Andrew Furst's Blog, page 124
June 24, 2015
Verse Us – Eden’s Address – A Video Poem
Verse Us - Poems I write: haiku, senryu, mesostics, free verse, random word constructions, I might even use rhyme or meter once and a while.
Municipal grey, empty,
A house of allegedly righteous character.
After a day or two, the chess-i-ness
becomes a game of desire.
Borrowing rook and pawn moves
to provide some veneer of order.
Arrest time, or give us some kind of a sign,
In these otherwise unreadable moments.
Something to measure?
Sooth this wont to parse the wilderness.
The post Verse Us – Eden’s Address – A Video Poem appeared on Andrew Furst.
Tiny Drops – Beyond the Delusion of Permanence
Tiny Drops is an ongoing iPhoneographic series. The images represent moments of noticing on my part. For you, they are an offer to pause, observe, and take that noticing into your life. All photos are mine unless noted otherwise.
These works by Andrew Furst are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Here’s a quick glimpse beyond the delusion of permanence, a cinemagraph of Field Pond in Harold Parker State Forest. Photographs offer a frozen picture in time. They always fall short of the actual experience. But they can also do more than that. They can contribute to a sense of permanence and the belittling of the true depth of the subject matter. Do photographs of you as a child define the complexity of who you are? Do you gravitate toward images that support your ideal view of the world?
This cinemagraph offers a step away from the static image and opens up possibilities of mind.
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
FIVE LIMITLESS THOUGHTS
May all living beings have happiness and its causes
May all be free from unhappiness and its causes
May all dwell in equanimity, free of attraction and aversion
May all quickly find the great happiness that lies beyond all misery
May all enjoy inner and outer peace now and forever
NAMO AMITOFOThe post Tiny Drops – Beyond the Delusion of Permanence appeared on Andrew Furst.
June 23, 2015
Say What? – Heroes?
Say What? is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip.
This shirt is dry clean only. Which means... it's dirty. - Mitch Hedberg
Heroes?
A Few Words On Heroes.
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
The post Say What? – Heroes? appeared on Andrew Furst.
Compass Songs – Lot’s Wife
Compass Songs is an ongoing series of works by poets that I enjoy. Poetry, as the Zen Masters have said, is like a finger pointing to the moon. It speaks the unspeakable.
And the just man trailed God’s shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
“It’s not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed.”
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
First Name:
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
The post Compass Songs – Lot’s Wife appeared on Andrew Furst.
June 22, 2015
Dialectic Two-Step – How To Deal With Emotional Pain?
Dialectic Two-Step is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.
Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio Paz
How Do You Deal With Emotional Pain?You should deal with emotional pain carefully and not always with meditation. When harm is in the equation, your natural instinct is to protect yourself. Follow that instinct.
Once you are safe, you want to assess whether you need help (medical or otherwise).
When you’ve taken care to get adequate treatment, you can consider meditation as a long term approach to dealing with the emotions and aversions that accompany hurt.
Sitting with your thoughts and noticing how they can be like the tail wagging the dog, can give you perspective on the source of the emotions and aversions. As you begin to recognize the fluid and ephemeral nature of these causes, you’ll recognize that they pass in the same way that they arise, and that you have choices about whether you need to engage those thoughts.
I recommend finding someone who teaches meditation to practice with. You can certainly do it on your own, but it is often difficult to sustain a practice without the support of a group.
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
The post Dialectic Two-Step – How To Deal With Emotional Pain? appeared on Andrew Furst.
June 21, 2015
One Minute Meditation – Three Sisters
One Minute Meditations is an ongoing series of short videos, poems, and commentary intended as a meditation. Offered as an opportunity to step back from your cyber routine and settle into a more natural rhythm, if only for a minute.
Ok you got me. I’m a waterfall addict. These are the three sisters (my name) at the that gravity still functions?
soothing to my core.
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First Name:
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
If You Watched The One Minute Meditation, How Do You Feel? Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
The post One Minute Meditation – Three Sisters appeared on Andrew Furst.
Sunday Morning Coming Down – Summertime
Sunday Morning Coming Down is an ongoing music video series. The songs fit my definition of music for a lazy couch bound Sunday morning.
We’re here. Celebrate Summer.
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
Summertime
lyrics by DuBose Heyward
The post Sunday Morning Coming Down – Summertime appeared on Andrew Furst.
June 20, 2015
Say What? – What Do You Want Most Out Of Life?
Say What? is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip.
This shirt is dry clean only. Which means... it's dirty. - Mitch Hedberg
Life?
A Few Words On Life.
Get Each Week's Say What? in your email box
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
The post Say What? – What Do You Want Most Out Of Life? appeared on Andrew Furst.
Tiny Drops – Change is Everything
Tiny Drops is an ongoing iPhoneographic series. The images represent moments of noticing on my part. For you, they are an offer to pause, observe, and take that noticing into your life. All photos are mine unless noted otherwise.
These works by Andrew Furst are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
When we considering emptiness and impermanence, we can often get mired in conceptual fuzziness. The words themselves seem counter-intuitive and can evoke a smile or disdain depending on your understanding. But change is the only thing that we can perceive with our senses. Movement of a predator in the bushes is signaled by reverberations. These vibrations reach our brain via sound and light, ripples in space. Our relationship to movement in space is our connection with and concept of the world. Change is Everything.
Impermanence is the only thing our senses can perceive. If something did not changing, there would be no ripple. If there is no ripple, there is no sensation. Without sensation, there is no mental formation. It would not exist to us.
Everything we perceive in meditation is change, including our senses themselves. Change is Everything. Who is meditating?
Get Each Week's Tiny Drops in your email box.mc4wp-form input[name="_mc4wp_required_but_not_really"]{display:none !important}First Name:
Last Name:
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
FIVE LIMITLESS THOUGHTS
May all living beings have happiness and its causes
May all be free from unhappiness and its causes
May all dwell in equanimity, free of attraction and aversion
May all quickly find the great happiness that lies beyond all misery
May all enjoy inner and outer peace now and forever
NAMO AMITOFOThe post Tiny Drops – Change is Everything appeared on Andrew Furst.
