The Rich Vegetarian

Simply Being | Simple Being

Category: This-That (page 7 of 234)

July 9, 2021 / 0 Comments

Habits

It’s an interesting phenomenon when a habit dissolves, and there is not another one to take its place. For instance, dinner used to be a habit, and now it’s poof… gone! A wide expanse of time has opened up in the evenings. No dinner, no cleanup… all this time, what is a person to do?

I love this quote by novelist Susan Ertz. “Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”

“I can’t function without my morning chai,” “I cannot end a meal without yogurt and rice,” “I cannot wear leather,” and so on. All habits, I think? And as I realized during recent travels, yes, I can function without morning chai, and yes, I just bought a leather purse!

I wonder if we define ourselves by these habits, and when they dissolve, we think we are dissolving, too. And prolly that’s why we hasten to find new ones. (Or perhaps, we are frightened of empty space and time.)

(I, for one, have a hard time developing new habits. No sooner do I make a resolution than I am plotting to break free of it!)

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July 7, 2021 / 0 Comments

Inchoate

Perhaps, recognition of an object gives rise to a subject. An array of objects creates a field that encloses an idea (identity?), gives definition to the subject who is also enclosed within the field, just like the objects themselves. But the objects begin to disappear, one after the other… and the subject feels its edges beginning to blur. It’s a moment of mild panic, and there are fewer and fewer objects now showing up in the field.

What to do? Go to sleep?

“yathA drishti, tathA srishti,” and so, when I stop looking, they don’t show up. Or perhaps, they stop showing up and I stop looking. Or maybe it’s the same phenomenon. All I know is that I am losing the habit of looking, or maybe there is little interest (energy) poured into looking. And all this energy is pooling somewhere, or everywhere… sans object or objectivity or subject or subjectivity.

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June 28, 2021 / 0 Comments

Expression/Experience

A few fleeting thoughts. (I see the irony, yes, I do!)

Expression can never hope to capture experience. In fact, it is wholly incapable of conveying experience, or maybe only a fraction of it. Here’s the clincher, though. Experience is fleeting, while expression has some degree of longevity. (Even if it’s only an individual voicing her thoughts to the void. And if she writes it out someplace, it persists longer… in her mind and in the minds of those who read it.) Here’s where expression does the individual disservice. It grants permanence to something ephemeral. It makes an experience into Truth, whereas what it is is creativity. It’s the mind connecting the dots, drawing a picture, casting a passing moment on to stone, paper, canvas, film.

If the individual and her readers (or listeners, etc.) know expression for what it is (i.e. creative energy), they can partake in it, savor it, bless it, or not. However, when they construe it as Truth, they grant it solidity, a lasting relevance. And they are forever imprisoned by it.

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June 28, 2021 / 0 Comments

Unspooling

What if thinking and doing were both the same phenomenon… unspooling?

It often seems like there is such a strong preference for doers, the ones who don’t sit and think (and/or talk) endlessly, or fall into an “analysis paralysis” coma, but get off their behinds and make things happen. And yet, I wonder if thinking and doing may not essentially be the same thing, a kind of “unspooling” from the same ball of yarn. For, if your thought and doing patterns both draw from the same bank of ideas, there may not be an actual difference between the two. While one manifests in something you could possibly see with your eyes, the other is confined to an imagined universe. And they may be two forms of the same pattern.

Now, if thinking or doing are spontaneous actions, seemingly drawn out of nowhere (or space), fully responsive to the place and time, then what emerges may be inspired, unique and novel. And perhaps that’s what we can call simply being, or simple being, or creative, alive being.

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