I’ve been reading “Essays in Wildness” and came across this thought-provoking meditation (Kenko, #188): A man decided to make his son a monk. “Study the laws of karmic cause and effect,” he told him, “and make your living by preaching.” The lad did as instructed. First, in order to be a successful preacher, he learned …
The two primary forces at work in American politics can be boiled down to: 1) a desire to maintain tradition and 2) an openness to progressive evolution. The former tend to hearken back to former, “better” times, while the latter lean into the prospect of novel, more enlightened times. While both aim for the betterment …
It’s a sunny morning in Juneau, Alaska, and my motorcycle is parked just outside of my favorite coffee shop in town, The Rookery Cafe. Excited voices of my contemporaries fill the air around me, but I am lost in a heartening reverie. I am reconnecting with an old friend, Yoshida Kenko, a soulmate of sorts. …
I love this observation by C.S. Lewis: “The whole man is kindled by the shape of his virtues.” In a world where people are judged by their success and not dignity, fear and anxiety are bound to prevail. Wherever the mindset reigns that a man who succeeds is right, suffering shall no longer be a …
[43] Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.[44] But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;[45] That ye may be the children …
I recall watching King Charles III’s coronation last year at about this time and thinking how starkly that event contrasted with the majority of the ceremonial events held at around the same time on earth. I remember thinking that this impressive display of pomp and circumstance on display used to seem appropriate and expected, but …
Tonight I am filled with questions, the answers to which would undoubtedly drastically change the course of my life, if not the course of all of humanity. These are not new questions, in fact they have been asked and generally unanswered for thousands of years. What if this planet was not ours to dissect and …
1. How much pain have cost you imagined evils which never came to be? It is always torturous to extrapolate from a faith in lack and the presumption of failure. 2. Never mourn the living. Savor the present forms through which the light of eternal life surges. 3. Beneath the tormented man darts a light-hearted …
At Grass by Philip LarkinThe eye can hardly pick them outFrom the cold shade they shelter in,Till wind distresses tail and mane;Then one crops grass, and moves about- The other seeming to look on -And stands anonymous againYet fifteen years ago, perhapsTwo dozen distances sufficedTo fable them: faint afternoonsOf Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,Whereby their …
The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago The old adage—“What has your heart, has you”—rings as true today as it did in the beginning…of this moment, of your life, and of time. …
Gregory Hake 