What’s the connection between the Buddha and Deadpool? It might seem an unlikely comparison, a wisecracking anti-hero and a spiritual icon. The answer is linked to the most amusing thing I learned from my battle with anxiety and what I learned from Zen: its responses are seemingly counter-intuitive, even paradoxical. You can’t understand Buddhism by grasping for […]
The ‘Nones’ and Syncretism
‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’ There is a rise of people who don’t identify with any religious creed. The ‘Nones’ as they are known, are a demographic that’s being talked about more in politics and religion, […]
The Abstract Expressionists
So many different art movements were born during the 20th century that I can’t go into them all, but one was the Abstract Expressionists (AbEx). I’ve been looking at them through the Museum of Modern Arts online course at Coursera, presented by Corey D’Augustine. In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting I found it to be […]
The Insidious idea of Perfection
“I’m never going to be good enough”. Sometimes I just can’t shake that feeling. Ashamed of who I am, flawed, weak, shy, introvert. Not like the people who have it together, the happy people. You know the ones who are relaxed in their own skin. In short I wasn’t perfect and I knew it. My […]
A purposeless cosmos is not a problem
It’s claimed that life is meaningless without religion and it’s an accusation often levelled at atheists. They deny that the cosmos has any intrinsic meaning or purpose so their lives must be the same it’s argued. Does it appear humanity is lost without some cosmic significance? With advances in science, a diversity of beliefs in […]
Where everybody knows your name
That’s what you get when you walk into the Cheers bar in Boston. The massively popular TV series I grew up with in the 80s and 90s. It’s such a desirable place to be, where you know all the people around you, they are your social circle. In our modern world of online communication having […]