Tag: Daoism

• May 12, 2014

  Inward Training (Nei-yeh): Our audiobook

  Translated variously as ‘inward training,’ ‘self-cultivation,’ and ‘inner development,’ the Nei-yeh is an early Daoist work consisting, according to the translation we have followed, of 26 interconnected verses. Set out in these subtle, beautiful poems is a program concerned with aligning one’s posture, breathing, and mind with the Way of things. Some Daoist scholars, therefore,…
• March 22, 2014

  ‘The way is available yet inaccessible’

  The way is available yet inaccessible. Disclosing ever to the attuned; inaudible otherwise. ‘The five tones deafen the ears.’ Listing unlistening. Attuned, one hears for the first time. Not tone deaf, without excited tongue: subtle feeling for sound. According oneself. So comes the way.
• December 10, 2013

  Non-being, being, and beings

  One would like to acquaint oneself further with ‘the way things are.’ The chief reason is that if the one who lives best lives in accordance with nature, then it would be good, to begin with, to be able to say some things about what nature is. Next, one would have to investigate what it…
• November 19, 2013

  ‘Milky birds…’

  Words that came to me during morning meditation moments before a philosophical conversation recently: * Milky birds Seaweed tree Breathing gneiss / Be, all you, all me, but a single stroke of life.
• October 15, 2013

  Philosophical horror: Making the world anew

  Perceiving political disorder, religious strife, social unrest, or economic collapse, philosophers have not infrequently regarded themselves as saviors who could, from out of the resources of the mind itself, create the world anew. This, argues Stephen Toulmin in Cosmopolis, is what occurred to Descartes who, upon witnessing the Thirty Years’ War, believed that he could…