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?
Sculptures of Life 01 — Ballantyne Town Center, Provincetown, Charlotte, North Carolina
I understand my role to be in the world as a witness–to see, hear, understand, know, what’s what, what’s happening, what is called for, and what is to be done about it, here, now, and to do it, when, where and how it needs to be done, in each situation as it arises, all my life long, with the gifts I have to work with from birth: My Original Nature, My Innate Virtues (The Things I Do Best And Enjoy Doing Most), My Intrinsic Intuition, and My Inherent Imagination, for the sheer joy of doing it, and the satisfaction of having done it.
I understand that to be your role as well. And when we join one another in doing the work that is ours to do as only we can do it, the world becomes a better place to be. Situation by situation. Day by day. Are you with me in this work that is ours to do?
Mossy Cascade — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Chestnut Branch, Tennessee
Integrity is foundational. We live to be who we are and to do what is ours to do. We live to be true to ourselves in all we do. We live to discover who we are. To know what we are called to do and do it. What is “us”? What is “not us”? We live our way to knowing these two things. No one can tell us who we are and who we are not. We experience integrity. We do not think it up, make it up. We get there by knowing what we know and living accordingly.
Joseph Campbell said, “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off it.” Carl Jung said, ““Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.” And, “Trust that which gives you meaning and accept it as your guide.” Only we know what is meaningful, right, good, true to us. To know that and to do it is to be who we are. We live to know what we know and to do what is ours to do. We are our own guide through life. Living the life someone else would have us live is to betray ourselves and our sense of what is right for us.
When we fall off the beam, step away from the path, we only need to drop into the right kind of emptiness, stillness and silence and “wait for the mud to settle and the water to clear” (Old Taoist advice for finding the center and getting back onto the Way) to know what’s what, what’s happening, what is called for here, now, and do what needs to be done about it when, where and how it needs to be done. And do it. Integrity is the way, the truth and the life. The way of the Tao. And the way in which “The Father and I are one.” May it be so for all of us, here, now and always.
Brown Trasher 01 — Scenes From My Hammock, 22-acre Woods, Indian Land, South Carolina
The solution to being perennially happy is to stop wanting things to be different than they are. Or, better, to stop wanting. What did wanting ever do for us anyway? When we come out of the womb, we have everything we need to find what we need to do what needs to be done. What more do we need? Besides cooperation, I mean. Cooperation is the missing item in everyone’s life. I don’t know why that is so difficult to secure. What does it take to be a little bit helpful?
How to be cooperative–which could also be understood as “lovingly kind”–is the one thing that would be most helpful around the world throughout the Cosmos. No?
Swan Lake Black Austrailian Swans — Swan Lake, Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina
We tend to go where the job takes us and income is the directing factor in our life most often. Jesus and the Buddha cared nothing about money. The Buddha walked away from certain King-ship and Jesus was of the opinion that “The love of money is the root of all evil,” and “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle (A narrow passage way in Jerusalem) than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” And that has evolved into the Prosperity Gospel. Go, as they say, figure. And prayer has evolved into getting what we want from something called “God” which is a collection of opinions about hearsay called “doctrine.” Somebody hears somebody say something is so, so it must be so, and everybody must believe it is so or go to hell, which is also something somebody said is so.
Jesus said, “You have heard it said, but I say unto you” and he talked to people out of his own experience, saying what he knew to be was so. The Buddha did the same thing, even telling his listeners, “Don’t take my word for any of this! Make up your own mind about what you say is so! Don’t listen to me! Listen to YOU!”
My position regarding money is to recognize its importance in paying the right bills and serving as a cushion to continue paying the right bills into our future, and to be right about what the right bills are. Living to be right about what we say is so was the way Jesus and the Buddha did it and I take it to be good guidance for the way we do it. If you think you have a better idea, the Buddha, Jesus and I aren’t going to try to talk you out of it. We are all on our own when it comes to saying what we think is so.
Lake Haigler 03 — 11/24 Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, South Carolina
There is always something to come to terms with. It is relentless and unending, our being asked/required to grow up some more again today. It appears to be a plot against us until we look closer and see that the trend can be linked directly to our addiction to wanting, desiring, having to have. It is a proven reality over time, the less we want, the happier we are. Supreme happiness is reserved for those who want nothing ever any time. We can stop being miserable the minute we stop wanting anything. The economy will crash, but we won’t care.
Lake Hagiler 02 11/2024 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, South Carolina
This is #160 in my “Zen Thoughts” on my other WordPress Blog, “Jim Dollar’s Published Works.”
There is wanting, and there is guessing, and there is thinking, and there is knowing. Knowing how to know what’s what, what’s happening, what’s called for, what needs to be done, where, when and how is the Philosopher’s Stone. The Way of living aligned with, in accord with in tune with, the Way, the Tao of Life and Being.
But. There is a catch. Knowing is not the way to getting what we want. Knowing is the way of doing what is called for and needs to be done.
Letting the Force be with us is submitting to the requirements of the Force for rhythm and flow, drift and direction. The Way is THE Way, not just any way. Not every way. Not OUR way. Can we surrender OUR way in service of THE Way? Can we acquiesce to–give our ascent to–concur with–say YES to–comply with–embrace whole heartedly–yield to– submit to–declare our allegiance to–serve and adore–THE Way to the exclusion of all other ways, always and forever, no matter what, Amen?
This is The Way of the Christ, the Buddha, the Tao. Do we have what it takes to lay OUR Way aside in declaring our liege loyalty and filial devotion to THE WAY always and forever, no matter what, Amen?
Doing so is what Jesus had in mind when he said, “If you want to be one with me, you have to pick up your cross daily and follow me.” And, it is what he ment when he said, “Pray always.” Being aligned with the Force is dying to ourselves and our idea of how things ought to be in knowing/praying OUR way into eternal oneness with THE WAY, now and forever no matter what, Amen.
Glade Creek Mill — Babcock State Park, Clifftop, West Virginia
Being there is being here, now–which, with the right kind of emptiness, stillness and silence, is highly preferable to what passes for life most days.
Stepping into this scene in your imagination, and staying a while, provides us with a refuge from horrors of the latest headline and the absurdity/insanity Donald Trump and his idea of how things ought to be. Empty of Donald and the MAGA madness, we are prepared to receive the Buddha’s idea of how life needs to be lived: “Peaceful abiding here, now,” with an openness to “That, too, that, too” without losing our attachment to the rhythm and flow of the right thing, done in the right way, in the right place, at the right time, sitting with the creek and the wonder of “This, too. This, too.”
The following is also to be found as #157 of “Zen Thoughts” on my WordPress blog, “Jim Dollar’s Published Works:”
All living things–all sentient beings–recognize, know, respond to being received and treated lovingly. But, don’t take my word for it. See for yourself.
We make too much over love. Forget love. Forget “I love you.” Treat all of life lovingly. Treat everyone lovingly whether you love them or not. Treat everyone with such loving tenderness and thoughtfulness that they can’t tell if you don’t love them–and, even better, you can’t tell yourself!
And understand deep in your bones/body that is how our Psyche treats us: lovingly, whether we are worth being loved or not. The way the Prodigal’s father treated the Prodigal.
As you surely know by now, I have thrown God as a spiritual being quite completely away, and have declared myself to be an extension of the psychic depths of life and being, and as an expression of that, I am sworn to treating everything, living or not, lovingly throughout what remains of this experience called “being alive.” And, I invite you to join me if you feel like it for the entire remainder of all that is before us.
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?
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