Andy Wimbush

I’d Be Lead Harpooner on the Pequod If It Wasn’t For These DEI Hires You know, I wouldn’t say this to just anyone. I’m not one to gam and gossip around the old grog-cooler. But I know you’re a good New England boy wo...

"Look, I’ve got nothing against Queequeg. He’s a nice guy. And he can spy a whale spout in a hurricane. And swim like a dolphin. But all those 'biggee' tattoos? Tell me they don’t scream 'diversity hire.'"

The Substance, dir. Coralie Fargeat (2024)

@duolingoverde.bsky.social

He also really, really cared about all the students he'd never get to meet: people like yourself who are discovering him after his death. He felt those people were his students and he was speaking to them and for them.

I always felt he was rooting for me - even when I was banging my head against the proverbial wall. He was genuinely interested in every student, and would quickly pick up people's names and make them feel seen. He always spoke from a place of experience, but also encouraged me to see for myself.

Ah, there's so much I could say! He was enormously generous with his time and energy, and was as devoted to being a teacher as he was to being an explorer and trailblazer. He had such warmth, playfulness and humour, but also a serious commitment to integrity and a fearless curiosity about things.

One of my meditation teachers, Leigh Brasington, recommended using the following phrase for mettā practice behind the wheel (or on the saddle): "May you be happy! May you get to your destination safely! May you learn to drive!"

Have you come across the work of Rob Burbea yet? He was my teacher - not well-known before he died in 2020, but increasingly becoming popular with online meditation nerds. The "fading of perception" was the cornerstone of Rob's approach to insight. hermesamara.org/teachings/em...

How meditation deconstructs your mind Want to learn how to meditate? Scientists have a new theory that might change how you practice.

This is a fabulous article by @oshan.bsky.social on the mechanisms operating at the deeper end of the meditative pool. A wonderful reminder that there's more to this project than simply stress reduction.

www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Love Calvino!

Samuel Beckett - Company
Elizabeth Bishop - "In the Waiting Room"
Sue Hamilton - Early Buddhism: The "I" of the Beholder
Mark Johnston - Surviving Death (particularly Chapter 4 - "What is found at the center?")
Douglas Harding - On Having no Head

Excellent. I cannot recommend the Huntingdon highly enough. It's not just about death either: it's about liberation.

Movies directed by Andrey Tarkovsky - YouTube

FYI: Mosfilm's YouTube page features a playlist containing free, restored versions of *all* of Andrey Tarkovsky's films:

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Optimist: The cup is half full

Pessimist: The cup is half empty

Buddhist: The cup is empty of cupness

I recently got the big red Princeton complete works and would like to start on the Ethics. Have you found any helpful guides to read alongside it?

The only right answer

People of Bluesky. Let's get to know each other. What's your favourite movie?

Quote share your answer only in gif form. #filmsky

"The doctrine of the will has been invented essentially to justify punishment through the assigning of guilt. [...] Men were considered 'free' only so that they might be considered guilty."

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Blue butterflies on a lake shore

I took this photo in Somiedo Natural Park, in Spain, in 2017.

It seems an appropriate welcome gift to all X-iles to Bluesky 🦋

I'm a Beckett scholar by training and usually post about literature, contemplative philosophy (mostly Buddhist and Daoist), and meditation.

Apparently, it's a sign of dementia risk. Doesn't bode well for us Beckettians.

"[An atheist mystic finds] the idea of God, in spite of all its fanciful extravagances, to be not the unsettling of that world of the given, but precisely its firmest anchor, rooted at its perspectival vanishing point."

- Brook Ziporyn, Experiments in Mystical Atheism

Rather than praising Yao [the ancient Chinese stereotype of saintliness; think: Gandhi] and condemning Jie [the stereotype of evil; think: Hitler], we'd be better off forgetting them both and transforming along our Way."

(trans. Brook Ziporyn)

A drawing of a fish

Zhuangzi's case for leaving Twitter/X:

"When the springs dry up, the fish have to cluster together on the shore, gasping on each other to keep damp and spitting on each other to stay wet. But that is no match for forgetting all about one another in the rivers and the lakes...

6 authors I love:
Olga Tokarczuk
Samuel Beckett
Laszlo Krasznahorkai
Meiko Kawakami
Herman Melville
Claire Louise Bennett

Once again - yet again - thinking about this Langston Hughes poem

It seems the US has gone with the "dead whale or a stove boat" option - or, in other words, the stove boat option.

oh America

'Every religion begins with someone saying, "Or *this* instead." What we really want is the "or... instead." What we end up with, though, is usually just the "instead" without the "or" - or worse, just the "this".'

- Brook Ziporyn, Experiments in Mystical Atheism