Metaphorical Thought

"In asking philosophical questions, we use a reason shaped by the body, a cognitive unconscious to which we have no direct access, and metaphorical thought of which we are largely unaware. The fact that abstract thought is mostly metaphorical means that answers to philosophical questions have always been, and always will be, mostly metaphorical. In itself, that is neither good nor bad. It is simply a fact about the capacities of the human mind. But it has major consequences for every aspect of philosophy. Metaphorical thought is the principal tool that makes philosophical insight possible and that constrains the forms that philosophy can take."

- George Lakoff (1941 - )

All Things End in the Tao

"The Tao is nameless and unchanging.
Although it appears insignificant,
nothing in the world can contain it.

If a ruler abides by its principles,

then her people will willingly follow.

Heaven would then reign on earth,

like sweet rain falling on paradise.

People would have no need for laws,

because the law would be written on their hearts.

Naming is a necessity for order,

but naming cannot order all things.

Naming often makes things impersonal,

so we should know when naming should end.

Knowing when to stop naming,

you can avoid the pitfall it brings.

All things end in the Tao

just as the small streams and the largest rivers
flow through valleys to the sea."

- Lao Tzu (6th century – 4th century BCE)
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 32

Time and Space as Dreams

"The reason why we want to remember an image varies: because we simply ‘love it,’ or dislike it so intensely that it becomes compulsive, or because it has made us realize something about ourselves, or has brought about some slight change in us. Perhaps the reader can recall some image, after the seeing of which he has never been quite the same.

...

...insight, vision, moments of revelation. During those rare moments something overtakes the man and he becomes the tool of a greater Force; the servant of, willing or unwilling depending on his degree of awakeness. The photograph, then, is a message more than a mirror, and the mans a messenger who happens to be a photographer.

...

Camera and eye are together a time machine with which the mind and human being can do the same kind of violence to time and space as dreams."

- Minor White (1908 - 1976)

Postscript. The "Minor White: The Eye That Shapes" exhibit was hosted by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1989, with an accompanying book and catalog, edited by Peter C. Bunnell (used copies of which are sometimes still available, though they are not cheap: e.g., $80 from Amazon). Amazingly, MoMA has made a pdf of Bunnell's 322 page book available for free (it is a 62Mb download)! Kudos, MoMA 😊

Trust in Nature

"If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge."

- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
Letters to a Young Poet 

The Incomprehensible Void

"We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through fabric of illusion. Many refuse to admit it: I feel a mystery exists. There are certain times, when, as on the whisper of the wind, there comes a clear and quiet realization that there is indeed a presence in the world, a nonhuman entity that is not necessarily inhuman.

...

My private glimpses of some ideal reality create a lasting mood that that has often been recalled in some of my photographs... the subtle change of light across a waterfall moved me as did a singular vista of a far-off mountain under a leaden sky. Others might well have not responded at all. Deep resonances of spirit exist, giving us glimpses of a reality far beyond our general appreciation, and knowledge... no matter how many stars we see in a clear mountain sky, we now know that they are but a minuscule fragment of the total population of suns and planets in the billions of galaxies out there in the incomprehensible void.

...

The only things in my life that compatibly exist with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit.

...

I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence. Intuition, suspicion, or confidence in new ventures; there is a strange strain within me when advantage is not taken of some situation, the immediacy of recognition of the rightness or wrongness of a mood, a response, a decision - they are so often valid that I am increasingly convinced that we have yet to grasp the reality of existence."

- Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984)
Autobiography

Contemplation

 

"The life of contemplation implies two levels of awareness: first, awareness of the question, and, second, awareness of the answer. Though these are two distinct and enormously different levels, yet they are in fact an awareness of the same thing. The question is, itself, the answer. And we ourselves are both. But we cannot know this until we have moved into the second kind of awareness. We awaken, not to find an answer absolutely distinct from the question, but to realize that the question is its own answer. And all is summed up in one awareness - not a proposition, but an experience: "I AM"."

- Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)

It is All Transcendental

"The syntactical nature of reality,
the real secret of magic,
is that the world is made of words.
And if you know the words
that the world is made of,
you can make of it
whatever you wish.
...
There is a transcendental
dimension beyond language...
It's just hard as hell to talk about!
...
Reality is, you know,
the tip of an iceberg of irrationality
that we've managed to drag
ourselves up onto for a
few panting moments before
we slip back into the
sea of the unreal.
...
It is the imagination that

argues for the Divine Spark
within human beings.
It is literally a decent of
the World's Soul into all of us.
...
We live in condensations of our imagination.
...
The main thing to understand is
that we are imprisoned in
some kind of work of art.
...
There is no mundane dimension really,
if you have the eyes to see it,
it is all transcendental."

- Terence McKenna (1946 - 2000)