Author: Andrew Taggart
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Doing what comes naturally
If it isn’t easy to do, then it’s not the thing to do. Deliberations require lack of spontaneity and struggle a lack of understanding, but graceful action comes quite naturally. Cutting wood is only hard until the trunk and I are on friendly terms and then the neck yields to the axe’s touch. Being courageous is…
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‘Luckiness is not getting what you want…’
Luckiness is not getting what you want but realizing that it wasn’t worth wanting after all. This is called adulthood. Unluckiness is getting what you want, only to grow thoughtlessly into old age. This is called childhood. Also: prose.
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The thing desired during sitting meditation
For the first time this morning, I came upon a criterion for my meditation practice. The criterion allows one to say, when one has hit upon the thing desired, that this is in fact the thing desired. Since last December, I had meditated without any aim apart from the continuing to do so diurnally. Now,…
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Lightening bitter hearts
A bitter heart can set in one day and thereafter settle in. Be vigilant therefore. Where today have you erred? What deed neglected, left unfinished? What love untold? Now write these reflections down on paper, read them aloud, and cast them thence into the night fire. Tomorrow, during morning meditation amid the quietude that pervades…
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Loneliness and presentness
Yesterday, in the middle of a philosophical conversation about a conversation partner’s sense of loneliness, it occurred to me that loneliness just is the experience of not being present. Loneliness is the word we typically use to designate this nebulous feeling of lack: the other is not there, the past in which love was is…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 