Finding our way to The Way one situation at a time. I don't know how great it will be, but I expect it will be interesting, and I look forward to it going on past all reason because wonder is just that way. Are you coming or not?
Farm Road Fog 05/11/2012 Oil Paint Rendered — Yadkin River Valley, Dinkins Bottom, Yadkin County, North Carolina
I have no idea where we get our filters,
the perception sieve that tilts us
imperceptibly toward the way we see/interpret/comprehend/
understand/judge/determine/take things to be,
and away from different/better/worse ways of doing
the same thing.
We look and see something different
from the way others look at the same thing.
A lot has to do with what we have at stake
in seeing things as we do.
The old "reasonable people can look at the facts
and draw different conclusions,"
suggests to me that the facts mean something
different to the "reasonable people"
doing the looking.
And that they see things based on the implications
their looking has for them and their lives.
Conservative people and liberal people
tend to see things as conservatives and liberals
and not as "reasonable people."
And so on through all of the categories of people
in the encyclopedia of categories.
Our perceptions are biased in favor of our perspective.
What we see when we look flows
from how we look at what we see.
We do not come objective and unbiased into the day,
any day.
We have a lifetime of experiences and preferences
leading us into all of our encounters
through all of the situations and circumstances
that arise in a day.
In the time left for living.
We see who we are,
who we have become
over the course of being alive.
We are going to be consistent
with our point of view
which has been developed
through the impact of life upon us
and the impact of the way we have reacted to it
from the beginning.
We cannot get outside of our point of view
to see things "as they are" ever.
However, we can be responsible for understanding
that how we look determines what we see--
and stop talking about "how things are,"
and start talking about "how we see things,"
and why we see things "this way and not that way"
and how "that is the way things are."
Catawba Heron 06-06-2013 Oil Paint Rendered — Catawba River Below the Wylie Dam, York County, South Carolina
I am taken by the flow of life
through the circumstances
and situations of each day--
and how so few people seem to be
aware of it.
My sister-in-law, for instance
(You know the one I mean),
sees every moment as an opportunity
to assert her way upon whatever
is happening,
with no clue regarding
how she might assist what is happening
toward its own purposes and goals.
The choice waits to be chosen
by all.
Few know, or care,
that a choice even is to be made.
In each moment of every situation
as it arises
there is the possibility
of assisting the flow of the situation,
or diverting it,
or dismissing it altogether
and creating a disturbance
of varying degrees of seriousness
from mild to chaotic
to heaving madness beyond anyone's capacity
to redeem,
reclaim,
or salvage.
Every situation is at the mercy
of those participating
in its oversight,
stewardship,
management.
Which brings to mind the old saw,
"While it takes a minimum of two
to have a fight,
one person can keep a bad situation
from deteriorating completely
into all out war
that is totally out of hand."
What this means for us
is the importance of sensing
the movement,
the flow,
of each situation as it arises
(Or that we step into),
and making the conscious choice
to assist/maintain the momentum
of the moment toward an outcome
that is a natural extension of the here/now,
or stop the drift of the Tao
and redirect things to a different outcome,
regardless of the impact upon
the situation as a whole.
Our situations and circumstances
are all we ever have to work with.
We tilt things to better or worse
by the way we size things up
and respond to them
one situation/circumstance at a time.
CSX 5283 11/07/2013 Oil Paint Rendered — Waxhaw, North Carolina
There is what we say, "Yes," to,
and there is what we say "No," to,
and that's it.
Our life is lived out between "Yes," and "No."
You might think we would be better
at being clear about,
and dedicated to,
"Yes" being actually and absolutely "Yes!"
and "No" being actually and absolutely "No!",
but no.
We say "Yes," when we know we should say, "No,"
and we say "No," when things would be much better
if we had said, "Yes,"
and live with things being much worse
that they would be
if we had been honest with ourselves
from the start.
Why are we not honest with ourselves?
Why is not our "Yes," YES! ?
And why is not our "No," NO! ?
Spoken out of our own integrity and sincerity! ?
The simple act of making that the way it is--
letting our "Yes," be YES!
and our "No," be NO!
would transform our life
and the world,
like that (snaps fingers).
Tunnel View 03/24/2006 Oil Paint Rendered — Yosemite National Park, California
Believe anything you want--
it doesn't matter what--
as long as you do what needs to be done,
when, where and how it needs to be done,
in each situation as it arises
without an eye on what's in it for you.
How often do those who
"Believe in God the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
and in HIS only son, Jesus Christ our Lord,
who was..."
do that?
Sparks Lane Panorama 02-28-2014 Oil Paint Rendered — Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Townsend, Tennessee
People talk all the time using words
to say what they mean.
Words are useless when it comes to meaning.
Meaning is among the most personal of things.
Coffee doesn't mean to you what it means to me,
and vice versa around the room.
Nothing does.
Meaning is ours alone.
And we cannot say what we mean.
Everybody says, "I love you,"
but what do they mean?
Ask them to show you.
And you show them.
How would you demonstrate love?
Listening is my favorite way.
I'll show you I love you
by listening to you.
Attending you.
Seeing you.
"I SEE YOU!"--
Jack Nicholson's line to Helen Hunt
in 1997's "As Good As It Gets"
is as good as any movie line delivered.
Nailed it.
Love is seeing, hearing, knowing.
Without being intentional about it,
being natural about it,
spontaneous about it,
not even thinking about it,
just seeing, hearing, knowing...
Being with whomever we are with
in loving ways
entails seeing, hearing, knowing.
None of which can be explained,
defined, told, said.
"The Tao that can be said, told, explained
is not the eternal Tao."
"Those who know don't say.
Those who say, don't know."
The best talking is showing not saying.
Show kindness.
Show compassion.
Show allegiance.
Show people what you mean.
Ask them to show you what they mean.
Revolutionize communication!
Beaver Pond 04/29/2010 Oil Paint Rendered — Bass Lake Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina
Zen is what happened
when Taoism met Buddhism.
The essence of Zen
is the essence of Taoism.
Their differences are insignificant
compared to their essentials.
For instance, the place of zazen
to either is "Take it or leave it,
it is up to you.
If you like it, fine,
if you don't like it, fine."
As far as enlightenment goes,
"To seek it is not to find it,
and to find it is to realize
there is nothing to it.
You still have to mow the lawn
and wash the dishes,
and pay the bills."
Enlightenment is seeing,
and seeing is seeing what needs to be done
and doing it,
in each situation as it arises.
It is not getting, owning, possessing,
having,
any advantage, gain, benefit, position, etc."
There are no billionaire/millionaire/wealthy
Zen masters or Taoist sages.
Zen and Taoism are not the way
to anything other
than the way of seeing/doing,
with no interest in the outcome
beyond seeing/doing
what needs to be done about it
with no interest in anything
beyond seeing/doing here/now.
"For what?" you wonder?
For nothing beyond
the joy of doing it
and the satisfaction of having done it--
and the opportunity
to see/do it again,
here/now!
"Why would anyone bother?"
There are no reasons to bother
with Taoism/Zen/Enlightenment!
If you do not care to see/do, fine.
If you care to see/do, fine.
What do you care to do?
Both Taoism and Zen fell on hard times
when they became popular
and their monasteries ceased to be places
older people could go
practice seeing/doing
and enjoying the community
of each others' company,
and became places where well-to-do parents
sent their children to become enlightened
masters/sages
because "It would be good for them."
Sitting zazen then became a way of
instilling discipline
and passing time--
in other words, "busy work"
to keep the kids still and quiet.
And everything went to hell
at the same time political fortunes fell,
and persecution of Taoist/Zen monks
destroyed much of the foundation
of the practices,
and gunpowder disappeared the value
of the martial arts
(Another way of passing the time,
instilling discipline),
and that was pretty much that.
All of which is to say
"A fish is only a fish,
and when you make too much of it,
you lose the whole point of it."
(Robert Ruark).
Enlightenment is a fish
by another name.
View From Grandfather Mountain 07 10/13/2011 Oil Paint Rendered — Grandfather Mountain State Park, Banner Elk, North Carolina
If we keep asking the same questions,
we will keep getting the same answers.
Pay attention to the questions you ask,
noting how many remain the same over time.
Things are the way they are
because we are only allowed to ask
the same questions.
Every institution/structure limits the questions
that can be asked about the institution/structure.
Start by asking what cannot be asked.
"What questions are not permitted?"
"What questions make people uncomfortable here?"
Follow that up with
"What assumptions/presumptions
do these questions expose,
maintain,
keep in place?"
We aren't going to begin to ask better questions
until we begin to ask different questions.
"Who says so?"
and "How do they know?"
Are two of my faves.
Follow-up questions are crucial.
The two rules for question asking are:
Ask all of the questions that beg to be asked.
Say all of the things that cry out to be said
(Saying those things will initiate additional questions,
and the two rules together will take you
straight to the bottom of what's what).
Two Swans Swimming Oil Paint Rendered — Trumpeter Swans, Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina
The worst thing that ever happened to you
can be the best thing that ever happened to you.
The best thing that ever happened to you
can be the worst thing that ever happened to you.
Depending, of course, upon how you respond
to what happens to you.
How we respond to what happens to us,
for good or for ill,
determines the outcome
and the outcome beyond the outcome,
which is, of course, karma.
We create karma by the way we respond
to what happens to us.
It becomes good or ill
by the way we respond to it,
by what we do with it,
by how we apply it to our life
and live our life around it,
flowing from it
into all the world.
How we respond to what happens to us
brings us forth,
exhibits/expresses who we are,
shapes and forms our identity
for ever.
We produce the future
by the way we live with the present.
We produce ourselves
by the way we are with the moment,
this moment,
right here,
right now.
This moment,
right here,
right now,
is an extension of the last moment,
and of all the moments
before the last moment--
and they all determine,
or strongly influence,
the next moment,
the one that is already taking shape
as I type these words
and as you read them.
Karma.
Unfolding before our eyes.
Our gift to ourselves
and all the world.
December Shoreline 01 Detail 12/14/2012 — Bur-Mill Park, Lake Brandt Greenway, Greensboro, North Carolina
What is the difference between
having faith in something,
and having an opinion about something?
Between having strong faith,
and having a strong opinion?
Knowing in your heart you are right
would apply to both.
Having deep conviction
would apply to both.
Hearing it from someone else
(including the Bible)
would apply to faith,
but perhaps not to opinion
(We crank out those babies
on our own all the time).
I'm saying that,
in my opinion,
or, I take it on faith,
that the line is so faint
it cannot be seen,
and has to be assumed,
opinioned,
or faithed,
into place.
Faith is an opinion
that takes itself seriously.
Beaufort Fall 04 11/14/2017 Oil Paint Rendered — Beaufort, South Carolina
I ditched theology five years into the ministry,
on the occasion of Ruth Sample's death,
and spent the next 35.5 years making sense of things
without theology.
The de-theologizing of religion was/is incredibly simple.
Start with the basics:
Your fingerprints.
Your fingerprints,
and your iris cones,
and your original nature
and your innate virtues/traits/characteristics
(Here we will take a break.
"Virtues" have nothing to do with "humility,
charity, chasity, temperance, patience
and diligence," or with "benevolence, righteousness,
propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness,"
and have everything to do with the things you
do naturally and well--
your virtues are the things you are good at,
as in "The virtues of this mare are her smooth gait
and her gentle way with riders,"--
and together form a mixture which set you apart from
everyone else who has ever, or ever will, live)
and all of the other things which shape your identity
which make you, you,
and different from all other sentient beings.
You/I/We are the ground/foundation
of religion sans theology.
The deeper we get into ourselves,
the deeper there is to yet go,
and we discover, as Heraclitus did,
that “traveling on every path,
(we) will not find the boundaries
of soul by going;
so deep is its measure.”
Aye, but, we are a lazy bunch,
stiff-necked and hard-headed,
and do not care a bit for the work
of uncovering ourselves
and doing what is called for
in aligning ourselves with ourselves
and taking up the work of balance and harmony,
so that things mesh smoothly within and without,
making the peace
in becoming one with oursselves,
others
and circumstances.
We prefer the easy way,
the course of least resistance,
and settle for doing it as it has always been done,
so that lethargy and shortcuts call the shots,
and we get by with as little as possible,
while complaining and whining about
that being too much.
We don't have what it takes to bring ourselves forth,
be who we are,
and do what is ours to do
in each situation as it arises.
We betray our calling
and exchange our destiny
for a life of drugs/sex/alcohol/money/
diversion/distraction/denial
in the wasteland of eternal discontent.
To do otherwise requires us to change our mind
about what is important
when we get to the end of our rope,
and do what is necessary
to reclaim our birthright
and live in accord with our original nature
and innate virtues
through the daily practice
of emptiness/stillness/silence
and doing what is called for,
when, where and how it is called for
in each situation as it arises,
no matter what
all our life long.
(Here, we will take another break.
Emptiness is emptying ourselves
of all thoughts and emotions,
memories, dreams, desires, wishes,
hates, fears, dreads...
everything.
Letting it go the instant it arises,
ordering it to go to the room in our awareness
especially suited to contain such things,
and returning to your breathing,
becoming as empty as the space between breaths.
Silence is just that.
no music,
no drumming,
no humming,
no chanting,
no noise...
Stillness is no fidgeting,
no twisting,
no turning,
no looking around...
5 to 20 minutes once or twice a day)
This is the Sisyphean Task
of doing the next needed thing
day-by-day for the rest of our life.
BORING!!!
And, it is also the path from the Garden of Eden
to the Garden of Gethsemane.
All of the old biblical symbols are apropos
to our awakening and development
quite apart from theology!
De-theologizing the symbols
"turns the light around,"
and anchors us upon the ground of our being
and secures our everlasting proximity
to the well-spring of living water,
from which revitalization,
realization
and renewal ceaselessly flow.
Our life becomes our touchstone,
evidence of our own validity,
our own value,
our own trustworthiness--
and our north star,
guiding our way forward
in light of where we are
by virtue of where we have been.
The experience of ourselves
in our own life
through all the circumstances
and situations
to here/now,
is quite beyond words.
No one can say
how we know what we know
or how we know what's what,
or by what assurance
we can trust ourselves to our life
and find the way
when "The path that can be discerned
as a path,
is not a reliable path"
(Martin Palmer).
The Tao te Ching places our plight
clearly before us:
"Darkness within darkness,
the gateway to mystery!"
No theology can help us here!
Words cannot help us here!
Words cannot go where we must go!
Only experience,
past and present,
and intuition,
instinct,
the "feel" for what's what
and what needs to be done in response to it
right here, right now,
the felt reliance upon the sense
of this, not that,
now, not then,
the spontaneous,
un-thought,
un-contrived,-
un-planned
in-the-moment
response to the situation as it is unfolding
before us,
can guide us here.
Emptiness/stillness/silence
can help prepare us
for the way that cannot be discerned
as a way,
but no human guide is worth her,
is worth his,
soothing reassurance and directing words.
We are on our own,
and learn as Jesus did,
as the Buddha did,
to rely upon the inward,
invisible,
grace that is always with us
"to the end of the age."
This is the Gethsemane portion of the way,
the dying place--
to be reborn,
only to die again
a bit further along.
Eden and Gethsemane dance us as an
everlasting duet
across time and place,
and we dance our heart out
along with them
all the way.
Wetlands Sunrise 12/26/2011 Oil Paint Rendered — Four-mile Creek Greenway, Charlotte, North Carolina
There is mindlessness everywhere I look!
Our only hope is being attentive
to what is going on,
and to what is called for,
where, when and how!
Clarity combined with courage and consciousness
form a union unparalleled
in the field of time.
The world is a wasteland
waiting for,
as Joseph Campbell would say,
"individuals living authentic lives
out of he spontaneity of their own hearts--
when that heart is a noble heart
and that spontaneity is based on compassion,
rather than conquest and possession."
In the moment of their awakening,
they are linked by their original nature,
innate virtues (traits, character)
and essential identity
with the very life that is necessitated
by the circumstances of their existence.
Just as "it took the Cyclops
to bring forth the hero in Ulysses"
(Campbell),
so it takes the occasion of our present moment
to bring us into the full flowering
of our possibilities and potential
in meeting the moment of our living
as those who will not be put off
or misdirected,
or sat aside
by any combination of fear,
hatred,
anger
and desire
from our task of seeing and doing
what needs to be done
and needs us to do it
in each situation as it arises--
no matter how useless or pointless
it appears to be--
through all of the situations
that will yet arise,
in the cause of being faithful to ourselves
and alert to what beckons in the dimension of action
through all the days of our lives.
May it be always so!
Dugger’s Creek Falls 01 05/11/2011 Oil Paint Rendered — Blue Ridge Parkway, Linville Falls Parking Area, North Carolina
Our work can be an expression of
our original nature
and innate virtues/traits/character,
and it can be what we do to pay the bills
in order to serve/express/exhibit
our original nature
and innate virtues "in the background,"
"on the side,"
"in our spare time."
Too often,
we have to "walk two paths at the same time"
to pay the bills
and do what is ours to do.
The trick with the two paths at once trick
is to keep one eye on "this path,"
while the other eye remains on "that one."
Always reminding ourselves of "the other path,"
keeps us mindful of balance and harmony
and maintaining a healthy relationship
with both sides at once.
The other trick is to return to the silence,
stillness and emptiness often enough
to stay in touch with both paths
and what they are asking of us
in order to maintain our emotional/physical
balance and harmony
in doing what has to be done
on both levels simultaneously.
We do the work to make it work,
feeding body and soul
day by day.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 