Tag: Living in the now

Death came knocking at my door – followed by Thich Nhat Hanh inviting me to tea!

“If you are average you have 30 months to live,” the Consultant said 10 months ago.

Having found out that my remaining life is likely to be very much shorter than the expected 20 to 30 years caused a reorganization of priorities, a focusing, a greater willingness to live in the now!

But support is flying in from all directions! I recently found this extract from Thich Nhat Hanh – it is comforting, elevating, beautiful, sweet, inspiring, a source of quiet joy as is everything that emanates from this man, one of the greatest teachers of our time ;

“When I drink tea it’s very pleasant

to be aware 

I am drinking cloud.”

What happens when you die?

by Thich Nhat Hanh

A transcription from a talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh during a retreat with five hundred people in Hong Kong on 15 May 2007 (apologies for any inaccuracies of mine — Editor)

In order to answer what happens us when we die, we need to answer another question – what happens when we are alive?
What is happening now to us? In English we say ‘we are’ but it’s proper to say ‘we are becoming’ because things are becoming. We’re not the same person in two consecutive minutes.

su_ong1A picture of you as baby looks different to you now. The fact is you are not exactly the same as that baby and not entirely a different person either. In a picture of you as a five year old, you are not exactly the same as that child and not entirely a different person either – the form, feelings and mental formations are different.
In the middle way there is no sameness and no otherness

You may think you are still alive but in fact you have been dying everyday, every minute, cells die and are born – for neither do we have funerals or birthdays (laughter).

Death is a very necessary condition of birth. With no death, there is no birth. They inter-are and happen in every moment to the experienced meditator. For instance a cloud may have died many times, into rain, streams, water. The cloud may want to wave to itself on earth! Rain is a continuation of the cloud. With a meditation practitioner nothing can hide itself. When I drink tea, it’s very pleasant to be aware I am drinking cloud.

When you are parents, you die and are reborn as your children. “You are my continuation, I love you.” The Buddha told us how to ensure a beautiful continuation – a compassionate thought, a beautiful thought. Forgiveness is our continuation. If anger, separation and hate arise, then we will not ensure a beautiful continuation. When we pronounce a word that is compassionate, good and beautiful that is our continuation.

When a cloud is polluted, the rain is polluted. So purifying thoughts, word and action creates a beautiful continuation. We can see the effects of our speech in our children. My disciples are my continuation ­– both monastic and lay. I want to transmit loving speech, action and thought. This is called karma in Buddhism.

This body of mine will disintegrate but my karma will continue – karma means action. My karma is already in the world. My continuation is everywhere in the world. When you look at one of my disciples walking with compassion, I know he is my continuation. I don’t want to transmit my negative emotions, I want to transform them before I transmit them. The dissolution of this body is not my end. Surely I will continue after the dissolution of this body. So don’t worry about my death, I am not going to die.

Let us meditate on the birth of a cloud. Does it have a birth certificate? (laughter) Examine the notion of birth – the notion that nothing can come from something, from no-one to someone. Is it possible for something to come from nothing? Scientifically this is not possible.

The cloud was water in an ocean, lake, river and heat from the sun gave it birth – the moment of continuation. For instance, birth – before you were born you were in your mother’s womb. The moment of birth is a moment of continuation. Is the moment of conception the start? You are half from your dad and half from your mum already, this is also a moment of continuation. When you practise meditation you can see things like that.

It is impossible for a cloud to die. It can become water, snow – it cannot become nothing. It is also impossible for us to die. Speech, action and thought continue in the future. The person who dies still continues because we are not capable of using meditators’ eyes. They continue in us and around us. All our ancestors are alive in us. Our ancestors are in our chromosomes.

I wrote a book ‘No Death, No Fear’. When conditions are right I manifest and when not, not. There is no coming, no going. Before she manifests we should not call her non-existing. Before manifestation you cannot call her non-being. They are a pair of opposites.

Meditating on the nature of creation and being may be the best way to understanding God. The theologian Paul Koenig describes God as the Ground of Being. Who then is the Ground of Non-being? This diminishes God. In Buddhism both notions of being and non-being can describe reality. Similarly, above and below, Europe and here.

Nirvana is the absence of all notions, birth and death, coming and going, sameness and otherness. According to Buddhism, ‘to be or not to be’ is not a real question.

Meditation takes us beyond to a place of fearlessness. We’re too busy, so we become victims of anger, fear. If we have really touched our nature of no birth/death, we know to die is one of the root conditions to realise oneself.

We have to learn how to die in every moment in order to be fully alive.

This teaching on the middle way is the cream of Buddha’s teaching. Many of our ancestors realised this and were not afraid of death.

We should be able to release our tensions. We are the karma we produce every day in our daily life, if we know how, to ensure continuation. I have a disciple in Vietnam who wants to build a stupa with my ashes. He wants to put a plaque with the words ‘Here lies my beloved teacher’. But I want to write ‘There is nothing here’ (lots of laughter). Because if you look deeply there is continuation.

I treasure the time I have left, more for me to practise. I want to generate energy of love, compassion and understanding so I can continue beautifully. I would like you to do the same. Use your time wisely. Every moment produce beautiful thoughts, loving, kindness, forgiveness. Say beautiful things, inspire, forgive, act physically to protect and help. We know we are capable of producing beautiful karma for good continuations and the happiness of other people.

When the time comes for dissolution of this body you may like to release it easily. You aren’t to grasp – releasing body and perception. Remember the image of a cloud in the sky seeing continuation in rice and ice-cream waving to itself. You can already see your continuation. The art of living is continuation. For myself and the other beings.

Sariputra – one of Buddha’s main disciples, Ananda and other friends went to see Anathapindika a lay disciple who was a businessman and dying. He had made time to come to dharma talks and weekly practice.

When the Venerables came they asked whether the pain had diminished. He replied that it was increasing. The monks led him on a meditation on the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. After a few minutes there was no more suffering and he smiled.

When you sit close to a person dying talk to them of happy experiences in their life. Touch seeds of happiness in them…………………………………………..

It speaks to the greatest joys and the greatest hurts of my life.

Let us ‘inter-be’, as this great Zen master teaches, from every atom of his being. If he is not the real McCoy, there is no real McCoy.

To read the full article go HERE

Note from WikiPedia on the theologian Paul Tillich and ‘God as the Ground of being’;

Tillich described God

(spatially) as the “Ground of Being” and (temporally) as the “Eternal Now,”[47] in tandem with the view that God is not an entity among entities but rather is “Being-Itself”—notions which Eckhart Tolle, for example, has invoked repeatedly ………were paradigmatically renovated by Tillich, although of course these ideas derive from Christian mystical sources as well as from ancient and medieval theologians such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas

When the mote turns in the light: A 10 STEP ‘Barthesian’ course on Street Photography

 

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When the mote turns in the light: A 10 STEP Barthesian course on Street Photography

 

Sub-title: 31 OF THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEAS ABOUT (STREET) PHOTOGRAPHY

DERIVED FROM ROLAND BARTHES’ BOOK CAMERA LUCIDA


inspired by the annotation by Kasia Houlihan (University of Chicago)

Roger Prentice Ph.D., MA (ACE), B. Ed. (Hons)

1st draft 4th Dec 2011

INTRODUCTION

Although my practice of photography is still at a beginning stage I want to keep up an old habit – that of theorizing my practice and practicing my theory. On the theory side as a starting point I have gone for ‘the big one’ Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida.

 

Barthes’ book Camera Lucida: reflections on photography is more like literature than an academic text.  Indeed its very purpose is to get us to function in a ‘heart-centred’ way, instead of via left-brain classification and logic-chopping.  It is even more like a Zen master’s pointings or teachings. It is profoundly intuitive and insightful about photography in relation to the inner life of being human. It is not in any conventional sense subjective – it is about the very opposite the state of transcending the ego and ironically, given its arguments, it is about living transcendentally in the now.

Camera Lucida provides answers for an enormous range of problems, not just to understanding the true nature of photography.  In particular it is staggeringly insightful about what it is to be human, in the world with others (and the memories of them) and the exquisite place the art of photography can play in deepening our realization of our true selves.

I have taken as a starting point Kasia Houlihan’s excellent summary/annotation to be found HERE   The four sections relate to the 4 paragraphs in Kasia’s original summary/annotation.  To Kasia I will be eternally grateful because it enabled me to stop wandering around in a desert of unmanageable responses to Camera Lucida  – and it saved me from the temptation to dive in to the very large pools of academic writing about Camera Lucida – where I would probably have developed unbearable head-hurt and eventually drowned. Including the 10 Step course this is a framework for further development.

The area of photography that grips me currently is Street Photography.  I discovered the truth in Camera Lucida  two ways a) by doing street photography, however modest my achievements to date and b) through all the work that went into my doctorate – see HERE .

For serious students therefore I suggest the following 10 steps;

 

1) start taking photographs and keep up the practice between every one of the other steps listed here – & get as much feedback as possible.
2) look at photographs a lot – yours, your family’s and those of great photographers,
3) read Camera Lucida, don’t worry about understanding
4) read Kasia Houlihan’s original summary/annotation to be found HERE and this piece (in development) which was inspired by it.
5) read or re-read this listing of 31 major ideas,
6) read articles about street photography – there are a range of starting points – HERE
7) read at least the summaries of my doctorate HERE or work out your own understanding of the human spirit
8) do even more photography
9) read every poem and other literature you can find about photos & photography, look at every painting & dance about light etc. Link photography to transcendent spirituality if you will – there’s a ‘course-on-a-page HERE
10) then and only then read the academic literature on Camera Lucida and Barthes!
Whatever is true here about photography is also true about street photography – in fact I would say it is especially true about street photography.  I intend to write other articles about how this incisive, manageable way into Camera Lucida relates to street photography, to art generally, to spirituality and so on.

SECTION 1

1 The book Camera Lucida sets out to determine a new way of looking at photography.

2 Camera Lucida is about a new consciousness – by way of photography.

3 Barthes seeks a new way of reading and valuing photographs – an altogether customized framework.

4 Barthes’ framework is to be distinct from all existing accounts of classifying photographs.

5 He wants to deal with photographs so as to get at the essence or noeme of photography.

6 Barthes says that he wants, ‘a History of Looking’.   (RP don’t know what is meant but 26e below might be the answer)

7a In his search Barthes attempts to account for the fundamental roles of emotion and subjectivity

7b in i) the experience of and ii) accounting for Photography.

8 Subjective experience of photography (I would say creating as well as reading) has an essential nature—or eidos

9 The essential nature of a photograph is as an index indicating, ‘that-has-been.’

SECTION 2

10 Photography is set apart from all other forms of representation.

11 Previously established ways of classification etc are ‘disordered’ (because they fail to work with the essential nature of photography.)

12 Consequently it is unclassifiable (I suppose compared to say genre classification in film).

13 We need to hold to the fact that ‘the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially’.

14 The essence is the event,

15 The event is ‘that which is never transcended for the sake of something else.’

16 In other words, the photograph is never distinguished from its referent—that which it represents;

17 ‘it simply is what it is’ (I, RP, wonder if this means, “It is what it is because it is indissolubly linked to that which it represents?)”

18 This is illustrated by the fact that one says ‘this is me’ when showing someone a photographic image of oneself, as opposed to ‘this is a picture of me.’

19 When we look at a photograph, it is not the actual photo that we see, for the photograph itself is rendered invisible; (presumably because we see what the photo is a referent of – or see what we are)

20 Consequently the photograph is unclassifiable,

21 Why? – because it resists language, as it is without signs or marks—it simply is. (This is comparable to Lacan’s version of the Real.)

22 Furthermore, the subject that is photographed is rendered object, dispossessed of itself.

23 Consequently it becomes ‘Death in person.’

SECTION 3

24 In his personal—subjective—examination of multiple photographs, Barthes proceeded to note a duality that was characteristic of certain photographs: a ‘co-presence of two discontinuous elements’—what he terms, the studium and the punctum.

25a The studium refers to the range of meanings available and obvious to everyone (RP because we are taught by the culture and society of which we are part).

25b The studium part of these photographs is unary and coded, – the former term implying that the image is a unified and self-contained whole

25c The unary meaning of the studium can be taken in at a glance (without effort, or ‘thinking’).

25d The latter (THE CODING) implies that the pictorial space is ordered in a universal, comprehensible way.

25e The studium speaks of the interest which we show in a photograph,

25f  the desire to study and understand what the meanings are in a photograph,

25g to explore the relationship between the meanings and our own subjectivities.

26a The punctum (a Latin word derived from the Greek word for trauma) on the other hand inspires an intensely private meaning,

26b one that is suddenly, unexpectedly recognized and consequently remembered

26c It “shoots out of [the photograph] like an arrow and pierces me”.

26d It ‘escapes’ language (like Lacan’s real); it is not easily communicable through/with language.

26e The punctum is ‘historical’ as an experience of the irrefutable indexicality of the photograph (its contingency upon a referent).

26f The punctum is a detail or “partial object” that attracts and holds the viewer’s (the Spectator’s) gaze;

26g it pricks or wounds the observer.

SECTION 4


27a The ambiguity of the book’s title lends itself to the many levels on which the text addresses media theory.

27b This ranges from the very materiality of the photographic medium itself

27c to its grander implications for human consciousness in the pursuit of truth.

28a In his efforts to divorce photography from realms of analysis that deny or obscure its essence, Barthes ultimately formulates a new science of photography

28b It is an original framework in which photography steps beyond the shackles of classification and such terms as ‘art,’ ‘technique,’ etc. and, thus,

29a It draws upon an ‘absolute subjectivity’

29b This absolute subjectivity exceeds the normal boundaries of the everyday by moving the activity of viewing from a transparent relationship of meaning and expression to a level in which meaning seems to be there without the presence of subjectivity.

29c It is as if the photograph brings out the unconscious;

29d it also represents the unconscious, while at the same time, it denies all of these relations of meaning.

29e The photograph allows for the sight of self,

29f not as a mirror but as an access point into a definition of identity—

29g but identity associated with consciousness,

29h thus housing a whole;

30a  it is in the photograph ‘where being coincides with self,’ (109)

30b  It is ‘true being, not resemblance.’

31a The photographer, (is) a mediator,

31b S/he is one who (RP potentially & for themselves) supplies the transparent soul its clear shadow,

31c S/he reveals the soul’s value and not its mere identity (110);

31d the photographer, ‘makes permanent the truth.’

MY PERSONAL CONCLUSION

Camera Lucida is more like a revelation, a spiritual text, than a piece of academic writing. I have no no doubt that it’s a work of intuitive, soul-searching genius.  It tells us nothing about the mechanics and technique of photography.  It tells us everything about the nature of being human, in which photographs are a gateway to reading our soul.
We (should) read photographs as we are asked to read the text of the self – with the whole of our consciousness and with truth, beauty, goodness and justice. 

 

As Barthes shows himself, and us, the defining characteristic of photographs (at least the personally affecting ones) is that they show us ‘that which has been’.  They are embodiments of memories. As such they elicit powerful emotions and as such they tell us who we are, which is why when that part of the brain which enables memories is damaged people no longer know who they are, or who people close to them are. In normal health however we can only have a healthy life-supporting relationship with memories, and photographs, if we live reasonably successfully in the now. Living in the now is the only way we can healthily experience ‘that which has been’.

All photographs are self-portraits. In all creating of, and viewing of, photographs we are searching.  For ourselves, for our love, for that mysterious Whole of which we each are an infinitesimally small part.  

We, and our photographs, are each the mote that the ray of light makes visible.  Through them we enter the lucidly lit room.

For me in our ‘plucking from the flow’ the photographs that come to us it is not so much the ‘collecting of souls’, as Thomas Leuthard suggests, but is the embodiment of spirit caught when the mote turns in the light.  That for me is my street, and its flow of (human) spirit, in that genre we call street photography.
 

Image

Photo: Roger Prentice

END

GLOSSARY
1 WikiPedia Indexicality
an indexical behaviour or utterance points to (or indicates) some state of affairs……..
Social indexicality in the human realm has been regarded as including any sign (clothing, speech variety, table manners) that points to, and helps create, social identity.

 

TAGS:

 

Photography, street photography, rogerprentice, roger prentice street photography, photography course, Henri Cartier-Bresson, p

Happiness as nowness: 31 inspirational quotations for December

 

Do photographs live in the now? If so how - where and when and with whom?
Do photographs live in the now? If so how - where and when and with whom?

My chosen favorite quotations for December and mainly about enlightenment, ‘now’ and the importance of living in the now.  They are not by Eckhart Tolle – but by an extraordinary variety of writers, even though Tolle is the outstanding teacher about now-ness.   My thanks espcially to two of the very best sources of quotations online WisdomQuotes and the Quote Garden

 

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RUMI

1 Into my heart’s night / Along a narrow way / I groped; and lo! the light,……. – Rubaiyat of Rumi

 

ANON

2 Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. – Anon (?)

 

VIKTOR FRANKL

3 “The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” — Victor Frankl

 

W.B. YEATS

4 “Man can embody the truth but he cannot know it.” – W.B. Yeats

 

MARK TWAIN

5 ‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.’ Mark Twain

 

BUDDHA

6 “Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” (Buddha)

 

SENECA

7 “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” (Seneca)

 

KEVIN KELLY

8 There is only One machine.

The web is its OS.

All screens look into the One.

No bits will live outside the web.

To share is to gain.

Let the One read it.

The One is us.

Kevin Kelly (see YouTube)

 

KAREN ARMSTRONG

9 “Like poetry, religion is an attempt to express the inexpressible.” – Karen Armstrong

 

M SCOTT PECK

10 Love = “The willingness to extend myself for the spiritual growth of myself or another”. (From “The Road Less Travelled”).

 

ANON and ECKHART TOLLE

11 The voice of God is silence

 

ANON and GHANDI

12  He/She/It has no religion.

 

ANAIS NIN:

13 The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.

 

ANAIS NIN:

14 We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

 

ANNE FRANK:

15 How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

 

ARTHUR MILLER:

16 The word now is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.

 

BRENDA PETERSON:

17 The Hopi Indians of Arizona believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning on its axis. For me, feeding the seagulls is one of those everyday prayers.

 

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN:

18 Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.

 

CORITA KENT:

19 Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING:

20 Light tomorrow with today!

 

GWENDOLYN BROOKS:

21 Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. 

And be it gash or gold it will not come 

Again in this identical guise.

 

HENRY FORD:

22 History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.

 

HUGH PRATHER:

23 To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.

 

THICH NHAT HANH:

24 Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life..

 

JOANNA RUSS:

25 Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler’s bet: it’s an act, an intention, a project, something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of time and right into Eternity, which is not the end of time or a whole lot of time or unending time, but timelessness, the old Eternal Now.

 

KALIDASA:

26 Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!

Look to this Day!

For it is Life, the very Life of Life.

In its brief course lie all the 

Verities and Realities of your Existence.

The Bliss of Growth,

The Glory of Action,

The Splendor of Beauty;

For Yesterday is but a Dream,

And To-morrow is only a Vision;

But To-day well lived makes 

Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,

And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.

Look well therefore to this Day!

Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

 

MARGARET BONNANO:

27 It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.

 

MATTHEW ARNOLD:

28 Is it so small a thing 

To have enjoy’d the sun, 

To have lived light in the spring, 

To have loved, to have thought, to have done…

 

PEMA CHODRON:

29 Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.

 

ROBERT FROST:

30 Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON:

31 The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.