Taoism
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Joe Zawinul, Taoist Sage
Joe Zawinul died two days ago. His band, Weather Report provided the sound track of my college days. "Birdland," however overplayed it may have become, is a joyous piece (you can hear it at the NPR site here),… Continue reading
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Taoists in Space
An op-ed in yesterday’s NYT, by Timothy Ferris, tells the story of the space probe Voyager I, a satellite that was launched thirty years ago and is now leaving the solar system. Ferris was responsible for a recorded… Continue reading
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Tao Poem
A reader sends in this poem, by Charles Wright, heard on this morning’s Writer’s Almanac, on NPR: After Reading T’ao Ch’ing, I wander Untethered Through the Short Grass Dry spring, no rain for five weeks. Already the lush… Continue reading
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The Tao Diet
Earlier this year, not long after my fiftieth birthday (my summer students seemed shocked when I told them I was born in 1957 – in the middle of the last century!), I went to the doctor for the… Continue reading
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This Just In: Chuang Tzu Is Right!
Today’s NYT: Studies Report Inducing Out-of-Body Experience: The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said one expert on body and mind, Dr.… Continue reading
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Chinese Solutions to the Religion Problem
Mark Lilla’s article in last Sunday’s NYT Magazine has been circling through my mind all week. While he does a great job explicating the ways in which modernization does not fully eradicate our tendency toward religion, which he… Continue reading
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Abstract Expressionism
While we were in the city last week, we went to the Museum of Modern Art. My daughter had expressed an interest in Andy Warhol (her seventh grade art teacher had brought his work to her attention) and… Continue reading
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Childhood
Should we consider childhood a distinct phase of life, separated by some level of maturity and knowledge from adulthood, or should we understand it as a synchronic moment in a larger dynamic process of life which cannot be… Continue reading
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Brian Cashman, Taoist Sage, Again…
The New York Yankees are winning again. But just a month or so ago, there was much anxiety among the Yankee faithful – the team was losing then, the trade deadline of July 31 was looming, and it… Continue reading
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Taoist Thoughts on Herbert Spencer
I read a review/essay in The New Yorker last night on Herbert Spencer, the 19th century (mostly: he died in 1903) thinker/philosopher famous for the idea of "social Darwinism." Many thoughts came to mind, mostly of a Taoist… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 