Brian used to work as a high school History teacher. He began his Master of Divinity degree in 2023 at the Sheptytsky Institute at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto.
Tibetan Buddhism
Taken as a whole, Dakpo Tashi Namgyal’s teaching reveals a master who articulated Mahāmudrā not as a collection of exalted claims but as a rigorously tested path of recognition, diagnosis, and integration.
An opinion piece in Vanity Fair wants to give us rubberneckers—or, you know, trainspotters, depending on which side of the tracks we may be standing (there can be only two, right?)—an apter set of historical precedents to talk about the M.O. of really existing Trumpism over against
It gives me hope in the goodness of humanity to know that, unremarked by policymakers or the press or this digital panopticon in which we all voluntarily inform on ourselves, millions of men and women are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, quietly and durably happy. Every incentive structure leads
modernity
"A great master says that his breaking-through is nobler than his emanation, and this is true." ~Meister Eckhart, Sermon 87
The rich will make temples for Śiva. What shall I, a poor man, do? My legs are pillars, the body the shrine, the head a cupola of gold. Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers, things standing shall fall, but the moving ever shall stay. —Basavaṇṇa (12th cent.), vācana 820.
Ash Wednesday, 2025 “All nations surrounded me; in the name of the LORD I cut them off!”—Psalm 118:10. It is not that the old school contrarian commentators require remarkable foresight to call the experiment in exceptionalism on its cruel game ahead of time—it is after hours, and
Upon arrival, I joined the parishioners in the confession line. I partook of the custom of bowing to my co-penitents just prior to approaching the confessor, which I am told is particular to Russian tradition. This soborny gesture attuned me to the sacrifice to come qua reparation of a shattered
Nahmanides
Nahmanides had success salvaging certain pre-Maimonidean currents of Jewish exegesis while seeking to set them on a new comparatively more systematic basis.
Saint Porphyrios
It is as though the flame of divine eros burning brightly within Dimas made Porphyrios's own heart and soul ignite.
Philokalia
From a fall into neglect even among the monks of Mt. Athos, the texts of the Philokalia have enjoyed a remarkable success in the modern era.
Why has the future tense come to displace the present in certain renditions of the Words of Institution? “This is my body which will be given up for you”? Weak tea, I say. Count me firmly in the camp of “This is my body which is given up (or, better,
There is no truth or value that imposes itself to which we ever manage to appeal in perfect abstraction from experiences and traditions given social life by human beings in just such and such a manner that they could not have foreseen or intended from the outset. A pure rational