Jul 24
A short selection from Essay Thirty-four in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay. —Stephen Jay Gould [1] …
Jul 22
A short selection from Essay Thirty-three in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] … though commoners have no method of ‘beating the cart’ … on the way of the Buddha … this is the very eye of study … it …
Jul 21
A short selection from Essay Thirty-two in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this respect it must be easy, but the fact that we can have a whole truth and not the particular part we aim …
Jul 17
A short selection from Essay Thirty in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. … and one day she slipped off the cover and looked in. Forthwith there escaped a multitude of plagues for hapless man—such as gout, rheumatism, and colic for his body, and envy, spite, and revenge for his mind —Bullfinch’s Mythology With the …
Jul 16
The fourth section of Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice begins. PART IV —Pandora’s Box Give me a lever, a fulcrum, and a place to stand, and I will move the Earth. —Archimedes Prometheus … Gk Myth a demi-god … worshiped by craftsmen. When Zeus hid fire away from man [author’s note: according to Bullfinch’s Mythology, fire …
Jul 15
A short selection from Essay Twenty-Eight in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] … to understand religion and to affirm it are not the same but almost exactly the opposite. —Merleau-Ponty (as interpreted by Remy C. Kwant) [1] Objectivity is …
Jul 14
A short selection from Essay Twenty-Seven in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] “If your cart doesn’t move,” [Dogen] asks, “is it better to prod the cart or to prod the horse (sic)” …everyone knows you should prod the horse …
Jul 09
A short selection from Essay Twenty-Six in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is …
Jul 02
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
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 …
