vrijdag 1 januari 2021
Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for
a return to ‘normality', trying to stitch our future to our past and
refusing to acknowledge the rupture.
But the rupture exists.
And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves.
Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew.
This one is no different.
It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us.
Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world.
And ready to fight for it.
- Arundhati Roy -
NITCH
donderdag 31 december 2020
De maanden
Ik wil september tegenhouden
en oktober en november,
maar mei en juni wil ik houden.
En laat ook juli eindeloos.
Ga zitten en wees welkom in mijn brein.
Het is hier meestal druk want hier geschiedt,
in de fabriek van gebeurtenissen,
de ongelijke strijd met het verslijten.
April is als een prettige maîtresse,
maart de maand van de longen
en februari de jongste bediende
die zich al volop in de lente bekwaamt.
Ik ben zo vreselijk tegen het heden
dat ik wou dat het al morgen was
of dat het altijd gisteren bleef.
Het is hier altijd de hoogste tijd:
september moet ik tegenhouden,
oktober en vooral november,
mijn dierbaarste maanden bewaren
en al mijn jaren laten gaan.
- Luuk Gruwez -Uit: Dieven en geliefden. De Arbeiderspers, 2000-
Beeld: Rijksmuseum Prent: De twaalf maanden van het jaar,
Uitgever: Glenisson & Zonen, houtsnede
woensdag 30 december 2020
Death comes along in ten years and says, 'Old boy, you can't take that with you.' So why not get totally free of attachment now? Which is death. You understand what I'm talking about? Totally detached, today, not tomorrow. Tomorrow is death.
So, why can't
I be free of my attachment, now? Therefore living and dying are
together all the time. I wonder if you see the beauty of it. Not ten
years later or forty years later. That gives you an immense sense of
freedom - to your profession, to everything about you. So living and
dying are together, always. It's not something to be frightened about.
So if the brain can do that, then there is a totally different quality
to the brain. It has no hooks. It has no sense of the past, the future,
the present. It is living. I can't go into it now because it is really
an endless way of living; every day is a new day; every morning is a son
of the morning.
- J. Krishnamurti -
5 things that cloud my judgement
Fear of failure or rejection
Our
fear failure or rejection can be so strong that avoidance becomes a
more preferred option and clouds our motivation to succeed. Although
temporarily this fear "protects" us from situation we perceive as
harmful, in the long run, it keeps us from trying, creates self-doubt,
and stalls growth/progress.
Holding on to unrealistic expectations
Raising
expectations helps us move forward and grow; however, they must be
realistic. Unrealistic expectations have the potential to draw distorted
conclusions or elicit negative emotions, such as resentment, anger, or
disappointment, when we or those around us naturally fall short.
Self-limiting beliefs
Self-limiting
beliefs are perceptions or assumptions we have about ourselves that
limit us in some way to tap into our full potential. Some examples
include, "I am not competent enough", or "I am not good enough" or "my
unhappiness is outside of my control"
My own insecurities and triggers
When
we are unaware about our own insecurities or triggers, we are likely to
project them on to others. This may make us view the situation from a
narrow lens clouded by parts of us that still need to be nurtured and
worked on.
A strong need to control all aspects of my life
Uncertainty
can be scary and it leads us to incorrectly judge how much control we
have over a situation. It is important to remember that we cannot
control other people or the future. We can only control how we react to
the situation at hand
- nawal mustafa -
There is a story in Tibet concerning two brothers, one of whom had ninety-nine yaks while the other had only one yak. The poor brother was quite content with his one yak. He was quite happy and thought he had great wealth. He had one yak and that was really all he needed. It was quite sufficient and he wasn’t particularly afraid of losing it. In fact his enjoyment of owning it was greater than his fear of losing it, whereas the other one was always very afraid of losing his yaks. He always had to look after them, and generally you find in the highlands of Tibet that there are a lot of wolves and Himalayan mountain bears, and the yaks quite often die through the hardships of winter. There are far more obstacles there than in this part of the world when it comes to looking after animals. So one day the rich brother thought, ‘Well, I think I’ll ask my brother a favor.” You see, he was not only afraid of losing his yaks, he was also very keen on accumulating more of them. And he went to the other brother and said, “Well, I know you have only one yak, which doesn’t make much difference to you. So if you didn’t have one at all it wouldn’t really matter very much. But if you give me your yak then I will have a hundred yaks, which means a great deal to me. I mean a hundred yaks is really something. If I had that much I would really be somebody rich and famous.’ So he asked the favor. And the other brother gave up the yak quite easily. He didn’t hesitate; he just gave it. And this story became proverbial in Tibet to illustrate that when someone has a lot he wants more, and when someone has less he is prepared to give.
So there is this possessiveness, this psychological hunger. And this relates not only to money and wealth but to the deep-seated feeling of wanting to possess, wanting to hold on to things, wanting things to definitely belong to you. For example, supposing you are window shopping. One person might be unhappy all the time, and when he sees things he likes, this always produces a kind of pain in his mind because he is thinking, 'If only I had the money, I could buy that!’ So all the time as he is walking through the shops this hunger produces great pain. Whereas another person may enjoy merely looking. So this wanting to own, wanting to possess and not being prepared to give out, is not really a weakness for any particular thing. It is more generally wanting to occupy oneself with something, and if you have lost or lose interest in that particular thing then you always want to substitute something else in its place. It isn’t particularly that you can’t manage without a motorcar or central heating or whatever it may be. There is always something behind that, something fundamental, a kind of wanting to possess, wanting to own, which is always changing and developing and substituting one thing for another. So that is the real weakness — though not exactly weakness, but more a kind of habit that one tends to form through a neurotic process of thoughts. The whole thing boils down to this overlapping of thoughts which goes on all the time in our minds. We never allow anything to really happen or take place in our mind. One thought comes and almost before we finish that another one comes in and overlaps it and then another. So we never allow any gap which would permit us to be free and really digest things. Therefore it becomes a continual demand, a continual process of creating and wanting to own. And that is why one has to develop this generosity of really opening oneself.
- A Tibetan story from Chogyam Trungpa on being generous rather than being possessive and wanting to hold on to things -
There are two waves drifting along in the ocean, one a bit wave in red and yellow bigger than the other.
The bigger wave suddenly becomes very sad and upset.
The smaller wave asks what’s wrong.
“You don’t want to know,” the bigger wave says.
“What is it?” the small wave asks.
“No - really - it’s too terrible. If you knew what I knew, you’d never be happy.”
The small wave persists.
Finally the big wave explains: “You can’t see it, but I can see that, not too far from here, all of the waves are crashing on the shore. We are going to disappear.”
The small wave says,“ I can make you happy with just six words, but you have to listen very carefully to them.”
The big wave doesn’t believe it – what does the small wave know that he doesn’t – but he’s desperate.
After a while of doubting and mocking the small wave, the big wave finally gives in, and asks the small wave to tell him.
And so the small wave says: “You’re not a wave, you’re water.”
- A short story of Ram Dass -
It is the philosophy of the Tao
that we are all falling off a tree,
at every moment of our live
When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of
itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the
ground. But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly make
up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and
rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing.
In the same way, it is the philosophy of the Tao that we are all falling off a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it.
So instead of living in a state of chronic tension , and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat.
~ Alan Watts -
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Art by John Caple
Difficult experiences, we learn, give us a window into rooms within ourselves we are normally unaware of.
When we undergo a harsh setback, a crisis, a severe loss, even a prolonged period of sadness or depression, the psychological check valves that keep certain emotions locked inside us are sprung and powerful new feelings come flooding out.
In the fury that follows, we find ourselves caught up in the confusion and distress.
We endure these bouts of anguish as best we can and hope for the best...
But afterward, when the smoke clears and the trauma is past, we discover that certain rock-hard insights have crystallized from these encounters...
Looking back on the hard times, it's often apparent that while these experiences hurt us, they also open deep recesses inside our being and make us aware that without the pain of birth nothing new can ever be born.
- Harry R. Moody -
In humility is the greatest freedom.
As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart.
As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy,
because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist.
- Thomas Merton -
dinsdag 29 december 2020
CINEMA.
Waarom hebben we de bioscoop uitgevonden.
Om mensen ervan te overtuigen dat het leven in de vorm van een verhaal is, om te beweren dat er onder de rommelige gebeurtenissen die we ondervinden een begin, een midden, een einde is.
Het vervangt religies, bioscoop, het brengt orde in chaos, het brengt reden in absurd.
- De spiegelvrouw - Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt -
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