Tag: Spiritual Exercise

• January 23, 2014

  Hunger and spiritual exercise

  Hunger can come over one with such force that one feels gripped by the claim that one must eat now. This is urgent, serious business, and one must do something about it forthwith. Not always or not often is hunger signaled so discernibly by a growling, turning, or twangy-sounding tummy. Mostly, it is indicated by…
• June 20, 2013

  Basho’s poetic spirit: A mode of radiance

  For Basho (1644-1694), in whose hands the haiku form achieves its essence, the poet must submerge himself within a natural object, to perceive its delicate life and feel its feelings, out of which a poem forms itself. A poem may skillfully delineate an object; but, unless it embodies feelings which have been naturally emerged out…
• June 19, 2013

  Summer morning: Redwood haiku

  A haiku marries sincerity with accuracy, reintroduces simplicity to lightness. There is no time for parody, satire, or irony. One’s poetic concentration is on the thing, on its relations to what is felt or unseen, and on the world’s radiating significance. R.H. Blyth states that a haiku ‘expresses some realm of the human spirit in…
• June 15, 2013

  Alice in Wonderland in northern California

  When Alice opened the front door, she was amazed to see a giant sequoia looking impassively back at her. The tree engulfed her view, so dwarfed her egress that she had to tiptoe and shimmy sideways to get out the door. Outside, she stepped back and back to take more of it in. And as…
• May 1, 2013

  Cultivating discipline: A forthcoming manual

  I’m beginning to think about the contents of a short guide, Cultivating Discipline, which I’ll likely be using in some upcoming educational workshops. One chapter, I believe, will be on spiritual exercises, which I plan to arrange according to categories. Pierre Hadot suggests that a spiritual exercise is a meditation aimed less at informing the pupil about…