In one way or another, human beings have always been involved in scientific search and spiritual search–in the search for knowledge and for meaning. I came away from my interview with the Indian-born, scientifically-trained Ravi Ravindra (in “Man and Machine”) with the impression that it is a quirk of Western culture to imagine that spirituality–which [...]
Archive for October, 2008
Merrily We Roll Along
Posted in Tracy Cochran on October 29, 2008 | 2 Comments »
A Way To Be Wild
Posted in Tracy Cochran on October 20, 2008 | 4 Comments »
“‘I think of my territory as that which I have walked in person and know the weather at a given time of year, know a lot of the critters, and know a lot of the people,” the Zen poet Gary Snyder told reporter Dana Goodyear in a recent issue of The New Yorker. His territory [...]
What Is This?
Posted in Tracy Cochran on October 13, 2008 | 2 Comments »
“What is this?” Recently, I’ve learned that koan practice began in sixth-century China, an answer to a trend toward seeking academic answers. Stories of monks’ awakenings became a source of questions that would draw the light of inquiry back onto the self and one’s experience in this very moment. In Korean Zen a classic koan [...]
“An Unsolved Mystery Is a Thorn in the Heart”
Posted in Tracy Cochran on October 2, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The author Joyce Carol Oates uses the above statement as a prompt for students in her creative class at Princeton. Twenty people and I tried this exercise at the loft space of the New York Meditation Society last Saturday in Manhattan, and the results were amazing. We had spent the earlier part of the day [...]
