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until the day i die by story of the year |
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someone with a brilliant soul left this comment in my thingy thing:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert M. Pirsig
Part 1, Chapter 7
I should talk now about Phædrus' knife. It'll help understand some of the things we talked about.
The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does. All the time we are aware of millions of things around us...these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road...aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.
Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. This is the knife. We divide the sand into parts. This and that. Here and there. Black and white. Now and then. The discrimination is the division of the conscious universe into parts.
The handful of sand looks uniform at first, but the longer we look at it the more diverse we find it to be. Each grain of sand is different. No two are alike. Some are similar in one way, some are similar in another way, and we can form the sand into separate piles on the basis of this similarity and dissimilarity. Shades of color in different piles...sizes in different piles...grain shapes in different piles...subtypes of grain shapes in different piles...grades of opacity in different piles...and so on, and on, and on. You'd think the process of subdivision and classification would come to an end somewhere, but it doesn't. It just goes on and on.
Classical understanding is concerned with the piles and the basis for sorting and interrelating them. Romantic understanding is directed toward the handful of sand before the sorting begins. Both are valid ways of looking at the world although irreconcilable with each other.
What has become an urgent necessity is a way of looking at the world that does violence to neither of these two kinds of understanding and unites them into one. Such an understanding will not reject sand-sorting or contemplation of unsorted sand for its own sake. Such an understanding will instead seek to direct attention to the endless landscape from which the sand is taken. That is what Phædrus, the poor surgeon, was trying to do.
There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask that question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. About the Buddha that exists independently of any analytic thought much has been said...some would say too much, and would question any attempt to add to it. But about the Buddha that exists within analytic thought, and gives that analytic thought its direction, virtually nothing has been said, and there are historic reasons for this. But history keeps happening, and it seems no harm and maybe some positive good to add to our historical heritage with some talk in this area of discourse.
When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts. Mark Twain's experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts...something is always created too. And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it's important also to see what's created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is.
if i was in a good mood right now i would be completely inspired by this. unfortunately im not in a good mood so ill hafta take another look at it like 2morrow or something..
the past few days have been so much fun between sleeping over alishias new house with tiff-tiff n getting lost in lindenwold and me n jessica-bear laughing at how drunk paul n steve were..but all the sudden i just went into a sudden downfall. god i hate this. why must it happen so much? i dont ever get a fucking break and i dont understand why. well i kno why i just cant take it....
theres a whole lotta ppl who been making me so mad lately. why do ppl gotta have b/s about stupid stuff. like i dunno its like i guess they dont have b/s but their actions and the things they say...its a fucking mess!!!! like what the hell am i supposed to believe when all u fucking do is lie. ur whole life is a lie. u dont even kno who the hell u r. whoever u r and whoever u may be and whoever u r to different ppl are 3 completely different things. u front about the biggest issues. u cant deny it no more. ur caught. there is no way u can be a different person to each and every person u talk to. u have some huge issues and u really need help...
then theres u...u be dissin every1 left and right like ppl r just motherfuckin ants u can step all over. well guess what when ppl start steppin all over u i gaurenteed u aint gonna like it one bit. im not the only 1 who deals wit ur b/s and ur bff is about to go off on u. u act like u aint do shit wit ur lil innocent act. u kno u aint innocent and what gets us is the fact that u just wont tell us the truth. we have to hear it thru every1 else. the 2 of us being the closest friends to u kinda deserve to kno a lil bit of insight of whats goin on in ur life if ur not gonna chill wit us. im not happy to get a 5 min phone call from u if even that no more. whats the point of that when u clearly show u dont really wanna talk 2 us neway. ur priorities are really fucked up...
thats so messed up....
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aggravated
tired
drained
crushed
embarrassed
bitchy
weird
horny
hyper
nervous
dorky