alex 
ONE The first number is really all the numbers. It is the infinite one. Indivisible, or infinitely divisible. One way of conceiving of it is a bright light, streaming in all directions, with no shape and no source. It is also like pure being, pure certainty. TWO By introducing two, we divide the one infinitely … Read more
Life is suffering, said the Buddha. This seems to me to be true much of the time, and what is also unavoidable is that our aliveness causes suffering for other living things. Even the most careful of us will unfortunately step on a few ants and swallow some gnats (unless we follow very particular ascetic … Read more
Update: I’ve written a few words about my primary years which precede the high school ones. I went to two high schools which gave me two completely different perspectives. The first two years were at a fairly rough local public. At this place there were many individual teachers who were highly engaged with their students, … Read more
Last semester I spent a lot of time enjoying Jason Grossman’s and Dayal Wickramasinghe’s brilliant course ‘philosophy of the cosmos‘ (previously ‘poetry’ of the cosmos). This course spans a lot of material that I have been privately reading about for years – but the new and really interesting stuff for me was the detail on … Read more
I am reading a lot of depressing guardian articles about it. And i have a new t-shirt. So I am thinking about the things that have to change to tackle climate change: 1. the planet has to be seen an extension of our own body, our own wellbeing. It’s health is our health. 2. decision … Read more
Last night I saw the Right Hon Malcolm Fraser speaking at the ANU about his new book, Dangerous Allies, about the US influence in Australia. He described the current diplomatic core and bureaucracy as having been “duchessed” by the US, for want of a better word he said, but I enjoyed this turn of phrase. … Read more
If opium were more widely available, I would take that rather than red wine on some nights (I have a glass of red by my hand as I write this). Michael Dransfield I suppose was of the same opinion. Coleridge, Hafiz; – it is recognisably a poet’s addiction. The few poems I have written under … Read more
Compared to the dancing ephemera of music and art, poems have eternity in their soul. For this reason, reading poems can be a genuinely painful experience. I like to know what I am getting myself into, before I don a suit full of prickles. So it is always a nervous moment, opening the covers of … Read more
I was recently filling up my motorcycle at Buddha at the Gaspump, a great newish website of interviews with spiritual people, run by Rick Archer, when I came across his great interview with David Godman. David, who lives at Tiruvannamalai in India is the primary editor of information in English on the great 20th Century … Read more
The internet mind is growing. It is sorting the threads of sticky intelligence, categorising memes, getting to know itself. There is not yet much policing of the internet. When it is established (probably after many turf wars) will it come from within? Or be enforced from outside? I wonder if the guerrilla battles which already … Read more
After the Herculean task that is preparing for and sitting an Ancient Greek exam, my normal life seems easy and plain. But I am at last able to turn to other interests, things like tumblr, pieces of silver, marshmallows, and Brian Jonestown Massacre. Lately, whenever I try to introduce the Brian Jonestown Massacre to my … Read more