August 2011
38 posts
“This city is not about other people or buildings or streets but about your mental structure. If we remember what Kafka writes about his Castle, we get a sense of it. Cities really are mental conditions.”
—Ai Weiwei
Know What's Fucking Crazy? Books. →
knowwhatsfuckingcrazy.tumblr.com
Like, fuckkkk.
You walk into a library or a book store, and laid out before you is the combined knowledge, thoughts and stories of the most incredible thinkers and creative minds to ever walk the fucking earth—all on glued-together thin slices of tree. Holy. Christ.
When you read a book…
What Is Life
George Harrison
What Is Life // George Harrison (1970)
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Being Blog: 40 Years of Contemplation at The Rothko Chapel →
blog.onbeing.org
[I go here every year when I visit the family…along with the nearby Menil Museum, a kind of spiritual motherland for me.]
Studying Rothko inside the Chapel. (photo: Stefan Klocek/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
The Rothko Chapel is a historic Texas landmark, dedicated in 1971 as an interfaith sanctuary and space of personal contemplation. It houses 14 paintings by the late abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko. They are black-on-black paintings, the largest of which is 15 by nearly nine feet, and had to be inserted through the skylight by crane. One reviewer said of the experience:
“It’s a place that captures opposites: It’s large yet intimate. Dark yet bright. Spare yet rich. The chapel is infinity captured. Vastness contained.”
Rothko Chapel with “Broken Obelisk,” 1967. (photo: kewing/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
“Broken Obelisk,” a sculpture by Barnett Newman greets visitors in a reflecting pool at the south entrance of the chapel. It is dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and when Texas art collectors Dominique and John de Menil offered the city of Houston money to purchase it, the city rejected them. The Menils later founded the Rothko Chapel and brought it there. Rothko did not live to see the completion of the chapel, he committed suicide in 1970.
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“The true felicity of a lover of books is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender, not meanly abject, but deliberate and cautious, with your wits about you, as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book. This I call reading.”
—Edith Wharton (via teachingliteracy)
Georges Simenon on the Novel →
nyrbclassics.tumblr.com
“‘The writer does not exist,’ he tells [his readers]. ‘Only the novel and the reader exist. The more the novel seems to have been written by the reader, the better it is. The novel must be short and it must be read at one sitting. It must not be a chronicle. It must not be picturesque. It must…
Brendan Gill, The New Yorker, January 24, 1953
“You’re bound to become a buddha if you practice.
If water drips long enough
Even rocks wear through.
It’s not true thick skulls can’t be pierced;
People just imagine their minds are hard.” —Shih-wu (1272-1352)
If water drips long enough
Even rocks wear through.
It’s not true thick skulls can’t be pierced;
People just imagine their minds are hard.” —Shih-wu (1272-1352)
LUB-DUB: My Game →
tsmhm.tumblr.com
I like to think that I’m kind of playful.
Did you ever play any of those video games Grand Theft Auto? Where you are running loose on the street, and you MUG PEOPLE, and STEAL THEIR CARS, and REEK HAVOC?
I play a game when I’m walking around Manhattan, (sometimes Brooklyn, more often Manhattan, (I like mornings, I spend my mornings in Manhattan)) where I am RUNNING LOOSE ON THE STREET!
And I am responsible for beaming happiness into the hearts of each stranger from my fingers, and taking a comforting round of breath for each of them, and carrying myself tall and gracefully and in a way that allows us all to share our burdens and access Care-Bear-level SuperBliss. This game, people, is really fun.
This post is dedicated to John Son, ninja yogi.
“Whoever cannot seek
the unforeseen sees nothing,
for the known way
is an impasse.” —Heraclitus. Thank you to The Beauty We Love. (via crashinglybeautiful)
the unforeseen sees nothing,
for the known way
is an impasse.” —Heraclitus. Thank you to The Beauty We Love. (via crashinglybeautiful)
Ninja Yoga: Star Bucks →
ninjayoga.tumblr.com
I recently read Jerry Spinelli’s teen novel Stargirl, which turns out to be a primer on Ninja Yoga. The book’s protagonist, Stargirl Caraway, is a master Ninja Yogini. She sends Love Bombs to people she doesn’t know. She looks up peoples’ birthdays and serenades them in public with a ukelele. It’s the story of a girl whose compassion is utterly fearless and without bounds.
Today’s practice is inspired by Stargirl. Go into your wallet or purse and fish out a Star Buck (in America, they come in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, and 1000). After you’re sure no one is watching, slip the Star Buck(s) into a place for someone to discover later. For example, go to a local bookstore, find a copy of your favorite book, and leave the Star Bucks between its pages. Instant discount! Great read! More positivity in the world! Leave twenty Star Bucks in the front pocket of pair of jeans that didn’t fit you. Tuck ten Star Bucks in the back seat of a cab. Leave a Star Buck in the hymnal of a church. Fold up a Star Buck and leave it under an avocado at the grocery store.
You object that your Star Bank account is empty or low on funds? Grasshopper, putting generosity in the world is how you experience generosity. In other words, if you believe money doesn’t grow on trees, you can believe it falls from the stars.
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LUB-DUB: Good Deed for the Day →
tsmhm.tumblr.com
Do you hear or use that phrase? “Well, there’s your good deed for the day!”
“That’s my good deed for the day.” [Brushes hands off, nods importantly, drifts off to behave the rest of the day selfishly, having met the quota.]
I think it’s strange to think of good-doing as a checklist thing.
For…
“It’s like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it’s dense, isn’t it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you’re a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don’t feel that we’re still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually—if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning— you’re not something that’s a result of the big bang. You’re not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as—Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so—I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I’m that, too. But we’ve learned to define ourselves as separate from it.”
—Alan Watts (via fernsandmoss)
“Even after many years of psychoanalysis, after teaching psychology, working as a therapist, after taking drugs for many years, being in India, being a yogi, having a guru, meditating for 18 or 19 years now - as far as I can see I haven’t gotten rid of one neurosis. Not one. The only thing that has changed is that while before these neuroses were huge monsters that possessed me, now they’re like little shmoos that I invite over for tea. I say, “Oh, sexual perversity! Haven’t seen you in weeks!” They’re sort of my style now. When your neuroses become your style, you’ve got it made. Everybody has a personality composed of neurotic patterns. I’ve given up thinking I’ve got to go through the eye of the needle and become psychologically sound. I’m always going to be a mess! At bottom, it’s uninteresting and unimportant. That’s part of the shift that occurs with spiritual practice. As things become less important, they become more available to change.”
—Ram Dass (via terramantra)
Ninja Yoga: The Ultimate Reality Show →
ninjayoga.tumblr.com
Way back in the olden days, all we had was the calm of a pond’s surface. Then, slowly, over many yugas, we learned to polish stone into an ersatz mirror. It’s been just over a hundred years since a German chemist invented the silvered-glass lover we greet every morning. Clearly, looking at ourselves is a basic human impulse. So it’s only logical that something we stare at more frequently than our mirrors evolved into our best reflector yet. How else explain our absorption with reality television?
Snooky is our face in the mirror. Snooky reveals everything about ourselves, especially what we try to deny. By embracing our inner Snooky, we strengthen our ability to love.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, Shakyamuni Buddha pointed us to the ultimate reality show—our minds. Once we bring it into focus, there is no better freak show to grab our attention. The best thing is we don’t have to pay Time Warner extra to get it. It’s on the sushumna channel. We tune into it by practicing on our mats.
Say it with me: I love you, Snooky.
