“You do not need to waste your time doing those things that are unnecessary and trifling. You do not have to be rich. You do not need to seek fame or power. What you need is freedom, solidity, peace and joy. You need the time and energy to be able to share these things with others.”
― No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life
― No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life
“The feeling that we call “I” is itself the product of thought. Having an ego is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you are thinking.”
― Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
― Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
“My mind begins to seem like a video game: I can either play it intelligently, learning more in each round, or I can be killed in the same spot by the same monster, again and again.”
― Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
― Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
“if, like many people, you tend to be vaguely unhappy much of the time, it can be very helpful to manufacture a feeling of gratitude by simply contemplating all the terrible things that have not happened to you, or to think of how many people would consider their prayers answered if they could only live as you are now. The mere fact that you have the leisure to read this book puts you in very rarefied company. Many people on earth at this moment can’t even imagine the freedom that you currently take for granted.”
― Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
― Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
“There is nothing passive about mindfulness. One might even say that it expresses a specific kind of passion—a passion for discerning what is subjectively real in every moment. It is a mode of cognition that is, above all, undistracted, accepting, and (ultimately) nonconceptual. Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves. Mindfulness is a vivid awareness of whatever is appearing in one’s mind or body—thoughts, sensations, moods—without grasping at the pleasant or recoiling from the unpleasant.”
― Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
― Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
Brandon’s 2025 Year in Books
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