Category: meditation

• February 10, 2014

  Proper appreciation for human embodiment

  Not to be pulled apart by the urgings of the body yet not to swear off the corporeal pleasures unique to human experience. Neither to give into one’s appetitive cravings nor to practice world-denying asceticism. Neither vanity nor shame. Neither the wrong Yes nor the wrong No. How then? Listen: the warmth of the sun…
• February 9, 2014

  A secular version of the Parable of the Talents

  Our time on earth is finite; we know that we shall perish. How are we to best spend our days? How to use our gifts? On the one hand, we could believe that all our words and deeds do not amount to much since these will be erased with the passing of time. Hence, we…
• February 8, 2014

  Plotinus on sculpting the self

  In Enneads I 6, 9, Plotinus writes, Go back inside yourself and look: if you do not yet see yourself as beautiful [i.e., as participating in the Idea of Beauty], then do as the sculptor does with a statue he wants to make beautiful; he chisels away one part, and levels off another, makes one…
• February 5, 2014

  The tentative, provisional, and presumptive

  A common error in thinking is to believe that a request, an invitation, or an offer is structured according to a Yes or a  No. Either I accept or I reject. Either I assent or else dissent. However, in many cases a binary operator may not be accurate or appropriate. Thus, one needs to consider,…
• February 3, 2014

  The salamander and the black-and-white bird

  Up to me came a  salamander to be warmed by the sun. The wind was cool and I felt chilled, so I sat down and began to climb. When I returned to be warmed by the sun, along came a little black-and-white bird hopping closer and closer to me. He was hopping along the low-lying…