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,…
Category: Wisdom Traditions
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
All Our Relations
All women are mothers and sisters, and all men are fathers and brothers in God’s family.–Maharajji, in Ram Dass, Miracle of Love: Stories about Neem Karoli Baba Oh humanityI am your grateful son.Every man my…
Searching
It was in Kafka that Scholem discovered a kind of heretical, secular Kabbalah, a literature paradoxically at once canonical and nihilistic. With Max Brod and Walter Benjamin, Scholem saw in Kafka a deeply Jewish writer,…
Today’s One-Liner (#9)
Blaming never helps. –Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step
Why Read the Russians (And Why I Have Classes on Them)
Reading Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, my students experience literature as never before. No more symbol hunting, artful theorizing, or smug political judgment: the Russians address the questions that really matter in a way that teaches readers…
Today’s One-Liner (#8)
To have a scapegoat is to not realize you have a scapegoat. –René Girard, Maxim #58, in All Desire Is a Desire for Being: Essential Writings, edited by Cynthia L. Haven.
Today’s One-Liner (#6)
The face offers itself to your compassion and to your obligation. –Emmanuel Levinas, in Jill Robbins, Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas
Today’s One-Liner (#5)
Be here now. Title of Ram Dass’s manual.