Archive for 2023-02
Summary and highlights
- Many posts in the Mindfulness topic
- Heavy of the Zen and Headless books.
- Discovered author Byung-Chul Han. Dense books!
- Quite on the music and sketching front.
Thinking
Collections
Longer form
- How I take notes (added 2023-02-14)
Posts
- Accept the wider view of everything and its opposite.
- An open hand, not a closed fist.
- Having the attention of a crowd versus being in a crowd
- "If only" mind sets us up to be miserable now.
- Navigating life is about proportion and balance.
- Our habituation to our scales of time and space make them seem objectively real.
- The cramp of self-consciousness is the opposite of nondual feeling.
- Our To-do lists are post-modern rosaries, keeping a larger, avalanching, reality away.
- Break the illusion of separateness of anything you can notice.
- Focus on the space, not the objects in the space.
- Knowing, not the knower and the known.
- Recognise what's already there, not acquire something that's missing.
- You can't become happy, you can only be happy.
- In this moment, is there really a problem?
- It's right on the surface. Like a window as mirror instead of a window.
- Judging yourself doesn't work. Check!
- Seen in the first instant, or not at all. Before concepts, not beyond them.
- What's there when there's no problem to solve?
- Worry postponement: set aside a time and place to worry instead of worrying right now
- All things change and flow, continuously becoming their opposite.
- Bear the truth, work with it, despite your fears.
- Everything, every thing, causes some problems.
- How far away from the object are your thoughts about the object?
- Live a good enough ordinary life.
- Not quite feeling yourself is the normal human condition.
- See difficulties as doorways to understanding.
- The harmony past knowing or saying (re)sounds more deeply.
- The more we're willing to feel uncomfortable, the easier it gets.
- We need perspective: we exaggerate what's close to us.
- We tend to assume that we can only be happy if things go the way we want.
- Leave space for things to untangle themselves.
- Pay attention, no matter what.
- Practice reduces the lag time, lets us catch it more quickly.
- Sometimes we need to turn towards positivity to combat our inherent negativity bias.
- Constantly "scratching the itch" conditions the mind to keep looking for more stimulation.
- Modern society has: little space for conflict, difference, negativity; more pressure to conform, be the same, be positive.
- Modern society is in permanent anaethesia.
- Pain initiates and carries narrative.
- Refrain, not repress.
- The intensity of the pain is equal to the intensity of the grasping.
- To do things carefully, do them quietly.
- Today, algophobia rules. Pain is cast as personal, private, a failure, an attack.
- Use whatever happens as opportunity to wake up, to soften.
- Wait in, instead of wait for.
- Work patiently, steadily, calmly. Allow ample time.
Noting
Book notes
- Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists.
- The Palliative Society: Pain Today.
- On Having No Head.
- Reasons to Be Hopeful.
- Becoming Bodhisattvas.
- Fragments.
Reading
- Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Reps, Paul. Read 28-02-2023, rated 4/5.
- Secrets Of The Sea by Barthelemy, Georgette. Read 28-02-2023, rated 4/5.
- Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists by Willard, Mary Beth. Read 27-02-2023, rated 4/5. My noteson Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists.
- Death at Intervals by Saramago, JosΓ©. Read 25-02-2023, rated 4/5.
- The Palliative Society: Pain Today by Han, Byung-Chul. Read 20-02-2023, rated 5/5. My noteson The Palliative Society: Pain Today.
- Scale by Egan, Greg. Read 20-02-2023, rated 4/5.
- The Practice of Not Thinking by Koike, RyΕ«nosuke. Read 18-02-2023, rated 3/5.
- On Having No Head by Harding, Douglas E.. Read 15-02-2023, rated 4/5. My noteson On Having No Head.
- Reasons to Be Hopeful by The School of Life. Read 13-02-2023, rated 5/5. My noteson Reasons to Be Hopeful.
- How People Lived by Pipe, Jim. Read 10-02-2023, rated 4/5.
- Becoming Bodhisattvas by ChΓΆdrΓΆn, Pema. Read 10-02-2023, rated 4/5. My noteson Becoming Bodhisattvas.
- Fragments by Heraclitus. Read 08-02-2023, rated 4/5. My noteson Fragments.
- Nine Horses by Collins, Billy. Read 07-02-2023, rated 5/5.
- Tale Of The Unknown Island by Saramago, JosΓ©. Read 07-02-2023, rated 4/5.
- Stella Maris by McCarthy, Cormac. Read 04-02-2023, rated 5/5.
Arting
2023 02 Sketches
Gaming
Nothing this month.
Musicing
Nothing this month.