Posts Tagged ‘spirituality’
2008
06.14
Tags: , Chain Letters, Compassion, Forwarded Emails, Gratitude, Love, spirituality
Posted in Filipinos, Life, Love, Philosophy, spirituality | No Comments »
Of course, almost everyone is familiar with chain letters and forwarded emails. There would be the usual exhortation to pass it on to a certain number of people for good luck and the warning not to ignore the message for the bad luck that would be its consequence.
I used to forward a lot of political emails (mosly anti-GMA stuff) that I was dubbed a “spammer” in certain circles. But once, I received a forwarded email that I liked and forwarded to others as well. It was about being grateful for the inconveniences and small misfortunes that happen to us because of their (often) unperceived value to us in the greater scheme of things. But what really caught my attention in that e-mail was the last paragraph:
“Pass this on to someone else, if you’d like. There is NO LUCK attached. If you delete this, it’s okay: God’s Love Is Not Dependent On E-Mail.”
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2008
06.06
Tags: Eternal Recurrence, Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy, spirituality
Posted in Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy, spirituality | 1 Comment »
Everything happens in the now. But even if everything happens in the “now,” we do not experience this. Consciousness, experience is time-bound.The theory of eternal recurrence is, if i’m not mistaken, also held by some eastern/hindi religions. Also by the stoics. Basically, it’s the theory that everything which has happened has already happened and will happen again infinitely. The premise is that if the world is finite and we have infinite time, all the permutations in the world will take place and be repeated again and again and again. To simplify, let’s say the whole world is made up of A, B, and C. At one point, the order would be like this: ABC; another, ACB; still another, BCA… and so on, until you will have to come back to ABC.
For my idol Nietzsche, it is a theory or a postulate which can be used to help us to live better (like heaven/hell, reincarnation, etc.).
Would you want the kind of life that you’re living be lived again? And again? And again?
Live then with the goal of eradicating, or at least, minimizing regrets.
best regards,
ian
2008
05.25
Tags: Authenticity, Books, Buddhism, Illusion, Masks, Movies, Philosophy, spirituality
Posted in Art, Books, Life, Love, Movies, Philosophy, spirituality, Theater, Translation, Writing | No Comments »
Mwahahahaha! Just had to let the cosmic laughter resonate, no, reverberate in my body…
Everything is grace! Even when shit happens… Divine piss, holy shit!
I have always been wary of spirituality/religiosity that denied/denigrated the body. Non summus angeli! (We’re no angels!)
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2008
05.14
Tags: Acting, Actors, Boddhisatva, Masks, Shaman, spirituality, The King of Masks, Wu Tianming
Posted in Acting, Art, Life, Love, Movies, spirituality, Theater | 1 Comment »
The awareness of the shamanic aspect of acting (the actor as an agent of positive change in society) is one of the things that I liked in “The King of Masks.”
Society has always been ambivalent to actors.
On the one hand, people are fascinated by the magical, yes, shamanic capacity of the actor to become other than what and who he is. Acting was first done by priests/shamans. There has always been that mystical/divine/spiritual/religious aspect to acting.
And yet, because of that possibility of entering into the nature of “things,” actors themselves can be waylaid and thrown off, especially by the dark daemonic qualities of persons and things. This is what probably scares a lot of people. Actors get to cross boundaries and societal taboos with some measure of impunity – anyway they’re just fulfilling their roles. But when the iconoclasm breaks through from art to real life… uhuh… that’s where it becomes dangerous and suspicious.
Thus actors too were regarded as immoral people, lumped with the gypsies and criminal elements.
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2008
04.27
Tags: Books, Conversations with God, Hegel, Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy, spirituality, Translation, Writing
Posted in Books, Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy, spirituality, Translation, Writing | No Comments »
“… Listen to Me in the truth of your soul. Listen to Me in the feelings of your heart. Listen to Me in the quiet of your mind.
“Hear Me, everywhere. Whenever you have a question, simply know that I have answered it already. Then open your eyes to your world. My response could be in an article already published. In the sermon already written and about to be delivered. In the movie now being made. In the song just yesterday composed. In the words about to be said by a loved one. In the heart of a new friend about to be made.
“My Truth is in the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the crack of the thunder, the tap of the rain.
“It is the feel of the earth, the fragrance of the lily, the warmth of the sun, the pull of the moon.
“My Truth – and your surest help in time of need – is as awesome as the night sky, and as simply, incontrovertibly, trustful as a baby’s gurgle.
“It is as loud as a pounding heartbeat – and as quiet as a breath taken in unity with Me.
“I will not leave you, I cannot leave you, for you are My creation and My product, My daughter and My son, My purpose and My… ‘Self.’”
—
The above quotation is from the last portion of Neale Donald Walsch’s “Conversations with God, Book 1.” I’m quoting it at length because I think it gives a general idea of what pantheism is all about.
Pantheism is, simply put, the belief that God is everything, or conversely, that everything is God. Of course, some philosophers have pointed out that pantheism is virtually an atheism. To believe that everything is God is to make the idea of “God” profane. If God is immanent (to the universe) and not transcendent, then why use the word “God” at all? The very notion of “God,” they argue, presupposes the idea of “transcendence.” Pantheism, insofar as it denies the transcendence of God, is virtually an atheism.
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2008
03.31
Tags: Art, Books, Life, Literature, Love, Music, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, spirituality, Writing
Posted in Books | No Comments »
Books Liked/Loved:
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexander Dumas)
El Filibusterismo (Jose Rizal)
The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
The Favourite Game (Leonard Cohen)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra / Genealogy of Morals (Friedrich Nietzsche)
The Trial / Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)
Doktor Faustus (Thomas Mann)
Cubao Midnight Express (Tony Perez)
The Alphabet of Grace (Frederick Buechner)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig)
Written on the Body (Jeanette Winterson)
The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevski)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)
Personal (Rene Villanueva)
Foucault’s Pendulum (Umberto Eco)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (D.H. Lawrence)
Siddharta / Narcissus and Goldmund (Herman Hesse)
The Book of Lights (Chaim Potok)
Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)
A Little Book on the Human Shadow / Iron John (Robert Bly)
It Is Here Now – Are You? (Bhagavan Das)
The Last Three Minutes (Paul Davies)
The Dancing Wu-Li Masters (Gary Zukav)
The Clowns of God (Morris West)
Zen Guitar (Philip Toshio Sudo)
Sophie’s Choice (William Styron)
The Artist’s Way (Julia Cameron)
The Day of the Jackal (Frederick Forsyth)
Inside the Music (interviews with contemporary musicians)
Writing Down the Bones (Natalie Goldberg)
Ordinary People (Judith Guest)
The Teachings of Don Juan (Carlos Castaneda)
2008
03.26
Tags: Body, Matter, Mind, Philosophy, Spirit, spirituality
Posted in Filipinos, Life, Philosophy, Psychology, spirituality | No Comments »
In Defense of Matter
by Michael Ian Lomongo (1992/98)
“It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
- The Fox, in “The Little Prince,” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
We are all too familiar with this perennial problem in philosophy (and life): the contraposition between matter and spirit, body and soul. The materialist says that there is no need to postulate such a “thing” as spirit. There is nothing beyond matter: what you see is what you get. The idealist, on the other hand, in putting forth and emphasizing the importance and supremacy of the spirit, belittles matter. In this great war between matter and spirit, the dominance (at least, in literature) almost always goes in favor of the spirit, even if people’s lives seem to indicate the contrary. Since it is the spirit that gives life, good is associated with it. On the other hand, matter (crude matter, body, the “flesh”) is somehow seen as the source of evil, disgrace, bad luck, or imperfection.
Matter, then, has acquired (no thanks to philosophers) quite a bad reputation. And this is especially true in a lot of idealistic, intellectualist, metaphysical, and religious philosophies. The exaltation of the spirit in these philosophies is inevitably tied up with the denigration of matter. Such a derogatory outlook on matter has especially been influential when coupled with the belief in a Supreme Being who is regarded as a pure Spirit, and the belief in man’s way to perfection as that of an active emulation of this paragon of perfection — God. The more you distance yourself from matter, the more you become perfect and God-like, God being immaterial. This naturally translates, for the believer, into a fascination for “things” (pardon the expression) immaterial or spiritual and an attitude of condescension, if not a direct aversion, towards matter.
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2008
03.15
Tags: Art, Duality, Femininity, Filipinos, Gender Issues, Layeta Bucoy, Life, Machismo, Maternity, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, spirituality, Theater, Tony Perez, Writing
Posted in Art, Filipinos, Gender Issues, Life, Love, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, spirituality, Theater | 1 Comment »
A Thousand Bitter-Sweet Poems for Women
By Michael Ian Lomongo, March 21, 2001
Last March 10, I watched PETA’s “Komedi Club,” a festival of 10 to 15-minute plays written by members of the PETA Writers’ Bloc. In celebration of the International Women’s Day, the plays featured during that weekend (March 8-10) were written by women playwrights (except for Nick Pichay’s “Kahit na Magtiis”). The line-up included “Flight,” an interpretative dance choreographed and performed by Martina Gonzales-Quesada, Regina Lasam, and Verni Severo, incorporated with a poem by Inge Saltarin; an adaptation of Liza Magtoto’s Palanca-winning “Despedida de Soltera“; Sheila Crisostomo’s “Emergency” (the grand prize winner of the second Charley dela Paz Awards of the PETA-PDP Writers’ Bloc); Nick Pichay’s “Kahit na Magtiis”; and Lallie Bucoy’s “Isang Libong Tula para sa Dibdib ni Dulce.”
I liked the last two plays best.
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2008
03.03
Tags: Agnosticism, Existentialism, God, Heidegger, Hume, Jokes, Kant, Life, Movies, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Rorty, Schopenhauer, spirituality, Superman
Posted in Filipinos, Jokes, Life, Movies, Nietzsche, Philosophy, spirituality | No Comments »
Jokes for philosophers:
1. Philosophaster: Who’s the most punctual philosopher?
Philosopher: Immanuel Kant.
Philosophaster: And why?
Philosopher: It is said that Immanuel Kant used to take his daily walk in the afternoon in Konigsberg with such regularity and punctuality. It soon came to a point that his townmates knew what time it was when they saw Kant walking.
Philosophaster: Nope.
Philosopher: Who then?
Philosophaster: Martin Heidegger.
Philosopher: Really? And why?
Philosophaster: Because he wrote a book entitled “Being On Time.”
Note: “Sein und Zeit” (“Being and Time”), written by Martin Heidegger, cited by existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre as a seminal work. Heidegger, however, refused the tag “existentialist” as if it were “The Plague.” He was probably thinking: “Camu/s na lang. Wag n’yo na akong idamay.”
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2008
03.03
Tags: Literature, Movies, Pantheism, Philosophy, spirituality
Posted in Art, Filipinos, Life, Love, Movies, Philosophy, spirituality, Writing | No Comments »
* Off the top of my head, here is a random list of films I’ve seen and liked/loved:
1 Leolo (probably my all-time favorite; a Canadian film in French)
2 Splash (with Tom Hanks and Daryll Hannah, with a beautiful song – One Fine Day or Love
Came for Me? – by Lee Holdridge and Marvin Hamlisch)
3 Insiang, Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag, and Ora Pro Nobis (Lino Brocka)
4 Kakabakaba ka ba? (Mike de Leon?)
5 Alapaap (Tata Esteban)
6 Groundhog Day (with Bill Murray)
7 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar)
8 Carlito’s Way (with Al Pacino, and the beautiful Penelope Ann Miller)
9 Santa Sangre (Axwl Jodorowsky)
10 The Girl on the Bridge (a French film in black and white)
11 Immortal Beloved
… and many others…
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