this week's podcast is pretty simple - just me talking about things that've come to mind over the past few days - mixed with some amazingly good local music by jonas and nick guerrero (+ the nick g hard drive!). it's funny how ideas work. and even more how the brain and intuition and memory and curiosity merge and exist together as simulaneous opposites and equal aspects of a whole. it's weird. i saw the movie "what the bleep do we know!?" late last week, and it got me thinking about the whole concept of "seeing" - what it means to see - what we mean when we
talk about seeing (as opposed to actually seeing) - how perception is always this unique mix of biological and neurological, etc. somehow i don't suspect we'll ever tease them apart by thinking, classifying, defining, theorizing. cuz it truly is as if they've become one in some way, fused indistinguishably... which, in the end (while frustrating at times, no doubt), is also much more just mysterious and beautiful. not about a word or idea - but a feeling. and who knows? maybe that's the point, afterall? somehow it feels that way. i certainly can't defend it with logic, but i do love that there's a point where the human brain studying the human brain just naturally devolves into absurdity. and words meld into shapes. and questions stop making sense. and poetry and need and longing and subjectivity take up the slack. that's just how it's supposed to be, i guess? it seems. there's nothing more human.
it's funny. and silly to talk about, i know. cuz i realize i'm doing the overly-thinking thing right here in these words. ;) all the same, i can't help but be amazed that those same limits exist in both micro and macro - inward and outward - the expanse of space, the universe of an atom - the feeling of honest love for another person. our eyes and brains can only see so much. which just is. and the "truth" - whatever it is - seems to be teaching us to let go. over and over. we don't seem to learn. we keep fighting. pushing. doubting. or, i do, i should say! and somehow that's ok too. sometimes it really does seem like the only way we learn is by
not learning long enough to see that we haven't learned what we thought we learned - the old
william blake quote in action - that wisdom is merely a fortunate form of persistent folly. something like that.
i'm reminded too of the buddhist koan (via
lin-chi l-hsuan) that if we meet the buddha on the road, we should kill him. that concept has always been tantalizingly beyond my grasp, but it does seem to have something to do with the idea that anything we can name or point to is not the real thing itself. and that that object (whatever it may be - the "truth," our perception of "enlightenment," god, buddha, jesus, nirvana, love, stability, success) is, in fact, the most pernicious impediment to actually participating with the real thing. there are lots of opposite ways to interpret that metaphor, i know. and do. ;) i don't claim to understand it completely (or even agree with it, per se). but it does seem true that seeing is always, by it's nature, distorted by what we're seeing with, or where from, etc. as odd and counterintuitive as that is, i gotta admit - i sorta love that it's so insoluble. it feels true. and right. and somehow inspiring too. deeply. i don't know if that reaction makes any sense? maybe not? but if you have time to listen to episode 117, i hope some of that comes through...
links to things:
free
jonas songs
free
nick guerrero songs
(id + password for above is - "muzik")
nick guerrero -
on myspace
jiddu krishnamurti -
kfa.org.
the boy in the striped pajamas -
boyinthestripedpajamas.com.
what the bleep do we know!? -
the movie.
william blake -
on wikipedia.
sheldon kopp's book -
if you meet the buddha on the road.
lin-chi l-hsuan -
on wikipedia.
wishing u the best week,
russell
