Opinion
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From The Dishwasher Dialogues
Parisians Sans Haute Couture
By: - May 18th, 2025Down and out in Paris in the 1970s Greg LIght and Rafael Mahdavi scraped by as kitchen help at the popular and colorful Chez Haynes. Their self published book about their adventures of surviving down and out in Paris, Dishwasher Dialogues, has become a hit. That inspired them to post a weekly blog. We are launching them as our Parisian correspondents. This blast concerns how the homeless survive harsh winters.
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Finding Clarity in The Now
Taiji, Meditation, and the Art of Presence
By: - May 14th, 2025Practices like Taiji and meditation serve as invaluable anchors, gently guiding us back to this present awareness, offering a path to clarity, peace, and authentic living. The goal is to cultivate a state of present moment awareness where we engage fully with what is, unfiltered by the layers of judgment, expectation, and predisposition that so often cloud our perception.
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Trump Defunds MASS MoCA
Cancels Grant for Jeffrey Gibson Exhibition
By: - May 06th, 2025On Friday night, the National Endowment for the Arts sent MASS MoCA an email notification of the termination of our awarded grant for the support of Jeffrey Gibson’s commission POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT.
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Beyond Belief
Freedom from Bitterness Through Knowing
By: - Apr 28th, 2025Moving beyond bitterness is not about forcing forgiveness or pretending the past didn’t happen. It is about recognizing where we are investing our energy. Are we feeding the rigid beliefs that keep the wound infected?
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The Mount 2025
Season Programs
By: - Apr 19th, 2025The Mount, Edith Wharton's Home, announces the full lineup of the 2025 Summer Author Series and In Conversation. This year, the series features an expanded roster of literary luminaries reflecting diverse disciplines and perspectives. Susan Wissler, The Mount’s executive director, shares, “For over three decades, The Mount has been a beacon for thought-provoking discussions, and this year is no exception. Inspired by Edith Wharton’s passion for ideas and love of good conversation, we invite the Berkshire community to join us for enriching talks and discussions with the literary giants and innovative thinkers shaping our world today."
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The Sweetness of Bitterness
Finding Meaning in Letting Go
By: - Apr 17th, 2025Laozi, in his timeless wisdom within the Tao Te Ching, presents a series of paradoxical statements that challenge our conventional understanding of how to achieve wholeness and fulfillment. Among these, the notion that embracing partiality, crookedness, emptiness, death, and surrender can lead to their opposites seems counterintuitive. Yet, within these inversions lies the profound truth about the human journey, particularly the “bitterness” of temple life to ultimately blossom into one of deep meaning.
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The Art of Yielding
Finding Strength in Suppleness (Part 2)
By: - Apr 02nd, 2025Compromise, another form of yielding, is essential for navigating the complexities of human interaction. By yielding on less important issues, we create space for finding common ground and achieving mutually beneficial outcomes. This approach avoids unnecessary conflict and preserves valuable relationships.
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Yielding with Strength
Bamboo as Metaphor
By: - Mar 18th, 2025In essence, yielding with strength is a practice of cultivating inner resilience. It is about developing the ability to adapt to change, to flow with the currents of life, and to find strength in suppleness. It is about recognizing that true power lies not in rigid control, but in the ability to yield, to adapt, and to flow.
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Insider’s View of the Protests Against the MFA’s ‘Boston Masssacre’—1999
Adapted from Forthcoming Book
By: - Mar 03rd, 2025Patricia Hills is a leftist/ feminist scholar, professor and curator. Since retirement from teaching art history at Boston University she has continued with research and writing. This essay is a chapter from her soon to be published memoir Feisty Feminist Challenges the Art World. Here she vividly relates the Boston Massacre when MFA director Malcolm Rogers fired renowned curators pursuant to his vision of One Museum. In a corporate, manner unique to the well mannered art world, they were escorted from the museum. Hills organized protest against this initiative. She endured a counterattack from the museum but was supported by Boston University.
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The Strength in Yielding
A Core Principle of Chinese Martial Arts and Life
By: - Feb 25th, 2025A stiff tree may withstand a strong wind for a time, but eventually, it will snap. A willow, on the other hand, bends and sways, yielding to the wind’s force, yet it survives even the fiercest storms. This is the essence of yielding: adapting, flowing, and ultimately overcoming by not resisting directly.
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The Mount 2025
Readings Music Sculpture and More
By: - Feb 19th, 2025“Our 2025 season reflects The Mount’s unique intersection of history, literature, the arts, nature, and community. With Edith Wharton as our muse, we are excited to offer an illuminating season celebrating the sharing of ideas, stories, art, and music, while providing space for our community to gather, reflect, and wander in the natural beauty of the Berkshires,” says Susan Wissler, The Mount’s executive director.
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Kultur Klash
Trumping the Arts
By: - Feb 15th, 2025The arts are the canary in a coal mine. Any government sponsored attack on culture diminishes dissent. Autocracy enforces a mandate of disinformation. Serfs and slaves were denied literacy. Ideas are anathema to oligarchies and must be repressed. Nazis burned books. School boards and libraries ban them.
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Diet and Health
The Yellow Emperor’s Classic on Medicine
By: - Feb 04th, 2025The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine (Huangdi Neijing), compiled over 2,400 years ago, remains the leading foundational treatise on Traditional Chinese Medicine. The Huangdi Neijing addresses all aspects of inner medicine and health, and is required reading for anyone interested in understanding TCM and ancient Chinese culture.
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The Vibration of Creation
Our Bodies and Spiritual Practices
By: - Jan 13th, 2025At the most fundamental level, everything in the universe is made up of energy vibrating at different frequencies. From the smallest subatomic particles to the largest celestial bodies, everything is in a constant state of motion, creating a unique vibrational signature. This includes our physical bodies, thoughts, emotions, and even the seemingly empty space around us.
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Return to Five Immortals Temple
Special Delivery and Renewal
By: - Dec 04th, 2024There is the excitement of the going, the anticipation of arrival, and a purpose to be fulfilled. There is excitement in the coming back, the thought of sleeping in your own bed, of waking up in familiar surroundings. Nonetheless, more than 40 hours of travel, flights, train rides, bus rides, and climbs, are daunting at any age. In my case, that is a few weeks shy of age 75.
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Same As It Ever Was
By: - Nov 10th, 2024n the morning after the election, I woke up to an America that is the “same as it ever was,” to borrow lyrics from The Talking Heads. I just didn’t realize what that “same” was. America had spoken, revealing its true self at this moment to me, and I am deeply saddened by what I heard.
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China's Wudang Mountain
Plethora of Ancient Temples
By: - Sep 25th, 2024The most iconic Daoist temple on Wudang Mountain is the Golden Summit Temple, situated atop the highest peak, Jade Emperor Peak. This temple is dedicated to the Jade Emperor, a supreme deity in Daoist mythology, and is a symbol of the mountain’s spiritual significance. The temple’s architecture is awe-inspiring, with intricate carvings, colorful murals, and a grand main hall housing a colossal statue of the Jade Emperor.
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Surrealism. Earth. Dreams.
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The Eight Immortals
Pantheon of Tao
By: - Jun 25th, 2024Lu Dongbin, also known as Lü Dongbin or Lu Tung-Pin, is a towering figure in Chinese mythology and religion. As one of the Eight Immortals, a revered pantheon within Daoism, he transcends the boundaries of a mere historical figure. He embodies wisdom, benevolence, and mastery of the Dao (the Way), leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire generations. This exploration delves into the life, legends, and significance of Lu Dongbin, the scholar-immortal who wields both sword and wisdom.
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The Flow
By: - Jun 17th, 2024Wu Wei is a lifelong journey, not a destination. It’s about cultivating a sense of ease and harmony in the face of life’s complexities. By embracing its principles, we can learn to flow with the current, navigate life’s rapids with greater grace, and find a deeper sense of peace and fulfillment along the way.
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The Unclouded Mirror
Reflecting The Wu Wei in Daoism
By: - Jun 03rd, 2024In the vast tapestry of Daoist thought, the mirror emerges as a potent symbol, not for vanity, but for cultivating a state of unclouded perception. Unlike a typical mirror, the ideal Daoist mirror reflects only what is truly present – the here and now, unfiltered by desires or judgments.
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The Duality of Breath Yin and Yang
Cultivating Inner Power
By: - May 13th, 2024The core concept in Daoist understanding of the breath is Qi (pronounced “chee”). Qi is not simply oxygen, but a subtle energy force believed to permeate all living things and the universe itself. It is the dynamic interplay of Yin and Yang, the fundamental polarities that govern existence. Deep, mindful breathing is seen as a way to cultivate and refine Qi, leading to improved health, inner peace, and a deeper connection to the Dao.
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Marjorie Minkin Recalls Clement Greenberg and Kenworth Moffett
Mentoring of an Emerging Artist
By: - May 08th, 2024I first met Clement Greenberg after Ken (Moffett) invited me to go to Toronto in the summer of 1981 where he and Greenberg were on a panel discussion at the Toronto Art Fair. I accompanied Greenberg and Moffett on their visit to at least 20 artists’ studios in Toronto. It was the best art education of my life!
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Unhurried Grace
Patience of a Forest Stream
By: - Mar 31st, 2024While offering instruction in the various taiji forms I teach, I often refer to a forest stream and urge my students to become it, ever-flowing, to find and then move at the pace of their breath, ever-flowing, just as the stream finds its pace. The stream does not move from one place to the next; there is no line of demarcation between places. The stream simply flows.
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Power of Stillness
Present Moment Awareness
By: - Mar 21st, 2024One exercise I suggest to my students is a “slow by slow” day each week: walk just a little slower than you usually walk; speak just a little slower than you usually speak; eat just a little slower than you usually eat. Not slow motion, and not so anyone else would notice, but slower than usual.
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