When a bank gets the runs
A new piece on Pajamas Media.
Archives
-
Pages
Also Nominated
Essential
Upaya
Categories
-
Meta
July 2008
Dark as Charcoal
This is about the coolest thing ever, and as a side-effect makes visible something I’d known academically: the moon’s surface is actually very dark. The usual gee-whiz statement is that with an albedo of around 7 percent, the Moon is really “as dark as a blacktop parking lot.” While true, this is a [...]
A Spell to Commit Pronoia
Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I am given unimaginable gifts;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.
Each condition I flee from pursues me.
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.
I bow to the one who has made [...]
Which shall it be?
“Oh God, is there ever to be any age of happiness?
Is there never to be any rest?”
“Rest enough for the individual man,
too much, and too soon, and we call it death.
But for Man, no rest and no ending,
he must go on, conquest beyond conquest.
First this little planet, and its winds and waves,
and then all the [...]
The hardest writing advice of all
Editorials and columns are a short form of essay writing, often about complicated, interwoven matters. Though we worked hard to bring new reporting and analysis to our arguments, the pieces still had to fit into a limited space. Being young and earnest, I wrote long, to explain it all. I can still hear Tony saying, [...]
To be free
To be free is to be without anxiety about imperfection. — Tara Brach
Karuna and Jesse Helms
The thing was, he’d answer anyone’s questions: a thief, a murderous warrior, an untouchable, a whore. Finally, someone asks him — maybe Sariputra, the perpetual straight man — how it is that he can be calm and not judge these people?
Parallels
… we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. — 2 Corinthians 4:18
Form is Sunyata, empty. …. Dharma neither arises nor ends, it isn’t pure or impure, it doesn’t grow and it doesn’t shrink. …. By way of the [...]