Up to Me
Buddhist nontheism teaches us that no one else is going to liberate us. We are each responsible for our own liberation. Thus, self-self-liberation first is most important because without self-self-liberation true compassion, the fuel to…
Tag: Emmanuel Levinas
Train Wholeheartedly
Attention [prosoche] is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude. It is a continuous vigilance and presence of mind, self consciousness which never sleeps, and a constant tension of the spirit. Thanks to this attitude, the philosopher…
Undeclinable
Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations With Phillippe Nemo Emmanuel Levinas and Jill Robbins, Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas A person dear to me is finishing her…
The Reading Life/1
The Chasm between Them and Us Kadya Molodovsky, A Jewish Refugee in New York: Rivke Zilberg’s JournalTranslated by Anita Norich The accomplished Yiddish writer Molodovsky wrote this novel in serialized form in 1940-41, knowing obviously…
What Is Vaster
In the early 1980s Harold Bloom noted about his experience of decades at Yale University that “[t]here is a profound falling away from what I would call ‘text-centeredness” among the current generation of American undergraduates,…
What Is Vaster
In the early 1980s Harold Bloom noted about his experience of decades at Yale University that “[t]here is a profound falling away from what I would call ‘text-centeredness” among the current generation of American undergraduates,…
Not So Random Entries, Commonplace Moleskine/10
111. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction. –Simone Weil 222. When [Arthur Waley] was at work, all else was eliminated. –Ivan Morris 333. Whenever I…
Primacy
“[Shoshani] didn’t teach piety; he taught the texts. The texts are more fundamental—and vaster—than piety. “ –Emmanuel Levinas
Being With
I have some grand notions in my head But they often fall by the wayside When I’m sitting at the table Talking with one person Hearing all that has happened In that one life. –Dorothy…
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?…