Eric Scheske

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Existence Strikes Back Part V

Biographies of people who have gotten the Tao back into their lives, or at least tried. Significant overlap with those people who have lived with their brain hemispheres in proper order. At my Substack, you'll find some of these under "Profiles in Right Hemispherism."

Way of the Right Brain: Chuang-Tzu’s Genius

Way of the Right Brain: Chuang-Tzu’s Genius

Seven and a half centuries before Bodhidharma started Zen by melding Buddhism to Taoism, Chuang-Tzu danced through the world. This sly jester is second only to the old sage Lao-Tzu in Tao greatness. Chuang-Tzu championed wu-wei—the art of non-doing, of letting the world spin without your sweaty grip on

The Left Hemisphere Deranges People Out of the Local, Driving Them Through Rationalism into the Clutches of Ideology, including Nationalism

The Left Hemisphere Deranges People Out of the Local, Driving Them Through Rationalism into the Clutches of Ideology, including Nationalism

The community is embodied existence: you rub against the white trash and the petty; you rub against flawed humans like yourself. You have to deal with it . . . in reality, not in a rational idea. When you escape it through abstraction, you become the anti-Mother Teresa

Pragmatism and the Saints

Pragmatism and the Saints

"Pragmatism" and "practicality" aren't the same things. When a person says, "I'm just being practical," he's probably being highly impractical. It normally means he's just thinking rationally: with the certitude of his left hemisphere, which excludes

Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton

These Monks Were on a Search-and-Destroy Mission Against Their Left Hemispheres

These Monks Were on a Search-and-Destroy Mission Against Their Left Hemispheres

It's hard to admit this, but here goes: Back in my twenties, I decided I wanted to be a mystic. Such a thing is absurd: The goal is foiled by the goal. You might as well decide you want to be a poor man with money (one of

Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton

I went on a crash GKC diet in my twenties. In addition to a score of Chesterton books, I read three biographies about the great man, plus his Autobiography. But I realized earlier this month that I had never read the first biography, which was written by his friend, Maisie

Your Opinions Stink

Your Opinions Stink

John of Montmirail liked to fight. He was a leading knight in battle; he jousted in peace. But then he had a religious conversion and dedicated his resources to helping the poor, including the establishment of a hospice in his castle. He once went to help a woman whose dying

The Right Hemisphere Way of Therese Lisieux

The Right Hemisphere Way of Therese Lisieux

St. Therese's is the "little way." The left hemisphere values the big. The left hemisphere demands answers and solutions, which require increasingly large effort. The Little Way is a rebuke of such a disposition. She placed no value on abstractions, opting instead for the real and

Therese Lisieux's Little Way is Exquisitely Post-Modernist

Therese Lisieux's Little Way is Exquisitely Post-Modernist

Another postmodernist existentialist revolt against the left hemisphere and its suffocating emphasis on essence