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Sunday, January 29, 2012

Your Sunday Thought

Whatever is experienced will fade to a memory.  Everything that is seen will not be seen again.
                                                                                                                          Milarepa



                                                          

5 comments:

Alon Perlman said...

Wow, at first i thought sounds a lot like echlisiastes, but then I looked up Milerpa (Again), Thanks Ann.
Happen to be carrying a heavy load this weekend...



Equality and Seven Things to Forget


------

When I realize everything’s equality
I forget all about my close friends and my relatives
It’s OK to forget the objects of your attachment

When I realize wisdom beyond thought
I forget everything included in perceiver and perceived
It’s OK to forget these causes of happiness and pain

Beyond memory, beyond feelings
I forget all about experiences, the good ones and the bad
It’s OK to forget them, they just go up and down

When I know the three kayas are present naturally
I forget all about the deity’s generation stage practice
It’s OK to forget the Dharma made of concepts

When I realize the result’s inside of me
I forget all about the results you have to strive and strain to get
It’s OK to forget the Dharma of the relative truth

Meditating on the key instructions
I forget all other explanations and their conventional terms
It’s OK to forget the Dharma that makes you arrogant

When I realize appearances are my texts
I forget all about those big books with their letters in black
It’s OK to forget the Dharma that’s just a heavy load.




-- Jetsun Milarepa, translated under the guidance of Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche,
by Ari Goldfield, July 13, 2002, Dechen Chöling, France.


All praise be to Google, the all knowing.

Sewertoons AKA Lynette Tornatzky said...

"Everything that is seen will not be seen again."

Perhaps this helps to explain the obsession of so many with photography? Speaking of which, beautiful photo Ann. I'm glad that you can share that moment.

This topic reminds me of a book that I read in college, John Berger's Ways of Seeing.

Alon Perlman said...

Hi toons, - Looked up Burger, this is good. I think it is more about how modern reproductions misrepresent the artists view (context), and separately that there is a loss of the real in favor of commercial utility. Would be interesting to see if the BBC series is on netflicks etc.. Quite a philosopher.
Everything that is seen will not be seen again.
The original black and white daguerreotypes are almost two centuries old now. The color images of our youth (?), taken in the early sixties are fading faster.
I threw away floppies containing digital pictures taken 12 years ago and now the computer that stored them is incompatible with my USB 2.0 reader, that I would use to transfer them to my more current computer. And Digital optical read write disks use a chemical optical process so most of those will deteriorate with the rapidity of celluloid. And assuming we keep disk drives; How permanent the Carrizo plain? The DNA of the native plants is a digital record of sorts. But will there be a reader compatible with them? Format obsolescence.

But I think that Milpra is thinking about thinking, or more correctly, thinking about not thinking.

Whatever is experienced will fade to a memory.

Is this what “is” is?
The view is in the moment
Viewing the picture is a different moment
Reviewing the memory of the image is also a moment
Will the eye of the beholder be present, will the third eye be awake?

And speaking of topic de-jur; Sometimes an obsession is just an obsession.

Word verification-undema Un-Dharma?

Sewertoons AKA Lynette Tornatzky said...

Hey Alon, nice to read you again! Great comments!

Churadogs said...

I think what Milarepa is up to is the same thing Heraclitus noted: You cannot step into the same river twice. i.e. everything is in constant flow and change and rearrangement. The "reality" you're looking at/experiencing this split-second will be slightly different in the next split-second and the exact arrangement of atoms will never be duplicated -- each milisecond of "reality" is unique, each milisecond of how we experience that "reality" is also unique and will never come again in the same way.