Parasite Recently saw Parasite—a brilliantly whacky and over-the-top satire on class relations. If you haven’t already, I’d say it’s worth checking out. The title of the film points to its primary theme and central ambiguity, expressed nicely here in one review: Who are the real parasites? The poor who attach themselves to the rich or the rich who suck the marrow of the poor? Or is the system …
[Read more...] about Practice Notes: Hasty Generalization, Parasite & The Australian Open
Sitting at a Dharma talk at Plum Village—in south-central France in the summer of 1996—I gazed for a few long seconds out of the large community tent, allowing Thich Nhat's Hanh's words to drift into the background of my attention. In the foreground now was a country road—maybe a football field's distance away—upon which passed a series of slow-driving cars. I thought: How sweetly poignant and …
Meditation at Oyster River (excerpt) The self persists like a dying star, In sleep, afraid. Death's face rises afresh, Among the shy beasts, the deer at the salt-lick, The doe with its sloped shoulders loping across the highway, The young snake, poised in green leaves, waiting for its fly, The hummingbird, whirring from quince-blossom to morning-glory— With these I would be. And with …
To the Holy Spirit O Thou, far off and near, whole and broken, Who in necessity and bounty wait, Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken, By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate. ~ Wendell Berry * …
To a Singer My soul is an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; And thine doth like an angel sit Beside a helm conducting it, Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. It seems to float ever, forever, Upon that many-winding river, Between mountains, woods, abysses, A paradise of wildernesses! Till, like one in slumber …
In the previous post, I introduced a psychological model rooted in Vasubandhu’s Thirty Verses on Consciousness Only—which sheds light on how unconscious or subconscious habit-patterns condition our current experience. Neither Random Nor Rigidly Determined Just as important as understanding how such conditioning happens, is understanding how these causal influences can be modulated or dissolved. …
