Tag: Meditation

• March 7, 2012

  Of an African horse and a mad-grinning man

  So I’m at, what?, 54th and 6th and there’s this horse right? and I’m thinking Af–shushu–fric–shushu–ca and what the fuck right? because I must’ve heard Africa from the mouths of this pea-coated couple standing on the corner somewhere before who knows when walking whereto and why the fuck am I thinking Africa as this horse on 54th and 6th…
• February 22, 2012

  Late afternoon, the fugitive stillness

  There’s a moment, not long, sometime after late afternoon but well before twilight. It’s not like the early morning before the signs turn to face you and the feet clap up the stairwells. It’s not like the “dead of night” or the “dead of winter” when stillness is near universal and the “streets are empty.”…
• October 28, 2011

  Friday meditation: On gift giving, potlatches, and the modern world

  The Gift Exchange I think it was last week when I had a conversation with John Mitchinson of Unbound books. I write “I think it was last week” because I’m starting to run all my conversations together, and my days have started to lose their hard edges. Near the end of my conversation with John,…
• 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 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…