I was very fortunate to be born in the USA as it enabled me to have these misconversations with myself. No one else wanted to have them with me, and if I had lived else where I might have had friends and never known.
Asimov once said “The most important words in science are not ‘Eureka!’ but “That’s funny.’”
This group of protons comes together for a short period and declares itself “ME!,” and maybe reincarnation is right, like clock, the universe expands and contracts through all time and sometimes the same protons will again find each other.
Or maybe they will just google me…
only to find out I was not really here before…
just a singular event which would happen to anyone in the hould.
Grandfather and grandson sharing a day at a campground near Arcadia, Maine, about 1972, seems like along time ago.
Those of you familiar with zen may also know of Case VI of The Mumonkan where Shakka Buddha is addressing the arhats, bodhisatvas and the biksus at Grdhrakuta. He held up a flower, (only) Mahakasyapa smiled and Buddha says
“Without relying upon words and letters, beyond all teaching as a social transmission, I pass this all onto Mahakasyapa.” (Blyth translation).
Centuries later in China, Hui Neng, an illiterate kitchen worker was selected over hundreds of monks be the Sixth Patriarch of Chan, and below, to further emphasize that Buddha Mind is not transmitted from writings, he is ripping up a “holy text.”
I am sure you get the picture, to these people zen is not an intellectual experience to be learned from reading, but whether that is or is not, is not the concern of this post and is most likely beyond my ken.
But the other day I noticed this book in the bookstore, at 72 years old I rarely buy books anymore, and I treat the bookstore as a library , where I go in and read for awhile although I may buy a $3 sale book because I like the pictures.’
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was popular in the 1960s or 70s and in popular culture reinforced a common understanding that zen was simply about the getting to the essentials of something, and when people referred to the zen of this, there zen of that, the zen of businesses, the zen of buying a car, etc. they were not referring to buddhist zen but to the idea of a technical method for understanding the real essence of something to enable one to accomplish something.
Perhaps classifying zen as a technique for achieving something might be indicative of something else, its not my point, here, but rather above I present two century old examples suggesting that words may get in the way of “zen enlightenment,” Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a popular book said to get “to the essentials” and then here is a book which purports to be a guidebook to a book which is said to “get the essentials” of understanding something which for centuries has said that writing gets in the way of the understanding.
I like a quote said to be from Woodrow Wilson Guthrie—“Let me be the person to tell you something you already know.”
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I get curious about what people are doing, normally.
All the human behaviour which makes headlines is mostly abnormal, perhaps that is why is make headlines—“dog bites man, or man bites dog?”
I like to the shapes, the gestures, the lines the colors, the compositions in the arrangements of people doing “common normal everyday” things, these are the behaviors that make up culture, the institutions that enabled and continue to enable societies to survive.
However I am not so concerned with a record of William graduating from high school or Dorothy drinking champagne on the beach,
rather the visual distributions of people behaving like they do most of the time. We do not know who they are, and if we met them we would not recognize them from these images…
but it is this behaviour which generates the field of institutions (culture) necessary to make survival of human societies possible. Or maybe its just a joeke.
I was so much younger than I would have been, Filene’s Basement in the 1960s and 70s, three floors similar to Ross or Marshall’s, but Filenes’ was the one and only then, buying up last years left over stock, seconds, fire sales, and offering it for sale in their basement at huge discount prices. Every year they had Brooks Brothers clothes for men, JAMMED PACKED!
Stop in for a little piece of pie…
I don’t usually give out investment advice, but then again, credit goes to credit due, the Oracle of Omaha.
San Francisco somewhere in Chinatown on the down side of the hill probably heading towards Broadway,
Once again I am caught hoping for something beyond my ken or at least beyond by liege,
Around a corner, down a side street and a brass roof
Later afternoon,
You might think I am less confused than I was, say 35 years ago, but you might be wrong, I have never understand to forgive what made yesterday.
But even if I were a part of some whole I would still feel for my heart…
And it is still beating, one day I visited a house where a zen priest lived , he was practicing brush and mad this image, its a mu shin, 無心, read right to left and it looks like Daruma is chasing his mind, “Show me your mind Daruma!”
My Sunday late afternoon, some may recognize the format and no, I do not bother reading the editorials, but the information and methodology on investing is excellent… and I use “stocklookup.”
Waiting fore go dough, the train which seemed so slough while Jimi preformed “Hey Jough’…
Would you think of reincarnation as a possibility if the exact same “small particles” which separated after death could later come together exactly as they were before? Where were they before, and before that…or…
Perhaps 95% of them came “together again,” not a match?
Maybe its hear? Do you think I have the right to stand across the street and make this image of people? Who “owns” the copyright??? Do I have a right to take this information ,which by the way is not up to date, everything in the image has aged.
Or sumwear off BART…
I don’t want you to “know” too much about the things I see, just the experience; if this were evidence in a courtroom it would not count for much, but if this were evidence in an art room you can feel the experience.
This was the actual image made in the camera, I see it but I cannot put the question into words.
I see, I no, and still money speaks to most people, its a wonder we have people willing to give their lives to something on a higher order…
In Fremont we have fall days, its not just one constant temperature every day of the year.
fore ghettoing whom I was
somewhere on the stream of dreams,
my thoughts are not for you,
But bye writing this they are with you,
And I could not be more sad.
Could you believe I could know what this image was going to be when I “clicked the shutter? Or would it be easier to believe I thought if I clicked the shutter it might be something interesting?
Exiting Montgomery Street Station, San Francisco. NOTE: I got that whole line in initial caps.
I like the flowing of the leaves,
and the lines of the branches
Its their promise of something
Deep in my heart
that will not part.
“Do you think that I sleep in a hollow log?”
Sound like a strange linear a song, but you can hear in delta blues. I guess if you got know other place to sleep its better than no thing.
“Do you think that I sleep in a hollow log?”
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