Thank You, Dear Layla Writing Class, Spring 2016
Dear Friends Thank you for coming to Tower Grove Place Thank you for listening week after week Thank you for becoming acquainted with each other Thank you for meeting up with me, like at Kaldi’s…
For Example, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, and The Diamond Sutra
“I don’t deny it,” answered Swann in some bewilderment. “The fault I find with our newspapers is that they force us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only…
Maintain Your Equanimity–
Innumerable spheres enter one sphere. One sphere enters innumerable spheres. —Diamond Sutra
A Comment on a Passage by Thich Nhat Hanh
During the superpower confrontation in Vietnam, while thousands and thousands of peasants and children lost their lives, our land was unmercifully ravaged. –Thich Nhat Hanh, Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change The…
How Many Millions of People Have This Thought Today?
When can I speak the unuttered words that are choking me? –Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam Poems
Poem of the Week: Untitled by Rob Trousdale
Sometimes. When biting into a baguette; or Getting a back scratch from mom; or Sipping on a Muddy Waters cocktail. I remember the screams. From hidden cells. Inside the Hennepin County Public Safety Facility. And…
Hatred/2 by Hedy Epstein
Throughout the 1960s, I became involved in local civil and human rights activities, as well as anti-Vietnam war protests. In the spring of 1970, it became public knowledge in the United States that, as part…
Five Thousand Years of Jewish Creativity
I learned Hebrew by dint of much effort. It is a difficult language, severe and ascetic. Its ancient basis is the proverb from the Mishna: “Silence is a fence for wisdom.”…If it weren’t for Hebrew,…
Appreciating Kafka
The marvelous thing is that the bareness brought him not to self-denial or self-hatred but rather to a kind of tense curiosity about every Jewish phenomenon, especially the Jews of Eastern Europe, the Yiddish language,…
Ventures
Friends, I wanted to pass this brief passage on to you from Hannah Arendt, German philosopher, Jewish immigrant to the USA, author of Eichmann in Jerusalem, from an interview in 1964… The venture into the…