How Some Saw Simone
A very Jewish soul. There was something of the Talmud in her. Very stringent in her logic. 206 [W]hat most struck me in her were her nobility, her straightforwardness, the purity of her soul. 218…
Tag: Simone Weil
What Simone Weil Wrote about School Studies
… the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies. … All tasks that really call upon the power of attention are interesting for the same reason…
Biographilia
I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For, not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world,…
The Patron Saint of All Outsiders
This French version of Kafka, this cross between Pascal and Orwell remains unclassifiable. She is intellectually stateless, prophet without any country in which she can be sure of honor. A Catholic Jewess who criticized impeccably…
Yoga Sutras Exchanges with Yael
Concentration, meditation, and pure contemplation focused on a single object constitute perfect discipline. 3.4—Barbara Stoler Miller, translation of Yoga Sutras Notes/Connections 1.Ekāgratā, noun, Sanskrit. One-pointedness, doing only one thing at a time, concentrating upon a…
June Journal 2019
Hanna Krall: “All my books are about how very good human beings can be, and about how very bad they can be—something we are constantly discovering over and over again.” Chasing the King of Hearts,…
Reflections on the Intellectual Life by Irina S.
In one of my classes, we are reading a variety of books on the love of learning. I asked Irina (a nom de plume) if she’d be willing to share a few reflections on Zena…
This Week’s Reading
Lahiri, Mandelstam, Weil
An Introduction to Simone Weil: Concentration Is Consecration–Spring Class 2019
Humanity is divided into two categories—the people who count for something and the people who count for nothing. To believe in God is not a decision that we can make. All we can do is…
Concentration Is Consecration
Sri Eknath Easwaran distinguishes two kinds of spiritual reading: that of instruction and that of inspiration. Simone Weil’s book, Waiting for God, is an example of the latter, as it is fecund with material for…