Ken Christenson
Author's posts
Jul 04
Young Buddha leaves Home, Part-2: the Practice
By admin in Humanity’s Future A short selection from Essay Twenty-Five in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] What would it be like to settle into your own body, into a sense of just being alive, even for a few moments … You …
Jul 03
Young Buddha leaves Home, Part-1: Looking Inward
A short selection from Essay Twenty-Four in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] [Phenomenological reduction] is a piece of pure self-reflection, exhibiting the most original evident facts; moreover, if it brings into view in them the outlines of idealism … …
Jul 02
Old Buddha Meets Young Buddha, Part-4: More Minutely Responsive means More ‘Evolved’.
A short selection from Essay Twenty-Three in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] I now want to show that there is ‘plenty’ of room [at the bottom] … The biological example of writing information on a small scale has inspired …
Jun 28
Two Buddhas Dance, Part-2: “Foresight”, Really?
A very short selection from Essay Twenty-Two in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. He moved very, very slowly and carefully. With the most slight and gentle movements, trying to catch at the sound he moved his head round what seemed like a billionth part of a billionth part of a degree, slipped behind a …
Jun 27
Young Buddha at Home, Part-2: Three ‘Natural Truths’ that Horrify!
A short selection from Essay Twenty-One in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. —like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round walks on, and turns no more his head; because he knows, a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1] Let’s …
Jun 24
Young Buddha at Home, Part-1: Illusion is Our Birthright
A short selection from Essay Twenty in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. The man pulling radishes pointed the way with a radish —Haiku by Issa The wolf is tied by subtle threads to the woods he moves through. —Barry Lopez [1] Our inner cave-man can clearly see his world has changed, but despite the …
Jun 21
Old Buddha Meets Young Buddha, Part-3: When we See the Difference, our World Changes
The Whole of Essay Nineteen in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer. —William of Ockham [1] The flexible behaviour of higher animals can’t be trusted to maintain resource partitions; only innate structure can. Thus ecological stability requires not only that inapposite curiosity …
Jun 20
Young Buddha, Part -1: Overturning the Natural Conformity of Structure and Function
In recent years a promising scientific approach to comparative mythology has emerged in which researchers apply conceptual tools that biologists use to decipher the evolution of living species. In the hands of those who analyze myths, the method, known as phylogenetic analysis, consists of connecting successive versions of a mythological story and constructing a family …
Jun 16
Two Buddhas Dance, Part-1: Different Tempos
The Whole of Essay Seventeen in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice: The story of Old Buddha ends (for the moment) and the story of Young Buddha begins. I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. —Friedrich Nietzsche [1] The final lesson to take from our …
Jun 13
Old Buddha Meets Young Buddha, Part-2: Our Own “Personal Evolutions”?
A short selection from Essay Sixteen in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] … novel behavior, (including the verbal and conceptual behaviors we call “ideas”) is the result of an orderly and dynamic competition among previously established behaviors, during which old …
