BY CHARLENE MOSKAL As I age I find I can no longer enter certain rooms. I see backspaces inhabited by specters of a world fading into my past.
Tag: truth
Adrienne Rich – The Corpse-Plant
The corpse-plant's soft and scaly appearance and its drooping head give it a ghostly, deathly air in Adrienne Rich's poem.
Self-Realization – Brahman and the Absolute
Daniel Simpson addresses the Atman or Brahman, the 'infinite, unchanging and formless unity from which life evolved and to which it returns.'
Boshan and Fostering Great Doubt
Doubt is a key incentive of the spiritual journey, and, as per the old adage 'Great doubt, great awakening', it is foundational to the enquiry of Zen.
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.
“You Can’t Pray a Lie” – Mark Twain’s Huck Finn
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn suggests that evil is not something manifested by wicked people, rather it perpetuates with the conventions that we absorb from childhood.
The Path That Leads Into the Mountains
In 1993, Zen teacher Joan Halifax published a book called The Fruitful Darkness based on her anthropological engagements with Tibetan Buddhists, Mexican shamans, Native American elders and other tribal communities.
Every Book is a Failure – George Orwell on Truth in Writing
"One can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a window pane." - George Orwell In his 1946 essay, Why I Write, George Orwell set out what he saw as the main motivators for writing: they were, sheer egotism, esthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose.… Continue reading Every Book is a Failure – George Orwell on Truth in Writing
Ada Limón – Wife
Ada Limón's poem, Wife, examines the secret pitfalls of marriage from a woman's perspective; poignantly, from the point of view of a newlywed, of someone entering unchartered territory that has been laid out and defined for her by the generations that preceded her.
Simone Weil – The Infinite in an Instant
Simone Weil lauds 'unmixed attention', which she likens to prayer, and reflects on the quality of attention, expressed as 'patience, effort and method' to 'understand with our whole self the truths which are evident.'