Theologian Paul Tillich on the interplay of anxiety and fear and how they feed in to one another at the very foundation of the human mind.
Tag: Emptiness
How to Dance? Lessons from a Zen Master
Jundo Cohen paints a picture of the universe as an integrated and indivisible dance, in which certain elements temporarily swirl out then return to the whole.
To Possess Is To Give
Lewis Hyde's book The Gift is a treatise on the power of the creative spirit and the dynamics of giving to transform the world.
Shunryu Suzuki’s Waterfall – On Separation and Death
When a human life comes into being, a unique form comes together, like a drop of water when it is separated from the wholeness of the river as it hits a rock or falls down a waterfall.
Aldous Huxley and Beauty
Huxley on the beatific vision of divine beauty that resides in Pure Interval and harmonious relationship, and experiencing the divine through architecture, music, sacred geometries and human relationships.
Erich von Hungen – The Moment
The pinpoint perspective of the present moment can feel so sharp but ultimately always impossible to fathom and out of our reach. As Erich von Hungen writes, it is simultaneously hard and soft, early and late, tiny and all-encompassing 'like a pocket-sized Big Bang.'
Robin Knight – The Dog on the Train
"I saw a man walking his dog, throwing a ball for him/her. The moment was simple and joyful."
Chuang Tzu’s Action and Non-Action
The true stillness that is at the root of human wisdom and the Taoist endeavor is a positive state, in as much as it is not the absence of anything nor a resistance to anything. Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu, author of foundational Taoist texts, writes in this poem: "The sage is quiet because he is not… Continue reading Chuang Tzu’s Action and Non-Action
There’s No Salvation in Elsewhere
'If nothing's here, nothing's there', writes poet Stephen Dunn about the instinct to believe that happiness is a place other than where we are, over the horizon, up in the sky, on the streets of a foreign city. If you are expecting to find salvation there, he says, all you'll find are reflections of the… Continue reading There’s No Salvation in Elsewhere
There Is No ‘I’ In Self
As it says at the beginning of this text, the teaching of no-self is a tough one to come to terms with. It's one of the most anti-intuitive notions Zen students eventually come across, and it takes some investigation and experimentation to begin to pick apart. Zen priest and prolific Zen author Brad Warner walks… Continue reading There Is No ‘I’ In Self