The more you talk and think about it,
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
From Verses On the Faith Mind (Chien-chih Seng-tsan)
Arrival
“Arrival” is a science-fiction parable in a distinctly more idealistic hopeful key than most movies in this genre, one in which the best solutions don’t necessarily materialize in a gun sight. It has a little action, a bit of violence and clenched-jawed jittery men. Mostly, it has ideas and hope, as well as eerie extraterrestrials who face off with a soulful linguist-heroine, Louise Banks (Amy Adams), the story’s voice of reason and its translator. She’s thoughtful, serious, at ease with her own silence and fears. — New York Times; The Atlantic review; Time review
Good movie. Don’t think it will do well at the box office because there was no car chase and you have to entertain the idea that time is nonlinear. But my kind of alien flick.
A Path
“Buddhism is not so much a belief system as a path. It is more something we do than something we believe.” — Unknown
As Good As It Gets
“I’m very intelligent. If you’re gonna give me hope you gotta do better than you’re doing.” — Melvin Udall
Cease to cherish opinions
I first came across the following quote (from a poem by Seng-ts’an) back in 2009:
“Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.”
I don’t think old Seng-ts’an was saying you shouldn’t have opinions. Just don’t love them too much. As for “do not seek the truth”… well, that’s harder for me. From the same blog post:
“Get comfortable with the emptiness of no beliefs, no ideas, no concepts, no knowing, no desires, no anticipation, no system, and no future.”
What does that leave? Direct experience. And about the only thing we can be certain of, based on direct experience is: I am. I exist. I find this ever so comforting (when I can remember it). The stress and anxiety of the last year is (for me) the result of beliefs and ideas and concepts and desires and anticipation and what’s gonna happen in the future.
Emptiness. It’s an important concept in most (all?) Eastern philosophies. It doesn’t mean the same thing it does in Western thought. Just saying the word makes me feel lighter. Calmer.