Category: philosophical counseling
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Going Beyond The Student-Spiritual Teacher Framing
We need a new, more deft understanding of “student” and “spiritual teacher.” In fact, ultimately both, rightly says The Avadhuta Gita, have to go. But first the promised understanding. The student in life–be he a spiritual practitioner, an entrepreneur, or (really) anybody–tells a story in which he, the protagonist, is struggling to follow the path.…
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Personal Peace Is Not The Ultimate Aim
The contemporary spirituality scene–be it New Age or Neo-Advaita–is lacking in many respects. Two such are pointed out by Swami Satyananda Saraswati in Rikhia: The Vision of a Sage, an account of the rural development project undertaken in Rikhia, India, starting in 1989. Satyananda, presumably speaking to younger disciples, asserts, “Personal shanti may be an…
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Why Does The Reiner Story Gnaw At Us?
Why is the Reiner story–the story about Rob and Michele possibly being killed by their son Nick–so horrifying? Why, that is to say, do some national and international stories grab us and tear at us while others do not? Aristotle knew well: the stories that really get or, even, gnaw at us are, properly speaking,…
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Who Isn’t My Neighbor?
In 1991, on the day of Kartika Poornima, when the moon is brightest, God gave me a very good idea. He told me, “Help your neighbours as I have helped you.” Then I had to consider, what does the word ‘neighbour’ mean? Is it a person who lives next door or close to my house?…
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On Being Post-secular
The secularization thesis held that organized religion would fade as modern science came to take hold in modern culture and so all of human life would be slowly and properly “disenchanted” or “de-spirited.” This hasn’t happened. Instead, a far stranger development, one charted by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age, has long been unfolding. More…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 