Lionel Bulmer (1919-1992) - The Turquoise Shutters, N/D. Oil on board. Messum’s, London, UK
(Source: amare-habeo, via benjaminhilts)
Most people insist on some idea. Recently the younger generation talks about love. Love! Love! Love! Their minds are full of love! And when they study Zen, if what I say does not accord with the idea they have of love, they will not accept it. They are quite stubborn, you know. You may be amazed! Of course, not all, but some have a very, very hard attitude. That is not naturalness at all. Even though they talk about love, and freedom, or naturalness, they do not understand these things. And they cannot understand what Zen is in that way. If you want to study Zen, you should forget all your previous ideas and just practice zazen and see what kind of experience you have in your practice. That is naturalness.
When you rest in quietness and your image of yourself fades, and your image of the world fades, and your ideas of others fade, what’s left? A brightness, a radiant emptiness that is simply what you are.
Adyashanti
(Source: thefarawaydreamer, via apoetreflects)
Now, only a gray-white light filled my awareness: but that is a metaphor, for I knew that what I was experiencing now was not the light of Physics, but that glow hypothesized by Plato, the light which underlies all awareness—the light against which matter, events and minds are mere shadows.
Stephen Baxter, The Time Ships (Thank you, johnsparker)
Alfred Sisley, On the Cliffs, Langland Bay, Wales, 1897. Thank you, litverve.
Frank J. Aleksandrowicz, Cleveland, Ohio, inhabited place, 1973. With thanks to firsttimeuser:
Ludwig Windstosser, Pappel am Bodensee, 1950. With thanks to yama-bato & ichnos.
(Source: yama-bato)
We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love - a connection between things. This arcane bit of knowledge is respoken every day into the ears of readers of great books, and also appears to perpetually slip under a carpet, utterly forgotten. In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single lifespan, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again, to watch the great personal psyche spar with it, to suffer affliction and weakness and injury, to die and watch those you love die, until the very dizziness of it all becomes a source of compassion for ourselves, and our language, which we alone created, and without which the letter that slipped under the door could never have been written, or, once in a thousand lives - is that too much to ask? - retrieved, and read. Did I mention supreme joy? That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. That’s why I read when I was a lonely kid and that’s why I read now that I’m a scared adult. It’s a sincere desire, but a sincere desire always complicates things - the universe has a peculiar reaction to our sincere desires. Still, I believe the planet on the table, even when wounded and imperfect, fragmented and deprived, is worthy of being called whole. Our minds and the universe - what else is there? Margaret Mead described intellectuals as those who are bored when they don’t have the chance to talk interestingly enough. Now a book will talk interestingly to you. George Steiner describes the intellectual as one who can’t read without a pencil in her hand. One who wants to talk back to the book, not take notes but make them: one who might write “The giraffe speaks!” in the margin. In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?
Mary Ruefle, courtesy of Whiskey River.
Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the ‘creative bug’ is just a wee voice telling you, ‘I’d like my crayons back, please.’
Hugh MacLeod, Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity (via larmoyante)
(Source: larmoyante)
kairosclerosis
n. the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.
Yep. Thank you, larmoyante.
(Source: dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com, via larmoyante)
