John Stanley: What moved you, as a Zen teacher, to address the global ecological crisis in your new book, "Minding the Earth, Mending the World"?

Susan Murphy Roshi: I've been feeling, for at least a couple of decades, that there's a kind of low-grade haunting going on --...

The Buddhists have a good piece of advice: "Act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference." It is this serious playfulness, a combination of concern and humility, that makes it possible...

"I would be absolutely astounded if population growth, industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn't changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial." --David Attenborough

"The basic matter is not one of economics. It is...

"The eye that searches the Milky Way galaxy is itself an eye shaped by the Milky Way. The mind that searches for contact with the Milky Way is the very mind of the Milky Way galaxy in search of its own depths." --Thomas Berry & Brian Swimme

"I came to...

"My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious." --C.G. Jung

Those who see into the Unconscious have their senses cleansed of defilements, are moving toward Buddha-wisdom, are known to be with Reality, in the Middle Path, in the ultimate truth itself. Those who see into the...

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a world that honors the servant, but has forgotten the gift.
--Albert Einstein

Except in the light of brain hemisphere lateralization, nothing in human psychology makes any sense.
--neuroscientist Tim...

The economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. The former is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis, equitable utilization of the means of production, and the fate of the working classes and underprivileged. This appeals...

Even with all these profound scientific theories of the origin of the universe, I am left with serious questions: What existed before the big bang? Where did the big bang come from? What caused it? Why has our planet evolved to support life? What is the relationship between the cosmos...

I saw that ordinary people believe they have a self and that everyone they meet has a self. They think of it as within the body. Because it is not like that, I have shown that the self is not there in the way it is thought to be. This...

"To be, or not to be: that is the question."
--Hamlet

"Psychopaths are capable of taking the perspective of somebody else, but only to take better advantage of you. They're able to play the empathy game, but without the feelings involved. It's like an empty shell. The core of...

We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and the survivors will have to adapt to a hell of...

This is the "pilgrimage season" in Bodhgaya. Under the Bodhi tree where the Buddha achieved enlightenment, on the west side of the Mahabodhi temple, a stream of people passes in silent contemplation. The great temple they are circumambulating dates from the Gupta dynasty (fifth to sixth century), the golden age...

"We are seeing a perfect storm of converging crises that together represent a watershed moment in the history of our species. We are witnesses to, and participants in, a transition from decades of growth to decades of economic contraction." --Richard Heinberg

"True development is in harmony with the needs of...

"The entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, the moon, and the stars live together as a cooperative. The same is true for humans and animals, trees, and the Earth. When we realize that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise -- then we can build a noble environment....

"We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger. And we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man ... far too little. His psyche should be studied -- because we are the origin of...

"The institutions of our society co-arise with us. They are not independent structures separate from our inner lives, like some backdrop to our personal dramas. Nor are they merely projections of our own minds. As collective forms of our ignorance, fears and greed, they acquire their own momentum, enlist our...

Another externality dismissed in market systems is the fate of the species. Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative. Business leaders...

It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing. --Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe