“We were driving back from my girlfriend’s parents. We had just switched seats when halfway through the car ride so that she could sleep after I had slept. My hand rested on hers, both resting on her thigh. It had gotten pretty late. It was close before midnight. I saw …
While I silently sit on the worn-out sofa, my mind wanders off and my staring seemingly contests the blank ceiling opposite of me. Suddenly, a song comes up on the queue. It is not that I have ever been listening to this melody before, but from the very first moment …
“I would compare it with my boyfriend. You know, the [kama muta] feeling I have here right now is the same as what I usually feel around him. I feel safe and completed. It is reassuring somehow. It might not be the exact same because these are two completely different situations. …
Let us today learn something about kama muta in Buddhism:Alan P. Fiske[1] writes that “the principal prototype and precedent of the Buddhist kam muta mote is third-person kama muta when observing, hearing, or reading about the paragon Buddha’s paradigmatic loving-kindness.” But “[t]he percept is that first-person kama muta should also occur …
In this post I’m trying to give you a grasp of what we think makes kama muta important. Not just for us humans. But especially for us humans. In doing so I will try to conceptualize “how kama muta” we humans actually are. What moves us? Many things, right? A …
After a summer break, we dive in some new territory of kama muta. The word terharu from Malay is one of the many that can grasp kama muta experience verbally; and shows how different languages embody kama muta experience in their very own manner. A native speaker explains terharu: “I think …
Each Sunday-morning service began with 30 minutes of prayerful singing described by the church as ‘worship,’ and every service ended in a call for people ‘who need prayer’ to come up front to get prayer. Indeed, there was a ‘prayer team’ chosen by and trained within the church, and as …
One’s very own kama muta in an Oslo café:He is a barista in an Oslo café that serves what may be the best coffee in the world. He has worked in retail service since he was 14, beginning part time in a cheese shop. Whenever a customer is especially thoughtful …
Today we have a moving moment which represents a rather personal one for me. I stumbled upon a video capturing the development of a human – “Portrait of Lotte, 0 to 20 years”; made by the Dutch artist and filmmaker Frans Hofmeester. When watching it I was deeply moved but …
After Martin Luther King Jr.’s address last week, let us turn to something similar. Similarly strong in its idea of connection: Love poetry. “Imagine,” Alan Page Fiske writes “that Shakespeare had written this poem to you:” [1] If I should think of love I’d think of you, your arms uplifted, Tying …