Category: meditation

• February 4, 2011

  On O’Keefe’s unknown infinity and Pascal’s eternal silence

  Georgia O’Keefe has ventured out of doors and there finds the “sun under the clouds.” But not some dull thing this, not ennui loitering behind the shed. No, for O’Keefe, this is a painter’s sun. She recalls later, “[T]he color effect was very strange–standing high on a pale green hill where I could look all…
• February 2, 2011

  On Gregory’s spiritual exercise

  In Letter 31, the 4th C. Archbishop of Constantinople Gregory Nazianzen writes, On the contrary, you must do philosophy in your suffering. Now more than ever, this is the moment to purify your thoughts, and to reveal yourself as superior to your bonds [which tie you to your body]. You must consider your illness a…
• February 1, 2011

  On Plath’s muscular owl

  It could have been 1962 when Sylvia Plath, then 30, set down in her journal a very dark thought: “I am now flooded with despair, almost hysteria, as if I were smothering. As if a great muscular owl were sitting on my chest, its talons clenching & constricting my heart.” 1963 was the year her…
• January 31, 2011

  On the joy of biking

  Is there anything more wondrous than biking again after a period of long rest following injury? Nietzsche calls happiness that “feeling that power increases–that a resistance is overcome.” The return to exercising capacities. The joy of movement for its own sake. The sublimation of aggression in the form of purposive movement. The enjoyment of the…
• January 30, 2011

  Stepping off the self-preoccupation machine

  As a child, the great Bertrand Russell was very unhappy. He remained unhappy until he hit upon a rather old idea: forget about the self. He realized that self-absorption was an obstacle to genuine happiness. As the years went by, Russell tells us, he seemed to be getting more and more happy for he had…