Swami Prabhavananda, The Eternal Companion: Brahmananda—His Life and Teachings A while back, through reading the spiritual works of Christopher Isherwood, I became acquainted with his guru, Swami Prabhavananda, who was a devotee of Brahmananda,…
1. Recently ten of us became acquainted with Japanese-American Mayumi Oda in the Writing Our Own History class. Here autobiography had just been published, Sarasvati’s Gift. As an artist Oda had a breakthrough when she…
“The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us…
As I was driving in the Central West End this afternoon, I realized that I had not asked a friend to do a Share the Wealth with us this weekend. Then, knowing that Christmas…
Dear Simone, It’s been a pleasure to spend the last seven months reading together Montaigne, Sarah Blakewell, Peter Berger, and, above all, Pierre Hadot! Your fascination with him has deepened my own: The Present Alone…
I vow to learn them all.–from Bodhisattva Vows “You Are That Person” A student asked Soen NakagawaDuring a meditation retreat: “I am very discouraged. What should I do?”Soen replied, “Encourage others.” At the beginning of…
1967 Today’s Email: “Thank you for signing up for the [New York Times] Vietnam ’67 newsletter. Over the course of the next year, we’ll examine the participation of the United States in the long war…
of course Harvey Milk stamps are impermanent.
Written in the Margins of Ginsberg’s “Why I Meditate” There are 10,000 reasons to meditate (at least) There are 10,000 beings to save (for starters) There are 10,000 demented states of consciousness to purify (carpe…
Zainab al-Ghazali, Return of the Pharaoh: Memoir in Nasir’s Prison Translated by Mokrane Guezzou Our goal is reformation and not sabotage, edification not destruction. Zainab al-Ghazali Nawal el-Saadawi may have met her match in Zainab…