Dear leisurely browsers, meditative readers,
discerning book-lovers, and learning pilgrims:
The 99th Monk welcomes you to the 100th MONKEY web site.
Thirty-one years ago, my first philosophy teacher, Roque Ferriols, S.J., told us college juniors at the Ateneo de Manila: "Whenever you find yourself in a bookshop and feel tempted to buy a book, by all means yield to the temptation, for there are worse temptations that you can yield to." I took his advice to heart. Twenty-five years later, on his 65th birthday, I wrote to let him know that I had yielded once again (for the nth time!) by accepting stewardship of a small, wholistic bookshop in Toronto.
My sophomore theology teacher, the late Raul Bonoan, S.J., introduced Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and guided me into The Divine Milieu. Father Ferriols also introduced the idea of a "noosphere" as articulated by Teilhard de Chardin in The Phenomenon of Man. And so inspired, I playfully activated in 1991 the 100th MONKEY as one infinitesimal node in the cosmic web.
The 100th MONKEY is
- An appointed station for my Canadian pilgrimage, my mythic Journey to the West
- A stable, where I keep company with imaginative and insightful books
- A garden, where I tend perennial ideas seeded by men and women through the ages
- A meeting place, where customers share their stories, while I witness their struggles, listen to their remembrances, and muse upon their dreams
- An alchemical vessel, where I practice transformative ideas as an earthly mystic and a heavenly merchant
- A consecrated centering-heart oasis in our common pilgrimage into the 21st century
Mindful of the vital questions posed by T.S. Eliot in the opening lines of The Rock (1934):
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
and inspired by Jacob Boehme, the early 17th century shoemaker-mystic of Goelitz;
the 99th Monk presents you with a key, an E. T. C. biblio-guide to:
- Eclectic information, respecting the diversity of human experience
- Essential knowledge, sustaining the discernment of truth
- Existential wisdom, fathoming the depth of being
- Enlightened living, realizing the divine purpose of life
And so, if you feel tempted, by all means yield to the temptation!
Buy a book. Visit again and again. Bring along a friend.
Dialogue with me by e-mail or through letters.
Enjoy reading, learning and living.Your fellow pilgrim,
Alexander, the 99th Foolish Monk,
wise-to-be attendant to
the Trickster King-&-Pilgrim Monkey,
the Descendant-who Realizes-the Void.
The 100th MONKEY web site
is dedicated to the memory of
Valentin
, my formative father
who emulated the Confucian Gentleman,
and
Rudolph H. Visker
, S.J.,
my Socratic midwife.
Browse Selected Books:
100th MONKEY Stable
Go Back to Table of Contents:
100th MONKEY OASIS