Sometimes I feel the universe at an unnatural level, or maybe I’m just projecting. Lately I’ve been attempting to distinguish between what is meant by existence and reality. There are probably many definitions, but the way I tend to distinguish them is to say that existence is based on presence or occurrence of something in a particular place or a situation and reality is more of a psychological state (I suppose I’m borrowing from Lacan here). In other words, that which exists is that which takes up space in the perceptible world or is subject to being experienced by the five senses: touch, smell, see, taste, and hear. In this sense, we could say that a book exists, my body exists, that awful smell coming from the sewer, and that dog I hear across the park all exist. Sight is a huge one here, because the things we are able to see with our own eyes make a big impression on us. Combine that sight with touch, and we’re talking about something with a lot of “existence”—especially in this definition of the term. That which is real, then, would be anything that we could say to be “feeling”—emotions, pain, etc. Love would be the most poignant example of something that is real. Love is real, it is undeniable, and it must be dealt with in your world.
It gets a little bit sticky here, because when I say something like, “God doesn’t exist,” I am by no means saying that God isn’t real. I’m saying that he doesn’t have an existence in the sense that I can go up and touch him. When, in the case of, say, a book, its existence is verifiable tactilely. In the same turn, it is possible to say that God is real. God exists as a psychological state that can be “felt.” Love is the same way. You can touch the manifestation of love (i.e. the object of your love as he/she is spooning with you), but there is no way to touch “love.” What does love look like? What does it smell like? What does it taste like? The problem with existence is that it changes for everybody, and this is because everybody’s existence is individual. You might think that reality is the same; however, the interesting thing about it is that because the structures of consciousness do not change from human to human, the real can “feel” more real than anything in existence. This is why love and religion are so powerful.
Most of the time when we experience something that is “real” (most prominently love and religion), what we are experiencing is the structures of consciousness taking over. In part, this is why it is such a wonderfully diverse experience: everything we experience that is associated with the experience is sent from the sensuous experience with the world (the existence) and it then passes through consciousness where it takes on hues that perhaps weren’t there technically, colors seem to pop up out of nowhere. Sunsets are suddenly more beautiful because they are experienced with this “other.” Lazy mornings in bed are all the more perfect. Church services are all the more meaningful. These are all forms of worship in the consciousness. Then, after consciousness, it is reflected into the sub-consciousness where it takes on even further signification. In a way, it’s like a game of telephone that the mind plays with itself. There’s the immediate significance of being there with the person, the sensuous experience. Then, there’s the conscious experience that amplifies (or diminishes) it. Next, there’s the sub-conscious chewing of it into a cud where the original is almost completely lost, but there is the lasting ball of something-or-other that leaves the delicious taste in our mouth. Finally, the reflected reflection is reflected once again into the spirit, where it is something that is felt in terms of the universal. This is where the experience that was so immediate becomes something beyond significant, it becomes a part of the fabric of who I am. It becomes me. That’s the power of the real in terms of the mind. It takes the immediate, the present, and anchors it in the self so that it is a kind of perpetual present, because I am that moment.
It is very tempting to set existence and reality at odds with one another. It is very tempting to say that you should attempt to be inside more than you should be inside the other, that you should trust one more than you should trust the other. On the one hand, the “present” of existence is entirely verifiable because of its sensuousness. I can pick up this coffee cup. I can hear my feet crunching on the trail as I walk. I can touch the bark of this tree. I can see the sun shining on the lake. I can smell the garlic and onions cooking in the pan. I can taste the flavor explosion in my mouth. These are the delicious experiences that make up my existence. The real, on the other hand, being nothing more than a psychological state, is unverifiable from a sensory perspective. But how many stories are there of people “feeling” god moving them in a particular direction, in the present, that changed their entire life? How many people experience the reality of present love that changes their life?
The thing about it all is that the mind is kind of in control of everything. All right, I should amend that statement and say that the brain is in control of everything. There is no way to fight the structures of the consciousness. We all have them. They are observable and have been observable for a very long time. In a way, you could call them a fact of life. Love is real. God is real. While they are still individually determined in terms of the “how” these things are experience, their possibility of reality is consistent. Perhaps that’s the difference: reality also contains the realm of possibility, whereas existence does not.
I have been told that I will never be able to love and that I have never been “in love.” From a personal perspective, I think this is perhaps a bit harsh to yours truly. As a matter of fact, I would say that love has been one of the driving forces of my entire existence; however, this is neither here nor there because love is a personal experience of the conscious experience of being with another person. What I mean to say is that perhaps why it might sometimes seem that my love is something other than love is because it exists in this realm of incredible possibility. Reality is not static. Reality is infused with the flavor of possibility, of nutty eternity, of mad infinity, and it only follows that love, at least in my experience of it, ought to be infused with the same flavors.
(For some reason I feel it necessary here to clarify that this eternity and infinity is not the same as “’til death do us part.” That is a lifetime. I’m talking about the possibilities of experience the reality of existence now.)
We’re combining the head the heart I suppose. We ARE both of them anyway.
It is entirely possible that, in this life I am leading, and with these views I’m holding, I will wind up cold and alone and stranded in solitude. I ask too much. I know.
It has also been my experience that there are certain things to compromise: the color of a room, when to go out, what to have for dinner, etc, etc, all the things that don’t actually matter in other words. When it comes to the state of the existence and the reality of possibility, it best not to compromise. Be now, with the understanding that rapid change is always possible. I never know what tomorrow brings. It is a blessing and curse. It is a consistent adventure, but it is also quite scary. My mom said to me yesterday, “Nothing you do surprises me anymore.” Across the world? Have fun. You did what? Wow. Who knows? In the infinite, eternal, present existence exists the reality of possibility.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Head and Heart
Some questions were never meant to be answered. “Why are we here?” springs to mind rapidly. That question is predicated on the assumption that you can know. You can’t know why, and it is pure arrogance to assume that you can know the answer to a question that goes so far back in history that there will never be any documentation. I should point out that this is from the technical, “proper” standpoint of “Why” as a question dealing with history. Any time you ask “Why,” you are asking a question of history. “Why did you do that?” Why did you do that thing that happened in the past? “Why are you going that?” What result are you hoping to gain from what you’re doing? “Why are you here?” What series of events led you to be where you are? Given that we can never properly know the scope and sequence of events that led to the present, it’s a preposterous question. Given the possibilities and probabilities of all that CAN happen in the future, it is a preposterous question. Questions like these can be interesting to explore, and they can lead to some fascinating self-discovery; however, it should also be noted that asking these questions is a little bit like trying to tear down K2 one rock at a time, single-handed. You could work for five consecutive lifetimes and not get any closer.
My personal preference, when it comes to these kinds of questions, is “What are you doing?” I love the present continuous tense. It is now, and it is perpetual. It forces you to take a look at what you are doing and to describe it as it is, honestly. It’s kind of like something I read about Buddhism (I think it was Zen, specifically) not too long ago:
“If you’re peeling potatoes, most of your major religions will try to remind you of everything external about where the potatoes came from and where you came from and where your praise ought to go. In Buddhism, just peel the potatoes.”
That’s what you’re doing. In a way, none of that other stuff matters. You see, where the potatoes came from doesn’t matter because the potatoes are there now. You bought them or grew them or whatever, and whatever the situation, they are there now. It doesn’t matter where the potatoes are going because you could trip and fall and send them flying into the trash can—where they would probably stay—and who can say it’s never happened to them? Don’t worry about it. Just peel the damned potatoes and appreciate being there at the time you’re doing it. Finished. It might make you smile when you realize what a distinct privilege it is to be there and alive and peeling those potatoes in that corner time in that corner of space in the world. Be where you are, not where you could be or where you were.
Well, I’ve managed to get pretty sidetracked by these abstractions here, but let’s get down to brass tacks: there are questions that aren’t meant to be answered and can never be answered (see above), and there are questions which are meant to be answered but can’t ever be answered, and there are questions are never meant to be answered but can, and there are questions which are meant to be answered and can be answered.
As it regards the second category of question, the biggest one is: what happens when we die? We are all meant to answer this question, but it will cost us our life, and can therefore never be answered in a technical sense. We can only answer it when we take the steps necessary to answer it, which ends in our inability to answer it. That’s kind of a bummer. All I’m going to say about the possibilities of an after-life is this: you can have faith and you can believe and I’m not going to stop you because you can never KNOW—and let’s just make double clear here that I’m talking about knowing in the head sense, not the heart sense.
Questions of the never meant to be answered but can be answered generally fall into the realm of tragedy. You should never know what a Holocaust looks like, but we’ve seen it. You aren’t supposed to know what it feels like to kill somebody, but you can. There’s something in this, an object petit a that I’m missing (or rather that could be developed), but here, now, we’re going to move on to…
Question that you are meant to know the answer to and questions that you can know the answer to. These are generally questions about overcoming fear. These are the questions where heart knowledge pushes one to brain knowledge. You feel something, but you don’t know it in your head. You feel it, but you haven’t experienced it. One of the greatest questions for this is: “What do you do when that which you want looks at you and says, ‘I want you, too’?”
You feel like you’re meant to know. You feel like you can know. The only thing standing in your way is the obstacle of the self, of the fear that is inherent in following feeling. Emotion is not knowledge. Experience is knowledge. Emotion is hope. The problem is that emotion is real. I AM this feeling. This is the inherent problem with love. We feel it. We experience it, but it never “exists”—in the sense that we can feel it physically (and don’t confuse feeling physically with the ephemeral touch of another… because that is sensory perception feeling and different). Love is Real. Love doesn’t exist. It’s kind of like God.
“What does love feel like?” is a question best left to poets who can write:
“Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.”
That’s what love “feels” like, but you can’t touch it.
The key here is freedom. Most people are actually afraid of their freedom. You are free to do anything. “Don’t tell people that!” You are. I’m not even sorry to say it. You are completely free to do whatever you want. Should you do whatever you want is a different question. Can you do whatever you want? Yes. That’s kind of a scary idea for people.
“What about my job? What about my career? What will people think? What do I do with X? What about this? What about that?”
Those are all valid questions, but they can all be dismissed with the doing. That’s freedom. Your job and your career? If it’s really what you want to do, then you’re fine. If not, then why are you there? Screw ‘em. Why punish yourself for the rest of your life because THEY expect you to be there. People will think what they will. They always have and they always will. Screw ‘em. Let ‘em think what they want, for they see only in part, but when in comes to YOUR life, YOU see in full. Your things and possessions, as almost every religion will tell you, are holding you back anyway. You can’t run away from your problems, let’s get that straight, but you can sure as hell get far enough away that they are not oppressing. Fear. Fear. Fear. Sometimes what it boils down to is a fear to truly live. How did those voices of experience get to where they are? Experience. Why take somebody’s word for it when you can KNOW. When you can BE it. When you can DO it. When you can GO. Respect is due to those whose theory matches their experience: they know in mind and soul. You failed? It’ll be hard. It might be the hardest thing you’ve ever experienced. But now you KNOW, head and heart.
My personal preference, when it comes to these kinds of questions, is “What are you doing?” I love the present continuous tense. It is now, and it is perpetual. It forces you to take a look at what you are doing and to describe it as it is, honestly. It’s kind of like something I read about Buddhism (I think it was Zen, specifically) not too long ago:
“If you’re peeling potatoes, most of your major religions will try to remind you of everything external about where the potatoes came from and where you came from and where your praise ought to go. In Buddhism, just peel the potatoes.”
That’s what you’re doing. In a way, none of that other stuff matters. You see, where the potatoes came from doesn’t matter because the potatoes are there now. You bought them or grew them or whatever, and whatever the situation, they are there now. It doesn’t matter where the potatoes are going because you could trip and fall and send them flying into the trash can—where they would probably stay—and who can say it’s never happened to them? Don’t worry about it. Just peel the damned potatoes and appreciate being there at the time you’re doing it. Finished. It might make you smile when you realize what a distinct privilege it is to be there and alive and peeling those potatoes in that corner time in that corner of space in the world. Be where you are, not where you could be or where you were.
Well, I’ve managed to get pretty sidetracked by these abstractions here, but let’s get down to brass tacks: there are questions that aren’t meant to be answered and can never be answered (see above), and there are questions which are meant to be answered but can’t ever be answered, and there are questions are never meant to be answered but can, and there are questions which are meant to be answered and can be answered.
As it regards the second category of question, the biggest one is: what happens when we die? We are all meant to answer this question, but it will cost us our life, and can therefore never be answered in a technical sense. We can only answer it when we take the steps necessary to answer it, which ends in our inability to answer it. That’s kind of a bummer. All I’m going to say about the possibilities of an after-life is this: you can have faith and you can believe and I’m not going to stop you because you can never KNOW—and let’s just make double clear here that I’m talking about knowing in the head sense, not the heart sense.
Questions of the never meant to be answered but can be answered generally fall into the realm of tragedy. You should never know what a Holocaust looks like, but we’ve seen it. You aren’t supposed to know what it feels like to kill somebody, but you can. There’s something in this, an object petit a that I’m missing (or rather that could be developed), but here, now, we’re going to move on to…
Question that you are meant to know the answer to and questions that you can know the answer to. These are generally questions about overcoming fear. These are the questions where heart knowledge pushes one to brain knowledge. You feel something, but you don’t know it in your head. You feel it, but you haven’t experienced it. One of the greatest questions for this is: “What do you do when that which you want looks at you and says, ‘I want you, too’?”
You feel like you’re meant to know. You feel like you can know. The only thing standing in your way is the obstacle of the self, of the fear that is inherent in following feeling. Emotion is not knowledge. Experience is knowledge. Emotion is hope. The problem is that emotion is real. I AM this feeling. This is the inherent problem with love. We feel it. We experience it, but it never “exists”—in the sense that we can feel it physically (and don’t confuse feeling physically with the ephemeral touch of another… because that is sensory perception feeling and different). Love is Real. Love doesn’t exist. It’s kind of like God.
“What does love feel like?” is a question best left to poets who can write:
“Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.”
That’s what love “feels” like, but you can’t touch it.
The key here is freedom. Most people are actually afraid of their freedom. You are free to do anything. “Don’t tell people that!” You are. I’m not even sorry to say it. You are completely free to do whatever you want. Should you do whatever you want is a different question. Can you do whatever you want? Yes. That’s kind of a scary idea for people.
“What about my job? What about my career? What will people think? What do I do with X? What about this? What about that?”
Those are all valid questions, but they can all be dismissed with the doing. That’s freedom. Your job and your career? If it’s really what you want to do, then you’re fine. If not, then why are you there? Screw ‘em. Why punish yourself for the rest of your life because THEY expect you to be there. People will think what they will. They always have and they always will. Screw ‘em. Let ‘em think what they want, for they see only in part, but when in comes to YOUR life, YOU see in full. Your things and possessions, as almost every religion will tell you, are holding you back anyway. You can’t run away from your problems, let’s get that straight, but you can sure as hell get far enough away that they are not oppressing. Fear. Fear. Fear. Sometimes what it boils down to is a fear to truly live. How did those voices of experience get to where they are? Experience. Why take somebody’s word for it when you can KNOW. When you can BE it. When you can DO it. When you can GO. Respect is due to those whose theory matches their experience: they know in mind and soul. You failed? It’ll be hard. It might be the hardest thing you’ve ever experienced. But now you KNOW, head and heart.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Importance of Being Tuesday
As a soft Korean rain falls outside my window, I reflect on my day. You see, today is Tuesday. Normally, I suppose Tuesday doesn’t mean all that much. To be sure, Tuesday generally, simply, hangs around as one of those extra appendage days of the week. It certainly doesn’t have the reproachful aura of a Monday. It certainly isn’t somewhat positive like that Hump-Day Wednesday business. Thursday has a strange aura because it is so close to the weekend, and if you went to a college where there were classes on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and different classes on Tuesday/Thursday, you would probably even say that Thursday was the start of the weekend. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are too obvious to even touch, which leaves Tuesday in a really awkward place.
One regular day (“what kind of days are regular” is the obvious question to ask here) just over one month ago on a Monday, I was walking to work and pondering this exact question of what each day of the week “means.” What I came up with, in brief, is explained about, and I decided to do something about that Tuesday business.
I am by nature a very spiritual person. To be sure, my grandfather, my father, and at least one uncle are ordained ministers in Church—mainly Southern Baptist (or just Baptist). At any rate, you can probably imagine that I spent many, many days of my formative years in and around dealing with spirituality—although from a purely technical standpoint it is important to say here that what I was actually working through was Religion. At any rate, I have a lot of history with Spirit.
Recently, as a matter of fact, I finished reading Saint Augustine’s Confessions, and I highly recommend it to anyone with the slightest bit of interest in matters of religion and faith and spirituality. Just before Augustine, I finished Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and the world of spirituality was swimming around my head. Finally, as I am currently residing in Asia, I have been investigating the eastern traditions of spirituality, too—a focused reading of the Tao Teh Ching and a long study of a book called May All Beings Be Happy by a Seon Buddhist monk named Beop Jeong. With all of these various traditions of spirit running around my head, I decided to take Tuesday and see what happens, what kind of importance it gains, when we invest it with some spirituality. Being an at least fairly diligent ontologist, the question was: how?
That’s when it struck me that there is something that really combines everything. There is something out there that has history and roots in every major religion. There is something out there that goes beyond religion and touches on humanity itself. There is a spiritual experience out there that every individual experiences every day whether they realize it or not. Have you guessed what it is?
Food. Nourishment. Fasting.
I have long had a very intimate relationship with food. I was once asked what my three favorite foods were, and my response was:
1) Super fresh. As in, I just got these from my garden out back. I grew them, and now I’m going to eat them. This food is intensely good to me. I just had some shellfish at a beach in South Korea where they had basically just pulled everything out of the water that morning. It… was… incredible.
2) Handmade/homemade. It might take a little bit longer to make, and I can guarantee you it will, but I will always prefer something that has been loved for a few extra minutes to something instant. The last time I had Mexican food was in Korea and we couldn’t find any tortillas, so I made them from scratch (I haven’t had the opportunity to it in a while, but my skills were still there), and the mouth can taste love.
3) Anything with good people and good drinks. It is entirely possible to eat anything, including food that might taste horrible, but if you are with the right people and the right bottle of wine, the beauty and spirituality of the experience come out. The other night I had the opportunity to make dinner and share a bottle of wine with somebody I care about, and there is almost nothing else that I would rather eat than those moments spent together.
So, I already have a spiritual association with food. Add to this the fact that I am incredibly adventurous with food and you’ll see how deep the spirituality goes. “Oh, people eat this, huh? Well, gimme some, let’s see.”
The other day I was sitting with a friend of mine at the shellfish feast I mentioned earlier, and she said to me something like, “I really prefer to have food I know,” when it struck me that I would almost PREFER to have food that I have never eaten before. If you know you’ll like something, there is no adventure. If you don’t know, you can turn it into a spiritual adventure.
Finally, the reality of the human experience is such that without food or nourishment for a long period of time, we would die. Food is necessary. You could almost say that we are food. I am by no means advocating that old saying, “You are what you eat”—although there may be a nugget of truth in there—what I am saying is that we exist in the perpetual need for food. That need IS who we are.
And so, Tuesday’s are fasting days. It is too difficult to fast on the weekends. I am a fairly weak person when it comes to food, and I very often find myself out with some of my very favorite people every weekend enjoying number three mentioned above. I know myself at least well enough to know that attempting to fast on the weekend was right out. Monday already has enough going for it—or against it as… as you will. Wednesdays I go into town and play the guitar and get to be with my people. Thursday was up in the air. Friday… well, Friday might as well be the weekend, eh? Essentially, the deciding factor was eenie-meenie-minie-moe, catch a tiger by its toe, if it hollers make him pay, fifty dollars every day, my momma told me to pick the very best one and you are it. Tuesday it was.
I have been fasting every Tuesday for a month with absolutely no religious intent. I fully understand that this is perhaps nothing new, and it is certainly not new from a religious standpoint. However, I have already been able (even in the relatively short time of this experiment) to observe some interesting things. First, I always appreciate food much more on Wednesday than I did on Monday. To look down at the bowls of soup and rice before me at family meal on Wednesday MEANS more than it did on Monday, and I’m working on a way to make it mean the same thing both days. Second, I’m not really all that hungry on Wednesday morning. I’ve become very aware of the fact of the habit of eating, and how the body gets used to doing eating at certain times. In this place and at this time, I am not much of a breakfast guy, and my body has gotten used to only having a cup of coffee, so the need isn’t really there when I wake up. Third, it is simply a will power workout. When you realize that you CAN say no to food for an entire day, you realize that you can do other things. Your brain is shocked into the realization that there is nothing to stop it from making an entirely new decision in its way of being. At least… that’s how I experience it.
One regular day (“what kind of days are regular” is the obvious question to ask here) just over one month ago on a Monday, I was walking to work and pondering this exact question of what each day of the week “means.” What I came up with, in brief, is explained about, and I decided to do something about that Tuesday business.
I am by nature a very spiritual person. To be sure, my grandfather, my father, and at least one uncle are ordained ministers in Church—mainly Southern Baptist (or just Baptist). At any rate, you can probably imagine that I spent many, many days of my formative years in and around dealing with spirituality—although from a purely technical standpoint it is important to say here that what I was actually working through was Religion. At any rate, I have a lot of history with Spirit.
Recently, as a matter of fact, I finished reading Saint Augustine’s Confessions, and I highly recommend it to anyone with the slightest bit of interest in matters of religion and faith and spirituality. Just before Augustine, I finished Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and the world of spirituality was swimming around my head. Finally, as I am currently residing in Asia, I have been investigating the eastern traditions of spirituality, too—a focused reading of the Tao Teh Ching and a long study of a book called May All Beings Be Happy by a Seon Buddhist monk named Beop Jeong. With all of these various traditions of spirit running around my head, I decided to take Tuesday and see what happens, what kind of importance it gains, when we invest it with some spirituality. Being an at least fairly diligent ontologist, the question was: how?
That’s when it struck me that there is something that really combines everything. There is something out there that has history and roots in every major religion. There is something out there that goes beyond religion and touches on humanity itself. There is a spiritual experience out there that every individual experiences every day whether they realize it or not. Have you guessed what it is?
Food. Nourishment. Fasting.
I have long had a very intimate relationship with food. I was once asked what my three favorite foods were, and my response was:
1) Super fresh. As in, I just got these from my garden out back. I grew them, and now I’m going to eat them. This food is intensely good to me. I just had some shellfish at a beach in South Korea where they had basically just pulled everything out of the water that morning. It… was… incredible.
2) Handmade/homemade. It might take a little bit longer to make, and I can guarantee you it will, but I will always prefer something that has been loved for a few extra minutes to something instant. The last time I had Mexican food was in Korea and we couldn’t find any tortillas, so I made them from scratch (I haven’t had the opportunity to it in a while, but my skills were still there), and the mouth can taste love.
3) Anything with good people and good drinks. It is entirely possible to eat anything, including food that might taste horrible, but if you are with the right people and the right bottle of wine, the beauty and spirituality of the experience come out. The other night I had the opportunity to make dinner and share a bottle of wine with somebody I care about, and there is almost nothing else that I would rather eat than those moments spent together.
So, I already have a spiritual association with food. Add to this the fact that I am incredibly adventurous with food and you’ll see how deep the spirituality goes. “Oh, people eat this, huh? Well, gimme some, let’s see.”
The other day I was sitting with a friend of mine at the shellfish feast I mentioned earlier, and she said to me something like, “I really prefer to have food I know,” when it struck me that I would almost PREFER to have food that I have never eaten before. If you know you’ll like something, there is no adventure. If you don’t know, you can turn it into a spiritual adventure.
Finally, the reality of the human experience is such that without food or nourishment for a long period of time, we would die. Food is necessary. You could almost say that we are food. I am by no means advocating that old saying, “You are what you eat”—although there may be a nugget of truth in there—what I am saying is that we exist in the perpetual need for food. That need IS who we are.
And so, Tuesday’s are fasting days. It is too difficult to fast on the weekends. I am a fairly weak person when it comes to food, and I very often find myself out with some of my very favorite people every weekend enjoying number three mentioned above. I know myself at least well enough to know that attempting to fast on the weekend was right out. Monday already has enough going for it—or against it as… as you will. Wednesdays I go into town and play the guitar and get to be with my people. Thursday was up in the air. Friday… well, Friday might as well be the weekend, eh? Essentially, the deciding factor was eenie-meenie-minie-moe, catch a tiger by its toe, if it hollers make him pay, fifty dollars every day, my momma told me to pick the very best one and you are it. Tuesday it was.
I have been fasting every Tuesday for a month with absolutely no religious intent. I fully understand that this is perhaps nothing new, and it is certainly not new from a religious standpoint. However, I have already been able (even in the relatively short time of this experiment) to observe some interesting things. First, I always appreciate food much more on Wednesday than I did on Monday. To look down at the bowls of soup and rice before me at family meal on Wednesday MEANS more than it did on Monday, and I’m working on a way to make it mean the same thing both days. Second, I’m not really all that hungry on Wednesday morning. I’ve become very aware of the fact of the habit of eating, and how the body gets used to doing eating at certain times. In this place and at this time, I am not much of a breakfast guy, and my body has gotten used to only having a cup of coffee, so the need isn’t really there when I wake up. Third, it is simply a will power workout. When you realize that you CAN say no to food for an entire day, you realize that you can do other things. Your brain is shocked into the realization that there is nothing to stop it from making an entirely new decision in its way of being. At least… that’s how I experience it.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Beyond Romanticism
One of the most difficult subjects to understand that I have ever encountered is Love. There is of course the argument that love is not meant to be understood, and there is some validity to this argument: as a feeling, it’s only requirement is to be. It is meant to be felt, not thought about.
But what manner of emotion is it?
What is it about love that makes us do the things we do?
How can love make us feel so intensely?
Is there a right time for love?
Can you force love?
What happens when you want somebody so much, and yet it seems as though the world is conspiring against you?
Is love personal? Or universal?
Can we love? Or is that just a plurality of loves?
It has been my experience that “I love.” What I mean by this is that the emotion I feel for somebody is my own. The emotion that somebody feels for me is his or her emotion. The most common manifestation of this principle is how people tell each other that they are in love:
“I love you.”
And the response is usually:
“I love you, too.”
When “too” is used in this position at the end of the sentence, it means “also.” In other words, what is really being said here is that “I love you,” and “I also love you,” but, in this situation, “you” is the same thing. In other words, what these two hypothetical people are saying is that they love their relationship, not the other person specifically. What are the psychological ramifications of this? Are there any?
It seems to me that it is fairly common to fall in love with the relationship. The person can be anybody—proven by the commonplace that we oftentimes come out of a relationship, fall into another relationship, and look down to find ourselves in the same relationship with somebody else. It is in this situation that the love is not for the person, but it is for the psychological fulfillment that comes from having somebody with you.
Perhaps I am simply being pedantic. What kind of importance can a little world like “too” have in reality?
Yes, that was most definitely a rhetorical question. I will leave it up to you start having this conversation with your loved one:
Look them in the eyes before and during your saying, “I love you.”
And as their response, have them say, while looking at you, “and I love you.”
Change as necessary.
It could be an interesting experiment. Maybe nothing will change, but I know, from personal experience, that is sounds and feels different. The “why” it feels different doesn’t matter, the “what” that feels different is a matter of language—and I have been over the fact (many, many times in this blog) that we ARE language, and the how of what changes is the personalization of the salutation (you know that this person is talking about you specifically).
The changeover to personalization is huge. What happens when you start lauding the relationship over the person is that the other person is put in charge of being able to take the love away. What I mean by this is, “YOU can end OUR love.” When love exists in the form of a fantasy-type relationship (in that there is no way to combine two people into one—sex is the greatest illusion of this), the love sits outside of the individual on this very precarious pedestal. When love is personal, I make the decisions regarding it. If “I” decide that I love “you” no matter what you do, then I grant all. In other words, “you” can do things that might make “me” reconsider our relationship, but because this love is mine and mine alone (which, by the way, is simply a recognition of the fact from both a theoretical/philosophical and physiological standpoint that we are all individuals and “we” is simply a plurality that is easily divisible), I make all the final decisions about who takes it away.
The easiest argument to make against this position is: what kind of love is it where there is no trust, or where there are no boundaries? If you think about the question long enough you’ll see first that when there are no boundaries, this love is boundless. I am not sure, but I would imagine that in this love where there are no boundaries and all is honesty and truthfulness and faithfulness to the truth of love in the individual, there would probably be less “infidelity” than one would imagine. Who wants forbidden fruit that isn’t forbidden? As far as trust goes, it is simplified. The only trust I need to have is that you love me right now. The trust is taken out of time and placed where it ought to be: in the present. Traditionally, you are trusting your partner to make decisions that don’t negatively affect the future of your relationship. In this new love you are trusting only in the fact, the reality, that your partner loves you right now. There is no future beyond if there is no love now. Two people focused on their present individual loves seems to me (scary and unconventional as it might seem) to be “the love of the future.”
Everybody loves a little romance. It is nice to feel wanted. It is nice to have those little gestures that say, “I care about you.” It just plain feels nice. The problem with romance is that it is traditionally concerned with the future. How many couples would complain that all the romance went out of their relationship after they got married? In this new love, there would be room for romance because it would be day-to-day courtship. Every day would be a glorious affirmation of my love for that person, simply because I have him or her right now.
Ah, yes, the older generation is probably sneering at my youthful naiveté, and why not, they’ve got life experience on their side, and that teaches them that they need to plan for the future; however, they’ve also never tried living an entire life this way. I think that there is discipline in living your life in the present. I believe it takes a great deal of will and strength to wake up every day and joyously affirm that I love this person. I don’t even know if it’s possible. Maybe it’s not, but why isn’t it worth trying? Is it too free?
“They're scared.”
“They're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to them.”
“All we represent to them is somebody who needs a haircut.”
“Oh, no. What you represent to them...is freedom.”
“Freedom's what it's all about.”
“Oh yeah, that's right. That's what it's all about. But talking about it and being it...that's two different things. It's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Don't tell anybody that they're not free, because they'll get busy killing and maiming to prove to you that they are. They're going to talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's going to scare them.”
“Well, it don't make them running scared.”
“It makes them dangerous.”
But what manner of emotion is it?
What is it about love that makes us do the things we do?
How can love make us feel so intensely?
Is there a right time for love?
Can you force love?
What happens when you want somebody so much, and yet it seems as though the world is conspiring against you?
Is love personal? Or universal?
Can we love? Or is that just a plurality of loves?
It has been my experience that “I love.” What I mean by this is that the emotion I feel for somebody is my own. The emotion that somebody feels for me is his or her emotion. The most common manifestation of this principle is how people tell each other that they are in love:
“I love you.”
And the response is usually:
“I love you, too.”
When “too” is used in this position at the end of the sentence, it means “also.” In other words, what is really being said here is that “I love you,” and “I also love you,” but, in this situation, “you” is the same thing. In other words, what these two hypothetical people are saying is that they love their relationship, not the other person specifically. What are the psychological ramifications of this? Are there any?
It seems to me that it is fairly common to fall in love with the relationship. The person can be anybody—proven by the commonplace that we oftentimes come out of a relationship, fall into another relationship, and look down to find ourselves in the same relationship with somebody else. It is in this situation that the love is not for the person, but it is for the psychological fulfillment that comes from having somebody with you.
Perhaps I am simply being pedantic. What kind of importance can a little world like “too” have in reality?
Yes, that was most definitely a rhetorical question. I will leave it up to you start having this conversation with your loved one:
Look them in the eyes before and during your saying, “I love you.”
And as their response, have them say, while looking at you, “and I love you.”
Change as necessary.
It could be an interesting experiment. Maybe nothing will change, but I know, from personal experience, that is sounds and feels different. The “why” it feels different doesn’t matter, the “what” that feels different is a matter of language—and I have been over the fact (many, many times in this blog) that we ARE language, and the how of what changes is the personalization of the salutation (you know that this person is talking about you specifically).
The changeover to personalization is huge. What happens when you start lauding the relationship over the person is that the other person is put in charge of being able to take the love away. What I mean by this is, “YOU can end OUR love.” When love exists in the form of a fantasy-type relationship (in that there is no way to combine two people into one—sex is the greatest illusion of this), the love sits outside of the individual on this very precarious pedestal. When love is personal, I make the decisions regarding it. If “I” decide that I love “you” no matter what you do, then I grant all. In other words, “you” can do things that might make “me” reconsider our relationship, but because this love is mine and mine alone (which, by the way, is simply a recognition of the fact from both a theoretical/philosophical and physiological standpoint that we are all individuals and “we” is simply a plurality that is easily divisible), I make all the final decisions about who takes it away.
The easiest argument to make against this position is: what kind of love is it where there is no trust, or where there are no boundaries? If you think about the question long enough you’ll see first that when there are no boundaries, this love is boundless. I am not sure, but I would imagine that in this love where there are no boundaries and all is honesty and truthfulness and faithfulness to the truth of love in the individual, there would probably be less “infidelity” than one would imagine. Who wants forbidden fruit that isn’t forbidden? As far as trust goes, it is simplified. The only trust I need to have is that you love me right now. The trust is taken out of time and placed where it ought to be: in the present. Traditionally, you are trusting your partner to make decisions that don’t negatively affect the future of your relationship. In this new love you are trusting only in the fact, the reality, that your partner loves you right now. There is no future beyond if there is no love now. Two people focused on their present individual loves seems to me (scary and unconventional as it might seem) to be “the love of the future.”
Everybody loves a little romance. It is nice to feel wanted. It is nice to have those little gestures that say, “I care about you.” It just plain feels nice. The problem with romance is that it is traditionally concerned with the future. How many couples would complain that all the romance went out of their relationship after they got married? In this new love, there would be room for romance because it would be day-to-day courtship. Every day would be a glorious affirmation of my love for that person, simply because I have him or her right now.
Ah, yes, the older generation is probably sneering at my youthful naiveté, and why not, they’ve got life experience on their side, and that teaches them that they need to plan for the future; however, they’ve also never tried living an entire life this way. I think that there is discipline in living your life in the present. I believe it takes a great deal of will and strength to wake up every day and joyously affirm that I love this person. I don’t even know if it’s possible. Maybe it’s not, but why isn’t it worth trying? Is it too free?
“They're scared.”
“They're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to them.”
“All we represent to them is somebody who needs a haircut.”
“Oh, no. What you represent to them...is freedom.”
“Freedom's what it's all about.”
“Oh yeah, that's right. That's what it's all about. But talking about it and being it...that's two different things. It's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Don't tell anybody that they're not free, because they'll get busy killing and maiming to prove to you that they are. They're going to talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's going to scare them.”
“Well, it don't make them running scared.”
“It makes them dangerous.”
Saturday, May 16, 2009
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
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
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
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?
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?
Friday, May 1, 2009
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
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
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