Start Where We Are
Why exactly is sudden transformation according to a model impossible? The same question can be asked about individuals: why can’t someone just become what she admires? Disgusted with her life, Tolstoy’s Kitty, as we have…
Category: Wisdom Traditions
Give This a Shot over the Next Few Months
We all can render a great service by listening to opposing opinions without agitation, discourtesy, or violence, and by offering our opinions not as nonnegotiable demands but as calm, courteous statements. –Eknath Easwaran, The End…
Invitations and Incitements
I think it’s best to see Walt, and virtually every other imaginative writer of consequence, as issuing not edicts but invitations. Walt asks us to make his words ours, his vision our own….you can respond…
Today’s One-Liner (#14)
Everything is impermanent, even my teeth. –Munindra, in Mirka Knaster, Living This Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra
Today’s One-Liner (#13)
To have the courage for whatever comes in life—everything lies in that. –Saint Theresa of Avila, quoted in Eknath Easwaran, Love Never Faileth: The Inspiration of Saint Francis, Saint Augustine, Saint Paul, Mother Teresa, 133
Containing Multitudes
Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.) –Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 53 [Soen Nakagawa] had many faces: he was a simple monk, a “crazy wisdom” Zen master,…
Found in the Notes of Chapter 9
Pirkei Avot 4:1–“Ben Zoma states, ‘Who is wise? He who learns from all people. Who is strong? He who controls his passions. Who is rich? He who rejoices in his own lot. Who is honorable?…
Gratitude/3
For Jim Grote, who introduced me in my late twenties to the work of Rene Girard, whom I am still reading, especially through three recent works by Cynthia L. Haven. Girard’s ideas inspire, humble, energize,…
Today’s One-Liner (#11)
Method of investigation— as soon as one has arrived at any position, try to find in what sense the contrary is true. –Simone Weil, Waiting for God
Today’s One-Liner (#10)
On ne donne rien si libéralement que ses conseils. –La Rochefoucauld, Maxim #110 One gives nothing so liberally as pieces of advice. –Translation by Stuart D. Warner and Stéphane DouardSt. Augustine’s Press, 2001