Jeremy Rifkin - The Empathic Civilisation

Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society.

"Compassion is like the sky; it covers all beings." 

-- Torei Enji

"People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the chest X ray and it doesn't look so good, or when the doctor writes 'prognosis, poor.'"

- Anna Quindlen

What do you wish you knew about love at 20?

What Do you Wish You Knew at Twenty?

Be gentle. Radically gentle. Be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with other people. And not in a sappy kind of way. I mean genuinely, from the heart gentle. I don't think any other advice would have gotten through to me. If someone had said this to me, instead of what I actually heard ("Don't be so sensitive," "You think too much," or "What did you expect?") I think I might have treated myself and other people with a lot more kindness.

If there's one thing I've learned from my meditation practice it's how incredibly aggressive I've been. On the most subtlest of levels. The majority of my thoughts and feelings have been rooted in self-aggression (which I still struggle with). And our culture really doesn't help much in this regard either.

Typically, we're told that being gentle is considered weak. Or, at the very least, this is what is implied.

But to be gentle is to acknowledge our humanness and our vulnerability. It is to recognize our connection. It is to treat ourselves and all beings with the utmost respect and requires great courage. To be gentle is to be intimate.

I cannot imagine anything stronger or more loving than that.

-- Robin Anderson, via the Interdependence Project 

The Calligraphy of Thich Nhat Hanh

Louis C.K.'s Girls Can't Have Cell Phones

"You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That's what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there. That's being a person." - Louis C.K.

Different Ways of Dealing with Obstacles

A cute comic on how we can deal with obstacles in our lives by Marcelle Hanselaar.