loving struggle

  • Mountain dog school for living philosophy

    The Mountain Dog School for Living Philosophy promotes philosophy as a way of life, inviting individuals from diverse backgrounds to explore existential questions through dialogue and reflection. Its mission emphasizes personal engagement in philosophizing, fostering authenticity, self-actualization, and meaningful relationships… Continue reading

    Mountain dog school for living philosophy
  • Responsive to skillful attention

    The concept of discernment is vital for cultivating awareness, as it involves skillfully distinguishing experiences without over-determining or under-determining. This harmonizes extremes to avoid the fall into nihilism and eternalism. Simultaneously, it reawakens the empty yet interconnected nature of all… Continue reading

    Responsive to skillful attention
  • Decluttering Awareness: Nagarjuna and Emptiness

    Nāgārjuna’s thinkering dives into emptiness to abandon how we cling to rigid views, which just messes with our understanding of reality. He shows that everything arises through dependence and encourages us to let go of fixed beliefs, which can lead… Continue reading

    Decluttering Awareness: Nagarjuna and Emptiness
  • where eternity’s shadow slinks

    walking about myneighborhood listeningas Debussy fillsthe day with nocturnes scurrying squirrelsleap toward safetyfrom the old thinkerplodding on along is there more bird song?do feathered cousinswhistling and chirpingapprove these preludes? a bee knocks my handon way to freshlyplanted flowerbedgathering pollenalong the… Continue reading

    where eternity’s shadow slinks
  • Reversion, Reconciliation, and Restoration: Toward Tranquility in the Current Empire

    Looking Back Almost twenty years ago, I began troubling the word peace. Like many of us, I had long imagined peace as the cessation of violence, the arrival of stillness, the mutual exhale after the fire. But something in the… Continue reading

    Reversion, Reconciliation, and Restoration: Toward Tranquility in the Current Empire
  • From Republic to Serfdom: Misreading Rome in America’s Rural Imagination

    Introduction The recent interview with Ammon Bundy in The Salt Lake Tribune highlights a recurring theme among certain rural conservatives: the belief that the expansion of government welfare signals the decline of a once-great republic. Bundy’s assertion that the U.S.… Continue reading

    From Republic to Serfdom: Misreading Rome in America’s Rural Imagination
  • Unionized Auto Workers Are Taking on a Three-Headed Behemoth of Big Capital | Truthout

    …there’s another sense in which the UAW’s fight is everyone else’s fight. In taking on the Big Three automakers, auto workers are quite literally confronting a three-headed behemoth whose leadership and governance are closely embedded and directly interlocked within a… Continue reading

  • The Devil and Thomas Jefferson

    America is ruled by Mammon wearing the skin of Christian Nationalist Jesus. But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost… Continue reading

    The Devil and Thomas Jefferson
  • Sometimes… Faith

    a small poem on the synesthetics of faith in humanity Continue reading

    Sometimes… Faith
  • Ready… set… leap!

    Obviously, folks make leaps all the time: they leap for real joy, they leap to invalid conclusions, they leap into bad deals, etc. So a distinction must be drawn between springing-forth from the solid ground of critical experience (the dance… Continue reading

    Ready… set… leap!
  • Reading my life as a “useless passion”

    Problem posing from my experience increases my existential literacy in the direction of liberatory praxis. Continue reading

    Reading my life as a “useless passion”
  • When daddy went homeward

    A small memory of faith, hope, and love. Continue reading

    When daddy went homeward
  • Aphorism 25Mar2023

    If I am willing to be open to the uncertainty of being in the lifeworld alongside all these others also struggling toward liberation, I must never forget: Evolution is neither preservation of the status quo nor conservation of the familiar;… Continue reading

    Aphorism 25Mar2023
  • Turning over: awake

    Bloody birth wriggling from the womb. Cries of life after the first difficult breath.  How to grasp this new thread Tightening itself within the tapestry? As each breath increases awareness Grab greedy all around… Suckling, pissing, shitting. Each action becoming… Continue reading

    Turning over: awake