‘No good sittin’ worryin’ abou’ it,” he said. “What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.’ Hagred, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling So much of our suffering seems to be self-inflicted. When I was younger I learned to retreat from life. I found the world to […]
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 Buddhist idea of Suchness, Thusness (Tathātā)
We might ask ourselves in a moment of contemplation, ‘why is there something, not nothing?’ or ‘why is the cosmos the way it is and no some other way?’ But that is like asking ‘why does a bee sting you?’ It’s an absurd question because that what bees are supposed to do. There is no […]
The Buddhist idea of Emptiness (Śūnyatā): The Cosmology of ‘No Things’
‘Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away, and change, they do not lie. But Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction. The “apparent” world is the only one: the “true” world is merely added by a lie’. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols Emptiness (Sanskrit: Śūnyatā) is […]
Pitfalls of self-help – Distraction and Addiction
I’ve read many self-help books but in recent years I’ve become more cautious of the whole genre. My quest for personal development lead me to read, listen and watch to so much advice. But a part of me became exasperated at how much it felt like work. I asked myself ‘When will it end? When can […]
You don’t have to know what you’re doing all the time
Am I just wasting my time? Is there something better I could be doing? Oh shiny,! maybe I should be doing this instead? I don’t know where I’m going with this… I’ve had many doubts about what I should do with my life. Last year I seemingly had an Existential crisis every month. These questions […]