Spider web decals

A large grackle bangs into the window pane but flies off. I suppose the spider web decals put up last year have worked, for fewer birds strike the pane in their...

Sturm und Drang

I came across a “prayer against storms” the other day — not from medieval or scriptural time but one composed very recently by a well-meaning ...

Stoic fates

Of the classical Stoics, Seneca is appealing because he represents the tragic middle between Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Having risen from slavery to freedom...

Consciousness

Depak Chopra has written that “reality is formed by consciousness.” This is not eighteenth-century Bishop Berkeley’s idealism, but states a de...

Zeno and the Way

A favorite Western counterpart to the story recounted by the Japanese Zen master Bassui (see June 14) is about Zeno, a Christian desert hermit, and runs like th...

Sunlight

Shafts of dawn sunlight through the primordial stone monoliths of Stonehenge are bound to draw expressions of awe from onlookers. Sunlight through the rose wind...