Wake Up!
Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav: “The world says that stories are good to put a person to sleep, but I say that with stories you arouse people from sleep.” — Sol Lipkin, A History of Yiddish Literature
Category: Wisdom Traditions
Three Passions
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. –Bertrand Russell
Cheer Up
The first sign that you are becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful. When a woman is gloomy, that may be dyspepsia, but it is not religion…. To the yogini everything is bliss; every…
Kristen’s Handout on Rabi’a for Week #2 on Islamic Mystical Experience
Sessions on the Liberative Potentials of Islamic Mystical Experience with Kristen Andersen Week 2: Rabi’a O my Lord, Thou knowest that the desire of my heart is to obey Thee, and that the light of…
Islamic Mysticism and Liberation: Rabi’a, Rumi, and Malcolm X
I am a big proponent of “Share the wealth.” Accordingly, I have asked our friend Kristen Andersen to share her important work on Islamic mysticism and liberation, the subject of her Master’s thesis in theological…
Word of the Day: Apokatastasis
Allen Ginsberg: …The conditions of revolution in late twentieth century are conditions unforeseen by any other civilization. We are going to the moon, we have drugs that go to the moon inside, we’ve recovered the…
Priorities
The concern for the other breaches concern for the self. This is what I call holiness. Our humanity consists in being able to recognize this priority of the other. Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous to Be?…
Crosses, Values, Options
1. “Really living like Christ will not mean reward, social recognition and an assured income, but difficulties, discrimination, solitude, anxiety. Here, too, the basic experience of the cross applies: the wider we open our hearts…
Spiritual Exercises
Last year I read several books by French philosopher Pierre Hadot, who has focused on the role of spiritual exercises in philosophy. Through Hadot, I became acquainted with this short passage from a diary kept…
Cheerful Thought of the Day
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, This is the best season of your life. –Wu-Men