CALL ME MAGGIE

Perennial Philosophy

  • Project Vox

    Project Vox concerns the next major scholarly development: the acknowledgement that a number of early modern women have been unjustly ignored in our narratives. From Lady Masham, Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway in England to Émilie Du Châtelet in France,… Continue reading

  • Pope Francis and Integral Ecology | Becoming Integral

    The new encyclical by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: On the Care of our Common Home, contains many references to “integral ecology,” including an entire chapter by that title. It’s relatively clear that Francis is working with the integral ecology proposed… Continue reading

  • Occupying Space

    A man should be so poor that he is not and has not a place for God to act in. To reserve a place would be to maintain distinctions. Meister Eckhart quoted in Merton, Thomas. Zen and the Birds of… Continue reading

    Occupying Space

  • How Legalizing Psychedelics Creates a Healthy Competition with Organized Religion

    Organized religion is almost always a monopoly. Legalization of mind opening substances would lead to a free market of ideas that dogmatic superstructures cannot survive. In a culture that prides itself on a bizarro academic sense of rationality, there is… Continue reading

    How Legalizing Psychedelics Creates a Healthy Competition with Organized Religion

  • Jerome Bruner, “Creative Wholeness” and How We Limit Our Happiness

    If one is to contain the panicking spread of anxiety, one must be able to identify and put a comprehensible label upon one’s feelings better to treat them again, better to learn from experience… Myth, perhaps, serves in place of… Continue reading

  • Primacy of Ethics over Metaphysics

    From a consideration of the primacy of ethics in Dante’s The Banquet by Etienne Gilson in Dante the Philosopher (1948): …the Crystaline heaven, or Primum Mobile, ordains by its motion the daily revolution of all the other heavens, a revolution that enables them to receive and transmit… Continue reading

    Primacy of Ethics over Metaphysics

  • Hugging Meditation

    According to the practice, you have to really hug the person you are holding. You have to make him or her very real in your arms, not just for the sake of appearances, patting him on the back to pretend… Continue reading

  • never stressing, all flows

    Nameless, the Way does without naming. Not naming, it makes no plans. Making no plans, it never stresses. Never stressing, all flows. Continue reading

    never stressing, all flows

  • Philosophy Should Come Out to Play

    I want to suggest that we divide play into two major categories; active and passive. The passive forms — let’s call them amusements — are indeed suspicious, as they seem to anesthetize the agent and reduce creative engagement. From our… Continue reading

  • The Psychology (and Philosophy) of ‘No Regrets’ – Pacific Standard

    YOLO has essentially become the over-used watchword for every toxic manifestation of masculinity looking to throw off the crushing yoke of personal responsibility. But, at its core, YOLO is also the current manifestation of a fundamental human sentiment: I want… Continue reading

    The Psychology (and Philosophy) of ‘No Regrets’ – Pacific Standard

  • Conversion not Improvement

    I have ranted before about the cult of improvement in our society. Certainly, a lot of what compels Transhumanism is the search for ultimate improvement. But Kant–I believe rightly–speaks to why a principled existence is a converted life not an “improved” or… Continue reading

    Conversion not Improvement

  • Is that so? Maybe.

    Zen Master Hakuin (1686-1769) travelled extensively to learn from other masters. When he was 32 years old, he returned to the Shoin-ji, the temple in his home town of Hara, in present-day Shizuoka Prefecture. Here he devoted himself to teaching… Continue reading

    Is that so? Maybe.

  • Alan Watts – Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching – YouTube

      Continue reading

    Alan Watts – Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching – YouTube

  • Borobudur Buddhist Temple

    Great entry from the folks over at OOAworld Travel… The first steps to Borobudur, the great Buddhist temple outside Yogyakarta, Indonesia, are guided: a welcome sign informs visitors of the monks’ routine, inviting the neophyte to follow the traditional path… Continue reading

    Borobudur Buddhist Temple

  • Don’t Worry, Be Grumpy

    Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm will describe how to upload ancient wisdom into modern technology. He will reveal the code for the antivirus to stress, show how to delete depression, and give Buddha-tech support to peace of mind. Synergizing Mindfulness with… Continue reading

    Don’t Worry, Be Grumpy

  • Replace the Gospel of Money: An Interview With David Korten

    Dean Paton: Tell me how somebody who was an organizational management specialist, and then a new-economy thought leader, made this leap into what is as much a spiritual proposition as it is a political one—that Earth is a living organism,… Continue reading

  • Live Long and Prosper

    Leonard Nimoy/Mr. Spock was the first person I remember talking about logic. As a child, I did not want to be Captain Kirk in games, I wanted to be the Vulcan. When I think about the passing of a person from… Continue reading

    Live Long and Prosper

  • Liminality… and Hope – Patricia Damery

    Liminality is a word that people ask me to repeat twice when I say it, as if they didn’t hear it quite right the first time. As a Jungian analyst, I recognize the liminal state as that of many entering… Continue reading