Isn’t it amazing that you would, years later, come back on to find that your life was even more amazing, stupendous, beautiful, surreal, unimaginable. The people you have met, the places you have seen. The stories you have. What you’ve survived. If anything, you’re numbed by its brilliance. If you can see your wealth in the eyes of when you had less adventure it would be gracious.
‘Unwoven Light’ by Soo Sunny Park
New print Summer Lake Wildflowers now available
I can feel the changes come to me. I feel the classic, the old, the new. I feel quality, I feel excellence. I feel beauty, most of all.
I watch the moon tonight and I remember me. Youthful sparkle, natural brilliance. Long dark hair.
Dakan, 1997
Seen on Santiago Island, Cape Verde by Kristin Bethge
Chris Ofili
The Holy Virgin Mary 1996
Collection MoMA
In 1999, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (and now Trump’s lawyer) attempted to block the painting from being shown at the Brooklyn Museum, threatening to cut off funding for the museum, but the museum refused to withdraw the painting and won the court case. In the settlement, the city agreed to pay $5.8 million over two years to help renovate the museum’s entry hall.
Sebastian Markbage
The practice of Zen is being in the world as it is. Your practice begins with you. Your practice of Zen is being as much you as you can be. Being you may not be easy, but it is impossible for you not to be you. Rather that try to do the impossible and be other than you, practice being you. To practice being you, you have to study yourself. See what motivates you. See what brings you joy. See what makes you suffer. See when it’s easy to be you. See when it’s hard to be you. See what you think about when you’re happy. See what you think about when you’re not happy.
Studying yourself is deeper than studying somebody else. With you, you get full access. You can see what you’re like first thing in the morning. You can see what you’re like around people. You can see what you’re like alone. You can see into your secret thoughts and deepest fears. If you study somebody else, you only get what they are able to present to you. Mostly what you see when you look at somebody else is you anyway. If you study somebody you admire, then you see good things in them. If you study somebody you don’t like, you see problems. That is just you seeing you, so you might as well just study yourself.
When you study yourself, you have to turn off all the judgement. Even if being you usually entails judging yourself, you have to stop that to get a true look into what you are. Then you can see sadness without being sad. You can see fears without being afraid. You can see your beauty without being modest. When you are able to see all that in yourself, then you will feel some compassion and it becomes a little easier to be you.
If you practice being you and you notice yourself getting carried away in some feeling or situation, just continue practicing being you in that situation, through that feeling. You will see that you can handle any situation. You can manage any feeling. As you practice being you without judgement, with compassion, you will find the joy of being you. When you are comfortable being you, then you can start to study other people without judgement and with compassion and you can help them find their joy too.
Victor Vasarely
If you have suffered a great loss or, if you struggle with depression, the painful feeling is extreme and unrelenting. You need to find a way out of the darkness. Unfortunately, the only way out of the darkness is through the darkness. In order to get through the darkness, you need courage. You need to know that you can do it. You can do it.
When you feel sad, feel sad and use that sadness to build compassion. To build compassion from sadness, think of your sadness as everybody’s sadness. Recognize that everybody is suffering just as you are suffering. That broken hearted feeling is your tender heart experiencing deep love. Compassion is connecting with the love and using it to help yourself through this difficult time. Compassion is also using your painful experiences to understand and help others.You don’t have to do anything extraordinary to help others, just feeling your sadness and building your compassion is helping others.
As you travel through this darkness, be kind to yourself. Be kind to others, if you feel angry, try not to take it out on other people or yourself. Cry as much as you need to. Keep breathing. If it feels like you can’t go on, you can. Keep on. Keep offering your sadness to the world. Somewhere in that darkness there is incredible light. It will find you.
The Nasir al-Mulk mosque in Shiraz, Iran. Photos from Atlas Obscura.
The practice of mindfulness helps people feel better because it interrupts thinking habits that make people feel worse. Thoughts and feelings are like water and waves. The waves of feeling are composed of the water of the thought. If you suffer from stress, anxiety, anger or depression then your thoughts are continually churning up painful waves of emotions. In order to change the quality of the waves, you need to change the content of the thoughts. If good thoughts are hard to come by, you can still calm your mind by thinking nothing at all. To think nothing, rest your attention on the present moment. There is a quality of peace available in that moment wherever you are, whatever your circumstances.
It is not easy to change the habits of your mind, but it can be done simply. The simple practice of mindfulness is taking a moment to see where you are. In that moment, don’t think about how you got there or where you are going, just check your surroundings. Breathe in deeply to see if there is any oxygen where you are. If you can breathe in some oxygen, then you have something nice in your life. You don’t need to hold on to that oxygen, because there is more, so you let it out. In that moment there is nothing but breathing in and breathing out. If you manage to take a mindful, thoughtless breath, with the intention of finding some peace in the moment, you will likely experience some peace in that moment.
If you are able to clear your thoughts for that moment, then, in the next moment, you can see what kind of thought comes to you. If it is a disturbing thought, you can take another breath and try again. The beauty of the present moment is it carries on forever. You are always experiencing something. There is always some place to rest your attention that can take you beyond your thoughts. As you practice finding some peace in the present moment again and again, you will gain enough strength to start thinking some nice thoughts. For every painful thought that occurs to you, you can counter it with a kind and compassionate thought until the painful thoughts give up. The present will carry on, offering opportunities to find peace in each moment.
I hate companies that are organizationally structured to incentivize mediocrity
Coming To America (1988)
