Economies of Merit at play in Qinghai
Last year, the Taer Monastery reported ticket sales revenues of 36 million yuan (US$5.48 million). The money was used to pay every monk about 10,000 yuan in living allowances and to maintain the monastery buildings. In 2010, the per capita net income of farmers and herdsmen in Qinghai was 3,863 yuan, according to the National […]
Jim Woodring is an artmonk
Finally ordered a print of one of my favorite li’l art pieces, signed by cartoonist Jim Woodring. Woodring’s words about Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delightsadequately reflect my feelings about Woodring’s work: “I see endless beauty and mystery in it. Like the world it reflects, it can never be understood, even when it is […]
Sister Corita Kent was an Artmonk
Via Here: Corita Kent was an artist, teacher, philosopher, political activist, and possibly one of the most innovative and unusual pop artists of the 1960’s. However, what is perhaps even more incredible is that she was a catholic nun. Corita: Passion for the Possible (exerpt) from BlackLake on Vimeo.
Brands, beliefs, practices, objects, rituals and community
In developing ideas for an open-source monastic tradition in my last post, I’ve been thinking of religions and lineages as more or less illusory aggregates of individuals and their communities, unified by a common brand more than anything else. Individuals have beliefs. Communities support these beliefs, or they do not. Occasionally, especially in the early stages, […]
Creating an Art Monastery
Living in intentional community is not for everyone—the idea triggers an autoimmune response in some people, for whom it might signify the sacrifice of personal autonomy and individuality—but once you develop a taste for the stuff, it doesn’t fade. I unabashedly love it.
Since I began this blog-inquiry into monasticism just six months ago, dissecting Taoism, Vedanta, Eastern and Western Christianity, as well as the various vehicles of Buddhism into what I have called the elements of monasticism, community is an element I haven’t written about directly much at all. Yet it figures in my mind as an important piece of what all monasticisms are aiming at. For those individuals who dwell in abbeys, ashrams, friaries, priories, sketes, lavras, mathas, mandirs, koils, gompas, lamaseries, wats, viharas, community is a powerful spiritual practice.
So we’re making a monastery.Living in intentional community is not for everyone—the idea triggers an autoimmune response in some people, for whom it might signify the sacrifice of personal autonomy and individuality—but once you develop a taste for the stuff, it doesn’t fade. I unabashedly love it.
Since I began this blog-inquiry into monasticism just six months ago, dissecting Taoism, Vedanta, Eastern and Western Christianity, as well as the various vehicles of Buddhism into what I have called the elements of monasticism, community is an element I haven’t written about directly much at all. Yet it figures in my mind as an important piece of what all monasticisms are aiming at. For those individuals who dwell in abbeys, ashrams, friaries, priories, sketes, lavras, mathas, mandirs, koils, gompas, lamaseries, wats, viharas, community is a powerful spiritual practice.
So we’re making a monastery.
Pico
Renaissance humanist philosopher Pico della Mirandola, who died at 31 in 1494 shortly after determining to become a monk, wrote “The Oration on the Dignity of Man” when he was only 23: He [God] received man, therefore, as a creature of undetermined nature, and placing him in the middle of the universe, said this to […]
Economies of Merit
In many monastic and religious traditions, ethical and spiritual “merit” gets traded like a commodity.[1. For example, the 15th and 16th century papacy’s practice of selling spiritual indulgences: “the Church drew from the the treasury of merits accumulated by the good works of the saints, and in return the recipient made a contribution to the […]
The Ages of Western Monasticism
From P. Langdale Hough at Plumblines: From Walled Towns (1919), by Ralph Adams Cram (courtesy of Schmitz). Pages 34 – 35: At the beginning of the Christian the impulse was personal, the individual was the unit, and the result was the anchorites and hermits, each isolating himself a hidden mountain cave, a hut in the desert, […]
Of Gods and Men
Listen to an NPR story about the film. Listen to an NPR story about the film.
