The Spirit of Science
Hello everyone, I hope you are in high spirits. Wait, what does “high spirits” mean again? Does it imply that you are filled with vigour? I take that back; my concern is that you are feeling well not necessarily that you are overflowing with energy. I hope you have been...
Precious Jewels
Hello everyone, Is everything going well for you? I sure hope it is, and that you are all not taking it for granted. As expected, the United States is doing among the worst in the world regarding the pandemic. They are now experiencing hundreds of deaths per day. Amid everything...
Emptiness and the Real Blue Sky
Hello everyone, I sincerely hope you are as well as the laws of nature allow. Today's letter will be a little different. More casual. I want to share with you two stories, that I believe will shed light on some concepts in Buddhist philosophy. These are both stories I have...
The Bigger Picture
Hello everyone, The world seems to be falling apart. At the risk of sounding completely delusional I must ask — is it really? It was not long ago that the world's gaze was on bushfires ravaging Australia, and without time to recover the coronavirus has run rampant across the globe. We...
Creativity and the Cosmos
Hello everyone, I hope you are well — and that reading this letter will make a humble contribution to this. For those of you in parts of the US affected by the recent unrest, please look after yourselves — my thoughts are with you. Also, please do not forget that underneath all...
On Cynicism
Hello everyone, I trust you are all well. At the very least, you are well enough to have the leisure of reading this letter. It is a good start — contemplate for a moment how many people are living right now that do not have this luxury? I want to cut...
Happiness and Problem Solving Revisited
Hello everyone, I hope you are well and that you will continue to be so. It appears that the number of cases worldwide of COVID-19 are still increasing. It seems as if the curve is yet to flatten — at least globally. Many individual countries appear to be doing well. In...
Taking Children Seriously II
[Taking Children Seriously](https://takingchildrenseriously.com) is simply the philosophy that it is both possible and desirable to raise a child without coercion. That is it....
Taking Children Seriously
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been doing as well as the laws of nature allow. I certainly have been. I have been helping test a user interface called Material Shell, very slowly trying to teach myself Japanese and reading through the short stories of Ted Chiang. It is...
The Virtue of Bodhicitta
Hello everyone, I want to start this letter with some good news. One month ago I wrote up a letter A Case for Giving, encouraging all of you to read Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save (which you can get for free) and donating to the not-for-profit named after...
David Whyte and the Man with No Head
In this piece I discuss to novel pointers to the intimacy of the present moment: Douglas Harding's teachings into headlessness and the poety of David Whyte....
The Beginning of it All
In this piece I take a trip to the beginning of the universe and ask the question; how do we know this? Why do we believe it all started with a bang?...
Determinism, Randomness and Free Will
In this piece I write up my thoughts on the useful concepts of determinism and randomness, and how they impact on our conventional sense of free will....
A Case for Giving
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been well — our lives are growing shorter by the minute, it would be a shame to waste them suffering or perpetuating suffering. Many of you are now in self-isolation, lock-down or quarantine and might still be adjusting to the situation. If you are...
Ramana Maharshi's Atma Vichara
Hello everyone, I trust you are all keeping well. We are living in an interesting moment in history, somehow I am feeling optimistic that we can learn a lot from it. Although, that is not what I will talk to you about in this letter. In fact, for now, I...
Cloudy with a chance of Coronavirus
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well, both physically and psychologically. Please take all the common-sense steps you can to safeguard your own health and those around you. The first I had heard about the coronavirus was towards the end of January. I was attending a series of...
An Internet that Sparks Joy
What if we designed it to maximise the happiness of its users, rather than the time spent on the platform? What if the efforts of our software engineers helped us reflect on our day as time well spent?...
Beyond Concept
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing really, really well! I haven't written in a while and I said I would have another letter by the end of the year. I have been back from my meditation retreat for over a week now. I don't have much to say...
Until we meet again
Hello everyone, As always, I hope you are all doing well. In this letter, I would like to say goodbye. Well, at least for the time being. Tomorrow I will be leaving for a five-week-long meditation retreat and will not be in touch with anyone. So this will be the...
A Beatific Vision
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. I have made some technical updates to the website in the past week, I made what are called embed cards which allow me to style embedded content so that it is more streamlined with the rest of my website. You can...