Arts, Books & Writing
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Why We Write
In the grand narrative of human history, few inventions have transformed the landscape of our existence like the art of writing. It is not merely a method of recording or a tool of communication; writing is the very heartbeat of civilization, a bridge spanning the chasm between the known and the unknown, the spoken and…
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Write, Run, Love, Pray
Often, a set of simple verbs can encapsulate the entire spectrum of our lives, presenting an ideal manifestation that we should, in some way, embrace. The bestselling novel, “Eat, Pray, Love” exemplifies this. It chronicles the journey of an independent woman who embarks on a post-modern, self-indulgent quest for life’s meaning, summarized by these three…
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The Interior Castle
The Interior Castle is a book by the Spanish mystic St. Teresa of Avila in the 16th century. It is considered one of the classic texts of Christian mysticism and has significantly influenced the spiritual practices of Catholics and other Christians. In the book, St. Teresa uses the metaphor of a castle with many rooms…
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Desiderata
In my childhood, one of the books we always saw in the living room was Reader’s Digest. It was a thin, smaller-sized booklet. As a small kid, I wondered what book it was. In later years, my father told me that its original edition was in English. He used to check both English and Japanese…
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Art in Nature
Paul Cézanne once said, “Art is a harmony parallel with nature.” His intention was not merely copying the superficial view of what he sees but rather capturing the more profound phenomena where he exists. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) called it “Cézanne’s Doubt.” What we see is indeed what we see. If so, how can we capture…
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The Eye of Detachment
Noh (能) is one of the traditional theater plays in the fourteen century’s Japan. It liberally means talent or skill in this Chinese character. But it implies a lot more in-depth. One of the key figures in this tradition is Zeami (世阿弥: 1363-1443). He was a Noh actor; at the same time, created playwrights and…
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The Beauty of Wabi-Sabi
There are two bowls. One looks flawlessly brand new. The other is a bit deformed with cracks and stains, and yet looks clean, well-used, and maintained. Given these two options, which one we could call beautiful? The wabi-sabi aesthetics tells us the second bowl is “beautiful.” There is another anecdote. One old Zen master instructed…
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Inclusive, Exclusive Faith
Should our faith be inclusive or exclusive? It is one of the most sensitive questions in human histories, which is derived from the birth of our self-consciousness. Once we are aware of ourselves, we would inevitably ask such questions as “Who are we?” and “Who are others?” Since the birth of our self-consciousness, we have…
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A Pair of Peasant Shoes
Plato claimed that our physical world was a shadow by a series of forms. Only beyond these forms, we could reach something truthful and timeless. He dichotomized both worlds as forms and ideas, likewise, physics and metaphysics. For example, we see various horses on earth. According to Plato, there must be something like ideal horseness…
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Invisible to the Eye
In my younger days, the first audiobook I purchased was the Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was just a cassette tape. I was listening to it by my Sony Walkman decades ago. It is no longer with me. Checking web articles, nowadays it seems there are arguments over English translations…
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Spiritual Reading
There are two types of reading. One is to possess knowledge. Through reading, we can learn new things and keep them in our mind. For this type of reading, finding a good quality of new books is quite important. The more we read new books, the more we possess something new. Or, they are not…
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Brevity is a Virtue
In the age of short span and reading it on a tiny mobile screen, digital contents should be short and concise. KISS (Keep it short and simple) is a mantra. Another is “less is more.” Hemingway’s iceberg theory is a good role model. Ironically, by showing a tiny tip, we could deliver an iceberg size…
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