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Shambhala: Mountain Sanctuary

Feb 10, 2026 / terry / No comments

Shambhala is a mythical kingdom described in the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism as a place of sanctuary. Paintings show the kingdom isolated from the rest of the world by a ring of mountains. At the center of the kingdom is the capital Kalapa, itself surrounded by another ring of mountains. The palace of the king has roofs of solid gold and is adorned with pearls and other jewels. Outside the capital, rivers divide the kingdom into eight regions arranged like the petals of a lotus flower. Each of these regions contains 12 principalities, so that 96 princes pay allegiance to the king of Shambhala. The illustration shows a Tibetan painting of Shambhala from the 19^th Century in the Musée Guimet. Many travellers have tried unsuccessfully to find Shambhala. It remains a spiritual rather than physical place.

Category: Architecture, Art, History, Painting, Philosophy, Politics, Religion / Tags: Akbar the Great, Annexation of Tibet, Cultural Revolution, Dalai Lama, James Hilton, Lake Manasarovar, Lhasa, Lost Horizon, Mount Kailash, Nicholas Roerich, Red Guards, Shangri La, Spread of Buddhism, Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism, tourism

The Letter of Lord Chandos: Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Jan 16, 2026 / terry / No comments

In 1901, Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) wrote an essay on the inadequacy of language in the form of a letter (Ein Brief) from the fictional Philip Lord Chandos to the actual Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a famous English philosopher of science, essayist and statesman. The letter is a response to Bacon’s inquiry about the two years of unexpected silence that following Chandos’ early success as a poet. Chandos replies that he has “completely lost the ability to think or to speak of anything coherently.” He feels a deep sympathy with the world, but finds no words whereby to express this experience. He seeks but has not yet, found a language “in which inanimate things speak to me and wherein I may one day have to justify myself before an unknown judge.” The illustration shows a 1916 portrait of von Hofmannsthal by Karl Bauer.

Category: Language, Literature, Music, Poetry, Religion / Tags: Der Rosenkavalier, Elizabeth Costello, Francis Bacon, Fritz Mauthner, J. M. Coetzee, Language Crisis, Ludwig Wittgentsein, Mysticism, Richard Strauss, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

T. S. Eliot: The Cocktail Party

Dec 21, 2025 / terry / No comments

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) wrote The Cocktail Party in 1948. The play begins with people making foolish conversation at a cocktail party but soon proceeds to a discussion of what it means to be married to another person, and what is required to become a saint. It was initially performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949 with Alec Guiness as the Unidentified Guest and Irene Worth as Celia, the prospective saint, and then moved to Broadway in 1950, where it received a Tony Award for Best Play. Critical reviews were mixed, but audiences were more enthusiastic. The play was revived briefly in 1968 with Guinness as both director and actor.

Category: Art, Ethics, Literature, Painting, Poetry, Religion / Tags: Albert Camus, Alcestis, An Inspector Calls, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, Euripides, Heraclitus, It's a Wonderful Life, J.-P. Sartre, Leonora Carrington, Marttyrdom, Mother Teresa, Prometheus Unbound, Sainthood, Shelley, Spirituality, Theatre of the Absurd, Zoroaster

Prime Numbers: Mysterious Building Blocks

Dec 12, 2025 / terry / No comments

A prime number is one that can only be divided by 1 and itself. Prime numbers are the building blocks for all the natural numbers, each of which can be expressed as a unique product of primes. Although their primacy can be proven by demonstrating that they are not divisible by any other number, where the prime numbers occur among the natural numbers cannot be predicted. Prime numbers are as mysterious as they are essential. The illustration shows the 25 primes (yellow) that occur in the first 100 numbers.

Category: History, Mathematics / Tags: Bernhard Riemann, Erastosthenes, Euclid, Friedrich Gauss, Goldbach's conjecture, Leonhard Euler, number theory, Pierre de Fermat, Prime Number Theorem, Riemann hypothesis, Twin Primes

Wu Wei: Effortless Action

Nov 23, 2025 / terry / No comments

One of the central ideas in the Daodjing of Laozi is the idea of wu wei (無為, simplified 无为; wúwéi). This has been translated in many ways: “non-action,” “actionlessness,” “effortless action,” and “doing nothing.” The 37^th chapter of the Daodjing considers wu wei an attribute of the eternal Dao. The 48^th chapter promotes wu wei as a human virtue. The illustration shows wu wei in regular script (left) and in cursive (right).

Category: Ethics, Language, Literature, Philosophy, psychology, Religion / Tags: Butcher Ding, Daodejing, flow, in the zone, Lao Tzu, Laozi, nondual action, Pen bird, Tao Te Ching, Thomas Merton, Zhao Mengfu, Zhuangzi

Laozi: the Nature of the Dao

Nov 23, 2025 / terry / 2 comments

Laozi (老子, lǎozǐ, “the old master”) was a legendary character from the 6^th Century BCE who put together a collection of philosophical and ethical sayings that has come to be known as the Dàodéjing (道德經 simplified:道德经; or Tao Te Ching in the Wade-Giles romanization, “The Book of the Way and of Virtue”) or Laozi after the name of the author. The illustration shows a depiction of Laozi from a scroll by Sheng Mao. Following the discovery of early versions of the text written on silk and bamboo slips dating to the 2^nd Century BCE (Chan, 2016, 2025), several new translations and annotated editions have been published. This essay presents a close reading of the first chapter.

Category: Art, History, Language, Painting, Philosophy, Poetry, Religion / Tags: Alan Watts, being, Coleridge, Daodejing, Daoism, desire, LaoTzu, Naming, pantheism, Spinoza, Tao Te Ching, Wordsworth, Zhuangzi

A Way of Writing: The Art of Chinese Calligraphy

Nov 6, 2025 / terry / No comments

Chinese calligraphy (書法, simplified 书法, shūfǎ, literally ‘way of writing’) is the art of writing Chinese characters (漢字, simplified 汉字, hànzì) with a brush. Together with poetry and painting, calligraphy is considered one of the “Three Perfections” (三絕 sānjué) of Chinese art. This essay reviews the development of calligraphy and provides some examples of its beauty. The illustration shows the calligraphy of the characters of shūfǎ in regular and semi-cursive styles.

Category: Art, History, Language, Painting, Poetry / Tags: Bada Shanren, Cangjie, Clerical Script, Cursive Script, Deng Shiru, Lotus Sutra, Ni Zan, Oracle Script, Regular Script, Seal Script, Shufa, Six Gentlemen, Thousand Character Classic, Wang Jiqian, Xu Chu, Zhang Xu, Zhao Mengfu

Wang Wei: the Wheel River Poems

Oct 20, 2025 / terry / No comments

Wang Wei (王维; traditional 王維; pinyin, Wáng Wéi; 699–761) was a Chinese musician, painter, and poet during the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907). He was a devout Buddhist and used the courtesy name Wang Weimojie in homage to the early Buddhist teacher and boddhisattva Vimalakirti (Chinese name 維摩詰 Wéimójí). Vimalakirti taught the practice of sunyata (Sanskrit, emptiness; Chinese 空性 Kōng xìng), a meditative state wherein the mind is emptied of the self and becomes one with the universe. After a tumultuous life, Wang Wei retired to his villa on the Wang River about 40 km southeast of the imperial capital Chang’an (present day Xi’an). There he composed the Wǎngchuān jí (辋川集 The Wheel River Collection): a set of twenty quatrains describing various locations near his villa. Each quatrain was accompanied by a reply from his protégé Pei Di (裴迪 pinyin, Péi Dí, 714-?).

Category: Art, History, Language, Painting, Poetry, Religion, Uncategorized / Tags: An Lushan Rebellion, Calligraphy, Chan Buddhism, Chinese Poetry, Confucianism, Deer Park, Du Fu, High Tang Poetry, Li Bai, Pei Di, Sunyata, Taoism, Wangchuan Ji

Laurence Cossé: Le Coin du Voile

Aug 14, 2025 / terry / No comments

Laurence Cossé’s 1996 novel Le coin du voile (A corner of the veil) describes the effects of a new and irrefutable proof for the existence of God. A priest who had resigned his calling to spend months in prayer and abstinence submits the proof for publication in Outlooks, the lay journal of the French Casuists. All those who read it are completely convinced. On seeing its effects, the Provincial of the Casuists decides to keep the proof secret until its effects can be more clearly understood. Finally, the Secretary of State at the Vatican arranges for all those who had read the proof to retire from any contact with the public and for the proof to be kept hidden. The proof becomes a pontifical secret – “a piece of information the Holy Father must not learn under any circumstance.”

Category: Art, Ethics, Literature, Painting, Politics, Religion / Tags: Alfred North Whitehead, Anselm, Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, Arthur Peacocke, Averroes, Benozzo Gozzoli, Blaise Pascal, Causistry, Charles Hartshorne, Ibn Rushd, Jacques Gaillot, Jesuits, panentheism, process theology, Thomas Aquinas

Paul-Émile Borduas: Le Refus Global

Aug 7, 2025 / terry / No comments

Paul-Émile Borduas (1905-1960) was a Quebec artist who became world-famous in the 1950s for his striking abstract paintings. In the early 1940s he had founded Les Automatistes, a group of artists interested in Surrealism. In 1948, he and his colleague had published the Refus Global (Total Refusal), a manifesto urging his fellow Québécois to throw off the oppressive authority of the Union Nationale Party and the Catholic Church. His call to freedom antagonized those in power. After being fired from his teaching position, he left Canada to work in New York and Paris. Shortly after his death in February 1960, the Liberal Party defeated the Union Nationale in the Provincial Election in June, 1960, and La Révolution Tranquille (Quiet Revolution) began to modernize Quebec society.

Category: Art, History, Painting, Politics, Religion / Tags: abstract expressionism, André Breton, Jackson Pollock, La Révolution Tranquille, les automatistes, Marie Alain Couturier, Ozias Leduc, Quebec, Riopelle, Surrealism

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