3.31.2009

Fulfillment




After things have been accumulated, courtesy and righteousness should be fulfilled.

Thus, after Little Accumulation, Fulfillment follows.







Above is Heaven; below is Lake.

An image of Fulfillment.

In correspondence with this,

The superior person discriminates as to duty between high and low,

And sets people's minds at rest.



3.16.2009

The Uncarved

For such a long time now, I have been fascinated by the Taoist ideal of the uncarved block to the extent that I actually would carry around a small rectangular block of wood to remind me of the nature of the uncarved along with possessing a large cut off from a beam that I found many years ago. The essence of the uncarved block is that of pure undifferentiated awareness before any concpetion is placed upon it similar to that of a piece of wood before the carvers gouge gets to ever remove any material. Most of the time, we, as fully developed humans are in a state of sculpted reality. Our views, thoughts, and reactions are all carved into us from the moment we begin to have a sense of self. What would it be like if we were to manifest and harness our pure untainted nature? One can only imagine.
It is with that mind set that I approached a week long Architechtural Woodcarving class. A fellow student and intern half jokingly said that I was going to spend the whole class carving a Yin Yang, yet another classic Taoist concept. I didn't quite carve one literally but I sure did carve the figurative version of it with the Dragon and the Phoenix.
Day one I carved the fish. Day two I carved the man in the tree. Days three through five I spent on the dragon and phoenix which is far from done but at least presentable in its current state.










3.10.2009

Perception


Its interesting to think of the varied ways that people see. The essence of design, as I've mentioned before, is really a way of seeing. Not just a way of taking in light through the darkness of the eye's pupil and mentally processing it, but a way of experiencing as much of existence as possible and understanding and actualizing that experience in an attempt to become it so as to know the answer to the question of ....

"What am I designing and therefore bringing into creation?".

The answer on a most fundamental level seems to be that of one's life and therefore the lives of others because no man is an island and on the deepest level there is no other. The silence and the sound are one and the same. If for only a moment we all had that realization and then acted on it......