Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

We need more help than we get. We can nod in agreement and then go back to doing the best we can. Here’s to you! Good luck with what you’re facing today! And tomorrow! Etc. A moment of silence for us all! And may we find there solace and direction, comfort and peace with the situation as a whole worldwide! May it be so! No?

There are people who think the Garden of Eden had latitude and longitude and evolution is a preposterous lie. I don’ t know how we all can hope to get together in more than a superficial and insignificant way and do anything in the service of a deeper good for human kind and the planet we live on. If people cannot think for themselves in assessing the truth of a situation they will live at the mercy of propaganda and indoctrination all their life long, doing what they are told to do, thinking what they are told to think, with no idea of in what direction the public good lies and what shape and form it should take, in the matter of global warming, for example, or public health with regard to vaccines and water purity. They will never know when they are being lied to and led along the way to voting for their own worst interests. They are swayed by the loudest voices to absurd conclusions and catastrophic outcomes, having no idea of what they are doing. What is the antidote to stupidity? The cure for ignorance and narrow mindedness? How do we get from where we are to where we need to be as a nation? As a word?

Where would you go to be alive? Fully alive? Completely removed from the things that keep you from being alive? Completely immersed in the things that bring you to life? What brings you to life? What prevents you from being fully alive?

Our work is to be fully alive. When we are fully alive, we are at the place Hindus call Satori. Translated into English as “Awakening,” “Enlightenment.” The Buddha called this state of being as “Peaceful abiding, here, now.” The Taoists would have said it is being “At one with the Tao.”

Our work is to help this state into being by separating ourselves from all the things that prevent it from being. What is keeping us from being fully alive? What can we do to move away from that into a life that is fully alive? How can we stop devoting ourselves to the things that are keeping us from being fully alive? And start devoting ourselves to that which is life itself?

I suggest that we understand silence/emptiness/stillness as the transition experience between “death” and LIFE (With “death” being the things that keep us from being fully alive). Start there, with silence/emptiness/stillness, and see what occurs to you, what realizations occur to you, and what changes you make in the way you are living that help you transition from “death” to LIFE.

Projection is a psychological process of seeing “out there” what is actually “in here.” It is easily recognized by its “footprint.” The script, “X is Y.” Expresses a projection in action. “You are beautiful.” “You are stupid.” “She/He/It/Them/They are (Fill in the blank) are all projections. Projections are about us and our perceptions. They are not about “them” and their indelible characteristics–and can be clarified by saying something on the order of “I think you are stupid/beautiful/etc.” Which we can follow up with internal questions including, “What is it about him/her/it that I find particularly attractive?” “Who does she/him/it remind me of?” etc.

Projections are waking dreams in that they are our way of calling our own attention to aspects of life that require our reflection leading us to new realizations about ourselves. It is our primary work to be engaged in seeing, hearing, understanding who we are and what we are to be about. Learning to recognize our mirrors and standing relentlessly before them are ever-present helps in seeing what’s what with us and doing what that calls for in terms of getting to the bottom of ourselves and seeing us as we are.

We cooperate with the time and place of our living by the way we respond to our environment, in tipping table servers say, or thanking the bus driver, or exhibiting a smoothly soothing attitude in the way we deal with the everyday affairs of life. Our attitude makes a difference. Transforming the world starts with the way we receive the world and the people who share it with us. A saddle blanket means a lot to the horse. And a kindness buffer means a lot to the day.

This is from 200 Zen Thoughts #3 On My Word Press Site:

106. Our intuition knows. We need to know how to know what our intuition knows–and how to apply it in the right way. We are back to the days of the Tao and knowing what the Tao know. They who knew in those days knew that the Tao knew how to do the right thing in the right way at the right time in the right place. That is what our intuition knows today. Our intuition reads the Tao and may as well BE the Tao for all the difference there is between our intuition and the Tao.

So. That puts us in the place of knowing what our intuition knows. The first step in that process is GETTING OUT OF THE WAY!!! This is critical. We aren’t actually interested in knowing what our intuition knows, We are interested in knowing how to get what we want. No one who ever lived aligned with the Tao was interested in having/getting their way. In having/getting what they wanted. We cannot want anything more than, beyond than, being one with the Tao. That is IT. That is All There Is! And that is what keeps us from knowing and living in sync with the Tao. But. Our intuition knows. And is waiting on us to have what it takes to know what it knows and to do what it knows we have to do. We are the kink in the hose.

Frasier Snowden said, “The only true philosophical question is Where do you draw the line?” Human beings invented line drawing, apparently without knowing what they were doing, raising questions the natural world had never considered. Establishing boundaries, creating borders. One of the Old Testament’s commandments that did not make the top ten is my personal fave: “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor’s landmark.” If that were honored it would transform everything worldwide instantly. And what would become of “Your kind isn’t welcome here!”? Who could say that without erasing someone’s landmark? Imposing their idea of who does and who doesn’t have a right to existence? Deporting immigrants because they are different is removing their landmark by imposing someone else’s landmark on them. It is telling them they cannot sit at the front of the bus. Or anywhere on the bus.

Democracy’s most discounted, dismissed, ignored regulation is, “No one is above the law.” Meaning, “Only outlaws are beyond the law!” When all it takes is enough money and status to be able to ignore all laws. Which is to say one thing and do another. And get by with it forever. Leaving us with the only viable option for making things as they should be: Move far away and visit seldom.

No?

We are waiting it out with the Trump reign, with no relief in sight. Oppression and absurdity take their toll, with half of the country cheering it on and the other half reeling under the weight of another day of the madness. Justice is meaningless with Trump in control and ICE on patrol, and voting on its way out the door. Oligarchs have never been so American, but the joke is on them in that after a certain point, money becomes boring, and rich and poor alike turn to sex, drugs and alcohol to take their minds off their lives.

The Buddha and the Christ turned emptiness around and recommended it highly as the source of mercy and grace at the heart of life and being, where we find the key to knowing and doing what is called for, when, where and how it is called for in each situation as it arises. Transforming what we want to happen by wanting what needs to happen here, now, moment by moment, and giving ourselves to seeing how things are and doing what needs to be done about it with right action at the right time, in the right way, and the right place. A new focus turns the light around and transforms the Trump blight into an opportunity for redemption and atonement through observation, reflection, realization and doing what the moment requires, moment by moment by moment all the way to the end of the line.

These are from 200 Zen Thoughts #3 on my WordPress Blog:

086. In living aligned with ourselves we will be living in sync with the Tao, Psyche, in doing the right thing in the right way at the right time in the right place. But. There is a catch. We will not be doing what we want to do. We will be doing what is called for, what needs to be done, in each situation as it arises, no matter what.

This is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “If you want to be my disciple, pick up your cross and follow me.” He was going to Golgotha to be crucified. To be Jesus’ disciple–really to be Jesus–is to die to ourselves and be born into the world of doing what needs to be done no matter what. We are sacrificing ourselves in the service of doing what is called for–in being what is called for–in each moment as it arises, in each situation as it comes to pass, throughout the rest of our lives.

085. We start small and get a feel for what is being asked of us. We don’t start by “selling all we have and giving the money to the poor” and go following Jesus begging on the streets until we die. But we could begin by giving 20% or 25% tips to the service people who wait our table at breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner. We could start by being generous and kind on a regular basis. And being sensitive to what is called for here, now and living in the service of that with the gifts that are ours to use. You know, like that.

We wake up each day to the adventure of seeing what the day has in store for us, wondering what awaits. Unless we are bound to a daily schedule, a monthly regimen, a sacred yearly routine we call “going to work.” In which case, we have to live around our obligations, duties, requirements, looking forward to sleeping late over the weekend, squeezing in what joys and delights we can manage after working hours and on holidays. Drudgery. Hum-drum. Tedium. Wondering how we can find life in our lives.

Escapes can be everywhere awaiting vision and imagination via Emptiness! Silence! Stillness! Drop into the quiet and see what meets us there after things settle down and the fairies have a chance at us to show us what we have been missing. The pixies and pucks know where the gold is hidden, and we only need give them the go-ahead to find the adventures awaiting on the far side of the everyday for those who are open to the game that is always afoot to the willing and the wondering. How long has it been?

We belong to the time and place of our living. We are not here on vacation. We have duties and obligations in line with bringing ourselves forth, being who we are and doing what is ours to do here, now in each/every situation as it arises.

What needs to be done? What needs us to do it? With the gifts that are ours from birth? The questions are guides offering purpose and direction. Inviting us to pause and consider, “Who are we? What are we to be about?”

The answers assist us in the unfolding of our life in this time, this place, here, now. Which is how we find our niche, our shtick, our Thing and do it for life, with all our heart, and mind, and soul, and strength.

How long has it been since we lived with our heart in what we were doing? How much longer will it be until we do? It only takes turning to the silence (emptiness, stillness) and asking, “What do you want me to want to do?” Then waiting for the mud to settle and the water to clear.

This is 058 of “200 Zen Thoughts #3 by Jim Dollar” on my WordPress Blog:

The power to be who we are lies latent within us all awaiting our waking up to the truth of our own being and living in ways that are aligned with the thrust of our own heart and soul. The thrust of our own heart and soul is the drift and flow, the Tao, of our Psyche/Self which is inherent within us all, calling us to wake up, see, hear, know and understand who we are and what is ours to do in the time and place of our living. This is what enlightenment, awakening, realization comes down to. We live to wake up to ourselves and bring ourselves forth in the life we are living as a blessing and a grace upon all who share the word with us for as long as we live. Amen! May it be so!