August 22, 2007

Want to make your troubles and worries insignificant rather than prominent. Then do it. The Buddhist phrase "Zen Mind", or shoshin, means "beginner's mind". A beginner's mind is a mind that restores the possibility of youth and youth's originality. This original state of possibility is determined by emptiness. The mind is the only medium between identity and reality, and therefore in the mind identifying itself, it realizes, and really constructs, reality. An empty mind allows reality to be constructed and realized peacefully, because an empty mind has no room for distractions. A good symbolic example, though a bit trite, is just that, a room. An empty room's windows present a scene free of manipulation. There is no point from which the scene is viewed other than emptiness, or purity. A room full of furniture and things hanging on the wall has a character that defines the scene viewed through the windows because it creates an attitude characteristic of a full room. People spend almost all of their time filling this room, filling their mind, and often with don'ts. Don't do this, don't do that. But the irony of this filling station is that the original state of your mind, your empty room, already has the wisdom to understand what not to do. To construct a positive world, a reality that you love, you must love yourself enough to trust your mind with a state free of clutter and judgment, a state where the don'ts of your life are natural and unconscious, and therefore not bothersome. You don't have to lose your character, lose your charisma, and become what feels like a monk, you don't even have to be spiritual, really you must simply trust exactly that character and charisma you have fear of losing. Because in trusting yourself and having the wisdom to separate identity and reality, worries and troubles become insignificant. The beginner's mind is a difficult thing to attain, and really maintain, but by understanding what it is it becomes easier to find, and use. The first question to ask in the quest to formulate a positive reality from a positive mentality is, how well do you know your own mind and its method of consciousness? It's a good thing to know, because it determines all of the rest of your knowledge.

August 15, 2007

Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

These are the words that appear on the modest gravestone of William Shakespeare, one of the greatest playwrights any language and theatre has ever known. But in the 17th century it became popular opinion that it was not William Shakespeare who wrote the plays on which his name was christened, because he did not have the proper education that would give one such a way with words. Shakespeare’s plays were always about royalty and aristocracy, and either through tragedy or comedy exposed its ironies and flaws. Shakespeare expressed knowledge on almost every subject, from medicine to social life, in his lyrical and theatrical development of prosody and character. It was easy for Baconians and Oxfordians to dismiss this Stratford-born resident’s genius with claims of conspiracy, declaring and circulating that it was likely someone well-known and of the courts, but one whose name could not be divulged due to the extravagance of the dramas’ fictional accusations, that produced these splendid works art. Some still refuse to believe that Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems included in his mightily impressive canon. Those that make up this group are likely those that do not have the curious, calculating, and inventive mind of a laymen like William Shakespeare; a laymen no more. Shakespeare is noted as saying that his favorite word in all of the English language was ‘sweet’, and what a sweet story it is for Shakespeare to lie in his grave untouched; still observing, and always knowing the oh-so-sweet truth. It is easy to be looked upon as inferior, to be accused of inabilities, whether by the eye or the mouth. It is also easy that when ability is rightly, even profoundly, shown, credit is not received. In each and every day all of us can do something ala Shakespeare, reaching our own expectations though they may far exceed the expectations placed on us by others; and all in a cloak of modesty. For it is important to know the difference between the two sets of expectations; and glorious, especially when unrecognized, to know, in the sweetness of lying down beneath a cold, gray stone, what others may never be willing to admit.

August 8,2007 

John Steinbeck, famous novelist, author of stories including "Of Mice and Men", "Grapes of Wrath", and "East of Eden", always signed his letters with his personal 'Pigasus' logo, a winged pig over which was written 'Ad Astra Per Alia Porci', thus symbolizing himself as "a lumbering soul but trying to fly." The Latin motto translates "To the stars on the wings of a pig". Steinbeck did something most of us never do. He recognized his own humanity; its cripplings, its inadequacies, its failings, its tragedies, and its terrors, but without being overcome by them. "A lumbering soul but trying to fly." Steinbeck admitted the reality of hiw own self: his self-comparison to a pig; without admonishing his potential for godliness: his self-comparison to Pegasus. Steinbeck was able to balance what would forever be failure with the possibility of immeasurable success. A lumbering soul is a soul nonetheless, and if he be confined to the abilities of a crippled humanity, still he was human, and could conquer that at the very least; at least the human form; at least what he had been confined to. He was not a God nor could he become a God, but by understanding and accepting his own failings he could reach a state of godliness, a state of flight. Steinbeck was an achiever, but was realistic. He sought with calm, soft eyes things beyond where others stared with amazement or glared with frustration, but not without first observing and recognizing the beauty or frailness of that upon which everyone watched shine or crumble. It is true to say that Steinbeck never flew, but also true to say that he is known well enough, and he is novel enough as a person, a human, that I am taking the time to tell you about him. If you accept your own shortcomings without besetting your eyes and mind upon them for too long a time, you too will move beyond what always is into what cannot be, with a wise and romantic balance of understanding that pushes you forward, while you remain forever stable and still. And someday, your name will be on a book, in a magazine, on a film, or perhaps just in someone's thoughts, engraved enough that another has it in their mind to write a few words about you, in hopes that a reader may become more like you were, and always will be.