Force, or logos, or matrix or aesthetic, clues pointing to reality.
It is well understood that each of us lives in a constructed world, …made up of unacknowledged social narratives so deeply embedded in our psyches that we rarely recognize them, let alone doubt their truth. To a degree they must conform to the actual case of “what is” since if they are too…
…danger and unpredictability [are not] in themselves evil. Human cultures that demonize death or pain or sickness are thus less able to deal with the bitter side of nature, with intoxications; and they make themselves doubly sick. The Buddha taught that all life is suffering. We might also say that life, both attractive and…
Thursday is cloud covered. Rain is expected at mid morning. I always welcome news of rain. Precipitation is irregular in our segment of the Midwest. No doubt the status quo obtains everywhere, on account of climate warming worldwide. Every place is caught in the vortex of weather patterns, whip-sawed by the release of atmospheric…
Sunday morning arrives, the advent of yet one more warm fall day. Before dawn while outside I heard an owl calling somewhere in a nearby tree. I couldn’t see the owl though it certainly was able to see me. The owl’s call was distinct, somewhat uncanny. The owl is a predator with dagger-like talons….
The paragraph is quoted from a Buddhist text, Sansui kyō (Japanese: 山水經), rendered in English as Mountains and Waters Sutra. The poetic phrasing was composed by the 13th century Sōtō Zen monk Eihei Dōgen. Priest Daokai of Mount Furong said to the assembly, “The green mountains are always moving. A stone woman gives birth to…
Ok, ok, ok! Would you get to your point? Fair enough. As a reader you’ve been patient to accommodate. I’ll bring my best effort to say it plain. This is the point of drag racing. It is an entire package: the years of absorption, a type of apprenticeship, the nuances of basic high-performance engine…
We may speak of “public land” or “private land,”but the truth is we are in the presence of an ancient mystery–life itself—and the great life communitieswithin which all beings thrive and die. The pines were contemporaries with the dinosaurs;the sequoias were a dominant forestthat swept across the north Pacific rimand into much of Asia,…
“The Ainu say that the deer, salmon, and bear like our music and are fascinated by our languages. So we sing to the fish or the game, speak words to them, say grace. We do ceremonies and rituals. Performance is currency in the deep world’s gift economy.” Performance is art in motion,…
The line between the life of the fields and that of the village is not hard and fast. In any case wilderness, in the sense of being the most inaccessible part of a given territory, is seen as a shared space that is both dangerous and magical, a place to visit for spiritual and…
…we have entered a period in which global relations are defined by new nationalisms, religious fundamentalism, developed world hubris, stepped-up environmental damage, and everywhere expanding problems of health and poverty. What was to have been a “New World Order” is revealed as a greater disorder, much of it flowing from the top down. Disorder…
