Pandemic Year
It stopped moving, the seconds pendulum in my parents ’ grandfather clock. When was that? …. I am confused as ?)aren’t you(? I sit here looking facing the glass bay doors to the clock of my world Home more than not (…except when…) I have watched the sun pendulum from one side of the world and back and I just don’t know their clock has not worked since…what?…the 80s? and this now, then, is……
Daily Song
I don’t do it often enough, but I intend to start the day with the following, “song.” It is original in a sense, or parts are, but much/most of it is taken from others, some more, some less obvious. Let it be like a scavenger hunt! And what happens when we take such a song into our heart and return to it daily? Thus begins another day for which I am overflowing with gratitude. Great is my fortune and…
Intimate (with) Life–for Kobayashi Issa
In Defense of “I feel…”—Philosophy is Not Merely, “I believe…”
How do you feel? –What did I just ask you? “Feel” is like many/most words, i.e., we usually use it without thinking and its meanings are many and varied. I might ask you how you feel in regard to your physical health—the answer, “I feel good; the pain in my ankle has gone away.” I might ask how you feel in regard to life/mental health—the answer, “I feel kind of down these days; I can’t quite place it.” I might…
Goethe and Ryōkan as Exemplars of How to Live
Writing on compassion in early Buddhism, Anālayo notes that the primary form of compassion was teaching the Dharma, i.e., the Buddhist teachings on the cessation of suffering. But as Anālayo also notes, verbal instruction is not the only way to teach: teaching, “…can also take place through teaching by example” (Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation, 16). Indeed, teaching and learning by example are extremely important, and often unconscious. We don’t always realize that others, especially children, learn by…
Suffering, Creativity, and Genius
What would Nietzsche make of us? What would Nietzsche make of the T-shirt you can find on Facebook that is a spoof of a beer label. It reads, “Nietzsche’s Übermensch/Superior Quality/It’s Beyond Good/Zarathustra & CO. Distillery/Consume Responsibly.” If there were a God who gave him a soul, would Nietzsche turn in his grave? What would he think about the fact that over the years I have viewed his writings as a kind of self-help? That is, and perhaps ironically, if…
Dōgen on Hearing Things As They Are…a Response to Okumura Roshi
One of my most beloved contemporary Zen practitioners and scholars is Shōhaku Okumura Roshi. One reason is simply the fact that he is in the lineage of Zen that I attempt to practice, namely Dōgen’s. But I also find his approach very human; that is, his approach to Zen is a Zen that a human could practice. This is not always the case, it seems to me, with other Zen practitioners and commentators. But this, of course, does not mean I…
Walt Whitman and Crossing the Boundaries of Consciousness
My dear reader, forgive me for what is most likely a projection. I am loath to admit it but often when poetry begins some prose piece that I am to read, I do little more than skim it. I have never even read through all of the poems that begin Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. Please do not gasp too loudly—I know I’m a terrible human being. So, please do not be like me. Please read these selections (and ideally the…
Midlife Crisis: Or First Draft of a Book Preface
It seems to me that my life, like surely many people’s lives, resembles the trajectory of modernism to postmodernism (to post-postmodernism?). That is, like many people, when I was a child everything was imbued with a robust intrinsic identity and meaning, both of which could be definitively and determinedly known. One of the most obvious examples of this was the faith in the near omniscience of my parents, and once in school and out of the house, in that of…