"the culture of explanation–in which all the ancient problems are either solved or scorned, and every obscurity of human life, every fog and every cloud, is just a research paper away from satisfactory clarification. There is no riddle of existence that cannot be resolved, or robbed of its sting, in a David Brooks column. We are lucid now, and efficient; we are the quickest studies who ever lived. We throw no shadows. We know how things really work. We have the definite measure of everything. (Happiness, for example, is defined for us by social science; is an objective of public policy). Even as we cozily admit our fallibility, we exempt nothing from our brilliance. We dispel inwardness with our analysis of it. Hurriedly and without any suspicion that precious things are being driven away, we march smartly through all the pains and all the perplexities, and we call this dream of transparency, this aspiration to control, this denial of finitude, reason. Reason is precisely what it is not…."
Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic from a book review
January 12, 2010
September 22, 2009
May 28, 2009
May 03, 2009
When Kishizawa Ian, Suzuki Roshi's second teacher, was a young monk, he was sitting in meditation on a rainy day and heard the sound of a distant waterfall. Then the wooden han was struck. He went to his teacher (maybe Oka Sotan) and asked, "What is the place where the sound of the rain, the waterfall, and the han meet?"His teacher replied, "True eternity still flows."And then he asked, "What is this true eternity that still flows?""It is like a bright mirror, permanently smooth," said his teacher."Is there anything beyond this?" asked the young monk."Yes," responded his teacher."What is beyond this?" inquired the young monk.And his teacher replied, "Break the mirror. Come, and I'll meet you."
April 29, 2009
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