It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
— Jerome K. Jerome
The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
1886
Speaking to an audience in Nevada this week, Hillary Clinton was heard to say:
“All of our problems are interconnected, but we treat them as though one is guacamole and one is chips.”
I find this fascinating, though not necessarily for political reasons. Some commentators wondered if this was her idea of a metaphor that would resonate with a Hispanic audience, but I have to think Hill is smarter than that. One thing no one has ever accused her of being is a dumbass.
No, what really gets me is the Zenlike, circular nature of the statement. It sounds like something Shunryu Suzuki might have said. In one sense it seems clear enough, but when you stop to think about it it’s a real head-scratcher. Are chips and guacamole not connected? What happens when you dip the chip in the guac and put it in your mouth? Are chip, dip, and mouth not all one for that moment? One question leads to the next until you begin to feel pleasantly lightheaded.
Maybe rather than pandering clumsily to Latins, Hillary was really sending a coded message to America’s stoners: “With Kucinich gone, you have to support somebody, and why not me? Remember during Bill’s adminstration how you could channel-surf without getting bummed out by news about the war and stuff? Those were good times. It can be like that again. Vote for Hill—she’s real Chill.”
Or something like that.
(Transcribed from The I Ching or Book of Changes, the Richard Wilhelm translation, rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes.)
Hexagram 24: Fu/Return (The Turning Point)
above K’UN (The Receptive, Earth)
below CHÉN (The Arousing, Thunder)
The idea of a turning point arises from the fact that after the dark lines have pushed all of the light lines upward and out of the hexagram, another light line enters the hexagram from below. The time of darkness is past. The winter solstice brings the victory of light. This hexagram is linked with the eleventh month, the month of the solstice (December-January).
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Every existence in nature, every existence in the human world, every cultural work that we create, is something which was given, or is being given to us, relatively speaking. But as everything is originally one, we are, in actuality, giving out everything. Moment after moment we are creating something, and this is the joy of our life. But this “I” which is creating and always giving out something is not the “small I”; it is the “big I.” Even though you do not realize the oneness of this “big I” with everything, when you give something you feel good, because at that time you feel at one with what you are giving. This is why it feels better to give than to take.
—Shunryu Suzuki
“Like a work of art,” she repeated, looking from her canvas to the drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.
—To the Lighthouse
“You never know what you have until it’s gone, and I wanted to know what I had, so I got rid of everything.”
What is efficacy? It is effectiveness in submission to what is right, most effective in abiding in faithfulness to rectitude. Only thus is it an auspicious path that is sound in the beginning and sound at the end. One aims for the submission of unruliness, the rectification of error, cultivating oneself and controlling the mind, getting rid of all seeds of vicious circles, not letting any pollution remain in the mind; being utterly empty, serene and sincere, the human mentality does not arise and the mind of Tao comes into being. After rectitude comes creativity, and while flexible is firm, and while receptive one can be strong: Whatever one creates grows, and whatever grows bears fruit, and the fruits are all good. So the submission and receptivity of abiding in rectitude is no small matter.
—The Taoist I Ching
translated by Thomas Cleary
But they seem to be on to something:
What guarantee is there that the five senses, taken together, do cover the whole of possible experience? They cover simply our actual experience, our human knowledge of facts or events. There are gaps between the fingers; there are gaps between the senses. In these gaps is the darkness which hides the connection between things…. This darkness is the source of our vague fears and anxieties, but also the home of the gods. They alone see the connections, the total relevance of everything that happens; that which now comes to us in bits and pieces, the “accidents” which exist only in our heads, in our limited perceptions.
—Idris Parry, “Kafka, Rilke, and Rumplestiltskin”
The universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.
Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.
—The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable?
But suppose you could answer, “It would take me forever to tell you, and I am much more interested in what’s happening now.” How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment—from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of galaxies—how is it conceivable that the incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?
—The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are