What a session last night at Starbucks. At least fifteen of us were seated around a table of a size to accommodate ten people. The room was echoing with voices, with the cacophony of the cappuccino machine used by the baristas. Nevertheless the group intently listened to chosen readings from the Tao te Ching. …
The Tao doesn’t take sides; it gives birth to both good and evil. The Master doesn’t take sides; she welcomes both saints and sinners. The Tao is like a bellows; it is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces; the more you talk of it, the less you…
One of many useful gifts that I received from grad school is the habit of taking notes in a pocket-sized moleskin notebook. I record memorable statements, questions, and especially outrageous exclamations that I happen upon in my reading. As a result of much reading I have filled seven or eight of these notebooks with…
So how is it going? You know, that pursuit of happiness? Was it genius or was it a touch of madness for Jefferson to have inserted “that” (happiness) into the Declaration of Independence? Is there anything more unstable than happiness? Happiness is not up to me for a starter. Today I plan some actions…
I finished reading the essay The Iliad or the Poem of Force written in 1943 by Simone Weil. The essay and other similar works are preparation for my commitment to read the Iliad by Homer. The more I’ve learned of the ancient Greeks, the greater my desire to read Homers great poem. This text was…
A copy of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse was given to me by a good friend. I finished the story a few days ago. I read it once before over 30 years ago. Hesse’s story is life changing, similar to T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. A copy of the Four Quartets is in my brief…
Love is never abstract. it does not adhere to the universe or the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, “the least of these my bretheren.” Love is not, by its own desire, heroic. It is heroic only…
Religion in its broadest sense, then, must be another term for that obscurity that surrounds men’s efforts to defend himself by curative or preventive means against his own violence. Religion shelters us from violence just as violence seeks shelter in religion. —excerpt from Violence and the Sacred by Rene Girard Bad Company A company…
There is no denying that competitiveness is a part of the life both of an individual and of a community, or that, within limits, it is a useful and necessary part. But it is equally obvious that no individual can lead a good or a satisfying life under the rule of competition, and no…
There’s a killer on the road His brain is squirmin’ like a toad Into this world we’re thrown Like a dog without a bone An actor out on loan. Riders on the storm –The Doors Riders on the Storm is a haunting Rock paean. Jim Morrison does justice to the dark lyric, singing about…
