For Sure
Surely there can be nothing to distinguish us from the beasts, if we simply devote ourselves to greed and never turn our hearts to the Buddhist truth.—Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness What is a man,If…
New Life
Later I’m back in New York sitting around with Irwin and Simon and Raphael and Lazarus, and now we’re famous writers more or less, but they wonder why I’m so sunk now, so unexcited as…
A Question about a Film
The call commands us bear the burden of our neighbor and it elects us to shoulder our responsibilities for another, through the minute details of living everyday in the world.—Ira F. Stone, A Responsible Life:…
Inexpressible, Expressible
Whether culmination or aberration of history, the Holocaust transcends history. Everything about it inspires fear and leads to despair. The dead are in possession of a secret that we, the living, are neither worthy of…
Facing Death, Cherishing Life: A Spring-Summer Class
We are not limited to our physical body, even when we are alive. We inter-are with our ancestors, our descendants, and the whole of the cosmos. We do not have a separate self; we are…
Share the Wealth with Kelsey Shaver: Dancing the In-Between
The word “liminal” comes from the Latin word for a threshold or doorway. Transitions in life are normal, but what happens when the doorway becomes prolonged, like a passage or tunnel? My name is Kelsey….
Detachment and Realization Inter-Are
You may think you are working in a detached spirit, but attachment creeps into the mind from nobody knows where. You may worship in the temple or arrange a grand religious festival or feed many…
Who of Us Born Here Could Say This?
I loved the Constitution and could recite many of its provisions from memory. –Raul Hilberg, born in Austria, author of The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian
Not the Pat Answer
Father Zosima then advises his suppliant, in some of the words that Father Ambrose of Optina Pustyn asked Dostoevsky to convey to Anna Grigoryevna: “Be not comforted. Consolation is not what you need. Weep and…
Don’t Be a Sleepwalker
My instructor asked questions such as: What had I done, in detail, from the time I had awakened until the time I arrived at the session, a period of one and a half hour? ……