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?
Beidler Forest 11/22/2019 20 Oil Paint Rendered — Audubon Four Hole Swamp Wildlife Refuge, Harleyville, South Carolina
Whenever I think I need
more noise and complexity in my life,
I read some Buddhist texts
on monastic methods and procedures
for doing Buddhism right.
Talk about nit-picking,
legalistic, no slacking off allowed
rules to live by!
You dare not even think about
emptying yourself of the lengthy list
of do's and don't's regarding
how to be empty in the right way.
If you ever have a yin for Buddhism,
or think you would like to become a Buddhist,
I suggest that you read "Indestructible Truth:
The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism"
by Reginald A. Ray.
It is a wonderful source of noise and complexity
without end.
There is more to Buddhism than chanting
"Om Mani Padme Hum"
or "inviting a singing bowl to sing"
when it doesn't have any choice in the matter.
Anytime someone else has the authority
to pronounce you "Enlightened"
(Or, "Saved," for that matter),
you are in a situation of having to be pleasing,
and that disconnects you entirely
from the state of being pleased yourself
over the quality of your experience,
and having to "measure up"
to another's expectations and agenda for you.
And this within a context proclaiming
the importance of "No Expectations!
No Plans!
No Agendas!
No Opinions!"
Buddhism, as much as Christianity,
is not what it purports to be.
Lower Cascades 04 05/02/2011 — Hanging Rock State Park, Danbury, North Carolina
Impartiality cannot be a steady state of being.
There are no steady states of being.
And so, it is said,
"It is easier to be a saint
than to live with one."
Because not even a saint
is a steady beam of kindness and light.
As soon as we care about something
we are partial to it.
Feeding the hungry,
championing the cause of the poor,
and being an advocate for the environment
(etc.),
puts us against corporate tax evasion
and corporate greed,
and fossil fuel expansion,
and the destruction of the Amazon rain forest,
etc.
We cannot erase dualities,
they will be with us always.
We bear the pain of their continuation,
and live within the tension
of mutually exclusive polarities--
which means dancing
the dance of the Serengeti,
with the lions and the antelope,
the jackals and wildebeests,
with tragedy in the particulars,
and balance over-all.
Hidden Falls 01 09/07/2011 Oil Paint Rendered — Hanging Rock State Park, Danbury, North Carolina
There is a way of assessing a person's
degree of health
referred to as "ease of functioning"
by two Canadian researchers
working on the questions,
"What is health?"
and "What is the difference
between good health and bad health?"
"Ease of functioning" is a helpful way
of thinking about what we are doing
and how we are doing it.
Are we making things easier
or more difficult
for ourselves and others
by the way we are living our life?
How simple/easy is it
for us to be who we are,
doing what is ours to do?
Who we are and what is ours to do
is one thing.
What we do and how we do it
is another.
We live to express/exhibit/incarnate/unfold/
disclose/reveal/etc. who we are.
There is something in us,
within us,
that yearns to get out
and be what it is
through the way we live our life.
Call it "the self."
Or "our soul."
Or call it "Pert,"
or "Dingle."
It doesn't matter what we call it,
just know that we are not alone here,
and free to do whatever we want
with our life.
A Giant Sequoia is not a Giant Squid,
and has no business pretending to be one.
Human beings, however can pretend to be
whomever they think they ought/want to be.
Human beings can strut around like gods,
or sit and stare at a wall.
They can live any way that suits them,
even though it may not fit them at all.
The trick with being human
is to cooperate/collaborate with
our self/soul in doing what is
legitimately/accurately/actually
ours to do,
by being what/who we need to be
in order to do what we need to do
in doing what needs to be done.
The Indian (as in India) chaste system
started off as a good idea,
with people doing what they needed to do
in the service of what needed to be done,
but it got off the rails by forcing people
to be who their parents were,
regardless of who/whom they were equipped to be/do.
Who we are is as individual as our finger prints.
We live to find out who we are
and what we are capable of.
That cannot be assigned to us at birth,
or before we were born.
"What is the face that was yours
before you were born?"
is the question.
(Or, "Before your grandparents were born?"
would free us into the uniqueness of our
particular configuration
of Original Nature and Innate Virtues).
There can be no expectations!
No requirements!
No caste!
Each of us must be free to be
whom we are capable of being
with "ease of functioning."
What comes "naturally"?
Do you think just anybody
could be Seth Curry?
Or Helen Keller?
Or YOU?
Or that you could be just anybody?
We live to discover/be who we are
with our particular drift of shtick/knacks/gifts/
daemon (The Daemon [sounds like diamond,
without the "d" on the end] is an angelic
gift to the world which can become
a demon if it is not allowed
to bloom/blossom/come forth as it is] is.
We live to find and be who we are
within the circumstances--the time and place--
the here/now
of our living.
We are not "free to be whatever we want to be,"
but we must be free to be whomever we are!
We live to make it easy to find and be whom we are.
But we get sidetracked along the way.
And the metaphor of The Garden of Eden
plays out in the life of each one of us.
The only way back into the Garden, remember,
is through death and rebirth,
dying to the life we are living
and being resurrected into the life
that is truly our life to live.
It is the story of Jesus in Gethsemane.
Dying to be whom we are
by breaking out of the caste we were born into,
and living to exhibit who we are born/built to be,
anyway, nevertheless, even so.
It is hard to align ourselves with
what should be easy from birth--
because we do not get the right kind of help
from the start.
The right kind of help being
that which assists us in waking up
to whom we are
and living to exhibit/express/be that
through the way we live our life
from the beginning.
That is the legitimate place of the church
in our life,
and it has betrayed its responsibilities
and obligations in heretical and blasphemous ways
throughout time.
And here we are.
Now what?
Portrait of a Green Heron 09/01/2011 Oil Paint Rendered — The Bog Garden, Greensboro, North Carolina
We spend much of our life waiting.
The Green Heron is waiting
for an afternoon snack to swim,
or fly, by.
I was waiting for a Green Heron
to alight on the log
and pose for a photo.
The secret of bird photography
is to walk with a camera
into the vicinity of birds
and wait.
All the photography I know anything about
comes down to getting there and waiting.
And when the door opens,
walk through.
We all are waiting for some door
to open.
Some of us have cameras.
All of us are waiting.
You would think
that we would be better at it
by now.
Road to Botany Bay 02 Oil Paint Rendered — Botany Bay Historical Preserve and Wildlife Refuge, Edisto Island, South Carolina
To those who say, “Have no aversion of any kind to anything ever!”, I say, “Oh, I see you have an aversion to aversion!”
To those who say, “Do not DO anything at all!”, I say, “Now, that would really be doing something!”
We cannot say anything without producing the antithesis of what we intend. We create duality by saying, “This! Not That!” “Enlightenment! Not illusion!” “This is right! That is wrong!”
All paths are paths to the path, which makes all paths the path. There is nothing that is not-the-path. And, sometimes we do it this way, and sometimes we do it that way. And that is the way it is to be done.
As Jesus said, "Let those with eyes see! Let those with ears hear! Let those with minds understand! And let those who do not see, or hear, or understand, come back tomorrow--perhaps things will be different then!"
Pond Scum 01 09/22/2011 Oil Paint Rendered — The Bog Garden, Greensboro, North Carolina
We are all looking
for where we belong,
for what we belong to.
For where we fit in,
for what fits us.
For what we do well/best,
for what we have no business doing
at all.
For what our shtick is,
and what it isn't.
For the good places to be,
and the good places to be not.
For the people who are right for us,
and for those better given a wide berth.
For what it is all about,
and for what it is not at all about.
And, through all of this
and the rest of it,
we have to trust ourselves to know
what we are seeing when we look at it.
And it takes a lot of looking
to be able to see.
Fern Falls 04/27/2006 Oil Paint Rendered — Yosemite National Park, California
Finding joy in what we are doing,
in what is available to do,
is a matter of changing our mind
about what is important,
in order to see
what is being offered to us,
instead of seeing what
is not being offered to us.
The simple pleasures require us
to see them
and avail ourselves of them--
to invite them into our lives.
Both joy and suffering
are perspectives,
ways of seeing,
ways of ascribing meaning
to the events and circumstances
of our life.
What we emphasize is what we see.
When we level the field of vision,
we don't make too much of anything,
but allow all things to be just they are--
and do what needs to be done about them,
in ways appropriate to the occasion.
With practice, we can return to the
grounding orientation of balance and harmony
by refusing to bestow an inordinate degree
of attention on anything,
and remaining "within the normal range"
with all our assessments of our life experience--
permitting joy to be joy
without dosing it with an unrelated excess of sorrow.
Left Mitten Sunrise 09/25/2007 Oil Paint Rendered — Monument Valley, Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona
People are always misreading their attractions,
thinking love and sex,
when the first read
should always be
self-reflection/examination/exploration/inspection...
Whenever we find ourselves
knocking ourselves off track,
we have to dig then and there
into what is going on.
Everything is a doorway/portkey/invitation
to self-transparency/awareness,
with the potential to strengthen,
or weaken,
our affiliation with the flow
of the Tao of Life and Being.
I use the term "Tao of Life and Being,"
for lack of a better way of talking
about being "on the beam or off it."
"Is this the beam or not the beam?"
"The path or not the path?"
"The way or not the way?"
What do we mean with these questions?
They are indicators of more than words can say.
This is the purview of mystery,
and the field of balance and harmony.
You have to know what I mean
before you can understand what I'm saying.
When we encounter the mystery
on our way through life,
we have to call time out,
and enter the emptiness,
stillness
and silence,
to do a personal inventory/inspection,
holding everything on awareness
and "waiting for the mud to settle
and the water to clear."
In the service of insight
and realization,
and see what might be seen.
Sex can be a lot of fun,
but it can also get in the way.
Sex has no necessary connection
with intimacy--
though it is often referred to
as "an intimate relationship."
Too often, it is a way of avoiding intimacy.
We go to sex to keep from being known.
Being known in the Biblical sense
is being concealed in the psychological/emotional sense.
We will resort to anything
to keep from being exposed/revealed--
when the true goal of life
is to exhibit/reveal/incarnate/disclose/make known
who we are and what we are about,
what is ours to do.
Hiding from that is detrimental
to our health and well-being,
and the end of life,
though we might remain 98.6 and ambulatory for years.
Intimacy is being seen, heard, known,
to the heart and core of our being.
Few of us have ever experienced
that kind of intimacy.
Yet, without it, we remain an enigma to ourselves.
We have to be seen in a way
that enables/allows us to see ourselves.
To be heard in a way
that enables/allows us to hear ourselves.
To be known in a way
that enables/allows us to know ourselves.
Psychotherapy can do that,
but the ease with which psycotherapy
goes over into sex (Transference and Counter-transference)
is evidence of the blurry nature of the line
between intimacy and sex.
And in which knowing and being known
can be the heart of a thoroughly healthy
sexual relationship.
But, sex can also knock us off the track/path
and out of the flow of knowing ourselves
and being true to who we are
and what is ours to do.
Everything about sex and intimacy
invites/requires/demands
inquiry/investigation/examination/exploration/
awareness/enlightenment/illumination...
so that we are not kidding ourselves,
or telling ourselves what we want to hear.
This gets us to the most important thing:
Enlightenment/illumination/awareness/seeing/hearing/
knowing/understanding/doing/being.
If we aren't doing that--
if everything we say and do is not
an aspect of that--
we are kidding ourselves
and concealing from ourselves
the truth of our own being/doing.
How do we knock ourselves off track?
We have to be alert to all the ways,
and catch ourselves in the act
of blind-siding ourselves,
using that as an entry point
in unveiling another layer of refusing
to face the truth of who we are
and what is ours to do.
We are our own worst enemy,
and have to be alert to our own tricks
of self-deception
all of the time.
Fern Spring Cascade 04/25/2006 Oil Paint Rendered — Yosemite National Park, California
We all need a sounding board.
A sounding board is all we need.
We have to hear what we have to say.
All of our "institutions" are designed
to keep us from hearing what we have to say.
They all tell us what we need to hear.
Churches head the list.
Schools.
Hospitals.
Government...
Everything whose job is to keep society going
is killing society
by preventing its access to the source of life:
The individual's own, personal, psyche.
Carl Jung wrote extensively about
the corporate tendency to replace/destroy
the individual's capacity to find their own way
in the world.
Get a group larger than five members
and no one is thinking for themselves.
No one is listening to each other.
Which means no one is hearing
what they have to say.
"Group Think" prevails.
And people who do not think like they do
are not allowed into the group.
Divisions do not exist
because differences of opinion
are not permitted.
Sound like the dear old GOP to you?
The world the GOP wants--
and would create instantaneously
with a sweep in the 2024 elections--
would be precisely the world the GOP is
and wants everywhere to be.
It is the fascist way:
"People like you
make people like me
hate (kill) people like you!"
That is the future the GOP
will impose upon the world,
and the entire universe with time.
Dismiss the danger to your own demise.
Atlantic Moonrise 10/25/2007 Oil Paint Rendered — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, North Carolina
We refuse to bear consciously
the pain of our contradictions/paradoxes/polarities
and deny them,
run from them,
hide from them,
when the simple solution
is to refuse to take them seriously
and laugh at them,
play with them,
enjoy them,
live lovingly with them all the way.
Schizophrenia is not much different
than poetry,
or other forms of art
(And a lot of artists
have allowed their schizophrenic tendencies
to drive them mad),
leading Carl Jung to conclude
"Schizophrenics drown in the same water
artists swim in."
It is just two ways of looking at the same thing.
Brilliant people box themselves in
with their insight, observations and deductions.
They make an ironclad case
against the reasonableness of life
and live miserably until they die at an early age.
My sister Susan killed herself
by--get this--
starving herself to death
under the oversight of Hospice.
Because she could not make any sense
out of going on with it.
Her living will stipulated
no liquids, no tube feeding,
nothing to prolong my life.
"Let's get this show on the road!"
She could not dance with The Deal.
Zorba the Greek had no problem with The Deal.
He was fictional, of course,
but he speaks for a lot of us dealing with
"The whole catastrophe,"
by laughing at it
and letting it be as it is.
Ortega Y'Gasset would say
everything meets at the edge of the corn.
Lao Tzu, and all the other old Taoists,
would talk about harmonizing the Yin and the Yang,
by bearing humorously (as Chaung Tzu did)
the pain of the contradictions
in a "The situation is hopeless but not serious,"
kind of way.
We have to take life as it is,
or not.
Some of us cannot.
Which is crazy
because we all are only
a simple perspective shift
away from having it made.
It is just a matter
of "turning the light around."
And dancing through
"the dark night of the soul,"
no matter how long it might last.
Moonrise at the Totem Formation 03 Oil Paint Rendered — Monument Valley, Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona
We can't hurry anything up,
or slow anything down.
It is a though we are all in this river
that flows at its own rate
no matter what we do,
and we forget that,
and think we can hurry things up
and slow things down,
and avoid things altogether.
Nope.
Can't do it.
We are corks on the water,
moving at the speed
of what's coming
and what's going--
and it never gets faster or slower
than that.
Here it comes,
there it goes.
Life is like that.
Requiring us to let come what’s coming,
and let go what’s going.
There is a country song in there somewhere.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 