“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." A corollary: don't do anything today you can put off and do tomorrow; tomorrow may never come, so why have regrets of having wasted your time in life doing something that didn't need to be done; this is wisdom, not laziness. Taken together, Picasso's proposition and the corollary guide us to live without regrets....
Those who live in a city and view others who live in the suburbs as provincial are themselves provincial, viewing the world through simple categories....
Between the drum beats of the pulse between the motion of breathing there is an empty space where all is still. When young, I anxiously waited in the empty space for the next beat or breath to engage my attention. Now, I rest in the empty space where nothingness reigns. From here, I can appreciate the wonder of creation....
"You have to die a few times before you can really live." Every evening we die, every morning we are born again; some resemblance to the person we were yesterday. Other than the similar to yesterday's circumstances in which we find ourselves when we are reborn in the morning, everything is completely new today, unique. This newness stirs us and we can awaken to really live the only life we ever have which is today. When we identify with the person we were in past lives (passed days of our lives as it's conventionally known) and believe that person never died (that we are that same person today), we experience today in the context of our past; a life based on stories our mind has created. Unless we recognize we died heretofore, we cannot really live....
When we purchase an artwork, we are in fact purchasing two things, the thing and its price. The discerning buyer knows that. The sophisticated buyer does not. The discerning buyer, by definition, has good judgement; can see the quality of something and it's relative price. The sophisticated buyer knows much about fashion and culture. However, they are often a sucker for sophism, a specious argument used for deception. They look at an artwork with their ears, not their eyes....
Enlightenment is simply being one with light. Light, the visual form of energy, is the essence of everything. Enlightenment is being one with everything. To the enlightened, this realization is manifested in the many faces of enlightenment. As E=M*C*C (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared) is M=E/C*C (mass (all that there is) is energy divided (slowed down) dramatically by the speed of light squared), all things are essentially infinite manifestations of light. As energy is all there is, all things (however seemingly real and independent of energy) are just an illusion disguising energy. As energy is all there is, the Big Bang is all there is. The Big Bang happens at one time. Hence, there is no such thing as time. The appearance of things sequentially is an illusion that creates the illusion of time as well....
"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind." When the mind is calm it doesn't engage us in a wrestling match. We can then deploy it to observe the infinite manifestations of the universe and create an order of things that make temporary sense of it all. In the preceding sentence, the second "it" is ambiguous; unclear if "it" refers to mind or universe or both or neither. Maybe all that can be said is that it is what it is whatever it is....
Best we keep our eyes open if we want to follow our dreams. If we're passionate about a career but lack the talent to make dollars, it doesn't make sense. But a singer with a lot of passion and no talent can be successful as a comedian....
In the cold of winter, February 1992, I drove with a guide from Lhasa Tibet to Kathmandu. During the four day trip we picked up a couple of hitchhikers. One was a 40 year old woman who looked deep into her 60s. Her skin was very dark for a Tibetan but that was apparently dirt from not having recently bathed. She was friendly and open about her life. She said she rarely bathed since her village home had no running water; had last bathed in a river in the summer; never in her life had a shower. Every morning as I shower I think about that woman, imagine how she would feel in the shower with its temperature controls, great water volume and soothing soap melting accumulated dirt, yak candle smoke and caked perspiration. Feeling it's the first shower of my life, my awareness of everything is heightened, I glow with gratitude; an unforgettable experience. When involved in the mundane, it's easy to fall into automatic pilot mode and oblivion. Imagining ourselves as someone who has never experienced these activities allows us to experience them as for first time which in fact it is as each time is never as any time before....