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Bhakti Redux
Today’s class we went over the concept of Bhakti for a little while before we spent the majority of time in a circle discussing the purpose of education: devotion to learning, coming to knowledge, bettering our situation in the world by developing our selves.
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Diversity of worship, unity of thought
Because we had roamed around in and out of a few topics yesterday, I decided to mostly lecture today with the hope that we would catch up a bit but that there would still be a lot of good questions from my friends. From what I read toward the end…
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Coordination, Subordination, and Exordination
Yesterday in our class, the discussion led me to talk for a little bit about a distinction originally made by Marcuse, I believe, regarding soft versus hard totalitarianism. I extended this description out to all manner of group structures that lead to implicit or explicit domination. Thinking about it last night,…
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Ordering expectations
In Tuesday’s class, we touched on the diverse story traditions from ancient India. My colleagues spent time at the beginning of our meeting talking with each other about what they had discovered about Indian sacred traditions, and what questions this had brought up to them. There were basic similarities, of…
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Introducing the Reality of Reality
Beginning our section on Hinduism today. So I decided to do two lecture sessions.
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Ultimate Concern
For our Thursday class, we began by everyone sitting in a circle on the floor. We stretched out our legs so that our feet touched each other completing the circle. Then we went around the circle and each named a thing we find in the world that is circular (e.g.…
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The Struggle between Monopoly and Cosmopolitanism
The Cynics were the first people to recognize that monopolitanism was a dangerous mindset which often leads to parochialism, moralism, xenophobia, narrow mindedness, etc. In its stead, they taught cosmopolitanism, or seeing yourself as belonging to the entirety of the cosmos rather than a local political and cultural structure. In…
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Explanations of religion
Below my lecture from 13 July 2016. Before I addressed the students, we had more discussion on what we take for granted in the everyday world, and then we shared a few things we take for granted about religion. Our questions and answers led us to a place where I believed…
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Taking things for granted
Lecture from Sacred Living Traditions. Following a class exercise asking “What is a chair?”, we had small group discussions on “What is religion?” The basic work was to think through what we take for granted, how we do not ask questions about most ordinary things. This leads toward a habit of…
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never mine
Reaching out to the limits of the universe Desire stretches–grasp grasping– for a peppermint or whatever Empires rising and falling all of reality just a sweet little distraction Deathless gesture taking-in-hand yet never mine
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Leaving Conservatism Behind | Dissent Magazine
For me, separating myself from what I now consider a naive move toward Reaganism happened in the late 1980’s when Iran-Contra allowed me to realize it was all just the same old song-and-dance. My anarcho-cynicism evolved over the course of the next decade as I saw very little redeemable about…
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The High Priests of Capitalism
Richard D. Wolff takes some time to describe how traditional intellectuals and economic theorists keep the superstructure mostly clear of those who disagree. Highly placed economic theorists usually evaluate the system prevailing in their societies very positively and construct celebratory theories about it. Those theorists are the high priests of…
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#harmonquest
HarmonQuest Trailer: Dan Harmon and His Pals Get Animated – IGN https://t.co/9O9HDt0aXr — Keith Wayne Brown (@pahndeepah) July 1, 2016
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becoming assimilated
I am not sure that any society which has had a long history of racism, misogyny, or homophobia–and now transphobia–is really one to which I should be running to assimilate.
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Hidden Desire: Nietzsche, Gay Philosopher
Most folks I know who focus on Nietzsche are very heteronormative. Yet Nietzsche as gay man has always made so much sense to me. Why do folks NOT read Nietzsche as a man who loved men, a man even more trapped by living in a culture where it was easier…
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