Tag Archives: meditation
What’s With the Nothing?
What’s With the Nothing? In the mornings, when I sit for meditation, I ask for input from On High and generally aspire to learn what the day should hold for me if I orient rightly. Normally, the answers I get … Continue reading
Posted in academe, action, alienation, art, art of living, beauty, Biblical God, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, ethics, evil, faith, femininity, freedom, gender balance, guilt and innocence, health, hidden God, history, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, Jews, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, love, masculinity, memory, moral action, moral evaluation, morality, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, philosophy, political, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, propaganda, race, reductionism, relationships, roles, romance, romantic love, secular, seduction, self-deception, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's "A Good Look at Evil", absurdity, bigotry, blaming Israel, class hatred, conflict resolution, Continental philosophy, deep thinking, divine guidance, emptiness, evil doers, existentialists, global consensus, God in the world, happy every after, ideological conflict, intuitive insight, Israel, Jews, Martin Heidegger, meditation, nihilism, philosophers in cafes, Plato's Republic, pointlessness, political differences, Poussin’s Et in Arcadia ego, prayer input, psychical differences, purpose of life, race prejudice, received opinion, receptivity, root canal surgery, saving the planet, self-assurance, self-discovery, self-knowledge, self-realization, self-trust, skepticism, stereotyping, the big picture, The Nothing, trusting intuition, unforced agreement, who am I?
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“Presence”
“Presence” Our rabbi, whom our temple can no longer afford to employ, will be gone in a few more weeks. This Friday, the temple is holding a service in his honor and I am one of those in the lineup … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art of living, atheism, autonomy, beauty, Bible, Biblical God, chivalry, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, eighteenth century, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, guilt and innocence, health, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, memoir, memory, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, non-violence, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, political, politics, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, seduction, self-deception, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, theism, theology, time, twenty-first century, Utopia, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged "be here now", "being here now", 1776, absence, America, American covenant, Biblical covenant, biblical criticism, biblical Israel, chagrin, clock time, covenant, Declaration of Independence, employment contract, Eternity, farewells, feminine side of God, Femininity, forefathers, Fourth of July, frustration, hail and farewell, half-absence, higher criticism, History, homesickness, Independence Day, insolvency, Jewish continuity, Jewish memory, Jewish scholarship, Jewish temporality, Jewish theology, Jon D. Levenson, Jon D. Levenson's Sinai & Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible, living in the now, loss, maternal love, meditation, memory, moral courage, Mother, past present and future, patriotism, pop psychology, presence, Rabbi, rabbinate, sabbath, Shabbat, Shekinah, spirituality, temporality, Torah Study
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“Peace in the Eye of the Storm”
“Peace in the Eye of the Storm” Today in morning meditation I noticed a sense of large-scale peacefulness in me. (Don’t worry, friends. It’ll pass, it’ll pass! I’ll still be me.) I must say it took me quite by surprise, … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, anthropology, art, art of living, autonomy, bureaucracy, chivalry, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, cool, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, faith, fashion, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, guilt and innocence, health, Hegel, history, history of ideas, identity, ideology, idolatry, institutional power, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, male power, masculinity, master, mortality, past and future, peace, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, political, political movements, power, psychology, public intellectual, relationships, roles, seduction, social conventions, sociobiology, spirituality, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, theism, time
Tagged adventure of life, Alexander the Great, Alexandrian empire, American Academy of Religion, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Aristotle, Asia Society, bullies, burnout, cafes, cafes and philosophers, Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, classical civilization, college administrators, conceptual accuracy, cultural heritage, denouncers denounced, denunciation, Diogenes, down time, Emmanuel Levinas, Epicurus, foresight, foretelling the future, freedom of conscience, French Revolution, futurology, G.W.F. Hegel, Greek amphitheaters, groundless denunciation, guillotine, Hellenistic civilization, hindsight, Hitler, hope, Human Resources, hunters and hunted, ideological bullies, inner peace, intelligent hope, McCarthyism, meditation, Metropolitan Museum, micro-aggression, miracles, moral directness, museum exhibits, museum going, overloaded, owl of Minerva, pedagogic vocation, Pergamon, peripatetics, personnel file, philosophers, philosophic talent, Prometheus, punishment of Prometheus, Roman temples, safe space, Salem witch trials, search for truth, Stoics, Sydney Carton, tainted personnel files, Title IX effects, transmission of culture, wave of the future, witch hunts
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“Peace”
“Peace” Peace! Who doesn’t want it? (Well, lots of people, apparently.) More to the present point: in what ways have I shown a preference for peace, and what’s the peace story for me now? When I was sixteen, I spent … Continue reading
Posted in action, culture, desire, ethics, evil, femininity, freedom, guilt and innocence, history, history of ideas, life and death struggle, love, memoir, peace, political movements, power, psychology, relationships, roles, sexuality, social conventions, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of woman, war, work
Tagged action, adolescence, adulthood, ashram, celibacy, celibate, Cherokee reservation, compassion, conflict, cruelty, Dorothy Day, dreams, end times, farm work, Fulbright, Gandhi, gangboys, History, impure thoughts, justice, kindness, meditation, mercy, North Carolina, outhouses, pacifism, pacifist, Paris, Peace, peace love and light, Picasso, poverty, promiscuity, purity, Quakers, rabbinic midrash, Smoky Mountains, social construction of reality, summer camp, The Catholic Worker, thought creates reality, vegetarian, violence, youth
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“Grief”
“Grief” Of late, it’s been one friend down after another. They’re falling over like soldiers raked with machine gun fire, each one opening another gap in the serried ranks. With every loss, one feels a whole dimension of one’s self … Continue reading
Posted in academe, culture, friendship, philosophy, relationships
Tagged Aging, brain, death of a friend, elegy, fallen comrades, grief, grief support, identity, identity theory, Kaddish, life story, lifetime, loss of a friend, Materialism, meditation, mourning, mourning a death, mourning a loss, Nevermore, philosophy, soldiers, The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, the self, witness
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