The Assembly
Season 2 of my favourite TV show has just dropped.
If you haven’t watched The Assembly on ITV, do it now.
It’s unmitigated joy and heart from start to finish.
(Possibly UK only 😕).
There’s a difference between being condemned to suffer and being free to suffer.
It doesn’t matter who you are or how much practice you’ve done: right now, there is just what's noticed without a noticer.
Pillars of Creation
All it took was an iconic image and a heavily loaded name and Science entered the world of myth without even realising it.
⚠️ Politics! 😱
Interesting times in British politics.
The (now historical) main two parties, Labour and Conservative, are effectively dead, replaced by a range of smaller parties known more for so-called fringe policies.
Effectively the Conservatives have been replaced by the more right wing Reform Party and Labour have seen their majority divided up between the Liberal Democrats and Greens. Meanwhile in Wales Plaid Cymru (Yay, Go Wales!) have become the larger party, just. In Scotland the SNP have cleaned up leaving everyone else behind fighting over scraps.
I have no idea what any of this means but only to note that the next General Election in 2029 will see the Parliamentary map completely redrawn out of all recognition.
When you find your way, you will also find many teachers standing in your way.
– Dōgen
Meaning is the mind’s imaginary friend.
At a certain point life becomes its own entertainment.
Happiness is a happy dog.
Just chatting to my wife about the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie.
Very underrated. A wonderful film I could watch again and again.
A masterclass in direction, cinematography, acting, music, the lot.
Gary Oldman’s performance, in particular, stands out as an object lesson in doing so much with so little.
Highly recommended.
Bill in Waiting Patiently mode.
The reactive self is a child throwing food. Calling the food-throwing “brave” is a mistake.
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.
— Thomas Browne
Who needs vacations when we have reality constantly unfolding into forms we have yet to experience? Miracles are sitting around me. They are not somewhere else. They never were. Isn’t it interesting? How I percieve helps construct what I percieve.
We were born for this.
All of it.
Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.
— Anthony De Mello
The book that started it all for me.
I bought an old dog eared copy in a second hand book shop for a few pence nearly 40 years ago. I had no idea what it was. It changed my life. I managed to lose it somewhere along the way. Copies go for around £60 these days!
There are no experts in the art of living, which is an art of improvisation, not certainty.
For RSS eyes only
Terry Godier (of Current RSS reader app fame) has made a new tool, Sourcefeed, which he calls a ‘pop-up RSS service’ enabling you to create a site-less feed of posts which can only be accessed by a/ any feed reader.
Mine is here - For RSS eyes only.
There’s no understanding or explaining this, there is only being this.
You can’t study to be what you already are.
You don’t need to understand anything in order to breathe or beat your heart.
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.
