Month: September 2020
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‘That’s Too Good For Me’
Who here hasn’t been prideful? Who, right here, isn’t prideful still? Who hasn’t said: “That’s too good for me”? Who hasn’t gotten huffy, murmuring under one’s breath: “That’s beneath me.” Whose anger isn’t slowly brought to a simmer, only to remain on a low boil? In 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre must have seen pride as the…
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The Best Thing Is To Be Told That You’re Full Of Shit
The best thing another can do for you is to tell you that you’re full of shit. And now, alas, for all the carats and qualifiers… The one telling you this shouldn’t be acting out of ill will, anger, or aggression. Buddhists call this “the second poison.” Instead, he or she should be acting with…
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The Confessors
The confessors out there do love their confessions. I don’t know who we have to blame for this shadowy development. The Romantics from whom the cult of interiority began? Or, as we come to our native soil, Emerson, who once wrote, “Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to this or that; the…
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Is Zen About Exerting Oneself To The Point Of Tears?
It is a common misunderstanding to think that Zen practice is so effortful that one must exert oneself to the point of tears. This is not so, yet it is is understandable. Chan (Chinese Zen) masters have, especially in the work entitled The Chan Whip, impressed upon their students the need to remain vigilant at…
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We’re Groundless
You can doubt pretty much everything today. There are Flat-earthers who doubt that the earth is a sphere. There are carnivore dieters who reject all food except for beef (or liver), salt, and water. There are anti-vacciners for whom the injection of COVID-19 vaccine, were such to exist, would be tantamount to poisoning one’s children.…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 