response to a student, on book burning

M

Thanks for this. A good piece.

...Technology has undoubtedly changed the way we share and save information, but Knuth argues that the core motivations for book burning, in whatever form the act takes, remain the same: prioritizing one type of information over another.  

“That’s why power is so scary,” Knuth says. “Because power allows you to put into effect the logic of your own beliefs.”  

(--from, A Brief History of Book Burning, From the Printing Press to Internet Archives, By Lorraine Boissoneault 31Aug17)

Lucky for us the human brain has upwards of 100 trillion terabytes of retention [a rough guess] and twice that amount operating system for inquiry [see first brackets].

The power referenced in final paragraph of article is a little scary -- in that, at times, the only logic of the power-wielding is the illogic of narrow opinion and lamentable prejudice. When thrown against real knowledge, the monkey wrench makes an awful clatter and a grinding breakage of confidence that what we've arrived at by honest investigation and communal confirmation might be, indeed,  invalid and untrue.

You are right to invite me to learn from this article. The wrong teaching of self-interested power threatens our reliance on clear and beneficial knowledge to help us see and understand the unfolding world we encounter every day.

Cheers to you and yours this cool morning auguring autumn!
B

solitary lostness, the poet said

Maybe we don't know why we do what we do.

If a kindness is done, if an act of presence is made, perhaps 'knowing why' is too much to ask for.

Like faith or prayer it is just something we do, some dream we wander through, without any clarity.

An outstretched intuition of something without name or form we speak into, listen closely for.

du jardin

Quarante cinq ans --

avec la reconnaissance pour le cadeau du garçon

nigh

From The New York Review of Books:

“Be wary of paramilitaries,” the Yale historian Timothy Snyder warned in his recent book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

August 29, 2017, 2:39 pm

 (--from, Trump’s Hoodlums, by Masha Gessen, NYR of Books)

morning practice

one

  

     is 

not 

     two 

where and what

A man I was visiting in a place where dying is as usual as morning marmalade on rye toast looked straight ahead and said, " I don't know where I am nor what I am."

He became my teacher the rest of the evening doing nothing other than what each minute brought to him.

In the kitchen I sipped ginger ale and bit into a baked square before going back to his room to thank him for allowing me to sit with him the time we had.

Once I visited Mt Vernon in northeastern Virginia where George Washington lived from 1747 to 1799, 52 years, one year longer than the man I visited said he has been married.

Addendum:

Abstract The distinction between place and non-place has occupied a critical role in both the philosophy of place and human geography for the last 20 years. In a distinction that stems from Marc Augé but is traceable to Edward Relph, “place” is thought as being relationally constructed, laden with meaning, and shaped by a broader history; home being emblematic of place. “Non-place,” on the other hand, is taken to mean places divested of meaning, homogenous, and largely interchange- able; airports, supermarkets, and pre-fabricated of ce complexes being examples. Whilst this distinction has tended to be pervasive and in uential in phenomenologi- cal accounts of place, critical analysis on the relation between place and non-place has been sparse. This paper aims to (1) develop an analysis of the distinction, ambiguities, and tensions between place and non-place. (2). To question and interrogate what kind of difference is involved in this distinction. (3). To address the role inter- subjectivity and affectivity plays in the “sense of place.” 
(--from, Place and Non-place: A PhenomenologicalPerspective! by Dylan Trigg , in academia.edu weekly digest)

body knowledge

Round and

Round

We go, 

and

Where we

Stop

(No-

body

Knows)

hard

Rain

In 

Texas

one/other

Reading from Dogen at Sunday Evening Practice.

Being-Time.

You can't have one without the other.

Relationality is our pedagogy.

Interrelationality is our catechetics. 

We already know each other, why not, finally, introduce ourselves?

arrving home, resting here, within now

When the reader is ready, the words will appear.

Second reading.     

From the Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop 

O eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity 

Urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your guidance into the inmost depth of my soul. I was able to do so because you were my helper. On entering into myself I saw, as it were with the eye of the soul, what was beyond the eye of the soul, beyond my spirit: your immutable light. It was not the ordinary light perceptible to all flesh, nor was it merely something of greater magnitude but still essentially akin, shining more clearly and diffusing itself everywhere by its intensity. No, it was something entirely distinct, something altogether different from all these things; and it did not rest above my mind as oil on the surface of water, nor was it above me as heaven is above the earth. This light was above me because it had made me; I was below it because I was created by it. He who has come to know the truth knows this light. 

O Eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity. You are my God. To you do I sigh day and night. When I first came to know you, you drew me to yourself so that I might see that there were things for me to see, but that I myself was not yet ready to see them. Meanwhile you overcame the weakness of my vision, sending forth most strongly the beams of your light, and I trembled at once with love and dread. I learned that I was in a region unlike yours and far distant from you, and I thought I heard your voice from on high: “I am the food of grown men; grow then, and you will feed on me. Nor will you change me into yourself like bodily food, but you will be changed into me.”
I sought a way to gain the strength which I needed to enjoy you.
But I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who is above all, God blessed for ever. He was calling me and saying: I am the way of truth, I am the life. He was offering the food which I lacked the strength to take, the food he had mingled with our flesh. For the Word became flesh, that your wisdom, by which you created all things, might provide milk for us children. 

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace. 

 (--from, Office of Readings, Feast of Augustine, 2nd Reading)  
https://divineoffice.org/0828-or/?date=20170828

Arriving home

Resting here

Within now

water

the rain

falls

and falls

Texas cannot

float

tired

drenched

fell upon

that something else may be something we’ve never noticed before

A fellow practitioner sends: 

Second, there is an internal process that unfolds when one experiences being fully heard. When we feel we haven’t been heard, we feel we have to keep repeating what hasn’t been heard until someone finally “gets” it. Until that point we’re stuck and can’t move on. We aren’t ready to hear or discover something new that hasn’t been felt or acknowledged before. Once we are heard, there is an inner process that is ready to unfold. The stuck-ness is gone and something new is free to appear. That something else may be something we’ve never noticed before about our own situation or our feelings about it—some undiscovered or unacknowledged facet of what is implicit, waiting to be experienced. Every situation is infinitely intricate and complex, like a tangled ball of yarn, connected in some way with everything else we’ve ever known, thought, or experienced. Pull one end of the string a bit, and a little more unravels, revealing itself in the light of consciousness. By being with and hearing a suffering person, we co-create a shared space in which the sufferer’s experience can unfold in new and surprising ways. 

(--from, Contemplative Chaplaincy, Psychotherapy, and Buddhist Ministry: Similarities and DifferencesPosted on May 8, 2017, on website The Existential Buddhist, dharma without dogma), http://www.existentialbuddhist.com

Haiku visits

brief encounters

passing practice presence