As the world’s refugee crisis builds — reminding us that much worse movements of people loom ahead, and much worse wars, as climate systems destabilize and the capitalist world-ecology unravels in the decades and centuries ahead — I can’t help asking myself what, if anything, philosophy can offer in response. It depends on which philosophy, of course. But […]
Archive for the ‘Spirit matter’ Category
The many ecologies of Laudato Si
Posted in Climate change, Politics, Spirit matter, tagged ClimateJustice, Papal encyclical, Pope Francis, religion and ecology on June 18, 2015 | 9 Comments »
Now that Laudato Si, the Papal Encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home,” is available for all to read, the punditocracy can debate it to their hearts’ content. As the most far-reaching statement by the single largest (relatively united) religious denomination on the planet, it is likely to have an immense impact on global conversations around […]
Quaking the subject
Posted in Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged Buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, Peirce, Shinzen Young, spiritual practice, Whitehead on April 13, 2014 | 4 Comments »
This post continues my thinking on the topic of a process-relational “bodymind practice” — an existential art or “technique of the self” building on Buddhist meditation practice reinterpreted and augmented through process-relational philosophy. In this post, I incorporate insights obtained through the practice of Quaker silent worship. See the posts “ What a bodymind can do” parts 1, 2, 3, and update for background […]
Happy phytomorphosis
Posted in Eco-culture, Spirit matter, tagged Christmas, ParkeHarrison, phytomorphosis, plant communication, trees, Yule on December 24, 2013 | 6 Comments »
Plant scientists are wondering if plants really communicate with each other (and with insects and other organisms) or if they just “eavesdrop” on each other’s “soliloquies.” At stake in the debate are the definitions of communication (e.g., is it necessarily intentional, and is intentionality necessarily conscious intentionality?) and behavior (is it something that only animals do?). […]
Querying Natural Religion: Responses to Latour
Posted in Anthropocene, Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged Anthropocene, Connolly, Gaia, immanence, Latour on November 24, 2013 | 10 Comments »
The following are my notes from “Querying Natural Religion: Immanence, Gaia, and the Parliament of Lively Things.” (Live-blogging did not work, as we didn’t have a live internet connection.) These notes are followed by a brief set of post-event summary comments. The setting: an airplane hangar of a hall in the Baltimore Convention Center. This […]
Half-Buddhist, half-Marxist
Posted in Spirit matter, tagged Buddhism, Dalai Lama, Marxism on July 2, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
For anyone who thought “socially engaged Buddhism” (a.k.a. liberation Buddhism, Buddhist socialism, et al.) was a marginal movement within the Buddhist world, Bruce Smithers’s Tricycle article “Occupy Buddhism” shows it reaches high up the (sort of) hierarchy of publicly known Buddhists… to the Dalai Lama. It’s a selective analysis (the DL is much more pragmatic […]
AAR panel on Latour’s Gifford Lectures
Posted in Academe, Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged Gaia, Gifford Lectures, immanence, Latour, natural religion on June 19, 2013 | 2 Comments »
The AAR panel responding to 2013 Holberg Prize winner Bruno Latour’s Gifford Lectures has now been scheduled. Information is as follows. QUERYING NATURAL RELIGION: IMMANENCE, GAIA, & THE PARLIAMENT OF LIVELY THINGS
Pretty dark out there…
Posted in Spirit matter, tagged cosmology, dark energy, dark matter, speculative realism, time on April 4, 2013 | 4 Comments »
Says NASA: “It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t […]
“What a bodymind can do” update
Posted in Spirit matter, tagged bodymind, Buddhism, categories, experience, Mahayana, meditation, mindfulness, Peirce, Shinzen Young on March 25, 2013 | 2 Comments »
The following provides an updated diagram and some further notes pertaining to my three-part article “What A Bodymind Can Do.” The earlier parts can be read here: part 1, part 2, part 3. (Please note that this version has corrected a minor error in the originally posted article, and added a bit more information at […]
Zizek v. Buddhism: who’s the subject?
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged Buddhism, subjectivity, Zizek on December 11, 2012 | 15 Comments »
This started out as a response to Slavoj Zizek’s recent talk here at the University of Vermont on “Buddhism Naturalized,” but evolved into a consideration of subjectivity, which happened to be the topic of my next post in the pre-G (process-relational ecosophy-G) series. So this can be considered part 1 of a 2-part series.
Latour on Gaia & Natural Religion
Posted in Eco-culture, Spirit matter, tagged Gaia, natural religion on October 30, 2012 | 5 Comments »
Bruno Latour’s upcoming Gifford Lectures sound remarkable. See ANTHEM for the details. There could be no better theme for a lecture series on natural religion than that of Gaia, this puzzling figure that has emerged recently in public discourse from Earth science as well as from many activist and spiritual movements. The problem is that the […]
A little riot going on
Posted in Politics, Spirit matter, tagged Connolly, global civil religion, globalism, globalization, liberalism, media, progressivism, Pussy Riot on August 22, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Little time this week, unfortunately, for me to keep up with the Pussy Riot conviction (as promised here) or anything else. But I recommend Charles Cameron’s series of posts (six so far, and counting) over at Zenpundit, including his annotated summary of their closing statements. The statements themselves are very lucid and articulate, as one […]