How naturally the subject of God and what it means to be good flows into the subject of the next Parabola theme: Man and Machine. In this space and in the readers’ forums, correspondents have shared comments and questions that revolve around the observation (that was also St. Paul’s) that we cannot do the goodContinue reading “What Does It Mean To Be Mechanical?”
Author Archives: Tracy Cochran
stepping back
Christians call it the “recollected heart.” In Sanskrit it is called “smirti,” or “that which is remembered.” “Sati,” the word for mindfulness in Pali, the ancient Sanskrit dialect of the earliest Buddhist texts, means to remember. The great Zen sage Dogen spoke of taking a half step back inside ourselves, creating the space to allowContinue reading “stepping back”
Open and closed (post redux)
Traveling by car is like watching life on a screen, writes Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, his now classic account of a motorcycle journey with his 11-year-old son that is really an inquiry into values.“You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. OnContinue reading “Open and closed (post redux)”
who knew?
“I should have been born in the Age of Middle Earth,” said my 11-year-old daughter Alexandra as we rode the train down to Manhattan one February day in 2002. “I don’t belong in this time.” Alexandra had been lamenting like this for weeks, ever since she had seen The Fellowship of the Ring, the firstContinue reading “who knew?”
