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Welcome to the Home of Gerry Beswick
Zen Master Dogen(1200-1252) wrote:
“To study the way
is to study the self
To study the self is to forget the self
To forget the self is to be enlightened
by everything that exists”
Forgetting the self is a tall order, taking a very long time, requiring hours,days, months and years on a black cushion but there is an alternative which might or might not work.
It is to get some brushes, paints and a surface onto which you can apply them.
When you start you are not there. You have forgotten yourself. Just brushes, paint and a surface.
You stop because you are looking for a result by looking at what you have just done and it is always a mixture of hope and desolation. This procedure takes up 99.9% of your time
As Kurt Vonnegut wrote “So it goes”
You put it away and then you get it out and you have another go because there is this thing called hope.
And so it goes with egoless endeavor and ego driven staring until the day when you say to yourself I’ll take this thing down to Anna and tell her “Give me a three inch white border and a wooden frame of your choice.”
“So it goes.”
You get the result home and nothing much has changed. Is it any good? Is it stupid rubbish?. You’ll never know.
So it goes