Author: Andrew Taggart
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Examining ‘Inevitable To Life Is Death And Not Inevitable To Death Is Life’
Of the human condition, the writer Jamaica Kincaid once wrote, “Inevitable to life is death and not inevitable to death is life.” It’s beautiful–symmetrical, epigrammatic, prima facie enigmatic–but is it true? Is it true that life, having arise, must end? And is it also true that it’s not knowable whether there’s any further life after death–be…
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The Main Lesson Of The Upanishads
The main lesson of The Upanishads, a book I just read for the first time, is that the body must be stilled and the mind quieted in order for the ascent to Brahman, or ultimate reality, to be possible. For someone who hasn’t had any mystical experiences or who hasn’t meditated much, The Upanishads (or The Daodejing or, for…
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Tough Compassion
It’s thought that compassion is always soft and gentle, but that’s a considerable mistake. Compassion may require perceptiveness, and perceptiveness may reveal that your interlocutor is deluded about something specific. To be soft and gentle, in such a case, may allow this person to maintain this delusion and therefore to be that much further from…
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Why Is Wisdom Important?
Let wisdom be defined as right conduct flowing directly from right understanding. That is, the wise person is known through her conduct. Yet because “one swallow does not make a summer” (Aristotle), wisdom is demonstrated through countless virtuous actions. Go further: somehow it can be ascertained that each of these actions arises immediately out of the wise…
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An Understanding Of Understanding: Three Features Of Wisdom
Let wisdom, for my purposes anyway, be defined as right conduct directly flowing from right understanding. Then we can ask: how shall we enhance and enrich our understanding to the point at which it could be that from which we act? Consider but three features of wisdom: perceptiveness, considerateness, and thoughtfulness. To be very perceptive is to pick…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 