The project

This project grows out of the master’s in Contemplative Studies at the University of Padua: the master’s bibliography is the ground from which everything here begins.

Vision

The Dharma has always changed as it crossed places and times: that is its way of being. Today it is changing again, but almost only in one direction: that of individual usefulness, of technique extracted from the ground that gave it meaning. We have been handed tools, and stripped of the context that made them meaningful.

The Dharma is not a shortcut to personal happiness, but a system of values able to give us back time with others, and that relationship with community which today is missing almost everywhere.

Mission

This site grows out of a reading: some 360 books, read in full and given back here as reviews and reflections.

I write for those who have never meditated and for those who have done so for thirty years, for those who call themselves Buddhist and for those who would call themselves nothing. For now I am alone. But what I am looking for does not live in a single head, and so the space stays open: to anyone who reads from another discipline — mathematics, biology, art, philosophy — and has something to leave here. One small piece at a time. Changing every time.

Values

Impermanence and humility

Nothing we formulate here is final, not even these lines. The Dharma has always changed as it crossed places and times, and there is no reason to believe it should stop now, nor that it falls to us to fix it in place. Besides, the era of the lone genius is over: no one could build a car from scratch — nor even a pencil. Recognising this is the starting point.

Radical collaboration

The work is distributed out of necessity, not out of kindness. What we are looking for does not reside in any single head, and so the space stays open: to anyone who reads from another discipline — mathematics, biology, art, philosophy — and has something to leave here. One small piece at a time.

Practice as foundation

Meditation is the ground from which dialogue takes shape and meaning. Without it, everything else risks remaining conversation. Life is an experience: to recount it is to betray it.

Deep listening

Before speaking, one must learn to stay in silence.