Comments on: THE FRIDAY LIST: MISCELLANEOUS USEFUL FACTS

By: norris mcdowell

norris mcdowell — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:25:34 +0000

10 COMMANDMENTS.

SPEED OF LIGHT, 182,000 miles per second (if my astronomy class memory is correct). It also could be 186,000 mps.

By: Jody M Clark

Jody M Clark — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:05:00 +0000

Well said Steve.

By: Steve Gilzow

Steve Gilzow — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 14:00:42 +0000

Grumpy, Dopey, Happy, Sneezy, Doc, Sleepy, and Bashful. And, I guess Walt Disney spells it “Dwarfs.”

I feel you “know” more about Buddhism than you realize; not the formal teachings with all the lists, but the essential quality of giving full attention to what is. Several passages in The Windward Shore (the chapter Beachwalking comes to mind) seek to give words to an inner experience of looking into the natural world unfiltered by ideas and concepts. That kind of attention is a cornerstone of Buddhist practice. There’s an inherent paradox in any effort to capture this process in language — the consciousness that sees without concepts is a layer below verbal thought — but something that has frequently struck me about your writing is how well you evoke that wordless presence — through the medium of words. The same facility has the work of Rick Bass appearing in Buddhist publications even though I don’t think he sees himself as being in or from that tradition.

I could be way off in all this, of course. Wouldn’t be the first time I revealed myself to be more Dopey than Doc.

By: Jerry Dennis

Jerry Dennis — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 15:52:35 +0000

Thanks, Steve! Because I know nothing about Buddhism, I had no right including any paths at all, let alone an eight-fold one. But when I ran across mention of it in my reading I couldn’t resist throwing it in anyway. Thanks for setting me straight… And I’d have happily included the Seven Dwarves but the only ones I could remember were Grumpy and Dopey.

By: Steve Gilzow

Steve Gilzow — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 11:54:53 +0000

Good list, Jerry. Don’t want to get stiflingly pedantic with you about Buddhist teachings…but…the existence of the eight-fold path IS the fourth of the Four Noble Truths, rather than a path to those truths. The Buddha seemed to have a talent and fondness for numbered lists.

And, as long as Pluto brings the term Dwarf to the list, let’s add the Seven Dwarves…