In Their Own Words

As Lynn Margulis' foreword indicates, Charlie's book exemplifies what the Lab Schools and the College do so well: produce thinkers who can bring together science, the humanities, and social thought. His interests in the human struggle and how it fits into the natural world are joined in a book that traces suffering and the Buddha's remedy by means of meditation to their roots in nature. The book weds the Buddha's explorations into the character of discontent to Darwin's understanding of the operations of nature. Beginning with disease, old age, and death in the wilds, Dismantling Discontent follows discontent from its animal origins to its expression in hunter-gatherer, agricultural, and finally modern societies and looks at how meditation may ameliorate suffering.