If you can see it, it can see you. That’s true of just about anything. —Margaret Atwood

 

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All being, it seemed, was built on opposites, on division. Man or woman, vagabond or citizen, lover or thinker — no breath could both be in and out, none could be man and wife, free and yet orderly, knowing the urge of life and the joy of intellect. Always the one paid for the other, though each was equally precious and essential.


—Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)
Narcissus and Goldmund

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According to whether we are in the same place or separated one from the other, I know you twice. There are two of you. When you are away, you are nevertheless present for me. This presence is multiform: it consists of countless images, passages, meanings, things known, landmarks, yet the whole remains marked by your absence, in that it is diffuse. It is as if your person becomes a place, your contours horizons. 

I live in you then like living in a country. You are everywhere.


—John Berger
And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

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Say you have seen something. You have seen an ordinary bit of what is real, the infinite fabric of time that eternity shoots through, and time’s soft-skinned people working and dying under slowly shifting stars. 

Then what?


—John Berger

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listen

 

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Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? 
It is that we have only known the back of the world. 
We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. 

That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. 
That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. 
Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? 
If we could only get round in front—


—G. K. Chesterton, 1908
The Man Who Was Thursday

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two sides of water

 

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You cannot see That which is the Seer of seeing;
you cannot hear That which is the Hearer of hearing;
you cannot think of That which is the Thinker of thought;
you cannot know That which is the Knower of knowledge. 

This is your Self, that is within all;
everything else but This is perishable.


—The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

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Once
a single cell
found that it was full of light
and for the first time there was seeing

when
I was a bird
I could see where the stars had turned
and I set out on my journey

high
in the head of a mountain goat
I could see across a valley
under the shining trees something moving

deep
in the green sea
I saw the two sides of the water
and swam between them

I
look at you
in the first light of the morning
for as long as I can


—W. S. Merwin
sight

 

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The whole of life lies in the verb seeing. —Teilhard de Chardin

 

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Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, 

and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. 

—Leonardo da Vinci

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Prior to the advent of brain, there was no color and no sound in the universe, nor was there any flavor or aroma and probably rather little sense and no feeling or emotion. 

Before brains the universe was also free of pain and anxiety.


—Roger Sperry

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There is only Seeing. 

Both the seer and the seen are contained in it.

—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj 

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present dreams

 

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The person we seem to be in a dream has not projected it. 

That person is not the seer but an object seen by us, so it is part of the projection. However, because we mistake ourself to be that person so long as we are dreaming, it seems to us that that person is seeing the dream world. The same is the case in our present dream. We who are seeing this dream now seem to be a person in it, so this person seems to us to be the seer, even though it is actually an object seen by us. 

This is why we need to distinguish the seer from everything that is seen. Whatever person we seem to be is just a body and mind, which are objects seen by us, so as the seer of these objects we are distinct from them.

—Sri Sadhu Om, direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi
The Paramount Importance of Self Attention, pt 33, excerpt, as recorded by Michael James, Mountain Path, 2020-II April-June 


Michael James assisted Sri Sadhu Om in translating Bhagavan’s Tamil writings and Guru Vācaka Kōvai. Many of his writings and translations have been published, and some of them are also available on his website, www.happinessofbeing.com.

 

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internal relations

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If man thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.

... But let me emphasize that to have an approach of wholeness doesn’t mean that we are going to be able to capture the whole of existence within our concepts and knowledge. Rather it means first that we understand this totality as an unbroken and seamless whole in which relatively autonomous objects and forms emerge.

And secondly it means that in so far as wholeness is comprehended with the aid of the implicate order, the relationship between the various parts or sub wholes are ultimately internal. Wholeness is seen as primary while the parts are secondary, in the sense that what they are and what they do can be understood only in the light of the whole.

And perhaps I should also add here that in each sub whole there is a certain quality that does not come from the parts, but helps organize the parts. I could summarize this in the principle: The wholeness of the whole and the parts. 

Each human being is therefore related to the totality, including nature and the whole of mankind. He is also therefore internally related to other human beings. How close that relationship is, has to be explored.

What I am further saying is that the quantum theory implies that ultimately the relationship of the parts and whole of matter in general is understood in a similar way. This approach of wholeness could help to end the far-reaching and pervasive fragmentation that arises out of the mechanistic world view.


—David Bohm

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Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see.

You are one with everything.

That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.


—Shunryu Suzuki

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the world is a totality

 

Päivi Oksanen

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The world is a totality in itself. It has its own muscles, its own brain, its own limbs, and its own circulation. We are not talking about the totality of the world in the sense that everything should be good and perfect and fantastic, and nobody should acknowledge anything bad. 

We are talking about reality, in which good is made out of bad and bad is made out of good. Therefore, the world can exist in its own good/bad level, its self-existing level of dark and light, black and white, constantly. 

Whatever is there, favorable or unfavorable, is workable: it is the universe.


—Chögyam Trungpa
Journey Without Goal: The Tantric Wisdom of the Buddha

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the river is not an object

 

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For (Heraclitus), reality is not a constellation of things at all, but one of processes. The fundamental ‘stuff’ of the world is not material substance but volatile flux, namely 'fire,’ and all things are versions thereof (puros tropai). 

Process is fundamental: the river is not an object, but a continuing flow; the sun is not a thing, but an enduring fire. 

Everything is a matter of process, of activity, of change (panta rhei). Not stable things but fundamental forces and the varied and fluctuating activities they manifest constitute the world. 

We must at all costs avoid the fallacy of materializing nature.


—Nicholas Rescher

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What the heart wants
is to follow its true passion,
to lie down with it
near the reeds beside
the river,
to devour it in the caves
between the desert dunes,
to sing its notes
into the morning sky
until even the angels
wake up
and take notice
and look around
for their beloved.


—Dorothy Walters

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the undressing

 

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Should you really
open your eyes and see,
you would behold
your image in all images…

And should you
open your ears and listen,
you would hear your own voice
in all voices…


—Kahlil Gibran

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The soul has been given its own ears to hear things the mind does not understand.

If you want to know who someone is, what is flowing through or not flowing, stay in a listening posture. 

Close your eyes inside your companion’s shadow. 


—Rumi

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