Some of us have been questioning what it means to be mechanical or not mechanical. Months ago, in the course of reporting a story for a Buddhist magazine, I took a trip up to Leverett, Massachusetts, to visit a glorious Peace Pagoda built by the monks and nuns of a little known sect of JapaneseContinue reading “Making the Sign of the Cross”
Category Archives: Blog Posts
What Does It Mean Not To Be Mechanical?
A reader posed this question as an alternative to “what it means to be mechanical?” He was right. It is the more fruitful way to go. After all, over the past three decades, scientists of all stripes have amassed a great deal of evidence to support Schopenhauer’s claim (as paraphrased by Einstein) that “a humanContinue reading “What Does It Mean Not To Be Mechanical?”
The Happiest Place on Earth
Last week, while visiting my father and sister in Florida, I took what I’m quite sure will be my last roller coaster ride, “Expedition Everest,” the latest spectacularly elaborate attraction at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane wrote an essay about the rich and strange art and mindset of Walt Disney,Continue reading “The Happiest Place on Earth”
What Does It Mean To Be Mechanical?
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, wrote Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, his 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. On aContinue reading “Open and closed (post redux)”
Tracy Cochran 