The Patron Saint of All Outsiders

This French version of Kafka, this cross between Pascal and Orwell remains unclassifiable. She is intellectually stateless,  prophet without any country in which she can be sure of honor. A Catholic Jewess who criticized impeccably…

Arundhati Roy on How MLK Is Remembered

Martin Luther King Jr. made the forbidden connections between Capitalism, Imperialism, Racism and the Vietnam War. As a result, after he was assassinated even his memory became toxic, a threat to public order. Foundations and…

Unodious Comparisons

Make the most and best of your lot, and compare yourself not with the few that are above you, but with the multitudes which are below you.  –Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, The Life of…

Closer than Your Jugular Vein

“Look not for my reality in the realm of appearances or in the Void. Seek it in your own mind. There only it resides.–Kuan Yin, in John Blofeld, Bodhisattva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of…

Present Moment Only Moment

Harold: This is real nice. Makes me want to do somersaults.Maude: Well, why don’t you?Harold: I’d feel stupid.Maude: Harold, everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves.You just can’t let the world…

A Carpe Diem Reminder

The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability that it will be much shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform….

The Business of Wisdom & Virtue

But our ideas are more subjected to choice; we can call them before us, and command their stay, we can facilitate and promote their recurrence, we can either repress their intrusion, or hasten their retreat….

Wake Up!

 I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. –Nhat Hahn There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though…