Tom Holland, the historian and amateur-but-elite cricketer, races his way through about 2498 years of human history in the course of not much more than 500 pages for his latest book Dominion. The object of the exercise is to trace the impact which a particular collection of ideas and beliefs has had in the rise and... Continue Reading →
On social media I recently saw a very busy person, a hospital doctor in fact, recommending the daily experience of stillness as a restorative practice. This prompted me not only to agree with her but to reflect on the fact that 'stillness' is not simply the state at which we arrive when we stop doing... Continue Reading →
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? (Merchant of Venice... Continue Reading →
From the outset I should say that although I am about to argue that silence is A Good Thing that does not mean that I am advocating it as a sovereign universal remedy. Broccoli is also an excellent thing but some people just can't eat it. This does not represent a personal flaw or... Continue Reading →
Let the seeker quietly lead the mind into the Spirit, and let all his thoughts be silence. (Bhagavad Gita 6:25) The word 'meditation' has a number of different meanings and the dominant meaning has changed over time. For the sake of brevity I shall ignore all these complexities and concentrate on the technique which Krishna... Continue Reading →
I thought love was only true in fairy tales Meant for someone else but not for me Love was out to get me That's the way it seemed Disappointment haunted all of my dreams Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer. (The Monkees) Using their favoured allegorical method the Monkees here advance a... Continue Reading →
They speak no words of peace, but against the quiet in the land they fashion deceitful speech. (Psalm 35:20) If you are wise enough to avoid Twitter then 'The Great Chinese Prom Dress Scandal of 2018' may have passed you by. Briefly, Keziah Daum, an American teenager in Utah, went to her high school prom... Continue Reading →
How to find meaning Is: stop searching for meaning; It is always here. There are, I think, at least three major assumptions embedded in this micropoem. Namely- 1) That there is a universal human desire to find meaning in life and in the cosmos. 2) That this desire is often expressed in terms of a... Continue Reading →
In recent years debate around free speech issues has tended to focus on university campuses (or, strictly speaking, campi.) Radical students have got into the habit of using protest, or the threat of protest, to exclude or disrupt speakers who advance viewpoints which they, the radical students, find objectionable. One of the lines of argument... Continue Reading →
