A Collection

This is simply a collection of the things that I’ve read in the past week: snippets, if you will, from what I’m trying to put together in my head. I guess this is most aptly what I'm doing with my life.

11
Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub;
It is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges.

We make a vessel from a lump of clay;
It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful.

We make doors and windows for a room;
But it is the empty spaces that make the room livable.

Thus, while the tangible has advantages,
It is the intangible that makes it useful.

--The Tao Teh Ching

“It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between “literally” and “figuratively.” If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively; it feels like it’s happening. If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means that you are leaping in the air because you are very happy. If you are figuratively jumping for joy, it means that you are so happy that you could jump for joy, but are saving your energy for other matters. The Baudelaire orphans walked back to Count Olaf’s neighborhood and stopped at the home of Justice Strauss, who welcomed them inside and let them choose books from the library. Violet chose several about mechanical inventions, Klaus chose several about wolves, and Sunny found a book with many pictures of teeth inside. They then went to their room and crowded together on the one bed, reading intently and happily. Figuratively, they escaped from Count Olaf and their miserable existence. They did not literally escape, because they were still in his house and vulnerable to Olaf’s evil in loco parentis ways. But by immersing themselves in their favorite reading topics, they felt far away from their predicament, as if they had escaped. In the situation of the orphans, figuratively escaping was not enough, of course, but at the end of a tiring and hopeless day, it would have to do. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny read their books and, in the back of their minds, hoped that soon their figurative escape would eventually turn into a literal one.”

--Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, No. 1: The Bad Beginnings, or Orphans!, Ch 3, last paragraph

"Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or think, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!" 


-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Ch. 13

“The external proletariat (including, as its largest part, the peasantry), which came to provide the Soviet leadership with a mass basis for the struggle against capitalism after the First World War, emerged as a historical “subject” seemingly by virtue of (from the Marxian standpoint) an exogenous event, namely, by, virtue of the fact that the revolution succeeded in backward Russia, failed to materialize in the advanced industrial countries, and subsequently spread from Russia into preindustrial areas, while the advanced industrial countries continued to remain immune. But this event was not quite as exogenous as it seems… The sustained weakness of the revolutionary potential in the advanced industrial countries confined the revolution to that area where the proletariat had not been thus affected and where the regime had shown political disintegration together with economic backwardness.”

--Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis, Ch. 1: Marxian Concept of the Transition to Socialism

“The right of nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own judgment, and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto… And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason, that every man, ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule, containeth the first, and fundamental law of nature; which is, to seek peace, and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature; which is, by all means we can, to defend ourselves.”

--Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 14: On the First and Second Natural Laws, and of Contracts.

“It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
Half of the night with our old friend
Who's showed us in the end
To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
Already, I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
Your instep to my heel,
My shoulder-blades against your chest.
It was not sex, but I could feel
The whole strength of your body set,
Or braced, to mine,
And locking me to you
As if we were still twenty-two
When our grand passion had not yet
Become familial.
My quick sleep had deleted all
Of intervening time and place.
I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace”

--Thom Gunn, The Hug

An Un-Special Wednesday Morning

Somehow, it’s May. Somehow, it’s well into may. My mind is swimming right now; or would it be more appropriate to say thrashing? Poetry, language, though, photos, religion, pedagogy, existence, fruit, subjects, posture, form, function, style, content, objects and action all have very powerful daily effects on me. What is it about these subjects that drive me? Maybe it’s a desire to know. Maybe it’s simply a desire to do. There’s a big difference there, and I’m not sure I’m capable of distinguishing it.
I want to make music. I want my life to be music given to others. I want what I consistently fail at achieving.
Do other people think, almost daily, about the importance of the length of sentences in determining their relative importance in the meaning of a piece of literature?
I do.
And I’m sure others do, too.
How do we go about filling up our time on this terrestrial sphere so that the uselessness of existence isn’t an ever-present burden to the affected consciousness?
There are so many ways.
And they go by diverse names.
Thinking of the past can consume much of one’s time, as can thinking of the future, but so, also, can existing entirely in the present—this latter being, I think, most conducive to actual existence. Cogitations of that which has gone by is a waste of the moment you’re living in on a moment that cannot be changed. Rumination—which has an interesting double meaning—of things to come ought to be done carefully as time can, and usually does, make fools of us all. Perhaps this is why I am a bigger fan of direction than directions (that “s” makes a huge difference). What we miss when we are involved in these time-thoughts is that they are all happening in the present. Again, we miss the present.
Where are you… right now?
To lay down the load seems like a thoroughly enjoyable thing, and I suppose it is entirely possible. Mercurial seems to be the best nomenclature for the perpetual state of my mind: that which I believe today might, by tomorrow, be altered by new information. Or, it might not. It’s hard to say. There is so little absolute truth in the world. Everybody’s right. Everybody’s wrong. Can there be a nugget of absolute truth that humanity can know? I hesitate to mention God—with a purposeful capital—because you would be hard-pressed to find a Hindu or Muslim who would agree with a Southern Baptist, and conceptions of God always seem to me to fall into the realm of personal truths—because if I’m right and somebody disagrees with me, then they are wrong and need to be shone the true light (which is to say: my light… this little light of MINE).
I think there is truth to be found in consciousness. We all have it. It is universal. As a matter of fact, it could be argued that every consciousness in the world even has the same shape or form or style. What gets put into it might differ in content, but the shape (consciousness, sub-consciousness, and spirit) remains the same. The consciousness is the sensual world (what Hobbes might call the “voluntary actions”), the sub-conscious that of the involuntary actions (to a point), and the spirit is that nugget of reality that is so tangible and yet so difficult to describe. Maybe it’s time for me to start asking a new question: how is truth?

Tomorrow…

is Buddha’s birthday. I’ve never really thought about it before, but I suppose it makes sense. Jesus has a birthday. Muhammad has a birthday. Sure. Why not? This is not something that is generally celebrated too often in the Western world, but it is a national holiday in Korea, and, I’ve heard somebody say something sometime about being Rome and… well, I forget the rest of how it goes.
At any rate, tomorrow I am going to celebrate Buddha’s birthday. I’m going to do this in what is probably an inappropriate manner—having had very little experience with what a celebration of this kind would entail, but I will spend the day in meditation, introspection, and fasting. Traditionally in Korea, a visit is made to the nearest temple—or whatever temple you choose—and the monks there provide the visitors with food (usually gimbap—sort of like a California roll: seaweed, rice, and whatever is around all rolled up), and everybody attempts to understand themselves a little bit better.

So, instead of gabbing on here about whatever it is I think about whatever it is that’s going on in the world of my mind these days, I’m simply going to leave you with some thoughts to make your “Buddha’s Birthday Bash” a beautiful one:

“To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.”
--Buddha

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.”
--Buddha

“On life's journey Faith is nourishment,
Virtuous deeds are a shelter,
Wisdom is the light by day and Right mindfulness is the protection by night.
If a man lives a pure life nothing can destroy him;
If he has conquered greed nothing can limit his freedom.”
--Buddha

“When the student is ready, the master appears.”
Buddhist Proverb

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. ”
Alan Watts

“Zen is not a philosophy, it is poetry. It does not propose, it simply persuades. It does not argue, it simply sings its own song. ”
Osho

“Sit quietly doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. ”
Zen Wisdom

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both. ”
Zen Wisdom

“To what shall I liken the world? Moonlight, reflected in dewdrops. Shaken from a crane's bill. ”
Dogen

“May all living beings,
All of my neighbors,
Be happy,
Be at peace,
Be comfortable.”
--Beop Jeong, Seon Master

“This spring, I am going to set off on the road again.
I have been staying here about as long as I am meant to,
so now I think it is time to find a new place to reside.
When ascetics stay in one place for a long time,
they begin to languish, stuck in a mire of sloth and inertia.
I want to embark on a new path, like an eternal beginner,
clumsily starting all over again from the beginning.”
--Beop Jeong, Seon Master

Right This Moment
“Do not let this moment escape.
Pay close attention, every second, with the thought,
"Now, I am living in this way."
Do not be distracted, do not think useless thoughts,
do not get lost in the words of others, but rather inspect things for yourself.
In the same way, do not get bound to my words here.
Go on your own path!
Do not spend this moment in vain.
These moments pile up and become an entire life.
Do not be to tense.
If you are, you lose your resiliency,
and then it is difficult to maintain consistency.
You have to be joyful in the living of life.
Everyday begin again.
Again and again, wipe yourself off and rise up from this tired old quagmire.”
--Beop Jeong, Seon Master