Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

No one can tell us where the stillness speaks to the silence, or how to find that place and what we can expect to hear there. That is why there is theology and doctrines and dogma and dharma and sutras and all those preachers and teachers who make things worse by talking us to death about things that cannot be said. Only emptiness works. Be empty and wait. In the silence. For the stillness to reveal its secrets about the way of the drift and flow of The Way of Life and Being, and how to drift and flow with it forever.

Anything we say about something says more about ourselves than what we are talking about. How we see the thing, anything, reveals who we are. The Buddhists who say “No Duality!” also talk about taking refuge from suffering. There is refuge and there is suffering. And, they talk about enlightenment and awakening, and they talk about illusion. How is what they say a reflection of who they are? It sounds like a contradiction to me, or a non sequitur. And that says more about me than about them. I want things to flow smoothly from here to there, from this to that, and I am quick to spot things that don’t do that. And I think everybody is that way, or should be that way. And I expose that about me by being the way I am. Which leads me to suppose/project (and this paragraph is all about supposition and projection) “where this comes from about me” to what I think is a probable childhood experience where adults caught me in the act of contradicting myself and created a need to protect myself from criticism by spotting logical fallacies from afar and going after them to take attention away from me, thus calling attention unto me in the act of protesting what I take to be a failure in someone else, the Buddhists, say. We reveal who we are in diverting attention to other people, pointing to our suppositions and projections. Sigh.

This is an excerpt from Zen Thoughts, #154, on my Published Works Blog:

If prayer worked, there would be no cemeteries, hospitals, medical schools, nursing homes, funeral homes, war or standing armies. Where does that leave us? With seeing what’s what, letting be what is and doing what needs to be done about it where, when, and how it needs to be done, with the gifts that are ours to work with: Our Original Nature, Our innate Virtues — the things we do best and enjoy doing most–Our intrinsic Imagination, our inherent Intuition, when, where and how they need to be employed in each situation as it arises all our life long.

And changing our mind about what prayer is and how it works from asking/getting what we want from something called “God,” to understanding prayer as a mode of being in right relationship with all that is by seeing, hearing, understanding what’s what and how things are and doing what needs to be done about it by doing the right thing in the right way at the right time in all situations and circumstances and letting that be that no matter what, letting nature take its course and repeating this process throughout the course of our life in alignment with the drift and flow of life and being, caring only about what needs to be cared about, when, where and how all our life long.

Trump wants to be great, but he is only pitiful. The Beatles somehow channeled him with their song, “Nowhere Man”: “He’s a real nowhere man, living in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody.”

He is great only in his imagination.

Living in their fantasy world is what schizophrenics do best. Where do their fantasies end and reality begin? They don’t know. And that’s a problem, No?

Chief Seattle and Black Elk were two Native American spiritual leaders on par with Jesus and the Buddha according to my take on things. They had dreams and visions as accurate and valid as anyone’s ever. And they took the loss of their land and their people in as mature a way as anyone ever has. It was/is our arrogance and our shame that we have treated them and their people as ignorant savages without honor, without holiness, without commendation, without acclaim. We need a Wailing Wall on the Mall in Washington to commemorate Native American civilization and their place of honor among all the peoples of the earth, equal in every way with all the other peoples worldwide.

There is the experience of our experience and there is the observation of our experience. Observing our experience removes us from our experience and provides us with the experience of experiencing our experience–and that puts us in the position of impacting our experience by being removed from it to the extent of altering its impact through the addition of our awareness of our experience of our experience of our experience, bringing curiosity, wonder, humor, etc. to bear on our experience and freeing us to distance ourselves from what is happening by enlarging what is happening through the observation of what is happening. Which makes going to the dentist something to look forward to as a playground for awareness to explore from the vantage point of the dental chair.

Laying our desires, ambition, wants, will, idea of how things ought to be aside and living in the service of what is called for in each situation as it arises by doing what needs to be done here, now in order for that to happen, and doing it in the right way, in the right place, at the right time puts us in accord with the Tao and at one with the flow of life and being, for the wonder and joy of the experience, and the satisfaction of having done it day by day all our life long. Like a field of buttercups or a forest of long-leaf pines.

We live in trying times. The way things are supposed to be is nothing like they are. The Constitution, Democracy, the Rule of Law, Truth, Justice, Equality, Freedom… Have all been replaced with Authoritarianism, Mobster Rule, Obscenity, Atrocity, Brutality, Cruelty, Inhumanity, Ruthlessness, Iniquity, Abomination, etc. without end. No one in position to enforce goodness is good. They all are without scruples, principles, conscience, morals or a recognition of the difference between right and wrong. The leadership of this country is rotten, amoral and unscrupulous. Under sail without direction or compass, led only by whim and fancy and the fantasy of excellence and perfection. Excellent only as an example of lunacy and perfect only as an exhibition of insanity and complete instability. Self-destruction is inevitable, but in the meantime, the collapse of the systems holding things together will be the bane of MAGA absurdity through decades of recovery.

In the meantime, I recommend erecting Wailing Walls and making regular visits there marking the only kind of wall Trump was capable of building.

We bring justice, compassion, grace, mercy, peace, and all the soft values to life in the Cosmos–in as much as we allow ourselves to be alive to one another and all living things. It is the gift of life to care about the living. And it is my bet that Neanderthal had an over-abundance of the Soft Side and that Homo-sapiens took care of that in short order–with the tendency flowing on against all those who aren’t enough like us to suit us throughout the universe. We are the bane of life. Give us forests and watch what we do with trees, no? “Fill the earth and subdue it!” was prophetic, or perhaps just boastful bar-talk among celebrating conquistadors.

The soft values have a hard time of it through most of civilization. The Wailing Wall, in all of its manifestations, stands as a metaphor of soft being traumatized by hard–or, perhaps of hard being victimized by harder, and biding its time in the service of bringing revenge to bear upon the conquerors. The world is a tough place to go about living, with the Law of the Jungle remaining in place throughout time: The big fish eat the little fish and the little fish swim through the holes in the nets hauling the big fish to the cannery. Serving the soft values in a hard world is the art of living with what we are given in light of the best we can imagine over time. The Sisyphean work against the way things are over time.

How many worlds are there in this world? How many worlds do all living things live in over the span of their lifetimes? It is no wonder that we have such a difficult time sharing space in this world that unites us all without actually uniting us at all. No? Making, in my mind, it all the more a thing to celebrate and cherish the times we can come together enjoying each other’s company and benefiting from each other’s presence by sharing the wonder of life together, here, now.

And, we could make our differences, our differentness, more of a joy and a pleasure if we merely flipped the switch on our perspectives and became friends with our enemies. I wonder why we don’t do more of that more often. It could become an actual thing, if we let it.

What do you know that no one told you, and you do not know how you know?

How much do you know that no one told you and you don’t know how you know?

Sit with that secret knowledge. Take it into the emptiness, stillness, silence with you, and wait there “for the mud to settle and the water to clear.” Waiting in the silence for clarity is waiting for something to stir to life beyond the stillness with a riddle, or a symbol, or a stereotype, or a memory, or… Gifting you with it as something to work with to take you where you need to be. This is like a daytime dream, offering insight into your life at this moment, this here, now, offering you the mission of discovery, of enlightenment, of awakening, of realization. Starting with the intuitive sense of something starring to life beyond the stillness, there in the silence along with the knowledge that you don’t know how you know.

These two paragraphs are #131 and #132 in Zen Thoughts on my Published Works Blog on WordPress:

1. You know the things we know without knowing how we know? Be aware of that kind of knowing when you know it. Look closer. Sit with it in the silence. See what emerges from the stillness beyond the silence. You are in the presence of intuitive awareness, which goes beyond mindful awareness to the very essence of “mind.” To the foundation of “mind.” To the boundary separating Psyche and “mind.” To the experience of Psyche informing “mind.” Serving as at the ground of “mind.” Psyche becoming “mind.” At the place where we, ourselves, become cognizant of Psyche, Mind and Self. The three that are one. The Real Holy Trinity. No?
   
2. We are talking foundation. And flow. And Psyche. And presence. Psychic foundation, flow, presence. And our awareness of ourselves being aware of, cognizant of, Psychic foundation, flow and presence–of being one with Psychic foundation, flow and presence. Which is the same thing as being at one with the Tao. Aligned with the Tao. In accord with the Tao. Which is the same thing as enlightenment and awakening. And it all comes together before our eyes, here, now. Psyche, Flow, Presence, Knowing/Knowledge, Cognizance, Tao, Enlightenment, Awakening, Me and You, Here, Now. No?