Category: philosophical counseling

• October 21, 2011

  Friday meditation: Curating Tao Te Ching

  The following are excerpts from Tao Te Ching. All have something to say about the  nature of wisdom. Enjoy this Friday’s meditation. —  I. To speak little is natural. High winds do not last all morning; heavy winds do not last all day.     II.  The ancient Masters didn’t try to educate the people, but…
• October 20, 2011

  On the discipline of eating: Open questions

  What is it like to put food in your mouth? To chew slowly? To look around and see warmed others beside you? To look down and find long-limbed wine in your glass? To have picked the vegetables, now in your mouth, thick from your garden? To have cooked the masticated sinews for hours beside those…
• October 19, 2011

  On what I learned from fasting

  Removing the inessentials is not a form of punishment; it is an act of joy. “He who knows that he has enough–is rich” (Tao te Ching). “The highest goodness is like water” (Peter France, Hermits: The Insights of Solitude). My defects have been pride and prejudice. I grew up with an overvaluation of my own…
• October 18, 2011

  10 word bios

  Individual: So what do you do? Me: I’m a philosopher. I put lives in order. — Institution: So what do you do? Me: I’m a philosopher. I bring lives to order. — Him: So where are you from? Me: The Midwest. Him: And why’d you move? Me: I set out to make life work. — Her:…
• October 16, 2011

  On birthdays as last days

  Here’s my short essay on public philosophy, education, and our spiritual predicament at Butterflies and Wheels. — I’m spending my birthday tomorrow fasting and meditating. The following is an excerpt from Pierre Hadot, The Present Alone is Our Happiness; Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson, translated by Marc Djaballah, Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2009, 162-6. — Jeannie…