Videos hosted by Michael Erlewine

Increasingly it does not matter what I do, but it matters very much how I do it. Take writing for example.

Words are for looking through, not at, windows into the nature of the mind. I use the juxtaposition of words to clarify my mind, and sometimes poems result.

And I kind of do it blindly, working the words like a raccoon gropes for food under the water, until I can look through them like windows. I work words, like windows, to look through, rather than at. Don't look at the window itself, but just through it. That is my advice. And everything we do is (or can be) a window into the mind.

Like the Tibetan analogy of a monkey in a house, running from window to window, looking out at the sky. The monkey thinks each window is a different sky all over again, when there is only one sky and many windows.

In the same way, I tend to go from one thing to another in my day, trying to get comfortable, thinking that one of them must be preferable over another to see through, when everything we do are equally windows into the nature of the mind. I just have to know how to look through them.

Like musical chairs, I finally manage to see through one of the windows and I stop there. In all of this, it is the seeing (the looking) that is important, not that which I am seeing through.

Unfortunately, too often I am all about the windows themselves, when they are only there to see through. I need to remind myself to look through the windows and not at them.

As mentioned, everything potentially is a window, a pair of spectacles or viewer to look through rather than at. But I actually have to learn to look. I am blind without looking. And by "look" I mean look through. I spend far too much time choosing my spectacles and not enough time learning to look through any one of them.

No wonder at times I can't see clearly.

[Speaking of seeing clearly, check out this photo by the new Zeiss 135mm f/2 APO lens. It is clear as clear gets, and the enlargement is a 100% crop from the larger image. Very sharp.]