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?
Joshua Trees in Red Rock Canyon 03/25/2007 — Las Vegas, Nevada
I understand the work of our life as being contented with how things are here and now, doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises while maintaining/sustaining our balance and harmony day to day as long as life shall last.
We have to settle ourselves into an occupation that enables us to make ends meet (the income and out-go ends), and live to serve/express our original nature and our innate virtuosities amid our circumstances, such as they are, and let that be that.
You have to understand that this is being said by someone in his 80th year who spends much of his time sitting, reading, writing and looking out the window each day.
And don't think that it has anything to do with you.
Big Creek 10/16/2007 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Waterville, North Carolina
There is more to everything than meets the eye. Any eye. All the time.
We don't know more about everything than we do know. Every thing.
Which puts us in the position of looking and listening, inquiring, examining, exploring, and simply sitting with all there is to sit with instead of running through our life as though we know what we are doing.
Projection, presumption and assumption lead the way, and we swagger arrogantly behind certain that we are only having our way away from having it made.
Where did all this wind in our sails come from?
Where did we get the idea that we know what we are doing? And that if everyone would just do it our way all would be well at last?
Where is humility, kindness, generosity and good will?
Waiting for us to sit down and be quiet, no doubt, and take stock and be appalled at running on opinion about hearsay instead of seeing what we look at and knowing when we don't know much of anything at all.
Green River Canyon 05/14/2010 — Canyonlands National Park, Moab, Utah
We make our own peace with our life. No one can do that for us.
We come to terms with our own responsibility for our responses to the way things are, knowing that how we respond to what happens can make things better or make things worse, and that our response-ability is the key for things being as good as they are capable of being our entire life long.
And, "Okay. Now what? is always appropriate to every occasion, voiding, as it does, our tendency to be emotionally reactive and mood-bound, thereby deaf and blind to what our options and opportunities are in all circumstances that come our way.
Our twin powers, perspective and perception, are superior to the Elder Wand, in that even the Elder Wand would be at the mercy of our perspective and perception (With perception being what we see and perspective being how we see when we look at everything).
Until we get perspective and perception under control, we are at the mercy of everything that happens over the full course of our life. And nobody can do that for us. It is all up to us, how we see what's what and what we do in response.
Bryce Canyon 01 05/16/2010 — The Amphitheater Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
Squaring ourselves up with the here/now, coming to terms with what's what and what is being asked of us in order to meet the day and provide what is called for in each situation as it arises is the day's work each day, in a "Here we are, now what?" kind of way.
We adjust ourselves psychologically, physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, in doing what needs to be done, when, where and how it needs to be done with the tools of our original nature and our innate virtues/attributes out of the stillness, emptiness, silence in dancing with what is asked of us and maintaining our balance and harmony, growing up some more, again, today for the joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it, day by day all the way.
That's the process we follow, whether we are a member of the United States Calvary riding over the hill, or a 10 year-old Apache girl standing outside of her family's teepee watching them come, with things about to be radically transformed forever.
Sometimes, there is no joy or satisfaction to be found anywhere in the day, for days on end, and we dance with that as well-- as well as we can.
Green River Canyon 05/13/2010 — Canyonlands National Park, Moab, Utah
If you want to be certain of going to heaven-- or it's preferential equivalent to your way of thinking-- all you have to do is be clear about what is important in each situation as it arises, and serve that with the gifts of your original nature and your innate virtues/attributes throughout the time left for living.
You don't have to be right about it, you only have to be clear about it. And you achieve clarity by waiting for the mud to settle and the water to clear from the vantage point of emptiness, stillness and silence, and the collective wealth of your experience.
This sounds as though it will take a long while, but with practice, you will zip into clarity just by recognizing the need for it and applying the process with confidence in the outcome and enthusiasm for the adventure.
With time,you will become increasingly right as well as clear about it, and you will take your place along with Jesus and the Buddha and all of those who have known what's what and what's to be done about it through the ages, and live as a blessing and a grace upon all who come your way.
Moraine Lake Reflections 09/21/2009 — Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Canadian Rockies, Alberta
We are here to find out who we are and to see what we can do.
To seek and serve our original nature and innate virtues/attributes within the constraints and opportunities of the time and place of our living.
In so doing, we have to give ourselves the freedom to explore-- the permission to experiment, investigate, examine, ask, inquire, knock, play, dance, sing...
To discover for ourselves what the legitimate limits are, and to push against those limits without end, testing them over and over, to see if they are what we take them to be.
Always asking the questions that beg to be asked and saying the things that cry out to be said, in the search for what can happen, what the possibilities are, what we can get by with, and what we have to live with, like it or not.
How are you coming along with that? What assumptions are you making that may be invalid assumptions? What limits are you accepting that may be imaginary limits?
We owe it to ourselves to find out what is so and what is not so, and who says so, and what we can do about it, anyway, nevertheless, even so.
A ranch, say, in Wyoming, or a pizza restaurant, say, in DC, or you, say, or me, develops their own rhythm and flow, maintaining their own balance and harmony, in dealing with all that must be dealt with through all situations and circumstances coming their way.
Whatever that is, it is the way things are done there over time. It is their way of doing things. It is who they are.
Identity develops over time. It is not imposed on time. Time will tell who we are. We will not tell time who we are. And who we say we are is a gift of time and place.
We all would be different with a different point of origin and a different birth date, or just a different birth date if it spanned a long enough time frame.
We are not born who we are, or even born to be who we are. We contribute to our development but we aren't the sole determinant of who/how we turn out to be.
Rhythm and flow, balance and harmony, form and shape us as we bend and sway in response to their influence upon us, the way the banks shape the river that forms its banks.
And here we are, dancing our way through what remains of our time left for living, seeing what we can do with what comes our way-- and who we will become because of it.
Clingman’s Dome Sunrise 11-02-2001 — From the Parking Lot, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cherokee, North Carolina
The Two Paths of Yin and Yang pair off in different configurations throughout our life.
We are always walking two paths at the same time.
And the better able we are to do this, the better everything will be all the way around.
We balance/harmonize opposites by the way we relate to them always and forever.
There is the care/don't care paradox. We have to live as though we care when we don't care at all, and, of course, vice-versa.
We have to live like it matters when it doesn't matter one bit. And, vice-versa.
We have to put ourselves on the line every day, and we have nothing to lose all of the time.
Etc. And so on and so forth. Like that. Without end.
Squaring up to eternal incompatibilities, embracing the contradictions, reconciling in our own bodies mutually-exclusive polarities, and bearing the pain of how things are and how things also are is the very essence of being alive.
It is how we get up and face the day every day, as though we mean it when we had rather be somewhere else, anywhere else, all the time-- because everything depends on it, and that is how it is, and also is.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 