Your Daily Zen Tripout - 02: The infinity of everything.
Choose one small section of space and stare at it. It could be anything. A small circle of space on the table or floor in front of you. A dish. A corner where two walls meet. A section of wallpaper. The tiles in your shower. Your fingernail. It matters not. This miracle will occur anywhere you decide to focus your attention.
What is the miracle? No matter how long you look at this small section of space, new details will continuously emerge, endlessly. They will
never end! The longer you look, the more you will see!
Even if you were to stare at the bottom of your coffee cup for one million literal years, the details emerging and presenting themselves to your awareness would never end.
The more you look, the more you see.
One of my favorite passages of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is when Phaedrus is trying to get one of his students to write an essay on the US. She can't do it. I can't think of anything to write about the US she says.
Ok. Narrow it down. Write about your city. She still can't do it. Narrow it down to Main Street then, he tells her, growing frustrated. She still can't think of anything to write. In anger he yells at her, Write about the front of the Opera House on main street, starting with the upper left-hand brick
She comes in the next day with pages upon pages upon pages. She tells him she sat and stared at the brick, and stared, and stared. And suddenly, everything was there. She couldn't stop writing about the details of those bricks, then the building, then the town, then the US.
The more you look, the more you see.
Love this passage. Had totally forgotten about it!
Haha this is awesome. I do this a lot when I’m in nature looks as if the item of focus is breathing!
Your ideas are really beautiful. the details are hidden among the words. I congratulate you
Life is wonderful, and being able to contemplate is always a unique experience, so you can see the same corner, the same cup of coffee or paint, it is always different ... Only because of the busyness of our life we do not value.
You made me remember that from the window of my room you can see a tree... And in many tomorrow I look at it and look for forms with leaves and I do not remember seeing the same image with the leaves. Regards!