Aug 30
A short selection from Essay Fifty — one of the longer essays, and THE LAST — in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice The Great Way is not difficult; just avoid picking and choosing. —from the Hsin Hsin Ming [1] A Buddhist monk commits to pay attention to whatever “arises” in his or her daily life and, when it’s clearly helpful, …
Aug 08
A selection (not so short) from Essay Forty-one in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet, believing what we don’t believe does not exhilarate. —Emily Dickinson [1] So with the stage thus set, we are now finally ready to examine the benefits that flow …
Jul 17
A short selection from Essay Thirty in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. … and one day she slipped off the cover and looked in. Forthwith there escaped a multitude of plagues for hapless man—such as gout, rheumatism, and colic for his body, and envy, spite, and revenge for his mind —Bullfinch’s Mythology With the …
Jul 02
A short selection from Essay Twenty-Three in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. I now want to show that there is ‘plenty’ of room [at the bottom] … The biological example of writing information on a small scale has inspired me … A biological system can be exceedingly small. Many of the cells are very …
Jun 28
A very short selection from Essay Twenty-Two in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. He moved very, very slowly and carefully. With the most slight and gentle movements, trying to catch at the sound he moved his head round what seemed like a billionth part of a billionth part of a degree, slipped behind a …
Jun 27
A short selection from Essay Twenty-One in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. —like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round walks on, and turns no more his head; because he knows, a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1] Let’s …
Jun 24
A short selection from Essay Twenty in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. The man pulling radishes pointed the way with a radish —Haiku by Issa The wolf is tied by subtle threads to the woods he moves through. —Barry Lopez [1] Our inner cave-man can clearly see his world has changed, but despite the …
Jun 21
The Whole of Essay Nineteen in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer. —William of Ockham [1] The flexible behaviour of higher animals can’t be trusted to maintain resource partitions; only innate structure can. Thus ecological stability requires not only that inapposite curiosity …
Jun 16
The Whole of Essay Seventeen in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice: The story of Old Buddha ends (for the moment) and the story of Young Buddha begins. I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. —Friedrich Nietzsche [1] The final lesson to take from our …
Jun 08
A short selection from Essay Fifteen in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. A bird might marry a fish, but where would they live? —Tevye character, in Fiddler on the Roof For the need of a niche, or for the good of a ‘race’, sexual traits intensify the cut of new species, just as they …
