Sentience is a core survival function. Sentience, like consciousness, is not a person, place or thing, it is an activity, a function, a response. It is what allows anything to exist at all in an impermanent universe. Impermanence is not the problem sentience must overcome. It is the condition that calls sentience into existence.

Consciousness is an emergent property of dependent origination. Consciousness does not reside in matter, does not float above it, does not constitute it, and is not an illusion generated by it. It is not a substance. It is not a property of a substance. It is an event, and like all events, it arises, performs its function, and ceases.

I was utterly captivated watching Sister Noella, a Benedictine nun, make cheese in episode four, “Earth,” of Michael Pollan’s documentary “Cooked.” I felt a profound resonance with how she described her faith’s engagement with the world and celebration of creation in all the small daily details of being present. How work becomes a sublime act of celebrating God’s creative force. It just felt right and true to me, and not dissimilar to my own view of faith and practice expressed through my...