July 2011
2 posts
Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
May 2011
10 posts
Dangers
There is no fire like passion, No beast like hatred, No trap like folly, No deluge like greed.
— Dhammapada
H. L. Mencken
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
from Scripture Unwritten
A soul without a king has satan as its master.
Reflexive Injury
The evil done by oneself, self-begotten self-bred crushes the foolish like a diamond any another precious stone.
— Dhammapada
Pleasure and Bliss
There is pleasure, And there is bliss. Forego the first To find the second.
— Dhammapada
Hope (Bitter Spinster)
Sweet hope is in his heart, Nurse and companion to old age. Hope, captain of the ever-twisting Minds of mortal men.
— Pindar
January 2010
1 post
Decisions
happiness is an activity and a state and, like love, a decision
(we don’t want to make)
August 2008
2 posts
Underreported: Tasered →
19. That’s the estimated number of times the Ozark police tasered 16-year-old Mace Hutchinson whom they found lying underneath a highway overpass with a broken back that apparently resulted from fall.
道可道非常道
Transcendental renunciation is universal acceptance.
June 2008
5 posts
Unclear on the Concept #8199
Like many who take a pro- stance on the death penalty, Mr. Obama seems absorbed with the question of whether the punishment (death) fits the crime:
[from the Boston Globe]
Asked about today’s US Supreme Court ruling that sentencing someone to death for raping a child is unconstitutional, Obama said he disagreed with such a broad ban. “I have said repeatedly that I think that the death...
得與亡孰病
Between acquisitiveness and poverty, which is the greater disease?
Dead Flag Blues
What is meant by the phrase, “I looked in my wallet, and it was full of blood”?
Most of us — unwillingly or willingly, wittingly or unwittingly — participate in a large, pathological system. This system seems to be willing to commit crimes — not the least of which is genocide — not for the sake of safety, but for prosperity.
This phenomenon is not new. In nearly every age, there...
不笑不足以為道
Laozi was teaching three students: Shang, Zhong and Xia. As Lao reached the end of his first lesson, he rested his hands in his lap.
Shang’s eyes lit up and he laughed briefly but joyously.
Xia, almost as immediately, rolled his eyes and let out a low, lazy chuckle that faded away to leave a self-satisfied smirk.
Zhong looked nervously to both sides and then to Laozi, letting out a...
May 2008
3 posts
Open letter from Laozi to George W. Bush
XXX He who makes proper use of the Way has no need for minions. This is a recurring theme for us. Soldiers must march among thickets and thorns, and in their wake, leave many harrowing months. Achieve one’s goal without pride, without vengeance, without arrogance, without ambition, and without brutality. To be without mercy is to oppose the Way. Things which are not in accord with the...
April 2008
9 posts
Total Commitment
The Tipping Point
After careful regression and calculation, I have scientifically determined that Lunchables were the beginning of the end.
Civilian casualties
(expressed as a percentage of total casualties) WWI: 10% WWII: 50% Vietnam: 70% Iraq: 90% Source: War Made Easy
“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will...”
– Charles Bukowski
“We are so small between the stars,
So large against the sky
As lost among the...”
– Leonard Cohen, “Stories of the Street”
כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד והעיקר לא לפחד כלל
Nachman of Breslov said, “The world is a very narrow bridge — the important thing is not to let it all make you fearful.” This bridge is the middle path between the two extremes. We do not often perceive clearly how narrow it truly is, nor do we understand how fearful it makes us. Whether your cosmology has room for a supreme being or not, the probability of either of these universes...
Power Phil Donahue talks about the futility of...
Ultimately
An economic system that is based on desire, a political system that’s based on fear, and sociological disciplines devoted to promoting sublimation and denial? What’s not to like? The propagator is also the payload — so elegant! Too elegant, in fact, for human invention. It is nothing more than the blueprint in our physiology projected proudly into macrocosm. In our own image. No,...
March 2008
6 posts
The Primal Threat
Faith as a marker for a “non free-thinker” is probably misleading. The core arguments of faith — whether or not they are understood by the faithful — are cogent enough. Religion is, after all, a broad portfolio of control mechanisms, and it is not, by far, the only one. People are constantly hacking each other, usually with cheap appeals to our primal needs, and we all make the...
“When you call yourself a Muslim or a Christian or a Hindu or an Indian or a...”
– Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
“This breakdown of social order - rules of dress, sexual controls, speech...”
– John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards
“In my father’s house there are many mansions,
And each one of ‘em...”
– Bob Dylan, “Sweetheart Like You”
“Thus the Age of Reason has turned out to be the Age of Structure; a time when,...”
– John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards
February 2008
1 post
Liberty and Opportunity are Rare
Somewhere in Turkey lived a Kurdish man, who spent most of his time working and only a little time socializing with his family and friends. One day, because he was a Kurd, and perhaps because someone didn’t like the look of him, he was taken onto a truck and bound and gagged and driven into Lebanon, into the desert where he was left to die, alone. In fact it was not just one Kurdish man,...
January 2008
5 posts
Questioning
Questioning everything requires the greatest show of faith. It is like stepping from one stone without knowing where the next lies. In asking the ultimate questions, we risk that the universe might collapse in on us. We must ask anyway.
Excess
夫唯不盈故能蔽而新成。 [Renouncing excess is like putting on a robe that can never wear through. Dao De Jing, 15
The American Family as a Communist Institution
[my father writes…] I had great respect for Dr. [Howard] Hamilton. Only as years passed did I realize how much of a liberal he was. It seems the seeds sown during one’s education germinate at varying times as years pass. I used to see Hamilton at the Debs Dinner each year. He was always a dapper fellow, with a thin little mustache, looking a little like a small Clark Gable. […] To...
December 2007
14 posts
“I console myself with the fact that if the universe were in a state of perfect...”
Slave Labour that Shames America →
Favorite part: Burger King will not pay the extra penny a pound that the tomato-pickers are demanding he said. “If we agreed to the penny per pound, Burger King would pay about $250,000 annually, or $100 per worker. How does that solve exploitation and poverty?” he asked.
“Few people have any philosophical integrity in this world, and it is the...”
Monastic Vows
[my father writes:] O’Murchu redefines the vow of poverty to be a vow of sustainability. (And while I am at it, celibacy becomes relatedness with others, and obedience becomes collaboration.) He argues that the traditional meanings of the vows actually do violence to the vowed person as well as the rest of humankind. I love the idea of sustainability and relatedness, but I think it is...
Monasticism as a Semaphore
While I don’t necessarily advocate traditional monasticism, there are hidden advantages to certain types of asceticism. For example, the vow of poverty. The religious doctrine that circumscribes this practice varies broadly on rationale and implementation of this vow. It seems that the most prominent reasons come down to fairness, avoiding waste, and modest living. There ...