Some sentences are so pregnant with implications that they seem overdue for giving birth to revolutionary insight. Here’s an example: “Burial in the simple Neanderthal style falls short of furnishing us with convincing proof of symbolic activity among these extinct hominids.” The key phrase is “symbolic activity,” by which the author, Ian Tattersall, writing in [...]
The dissected brain cannot have insight. That is as true metaphorically as it is literally. Insight, whether as a flash of direct perception in a given context, or a state of unmediated awareness without limit, is always whole. The neuroscience popularizer and Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel was on the Charlie Rose Show recently, promoting his [...]
For Socrates, being a good citizen was part of being a good human being. So what does it mean to be a good citizen? I submit that in a global society, to be a patriot of a nation means being traitor to humanity. That’s a strong statement, and I need to ‘unpack’ it a bit, [...]
When I arrived at the gorge that cuts through the canyon just outside town, the sky was shatteringly clear, the slopes spectacularly green, and the grasses peppered with poppies and lupines. One couldn’t help but feel obliterated by the beauty. Walking in, I saw four college guys rock-hopping a short distance away. Some minutes later, [...]
I keep thinking of that little girl in France, Miriam Monsonego, who was cold-bloodedly murdered by an al-Qaeda madman. Her mother said, “This is my sacrifice.” But sacrifice to and for what? ‘Sacrifice’ is one of those words that has two completely opposite meanings. Obviously Miriam Monsonego was a sacrifice in the worst sense of [...]
For philosophers, the worst thing you can say about a person’s views is that they’re ‘wrongheaded.’ Well, here’s the most wrongheaded thing I’ve read in a long time: “We’re natural-born killers, and the real question is not what makes people kill but what prevents them from doing so.” That idiocy comes from a leading commentator [...]
Recently I heard a scientist say, “Time is the most stubborn psychological filter we have.” That’s true. There are two main filtering mechanisms that have to be negated in passive awareness for meditation to begin–the separate observer, and psychological time. One of the main points of contention in physics at present is whether time actually [...]
She walked up as I was finishing my sitting at streamside. Announcing she was a Buddhist lama, ordained by a well-known rinpoche under the Dalai Lama, she said she’d just given a weekend retreat for 20-somethings in town. The sun had broken through and was low in the sky. Having had some difficulties before I [...]
It was the strangest and most beautiful sky I’d ever seen. After witnessing three dramatic changes in weather within an hour, I stood transfixed looking back on the sycamore I had sat under. Its white bark gleamed in the bright, setting sun, with an intensely blue-black sky as a backdrop to the east. The wind [...]
The recent windstorms have burnished the air, and the canyon, hillsides, and rocks stand out in sharp relief, accented by clumps of white clouds that fill half the sky. The beauty is so overwhelming that it’s hard to string two thoughts together. To my right, the sheer cliffs about a half-mile away seem to press [...]
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