The implications of this...

 

Ads in space

Traveling, and leaving eastern America in particular, has exposed me to vast landscapes and made me realize how very very important it is to be able to look far out across to a horizon, full of mystery and potential. This simple pleasure imparts something into the mind and the spirit that is crucial. In many parts of the world, where we've built up and built up, the night sky is one of the only last frontiers of this kind that people can gaze into, and ponder. 

Vastness is salient. And while the night sky we look into could be a myriad of things: a cloak, a shield, a mirage--basically maybe the night sky we're looking into isn't what we think it is, what we've been told, or nearly as understood as we might think-- despite, I still firmly believe that putting ads there is one of the most degenerate notions imaginable.

The Cloud of Unknowing (link to full film)

Rodney Thompson lived as a hermit for thirty years in a small Connemara cottage [in Ireland], dedicating his life to silence, solitude and prayer.

"The Cloud of Unknowing" is the title of a Middle English anonymous manual on contemplative prayer. This practice dates back to the third century Desert Fathers (and Mothers) - Christian mystics who separated themselves from distractions in order to find God.

The film is constructed from the interplay of formal and thematic dualities: movement and stasis, speech and silence, portrait and landscape, the sky and the ground.

Filled with majestic vistas and robust Connemara weather, the film allows the viewer to step into the mind of a hermit, as the natural world unfolds at an unhurried pace.

“When I was introduced to Rodney I was struck by his graceful and calm benevolence. I wanted to communicate something of this in the film. He has followed an ancient mystical tradition, and his way of being in the world is a blissful respite from the ever increasing hectic pace of contemporary life. As a documentary film maker, I’m perhaps more motivated by questions of form than content. So the film that I made is not a conventional biography. Instead, it’s oriented towards the experience of the viewer. It tries to move beyond words and images, much like contemplative prayer itself.”

- Mike Hannon, director

The Cloud of Unknowing, link to full film: https://vimeo.com/201640633

Day of a Stranger

 Day of a Stranger is an intimate portrait of a world-renown mystic and author during his final years living in solitude from 1965 until his shocking death in 1968. As a Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton became a prolific writer and was in dialogue with some of the twentieth century’s most influential figures, luminaries such as D.T. Suzuki, Rachel Carson, Henry Miller, Thich Nhat Hanh, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day. Interweaving meditative images of his hermitage nestled deep in the woods of Kentucky and rare audio recordings he made in isolation; the film pieces together a glimpse into the consciousness of one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant minds.

Full film here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/dayofastranger

A certain kind of aesthetic

 

Currently Reading

 

Currently reading:

Little House on the Prairie, Vol. 1

and still making my way through the Bhagavad Gita, translated by Prabhupada

Arctic home in the Vedas?

 Very interesting theory I've come upon in my research on origins of Indo-European peoples. Here is a full Youtube playlist on the topic:

Visiting the old home at Zen Forest

During my visit to Kentucky, I drove out to the cabin I used to live in during my early-mid twenties. Back then, it was landlocked in 300 acres belonging to a Zen monastery. We purchased 30 from them, plus the cabin. Some of my most fond memories are from that time period, with Vietnamese monks, Amish people, and Wendell Berry for neighbors, where I learned so much and moved through levels of consciousness, where I discovered philosophy and connected to higher ways of living, and I just wanted to go see what it felt like to me now. I was so happy to see that the person who owns it now is doing everything I dreamed of: they have a big vegetable garden, have dug out a lovely spring-fed pond, added on to the cabin, and otherwise just maintained everything and protected it as a nature preserve. Certain things broke my heart wide open, and I shed some tears on the drive in- that strange sensation of having lived many lives, most of which are put away to memory, then to have them intersect again in real life. A place from back then, which held the person you were then, you go meander over that same landscape now, with yourself now, but the place can never be revisited even when you go stand on that very ground, because so much has changed... 

It is surreal, bizarre, heartbreaking, but beautiful too. 

Hue Nang Trail (pronounced 'way-nong')

Just behind this sign (which is new to me, though the tree I knew) is the lotus pond and it was all in bloom. Across the gravel road and down a small slope is our old cabin...

And there's the old cabin.

The new pond down to the left of the house. This used to be only forest.

Here is what little the web archive held onto from the blog I kept during my time at Zen Forest.

Today

 Kentucky - a katydid and cicada symphony.

Dad in the distance

Return

"In a revolutionary epoch, sometimes men taste every novelty, sicken of them all, and return to ancient principles so long disused that they seem refreshingly hearty when they are rediscovered."

Sanctify

We all generally want to feel "happy". But when you reflect on your life, when did your big spiritual growth spurts happen? Usually deep growth comes from hardship and strife, from those dark nights of the soul. I think many humans rob themselves of a rich life experience by succumbing to the assembly line of quick distractions and comforts- TV, gossip, scrolling social media, overeating, partying, alcohol, drugs, pornography... the multitude of balms we rub on ourselves, and they are plentiful. Left unaware, we become slaves to sense gratification.

I think it's crucial that we make ourselves present for life, all of it, rather than distract. We must understand why we're here in this human form, which is for spiritual realization, not just a happenstance universe explosion as Materialists would have you believe (and had me believe for a good portion of my life). In this way, you can reinterpret suffering and not be a captive to the finite material world, the body you're in, and what it's currently enduring. 

Hone your mind. Connect to the Divine through daily devotion. Build up a sanctuary in yourself. Fortify what is eternal in you.