(Nick) Religious Studies PhD candidate (Rice University), MA History of Religions (University of Chicago), MA Eastern Classics (St. John’s College)
Joined August 2012
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13 Dec 2021
My most recent work on the relationship of memory to tantric mysticism and its contemporary relevance as evaluated through the lens of musical-autobiographical memory, presented a few weeks ago at this year's American Academy of Religion conference.
academia.edu/63985103/The_Wh…
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“Someone who intentionally gives the impression of being capable & virtuous is in reality a small-minded person. For this reason, the crucial aspect of speaking is for a junzi (gentleman) to acknowledge to others what he knows (and what he doesn’t know)”
Confucius, Dialogues9.10
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“That which shines from a distance is your outward appearance. That which increases in brightness as others approach is your learning.”
-Confucius, Dialogues, 8.11
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“A sovereign is a boat, and the people are water. Water not only supports a boat, but it can also capsize it. You can come to understand danger by reflecting on this.”
-Confucius, Dialogues 7.2
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“A commoner never utters words of wisdom. He doesn’t care to turn himself into a virtuous & capable person nor does he make an effort to control himself. He sees narrow concerns but not broad ones. He drifts along with circumstances, unsure of what to grab onto.”
Confucius, D7.1
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Jun 14
“The continuum gives potential, while the actual is atomic or quantic by nature. The continuum is not pregiven but exists only in the spatiotemporal gaps between actual occasions… each actual entity produces the continuum for itself from the angle of its own occurrence”
Goodman
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Jun 14
“What gets stored by today’s media are no longer human experiences themselves but bits of data that register molecular increments of behavior and that do not in themselves amount to a full picture of integrated human lived experience.”
-Mark Hansen
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Jun 14
Maybe books are not only good or bad but also good or bad for particular people at a particular time. Good books might find themselves in situations where they are good for people much more often than others, but they won’t always hit for everyone, & something else “worse” might
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Jun 14
“There are those whom I love & who dwell within me. Some of them I have abandoned long ago. Others long ago have abandoned me. Yet they dwell in the love within me. There are others, whom I never have abandoned, & who never have abandoned me.”
-Tosches, ‘In the Hand of Dante’
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Jun 14
“He who, of all of Christendom, had chosen no patristic sage or saint to lead him through his Paradiso, but had chosen over all the dead wife of a banker. If he could defend her as personification of the divine, why should he damn those who perceived divinity in a different god?”
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Jun 13
“The elite defy the masses and attack people of dao. In pursuing their immediate desires, they fail to live up to their positions.”
-Confucius, Dialogues 6.1
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Jun 12
My punk band has our first show since pre-covid on the 26th of this month and we are initiating a blitz on practicing to get ready on short notice, luckily we stay in shape playing at least a few times a month but it’s exciting. Just a two piece with me on guitar & buddy on drums
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Jun 12
Too many people are concerned with the testosterone levels of men 100 years ago when they should be concerned with the literacy levels of people 100 years ago.
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Jun 12
"The transcendental inquiry into ultimate reality is a search for ultimate coherence"
-Lawrence
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Jun 12
“The human body is thought to contain the higher universe beyond it & also the absolute consciousness with which it is ultimately identical & a projected form. It is homologous with the cosmic body & contains within its transcendent source, the essential cosmic body.”
-G. Flood
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Jun 11
What you see isn’t necessarily what you know - some people see very little but from this are able to intuit a great deal, while others may see all the colored lights of the infinite and, lacking interpretive acumen, come away knowing comparatively little.
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Jun 11
Obviously the person who both sees much more and who is also able to use this for a greater gnosis is the ideal case. And I do think that what you know beforehand is very significant vis-a-vis what can be seen. Knowledge constrains vision & then vision expands existent knowledge
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Jun 11
“The dao of tian (heaven) is like the unceasing movements of the sun & moon from east to west. It is never obstructed & persists. It is the spontaneity of processes that fulfills the nature of things. The dao of tian illuminates all things thus fulfilled”
Confucius, Dialogues4.2
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Jun 11
“When small-minded men form cliques, that is the time to worry”
-Confucius, Dialogues 2.1
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Jun 11
Orality in a context of embodiment is much different than orality in the context of disembodiment.
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Jun 11
Electric orality (radio, tv, film) is somewhere in the middle because they are (were) self-enclosed media rather than networked and integrated into the web with everything else that exists there.
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