Thank you to K. for the great compliment on our photography work on IG, the other day on the stop in Taipei. I found out a lot of things that AI said about what I should check out were totally wrong and boring suggestions and then I wrote a long book on LinkedIn in an update there today, about it.
LinkedIn, it’s so strange to use this primarily to meet people and talk about what I make here in Cambodia. But I think it’s okay. It works for me. I don’t really do messaging much and I’ve not got a smartphone so I don’t want a bunch of appy things. Plus, there’s not much point since most people discover me now through the QR codes on flyers and that’s really a lot better because it says, ‘I’m curious,’ and it also says, ‘I’ve bothered now to find out who you are.’ This is big in this era. People don’t really bother, now.
As I thought over the zen comment, I realized I should probably search it to see what ‘internet’ (not AI), says. I found this.
So, again, what is Zen? Stop now. Stop trying to get an intellectual lock on something that is vast and boundless, far more than the rational mind can grasp. Just breathe in with full awareness. Taste the breath. Appreciate it fully. Now breathe out, slowly, with equal appreciation. Give it all away; hold onto nothing. Breathe in with gratitude; breathe out with love. Receiving and offering—this is what we are doing each time we inhale and exhale. To do so with conscious awareness, on a regular basis, is the transformative practice we call Zen.
This simple yet profound practice can release us from the shackles of past and future, as well as from the self-imposed and imprisoning barriers we erect around what we erroneously consider our separate and unchanging identities.
Who do we think we are, anyway? When we really look deeply, it becomes the koan “Who am I?” We find that the conditioned views and compulsive traits we have come to call “self” have no fixed substance. We can, through consistent zazen, free ourselves from that imposter self and discover the true self—the being that is open, confident, and unhindered, flowing with all that exists in this very moment. Thus quite naturally we care for the environment, starting with our own actions: not wasting the earth’s precious resources, realizing that every act has consequences. And quite naturally we extend This Mind; we vow to live with attention, integrity, and authenticity; we vow to free all beings from suffering.’ Source: Zen Studies https://zenstudies.org/teachings/what-is-zen/
Footnote
Maybe ‘slow down to see it,’ which was the tagline I made for this blog this year, lines up with this concept of Zenniness, somehow. I’m really intrigued that it took going to Taiwan to hear this statement, after many years. No one in Japan said I was ‘zen’ but perhaps that was the beginning of learning it, when on exchange at 18 in the boonies over there. I don’t know. It’s okay not to, too.
Meantime, making zines this week for launches and miniparties next weekend, in Phnom Penh and virtually. DESK is ready to roll, too, and will be mailing it out to our subscribers. Thank you for subscribing and taking part in these conversations, you know who you are, for DESK.
To the journeys!