Andrew Furst's Blog, page 84
January 7, 2016
Ferry Beach Rocks – Five Minute Meditation
Here is video taken at the Ferry Beach Retreat Center in Saco, Maine. It’s another product of a quiet morning walk . This five minute installment is perfect for the beginning of lunch break at work, when your toddler settles into a short nap, or if you’ve just been spending a little too much time clicking the hyperlinks. Along with the sound of the ocean, you’ll hear a singing bowl ring atone minute intervals.
These Meditation Videos Are Best Viewed In Full Screen
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.
Get Each Week's Minute Meditations in your email box
These videos are produced for those of us who spend an inordinately large amount of time in the cyber-world. They are not a substitute for unplugging from your devices and taking a stroll near trees, water, or a patch of unkempt grass. Getting out into the world - touching, smelling, hearing, and seeing nature is the best way to reconnect with our prime purpose.
What is our prime purpose? We are feeling and sensing machines. We are the universe looking back on itself. We are witness to the wonders and dangers of living in this corner of the cosmos. We are the seekers looking for connection a little further beyond yesterday's borders and boundaries.
But sitting and staring at the screen robs us of the sustenance that we rely upon for wonder and sanity. These videos are an opportunity to bring the sensations of nature to you, while you're in the cyber-world. Its an opportunity to relax your gaze, resettle your posture, and regain some depth in your breath. Listen and watch the video and allow your self to open up and recharge.
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January 6, 2016
Ladybug – A Mesostic – Verse Us (Poems by Me)
Verse Us - Poems I write: haiku, senryu, mesostics, free verse, random word constructions, I might even use rhyme or meter once and a while.
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Stages – Tiny Drops (Photography)
Click on an image below to view images in the lightbox
bolt sculpture
polar bear skull
berries
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January 5, 2016
Altered States? – Say What?
Say What? is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip.
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No Possum, No Sop, No Taters – Compass Songs
He is not here, the old sun,
As absent as if we were asleep.
The field is frozen. The leaves are dry.
Bad is final in this light.
In this bleak air the broken stalks
Have arms without hands. They have trunks
Without legs or, for that, without heads.
They have heads in which a captive cry
Is merely the moving of a tongue.
Snow sparkles like eyesight falling to earth,
Like seeing fallen brightly away.
The leaves hop, scraping on the ground.
It is deep January. The sky is hard.
The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.
It is in this solitude, a syllable,
Out of these gawky flitterings,
Intones its single emptiness,
The savagest hollow of winter-sound.
It is here, in this bad, that we reach
The last purity of the knowledge of good.
The crow looks rusty as he rises up.
Bright is the malice in his eye…
One joins him there for company,
But at a distance, in another tree.
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.
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January 4, 2016
Post Card Art Project – Help Wanted
I visited the Addison Gallery at Philips Academy down the street and saw the tail end of the Eva Hesse and Sol Lewitt exhibit. I was really struck by Eva’s work (I’ve seen Sol’s work already at Mass MOCA). There was one series of pieces that were constructed out of sent post cards that inspired this little post card art project.
Here’s how it will work:
I will be sending letters to friends, Patreon patrons, and anyone else interested in helping.
In the letter will be one or more copies of the 4 post cards above. They will be pre-stamped to make sure they get back home.
On the other side are instructions on what to do – basically this; on the addressed side of the post card , write a message, color the image, draw over it, send it back blank, or anything in between.
When I get them in the mail, I will reunite the 4 cards (sent to different people) into a single image, scan, and send to everyone.
Let me know by email if you’re interested, whether you want 1 or more cards, or if you have questions. It’ll be fun, it’s art, and heck maybe it’ll end up in a book or on someone’s wall.
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Anton Chekhov On People
Quotes -The path to right view is an arduous walk through fields of manure.
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Are Pain and Pleasure Equivalent In Terms of Suffering? – Dialectic Two-Step
Question: Are Pain and Pleasure Equivalent In Terms of Suffering?
This spring I went to a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat, and I’m trying to make sense of that experience. That we suffer when we feel pain is obvious. Yet, something that the teacher tended to hint to often is that there is a very subtle form of suffering that’s generated with pleasure, due to the fact that we cling to it.
Response:
We always need to be precise when we talk about suffering, or dukka. The Buddha described three types of suffering. Being clear about what type you’re talking about is important. The first type is inevitable; the suffering that comes from birth, illness, old age, and death. There is relatively little we can do about the pain that comes with these events in our lives. Medicine offers some comfort, but it’s not complete.
When we talk about “equivalence” of pain and pleasure, it should be explicit that this is strictly in the realm of the remaining two types of suffering.
The suffering that comes with our response to change
The suffering that comes from conditioning.
The former is created by mind, in that disappointment arises when something we want to remain the same changes – e.g. a relationship fails, an object breaks, and so on. The latter is also created by the mind. Suffering with respect to conditioning is the dissatisfaction that arises when things don’t work out as we expect – we lose a job, someone doesn’t agree with us, and so on.
If we look at these two types of dukka through the lens of pleasure and pain, it goes like this:
Suffering because of change
You have a favorite tea mug (pleasure), it breaks (pain). You are sad because of the change.
Suffering because of conditioning change
There is a person you strongly dislike. They show up at a party you are at (pain). You leave to get away from them (pleasure?). You end up missing the party (pain)
In these examples our minds create the suffering. The objects of our preferences or aversions do not directly cause the pain or pleasure; it is our response to them that generates dukka. I believe this is what the teacher meant. Mind is the source of the pain and pleasure, in this way they might be considered equivalent.
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
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January 3, 2016
Night Falls – A Two Minute Meditation
A pulse on which I cannot lay my finger.
It courses on frequencies measured in eons.
Resting in some microcosm of its rhythm,
I lie oblivious to its time.
Of course emptiness knows the score,
As she taps out my day.
The video is of the falls coming off the Reflecting Pool, making their way to the edge of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
These Meditation Videos Are Best Viewed In Full Screen
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.
Get Each Week's Minute Meditations in your email box
These videos are produced for those of us who spend an inordinately large amount of time in the cyber-world. They are not a substitute for unplugging from your devices and taking a stroll near trees, water, or a patch of unkempt grass. Getting out into the world - touching, smelling, hearing, and seeing nature is the best way to reconnect with our prime purpose.
What is our prime purpose? We are feeling and sensing machines. We are the universe looking back on itself. We are witness to the wonders and dangers of living in this corner of the cosmos. We are the seekers looking for connection a little further beyond yesterday's borders and boundaries.
But sitting and staring at the screen robs us of the sustenance that we rely upon for wonder and sanity. These videos are an opportunity to bring the sensations of nature to you, while you're in the cyber-world. Its an opportunity to relax your gaze, resettle your posture, and regain some depth in your breath. Listen and watch the video and allow your self to open up and recharge.
If you enjoyed this post, please like and share.
The post Night Falls – A Two Minute Meditation appeared on Andrew Furst.
Sunday Morning Coming Down – Melissa
“Melissa” featuring Jackson Browne and Gregg Allman
Sunday Morning Coming Down is an ongoing music video series. The songs fit my definition of music for a lazy couch bound Sunday morning.
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Melissa
Crossroads, seem to come and go, yeah.
The gypsy flies from coast to coast
Knowing many, loving none,
Bearing sorrow havin’ fun,
But back home he’ll always run
To sweet Melissa… mmm…
Freight train, each car looks the same, all the same.
And no one knows the Gypsy’s name
No one hears his lonely sighs,
There are no blankets where he lies.
In all his deepest dreams the Gypsy flies
with sweet Melissa… mmm…
Again the morning’s come,
Again he’s on the run,
Sunbeams shining through his hair,
Appearing not to have a care.
Well, pick up your gear and Gypsy roll on, roll on.
Crossroads, will you ever let him go? (Lord, Lord)
Will you hide the dead man’s ghost,
Or will he lie, beneath the clay,
or will his spirit float away?
But I know that he won’t stay without Melissa.
Yes I know that he won’t stay without Melissa.
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