After Reading a 2002 Book by Arundhati Roy
What is happening to our world is almost too colossal for human comprehension to contain. But it is a terrible, terrible thing. To contemplate its girth and circumference, to attempt to define it, to try…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
A State of Wonder and Serenity
What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? And if so, what…
Some of the Dharma/1
The dharma is everywhere. It doesn’t matter where you are. All emotion is from thinking. In my mind there are three things: concentration, loving-kindness, and peace. Your heart knows everything. Thoughts of the past and…
“The Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha”*
Notes on Eliot Katz, The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg Example of George Steiner’s championing learning by heart: Ginsberg knew hundreds of poems from memory [20] In Dear Layla and Book of Mev: The…
Don’t Expect Applause
Tom Hayden was a major player in the antiwar movement of the 1960s as well as a familiar liberal and progressive activist, commentator, and researcher since. His last book is entitled, Hell No: The Forgotten…
El Salvador Connection by Martin Zaldivar
In our current class, I asked if anyone had a strong connection to El Salvador. Martin Zaldivar shared the following, and he gave me permission to post it. El Salvador is the home to half my…
A Feat of Reading and Writing
1. [T]he sheer enormity of what took place between 1933 and 1945 beggars our powers of description and understanding. The more one studies this period and its excesses, the more one must conclude that for…
Share the Wealth with Andrew Wimmer: Practicing Loving Kindness Meditation
I’m looking forward to talking with other meditators about my recent introduction to Loving Kindness Meditation as taught by Bahnte Vimalaramsi during a ten-day retreat at the Dhamma Sukah Meditation Center in southern Missouri. I…