The Hammock Papers: Subtle.

11 September 2022

Subtle.

Why scurry about looking for the truth?

It vibrates in every thing and every not-thing, right off the tip of your nose.

Can you be still and see it in the mountain? The pine tree? Yourself?

Don't imagine that you'll discover it by accumulating more knowledge; knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge. You can't get full eating this way.

The wise person dines on something more subtle: He eats the understanding that the named was born from the unnamed, that all being flows from non- being, that the describable world emanates from an indescribable source.

He finds this subtle truth inside his own self, and becomes completely content.

So who can be still and watch the chess game of the world?

The foolish are always making impulsive moves, but the wise know that victory and defeat are decided by something more subtle.

They see that something perfect exists before any move is made.

This subtle perfection deteriorates when artificial actions are taken, so be content not to disturb the peace.

Remain quiet.

Discover the harmony in your own being.

Embrace it.

If you can do this, you will gain everything, and the world will become healthy again.

If you can't, you will be lost in the shadows forever.

Lao Tzu

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL