Saturday, May 11, 2024
Friday, May 10, 2024
Thursday, May 09, 2024
we must be diligent today
If I wander around the house. If I wear meditation beads around wrist. If I listen to the obscenity of political Florida Senator squawking for criminal defendant in violation of gag order against family members of judge and prosecutors.
If I wish to maintain a balanced and sober mind in the midst of vile characters.
Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is
In the very here and now,
The practitioner dwells
In stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today.
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly.
How can we bargain with it?
The sage calls a person who knows
How to dwell in mindfulness
Night and day
“One who knows the better way to live.”
--Bhaddekaratta Sutra
poetry as its own “standing in itself,” must be seen “its own truth” in the “beauty” of its very word
Thought and love are not strangers.
Perhaps their arrival in the same place at the same time augurs a promising outcome.
Is what we call pure thought and pure love the invitation into what we call the life of God?
Heidegger therefore maintains that philosophy exemplifies a particular love, indeed a clearly erotic relation to thought.14 And in his lecture course What Is Called Thinking?, he turns to Hölderlin to articulate the relation between love and thinking to trace the relation between thinking or philosophy and love. Reflecting on thought and poetry, Heidegger claims that poetry, as its own “standing in itself,” must be seen “its own truth” in the “beauty” of its very word (WT, 19). This self-standing in the truth “does not exclude but on the contrary includes what we think in the poetic word” (Ibid.). Heidegger’s reading of the poet’s word turns it out of the center of one of Hölderlin’s seductively intriguing poems, “Socrates and Alcibiades”: “Who the deepest has thought, loves what is most alive” [Wer das Tiefste gedacht, liebt das Lebendigste].15 The poet draws us to thinking and love, posing them side by side, as Heidegger observes: “ ‘thought’ and ‘loves’ form the center of the line. Inclination [Mögen] reposes in thinking.”16 The alignment of love (the past of thinking and the present allure of love) betrays the sobriety (and self-sufficiency) ordinarily supposed for the life of thought.
—pp.5,6 in Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, by Babette E. Babich, 2007
Sometimes referred to as the life of the mind, thought/love in reflective interaction can easily lead to a sense of equanimity and poise.
Philosophy isn't just an intellectual somersault through arcane concepts and logical mazes, rather, philosophy (as a friend once put it) is ordinary thinking done more carefully.
The life of thought is attractive.
We like thoughtful people.
Just as we like those able to clarify and open up things difficult to comprehend.
Let's see poetry where it is.
Let's look around.
One's own truth.
In itself.
post-hagiography, retrospective
He said he wanted to be someone who prays
So he tries to pray
He looks at god and says “I really don’t see you”
He shakes head and sits on bench
Wonders
In the empty space god is not
The vacant bench
He rethinks prayer
Comes to conclusion
There’s nothing there for prayer
Stands up
Looks around
Wanders away
Disappears into chill fog
Giving up body
Leaving behind mind
Laments loss
Becomes birdsong
Wednesday, May 08, 2024
stop the killing, stop the destruction
Tuesday, May 07, 2024
christian faith commends those who are relentless in their pursuit of justice
There seems to be a difficulty as to how to respond to or react to the horrendous response to a horrendous action last October wherein Hamas committed terror against Israel and the Israeli response of terroristic reprisals against Gaza.
Verse of the day
And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?
- Luke 18:7
Voice of the day
To me, it’s clear we should follow the lead of many of these persistent students in using our own social capital — however much or little — to raise a ruckus in the name of those who suffer starvation, disease, and death-dealing violence each day.
-- Brooke M. Foster, “Student Encampments Echo Jesus’ Parable of Annoying the Powerful”
Prayer of the day
Our persistence is powerful. You tell us that even the most unjust rulers can grant justice when they’ve been bothered enough. May we continue to annoy the powerful in the name of the marginalized.
It's as though no one is aware of the horrible way the marginalized are treated by the mighty.
It is as though no one is aware of the ugly attacks upon the innocent and the compromised in both Israel and Gaza.
Surely, we are not that stupid.
Surely, we have eyes to see.
But do we have heart-courage and mind-clarity to face and resolve such blatant injustices.
Monday, May 06, 2024
reclusively with appreciation
few people know
my name
fewer care to --
its a beneficial trade-off
being no-one
going no-where
happy to be your kin
happy to travel incognito
happy to be happy for you
conatus
Spinoza's notion of God made people uncomfortable.
For humans, being free is understanding the laws of the universe.
In the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, conatus (/koʊˈneɪtəs/; wikt:conatus; Latin for "effort; endeavor; impulse, inclination, tendency; undertaking; striving") is an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself. This thing may be mind, matter, or a combination of both, and is often associated with God's will in a pantheist view of nature.
... The Latin cōnātus comes from the verb cōnor, which is usually translated into English as, to endeavor; used as an abstract noun, conatus is an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself. Although the term is most central to Spinoza's philosophy, many other early modern philosophers including René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, and Thomas Hobbes made significant contributions, each developing the term differently.[1].
...Conatus is a central theme in the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677), which is derived from principles that Hobbes and Descartes developed.[13] Contrary to most philosophers of his time, Spinoza rejects the dualistic assumption that mind, intentionality, ethics, and freedom are to be treated as things separate from the natural world of physical objects and events.[14] One significant change he makes to Hobbes' theory is his belief that the conatus ad motum, (conatus to motion), is not mental, but material.[8] Spinoza also uses conatus to refer to rudimentary concepts of inertia, as Descartes had earlier.[1] According to Spinoza, "each thing, as far as it lies in itself, strives to persevere in its being" (Ethics, part 3, prop. 6). Since a thing cannot be destroyed without the action of external forces, motion and rest, too, exist indefinitely until disturbed.[15] His goal is to provide a unified explanation of all these things within a naturalistic framework, man and nature must be unified under a consistent set of laws; God and nature are one, and there is no free will. For example, an action is free, for Spinoza, only if it arises from the essence and conatus of an entity. However, an action can still be free in the sense that it is not constrained or otherwise subject to external forces.[16] Human beings are thus an integral part of nature.[15] Spinoza explains seemingly irregular human behaviour as really natural and rational and motivated by this principle of the conatus.[15] Some have argued that the conatus consists of happiness and the perpetual drive toward perfection.[17] Conversely, a person is saddened by anything that opposes his conatus. Others have associated desire, a primary affect, with the conatus principle of Spinoza. Desire is then controlled by the other affects, pleasure and pain, and thus the conatus strives towards that which causes joy and avoids that which produces pain.[8]
He said we are all expressions of the same divine substance.
It's our interconnectedness.
By caring for the world around us, we are caring for ourselves.
This 17th century philosopher needs to walk and converse with us in the 21st.
Sunday, May 05, 2024
deep homesickness
everyone has a hobby
whiling time watching time
slide into invisible effect
the inevitable nostalgia
pretending wonderful
memories and accomplishment
instead, looking out window
weathered prayer flags
holding remnant petition
dropped aspiration and gone
intention the day turns
a spirituality of homecoming
where true self wanders alone
hobbyless unwatching gaze
imaginative dreamtime
a deep time without
clear or recognizable reference
trans [s]it i on
- trans: derived from Latin trans- "across, beyond, so as to change"
- Many arrivals are us live -- (Roethke, The Manifestation)
Being Is
That
Which Is
Becoming
Itself