I had been retired three years when I took this photograph,
and that was ten years and one month ago.
I have no issues with how I have spent the time. Any of it.
It got me from there to here, and I am grateful for that.
Seeking Buddha. Seeking Jesus. Seeking God. Is seeking ourselves.
We are seeking ourselves.
We are the Buddha. We are Jesus. We are God.
Why do you balk at that?
Sit with it for a while
and you will see that it is so.
You can sit looking into a mirror,
or you can sit in the emptiness, stillness, silence.
As you sit,
you will eventually become quiet enough
for realizations to begin to arise, appear, emerge.
Of their own accord
out of the silence.
One realization will lead to another,
and somewhere in that process,
you will realize that Buddha, Jesus and God
all need to be fired
because if this is the best they can do
they have no excuse for continuing
to hold the positions they hold.
The world is a complete failure
and they have done nothing to prevent
that development.
It will come to you as a bolt of lightening
from a clear blue sky:
You could have done better!
What is it about that truth
that compels you to deny it?
What is it that you don't understand?
Sit with that question in the silence
and see what realizations it brings to mind.
What do you need to know that you don't know?
Why do you deny the truth of what you do know?
What are you afraid of acknowledging?
Is it that if you are Buddha, Jesus, God
you will be responsible for things you can now
ignore? That you will be "on the spot"?
And can no longer slide by with being "just you"?
The silence reveals all eventually
if you have what it takes to sit there
"waiting for the mud to settle
and the water to clear."
But then you will have to do something
with what you know,
and we do so relish lethargy and wishing
it were easier.
No?
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 