The cybernetics phase of cognitive science produced an amazing array of concrete results, in addition to its long-term (often underground) influence

The relations that define a system as a unity, and determine the dynamics of interaction and transformations which it may undergo as such a unity constitute the organization of the machine.

All our suffering is associated with this pre-occupation. All loss and gain, pleasure and pain arise because we identify so closely with this vague feeling of selfness that we have. We are so emotionally involved with and attached to this "self" that we take it for granted.

The cybernetics phase of cognitive science produced an amazing array of concrete results, in addition to its long-term (often underground) influence

As Buddhist teachers often point out, knowledge, in the sense of prajña, is not knowledge about anything. There is no abstract knower of an experience that is separate from the experience itself.

There is a strong current in contemporary culture advocating ' holistic ' views as some sort of cure-all... Reductionism implies attention to a lower level while holistic implies attention to higher level. These are intertwined in any satisfactory description: and each entails some loss relative to our cognitive preferences, as well as some gain... there is no whole system without an interconnection of its parts and there is no whole system without an environment.

When a living system is suffering from ill health, the remedy is found by connecting with more of itself.