The lyric penned by Chrissie Hynde is more true now than ever. Resist temptation, irrational faith in “the system,” that’s going to take care of us. The system is an abstraction, a collection of imagined, dream-like benefits, (democracy protects everyone’s rights, captalism-gets-us-all-ahead, etc.) quite divorced from the way things actually work, the sharp-edged reality….
Monday, a mild day with 45 degrees F at 6:30AM. The poet James Dickey suggests in his poem To Rise To Walk Again that non-human mammals live in a perpetual paradise. That is, they live in a state of perpetual renewal. A consciousness that is filled with each successive moment would be one that…
The Heaven of Animals By James L. Dickey Here they are. The soft eyes open. If they have lived in a wood It is a wood. If they have lived on plains It is grass rolling Under their feet forever. Having no souls, they have come, Anyway, beyond their knowing. Their instincts…
Under heaven there is nothing greaterthan the tip of an autumn down,and the Thâi mountain is small. There is no one more long livedthan a child which dies prematurely,and Phang Tsû did not live out his time. ~*~ Heaven, Earth, and Iwere produced together,and all things and…
‘How do I know that the love of life is not a delusion?and that the dislike of death is not like a young person’s losing his way,and not knowing that he is (really) going home? Lî Kî was a daughter of the border Warden of Âi.When (the ruler of) the state of Tsin first…
The Tâo that is displayed is not the Tâo. Words that are argumentative do not reach the point. Benevolence that is constantly exercised does not accomplish its object. Disinterestedness that vaunts its purity is not genuine. Courage that is most stubborn is ineffectual. These five seem…
But here now are some other sayings: I do not know whether they are of the same character as those which I have already given, or of a different character. Whether they be of the same character or not when looked at along with them, they have a character of their own, which cannot…
Among the men of old their knowledge reached the extreme point. What was that extreme point? Some held that at first there was not anything. This is the extreme point, the utmost point to which nothing can be added. A second class held that there was something, but without any responsive recognition of it…
When we toil our spirits and intelligence,obstinately determined (to establish our own view),and do not know the agreement(which underlies it and the views of others),we have what is called‘In the morning three.’ What is meant by that ‘In the morning three?’ A keeper of monkeys,in giving them out their acorns, (once) said,‘In the morning…
Saturday morning brings a needed rain. Rain, even as my mind turns to the national No Kings rally scheduled for later in the morning. I plan to participate rain or no rain. What will this multi-city demonstration involving millions of citizens amount to? Nothing at all in the immediate manifestations of human injustice. I…
