Ken Christenson
Author's posts
Aug 16
Young Buddha Meets Old Buddha, Part-1: Realizing that Humans are Naturally Compromised
A short selection from Essay Forty-five in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. Do not depart from deceptions and errors; for they of themselves are the nature of True Reality. When all things are illumined by wisdom and there is neither grasping nor throwing away, then you can see into your own nature and gain …
Aug 15
Young Buddha leaves Home, Part-5: Trouble with ‘Visionary’ Philosophies
A short selection from Essay Forty-four in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] The subtle source is clear and bright; the branching streams flow in the dark. To attach to things is primordial illusion; to encounter the absolute is not …
Aug 11
Young Buddha leaves Home, Part-4: Facing a New Conceptual Field
A short selection from Essay Forty-three in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] Direct your eye inward, and you will find a thousand regions in your mind yet undiscovered. Travel them and be expert in home-cosmography. —Thoreau [1] From personal …
Aug 09
Old Buddha’s Gift, Part–7: Extravagant Flights of Fancy
A short selection from Essay Forty-two in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis, “Think.” In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea. …
Aug 08
Can Humanity KNOW ITSELF without Knowing the GREAT GOD PAN? Part-4: The Problem of Motivation
A selection (not so short) from Essay Forty-one in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet, believing what we don’t believe does not exhilarate. —Emily Dickinson [1] So with the stage thus set, we are now finally ready to examine the benefits that flow …
Aug 06
Can Humanity KNOW ITSELF without Knowing the GREAT GOD PAN? Part-3: Learning Intimacy from the God-Of-All-Tribes,
The last section of Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice begins. PART V —The Extremophile Choice The rewilding of the tortoise in its ancient habitat represents not only the species’ slow drift away from extinction, but an overall movement toward a more plentiful world. What the bolson tortoise reminds us is that it is ultimately …
Aug 04
Young Buddha Speaks, Part-3: The Name Game.
A short selection from Essay Thirty-nine in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] We are between stories. —Thomas Berry [1] Our stories aren’t real. But we know this only in that ‘dumb’ part of the brain that’s been left out …
Aug 02
Young Buddha, Part -2: The Living World is Overturned — along with Mankind’s Inner World
A short selection from Essay Thirty-eight in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. What I cannot create, I do not understand. (Written on Richard Feynman’s blackboard at the time of his death.) There is one consequence of a supercharged mirror neuron system (See last two Essays, 36 and 37) with the ability to impersonate inanimate …
Aug 01
Old Buddha’s Gift, Part-6: The ‘Sympathy’ of Bodymind
A short selection from Essay Thirty-seven in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. Unlike monkeys, humans also use mirror neurons to directly imitate actions and understand their meanings. … Gallese and Rizzolatti found that when people listened to sentences describing actions, the same mirror neurons fired as would have had the subjects performed the actions …
Jul 28
Young Buddha at Home, Part-5: Three Common Mistakes we have all Made
My contribution to this essay is actually quite short, but the quote by Kassewitz, which works in counterpoint to my propositions on original human nature, doubles the length. All of Essay Thirty-Six in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] The …
