the a list

  A small little book/graphics project I finished up in early May 2022.  

Note: this is part of a best of series of old blog posts that still garner attention. I've pared down the list to 10 items per category (including Modern Koans, Dialectic Two- Step, etc). These were originally published between 2010 - 2020. I just finished Stephen Batchelor's latest book  After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age . While I would say I didn't agree with everything he had to offer, the book struck me as an authentic scholarly examination of the Dharma.  He makes some very compelling arguments, based on an examination of the Pali canon, for stripping away much of the metaphysical trappings of modern Buddhism.   The book is similar to some of the modern works on the historical Jesus, moving beyond the Buddhist texts for corroboration as well as probing the text for hints of edits and biased later additions. Anyone interested in examining the historical Buddha and the Sangha as a means to discern what might be considered...

   This is... an early version - stanza two - of the application of  automatic poetry  to the  Tao te Ching  stanza two.  I created the font - absurdlyTall-regular - just for this.  

Q: What is it like to have your world view completely disproven? A: Responses will vary. Here are a number of possible outcomes (by no means meant to be comprehensive): You will proceed on as if nothing happened. You will have a strong emotional reaction, double down and remain steadfast that the debunking is flawed. You will respond with a variety of arguments. All of your so-called logical arguments will be critically flawed and easily classified as a fallacies. All of your rhetorical arguments will be baseless. You will pause, acknowledge the error in your view, and continue on operating as you always have. You will pause, acknowledge that your actions made in the context of your worldview amount to sin, that we are all hopeless sinners, pray forgiveness, seek to atone. You will pause, acknowledge that your actions made in the context of your worldview amount to sin, that we are all hopeless sinners. But you realize that doing this is just clinging to your disproven worldview. You f...

  This is... a collection of various accordion books I've crafted over the past few years. Behind the video is the song "We're In Love - There's the Song (Instrumental)" I recorded in April when I had a bout with omicron BA.2.  The books are mainly filled with handmade print blocks I've created in the same few years.   

  This is... an early version of the application of automatic poetry to the Tao te Ching .  I created the font - absurdlyTall-regular - just for this.