So much in this small quote

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

- Henry Miller

Keith Jarret's words of wisdom

Try to imagine
the first musician.
He was not playing for an audience,
or a market, or working on
his next recording,
or touring with his show,
or working on his image.

He was
playing out of need,
out of his need for the music.
Every year the number of
musicians who remember why
they play music in the first place
gets smaller and smaller.

Beyond right and wrong

The man who lives with fixed ideas lives a dead life. He is never spontaneous and he is never in a right relationship with the situation that exists. He is never response-able; he functions out of his old conclusions which are no longer relevant, he does not look at the situation itself.

There is nothing right or wrong.
It all depends on your standpoint.

If somebody wants to decide absolutely, he will be
paralyzed; he will not be able to act.
If you want to act only when you have an absolute decision
about what is right, you will be paralyzed.
You will not be able to act. One has to act, and to act in a
relative world. There is no absolute decision, so don't wait for it.
Just watch, see, and whatever you feel is right, do it.

Any action that happens through awareness is right;
any action that happens through unawareness is wrong.

Whatsoever you are doing, do it with such consciousness
as if it is a question of life and death; as if a sword is hanging over you.

But see the emphasis! The emphasis is not on the action itself,
the emphasis is on the source — awareness or unawareness.
If you act fully aware, then whatsoever you do is right.
If you move mechanically and do things unconsciously
as if you are a sleepwalker, a somnambulist,
then whatsoever you do is wrong.
Awareness is right, unawareness is wrong.

- Osho

Beholding the mind

Bodhidharma :

The most essential method, which includes all methods, is beholding the mind.

Ramana Maharshi :

You are the mind or think that you are the mind. The mind is nothing but thoughts. Now behind every particular thought there is a general thought, which is the `I', that is yourself. Let us call this `I' the first thought. Stick to this `I'-thought and Question it to find out what it is. When this Question takes strong hold on you, you cannot think of other thoughts.

Gurdjieff :

Remember your self always and everywhere. Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.

Osho :

This technique is one of the most helpful, and it has been used for millennia by many teachers, masters. Buddha used it, Mahavira used it, Jesus used it, and in modern times Gurdjieff used it. Among all the techniques, this is one of the most potential. Try it. It will take time; months will pass. When Ouspensky was learning with Gurdjieff, for three months he had to make much effort, arduous effort, in order to have a glimpse of what self-remembering is. So continuously, for three months, Ouspensky lived in a secluded house just doing only one thing – self-remembering.

Thirty persons started that experiment, and by the end of the first week twenty-seven had escaped; only three remained. The whole day they were trying to remember – not doing anything else, just remembering that ”I am.” Twenty-seven felt they were going crazy. They felt that now madness was just near, so they escaped. They never turned back; they never met Gurdjieff again. Why? As we are, really, we are mad. Not remembering who we are, what we are, we are mad, but this madness is taken as sanity. Once you try to go back, once you try to contact the real, it will look like craziness, it will look like madness. Compared to what we are, it is just the reverse, the opposite. If you feel that this is sanity, that will look like madness.

But three persisted. One of the three was P. D. Ouspensky. For three months they persisted. Only after the first month did they start having glimpses of simply being – of ”I am.” After the second month, even the ”I” dropped, and they started having the glimpses of ”am-ness” – of just being, not even of ”I”, because ”I” is also a label. The pure being is not ”I” and ”thou”; it just is. And by the third month even the feeling of ”am-ness” dissolved because that feeling of am-ness is still a word. Even that word dissolves. Then you are, and then you know what you are. Before that point comes you cannot ask, ”Who am I?” Or you can go on asking continuously, ”Who am I?”, just continuously inquiring, ”Who am I ? Who am I?”, and all the answers that will be provided by the mind will be found false, irrelevant.

You go on asking, ”Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” and a point comes where you can no more ask the question. All the answers fall down, and then the question itself falls down and disappears. And when even the question, ”Who am I?” disappears, you know who you are. Gurdjieff tried from one corner: just try to remember you are. Raman Maharshi tried from another corner. He made it a meditation to ask, to inquire, ”Who am I?” And don’t believe in any answers that the mind can supply. The mind will say, ”What nonsense are you asking? You are this, you are that, you are a man, you are a woman, you are educated or uneducated, rich or poor.”

The mind will supply answers, but go on asking. Don’t accept any answer because all the answers given by the mind are false. They are from the unreal part of you. They are coming from words, they are coming from scriptures, they are coming from conditioning, they are coming from society, they are coming from others. Go on asking. Let this arrow of ”Who am I?” penetrate deeper and deeper. A moment will come when no answer will come.

The non-dual nature of knowledge and action

How can knowledge and action be separated? This is the original substance of knowledge and action, which have not been separated by selfish desires. In teaching people, the Sage insisted that only this can be called knowledge. Otherwise, this is not yet knowledge. This is serious and practical business... I have said that knowledge is the direction for action and action the effort of knowledge, and that knowledge is the beginning of action and action the completion of knowledge. If this is understood, then when only knowledge is mentioned, action is included, and when only action is mentioned, knowledge is included... But people today distinguish between knowledge and action and pursue them separately, believing that one must know before he can act. They will discuss and learn the business of knowledge first, they say, and wait till they truly know before they put their knowledge into practice. Consequently, to the last day of life, they will never act and also will never know. This doctrine of knowledge first and action later is not a minor disease and it did not come about only yesterday. My present advocacy of the unity of knowledge and action is precisely the medicine for that disease.

— Wang Yang Ming (1472-1529)
Instructions for Practical Living, I.8a

.

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.

- John Ruskin

Bill Frisell's words of wisdom

“I guess that has something to do with just my personality," he laughs. "Like, it's hard for me to talk sometimes, so that probably comes through, too. When I play, I want to be sure that there's some reason for it to be there, so sometimes I’ll wait. I don't want to just run off with a bunch of stuff; I like to have every note mean something. I have the same attitude, whether I'm playing a solo or comping. I just try to listen to whatever is happening and go with that, rather than play something that's worked out or preconceived. Paul Motian was a big influence on me that way. He's constantly changing and trying to make every note mean something. He won't play something just to play it.”

“Well, there's a lot that I can't do. That's for sure (laughing). I guess I try not to put limits on my imagination or I would say don't put limits on what the possibilities are, but then you're constantly running up against physical limitations all the time and in some ways, that's where you get your own individual, personal sound. You're sort of trying to push past this point. Each person has their own kind of a wall that you get up against and then it is when you get up against that wall, you have to figure out a way to deal with it. One thing that helped me a lot when I was a bit younger, I read something about Miles Davis saying that he was trying to play like Dizzy Gillespie, but he couldn't play that high so he just played what he thought was sort of the same stuff an octave lower or something. And I was thinking if Miles Davis had been able to play like Dizzy Gillespie then we wouldn't have Miles Davis. We would just have another Dizzy Gillespie, which would, that would be fine too, but there is something about dealing with your limitations and I think that's where you find your own sound.”

“Talk about being lucky! Now, it's like this full orchestra surrounding me. I have friends, really close friends, this group of people where I don't have to explain anything. There's a huge body of music that we've all played together, so it's like a live organism that keeps on growing. The circle of people just keeps growing, but there's maybe a core of a bunch of people that we put in different combinations together. We come together and then we go apart and do our own things, and when we come together again everybody just has more experiences that keep feeding this kind of giant plant.”

“It's such a gradual, day-to-day thing chipping away at [one's personal style]. It's not really a matter of finding it. I think so much of it comes from your limitations. I'm hearing something in my head and I'm striving towards it but can't ever really get there. So, you just do what you can do in the moment. And so much of it is what you CAN'T do in what it really sounds like. It's a good thing. It's what makes each of us unique. If we could do whatever we wanted at any moment then there'd be no music [laughs]. Music just keeps on going and going and you never get to the end of it. You just keep trying and trying and trying. There's no finish line or anything.”

“With the people I'm playing with there's tunes we can play where it's not about the tune itself, which becomes a kind of framework where all kinds of new things can happen. I need to write new things and come up with new compositions and all that, but there's something great when people have this shared conversation that they've played for years and years.”

“I guess I'm just looking for progress or something. It's almost an emotional thing. Each time I hope I get a little more comfortable with being myself. All music is that anyway, whether there's other people or not. It's all an invitation to take the next step.”

Knowledge and Creativity

I think the only people who are still capable of saying something are either those who have not been conditioned by education and its notions, or those very few who went through with it and escaped it. If it is creativity and life you desire, you have to dump that baggage at the crossroads and go with what you wanted to say all along.

Education and knowledge have nothing to do with creativity. It took me a long time to realize this. You have to know why you want the answers and what you want to do with them before you cram them down your throat. Being skilled is one thing, being educated is another, and being creative is another. It seems to me that education promises a lot, but delivers little in substance. No wonder most people who invest themselves in education at the expense of all the else end up jaded by it and deal in education for the rest of their lives.

The creative people, the ones actually doing the work, are never to be found within educational and academic circles. Their effect, and especially the influence of the people within it, is so stultifying to the spirit that one must cut all ties with them if one hopes to fly free. The fallacious notion that appears to me to be behind every theoretical analysis of anything (and indeed one must hold this notion to some degree to be true because otherwise the foundation of the whole endeavor collapses) is that something, no matter what it may be or how great, can be understood as the sum of its parts. This raises, for me, two questions: In the first place, why the desire or need to understand it? And second, what effect does one hope this understanding will bring? There is understanding to be had, but this understanding is partial at best, and dubiously related to the actual thing in itself, unless the thing one investigates was made explicitly to be understood through deconstruction, like a puzzle.

What one learns through analysis has more to do with being able to do analysis and less with what one uses the process for. That is to be expected with any kind of standardized method of theoretical understanding. What you learn then becomes a way to deconstruct and understand a particular thing, a method of perception. The scope of this understanding, although useful if used judiciously and with awareness, is very limited. By applying the method, you learn how to apply the method. It becomes more or less and end in itself, unless you are willing to see beyond it. You might know of a way to explain how something works, but you do not know why it does, and without the why you also do not truly know the how, just a how-to. That is because all systems of analysis and theoretical understanding must come necessarily after the fact, and conform to the fact for as long as they can until the new fact, the new art, literature, scientific discovery etc. demand a change in the method of explanation.

A person who goes to university to learn how to become a creative individual, in any field, is sorely deluded. Analysis and theoretical understanding cannot help anyone one bit toward that end. They can only help one "create" work that rises from applying this theoretical understanding and analysis to their craft. In other words, exactly backwards from the way it actually works, from theory to practice, instead of practice to theory. This results in work that has little or nothing to do with creativity, individuality and self-expression and everything to do with clever ways to use theory and knowledge. This, for me, constitutes the fallacy of all educational institutions, a fallacy that is so widespread that almost everyone who is associated with one or wishes to attend one takes as de facto. It is implied within the brochures, through their use of words and so on; "Come to us and we'll tell you all the methods and all the things you need to know to make a great (insert here)".

The problem I see with this is that the more it is propagated, through old institutions and new ones alike and through the majority of the academic world, the more the understanding of what it truly means and takes to be creative is being lost. Pupils imitate their teachers and assume their way of thinking, and pass it on. The industries that deal with creative people conform more and more to this new 'standard' of creative work. People, especially in the States, who want to be musicians or writers or filmmakers are increasingly brainwashed into accepting this sort of propaganda from institutions who in the end exist to make a profit. Most art schools in the US for example are very very expensive, especially music schools. But you know, it's "the place to be" if you wanna "make it". Well about 20%-25% make it with a degree, and out of those about 1%-3% go on to what their institutions promised as a career. Why? Because information is cheap nowadays. You've got institutions churning out thousands of skilled everythings, every year. Thousands of people who have the knowledge and the skills, and are competing for the same kind of work. So the demand for excellence, creativity, individuality and genuine art is on the rise. But 99% of the people who have the skills and the knowledge and can explain to you all of Bach's fugues or write a hundred-thousand word essay on Proust are completely ill-prepared for this demand to be outstanding, to be the originator of truly distinguished creative work. The 1% who figured out that their imagination is their most valuable asset are those who have a shot at being studied and analyzed by the academia later on. These people are visionaries, because they know that, in the words of Keith Jarrett, music does not come from music.

So to come back to my first point, theoretical analysis is very essential and useful in the beginning because it brings together all this vast amount of creative work and filters it through a standard method of deconstruction. It becomes a way of navigating this world of art, or music or literature or whatever it is. But it also has the effect of numbing the senses, of blurring the fine distinctions that are so important and worst of all it can make you think (it certainly made me think) that you really understand something. The only thing you really can come to understand (and therefore apply) is the method. To really understand (which is not exactly the right word for it) that which the method deals with, you have to dump the method altogether or be bound and short-sighted by its limitations. It's just a means to an end, and pretty soon it's not the right means for those who are bursting with creative desire and the spirit of adventure.

The real means are not external, they lie within oneself and, after they have been carefully cultivated they can only be supported by external factors such as knowledge and theory. There are infinite skills one can acquire - the key is to weed through all the "should's" and "have-to's" and only go for those that are absolutely essential to one's creative journey and keep working on them for the rest of one's life, because that's where the true value lies. Everything else is not necessarily superfluous, it's just secondary.

Letting Go?

[...] All I can say is that there is nothing to let go of. It is the illusion that there is something, a "self", a "you" that you believe you are holding on to. So long as you define "you" strictly by your knowledge of your past, your thoughts about the future and your self-awareness in the present moment, you cannot let go. Because the ego cannot let go of itself.

Self-consciousness is the barrier between what is construed as "self" and "other". Self-consciousness, the ego, "yourself" is the dividing line and the root of all fear. The ego is defined by what it separates itself from. The ego is defined by other, and as long as there is the perception of "other", there must be a "self". Fear then, is the resistance of "other".

Fear is what happens when you operate under the illusion of being separate from that which is happening to you. It is only the ego that is afraid. To resist the ego by means of the ego is futile at best and delusional at worst. The ego itself, or the self-consciousness in the present moment, or the sensation of "I" as something that experiences life, instead of being the experience is Resistance. The way it resists is by putting barriers between you and everything else, separating consciousness from Life and blocking experience and action.

When you see all of it is You, and that there is no "other", there is nothing more to fear. There are no barriers, no fears, no effort beyond the "self", beyond the ego.

What you are afraid of is what will set you free. It is the only means of liberation from "self" that has worked for me. It is only through facing fear that you truly come to see that there is no fear, there is no "self", and "you" are not what you think.

When you do what you fear, what goes beyond "yourself", you recognize there is no distinction between "self" and "other" -it was only your thoughts that told you so- and you become liberated from the illusion of control. The intellect cannot serve anything apart from the ego. Only through direct action can this be accomplished. As long as you act through the prism of a "self", whether you are trying to "let go" or not, it makes no difference because for a "self" to be there must be "other" and those two must be different. As long as you remain "yourself" there is the illusion of having to 'let go', which is just another form of Resistance.

There is nothing there to let go of.
There is nobody holding on to anything.

Ray Bradbury's words of wisdom pt.2

“It is easy to doubt yourself, because you look around at a
community of notions held by other writers, other intellectuals,
and they make you blush with guilt. Writing is supposed to be
difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.”

“But, you see, my stories have led me through my life. They
shout, I follow. They run up and bite me on the leg—I respond by
writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I
finish, the idea lets go, and runs off.”

“That is the kind of life I've had. Drunk, and in charge of a
bicycle, as an Irish police report once put it. Drunk with life, that
is, and not knowing where off to next. But you're on your way
before dawn. And the trip? Exactly one half terror, exactly one
half exhilaration.”

“By the time many people are fourteen or fifteen, they have been divested
of their loves, their ancient and intuitive tastes, one by one, until
when they reach maturity there is no fun left, no zest, no gusto,
no flavor. Others have criticized, and they have criticized themselves,
into embarrassment. When the circus pulls in at five of a
dark cold summer morn, and the calliope sounds, they do not rise
and run, they turn in their sleep, and life passes by.”

“My ideas drove me to it, you see.
The more I did, the more I wanted to do. You grow ravenous.
You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can't sleep
at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you
in your bed. It is a grand way to live.”