Iran is a classic wicked problem
We need to ask, what is love or beauty or pain before we objectify it? what happens when we can abide without conclusions? you know, these are questions for the practitioner, practitioners questions… and I wanted to use one word in Tibetan that I’ve found very useful for myself… and this is the word zöpa.. this translates usually as patience or endurance or tolerance, but there’s this very subtle translation of zöpa, which is the ability to tolerate emptiness basically, which is another ways of saying the ability to tolerate that things don’t exist in one way, that things are so full and infinite and leave you so speechless, and so undefinably grand – and these are just descriptive words, but you have to use some words to communicate, I guess — the ability to bear that, that fullness, like we’ve been talking about, not turning away, not turning away.
Page 3 of 3 | Previous page
L. C. Rees:
March 11th, 2012 at 6:10 am
Carl von Clausewitz’s kritischer Betrachtung favors intensive study of 1-3 military campaigns to cultivate the deep associational mind instead of glancing studying of many campaigns to populate the shallower checklist mind. Research suggests insight is produced by aconscious processing seconds before it reaches consciousness. That aconscious thought in turn feeds off a period of offline processing that was also supra-conscious. The deep Clausewitz advocates gets most of its bang out of intense focus on a few landmarks of concentration rather than vacuuming up factoid x and factoid y. Studied this way, the oblique order at Leuthen is more akin to an interesting rock in a Zen garden rather than raw material for The Idiot’s Guide to Being Great Like Frederick. If you listen carefully, that’s the sound of one Hun clapping.
Dan:
March 11th, 2012 at 8:07 pm
well done. intriguing title, great points on ‘we just don’t know’ (i wish more ‘experts’ would give an HT to that fact, via any of its many iterations and quotes beyond just Rumsfeld), and nice ending with some thoughts on zen. nothing like a good blog post that infuses koans and their nature into its very writing style. this one does it on a popular subject, introduces new ideas, and artfully leaves the main issue alone mid-way through for the reader to contemplate.
Unsui:
March 13th, 2012 at 6:36 am
Thanks for the thought-provoking and stylish piece. Much is said while no words are wasted. The quotes show much scope. Look for Haubner’s essay collection summer 2013.
Madhu:
March 13th, 2012 at 1:22 pm
The Jackson Pollack at the beginning? Love. My favorite gallery at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts contains a Pollack. I love the mid-modern sensibility of the room, its shape, its windows, the leaves on the trees outside, the low ceilings adding to a sense of quietness–the feeling of being inside a perfectly peaceful space.
.
http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/number-10-1949-34114
.
That’s the way the room is in my memory of it, so, you know, FWIW. The memory deceives in details but not always in emotional resonance….
Madhu:
March 13th, 2012 at 1:33 pm
Oh, hahahahahahahaha. Did you see what I did? Maybe my family is right and my admiration for Pollack is incomprehensible. ” A kid could do it,” they say to me and I say back, “nah uh.” But they are right! Hahahahahahaha. That kind of made my morning.
.
I really thought it was a Pollack before reading the words under it (I don’t always like reading the words. That’s why I prefer the visual arts sometimes.)
.
Hahahahahahaha.
Charles Cameron:
March 13th, 2012 at 4:55 pm
Hi Madhu:
.
The painting in the illustration above is, I believe, a Pollock. It comes from a site which shows kids the image and suggests they could do something similar… but I’d munged the link, so you couldn’t possibly know that.
.
Here is is, again: http://blog.austinkids.org/tag/jackson-pollock/
.
So maybe you’re right and your family is, too!