Month: August 2019

• August 31, 2019

  Not To Pass By On The Other Side

  That time when we were on the bus. Must have been, what, 11 years ago now. And the coldest winter I can remember. Maybe below 0 degrees Fahrenheit that morning not counting wind chill. The kind of cold that takes your breath away, the kind that causes your eyes to become glassy with tears. Did…
• August 30, 2019

  I Almost Cry Every Time I Hear Johnny Cash’s Hurt

  I almost cry every time I hear Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt.” Sometimes I do cry. Yes, the speaker’s voice contains so much pain. But it’s not just that. It’s not just the fact that his pain spilleth over nor is it just the history of his pain nor merely the enormity of his pain. Nor…
• August 29, 2019

  Yes And: Buddhism And Beyond

  In a recent Aeon article, “The Problem of Mindfulness,” graduate philosophy student Sahanika Ratnayake claims, among other reasonable claims she makes, that mindfulness, just because it rests upon a no-self (anatta) doctrine, promotes detachment from one’s thoughts and feelings and, in turn, nullifies one’s ability to deliberate upon one’s thoughts and feelings as well as, and more important…
• August 28, 2019

  That’s Not Soul Searching

  I once had a chat with a man who’d finished a BA at a major research university, later on a Master’s degree at an Ivy League school. Between both, he had worked successfully in finance and had then successfully pivoted to the tech space. After “some soul searching,” he said, he decided to become a…
• August 27, 2019

  ThePresent And Today

  I recently received a note from Scott Thrift, an inventor of two clocks–ThePresent, which slowly carves out the year according to the natural rhythms of the seasons, and Today, whose “silent movement” is said, according to the MOMA Store, to simplify “the day into the perfect balance of dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight.” It is…