Youngmoon Bhang

“If it’s Truth we’re after, we’ll find that we cannot start with any assumptions or concepts whatsoever. Instead, we must approach the world with bare, naked attention, seeing it without any mental bias—without concepts, beliefs, preconceptions, presumptions, or expectations”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs

“By the 1990s, experts had completely rejected the idea of a three-layered brain. It simply didn’t hold up when they analyzed neurons with more sophisticated tools.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain

“But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.

No, said Tolkien, they are not.

...just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.

We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand.”
― Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography

“Other animals are not inferior to humans. They are uniquely and effectively adapted to their environments. Your brain is not more evolved than a rat or lizard brain, just differently evolved.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain