Don McCullin, Early morning, West Hartlepool, 1963. This is such an amazing photo. Thank you, melisaki.
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seedy: Conversing with John Cage
Conversing With Cage (ed. Richard Kostelanetz) [2.2mb PDF]
This book is a collection of interviews with John Cage, the late avant garde composer who was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. The interviews span nearly a half century and give a cogent idea of Cage’s thought on music, art, education, politics, and social revision.
If you are curious about why a composer would write music that is “silent”, why he would use chance, nonintention, and denounce music as communication, this is a good book to begin an overview of Cage’s philosophy of art.
It also shows that Cage’s musical thought was not monolithic, but changed several times in the course of his life, as did his music.
Thank you, Seedy.
(via c-d-deactivated20120908)
It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with.
But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours-arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additions existence. Life, in short just wants to be.
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it's all dhamma.: Awareness
Awareness cannot be taught, and when it is present it has no context. All contexts are created by thought and are therefore corruptible by thought. Awareness simply throws light on what is, without any separation whatsoever.
Awareness, insight, enlightenment, wholeness — whatever words one may pick to label what cannot be caught in words — is not the effect of a cause. Activity does not destroy it and sitting does not create it. It isn’t a product of anything — no technique, method, environment, tradition, posture, activity, or nonactivity can create it. It is there, uncreated, freely functioning in wisdom and love, when self-centered conditioning is clearly revealed in all its grossness and subtleness and defused in the light of understanding.
Can the inner noise be entirely left alone while attending? When the changing states of body-mind are simply left to themselves without any choice or judgment — left unreacted to by a controlling or repressive will — a new quietness emerges by itself.
Sitting motionlessly quiet, for minutes or hours, regardless of length of time, is being in touch with the movements of the body-mind, gross and subtle, dull and clear, shallow and deep, without any opposition, resistance, grasping, or escape. It is being in intimate touch with the whole network of thoughts, sensations, feelings, and emotions without judging them good or bad, right or wrong — without wanting anything to continue or stop. It is an inward seeing without knowing, an open sensitivity to what is going on inside and out — flowing without grasping or accumulation. Stillness in the midst of motion and commotion is free of will, direction, and time. It is a complete letting be of what is from moment to moment.
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, not knowing what is next and not concerned with what was or what may be next, a new mind is operating that is not connected with the conditioned past and yet perceives and understands the whole mechanism of conditioning. It is the unmasking of the self that is nothing but masks — images, memories of past experiences, fears, hopes, and the ceaseless demand to be something or become somebody. This new mind that is no-mind is free of duality — there is no doer in it and nothing to be done.
She describes this process very well. Thank you, sharanam.
These are pregnant times throughout the world. Just as in geology we have breaking lines between huge blocks of earth, so today we are at the juncture between great blocks of time. This is the place of storm and volcano — and of becoming. In today’s reality, a small act can have far-reaching consequences, beyond imagination, whereas things that will be done five or ten years from today will be so much less effective. This is precisely the meaning of pregnant times: Anything can be born. And this is exactly the time when one must not sleep.
Whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, gross or subtle, every sensation shares the same characteristic: it arises and passes away. It is this arising and passing that we have to experience through practice, not just accept as truth because Buddha said so or because intellectually it seems logical to us. We must experience sensation’s nature, understand its flux, and learn not to react to it.
S.N. Goenka: Finding Sense in Sensation from Tricycle.
From: astroinquiry & artemisdreaming
(Source: nemoi, via frederickwoodruff)
All this talk and turmoil and noise and movement and desire is outside of the veil; within the veil is silence and calm and rest.
Thank you, astroinquiry.
(Source: frederickwoodruff)
Celia Gerard
Campo, 2010
charcoal, graphite, and casein on paper
38 x 38 inches 43 x 43 inches framed
From Sears Peyton Gallery
“…In the afternoon, full of the sense that there was everything to be gained by leaving my winter-imposed solitude and seeking out the work of others–and work by living humans, not museum pieces–I drove down to Manhattan. Braving the icy wind off the Hudson and the sense that I don’t know anything about art, I walked around the art galleries of Chelsea. I came to a full stop at the show “Regions of Unlikeness” by the artist Celia Gerard at the Sears Peyton Gallery. Gerard’s abstract, geometical works in black and white have the power of making a viewer stay. “It’s amazing how they unfold,” said my friend, and I agreed. The triangles, spheres, and cones open into landscapes and unknown worlds in deep space. What is really uncanny about the works is that they unfold the viewer, waking up the energies in the body and opening the mind and heart. I felt like I could see and feel the ongoing search in the work, and it had the effect of calling to search along with the artist. Gerard’s work woke me up, yet made me feel very concentrated and still, like looking inside a vast crystal or up at a mountain, or inside myself. It gave me a feeling of nostalgia for places I have never travelled, a longing for a quality or state that is still unknown yet essential…home.
“I want to unfold/ I don’t want to stay folded anywhere/ Because where I am folded,/ There I am a lie….” These lines by Rilke echoed through my head as I drove home from Manhattan last night, and this morning when I woke.”
—Tracy Cochran “Regions of Unlikeness” @The Editors blog.
(via parabola-magazine)
