Navigating Quality


We’re inundated with arguments and counterarguments over what are considered facts and counter-facts. There is a scramble to create ever-larger data-farms to handle…, well, all the data. There’s also been a curious turn of phrase used by one buffoon, George Will to describe another, Donald Trump. Will has claimed that “Trump doesn’t know how toContinue reading “Navigating Quality”

Compassion is Attention


Attention is Compassion One of the first things we encounter on beginning some form of meditation, any way for us to empty out the rush of unbidden thought and pause to see what might lie behind it all, is the question of compassion. Does this come directly from our confrontation with attention in and ofContinue reading “Compassion is Attention”

It’s not a process…


It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we haveContinue reading “It’s not a process…”

The Proprioception of Power


Finding what needs to be said is a challenge. In large part it requires letting go of reacting to things and getting caught-up in complaining. Chasing disappointment… It requires allowing the force of what is not being said to make itself felt. This is a combination of internal listening with sampling what comes to usContinue reading “The Proprioception of Power”

The point is… not to build a more just prison…


This paraphrase, taken from the end of Ishmael, continues to reverberate with me. “I have neglected one small point…” Ishmael begins to say, almost as an afterthought. “One of my students was an ex-convict…” “…what is crucial to your survival … is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather theContinue reading “The point is… not to build a more just prison…”

Retreat & Resilience


I was asked to look at these two terms as a simple request without any elaboration. This is an interesting way to enter into a form of dialogue. For the one asking it does not limit the answer to any preconceptions they might otherwise bring. For the one answering there is the wide open spaceContinue reading “Retreat & Resilience”

Resistance


Nothing exists solely to fulfill a single purpose or to take a singular role in a single process. How can I realize that the “answer” is not to remake the world in my image, that no singular image of what the world “should” be is either possible or beneficial? If these are true, then whatContinue reading “Resistance”

What is


Listening to, or reading Krishnamurti, as he gives a talk, has been something I’ve had to ease myself into. It’s funny, the same has been true of David Bohm, of John Berger, of David Abram – my first reading of the Dark Mountain Manifesto! There is a floodgate of excitement that threatens to over powerContinue reading “What is”

We Are Dissatisfied.


We are dissatisfied. And then we expect the other, the world, to change to accommodate to our dissatisfaction. Our dissatisfaction stems from our confusion. Our expectations compound our confusion. The sheer wrongness of this position holds us as if hypnotized, paralyzed, and unable to take in what the other, what the world, is showing us.Continue reading “We Are Dissatisfied.”

A Short Note on Anger,


Dwight Towers recently blogged this quote from a book we’ve both been reading: When we complain about what someone is doing that annoys us, we are really not complaining about him at all. We are complaining about our own character. We make a fuss about what he is doing, but that is useless as heContinue reading “A Short Note on Anger,”

Routine, Another Cost of Efficiency


The ripples keep expanding from Krishnamurti’s insight into the way knowledge, especially psychological knowledge, locks us into routine responses that, as he put it, atrophy the brain. In my penultimate post, I speculated on how this could be a way to speak directly about a significant aspect of what’s led us to where we findContinue reading “Routine, Another Cost of Efficiency”