Andrew Furst's Blog, page 142

Xeni Jardin on Identity

From  WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY’S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?

 

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One Minute Meditation – Pacific Sounds

 

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. 

Pacific Sounds

This week’s one minute meditation was taken at Sunrise on the Beach in San Diego (Coronado). It captures the soothing Pacific sounds that I witnessed while there on a conference in November of 2013.

On the flight out, I listened to Stephen Batchelor’s thought provoking Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist. In the book he takes Buddhism to task, especially some of the  more dogmatic and culturally eastern baggage that it carries. He calls out transcendence and reincarnation as problematic concepts.  I agree.  These ideas pull us out of the world and into our heads.

When we are mindful of the present moment, what do transcendence and  rebirth offer us? Perhaps distractions.  In their defense, these ideas bring to mind the vastness of the experience of being alive.  But none the less, they are just that – concepts. They are a raft, which having served their purpose can be left behind.

Be careful not to leave behind being in the world.

Other Coasts

At the other coast
things change the same way here too
the ocean still breaths

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Verse Us – Developments (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.  

Developments (Video Poem)

I recommend viewing this in full screen.

Developments

A tick, low, imperfect.
An arrhythmic watch eliciting; arguments, in burnt stim-responses.
Bursting, on the tender breeze of irregularity.
Stirring what lies inside the vest.
Sting rays, drunk with rage,
deprived our drink.
It’s frightening how we fail the test of freewill.
Dry sticks unable to resist combustion.
Outrageously in or out of our minds?

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Tiny Drops – The Old Guard

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.

The Old Guard

Click on images to view the full size slide show.

MIT Door Upold glorybulfinch buildingcaged angel filterpost and chainbowling ball return 1 filterGet Each Week's Tiny Drops in your email box

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 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 AMITOFO

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Say What? – A Few Words On Meditating

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  

A few words on Meditating

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Compass Songs – The Road Not Taken

 
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.

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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Dialectic Two-Step – The Secret to Contentment

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  

Contentment Love This

As you watch this, think of all the contented people you know and think about how much they give. A great lesson for everyone. Don’t forget to pat yourself on the back for all you give, its what makes you happy.

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One Minute Meditation – Bennetts Brook Snow

 

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. 

Bennetts Brook Snow

Winter’s bite, pulse slows
persisting though, ice can’t stop
the flow of seasons

The song Town by Alexandre Klinke is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

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Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
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Sunday Morning Coming Down – Goldberg Variations

Sunday Morning Coming Down is an ongoing music  video series.  The songs fit my definition of music for a lazy couch bound Sunday morning.

Glen Gould’s Goldberg Variations

J.S. Bach and the Beatles.  Artists that, for some reason, I did not enjoy until my late twenties.  My wife surfaced my appreciation for the Beatles and Glenn Gould’s unique recordings of J.S.  Bach’s Goldberg Variations uncovered  the magic of Bach for me. I’ve linked to a short video of 4 of the variations, but if you’re up to a more in depth  look at the intensity with which Glenn Gould takes on Bach, you might want to view the 1981 movie.

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Talking Back To Chuck – A Two Dimensional Poem

Talking Back To Chuck – A Two Dimensional Poem

In this installment I deconstruct Charles Bukowski’s Poem A Smile To Remember

Bukowski’s poems are rough, this one is no exception.  The accompanying avante garde music accentuates the feeling.  So, if you’re looking for pretty, this is not it.  But as was Bukowski, it is somehow compelling.

I recommend viewing this in full screen mode.  After you click play, hover over the  bottom left corner of the video and click this icon 

Kemialliset Ystavat live at WFMU 2008 (Part 2) by Kemialliset Ystavat is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.a smile to remember

by Charles Bukowski

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, “be happy Henry!”
and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week
while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn’t
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!
why don’t you ever smile?”

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

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