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Matthew Gindin
Matthew Gindin

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Published in Strange Wonder

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The Three Fiercest Mantras

Many people wonder what the most powerful mantras are. This is a natural question, and I am going to tell you. I should warn you that these mantras are for those who truly desire power, peace and freedom, and not for those who merely seek a passing wind of improvement…

Life Mantras

2 min read

The Three Fiercest Mantras
The Three Fiercest Mantras

10 hours ago

Making Chelm Great Again

A Satire Note: In Ashkenazi Jewish folklore, Chelm functions as an imaginary town of fools. The following piece, which I wrote in February of 2017 after Trump’s election, continues in that tradition. It was originally published in The Forward in their community blog, which they compassionately created…

Satire

8 min read


Jul 27

Kate Bush: Loyal To The Kick Inside

Things like that don’t come along very often. When has the next Kate Bush come along after Kate Bush? There hasn’t been one. -Elton John When I was a teenager I was living with a crew of ex-street punks who had left the mean streets for the beauty of Denman…

Kate Bush

7 min read

Kate Bush: Loyal To The Kick Inside
Kate Bush: Loyal To The Kick Inside

Jul 27

Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: A Buddhist View of Abortion

When I was a much younger man I decided that I wanted to become a monk in the Thai Forest Tradition. I had some responsibilities to honour, though, so I decided that I would not leave to find a monastery which would ordain me in for two years. …

5 min read

Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: A Buddhist View of Abortion
Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: A Buddhist View of Abortion

Jul 7

A Song That Makes Me Cry

This song has always filled me with a sense of melancholy and longing, and almost unbearable poignancy. The song is “The Long and Winding Road,” from the Beatles album Let It Be. Particularly the line “Don’t leave me standing here, take me to your door.” Why does that song, that…

Beatles

2 min read

A Song That Makes Me Cry
A Song That Makes Me Cry

Published in Strange Wonder

·May 10

Mother Night

We Are What We Pretend To Be “This is the only story of mine whose moral I know,” writes Kurt Vonnegut at the beginning of his 1962 novel Mother Night. “I don’t think it’s a marvelous moral; I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend…

Kurt Vonnegut

4 min read

Mother Night
Mother Night

Apr 15

My Ten Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels

Although some of my favorite novels are what we usually think of as “literature,” over-all my favorite genres are science fiction and fantasy. I think this is for two reasons. The first is that sci-fi/fantasy is the most philosophical of all genres. The freedom from so-called “realism” allows the greatest…

Literature

4 min read

My Ten Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels
My Ten Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels

Published in Strange Wonder

·Apr 12

Individuality

Spinoza In Plain English Book 2 Part 7: (Propositions 12–19) In our last essay we discussed Spinoza’s fascinating view of individuality, which circumvents a number of the conundrums the philosophy of selfhood usually tangles itself in. He argues that when a number of bodies communicate their motions to each other in a consistent ratio so that they produce an action…

Philosophy

2 min read

Individuality
Individuality

Jan 24

Ecology In The Divine Image

In the opening chapters of Bereisheet/Genesis, God famously creates humanity b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image. For millennia Jews (and Christians) have been debating what that means. The word tzelem referred to an image of statue used in non-Jewish Temples, and Umberto Cassuto (1883–1951) argued from this that the writer…

Judaism

10 min read

Ecology In The Divine Image
Ecology In The Divine Image

Published in Strange Wonder

·Jul 30, 2021

On Anger

words from a Buddhist monk on forbearance — I am currently reading the book Good Heart, Good Mind by my teacher and abbot when I was a monk, Thanissaro Bhikkhu (available free here). It’s a book of talks he gave in Brazil and France about the ten virtues, or “parami” of the Theravadin Buddhist tradition, often called the…

Buddhism

11 min read

On Anger
On Anger
Matthew Gindin

Matthew Gindin

Trying to be both civic and civil. Freelancer available for hire. https://www.matthewgindin.com/ https://www.patreon.com/mzgindin

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