‘No good sittin’ worryin’ abou’ it,” he said. “What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.’ Hagred, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling So much of our suffering seems to be self-inflicted. When I was younger I learned to retreat from life. I found the world to […]
The Heroes Journey and My Art
I reread the Star Wars X-Wing trilogy recently. Pleased that I found it a compelling as when I first read it. Reading for hours at a time, even late into the night. But the stories are what I note most of all. The feelings of joy, the camaraderie, the connection I felt with the characters. […]
The Abstract Expressionists
So many different art movements were born during the 20th century that I can’t go into them all, but one was the Abstract Expressionists (AbEx). I’ve been looking at them through the Museum of Modern Arts online course at Coursera, presented by Corey D’Augustine. In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting I found it to be […]
The Buddhist idea of Suchness, Thusness (Tathātā)
We might ask ourselves in a moment of contemplation, ‘why is there something, not nothing?’ or ‘why is the cosmos the way it is and no some other way?’ But that is like asking ‘why does a bee sting you?’ It’s an absurd question because that what bees are supposed to do. There is no […]
The Buddhist idea of Emptiness (Śūnyatā): The Cosmology of ‘No Things’
‘Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away, and change, they do not lie. But Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction. The “apparent” world is the only one: the “true” world is merely added by a lie’. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols Emptiness (Sanskrit: Śūnyatā) is […]
Travelling light: The value of having just what you need
‘You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple of years, you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. […]