Category: Books
-
Our fetish for stuff ~ Wallace Shawn and Karl Marx give you the shirt off their back…
The Fever One day there was an anonymous present sitting on my doorstep — Volume One of Capital by Karl Marx, in a brown paper bag. A joke? Serious? And who had sent it? I never found out. Late that night, naked in bed, I leafed through it. The beginning was impenetrable, I couldn’t understand…
-
Child of darkness ~ entering the gateway to all understanding
Darkness. One of the most compelling forces, and metaphors, we have. Darkness fascinates me. Here are a few snippets from an online conversation I participated in some time ago, beginning with a quote, then Anabele’s response to it, followed by my reply.
-
A Gradual Awakening ~ breathe yourself to sleep.
It’s tempting to make a big thing of this, tie it into other spiritual work, but it’s just a simple technique for overcoming insomnia I’ve shared with dozens of people. No drugs. No warm milk. No visits to a sleep clinic. There are side benefits, and it’s based on an ancient spiritual practice, but you…
-
Time Tables and Being out of Time
Time has been on my mind. Yes, because I’ve been reading (and just completed) The Time Traveller’s Wife, but also because time has long been on my mind. This song, Time Table, is an old, old example of time in my consciousness and subconscious. It’s a favourite of mine since I first bought the album,…
-
Ancients and Contemporaries ~ timeless wisdom about violence
The use of force is a last resort. One aspect of violence is that it is unpredictable. Although your initial intention may be to use limited force, once you have engaged in violence the consequences are unpredictable. Violence always brings about unexpected results and almost always provokes retaliation.
-
Before and After ~ Stephen Mitchell’s Second Book of the Dao
—
by
in Books, Insight, Love, Non-Fiction, Perfection, Peter’s Poems, Poems, Poetry, Spirituality, SynonymsI was digging into Stephen Mitchell‘s The Second Book of the Dao one day back in January (over a lovely Red Snapper Soup @ Granville Island) when a passage in the second chapter inspired the following poem. Before and After Before sorrow, longing Before longing, anger Before anger, pain Before pain, injury Before injury, fear…
-
War Prayers ~ Mark Twain and Lao Tse on the artlessness of war
—
by
in Books, God, Insight, Non-Fiction, Perfection, Philosophy, Political, Social, Spirituality, SynonymsYesterday the people of The United States of America marked Memorial Day. It’s a day of baseball, hot dogs and apple pie, of families and communities gathering to celebrate the arrival of summer. It’s a day of flags and bunting and red, white & blue and national pride, and a day to memorialise the millions…
-
The second book of The Way ~ Stephen Mitchell illuminates the Tao again.
Mmmmm… a day of cloudy wet so a retreat into a tub of hot water with salsa & tortilla chips and a good book about one of my favourite subjects, Stephen Mitchell’s The Second Book of the Tao (Dao, Tao, same thing, same pronunciation: Dao). Hmmmm… the liner notes of this book explain that the…
-
Jason Bourne and identity — who am I?
Who are you? Are you the sum of your experiences, your actions, your memories? Are you your dreams, your plans, your aspirations, the person you’ll someday become? Are you your past, or your destiny or your present? The best films in any genre are always the ones that touch on essential human questions. What is…
-
We’re too good to be this political ~ Be the change you want to see in the world
—
by
My first mistake today was climbing into the bathtub and picking up the May 31st, 2010 edition of Canada’s weekly news magazine, Macleans, rather than the copy of Stephen Mitchell’s The Second Book of the Tao, in which I’d thought to have a nice, long spiritual soak along with the hot water, and possibly bubbles.…