Rationalisations:
lies we tell
to make ourselves
feel better

My teacher had a damning phrase for students who have yet to establish a daily practice regime: Not ready to begin. The real beginning is when you formally commit to a life dedicated to the teaching. The good student realises quite soon after starting their studies that this is their only chance and that everything else in life pales in comparison, including family and spousal commitments.

When I talk about mainstream culture, I am specifically referring to the “religion of science” (or dogmatic scientism), academic psychology (the cognitive-behavioral paradigm) – a New Age, Disneyfied doctrine (simplistic magical-positive thinking), traditional (monistic) religion, commercial media and social media culture (narcissistic histrionics or hypertransparency). In general, I am referring to all one-dimensional, mainstream thinking that flows from powerful organizations and the ways they wield power, all for their exclusive gain.

—Sergi Rufi

Break on through to the other side

Liang Tung-tsai, my teacher's first Chinese master, had a witty phrase for know-it-all students: Worse than a beginner. Yet in a way we are all worse than beginners because beginners really do have beginner's mind. So until we cultivate beginner's mind – the ability to repeat an exercise with the same enthusiasm and attention we gave it when we first learned it – then we too are worse than a beginner.

To all of us, I believe, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Roman Empire is like a mirror in which we see reflected the brutal, vulgar, powerful yet despairing image of our technological civilization, an imperium which now covers the entire globe, for all nations, capitalist, socialist, and communist, are united in their worship of mass, technique and temporal power. What fascinates and terrifies us about the Roman Empire is not that it finally went smash but that, away from the start, it managed to last for four centuries without creativity, warmth or hope.

—W. H. Auden, 1952

By all means think, but in images not words. Words are abstractions. The word tree is not a tree, and neither does it evoke a tree. Thinking in images is effectively imagining – developing the imagination.

Quiet mind
Empty mind
No mind

The teaching constitutes an attack on the Ego. Without persistent, concerted practice you will develop resistance to that attack and then the teaching won't be able to penetrate – you will effectively have become a poor student.

Depression is the result of turning a blind eye
(Eventually the past catches up with you)

The first book of Thus Spoke Zarathustra begins with the story of three metamorphoses: “How the spirit becomes camel, the camel becomes lion, and how finally the lion becomes child.” The camel is the animal who carries: he carries the weight of established values, the burdens of education, morality, and culture. He carries them into the desert, where he turns into a lion; the lion destroys statues, tramples burdens, and leads the critique of all established values. Finally, the lion must become child, that is, he who represents play and a new beginning, creator of new values and new principles of evaluation.

According to Nietzsche, these three metamorphoses designate, among other things, the different moments of his work, as well as the stages of his life and health. These divisions are no doubt arbitrary: the lion is present in the camel; the child is in the lion; and in the child, there is already the tragic outcome.

—Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche, 1965, included as final chapter in Pure Immanence, 2001

What do all civilisations have in common?

Unsustainability.

Anything worthwhile has a price & a risk

I've yet to meet a therapist capable of turning the therapeutic spotlight back on themselves. Yet without this the life is one of pure pretence.

The search for an equilibrium is essential for the artist, to be as aware of inner space as he is of outer space.

—Mark Tobey

Content is a glimpse

—Willem de Kooning

Unless you let gravity flow through you it will be a pall dragging you down.

When you make spiritual progress, the body, which always lags behind, often injures. Its way of saying: "Wait for me!" Just be patient and resist fearing you've done something wrong. Eventually, the chances are, one such injury will be the death of you. So be it. This is why those on a spiritual path don't make old old bones.

Refuse to be an accomplice.

—Simone Weil

an inner discipline : a search for truth

Clearly distinguish body, mind & spirit. Gravity pulls the body down. Levity lifts the spirit(s). Selfless attention expands the mind until mind is simply the space you operate within – the boundless field of consciousness. Thoughts & feelings are fleeting tightenings of mind within mind. They come & they go. When they linger too long you have obsession, indulgence, worry & narcissism.

To think about God is to the human soul what breathing is to the human body.

—Jacob Needleman

Practice stale & tedious?

Try reversing your circuits.

Often a change is as good as a rest.

Never stew in your own juices
(Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours)

When you move into a front-foot posture, imagine the master's hand on your sacrum, gently easing it forward & down. Then feel the thymus (upper sternum) reaching up & out.

All fear reduces to fear of death
All love aspires to love of God

A heavy heart will tip the body forward and then the bum will stick out (the cardinal sin of Taiji). A head full of worries (thoughts unrelated to the immediate situation) will do the same.

stones

water

mud

hands

days

symmetry

gravity