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bodhidave.bsky.social
bodhidave
@bodhidave.bsky.social
1.8K followers 310 following 3.9K posts
humanistic psychodynamic Buddhist deconstructionist ... and all-round sweet guy

interested in cross-cultural parallels in contemplative practice

.

https://utexas.academia.edu/DavidCollins

[header is the rock garden at Ryōan-ji; avatar is an enso]
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bodhidave.bsky.social
I happen to be editing some writing I've done about the Cynics at the moment, and the spirit of your post reminds me of their playful-serious critiques of societal norms and expectations....
the painting by Nicolas André Monsiau of Alexander, standing in military garb in front of Diogenes, who's half-naked and reclining in a big overturned barrel, gesturing at Alexander to move text: The Cynics weren’t opposed to reason and knowledge. But they criticized pompous self-assurance and pretentious propriety and anything which separated someone from being natural. A famous example is the story where Alexander the Great, who was intrigued by Diogenes, came across him one day sitting outdoors in a big barrel. When Alexander stood in front of him and asked, “What can I do for y¬ou?,” Diogenes said, “You can stop blocking my sun.”
November 14, 2025 at 3:54 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
This reminds me that the way we perceive the world is a construction. And when we practice and allow equanimity — we see that that construction is a poem.

🙏 ❤️
Translation: Poetry has been defined by W.H. Auden as the clear expression of mixed feelings. If this is so, equanimity can be said to be the space where such poetry can operate.
November 14, 2025 at 1:58 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
used in a book chapter I'm writing on Socrates...

🙂 🐸
Life is bliss when you are not seated next to Socrates, running off at the mouth…. But it is the life of a lunatic to spend your time doing nothing but mouthing high faluting words and picking at lint. lines 1491f., in Diskin Clay, “The Origins of the Socratic Dialogue,” in The Socratic Movement, ed. Peter A. Vender Waerdt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 39.
November 13, 2025 at 11:38 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
nice ... we got just a hint tonight, here outside Asheville
a dark blue sky, over some nighttime trees, with a hint of a dark pinkish glow on the immediate horizon
November 13, 2025 at 4:15 AM
bodhidave.bsky.social
one more of the aurora tonight, outside #Asheville, NC
dark blue-purple sky shading left to right into a magenta, with dark trees beneath and a closer one to the right border of the image
November 12, 2025 at 4:13 AM
bodhidave.bsky.social
another picture of the aurora tonight, from my yard
a large wintery tree in dark outline, behind which the aurora sky moves upward from a dark scarlet to dark lavender
November 12, 2025 at 3:36 AM
bodhidave.bsky.social
I think I'm* seeing the aurora here, outside #Asheville.

(*more precisely — my phone camera is picking it up)
dark pink and rose colors in the sky behind the outlines of trees
November 12, 2025 at 2:07 AM
bodhidave.bsky.social
I hope you have good insurance 👍
the rock of gibraltar logo over the altered name "Prudental"
November 11, 2025 at 5:53 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
me and Bradley (I'm the slightly less furry one)
a bearded yours truly sitting in front of the computer camera wearing a black sweatshirty, with Bradley, a furry dark blonde doggy wearing a black vest and sitting in my lap
November 11, 2025 at 4:41 AM
bodhidave.bsky.social
snowy night, outside #Asheville tonight
a dark country road illuminated by a street lamp, with snow on the ground and the road
November 11, 2025 at 3:56 AM
bodhidave.bsky.social
outside Asheville, it was 69F and sunny here this time yesterday ... it's currently 24F ... and snowing ❄️
November 10, 2025 at 8:55 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
... and from mine :)

(Pigeon River, outside #Asheville)
blue skies, some white clouds, over wintery trees on the banks of a smallish river
November 10, 2025 at 4:18 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
Maybe Angus King wasn't paying close enough attention: - public blamed the GOP for shutdown - Dems won big in elections last week - Trump's approval rating sinking - Republicans increasingly divided against one another Standing up to Trump *did* work.
November 10, 2025 at 1:48 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
really nice day today (though temps are expected in the 20F's tonight, and all day tomorrow) ... so went for a walk, and said hi to my neighbors

(in the second pic they have clover in their mouth, which I picked for them)
a pair of somewhat chubby short black and white goats standing in a field, one is looking toward me one of the goats, much closer, looking at me, with a mouth full of clover
November 9, 2025 at 8:37 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
I sense it can get subtle — our minds can't help but try to make models of what's happening. And spiritual "effort" and "intention" can have the paradoxical character of "trying to be natural." So it's like how being honest can take effort, but it's an effort towards not doing, not making things up.
from an email I sent to a friend last night: I started to do some meditation just now, and the phrase came up, "an embodied good." I was thinking about how askesis can often carry a goal-quality — a "gaining idea" and a practice of "doing" - the intentionality of which the apophatic contemplatives and Zen practitioners will want to interrogate and displace in the service of an experiential practice of "non-doing." But then I was reminded of the line from Chariots of Fire, where the missionary sister of the Christian runner athlete is concerned about him running on Sundays. And he replies to the effect, "I appreciate your concern, but I've got to tell you — when I run I feel God's pleasure in me."
November 9, 2025 at 5:02 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
I sense it can get subtle — our minds can't help but try to make models of what's happening. And spiritual "effort" and "intention" can have the paradoxical character of "trying to be natural." So it's like how being honest can take effort, but it's an effort towards not doing, not making things up.
from an email I sent to a friend last night: I started to do some meditation just now, and the phrase came up, “an embodied good.” I was thinking about how askesis can often carry a goal-quality — a “gaining idea” and a practice of “doing” — the intentionality of which the apophatic contemplatives and Zen practitioners will want to interrogate and displace in the service of an experiential practice of “non-doing.” But then I was reminded of the line from Chariots of Fire, where the missionary sister of the Christian runner athlete is concerned about him running on Sundays. And he replies to the effect, “I appreciate your concern, but I've got to tell you — when I run I feel God’s pleasure in me.”
November 9, 2025 at 5:00 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
tonight's sunset, outside #Asheville
a light grey-blue sky over darker grey clouds which are lined on their edges with yellow-orange light from the setting sun, above a patch of sky on the horizon which is red and yellow, all above hills and fields becoming a dark green
November 8, 2025 at 10:31 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
on my walk just now, outside #Asheville
looking down a country road, with a brightly colored tree, reds and oranges, a blue cloudy sky, and mountains with autumn colored trees close up of a field of tall weeds with oranges and beiges and whites
November 8, 2025 at 7:22 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
a Yank, I had to look it up ... an online definition:
"Bellend" is a vulgar British English slang term used to insult a foolish or stupid person. It is considered a strong insult, but not the most offensive, and is sometimes used informally among friends, much like "asshat" or "douchebag". The term is also used to describe stupid behavior, with the derivative "bellendery".
November 8, 2025 at 3:44 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
good foggy morning, from outside #Asheville
large winter trees in a grey-blue fog a pale fat gibbous moon in a blue-grey sky between branches of a pine tree
November 8, 2025 at 12:31 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
November 8, 2025 at 3:10 AM
bodhidave.bsky.social
... and, in association with khthoniaa's post just now ...
@khthoniaa.bsky.social‬ Oh! A sense of play also helps tremendously. Yes, some rituals are meant to be serious and solemn, but there is also so much room to cultivate joy and humor within magick. And from joy sprouts resilience, courage, and creativity. Plotinus knows his suggestion that Nature is contemplation might not be easy to understand. So he starts his treatise with the suggestion that we look at that idea playfully. Here are the opening lines: Suppose we said, playing at first before we set out to be serious, that all things aspire to contemplation and direct their gaze to this end—not only rational but irrational living things, and the power of growth in plants, and the earth which brings them forth—and that all attain to it as far as possible for them in their natural state.... Then are we [too] now contemplating as we play? Yes, we and all who play are doing this... And it is likely that, whether a child or an adult is playing or being serious, one plays and the other is serious for the sake of contemplation, and every action [praxis] is a serious effort towards contemplation; ... voluntary action ... springs from the desire of contemplation ... the earth itself, and trees, and plants ... we can relate what the earth makes and produces to its activity [energeian] of contemplation, ... Nature, which ... has no power of forming mental images or reasoning, has contemplation in itself and makes [poiei] what it makes [poiei] by contemplation.... Plotinus says Nature itself is contemplation and that it is by contemplation that Nature makes what it makes. The word he uses for “makes” is a form of the word poien, which can also mean “to do” or “to produce” or “to create.” Our words “poem” and “poet” and “poetry” come from that Greek word poien.
November 7, 2025 at 7:57 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
I am, at this moment revising some writing I'm doing on Plotinus, who I find to to saying something very similar...
For Plotinus contemplative experience is the whole point of our lives. It’s the purpose and end of our wholesome actions, and, as noted above, it’s the heart of Nature’s creation. It’s the heart of Nature’s actions and it’s the heart of our own actions. I’m reminded by this of how the Cloud author had said, “it will be the main thing you do, in everything you do.” Plotinus writes: Action [praxis] ... is for the sake of contemplation and vision, so that for people of action too, contemplation is the goal.... It’s as though for Plotinus “being” and “creation” are things which we’re to appreciate as being both nouns and verbs. For Plotinus everything is creative. In this next quotation, for example, the word that’s translated as “produce” in the first line is genna, which can also mean “generate” and “give birth”: when living things ... produce [genna] ... this is an activity [energeia] of contemplation ... and a kind of endless contemplation, for creating [poien] is bringing a form into being, and this is filling all things with contemplation. 1 it shall be chief of all thy doings, in all thy doings, whether they be active or contemplative. (Privy Counselling, p. 147), seen above, page --. 2 Ibid., 3.8.6.1, p. 377. 3 Ibid., 3.8.7.20-23, p. 383. The Greek word translated here as "filling" is plerosai, which carries a sense of completing and fulfilling. And the word translated as "endless" is aei, which also means "always" and "forever"; it is related to our word "eternal."
November 7, 2025 at 7:11 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
thanks for this ... and for reference ...

(Wikipedia "Boroughs of New York City")
a color-coded map of New York City showing the location of the different boroughs
November 7, 2025 at 3:43 PM
bodhidave.bsky.social
keep on protecting the universe Mr Corn 🙏
cartoon image of the superhero Ultraman, holding up their hand, palm forward, with the statement "protector of the universe"
November 6, 2025 at 4:30 PM