Saturday, February 23, 2013

Waste Time? Be Ordinary?




 http://sped2work.tripod.com/lin-chi.jpeg


My readings have been pointing me lately in an interesting direction. Lin-chi: "There is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me but the wise will understand"  Alan Watts: "Our attempt to master the world from outside is a vicious circle in which we shall be condemned to the perpetual insomnia of controlling controls and supervising supervision ad infinitum." Mary Ruefle: "Wasted time cannot be filled, it is a necessary void for fermentation." Gertrude Stein: "It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing." Heidegger: "Boredom is very closely allied with that of awe in which one's mind begins to reach beyond. And that is a poetic moment." Charles Lamb: "Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative"

Of course a characteristic of mine is putting in an overabundance of effort, which stands in direct contrast to this. What do you think?