Recent posts tagged dharma
2013
Man of Steel, Fans of Clay Dept.
Why the longing for "escapism" is problematic.
Oh, Grow Up Already Dept.
Living forever without actually growing up first seems like a non-starter.
A Man of Steel With Feet Of Clay Dept.
Why "Man of Steel"'s Superman is a little more interesting, and problematic, than you might expect. (Warning: spoilers.)
That Superior Feeling Dept.
Godhood without humanity: the gains hardly seem worth the degeneracy.
With A Finger In My I Dept.
"I want to live forever." Yes, but which I?
The Heart Of The Matter Dept.
On love being the highest law.
Buddy, Can Youse Paradigm? Dept.
Knowing more than others is not a form of oppression.
No Difference, Except The Feet Are A Little Bit Off The Ground Dept.
Please suspend your disbelief. It'll do us both a world of good.
Don't Get Mad Or Even Dept.
Life's bigger than one-upsmanship.
Astonish Me Dept.
"I demand two things from a composer: invention, and that he astonish me." What did Stockhausen mean by this?
2012
Rebel Buddha (Dzogchen Ponlop)
We are, I think, finally beginning to see the full flowering of a literature of true native Western Buddhism. By this I mean works written by Buddhists who are Westerners first and foremost, and whose understanding of both Western life...
White Noise And Its Discontents Dept.
Laster Bangs and racism, 30+ years on. Or, how not to be another brick in the wall.
The Really Real Thing Dept.
On reality hunger an its abuses.
Think Once Dept.
Is it wrong to want to improve yourself?
Scraping Off The Labels Redux Dept.
Is it OK to cheer if someone you hate dies?
Belief System Dept.
When SF addresses religion.
2011
Disappearing Act Dept.
I have been reading The Shores of Light, a collection of literary criticism from the 1920s and 1930s courtesy of Edmund Wilson, a very capable and perceptive critic who as far as I can tell isn’t sung much of these...
2010
Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature (George Russell)
It was only through George Russell’s obituary that I ever learned about him in the first place. He was not as household a name as Duke or Miles or ‘Trane, but he mattered in a way that is only now...
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn (Compiled and edited by Stephen Mitchell)
By all accounts Zen Master Seung Sahn was a funny guy, and that squares with my understanding of the way Buddhism and Zen specifically act as a liberating force on the personality. Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, likewise, is a...
Commencing Countdown Dept.
After a few delays, I finally have a start date for when my version of anime.about.com goes live: this coming Thursday, Nov. 11. So what does this mean for this site and all the other things I've been doing here? ...
Empathy Machine Repair Dept.
More excerpts from the Kurtz interview (see yesterday's post): No one’s been able to read the audience, ever, so you have to kind of rely on your own instincts. In the case of Star Wars, George and I had dinner...
Old (And Busted) School Dept.
Within seconds of closing the covers on The Count of Monte Cristo I was already ruminating on how a book that widely imitated must have inspired at least a few people to revisit not just the plot but the very...
Just Watch What You Say Dept.
Orac has a problem with the concept of freedom of speech getting historical exceptions, as do I: Elie Wiesel: Carve out an exception to free speech for Holocaust denial : Respectful InsolenceI find myself far more in agreement with Salman...
The Fanboys Are Back In Town Dept.
Okay. This could get bristly. A while back I started learning the C# programming language -- (okay, okay, don't freak out, this is going somewhere) -- for the sake of rewriting a major website project which had been languishing in...
The Door Is Still Open Dept.
Dave Winer makes a point about Apple and their ecosystem that is precise enough to inspire jealousy in the rest of us who have been seeking to make the same point. ... computers are meant to be more than DisneyLand,...
