As of late, I’ve been contemplating the relationship between, on the one hand, intention/aspiration; and, on the other hand, accomplishment. What determines the extent to which an intention or aspiration translates into an actual accomplishment of the thing (or no-thing) that was intended or aspired to? As a starting-point, I’ve divided the inquiry into two cases: 1. When the accomplishment …
Practice Notes
Practice Notes: The Serenity Prayer
There’s this thing called the serenity prayer, which you may already be familiar with. It was penned, originally, by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and goes like this: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Eckhart & The Dalai Lama, too There’s something about this that I’ve always liked. …
Scripture, Sutra, Ontological Heft
The Tao That Can Be Told In the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching, Taoist sage Lao Tzu famously proposes that: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnameable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. (translated by Stephen Mitchell) And I resonate with this, completely. There is this eternal …
Practice Notes: Never Again …
Never again—will I say never again! When I uttered this phrase (quietly to myself) several days ago, it immediately brought to mind the liar’s paradox, in its various iterations: I am lying or Nothing I say is true or This sentence is a lie. The liar’s paradox is a paradox because if the statement is true, then it is false; and if the statement is false, then it is true. Paradox v. …
Pizza for the Apocalypse
Let’s be clear: The tragicomedy of our national government’s generalized ineptitude aside—a worldwide pandemic is no laughing matter. I hope you’re all staying healthy and safe, and following the recommendations of healthcare professionals. Let’s hope and trust that kindness, compassion and collective intelligence will ultimately prevail—as we wake up fully to the fact that we’re all in this …
Practice Notes: Field & Particle
The field is the sole governing agency of the particle. ~ Albert Einstein What A Human Sees I recently came across the following definition of a particle—a riff, perhaps, on the more well-known Einstein quote—which I’m liking quite a lot: A particle is what a human being sees, when they look at a field. So far as I call tell, this definition accords with recent research in quantum field …