Category: meditation

• March 22, 2012

  When a vague question is asking to be asked

  In his actions, gestures, demeanour and speech, the [Daoist] sage shows himself to be responsive but steady, focused but spontaneous, firm but flexible, reserved but accessible. He follows no rigid plans, and does not espouse goals that are to be achieved come what may. Hence, he does not force people or things to fit in…
• March 21, 2012

  On the concept of anxiety: A reconsideration

  At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;  Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement.   –T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets * First a detour through the Dia Trip (good pun fun) for a visual inquiry into tranquility, the opposite of anxiety. In case…
• March 20, 2012

  Ramble re: rest

  Auto-reply on: March 18 to March 19. Subject Line: Ramble I’m spending the day upstate. Rousseau would call this a reverie. Attending to the natural world seems to me a necessary feature of leading a philosophical life. I should be back in town by the evening; I’ll reply by Tuesday at the latest. Kindly, Andrew…
• March 19, 2012

  Notes on the Milonga: An essay in improvisational dance

  The following is a poem or poems that my friend Carolyn and I wrote late last week. Carolyn’s contribution is in black, mine is in teal. The theme nestled, three-fold, is the following: how will women live today, how will men do so, and how will they (we) live radiantly together? You know that our…
• March 17, 2012

  On the ‘profound de’: An excerpt from David E. Cooper’s Convergence with Nature: A Daoist Perspective

  The following, 10 lines down below the hash marks, is an excerpt from David E. Cooper’s Convergence with Nature: A Daoist Perspective (Green Books, 2012), pp. 76-7. In the Daoist tradition, the sage was someone who lived according to the Way (dao). But how was he to do so? The sage cultivated “profound de.” De can be…