Over the years I've heard a number of people (myself included) talk about how Jesus' disciples never really got his "real message" and we've been misinterpreting it (in various ways) ever since.
But doesn't this raise the obvious question: Does this say more about Jesus than the disciples? (i.e. isn't this saying he wasn't a very good teacher?)
Thoughts?
The Great and Powerful Amazon.com has shipped "Out of Your Mind: Essential Listening From the Alan Watts Audio Archives."
It should arrive today.
That's right: 12 CDs, 14.5 hours. This should provide plenty of commute / mowing / cleaning-the-house audio for the next month or so.
...a rap song I am listening to just rhymed the phrase "chicken bone" with "every chick I bone."
Wow. Emily Dickinson, eat your heart out.
I think I've posted this before, but being that it's Holy Week and all (the week leading up to Easter), I thought I'd repost it. The poem was originally written in a Creative Writing class in college but I've also converted it into a song called "Drapery" that we play in all our live sets. I generally have no interest in writing music with an overtly Christian theme, but I really like how this turned out and what it says about humanity.
Try this (for one day... one hour... ten minutes?):
Label nothing. Name nothing. When something happens, resist the temptation to call it good or bad. There is just unfolding, that is all. Like a child, find every moment, every "event," every NOW as a magic, wonderous reality - because that is what it is. Be open. Take it all in. To do this you have to stop thinking about things in the future or reliving a past moment. You have to be intensely present.
Then suddenly the world becomes alive. There is no longer individual "things" in a space, nor individual moments... then eventually not even "you." There is just this.
Over the last few weeks, Amy has occasionally tuned into the new hit game show "Deal or No Deal" on NBC on Monday nights.
I seriously feel like the entire world is in on some joke that I don't know about.
Wanna hear how the game works? Ok, here goes, let's see if you can get this: The host asks the contestant "Do you want number 4, 5, or 6?" Then the dramatic lights and music kick in and the contestant converses back and forth with his family: "Gee, spouse, do I want 4 or 5... cause 6 is my unlucky number and... gosh, I just don't know... I mean, I have 4 kids, so.... uhm, ... ah, I just don't know, Howie... the pressure... OH THE PRESSURE!... I'm gonna go with..." Meanwhile the crowd is going apeshit and Howie Mandell is shooting them deathly-serious interrogative glances.
There's no skill here... no game... they're picking numbers for *#@$&'s sake!!!!
Please, someone tell me I'm being Punk'd.
I know it's somewhat cliche to talk about the film CRASH, now that it's won "Best Picture" and all, but Amy and I finally got around to watching it last night and I just feel like I've got to say something.
For the first 45 minutes, I was somewhat turned off by the over-exaggeration of the race theme. I found myself saying "Give me a break, that's not ALL people talk about ALL the time."
Then, the second act began.
I've never, ever been shook to the core by a movie. But for some reason, I was so sucked into all that was going on that I literally almost had a nervous breakdown (I'm not kidding). For those that have seen it, the scene involving the cop pulling a woman out of the overturned car almost put me into a panic attack.
I think this is why: none of the bad guys are REALLY bad, none of the good guys are REALLY good. We're so used to seeing 2-dimensional characters in Hollywood that seeing compassion in a dickhead is strangely heartbreaking. The race thing was expected - that's not really what spoke to me about this film - to me it was more about the fickleness and complexity of being human and about the glorious, unfortunate horrors of the dark side of life.
My band and I played the coolest venue in our town last night. It was our first time there and it went pretty well, but a couple of dark handcrafted beers on an empty stomach and getting to bed at 1:30 am is a little much for a Wednesday night.
I'm going to need another cup of coffee.
One of the most well-written songs to come out in the last couple of years has to be "Volcano" by Damien Rice. It just came up on my iTunes and it's beautiful and haunting... especially as it builds to the multi-vocal outro.
Getting chills here.
Fantastic thoughts and comments everyone.
The Tao te Ching says that "The Tao that can be spoken about is not the real Tao." When we get into topics like this - such as the nature of reality - there is so much room for speculation and fluidity that writing anything is really just ludicrous. Dan brought up some interesting questions and though I won't propose any answers, it just shows that there are (like Kev said) "loopholes" and inconsistencies in any written or spoken philosophy. Speaking about or writing down truths or speculated truths concretizes things - and reality just refuses to be "nailed down" by the English language, the thinking mind, and friggin' blogs.
To speak personally, I too subscribe to this hide-and-seek notion of things - not just intellectually but experientially. The language is clunky (as Andrew said, it provides no "tidy explanations"), but the general idea makes sense to me for many reasons and it has been (like Isaiah said) the reality for many mystics and saints for thousands of years.
Yet in the final analysis, we have to remember that we can talk about orange juice all day - discuss its acidity, speculate its sweetness, and argue about its origin - but it cannot be "known" through words - it has to be tasted and experienced.
I've been listening to lectures by Alan Watts as of late. Absolutely fantastic stuff. Here's a segment from some of his writings [This will be sure to rile a few of you up (wink)]:
God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, He has no one but himself to play with. But He gets over this difficulty by pretending that He is not Himself. This is His way of hiding from Himself. He pretends that He is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way He has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when He wakes up they will disappear.
Now when God plays hide and pretends that He is you and I, He does it so well that it takes Him a long time to remember where and how He hid Himself. But that’s the whole fun of it-just what He wanted to do. He doesn’t want to find Himself out too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be Himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self-the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever.
God is the Self of the world, but you can’t see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can’t see your own eyes, and you certainly can’t bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.
You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that He isn’t really doing this to anyone but Himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It’s the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play again, and so it goes with the world.
A co-worker was telling me a story about tucking in her grandchild to bed. Out of nowhere the boy said: "One day I'll stop breathing and then I'll be with God in heaven." This woman wisely said "That's true, but God is with you right now as well."
The little boy then said: "Yeah. God's kinda sneaky like that."
Posts
All Comments
