Whether we think of certain concepts as tools or technology (see Peter Hershock on this distinction; a discussion of it can be found here), concepts allow us to see and do things we couldn’t without them. The concept of mental health is much more than simply the modifier “mental” to the preexisting concept of bodily health. Mental health comes with a number of assumptions and values that inform how we see persons and evaluate their well-being, who is responsible for…
It stopped moving, the seconds pendulum in my parents ’ grandfather clock. When was that? …. I am confused as ?)aren’t you(? I sit here looking facing the glass bay doors to the clock of my world Home more than not (…except when…) I have watched the sun pendulum from one side of the world and back and I just don’t know their clock has not worked since…what?…the 80s? and this now, then, is……
1. In laying out the idea that there may be some value in thinking of philosophy as good for nothing, I drew comparisons between a certain way of conceiving of philosophy and what I take to be the best way to conceptualize Dōgen’s understanding of the practice of seated meditation or zazen. For Dōgen, you sit just to sit, not for some other end (wink wink). If we take seriously Socrates’ claim in the Apology that practicing philosophy is the…
I don’t do it often enough, but I intend to start the day with the following, “song.” It is original in a sense, or parts are, but much/most of it is taken from others, some more, some less obvious. Let it be like a scavenger hunt! And what happens when we take such a song into our heart and return to it daily? Thus begins another day for which I am overflowing with gratitude. Great is my fortune and…
Quite representatively of popular Zen writings and teachings, Sobun Katherine Thanas is recorded, in her The Truth of This Life: Zen Teaching on Loving the World as It Is, as saying: I’ve been thinking with renewed interest how difficult it is to see or hear clearly. Settling the mind allows us to see things as they really are, relatively free of emotional or intellectual biases. Clear seeing may not happen the first time we sit, but maybe it will. Our…
I would like to begin by considering two radically different pictures. First, consider the original notion of an atom: a kind of indestructible, unchanging, simple. That is, because it had no smaller parts, i.e., it was simple, and it was further then taken to be indestructible and unchangeable, since to be destroyed or changed, it would require smaller parts that could be taken away or replaced. Now imagine such an atom moving through the world, interacting with various things, but…