The Goal

“Let go of body and mind, until you reach a state of great rest, like letting go over a cliff ten miles high, being like open space"— Huai-t'ang

What is REALLY real?

When working with my clients, I often tell them the old story of the three blind men and the elephant: Three blind men encounter an obstacle (an elephant) in their path. The first blind man reaches out and feels the trunk of the elephant and declares it is a hose; the second blind man feels the elephant’s tusk and thinks it is a sword; the third touches the elephant’s leg and insists the elephant is a tree. They end up in a hopeless argument, not being able to agree on whose reality is really real.


I use this story to point up a major tenet of postmodernism: Our sense of what is real depends upon our perspective. Indeed, we all have our human truths that are vital to us and our socially constructed reality—that’s fine and the way it should be. The point is, we should be extremely leery of declaring these human truths absolute Truth with a big "T." 


I recently ran across a wonderful quote by Robert M. Pirsig that illustrates this same human conceit of taking a partial sampling (the extent of our human reality) and declaring it everything. I combined the Pirsig quote with a photograph I took at Ogunquit Beach many years ago.

“We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.”

Have We Become A Media Mind

Last night I attended a Poetry Society of N.H. public reading, War and Remembrance, at the University of N.H. with Paul Nichols, best friend, Vietnam combat veteran, and one of the featured poets. The poems read vividly depicted the brutality, immorality, and soul-sucking destructiveness of War–along with addressing the causes of this abomination.

I was particularly struck by the words of Burkhard Hoene who died in 2006 at the age of 46.  Some of his poetic journal entries were poignantly read by his brother last night from the Poetry Society's anthology, The Other Side of Sorrow.  An excerpt from his poem, what package is this? accompanies  my photographs below:

just who are we when we become

a media mind?

what is it that builds the power

of a such a country as ours?

similar resources, similar

television, similar people,

similar topography.

yet we have become the 

cause and barometer of how 

the world feels a about itself.

Is this an open society?

What is an open society

when it behaves as we do?

what values do we accept

and what values do we

impose on ourselves?

what values do we impose on others?

can we remain

indifferent?

can the blind remain

indifferent?

forgive them for

they know not what they do