I’ve been winding my way through the collection of Eckhart Tolle I downloaded. Wonderful stuff. I’ve been listening to one recently called Living a Life of Inner Peace and it’s straight up comedy. He’s got the audience roaring on the recording.
I did a search on Tolle, wondering if he was showing up in the media at all, and boy did I get a shock. Apparently Tolle, along with The Bible, was with Paris Hilton as she went into prison.
Thankfully, living in Korea allows me to avoid most of the hoopla surrounding Hilton, although I did notice they carried her exit from jail live on CNN World.
When seeing that she was reading Tolle I scanned a few other articles to see if maybe a transformation was taking place. Unfortunately all I could find were backhanded mentions of Tolle by gossip columnist vermin in regards to a subject they must cover 100% negatively.
I found one bit that said Hilton was moving away from New York to somewhere quiet. Interesting, I thought, until I found out she was moving to Beverly Hills. Oh well. I suppose in her world that might be like getting in touch with nature.
At any rate I love Tolle’s work to the extent that I’m not affected by who else is reading it. Although I will say I dislike the New Agey cover art his publishers seem unable to veer away from. Hopefully his dalliance with Paris will help get his message out.
July 3, 2007
More Eckhart Tolle
June 7, 2007
Louis Theroux and The Most Hated Family in America
I’m not sure how I found the documentary The Most Hated Family in America, but the tagline was somewhat irresistible, even though I’ve been trying to avoid the topic of religion recently.
TMHFIA centers on the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, who are notorious for picketing the funerals of soldiers in Iraq with neon signs that say “God Hates Fags.”
Especially since the documentary is a production of BBC2, I initially thought the church was a bit of an easy target. An open and shut case. Obviously its message is outlandish and abhorrent.
But Theroux skips the obvious points and gets to the human side of the church (which is primarily one family). He hangs out with them, gets to know them and tries to get to the bottom of their motives and personal narratives.
I don’t want to go off the deep end here, because I’ve only seen the one piece, but this guy appears to be some kind of journalistic genius. Totally unassuming, frank, and very centered. Not once does he try to go for the jugular…and in many ways the family comes off quite well, which, considering what the church is, is no small feat.
Television journalism has become so despised that its manifested a celebrity whose entire shtick aims to blur the line between journalism fiction and reality (at the expense of both the subject and the viewer). But Theroux is a breath of fresh air. He keeps his ego out of the picture and trusts the viewer to draw their own conclusions.
May 24, 2007
Buddah’s Birthday
I’ve had this photo on my desktop for a couple weeks. Not a statement about the Buddah or his birthday (which is today). Just love the color.
The photo is from Marmot’s Hole, the best daily news blog here in Korea.
May 13, 2007
Alan Watts
Since I mentioned Watts in my last post I’ll go ahead and give him a little more time here.
I ran into his lectures by accident. I think I did a search on meditation.
While most people think of him as a Zen teacher, he was actually never ordained as a Monk. Rather, he was an autodidact, which is to say, self-taught.
This makes me like him more. He was raised Christian, so he is prone to using it as an example of incorrect spirituality. And he formally trained in Zen, but isn’t beyond mentioning it’s problems. The fact that he’s not pushing any one kind of spirituality makes me like him more.
May 11, 2007
Eckhart Tolle
Just finished The New Earth, the latest book by Eckhart Tolle. My friend Brian turned me on to him.
It’s difficult to know how to properly describe someone like Tolle. Some could call him a teacher, spiritual advisor, a guru…he’s a little bit philosophical, a little Zen, and possibly even a little Christian. Indeed he changed his name to Eckhart to allign himself with Meister Eckhart.
My favorite description of this type was coined by my favorite of this ilk, Allan Watts, who called himself a Spiritual Entertainer. So I will call Eckhart Tolle a spiritual entertainer so as to not overemphasize it’s importance, yet, to not downplay the power of its spirituality.
Most of Tolle’s ideas have to do with living in the present, the power of meditation, things of that nature. One thing that distinguishes Tolle is his concentration on awareness of death. The book is filled with several stories of people aging and/or dying…so the tone is somewhat melancholy, but in a bright way.
In one of my favorite parts of The New Earth he described going to a spiritual retreat and someone asking him what he thought of their seminar programs. Tolle told them that if people would just concentrate on their breath for a single year they could do more for themsevles than any number of expensive seminars could.