If our culture is so often readily and easily appropriated, imagine what happens when we embrace our full blackness and know that our contributions are just as important to the shaping of the country and, more broadly, the world.
The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our 'me' generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture.
Our life is whatever we are encountering right now, and our practice is shikantaza, which is literally 'just sitting.' More broadly it means to put our energy into settling everything in our world here and now, where we really live.
I believe that it is essential to our leadership in the world and to the development of true democracy in our country to have no discrimination in our country whatsoever. This is most important in the schools of our country.
It's very important that we keep these special, wild places. It defines the United States. Imagine our country without our national parks and our monuments. Here in California, imagine if you didn't have in Southern Cal the Channel Islands or the great Highway 1, Big Sur up to Point Reyes up to the Redwood country.
As a scientist, objectivity is one of my most deeply held values. If we could just try harder, I once thought, surely we could each see the world as others see it and learn to respect one another's views more readily. But I learned from the Pirahas, our expectations, our culture, and our experiences can render even perceptions of the environment nearly incommensurable cross-culturally.
The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.
There are certain things that Americans expect their government to do. Our infrastructure is vitally important. Putting people back to work with construction is important. Our roads, our bridges, our sewers, our waterways, our dams - this is what makes our country so special.
Well, I think, you know, the arts are really what - one of the things that make this country strong. We always think it's our economy or our military power, but in fact, I think it's our culture, our civilization, our ideas, our creativity.
So food is important part, not just in our physical well-being, but in our psychological well-being. The more chemicals that are in our food and the more outside of the way it is intended by nature, the more we are messing with things that we probably don't know the full effect of.
I see little more important to the future of our country and our civilization than the full recognition of the place of the artist.
As Americans, I think we really believe that with the meritocracy that exists in our country, the equality of opportunity is so important to the foundation of our culture and our society.
Activating our light and our full potential requires that we embrace our shadow. Realizing our wholeness requires us to become big enough to hold our brokenness.
Our culture is in deep trouble, and at the heart of its trouble is its loss of a vision for manhood. If its difficult for you and me as adult males to maintain our masculine balance in this gender-neutral culture, imagine what it must be like for our sons, who are growing up in an increasingly feminized world.
Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.
The better we are at accepting the limits of our world, the more easily we can embrace what we have.
I don't know what happens to our consciousness when we're unwound," says Connor. "I don't even know when that consciousness starts. But I do know this." He pauses to make sure all of them are listening. "We have a right to our lives!" The kids go wild. "We have a right to choose what happens to our bodies!" The cheers reach fever pitch. "We deserve a world where both those things are possible— and it's our job to help make that world.