"More spontaneous, less calculating"
If you could sum up The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions in three words, what would they be?
Let things go
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions?
John Lame Deer from the Lakota tradition tells a story of "green frog skin" that relates to our commodity fetishism powerfully. His ancestors conjure up a scene at Custer's last stand which remains vivid and disturbing, This resonated with many thinkers throughout this series.
What does Professor Jay L. Garfield bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
He has a tendency to lisp or mumble, his New Yorker accent provides a professorial, intellectual ambiance, and his jokes fall as flat before the microphone as they may to his students. But he's a noted scholar in Eastern religions and philosophy. Hearing him enables those of us outside an Ivy League seminar to ponder many wise men (and women in the background, alas) from thousands of years. He likes what he teaches, and this comes across
If you could give The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions a new subtitle, what would it be?
Eastern as well as Western perspectives
Any additional comments?
Ultimately, impermanence and our miniscule place in space and time diminish our self-inflated egos. Rather than resisting our decline, we would do better to confront our death, so as to live a life bent more on helping others, easing their pain, and minimizing the harm we cause others. This course is not aimed at the divine so much as the human context. For that humanism, and the emphasis on lessening our heavy footprints upon the earth, it's worth it. (To Amazon Audible 8-16-16)
No comments:
Post a Comment