I’ve always liked reading “wisdom tales”; I still read and delight in those Zen Buddhist stories that Paul Reps recounted in his book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, which I first encountered in the late 1960s. Not long after that, I discovered the many tales of the Mulla Nasrudin retold by
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Scripturient: Musings on Montaigne’s Cannibals
Montaigne’s essay On Cannibals contributed at least some of the content and ideas in Shakespeare’s late play, The Tempest. A speech by the recently-shipwrecked counsellor Gonzalo in Act 2, Sc.1 about creating a utopian community on the island is lifted almost word-for-word from this essay.* Montaigne’s other essays might have
Continue readingScripturient: Musings on Art and Taste
Many years ago, I had a lengthy correspondence with a friend in another part of Canada about what constitutes art. His basic argument was that art was not neutral or generic, but was the final product of high achievement: real art was “good” art. That is, art was defined by
Continue readingScripturient: Musings on Cats and Philosophers
British philosopher John Gray thinks cats can “often teach us much more about living the good life than philosophy ever could.” As a lifetime cat owner, I can vouch for cats serving as metaphors for all sorts of things, but not usually as philosophers outside some children’s books. That statement
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: I Have A Dream
I Have A Dream: surely, and unquestionably, that great speech by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is one of the most important, and most beautiful, uplifting, empowering, ennobling, visionary and inspiring speeches ever given. Listen again to these words. These words were never more relevant than now. Unity
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Enlightenment & The Power Of Emptiness
OK, gangster punks, rebels and revolutionaries, free spirits and seekers of truth, hear this: People don’t understand the power of emptiness. With all my heart, I wish they did. And I wish I were more firmly grounded in that awareness. I merely have a knowing, a deeply felt and directly
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Getting Comfortable With Uncertainty
People everywhere are the same – people are people. We have far more in common than we have differences between us. And all the differences, or at least the great majority, are on the surface only. That being said, we do have some significant differences in psychology, views, values and
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Yuval Harari: Bleak Is Back!
Yuval Harari is a shallow thinking dogmatic materialist who swallows whole and uncritically the dominant pseudo-scientific paradigm of mechanistic materialist dualism, which of course is an extremely bleak view of the world, and he is also steeped in an equally uncritical post-modernist nihilism; and he tries to wed that sordid
Continue readingScripturient: Why Master Sun Matters Today
Master Sun was a wise man. So wise that his famous treatise, The Art of War (aka The Art of Warfare), has been read, written about, critiqued, and discussed for roughly 2,400 years. It has been used as a model of strategy and leadership for the military, for business, romance,
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The Madness of Nietzsche
Nietzsche was either terribly misinterpreted, as my dearly departed scholar brother was adamant to say, or he was simply mad his entire life, and his philosophy was a philosophy of madness. But it ultimately matters little, other than to historians and biographers, which one is the case, because the philosophy
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Stoicism: A Philosophy of Powerlessness
Stoicism is recently faddish and in vogue, but it is fashionable only to those who don’t understand it. It is not surprising that Stoicism is attractive to many people now, in the same way that many people are attracted to a death fetish: Stoisism is a philosophy of fatalism, and
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Question Everything: Metaphysics, Science, Philosophy & Common Sense
Here are thoughts on a short video linked below, but I would frankly assert that the thoughts presented here in this reflection or meditation are more interesting and more useful than the talk that they are commenting on. This seems to me an unnecessarily obscure talk (linked below), even though
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Robertson Davies and Alice Walker: A Review By Someone Who Has Never Read A Single Word They Have Written
Such a delightfully warm and witty man, Robertson Davies seems most definitely to be. He looks so severe, when you first look at his face, but then he speaks, and there is such an effusive warmth, gentleness, sensitivity, good-heartedness, magnanimity, graciousness, playfulness, optimism, compassion, humour and wit, that you realize
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Guiding Lights In A Collapsing World
Who are some of the guiding lights in terms of what must be done? I would suggest Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Emerson, Thoreau, Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Bookchin, EF Schumacher, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Erich Fromm, Alan Watts, Allan Wallace, Joseph Campbell, Einstein, Bohm, Spinoza, Dickens, Blake, Anthony J. Hall,
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Knowledge vs Opinion, Enlightenment vs Delusion
As Plato said, everyone has opinions, but few have knowledge. It is important that we keep that in the back of our minds, if not the fore. Two levels, there are, in everything: there is the question of how to live, and how to construct a society that is just,
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: What Must Be Done
Open letter to friends of freedom: Hi folks, People are beginning to realize that we need a different attitude and view with regards to how we see nature, life, humanity, and ourselves. Very few get past rudimentary first steps, however. Since this shift in paradigms and consciousness is essential and
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Enlightenment: Raising Consciousness & The Cloud of Unknowing
Ideology is neither salvation nor liberation. As important as a paradigm shift, a shift in world view, or a shift in consciousness and perspective, clearly is, we must understand this. It is not ideas or ideology that will save
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Stoicism and Slave Mentality
Stoicism is a sordid philosophy of grim forbearance in the face of a rigidly deterministic fatalism devoid of all agency or hope. People who have no hope gravitate to it, for it offers no hope, but only the promised power to endure. Unfortunately it seeped through Christianity, and through all
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: What is Enlightenment?
Further Notes On The Dualistic Illusion (This ought to raise the hackles of the fundamentalists – both secular and religious. But I don’t write for the narrow of mind anyway, so I am not concerned about that.) Now here is someone who knows what he is talking about: Rabbi David
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: What Is Buddhism, and What Is Non-Dualism?
And What Are They Not? Open letter to Russell Brand, regarding a video (linked below) titled, Dualism vs Monism EXPLAINED! Russell, who the hell are you interviewing?! The guy is clearly talking out of his ass. (Sorry for my directness and occasional bluntness. I was heavily influenced by Chomsky, Trungpa
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