Zen Mind is described as a state of egolessness, devoid of self consciousness.   One can utilize this state of mind, Zen shows us, in archery, martial arts, and calligraphy.  Zen and the Art of Archery, by Eugene Herrigel, is the short classic story of a westerner’s attempt to achieve Zen Mind and become a skilled [...]

Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek,  and author of American Lion, Andrew Jackson in the White House, reviews Christianity, the First Three Thousand Years, by Diamond MacCulloch, in the New York Times Book Review, April 4, 2010.
Meacham tells us he is officially sympathetic to christianity.  ” I am an episcopalian who takes the faith of [...]

“Combat fog obscures your fate…and from that unknown is born a desperate bond between men”

In Sebastian Junger’s War, a book about a company of soldiers in the Korengal Valley of Eastern Afghanistan, we experience war conceptually, and devoid of the cynicism of most war commentary.  Junger doesn’t speak to whether war is good or [...]

“The most incomprehensible aspect of the Universe is that it is comprehensible.” Albert Einstein.
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” Steven Weinberg.
Science seems to have the unspoken goal of finding explanations that have no arbitrary element.   Nothing can be a certain way, when it could as well be another [...]

In the charming movie, Vitus, a young boy is a piano prodigy.  This becomes very important to his parents, so much so that they almost forget that he is still a young boy.  Too young to understand his gift, he wants to be a young boy.  His parents’ obsession becomes annoying,  so he fakes a [...]

On Deep History and the Brain, Daniel Lord Smail, 2008.
Does culture evolve  and if so, how?  This is a big question, for if culture evolves and we can change its course, then perhaps we can change our future.
Some see cultural history as showing a progression, a direction.  They see accumulation of knowledge as increasing in [...]

“Tell me a horror story, Daddy”.
“. . . Look around you, son.  . . . What do you see?”
There is the abyss, the empty secret that life is ultimately meaningless, that none of us really matter.  It is that existential horror of being.  We could dwell on it, but that would make it very [...]

Jeff Bridges gives a powerful performance, a great portrayal, not just of a failing country music artist, but of an alcoholic.
Alcohol, it is not commonly known,  chiefly blocks emotional intelligence, not intellectual intelligence.  The alcoholic over time doesn’t know what makes him sad, what makes him happy, what makes him anxious.  And we have these [...]

Many consider Franklin Delano Roosevelt to be  our third greatest president.  In books such as The New Dealers’s War,  Thomas Fleming, 2001, the forgotten man, Amity Shlaes, 2007, however, the case is being made that he is due for re-evaluation.
Not all went as well with FDR as we have been taught.  Unemployment was still 20% [...]

In the movie “I’m not there“, creative Hollywood artists who know Bob Dylan, and know of his singular importance in our time, seem to want to publicly acknowledge this fact and give tribute to Mr. Dylan, without any sign of his acknowledgment, of course.
It is curious, and very to the point, that the chosen title [...]