thinking thursday.
Thinking Thursday could also be called 9 short thoughts and a quote. But then again, “Thinking Thursday” has all that alliteration going for it.
MIND
Created and Estranged Alphabets of Visionary, Creative and Boring Things will give you some slight indication of the wacky and fanastic wanderings of Mr Brilliant’s mind. As will Paper Sculpting of Nothing, or pretty much anything on his bizarro and amazing blog. Turns out, a lot of folks are noticing the breadth and depth of his mind. Identity is an interesting concept, isn’t it? (Thanks to Betsy Blake Bennett for that Johnnylicious link) Meditation, Medication, and Where I’ve Been Lately:“In his Shambhala Sun article entitled ‘Depression’s Truth,’ Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche discusses another potential benefit of depression – clear seeing: According to Buddhism, the world that we perceive—the world we interact with and live in—is insubstantial. Through the experience of depression and despair we can begin to see things more clearly rather than less clearly. It is said that we are normally charmed or bedazzled by the world, like a spell has been put on us by the allure of samsaric excitements and entertainment. When we get depressed, though, we begin to see through that—we are able to cut through the illusions of samsara. Depression, when we work with it, can be like a signal, something that puts a brake on our excesses and reminds us of the banality of the samsaric condition, so that we will not be duped into sliding back into the old habits again.”
There is an interesting thought about anti-depressants as well, from a 1993 Tricycle article by the Buddhist psychiatrist Mark Epstein called “Awakening with Prozac.” Epstein writes:
There continues to be a widespread suspicion of pharmacological treatments for mental anguish in dharma circles, a prejudice against using drugs to correct mental imbalance. Just as the cancer patient is urged to take responsibility for something that may be beyond her control, the depressed dharma student is all too often given the message that no pain is too great to be confronted on the zafu, that depression is the equivalent of mental weakness or lassitude, that the problem is in the quality of one’s practice rather than in one’s body.
BODY
Yes, please. This says summertime to me. one of my favorite “errands” as a child was blackberry picking with my father and making cobbler with him.I think this video just changed my life. I’ve bookmarked it and will be doing this 3x/day for a week to see how different I feel.
Have to give her an “A” for this one.
SPIRIT
I’ve been talking about parenting a lot with The Women of the Lodge (a group of amazing women who happened to be together one weekend in a lodge and have formed an ongoing goddess circle of the highest order). And today, I read this. And it is sheer perfection.
These photos got to me. In the best way. In the way that says “yes” with every fiber of my being. In the way that says revolutions are small actions over time. Over time, people. Not once. But over time. May we step in when the need arises, and before it does.VOICE
Pema Chodron writes:
“Instead of struggling against the force of confusion, we could meet it and relax. When we do that, we gradually discover that clarity is always there. In the middle of the worst scenario of the worst person in the world, in the middle of all the heavy dialogue with ourselves, open space is always there.” (to which I would add: let’s resist the urge to fill up that open space).
(Image: Summer has arrived again in Asheville. And with it, a real ice cream man.)
