DAILY PHOTO: Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple
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Category Archives: Philosophy
PROMPT: Patriotic
I am. I wish my country the best, am pained to see ailments of what have always been the country’s greatest strengths (the government being limited and at the command of the people and the law [rather than the other way around] and the courage to boldly lead by building the new technologies and adapting to the world that came to be,) and will not stop bitching about it unless and until the situation rights itself. When I was a young man, I served in the military and waved flags. Now, as an old man, I’m not eager to see America go gently into that good night.
I realize that may sound excessively Pollyanna about America’s past and pessimistic about the present / future. I do realize that the country has always had its flaws, as humanity always does. (And loved it all the same.) There have been missteps and mass movements that would later come to be viewed as wrongheaded and self-defeating. But we always had checks and balances, an Enlightenment norm for tolerance, and a respect for decorum and gravitas in our leaders. Now, as I see the “Putin-Orban Manual for New Populist-Nationalist Dictators” being played out, I wonder if the shark hasn’t been jumped on all that was good, honorable, and impressive in the America in which I grew up.
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PROMPT: Law
Daily writing prompt
If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?
If such a situation were to avail itself, I would make a law so that no one person — even a high elected official — could change the law unilaterally. (Administrative policies for the bureaucracy not being laws, said high elected official could go to town on them.) Why? Because one person being able to change law is an affront to democracy and to the very concept of rule of law, and if we make it the object of fantasy to be able to do so we are cooked.
We had such a law in the US. It was called the Constitution, and it was glorious. It said that only the legislature (a body consisting of many representatives) could make law, and only the judiciary could interpret and evaluate the legality of a law. And it was okay that the executive was the least democratic of branches because it was to stay in the lane of enforcing the laws as they were written (and shaped by judicial interpretation,) and if the executive started getting too big for his britches, the legislature would turn off the flow of money.
So, my great fantasy is not to be able to unilaterally change law, but to have three functioning branches of government who stay in their own lanes, applying checks as (and only as) described in the Constitution.
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PROMPT: Dream Home
Regularly teleports to new and interesting places. Ideally, compact from the outside but comfortable inside. So, I guess a TARDIS would be my dream home.
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PROMPT: News
Daily writing prompt
You get some great, amazingly fantastic news. What’s the first thing you do?
Seek a second and third independent source. The News is increasingly unreliable.
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PROMPT: Invention
Velcro and Sticky Notes! We knew how to fasten things, but before then we couldn’t fasten things in a half-assed fashion. As Laozi says in the Daodejing [Ch. 40,] “Returning is the movement of Tao; yielding is the way of Tao.” So, to be able to stick and unstick at will is the highest virtue under heaven.
[NOTE: Technically, research indicates both inventions predate me, but I don’t believe ether became popular for household consumer use until my lifetime.]
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PROMPT: Ideal Day
I wake up. I don’t die. I go to sleep.
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Superabundance of Buddhas [Free Verse]
The reclining Buddha oversees
the diligent seated Buddha.
Is this an analogy of the mind,
or just a monk's proclivity
toward a superabundance
of Buddhas?
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PROMPT: Understand One Thing
Daily writing prompt
If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?
How Buddhists reconcile the Doctrine of Anatta (the belief that there is no permanent self) with a belief in reincarnation.
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BOOK: “Four Chapters on Freedom” by Patanjali [Commentaries by Satyananda Saraswati]
Four Chapters on Freedom: Commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Satyananda SaraswatiMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher – Yoga Publications Trust
This book holds the Bihar School of Yoga commentaries on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. In addition to providing each Sutra in Sanskrit, a Romanized transliteration, a word-by-word literal translation, and a readable free translation into English, the book offers a commentary for each Sutra. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali consist of just 196 lines of Sanskrit, explaining the nature of yoga and how it is to be practiced. Because the Sutras are so sparse and open to varied interpretations, a commentary is essential and one’s learning experience is only as good as the translation and commentary. There are many English language commentaries on Patanjali’s Sutras available, but I don’t think one can do any better than this one.
In general, I have found the publications put out by the Yoga Publications Trust of the Bihar School to be as useful as they come. Their books are pragmatic, focused, and readable.
This book does, by necessity, use a fair number of Sanskrit terms repeatedly because there are not English words for many of the key concepts and to try to put them into English would be tiresome and confusing. However, there is a glossary at the end of the book (in addition to an index) to help the reader negotiate this Sanskrit terminology. The appendices also include a key to help English language readers with the pronunciation of Sanskrit terms. There are also appendices with the sutras written out in Sanskrit and Romanized transliteration in list form.
This book is well worth reading, whether one has read other commentaries on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or not.
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