Tag: Quotes

Labels Are For Jars

by Ebb Then Flood

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 “How many cares one loses ,when one decides not to be something ,but someone.”

        – Coco Chanel

This quote has almost been my mantra in the past year or so.

The creeping realisation came that I was defining myself by my various jobs,roles and external expectations , not by my core,essence and natural intuition. And I was losing myself in the process.

The labels that the world uses to pigeonhole us should not stick to us through everything , or anything all really, but they do .

Be warned ,you might just have to break a jar or two to lose those labels, and just be someone – you.

Glass broken, cares lost….

The Monkey Mind

by Ebb Then Flood

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I only became aware this week of the Buddhist concept of the “monkey mind” when I was reading  a story online about a depressed US army veteran who had been taught tai chi in order to quiet the negative voices in his head.

Another magazine article at home awhile back described an acquaintance of mine as having a “manic, fizzing mind.” The description was bang on.

I can relate …in fact this blog reflects a lot of things that just bounce around inside my head …I have to get rid of some of them in cyberspace…sorry!

But seriously ,apparently the average person has about 50,000 separate thoughts a day(many about the same thing) and a lot of those are not relaxing or mindful thoughts.They are of the “need to do this..now”  and  “next, that”, or just general worry bead handling.

Some of this is necessary for personal organisation and survival; too much of it causes mental and physical fatigue.We simply can’t unwind and become restless and unsettled.

Buddha wrote: “Just as a monkey swinging through the trees grabs one branch and lets it go only to seize another, so too, that which is called thought,mind or consciousness arises and disappears continually both day and night.”

The trick,supposedly, is to understand that aspect of ourselves and then tame the monkey, not fight it.

I won’t get into the mindfulness techniques to do that because I am no expert,but  it is good start just to realise that maybe we can hold a thought,if a beneficial one, before launching for the next “branch” .

Lastly,the monkey picture was taken at a popular tourist island in  Langkawi, Malaysia. There are constant warnings to the boatloads of  visitors:”Do not feed the monkeys”,as they can be quite excitable and  aggressive.

Good advice for those with “monkey minds” too!

 

Zen Gate At The Snake Temple

by Ebb Then Flood
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 Gate At The Snake Temple, Penang, Malaysia

“In Zen they say: “Don’t seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions”. What does that mean? Let go of identifications with your mind. Who you are beyond the mind then emerges by itself “.

– Eckhart Tolle, from ‘A New Earth’.

We love our opinions and our right to have them .

To hang on to them, defend them, fight others over theirs.

We sometimes identify with our opinions, forgetting that they are not actually us.

I think of opinions I have held strongly, then later discarded.Who I am didn’t actually change.`

Some thoughts and opinions I have are kind and beautiful; others, like the snakes who inhabit the Buddhist temple where I took this photo, are just a bit twisted and scary!

 

Collapse Into Fall

by Ebb Then Flood

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“All at once, summer collapsed into fall” – Oscar Wilde

Easter approaches  – almost on cue summer disappears speedily, and the first autumn chills arrive.

Leaves start to fall; beautiful golden, reddish debris will soon cover the ground.

In the Southern Hemisphere ,Easter sits seemingly opposed to the new season, with its imagery of eggs ,new life and rebirth more redolent of  spring.

But not really, as for every birth there needs to be the death of something ; there is no beginning without a  prior ending….I know myself what it is like to have collapsed, fallen and then started afresh in life.

(PS: Grateful for the end of humidity, hot sleep-disturbed nights and mosquitoes!)

Kick Against The Pricks

by Ebb Then Flood

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Carrying on from yesterday’s post, ‘Barbed Wire Blues’, on the theme of things sharp, pointy and generally unpleasant, pictured is a gorse plant. Originally introduced from Europe to New Zealand as a farm hedge plant, gorse has misbehaved in spectacular fashion, spreading everywhere like wildfire and is considered the most noxious ground weed in the country. Most Kiwis would have come off second best in an encounter with this prickly, thorny bastard.

Botany lesson over, the title of the post  comes from an old  Greek saying :”It is hard for you to kick against the pricks”.It crops up in the New Testament too.It has to with beasts of burden being controlled in work like plowing and haulage by a sharp prod.To kick against it would mean the prod would dig in deeper.Not great.

When we go against our own nature  and true gut instincts,and are not in tune with our environment,matters can  get painfully worse,or that is my experience at least .Sometimes best not to fight the tide!

On the other hand,given the modern colloquial  use of ‘pricks’ ,it is tempting to give those people who cause us grief a fair kicking…

Why Do You Stay?

by Ebb Then Flood

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“Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open?”

                                                                         – Rumi

Last  night I was watching a rerun of the movie ‘The Terminal’, starring Tom Hanks. His character is from a fictional republic in the  former Soviet Union and he  lands at New York ,but because of a revolution at home he is rendered stateless and thus unable to leave the  airport terminal .He has a personal mission  he must achieve in NY ,but when he is “gifted” a small envelope of time by the immigration authorities to walk out to America ,while they turn a blind eye , he hesitates at the doors ,and cannot exit, held back by fears.

The scene Rumi’s words above . All of us have at some time been held captive by fear and doubt, often of   our own making. When the chance  to escape comes, are we courageous enough to do so, or will we languish in our all too familiar cell?

We Are The Ones Who Stayed Behind

by Ebb Then Flood
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Highway view, near Parry, GA. April 2017.

“We are the ones who stayed  behind, for all those good, bad and ugly reasons: because of caution, for conformity and obligation but mostly I suspect because of habit and fear. We didn’t take the risky road.”

– A.A.Gill ,excerpt from ‘The Golden Door’.

Gill was describing those people who did not migrate from the Old World, Europe, to the new one, America but he could equally be describing all who have stayed where they were in a situation, place or relationship because they felt bound to it, refusing to take the leap into the unknown new. It speaks to me anyway…

Blue Motel

by Ebb Then Flood

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‘I’ve got a blue motel room

with a blue bedspread

I’ve got the blues inside and outside my head…’

–  Joni Mitchell, ‘Blue Motel Room’ from ‘Hejira’ (1976).

 

Shot this on a rainy night on holiday in Nelson; alone that evening so walked the balcony’s length a few times to kill time, boredom and a drifting anxiety. Motels never feel like home or any place you would be if you didn’t have to be there. Queen Joni summed up my mood on that evening perfectly.