Paul's Reflections

"At the core of it all, there's something more.
Something luminous, something shimmering."

- Paul Cotter

Long-time readers of my blog will have seen book reviews appear every now and then, but I haven't posted as many as one might expect (given my general penchant for books). By my count, I have about 20 (depending on the minimal length and depth that defines a "review" and excluding a post in which I summarize the book my mom and I wrote about my dad's life and art); just click on "Book Reviews" in the Themes and Places section in the left sidebar to see the full list. That's 20 reviews out of a total of 1660 total posts since 2004, or less than 1 per year! The main reason is that I only post reviews of books that have made a strong - a strong positive - impression on me. I can further distill this already select group to a set of exactly four books that made me blurt out "Wow!" and which altered my perceptions of the creative potential of photography as an art form: (1) Bruce Barnbaum's Visual Symphony (in the 1970s), (2) Fay Godwin's Land  (middle 1980s), and (3) John Sexton's Recollections (in 2006), and (4) Wynn Bullock's Color Light Abstractions (in 2010). To this short list I must now add a fifth - Paul Cotter's Paul's Reflections: Photography and thoughts about life and living - mostly because of how brilliantly it combines "verbal and visual" aesthetic - even spiritual - spaces, an observation made also by Barbara Bullock-Wilson in the foreword she wrote for Paul's book.

Full disclosure: (1) Despite never having met in person (though we both look forward to the day this is no longer true), Paul and I have "known" each other for about 10 years, and connected over an essay Paul had published on Wynn Bullock in 2016 (which I found by following a link I'd seen on Barbara Bullock Wilson's Facebook page). And, as dedicated readers of my own blog know, Barbara serendipitously become a treasured friend of mine soon after we first corresponded in 2012 via email about my "discovery" of her father's color abstractions; (2) I purchased Paul's book online as soon as I learned of its existence. Does my knowing Paul make the "review" you are about to read biased? Objectively, perhaps. But you'll have to take my word (on faith, of course) that I never recommend a book (about photography or any other subject) unless I believe it is special. Which brings us to my review.

The softcover book (this is the only version available) consists of 53 of Paul's favorite essays and accompanying photographs that have appeared on his blog between March 2023 and early 2026 (you can read more about the book and place your order here). Apart from the foreword and introduction, it follows an elegantly simple two-page format: a title introduces a short essay and a quote/callout (that highlights salient text) on the right, and an accompanying photograph appears on the left (a few sample pages are here and here). 

While the photographs reveal Paul's gift for simplicity and reflect an inner calm honed from years of studying Buddhism (Paul has been featured in National Geographic magazine, gallery exhibitions, and international photography annuals), the essays - each a perfect companion to the image it is paired with (as explained below) - are a world unto-themselves. Each essay is anchored on a single idea or observation (or, as you'll find on page 29, "thoughts about thoughts"). What sets these essays apart from those by most other photographer-authors is the Zen-like spark of illumination they ignite in the reader; Paul is as gifted an author as he is a photographer! Indeed, as I've emailed him privately several times after reading his blog posts, I am in awe at how few words - often no more than a few spare, poetic-like paragraphs - Paul needs to convey ideas that will take root and linger in your memory long after you've closed his book. I tend to think of them as sacred clippings drawn from the life of a wise and gentle sage. Though they are all short and can be finished in a minute or two, I recommend that you savor these essays by reading them slowly, thoughtfully, letting your mind wander and muse on whatever related themes and ideas you will no doubt find percolating inside you. 

You will find - and grow to appreciate after spending quality time with Paul's book - that each image-essay pair is subtly interlocked and self-reinforcing. When you turn to a page, your eye will first be drawn to the photograph on the left (since we are fundamentally visual creatures). After you've absorbed the first layer of meaning (there are other, typically many other layers you'll discover as you revisit the image), you'll shift your gaze to the accompanying essay on the right. This will also quickly draw you in, and you will momentarily "ignore" the image because you will have become consumed with the story that's taken you along for a ride. At some point, as you are reading the essay, your eyes will suddenly dance back to the image to pick out a detail you somehow missed before but which some words you've just read reminded you (or your mind's eye) was there to be discovered all along. You smile ("Of course, I should have seen that!") and turn your attention back to the essay. You smile again ("Paul's describing a world the photograph is showing me just a small part of!"). The essay seems somehow even richer than before; and you see textures and rhythms only hinted at by the words themselves. You glance back at the image and suddenly see that it doesn't just mirror some explicit part of the essay (what probably originally caught your eye), but includes deeper latent layers of meaning; the image is somehow transformed into something more ("I want to just keep looking at it, I don't want to leave."). Then back to the essay ("I wish it would go on. I'm not ready to leave this world. I never saw the world this way!). Back and forth you'll go, until distinctions between image and essay start blurring, and eventually disappear altogether. You'll "see" a world that the Zen-master's boat (i.e., which I'll colloquially refer to as "Paul's image-essay pair") has gently guided you across the stream to see. You smile again, relishing the anticipation of revisiting this stream before turning the page to step into another boat. 

While Paul's book is not meant to make you a better photographer or writer (though there are lessons galore for those who aspire to refine their skills at either), it will undoubtedly enhance your appreciation of - and ability to see, to really see - the "everyday miracles that are all around us." As for me, I look forward to dipping into its pages for inspiration for years to come. Highly recommended!

Perfect Penetration

"I entered into the stream of the self-nature of the sense of hearing, thereby eliminating the sound of what was heard. Now proceeding from this stillness, both sound and silence ceased to arise. Advancing in this way, both hearing and what was heard melted away and vanished. When hearing and what is heard are both forgotten, then the sense of hearing leaves no impression in the mind. When sense and the objects of sense both become empty, then emptiness and sense merge and reach a state of absolute perfection. When emptiness and what is being emptied are both extinguished, then arising and extinction are naturally extinguished. At this point the absolute emptiness of nirvana became manifest, and suddenly I transcended the mundane and supra-mundane worlds."

- Guanyin Bodhisattva
Shurangama Sutra

Gojū-no-tō

"By knowing things that exist,
you can know that which does not exist.
That is the void.

...

Do not think dishonestly. The Way is in training. Become acquainted with every art. Know the Ways of all professions. Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters. Develop an intuitive judgement and understanding for everything. Perceive those things which cannot be seen. Pay attention even to trifles. Do nothing which is of no use. [...] Know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things. As if it were a straight road mapped out on the ground. [...] These things cannot be explained in detail. From one thing, know ten thousand things. When you attain the Way of Strategy there will not be one thing you cannot see. 

...

In the void is virtue, and no evil.
Wisdom has existence, principle has existence,
the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness."

- Miyamoto Musashi (1583 – 1645)
The Book of Five Rings

A Kind of Gravitas

"Stones possess a kind of gravitas, something ultimate and unchanging, something that will never perish or else has already done so. They attract through intrinsic, infallible, immediate beauty, answerable to no one, necessarily perfect yet excluding the idea of perfection in order to exclude approximation, error, and excess. This spontaneous beauty thus precedes and goes beyond the actual notion of beauty, of which it is at once the promise and the foundation.

...

I speak about stones that have always lain outside or that sleep in their deposits, in veins, at night. They have not aroused the interest of the archeologist, nor the artist or the diamond merchant. No palace, statue, jewel, no dyke, embankment or tombstone was built from them. They are neither useful nor famous. Their facets decorate no ring or diadem. They do not bear lists of victories, or state laws, in indelible numerals. They are not boundary markers or steel, and do not earn credit or deference from bearing with bad weather. They only attest to their own presence.

...

I speak about stones as algebra, vertigo and order; stones as hymns and quincunxes; stones as stings and corollas, on the brink of dreams, catalyst and image. [...] As one speaks about flowers, leaving botany, gardening and flower arranging aside, still having a lot to discuss, so will I overlook mineralogy, ignoring the arts that give stones a purpose. I speak of bare stones - fascination and glory! - that both hide and yield up a mystery, slower, more immense and more profound than the fate of a short-lived species."

- Roger Caillois (1913 - 1978)

Original Face

"The Sixth Ancestor was pursued by Ming the head monk as far as Ta-yü Peak. The teacher, seeing Ming coming, laid the robe and bowl on a rock and said, 'This robe represents the Dharma. There should be no fighting over it. You may take it back with you.' Ming tried to lift it up, but it was as immovable as a mountain. Shivering and trembling, he said, 'I came for the Dharma, not for the robe. I beg you, lay brother, please open the Way for me.' The teacher said, 'Don’t think good; don’t think evil. At this very moment, what is the original face of Ming the head monk?' In that instant Ming had great satori. Sweat ran from his entire body. In tears he made his bows saying, 'Beside these secret words and secret meanings, is there anything of further significance?' The teacher said, 'What I have just conveyed to you is not secret. If you reflect on your own face, whatever is secret will be right there with you.' Ming said, 'Though I practiced at Huang-mei with the assembly, I could not truly realize my original face. Now, thanks to your pointed instruction, I am like someone who drinks water and knows personally whether it is cold or warm. Lay brother, you are now my teacher.' The teacher said, 'If you can say that, then let us both call Huang-mei our teacher. Maintain your realization carefully.'"

 - Dajian Huineng (638 - 713)
Case 23 of Mumonkan

Sunyata

"All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. That is a mistake.

...

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.

...

So we say, 'True nothingness, true emptiness -- from true emptiness the wondrous being appears (shin ku myo mu).' Shin is true, ku is emptiness, myo is wondrous, mu is being. From true emptiness wondrous being - shin ku myo mu. So without nothingness there is no naturalness - no true being. True being comes out from nothingness, moment after moment. So nothingness is always there. From nothingness everything comes out."

- Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971)

Suspended Time

"One reality, many names.
The nature was born before heaven and earth.
It spans both the past and present, it is constantly here.
Its essence is wonderfully and profoundly empty,
perfectly brilliant and serene,
unfathomably vast
and great. "

- Imakita Kōsen (1816-1892)

Beyond Knowing

"If you want to be free, get to know your real self. It has no form, no appearance, no root, no basis, no abode, but is lively and buoyant. It responds with versatile facility, but its function cannot be located. Therefore when you look for it you become further from it, when you seek it you turn away from it all the more."

- Linji Yixuan (618-907)
The Record of Linji

Ceasing to Stir

"Just let your minds become void and
environmental phenomena will void themselves;
let principles cease to stir and events
will cease stirring of themselves.
...
Ordinary people look to their surroundings,
while followers of the Way look to Mind,
but the true Dharma is to forget them both.
...
I assure you that one who comprehends
the truth of 'nothing to be attained' is
already seated in the sanctuary where
he will gain his Enlightenment."

- Huang Po (? - 850)
The Zen Teaching of Huang-Po:
On the Transmission of Mind

Liminal

 "New pond.
No sound of a frog
Jumping in.
...
Past has passed away.
Future has not arrived.
Present does not remain.
...
I don’t tell the murky world
to turn pure.
I purify myself
and check my reflection in
the water of the valley brook."

- Ryōkan (1758 - 1831)

Immense Silence

 "But for the time being, around my place at least, the air is untroubled, and I become aware for the first time today of the immense silence in which I am lost. Not a silence so much as a great stillness - for there are few sounds: the croak of some bird in a juniper tree, an eddy of wind which passes and fades like a sigh, the ticking of the watch on my wrist - slight noises which break the sensation of absolute silence but at the same time exaggerate my sense of the surrounding, overwhelming peace. A suspension of time, a continuous present. If I look at the small device strapped to my wrist the numbers, even the sweeping second hand, seem meaningless, almost ridiculous. No travelers, no campers, no wanderers have come to this part of the desert today and for a few moments I feel and realize that I am very much alone."

- Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989)

A Sea of Looking-Glass

"But when ... he cast his eyes around him, the most horrible despair was infused into his soul. Before him stretched an ocean without limit. The dark sand of the desert spread further than eye could reach in every direction, and glittered like steel struck with bright light. It might have been a sea of looking-glass, or lakes melted together in a mirror. A fiery vapor carried up in surging waves made a perpetual whirlwind over the quivering land. The sky was lit with an Oriental splendor of insupportable purity, leaving naught for the imagination to desire. Heaven and earth were on fire.

The silence was awful in its wild and terrible majesty. Infinity, immensity, closed in upon the soul from every side. Not a cloud in the sky, not a breath in the air, not a flaw on the bosom of the sand, ever moving in diminutive waves; the horizon ended as at sea on a clear day, with one line of light, definite as the cut of a sword."

- Honoré de Balzac (1799 - 1850)

Life and Sound

"Left alone, I am overtaken by the northern void-no wind, no cloud, no track, no bird, only the crystal crescents between peaks, the ringing monuments of rock that, freed from the talons of ice and snow, thrust an implacable being into the blue. In the early light, the rock shadows on the snow are sharp; in the tension between light and dark is the power of the universe. This stillness to which all returns, this is reality, and soul and sanity have no more meaning than a gust of snow; such transience and insignificance are exalting, terrifying, all at once…Snow mountains, more than sea or sky, serve as a mirror to one’s own true being, utterly still, utterly clear, a void, an Emptiness without life or sound that carries in Itself all life, all sound."

- Peter Matthiessen (1927 - 2014)

The Great Silence

"The first going-down into the desert is always something of a surprise. The fancy has pictured one thing; the reality shows quite another thing. Where and how did we gain the idea that the desert was merely a sea of sand? ...The dunes are always rhythmical and flowing in their forms, and for color the desert has nothing that surpasses them. In the early morning, before the sun is up, they are air blue, reflecting the sky overhead; at noon they are pale lines of dazzling orange-colored light, waving and undulating in the heated air; at sunset they are often flooded with a rose or mauve color; under a blue moonlight they shine white as icebergs in the northern seas.

...

The weird solitude, the great silence, the grim desolation, are the very things with which every desert wanderer eventually falls in love. You think that very strange perhaps? Well, the beauty of the ugly was sometime a paradox, but do-day people admit its truth; and the grandeur of the desolate is just as paradoxical, yet the desert gives it proof.

...

All, all to dust again; and
no man knoweth the
why thereof."

- John Charles Van Dyke (1856–1932)
The Desert

Nature's Mirror

"In this secluded spot the soothing silence,
Far from the clank of crowds, I stand or sit, musing,
Thoughts that are the hymns of the praise of things,
Largely learn’d from nature’s schooling.
Give me again O nature your primal sanities!
Thou hast, O nature! elements!
Utterance to my heart beyond the rest.
...
Somehow I feel the globe itself swift-swimming in space.
I merge myself in the scene, in the perfect day,
Never before did I get so close to nature—
absolute and unqualified acceptance of nature—
Never before did she come so close to me.
...
The mirror that nature holds is deep and floating
and ethereal and faithful, I see
my soul reflected in nature."

- Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
"The Poet in Nature"

A State of Information

"There are objects: cinnamon, microwaves, interstellar particles and scarecrows. There is nothing underneath objects. Or, better, there is not even nothing underneath them. There is no such thing as space independent of objects (happily contemporary physics agrees). What is called Universe is a large object that contains objects such as black holes and racing pigeons. Likewise there is no such thing as an environment: wherever we look for it, we find all kinds of objects—biomes, ecosystems, hedges, gutters and human flesh. In a similar sense, there is no such thing as Nature. I’ve seen penguins, plutonium, pollution and pollen. But I’ve never seen Nature (I capitalize the word to reinforce a sense of its deceptive artificiality).

...

Likewise, there is no such thing as matter. I’ve seen plenty of entities (this book shall call them objects): photographs of diffusion cloud chamber scatterings, drawings of wave packets, iron filings spreading out around a magnet. But I’ve never seen matter. So when Mr. Spock claims to have found 'Matter without form,' he is sadly mistaken... You can now buy a backpack that is made of recycled plastic bottles. But an object doesn’t consist of some gooey substrate of becoming that shifts like Proteus from plastic bottle to backpack. First there is the plastic bottle, then the production of the bag ends the bottle, its being is now only an appearance, a memory of the backpack, a thought: “This bag is made of plastic bottles... Nature [...] is 'discovered in the use of useful things.'

...

Matter, in current physics, is simply a state of information. Precisely: information is necessarily information-for (for some addressee). Matter requires at least one other entity in order to be itself... Instead of using matter as my basic substrate, I shall paint a picture of the Universe that is realist but not materialist. In my view, real objects exist inside other real objects. 'Space' and 'environment' are ways in which objects sensually relate to the other objects in their vicinity, including the larger objects in which they find themselves... There is no space or environment as such, only objects... The existence of an object is irreducibly a matter of coexistence. Objects contain other objects, and are contained 'in' other objects... What are these objects, then, that claustrophobically fill every nook and cranny of reality, that are reality, like the leering faces in an Expressionist painting, crammed into the picture plane? On what basis can we decide that there is no top, middle, or bottom object, that objects are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside, that they generate time and space, and so on?"

Timothy Morton (1968 - )
Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality

Nature's Calligraphy

"Just as writing can become calligraphy when it's
creatively, skillfully, and consciously performed,
so can all other activities become art.
In this case, we are reflecting upon life itself
as an artistic statement—the art of living."

- H.E. Davey (1961 - )
Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation

Leaving a Trace

"The enlightened mind is like a bird in flight that leaves no trace of its path. People will say, 'A bird just flew by.' In their mind, there is a trace of the bird’s path. This is attachment. For the enlightened practitioner, that moment is already gone—the bird has left no trace of its flight. Like the bird, from moment to moment the enlightened practitioner’s actions do not leave any trace."

- Sheng Yen (1931 - 2009)
The Method of No-Method

Beyond Form

"Thought defines the universe in geometric figures.

...

Those granted the gift of seeing more deeply
can see beyond form, and concentrate
on the wondrous aspect hiding
behind every form, which is
called life.

...

Only for those prepared to leave
their familiar life behind, will life
emerge in a new gown of continually
expanding beauty and perfection.
But in order to attain such a state,
it is necessary to achieve stillness
in both thought and feeling."

- Hilma af Klint (1862 - 1944)

Sage Stillness

"The sound of water says what I think.

...

The stillness of the sages does not belong to them as a consequence of their skillful ability; all things are not able to disturb their minds;-- it is on this account that they are still. When water is still, its clearness shows the beard and eyebrows (of him who looks into it). It is a perfect Level, and the greatest artificer takes his rule from it. Such is the clearness of still water, and how much greater is that of the human Spirit! The still mind of the sage is the mirror of heaven and earth, the glass of all things.

...

People do not mirror themselves in running water,
they mirror themselves in still water.
Only what is still can still the
stillness of other things."

- Chuang Tzu (c.369 B.C. - c.286 B.C.)