As Buddhist teachers often point out, knowledge, in the sense of prajรฑa, is not knowledge about anything. There is no abstract knower of an experience that is separate from the experience itself.
Francisco VarelaAll 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.
Francisco VarelaWhen a living system is suffering from ill health, the remedy is found by connecting with more of itself.
Francisco VarelaI'm a biologist who has been interested in the biological roots of cognitive phenomena.
Francisco VarelaThe cybernetics phase of cognitive science produced an amazing array of concrete results, in addition to its long-term (often underground) influence
Francisco VarelaThere 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.
Francisco Varela