Category: philosophical counseling
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‘Nothing happened until it did’: Kensho and positive samadhi
Nothing had happened, but then I hadn’t expected anything to happen anyway. We must have descended the long stairwell, feeling the polished wood of the handmade rail with soft fingers as we went. Then we would have stepped outside into the early afternoon sunlight and onto the sidewalk, possibly looking up at the bowing trees. We would…
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Openness, wonder, and joy
Philosophy is not for those who presume to know all there is to know. Nor is it for those who, being bourgeois, take life to be wholly self-explanatory. ‘The commonplace mind,’ writes Josef Pieper in ‘The Philosophical Act,’ ‘rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory’ to the point at which ‘”wonder” is no longer there.’ Now that must be…
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What is lacking in having no strong attachments
It is easier for most of us to recognize, as if by default, Marcia’s prolonged grieving over her son Metilius than it is to understand someone who does not grieve or miss anyone who has passed into and out of his life. We recognize a mother’s strong attachments to her too soon gone son, and we wonder…
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Two basic philosophical questions: Perfectibility and self-understanding
There are two sorts of philosophical questions that, though related, are actually separate, with the first question gaining unwarranted authority over the second. One is: how can I improve myself? The other is: how can I understand myself? When I ask, ‘How can I improve myself or my life,’ I am thinking in some such terms:…
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Two mistakes hidden by ‘meaningful work’
Number of Hours Spent Working Imagine you spent a millisecond working every day. Imagine further that this millisecond was the length of time required for you to meet your material needs. Would you think at all about a concept such as ‘meaningful work,’ a concept that, according to Google Ngram Viewer, only came into prominence during…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 