According to Buddhism, each person is a Buddha who has forgotten their original nature. If we in the pampered West, having grown up with so many advantages, could not claim our own health and our agency, preferring to see ourselves as helpless victims, then who would do it? Who would take responsibility for the world?

Maybe the same instruments and tools that have been used to keep people in slavery and ignorance could potentially be used to liberate and awaken them.

If consciousness is the ground of being rather than an epiphenomenon of physical processes, we may find that a basic question asked by modern astronomy and space science- 'Is there life out there?'- should be rephrased. Organic life, as well as intelligence, may already be a property enmeshed in the fabric of the cosmos, brought to fruition through the spiraling dynamics of the solar system and the galaxy, built into the structure of the universe itself.

The drive to Black Rock City from San Francisco leads through the Nevada flatlands, past the jittering neon sadness of Reno.

Cynicism is something that is part of the media production of a certain type of subjectivity or consciousness that is passive and disempowered, cynical, fatalistic, pessimistic.

Deep down, nobody wants a job to occupy his or her time. We want a mission that inspires us.

We live in a culture where everything tastes good but nothing satisfies.