Taoist artnuns
Abbess Yin opted for another model. Trained in Taoist music, she set up a Taoist music troupe that toured the Yangtze River delta in a rickety old bus, stopping at communities that hired them to perform religious rituals. When I first met her in 1998, she used the money to rebuild one prayer hall on […]
The Buddha
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not […]
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Worship
God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions. via Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Worship.
Cyborg Buddha | Philippe Verdoux | On Why It Might Be Wise To Think More About Wisdom
“In a world torn with strife and warfare, perhaps no problem is more important [than that of understanding and developing wisdom], as wisdom may be the only hope out of the bloodshed.” – Robert Sternberg … But what exactly is wisdom? Would augmenting our cognitive capacities entail a corresponding increase in how wise we as […]
Intrapreneur’s Ten Commandments
[Part of the Daily Lectio series, named after the Benedictine tradition of lectio divina, “divine reading.” For instructions and background on the series, click here. Subscribe to Daily Lectio. Send comments or suggested readings to nathan@artmonastery.org] Gifford Pinchot III is one of the co-founders of the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, where I went for an MBA in Sustainable Community Economic […]
Announcing: 2011 Artmonk Retreat, Joshua Tree, CA
What Artmonk Retreat. 10 days, 9 nights. Part silent meditation retreat, Part transformational art ritual. Vipassana, Gregorian chant, musical improvisation, ritual theater, group exercises, and more, in an incredible setting. When The second-ever Artmonk retreat will begin (after a concert in the Integratron by a handful of artmonks) in the late afternoon on Saturday January […]
Up to our necks in Augustine
On Saturday the Art Monastery, a community of artists from a wide range of spiritual traditions working to apply the tools of monasticism to art-making instead of religion, will embark on a 7-day silent retreat in the Jesuit tradition, in which the primary form of activity (and inactivity) will be to read the Rule of […]
“a ‘holy’ actor in a poor theatre”
Some good bits of artmonkish wisdom from a “visioning retreat” we recently held at the Art Monastery. “Theatre cannot be imprisoned inside theatrical buildings, just as religion cannot be imprisoned inside churches; the language of theatre and its forms of expression cannot be the private property of actors, just as religious practice cannot be appropriated […]
Alan Chapman » Monasticism and Lay Practice Open Enlightenment
Some sound advice from Alan Chapman at Open Enlightenment:Monasticism and Lay Practice. “The division between monastic and lay is a cultural division. I’m more interested in how you can experience awakening as a human being… None of the [monastic] frameworks have a monopoly on your experience of enlightenment.” Chapman’s advice seems to be that, if you’re […]
Nuggets
Ken Wilber, in Always Already: The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness: Many people have stern objections to “mysticism” or “transcendentalism” of any sort, because they think it somehow denies this world, or hates this earth, or despises the body and the senses and its vital life, and so on. While that may be true of certain […]
