Today we have a lesson in history. Or perhaps I should say some personal history that contains a lesson. As I am naturally loquacious however I will give away the ending upfront just in case you miss it embedded in my rambling.
Ok, here it is: be true to yourself. I know, I know...it's cliche to even point out that it's a cliche. So, perhaps a smarter way of saying this is, know who you are, know what you do best, and then do that!
I have made this point previously—most recently in the article the impact positive childhood memories can have on adulthood. I wrote that article as we often...
Introduction
13th Beach a Postpositive is a little video I made while staying with family after returning home from a long Indian field trip for my Ph.D (I write about the circumstances of creating the video in more detail in the BTS section below).
For now, some prefatory remarks if I may. I am slightly reticent to say too much about the ideas to follow before you have a chance to watch the short-film. That being said, I would like to make a small comment about the use of the grammatical term "postpositive." First, its important to know I am using this term as a bit of a play on words rather...
1. The Words
What does it mean to be a writer? When does one get to call himself a "writer." Could it be that a writer is someone who is paid to write? Or perhaps a writer is someone who simply puts pen to paper? Maybe its simply a state of mind, or even just a label we use to make it easy for others to understand what it is we do. For me, a writer, at least in one sense, is all of the above and yet in another it is none of them. For writing is communication. Of course, it's not the only kind of communication but, at its heart, is the flow of an idea from one human to another....
It seems that my assertion from the article Philosophy as Practice raised some eyebrows among Buddhists. Here is the section of in question:
...without the ability to analyze and use critical thinking, even the compassion spoken of in Buddhism cannot be fully developed. Therefore the wisdom lineage, as in “method and wisdom”, pervades the method lineage.
I was surprised by the doubt raised by this statement, as it seems to me to be quite clear. However, in order to practice what I advocate, that is, doing philosophy, since last Thursday when the doubt was surreptitiously raised during...