an incurably abstract intellect
"So when these states of mind arise - restlessness, desire, fear, wanting, worry, agitation, or judgment, if only it were somehow different than it is, "I don't like this" - what to do with them? Sit in the very middle of them and study them. Note how they feel in the body. There's desire. Desire runs much of our world. Pay attention to see what it's like, how do you feel it in the body, what is it like in the mind. Give clear and careful mindful attention to it, without getting caught - not suppressing it, or trying to get it to go away, and not getting involved. Just noting, "desire, desire, wanting," until you come to see its nature and you come to some balance where you're not so caught up in it or afraid of it.
The same for anger. Most of us are either afraid of it and stuff it down or we act it out. See if when judgment or anger arises you can just sit and note, "angry, furious, judging," whatever it is, and feel it. Heat, movement, energy in the body, certain contractions, different qualities of mind, see if it is possible to experience that energy and learn from it. See how it changes, what it does to you, what its flavor is, its effect on you, and then maybe you can learn not to be quite so caught in it. It doesn't mean it won't still come, heaven knows, but your relationship to it can be a wiser one. Do it again and again - with fear, with all the kinds of mental states that come up, especially the difficult ones - until you can sit and allow them to come and go like cows or sheep in the meadow.
What if they're very strong, what if they're too difficult, they're really, really hard, what should you do? You're so restless you just can't stand it, what to do? Die! Be the first to ever die of restlessness. Just say, "Fine, take me." Surrender to it and let it kill you. And what you discover if you do that is that in a way you die; what dies is your resistance to it, and that you just carry on. You discover this powerful capacity we have, if you work with it, to open to all of our experience and find some balance in it."
- Jack Kornfield
Householder Series
it's training."
- Shunryu Suzuki
A Zen master lay dying. His monks had all gathered around his bed, from the most senior to the most novice monk. The senior monk leaned over to ask the dying master if he had any final words of advice for his monks. The old master slowly opened his eyes and in a weak voice whispered. "Tell them Truth is like a river."
The senior monk passed this bit of wisdom in turn to the monk next to him, and it circulated around the room. When the words reached the youngest monk he asked, "What does he mean. 'Truth is like a river'?"
The question was passed back around the room to the senior monk who leaned over the bed and asked, "Master, what do you mean, 'Truth is like a river'?"
Slowly the master opened his eyes and in a weak voice whispered, "O.K., Truth is not like a river."
Do it regularly every day.
Then forget what day of the week it is,
and do this regularly in company for a week.
Then forget what country you are in,
and practice doing it in company for a week,
and then do them together for a week
with as few breaks as possible.
Follow these by forgetting how to add
or to subtract.
It makes no difference.
You can change them around after a week.
Both will later help you to forget how to count.
Forget how to count,
starting with your own age,
starting with how to count backwards,
starting with even numbers,
with roman numerals,
starting with fractions,
with the old calendar,
going on to the alphabet,
forgetting it all until everything
is continuous and whole again."
- W. S. Merwin
"I am becoming aware that with words ambiguous feelings enter into my life. It almost seems as if it is impossible to speak and not sin . . . . Many people ask me to speak, but nobody as yet has invited me for silence. Still, I realize that the more I speak, the more I will need silence to remain faithful to what I say. People expect too much from speaking, too little from silence."
- Henri J.M. Nouwen
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand."
- Kurt Vonnegut
Cat's Cradle
"As I read the Book of Genesis, God didn't give Adam and Eve a whole planet.
He gave them a manageable piece of property, for the sake of discussion let's say 200 acres.
I suggest to you Adams and Eves that you set as your goals the putting of some small part of the planet into something like safe and sane and decent order.
There's a lot of cleaning up to do.
There's a lot of rebuilding to do, both spiritual and physical.
And, again, there's going to be a lot of happiness. Don't forget to notice!
What painters and sculptors and writers do, incidentally, is put very small properties indeed into good order, as best they can.
A painter thinks, "I can't fix the whole planet, but I can at least make this square of canvas what it ought to be.'' And a sculptor thinks the same about a lump of clay or marble. A writer thinks the same about a piece of paper, conventionally eleven inches long and eight and a half inches wide.
We're talking about something less than 200 acres, aren't we?"
- Kurt Vonnegut
"Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them - never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?"
- C. S. Lewis
"Let us not forget that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote inference."
- Sir Arthur Eddington
"Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience."
- Albert Einstein
I just read in this self-help book
I took from the trash can
in the ladies' room at the
House of Pancakes.
Will, by G. Gordon Liddy,
Master of the Watergate caper.
My new guru.
Who, when holding his hand
over a lit candle, said,
"The trick is not to mind it."
I have set as my goal
to get so strong
I could peel onions
all day long
and never shed one tear -
I want my skin to thicken
so if I'm panic-stricken
when post-nuke day gets here
I won't even feel the fear
as I watch me and the world disappear.
The trick is not to mind it -
if you're looking for peace
this is where you'll find it.
For life
is like that candle flame
and we
are like Gordon Liddy's hand
hovering
over it.
And it hurts
like hell,
but the trick
is not
to mind it."
- Jane Wagner
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
"Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room.
Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around."
- Stephen King
"But I like the inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.
- Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
"Somewhere in this process, you will come face-to-face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you just never noticed."
What To Do With Your Mind
"One of the most difficult things to learn is that mindfulness is not dependent on any emotional or mental state. We have certain images of meditation. Meditation is something done in quiet caves by tranquil people who move slowly. Those are training conditions. They are set up to foster concentration and to learn the skill of mindfulness. Once you have learned that skill, however, you can dispense with the training restrictions, and you should. You don't need to move at a snail's pace to be mindful. You don't even need to be calm. You can be mindful while solving problems in intensive calculus. You can be mindful in the middle of a football scrimmage. You can even be mindful in the midst of a raging fury."
Mindfulness Versus Concentration
- Henepola Gunaratana
Mindfulness in Plain English
and/or
Mindfulness in Plain English
The man fashioned a rope from a vine, stalked closer to the sorcerer, then threw the vine around him and tied him. The sorcerer awoke furious at the man, demanding to be immediately let go. The man would not let him go, not only because he wanted the knowledge of a shaman, but also out of fear for his life. However, the man knew that by universal law he could have the sorcerer grant him one wish and then he would let him go. The man sheepishly told the sorcerer that he would let him go only after his wish was granted. The sorcerer, realizing that there was no other way, told the man that he would have his wish. As the man thought about what he would wish for, the sorcerer grew angrier and angrier, demanding that the man make up his mind. The man sat down and thought long and hard about his wish, which only succeeded in infuriating the sorcerer even more.
The man, being a very smart man, did not want to wish for money or riches, for he knew that these would only lead to evil. He did not want to wish for food, shelter, happiness, or health, for these things he already possessed. He then asked the sorcerer for a demon, that which is possessed by all shamans, that would do his bidding for the rest of his life and beyond. Now the sorcerer, also being very smart, said, "I will give you a demon, but under one condition. You must keep it busy all of the time, in sleep and while awake; otherwise it will consume you. It will remove you from the ways of the spirit and forever imprison you in the flesh." It did not take the man long to demand the demon, and the sorcerer nodded his head in agreement. In a flash he was gone, and the man was left standing alone.
As he walked back home, a small gargoyle-like demon appeared before him and said, "Master, I am your demon." The man was taken by surprise, for he thought that the sorcerer had lied about granting him a demon. The man told the demon to follow him home. Once at home, he began to feel tired from his walk and wanted to lie down. Remembering what the sorcerer said about keeping the demon busy, he told the demon to go out and build him a beautiful new house, high up on the hill that overlooked the forest valley where he now lived. The demon smiled and in a flash was gone. The man smiled and lay down to rest. Just as he closed his eyes, there was a flash of light and the demon stood before him. Angry that his rest had been interrupted, he told the demon not to bother him and to get back to the task of building his new home. The demon only smiled at him and said, "Master, it is done."
The man was deeply shocked, for he could not believe the demon could build a house so quickly. He moved to the door and looked out, only to see a beautiful house high on the hill. The demon now demanded that the man give him something to do, and began to grow larger and more fearsome. The man, now frightened at the demon's ability and size, told the demon to furnish the new house, plant beautiful gardens and vineyards, and prepare a feast for all of his friends. The demon again smiled and said, "Master, it is done. Now give me more to do." Now the demon grew larger and more fearsome, the man more frightened and desperate. Each time the man gave the demon something to do the demon replied, "It is done," and grew larger and more menacing. Finally, out of desperation, the man told the demon to heal his sick and dying friend, but again the demon told him, "It is done."
The man was terrified and shaken now. The demon was growing larger and more fearsome with each passing moment. The man could feel his spirit becoming slowly enveloped by the demon. His humanity was being stripped away from him, and his head swooned with the relentless bantering of the demon's voice. There was no escape. No matter how difficult the task, the demon said, "It is done." In desperation, the man dived out the window and began running through the woods, until finally he lost the demon. Still running in a blind panic, he ran right into a shaman who had been walking along the path. The man fell to his knees and told the shaman of his plight, of his demon, and of his torment. The shaman smiled down at the man lovingly and said, "Grandson, we all have our demons." With that, he plucked a hair from his curly head and handed it to the man, saying, "Give the demon this hair and tell him to straighten it."
The man looked at the curled hair and exclaimed, "Straighten this hair! My god, you do not know this demon! He can build homes in moments, plan feasts, and heal the sick!" The shaman waved his hand in a gesture of silence and repeated, "Give him the hair and tell him to straighten it." Before the man could utter another word, the shaman disappeared in a flash of light. The man was alone again, trembling with fear, shocked with utter disbelief. He could not see what good a curled hair would do in the fight against such a powerful demon. Faced with no other choice, however, he began to walk back to his home. Suddenly the demon appeared before him on the path, larger and more fearsome than he had ever been before. In what sounded like a thousand screaming voices, the demon demanded the man give him something to do. The man stood trembling and frightened, unable to move or even think. His mind was being consumed by the very presence of the demon.
With his last bit of spiritual strength the man handed the demon the hair and asked him to straighten it. The demon grabbed the hair from the man, smiled at him in an arrogant way, and pulled the hair straight, then smiled at the man triumphantly. Then, as the demon let the hair go, it curled again. The demon subsequently shrunk in size. The demon pulled the hair straight again and let it go, only to have it curl. The demon now grew furious and tried again and again, but to no avail. He could not straighten the hair, and now had shrunk down to his original size. The demon's sheepish manner returned. Upon seeing this, the man grabbed the hair from the demon and told him to carry him home and put him to bed. As soon as the man was in bed, the demon demanded that the man give him something to do. With a broad smile on his face, the man handed the demon the hair and told him to straighten it, and with that fell into a deep and much needed sleep.
[You see] the hair is a symbol of that final element of meditation. It is the various 'hairs' of man that make religions appear different, but looking deep they are all the same, for they all possess some form of meditation. You know these hairs well, but call them by countless other names. They are the chants, the songs, the rituals, the dogmas, the ceremonies, the drumming, and the countless other religious artifacts that people cling to like crutches. When people see these things, when they become involved in the rituals, their uncontrolled demons are quieted and the spiritual self emerges. The farther man moves toward the flesh and the confines of the physical mind, the more elaborate hairs he needs."
- Tom Brown, Jr.
Awakening Spirits
I consider the capacity for it terrifying."
- Kurt Vonnegut
One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
"Tell me you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your Purpose in Life, anyway?"
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU" (The Chinese ideogram for NO-THING).
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese."
- Camden Benares
Zen Without Zen Masters
I can't read Borges
"It is my belief that this is a world battle in the sense which we do not appreciate. There have been some who have held that the earthly conflict is but a reflection of the war in heaven. What if it be reflected infinitely, if it penetrate to the uttermost depths of creation? And if a speck of dust be a cosmos - the universe - of revolving worlds? There may be battles between creatures that no microscope shall ever discover."
- Arthur Machen
The Pool in the Graveyard
- Greville MacDonald
at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity.
some understanding and, at times, acts of
courage
but all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn't
have too much.
it is like a large animal deep in sleep and
almost nothing can awaken it.
when activated it's best at brutality,
selfishness, unjust judgments, murder.
what can we do with it, this Humanity?
nothing.
avoid the thing as much as possible.
treat it as you would anything poisonous, vicious
and mindless.
but be careful. it has enacted laws to protect
itself from you.
it can kill you without cause.
and to escape it you must be subtle.
few escape.
it's up to you to figure a plan.
I have met nobody who has escaped.
I have met some of the great and
famous but they have not escaped
for they are only great and famous within
Humanity.
I have not escaped
but I have not failed in trying again and
again.
before my death I hope to obtain my
life.
- Charles Bukowski
"There is no release. Not to write is a release. I do not write. I am writing, I wrote, I will have written. I will have been reading this.
The beginning of the book is the book of the beginning, and the beginning of books. What was etched in clay, sealed in an envelope etched in clay, the doubling. The habitual environment of writing, the world of writing, the doubling of Being fractured by virtue of the margins.
There are no margins within the machine. Pure process is nothing; the star-plasma-machine is ideal continuity. One is surrounded by the continuous.
To step from the beginning, to step from this beginning, is to analyze transforms, the language and symbolic of transforms, the continuities carried across nodes and vectors, objects and arrows - the inescapable designations of processes, becomings, inhabitations of time. But mathesis is the heart of technology; here, everything disappears, brought back only by the friction of the real."
- Alan Sondheim
The Beginning of the Book
Why am I afraid to live, I who love life
and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of earth and sea and sky?
Why am I afraid to love, I who love?
Why am I afraid, I who am not afraid?
Why must I pretend to scorn in order to pity?
Why must I hide myself in self-contempt in order to understand?
Why must I be so ashamed of my strength, so proud of my weakness?
Why must I live in a cage like a criminal, defying and hating, I who love peace and friendship?
Why was I born without a skin? Oh God, that I must wear armor in order to touch or be touched.
- Eugene O'Neill
"We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is. Someone, our parents, teachers, analysts, hypnotizes us to see the world and construe it in the right way. These others label the world, attach names and give voices to the beings and events in it, so that thereafter, we cannot read the world in any other language or hear it saying other things to us. The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we become undeaf, unblind and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meanings in the new book of our existence. Be careful in your choice of hypnotists."
- Sidney Jourard
Draw a circle a hundred feet round.
Inside the circle are
300 things nobody understands, and maybe
nobody's ever seen.
How many can you find?"
- Lew Welch
When something is right, something else is wrong.
Knowledge and ignorance depend on each other.
It has been like this since the beginning.
How could it be otherwise now?
Wanting to toss out one and hold onto the other
makes for a ridiculous comedy.
You must still deal with everything ever-changing,
even when you say it's wonderful."
- Ryokan
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you'll sweep petals from the floor.
Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say "I'm old,"
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are."
- Han Shan
"What the Buddha said is that you are a verb, not a noun.
What you're doing is what is real, not who's doing it.
For example, only walking is real, not the walker or the path.
The more attached you are to yourself - you being a thing - the more trouble you get into."
- Mas Kodani
"Don't strive for
some special state of mind.
There is no special state of mind.
Thoughts, feelings, and emotions come and go in the mind. If you play with them, or prod them, or develop them, they hang on. They start to branch into other thoughts. That's what the mind does when it's not being attended to.
Most of the time, most of the people we meet are at best only partially engaged in the moment. And often we find people (or ourselves) lost in thought or reverie - barely here at all.
How often we miss the moment simply because we're not here. We tune out much of the world - and much of ourselves as well, and generally we don't even realize how removed we are from what is going on."
- Steve Hagen
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