the natural curve
"How is it that I usually seem to be in my body? Partially, because perceiving things from eye-level is the most efficient way of making use of the information coming in from our predominant sense of sight. Blind people feel they are in their fingertips when reading braille. Dogs probably are more inclined to feel they are inside their noses. Exactly where we are depends on how we are perceiving.
It also concerns what we are able to control. It is the ability to control events that gives rise to a sense of self. The technology of virtual reality mimics this. Virtual reality is a computer-generated world in which you can move about as though it were real. The computer detects your movements so that the scenery changes realistically as you walk around and move your head and body. Special gloves that you wear detect the movements of your hands, so that the virtual hand appears to be your hand. And, to you, it seems real. It could be blue, green, or pitted with glowing nodules but it will still seem like you. Virtual reality gives you an illusory sense of control, so it creates a you that feels real, when it is no more than information being processed by a computer. The position where I seems to be depends on the viewpoint that takes in the information and the parts of the world that can be directly controlled."
- Susan Blackmore
Dying to Live
mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being
- K.W. Brown & R.M. Ryan
Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester, New York
National Center for BioTechnology Information
"A cultivated mind is one that is able to maintain some high degree of Mindfulness. In such a state of mind, one is more able to be fully in-touch with one's experience and oneself. Such a person is, hence, much more likely to experience simple joys, the way a child might. In other words, that guy is like a kid. Things around him, especially things that adults tend to take for granted, tend to be amusing and interesting to him. That simple joy often rubs off on other people. That's why people tend to think of him as being humorous."
- Meng
The two sides are muddy, the middle is depthless."
- Raga Gunjari
we generate our interesting content for the amusement of others, without which there would be no domains; we're all existentialists within the abyss of absent protocols, cool artifacts of our _doing_
manufacturing content such as this, she said, I'm luring you for my amu- sement, the further seduction of readers and writers, annihilation- jun- kies riding into oblivion, the last cool leaders of our _done-to_ tribe
you'll leave us, she continued, if we're not smart enough, clever enough, lured enough, facing the void we pour ourselves into, night-time junkies of the fiber-optic vectors, we'll tell you how we've come _undone_
she said who's to say I'm not a he, luring you in, you always assume I'm heterosexed, living the rim, filling the hole; it's queer desire anyway she said, cool riders into the _done_ dawn beyond life and far-out death
the gone world we're done for, the cool world, we're lost-gen, holy wri- ters straddling wires for the first millennia, down in drawn dusk and doom, up in all-night wryter-rider highs riding our own cool minds
drawn _down_ and sunbeam sunbeam sunbeam
forgotten, like this post, not even a curlicue, but a _nuance_ to the day.
It's something that requires an extension, she said, just as the element of narrative I have created with "she said" produces already a setting, podium or city square, coffeehouse or apartment, where such discussions or presentations occur. When the text becomes an occurrence, it presents a degree of inertia. It holds or spans a diegetic.
It catches you up, she added, just like this.
Alan Sondheim Poems
Into the Twenty-First Century
- Emily Dickinson
would be sure to believe none of it, or at most only half of it."
- Buddhadasa Bhikkhu
which is to say we might not get up
from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast ...
Let's say we're at the front -
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
but we'll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind -
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die."
- Nazim Hikmet
- D.H. Lawrence
There are twenty difficult things which are hard for human beings:
1. It is hard to practice charity when one is poor.
2. It is hard to study the Way when occupying a position of great authority.
3. It is hard to surrender life at the approach of inevitable death.
4. It is hard to get an opportunity of reading the sutras.
5. It is hard to be born directly into Buddhist surroundings.
6. It is hard to bear lust and desire without yielding to them.
7. It is hard to see something attractive without desiring it.
8. It is hard to bear insult without making an angry reply.
9. It is hard to have power and not pay regard to it.
10. It is hard to come in contact with things and yet remain unaffected by them.
11. It is hard to study widely and investigate everything thoroughly.
12. It is hard to overcome selfishness and sloth.
13. It is hard to avoid making light without having studied the Way enough.
14. It is hard to keep the mind evenly balanced.
15. It is hard to refrain from defining things as being something or not being something.
16. It is hard to come into contact with clear perception of the Way.
17. It is hard to perceive one's own nature and through such perception to study the Way.
18. It is hard to help others towards Enlightenment according to their various needs.
19. It is hard to see the end of the Way without being moved.
20. It is hard to discard successfully the shackles that bind us to the wheel of life and death as opportunities present themselves.
- attributed to the Buddha
If possible, you should help others. If that is not possible,
at least you should do no harm."
- the Dalai Lama
"It is a highly significant, though generally neglected, fact that those creations of the human mind which have borne preeminently the stamp of originality and greatness, have not come from within the region of consciousness. They have come from beyond consciousness, knocking at its door for admittance: they have flowed into it, sometimes slowly as if by seepage, but often with a burst of overwhelming power."
- G.N.M. Tyrell
"What is creativity? People think it's just another psychological process - but there is a sense of profound mystery; unpredictability, and what philosopher G.N.M. Tyrell calls the burst of overwhelming power from some source beyond the individual, beyond consciousness, that is a key to true creativity. It's an experience beyond the boundaries of normal consciousness.
Why is it that true creativity seems to appear from beyond the threshold of consciousness, as if the mind is suddenly tuned in to some inconceivable other - dimensional broadcasting system unheard by ordinary people? Perhaps it is because in the act of creation, our mind physically reorganizes itself in a new way that is impossible to predict beforehand.
Our brain/mind is what physicists call an open system - a structure through which is flowing or passing a constant stream of matter and energy, such as blood, oxygen, nutrients, thoughts, and information. This influx of energy and matter causes the brain to vibrate or fluctuate. Ordinarily, in normal states of consciousness, our brain is able to absorb these fluctuations and still maintain its structure or internal organization, that is, our ego/reality continues to make sense.
However, as more and more energy flows through the system (as the creative thinker absorbs more and more information, has more and more thoughts, feels more and more emotion), the fluctuations increase, until they are too turbulent to be absorbed by the system. The structure becomes increasingly unstable until it reaches a critical point, like a complex machine thrashing around on the verge of flying apart. Finally, the turbulence grows so great that the system can no longer maintain its organization or structure. At this point, it has the potential to move in an almost infinite number of unpredictable directions.
Now, even a small fluctuation can be sufficient to push the system over the edge. When that happens, the entire system seems to shudder and fall into chaos. Things stop making sense. In some cases the system may be destroyed. Or it may survive by emerging from this chaos into a new structure, a new pattern, a new organization that is characterized by a higher level of coherence - a structure that can pass more energy through it without turbulence. Things now make sense again, but in a whole new way we could never have imagined. The system has taken a leap into the unknown and escaped into a higher order.
It has had a creative insight. This happens not just for creative individuals, but for everyone who experiences personal growth. It's not an accident that major upsets, personal crises, an experience of chaos, and a disintegrating ego can lead to the most growth.
Since the breakthrough to a higher order and higher coherence can happen only when the existing structure - the conscious mind, or our normal state of consciousness - breaks down (into what the creative thinker often experiences as a tumult of ideas, teeming images, confusion, uncertainty, disorder), then the reorganization at a higher level must by definition appear out of chaos or disorder, must appear to emerge from beyond consciousness. Research has proven that the reorganization that takes place after collapse is not related in any causal or linear way with the structure that existed before. There's no way it could have been predicted from prior conditions. In that sense, it's a true quantum leap, a death that leads to a rebirth.
This, of course, explains why, traditionally, creative individuals have been thought to be a little nuts. A number of recent psychological studies have concluded that there is a very strong connection between creativity and mental turmoil or disorder. Seen from another angle, this means that creative people are not afraid to open themselves up to new ideas and experiences, not afraid to let go of their ego and their sense of what makes sense, and plunge into the unknown. Creative people have faith: they stake their lives on the belief that as they plunge ahead into the unknown, they will emerge with a higher sense, a new vision.
People tend to be reluctant to go through the fluctuations, and destabilization necessary to escape to a higher order, preferring to retain their usual rigid reality, determined to hang on to their present structure. It's a natural tendency to resist the unknown and to want to protect the established structure/ego.
Not only do we hang on to our psychopathology, but we tend to evade personal growth because it brings fear, awe, feelings of weakness and inadequacy. We resist, we deny our best side, our talents, our finest impulses, our highest potentialities, our creativeness."
- Abraham Maslow
But I did enjoy the one that started with my child asking,
while looking at the calendar, "Is today an odd or evil day?"
an accolade
"Be greeted psychoneurotics!
For you see sensitivity in the insensitivity of the world, uncertainty among the world's certainties.
For you often feel others as you feel yourselves.
For you feel the anxiety of the world, and its bottomless narrowness and self-assurance.
For your phobia of washing your hands from the dirt of the world, for your fear of being locked in the world's limitations. for your fear of the absurdity of existence.
For your subtlety in not telling others what you see in them.
For your awkwardness in dealing with practical things, and for your practicalness in dealing with unknown things, for your transcendental realism and lack of everyday realism,
for your exclusiveness and fear of losing close friends, for your creativity and ecstasy,
for your maladjustment to that "which is" and adjustment to that which "ought to be", for your great but unutilized abilities.
For the belated appreciation of the real value of your greatness which never allows the appreciation of the greatness of those who will come after you.
For your being treated instead of treating others, for your heavenly power being forever pushed down by brutal force; for that which is prescient, unsaid, infinite in you.
For the loneliness and strangeness of your ways. Be greeted!"
- Kazimierz Dabrowski
Psychoneurosis is not an illness
"The propensity for changing one's internal environment and the ability to influence positively the external environment indicate the capacity of the individual to develop.
Almost as a rule, these factors are related to increased mental excitability, depressions, dissatisfaction with oneself, feelings of inferiority and guilt, states of anxiety, inhibitions, and ambivalences - all symptoms which the psychiatrist tends to label psychoneurotic.
Given a definition of mental health as the development of the personality, we can say that all individuals who present active development in the direction of a higher level of personality (including most psychoneurotic patients) are mentally healthy."
- Kazimierz Dabrowski
Positive Disintegration
Dabrowski on advanced development
But what of that? We must have perseverance and,
above all, confidence in ourselves.
We must believe that we are gifted for something,
and that this something, at whatever cost, must be attained."
- Marie Curie
of the impermanence of the world.
This realization is not achieved
by some temporary method of contemplation.
The truth is not some method you can take up.
You stand alone,
raw and dying under heaven and earth.
What do you make of it?
Don't wait for the teachings from others,
the words of the scriptures,
the principles of enlightenment.
We are born in the morning
and die in the evening.
The man who you saw yesterday is no longer
with us today.
These are facts we see with our own eyes
and hear with our own ears.
But do we really notice it?
Do we let it touch us in the midst
of being bored, or tired, or incapable?
We were born this morning,
we will die this evening:
how will we give life to this moment?
To realize our potential
we only need arouse and invite
that reality,
to notice and appreciate it."
- Sensei Bonnie Myotai Treace
We are only here right now."
- Natalie Goldberg
The old monk sat by the side of the road. With his eyes closed, his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap, he sat. In deep meditation, he sat.
Suddenly his zazen was interrupted by the harsh and demanding voice of a samurai warrior. "Old man! Teach me about heaven and hell!"
At first, as though he had not heard, there was no perceptible response from the monk. But gradually he began to open his eyes, the faintest hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth as the samurai stood there, waiting impatiently, growing more and more agitated with each passing second.
"You wish to know the secrets of heaven and hell?" replied the monk at last. "You who are so unkempt. You whose hands and feet are covered with dirt. You whose hair is uncombed, whose breath is foul, whose sword is all rusty and neglected. You who are ugly and whose mother dresses you funny. You would ask me of heaven and hell?"
The samurai uttered a vile curse. He drew his sword and raised it high above his head. His face turned to crimson and the veins on his neck stood out in bold relief as he prepared to sever the monk's head from its shoulders.
"That is hell," said the old monk gently, just as the sword began its descent.
In that fraction of a second, the samurai was overcome with amazement, awe, compassion and love for this gentle being who had dared to risk his very life to give him such a teaching. He stopped his sword in mid-flight and his eyes filled with grateful tears.
"And that," said the monk, "is heaven."
"I often hear others speak of the sea. But what exactly is it?"
The great fish replied, "Your environment is the sea.
The sea is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
You live in the sea, and belong to the sea.
The sea surrounds you, just like your body."
making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."
- Charles Mingus
"In the innocent heart nothing can be repeated. When the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said we can never step in the same river twice, he also knew that we can never meet the same person twice, that to say the word "bread" can never do justice to its shape and texture, to the unique moment when this particular piece is softened with butter as we prepare to put it in our mouth. Rumi delights in this freshness.
within the inner courts of God.
A grace like new clothes thrown across the garden,
free medicine for everybody.
The trees in their prayer, the birds in praise.
We cannot predict how this awareness of mystery will reawaken in us, or in what form. Long ago I lived with one of my first loves and her young children, Seth and Chani. When the children were three and five years old the Ringling Brothers circus came to town. As a treat I bought tickets for us, ringside seats, right in the center, two rows back.
The children liked the clowns and the tigers. Most of the other acts - the high wire, the jugglers, the contortionists, the trained horses - were too far away, too small to seem especially remarkable to a young child's eyes.
But then the elephants came out, with their feathered plumes and sequined riders. In formation, they circled the ring twice, coming right near us. Then they stopped while the ringmaster talked. All at once the big elephant just in front of us began to pee; a huge flood cascaded to the sand below, making a giant puddle. The children's eyes grew wide. And then the elephant began to poo. Large, bowling ball-sized spheres thudded to the ground, one at a time, plop, plop, thwack. Each was observed with increasing wonder and excitement.
When we got home, and for weeks after that, the children talked about going to the circus. And what they told and recounted over and over was the story of the elephant. That was the most amazing circus act of all.
It is life itself that is astonishing, each unique moment. Zen honors this mystery for its own sake - each thing in its turn. As Kodo Rishi teaches, "You don't eat in order to poo, you don't poo in order to make manure." With the same eyes of wisdom, we don't practice meditation or prayer to make some special reality. Eating, walking, speaking, seeing, breathing, defecating, each is amazing in itself.
This innocent heart, our Buddha Nature, the Child of the Spirit, the Holy One within is never degraded nor lost. It is never born and never dies. To see in this way is to see, as the Tao says, "with eyes unclouded by longing." When we awaken this innocent heart, we find our true home. At ease, we celebrate the simple marvels of every day.
Zen Master Dogen reminds us: "The life of one day is enough to rejoice. Even though you live for just one day, if you can be awakened, that one day is vastly superior to one endless life of sleep."
If this day in the lifetime of a hundred years is lost, will you ever touch it with your hands again?"
- Jack Kornfield
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
"So many saints say that when you are ripe and ready, you will realize. Their words may be true, but they are of little use. There must be a way out, independent of ripening which needs time, of sadhana [spiritual practice] which needs effort.
Don't call it a way; it is more a kind of skill. It is not even that. Stay open and quiet, that is all. What you seek is so near you that there is no place for a way."
- Sri Nisargadatta
"We must look on everything in this world as time. Each thing stands in unimpeded relation just as each moment stands unimpeded. Therefore, (from the standpoint of time) the desire for enlightenment arises spontaneously; (from the standpoint of mind) time arises with the same mind.
This applies also to training and enlightenment. Thus we see by entering within: the self is time itself."
- Dogen
"Itself cannot be named or said. The whole method is knowing how to fly."
- T'ien T'ung
Some Zen sects are very physical in their approach to reaching enlightenment.
Example: Master asks student, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
Student stops to think. Master hits the student hard against the head with his hand...
THWACK!
Student experiences enlightenment.
that were closest to hand to pin it down lest it fly away again.
And now it has died of these arid words and shakes and flaps in them -
and I hardly know any more when I look at it
how I could ever have felt so happy when I caught this bird."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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