Month: December 2019

Put Your Body Where Your Mouth Is

In a time when it is the fashion to propose amendments to the Constitution, I would like to propose an amendment requiring (1) that when war breaks out the president and all consenting members of…

The Power of Footnotes

1. My idea of the ideal text is still the Talmud. I love the idea of parallel texts, with long, discursive footnotes and marginal commentary, texts commenting on texts. –Noam Chomsky, Mother Jones interview, 1987…

Perennially Good Advice

“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above…

A Phenomenologist of Impermanence

In this world of ours where everything withers, everything perishes, there is a thing that decays, that crumbles into dust even more completely, leaving behind still fewer traces of itself, than beauty: namely grief. –Marcel…

To Serve Suffering Humanity

Shekhar Ganguly, A Satyagrahi, a Revolutionary, a Communist People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, 1995 I recently read Arundhati Roy’s moving essay, “Walking with the Comrades,” detailing her solidarity with the indigenous Maoists of India back…

Sayings by Maharajji

Said one devotee, “Maharajji was love incarnate. No religion, only love.”   from Miracle of Love: Stories about Neem Karoli Baba, compiled by Ram Dass See God in everyone. It is deception to teach by…