I've been listening to Alan Watts perhaps too much, but I love listening to his lectures, he always presents his arguments in funny and insightful ways.

I've been listening to Alan Watts perhaps too much, but I love listening to his lectures, he always presents his arguments in funny and insightful ways. He has a lovely one on identity, and how even if a human changes and can change quite a lot in physical appearance, they remain themselves through the actions they do, the pattern of their doing is the personality. He also talks a lot about the doing and not-doing in relation to his experiences in Japan.

My mother has a remarkable ability to empty her mind, that she didn't learn from any meditation course or anything, it's an interesting thing that is inherent to herself, and I suppose to some degree, myself as well. She can still her whole being so much, that the most recognizable part of her is her complete ability to empty her mind. And it's an expansive mind! I once told her, I know no one like her at all. Spending time with her is like being alone in a large and empty room, that's the best I could describe her personality of "doing." (At one point I found it even frightful as a young adult, now in my midlife I appreciate it as a very unique way of patterning the doing of her person.)

I can empty my mind as well, although it is perhaps a different effect. Instead of an empty room, I think I'm a still pond, which is not as observable as the room is. The trouble with the pond is that the surface reflects, unlike the air in the room, and people tend to see something entirely different on the surface than what the pond is made of (very often something they brought there themselves.)

(Oh but the moon and the stars touch the surface so beautifully.)