Choosing Guiding Means
A few years ago I read Amos Oz’s trenchant book, How to Cure a Fanatic. His context was the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Therein, Oz noted that “the essence of fanaticism lies in…
Category: Wisdom Traditions
Perduring Truth
It is, indeed, not necessary to shew by many instances what all mankind confess, by an incessant call for variety, and restless pursuit of enjoyments, which they value only because unpossessed. –Dr. Samuel Johnson, The…
Intellectual Superiority Complex
Ivan Karamazov has lost his faith precisely because he has elevated himself above the people. In this case, “the people” are not necessarily peasants, but are what Ivan, a modern intellectual, is not: human beings…
One Kind Gesture
I am grateful to Gary Saul Morson, for his book that has engaged me over the last year, Wisdom Confronts Certainty, as well as many of his articles and essays. Thanks to Morson’s insights here…
Hold It All
Joseph Needham has described the unity of Chinese civilisation as organismic, with the various parts functioning like those of a living organism. We think of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, and even of popular religion. These…
Kindred Spirits
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. But I try to work one day at a time. If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever…
Don’t Be Swayed by External Circumstances
The great remedy which heaven has put in our hands is patience, by which, though we cannot lessen the torments of the body, we can in a great measure preserve the peace of the mind,…
Tsores, and Then Some
But even from such calamities life is by no means free; a thousand ills incurable, a thousand losses irreparable, a thousand difficulties insurmountable are known, or will be known, by all the sons of men….
Fire/2
“It is in the midst of such various woes as these that the beings are plunged, yet they cavort in joy, unaware, unknowing, unalarmed, unafraid, neither experiencing disgust nor seeking release. In this burning house…
Moving toward Perfection
When Turgenev pleaded with him to return to the literary art that had first won him fame, he did not understand that for Tolstoy the measure of true greatness was not what we were but…