Flowers fall even though we love them, and weeds grow even though we dislike them.
— Dōgen Zenji
You don’t solve a koan. It solves you.
— Nothing and Everything Matters, So Act Accordingly, Michael McCaffrey
Beyond optimism and pessimism — Viktor Frankl’s Yes To Life, The Marginalian.
Who says my poems are poems? My poems are not poems. When you know that my poems are not poems, Then we can speak of poetry!
— Ryōkan
Everything happens automatically.
Including you.
At some point, the question stops being what you believe, and becomes whether any of it can survive a direct look.
What use is the story of your life?
Really.
No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.
— Alan Watts
Taboos define what must never happen. But silence decides what continues unseen.
I use RSS everyday. Practically everything I read arrives on my screen via RSS. So it matters that my RSS readers work for me by getting out of the way.
I’m always trying new ones out, most recently Micro Blog’s Inkwell. It’s good. It works. I like it. But it’s missing something and I don’t know what.
In contrast I have never stopped using Sublime Feed for medium to long form reading. It works just the way I want. I couldn’t really tell you how or why, it just works for me.
For brief scanning of short form posts, news and social accounts, I use Reeder, to which it is very well suited. The opposite of Sublime Feed.
Horses for courses.
Other good readers I have used, like Inkwell and Unread, fall between the two short form and long form stools.
The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.
― Henry James
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
— Samuel Beckett
Although I might have thought otherwise at the time, I have never known, nor know now, what I am or what I am doing.
Having imported a ton of old posts from Wordpress I stumbled across this from four years ago…
There is no Buddhism here, no Zen, no Advaita, no Dzogchen, no awakening, no enlightenment, no spirituality, no tradition, no duality or non duality. Just the cool brush of breeze through the window, the exquisitely simple pain of loss and these words appearing out of nowhere.
Bill.
A big thank you to Vincent at Scribbles for the new Wordpress import feature! 🙏
I have no idea what I’m doing but just imported over a thousand posts from old Wordpress blogs in a matter of a few minutes. No problems. No errors. Simple as.
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.
— Matsuo Bashō
Back to evening dog walks which is really nice.
Twenty minutes of shared solitude.
Very peaceful and quiet but for the patter of paws and the tinkle of tag on collar.
For all their potential complications, pets are remarkably adept at simplifying life.
Now that we are blessed with having a dog in our lives once again I was, today, reminded of the simple and grounding fact of finding an unused poo bag in my pocket.
The myriad complications and worries of the world collapsed in an instant as I was reminded of the basic, immediate duty of care.
I love Luke O’Nein, he’s my favourite ever Sunderland player, but…
…if Dan Ballard had played instead we don’t lose.
Hey ho.
Bill not the slightest bit interested in the match.
When I see dogs being dogs I smile. I recognise the simplicity of unconditional, spontaneous being.
I'm suspicious of nostalgia, looking back with rose tinted spectacles to alleged golden ages. They don't exist. The world has been both progressing and going to hell in a handcart forever. Today is no different.
I can think I am doing all sorts of things but that’s merely retro-fitting a will and a narrative over an infinitely unknowable movement of energy.
Bill our new rescue dog.
Picked him up yesterday and he’s settling in really well.
A gentle soul, already got himself into our hearts.
Good morning.
When I’m feeling low, I can always go do something for someone or something else. It works every time. A day unfolds into an unknown day I have never seen before, as M. Oliver offers. Maybe being useful is the only reality there is in such a context? Maybe being kind and compassionate is the only thing that seems to make sense? And lifts us all.
Somebody's boring me. I think it's me.
— Dylan Thomas
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.
— Kahlil Gibran
In spirituality, the following law often seems to me to be verifiable: the more people cluck and chuckle, proclaim and fret over an experience, the more insignificant and/or fabricated it actually is.
Good evening.
Well-written does not equal interesting, appealing or enjoyable.
Good morning.
A life that makes a good story tends to be a life that was awful to live.
Meaningful things
Happen quietly
Without fanfare or performance
Acts away from the spotlight
Of the ego or the crowd
Deeds done
Doer invisible
…dopamine fires for the chase, not for the catch.
Zen is the practice of simplicity and silence. This involves encountering difficulty and frequenting noise.
Have spent much of the day tearing my arms and legs to shreds using only nature’s finest overgrown brambles and gorse while knee deep in a freezing stream.
Get back to nature they said…
Good evening.
Good afternoon.
