Category: meditation

• April 26, 2013

  Can we tell an alternative story of not being at home?

  ‘The one who masters walking leaves no footprints. / The one who masters speaking makes no slips of the tongue.’ —Daodejing 27, trans. Wenlong Lu and Keith Wayne Brown I believe one could write an alternative story of human embodiment, worldly engagement, and understanding that would not avail itself of a psychologist’s categories but would…
• April 25, 2013

  Beauty of Soul: Course Schedule

  My  Short Course at Schumacher College, ‘Beauty of Soul, According to Nature,’ has now been posted on Schumacher College’s website. The course is set to run from November 4-8. I’m including an early draft of the Course Schedule below. Opening Talk ‘The Beautiful Life of the Virtues’ What would modern moral philosophers make of the following…
• April 22, 2013

  The wisdom of one-liners

  Wisdom comes not in but through one-liners. The throughway is the entire expanse of a life of investigation which has been worked and shaped and magnified–like a vast, refined conclusion–into a single intuition. Condensed in that straight, parabolic line is the sinuous beauty of the speaker’s grainy union with the gulping, glorious cosmos. Hold to…
• April 19, 2013

  Knocking one hell of a squeeze out of life

  John O’Donohue: What would you say about the whole thing now that you’re about to leave it? [And this big roguish smile crossed his visage.] The Man on his Deathbed: By Jesus, I knocked a hell of a squeeze out of it. The Irishman’s words are goodness lifted into beauty. It is the light humor exemplified…
• April 17, 2013

  Discerning ‘when it’s time’

  No one can tell you ‘when it’s time,’ but you must become discerning. Pick up clues. Amass them. Clues are not grains of sand. Discern when they amount to something and when to nothing. Then–go to!–change yourself or change course. Make haste lest you slink into retreat. You think I am telling you ‘when it’s…