You've come to realize, you say, that despite your best intentions your motives for spiritual work remain largely "ego-based". It's doubtless important to have noted this fact, but I wouldn't brood about it. After all, Christ Himself appeals to the ego precisely in...

Be very careful: discrimination (viveka) between Ātma and Māyā, or the Real and illusory, is a good deal trickier than you may have realized. It's easy to make the mistake of supposing that the two terms are somehow parallel and thus equally real, even though this is...

I'm glad you liked Eats, Shoots, and Leaves; it is indeed a wonderful book, as you say. But I confess I was surprised when you expressed your disappointment that the author, Lynne Truss, "takes anything less than a fascist attitude toward imposing the Oxford comma"....

The key to Christian teaching on the subject of the Crucifixion is closely related to the Christological point I was speaking about in my last post (30 September). Christ is not merely empowered or indwelled by the Divine Logos or Word; He is that Logos in human form....

I'm afraid it's a serious mistake to write, as you have, that "most Christian theologians have labeled the belief in one fully Divine Jesus as the monophysite heresy". This is by no means the case. Every orthodox Christian believes and teaches that there is only "one"...

I can easily understand your desire to re-marry; given your many years in that state, it's only natural that you would feel lonely now and only natural in turn that you would keenly desire to return to what you knew. At the risk of seeming rather cold and uncaring,...

Your reference to Crossett's poem is most timely. As it happens we just finished J. R. R. Tolkien's Silmarillion in the "Oxford Inklings" honors seminar I am teaching this term, and during the course of exploring this book we had occasion to discuss Tolkien's...

What you describe is not uncommon. The spiritual life entails a process of purgation, and it is in the nature of things that the ego, sensing its own eventual death, will react against this. From the ego's point of view, as a spiritual master once told me, "It is as...

Allow me to add a postscript to "Caught in the Middle" (see September 12). As I suggested but perhaps did not sufficiently emphasize, one of Hadot's most important points in his book is that the ancient schools were united more by their commitment to a common...

I've just finished an interesting book and recommend it wholeheartedly: What is Ancient Philosophy? by Pierre Hadot (Harvard University Press, 2002). Just in case there was any doubt on the subject, the author very convincingly demonstrates that for Plato and Co.,...