It’s been quite a while since my last “practice notes” post. Partly this is because I’ve been deeply engaged, within the past couple of months, with a large writing project: the creation of a new book manuscript. So, the flow of my creative energy has been directed almost exclusively in this direction. And partly because there’s been such an abundance of, shall we say, “grist for the mill” …
Reviews
Realisms Interlinked: A Preview
I’ve been dipping into the rather dense but fascinating book Realisms Interlinked: Objects, Subjects, and Other Subjects by Arindam Chakrabarti—a scholar who, with great facility, straddles the worlds of Indian and (analytic) Western philosophy. Mr. Chakrabarti’s overall project is to propose and defend a form of metaphysical realism. And while I—from my lay-woman’s perspective—remain agnostic …
Practice Notes: Body Cultivation
Over the years, I’ve explored and greatly benefitted from a variety of body-cultivation traditions—the majority of which have their roots in India or China. Iyengar Yoga The first was Iyengar yoga, which I was drawn to for its therapeutic applications. I was in my early 20’s and still recovering from a serious ankle injury, which had been creating all kinds of problems, also, in my hips and …
Only By Courtesy: Sankara’s Definition of Real
As of late, I’ve been enjoying a pair of books, toggling back-and-forth between them in a way that feels quite interesting and enriching. One of them—Insight into Emptiness by Khensur Jampa Tegchok—harkens from the Buddhist Madhamakaya tradition. The other—The Seven Great Untenables by John Grimes—expresses the view of Advaita Vedanta. So, I read a bit from one, then a bit from the other—as …
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Blissfully Unencumbered
This is the great mystery of human vision: Vivid pictures of the world appear before our mind’s eye, yet the brain’s visual system receives very little information from the world itself. Much of what we “see” we conjure in our heads. Understanding a bit about how human vision works provides a fascinating window onto the deeply conditioned nature of all perceptual processes: hearing, tasting, …
Quarantine Favorites
Strangely enough, my daily rhythms during our quarantine time—from “stay at home” to the more recent “safer at home”—have not been dramatically different from what they had been, before this all began. For quite some time, my yoga/qigong practice has been a “home practice.” And, likewise, the majority of the freelance writing that I’ve recently been engaged with takes place in my home office … …