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Today I have found myself quite literally chopping wood (with a new splitter) and carrying water (bottles) from the supermarket 🤣
Every now and then I fire up an AI app and just end up staring at the blinking cursor with absolutely no idea what to type. . .
There can be hollow victories that exclude too many people, as well as powerful losses that can lead to wider, more inclusive movements.
To become one with just what is, one is at one with both presence and loss, with being and not being. It doesn’t feel like anything; but sitting still, something moves. I don’t know what it is, but somehow it draws from the emptiness that is the way itself, the ground of what is and is not. Not known, it is most precious; not to be held, it is maybe the gift the world needs.
The peace you’re looking for isn’t something to acquire. It’s what’s revealed when you stop searching.
I appreciate the way Zen embodies, with humour and mischief, the futility of describing and/ or expressing the qualia of our aliveness.
First snow. Just a soggy dusting quickly turning to slush. More to come this week though.
Coffee and cake (that was) before my late shift today.
Heavy rainfall due later so I’m slightly mindful of potential flooding…
As always, the present moment exactly as it presents itself, is the greatest teacher of all… but only if we allow it to be.
Rather than succumbing to the illusion of certainty through prediction, we should embrace the future as a space of possibility and creativity.
Attempts to foretell what lies ahead often narrow our vision, tethering us to preconceptions and limiting our ability to respond adaptively to change.
Instead, by resisting the urge to predict, we can cultivate curiosity and openness, allowing us to engage with the unfolding future on its own terms.
When we resist what is, we get stuck to the very thing we want to move away from.
I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
— Mark Twain
Perhaps you have noticed that the mind misinterprets everything.
Some random notes on media:
True independence of mind surely precludes subscribing to or following any publication or service that claims to be independent.
Read, watch and listen broadly and think critically.
Always be alert to confirmation bias.
What incentives are in play?
Objectivity doesn’t exist.
If you doubt too much, pause. If you agree too much, pause.
Certainty and ‘truth’ are warnings not guarantees.
‘I don’t know’ can be a valid position.
Everything is impermanent, in flux.
And the the old classic: Opinions are like arseholes, everybody’s got one.
Reading in front of this is the only place to be this afternoon.
If this moment in time should teach those of us with a spiritual bent anything, it’s the lesson of impermanence.
Counter to the prevailing trope of spiritual orthodoxy I don’t accept that our so-called true nature is loving and caring any more than it is hating and othering. Humans are complex animals with fathomless psyches. When we care and love we do so from bottomless wells of empathy and devotion. And yet we hate and other too from similar reserves of opposite emotion. When the time comes we do what we do. It is not only myopic but delusional to believe that one well of human behaviour is any more rich or better fed than another.
Nothing is everything. Or, in the mirror, everything is nothing.
What I’ve learned
One day I looked for my self and found nothing. Turning attention back on itself there was only wide open space – not a thing, but space for everything. If I am anything I am simply everything that is happening.
Life is not something to understand or figure out. It’s not an equation to solve, nor a puzzle to complete. Life is simply here, as it is.