Quieting the Mind
The content of our lives, to a large degree, begins
and ends with language, even our understanding of self. Our days are punctuated,
from start to finish, with a continuing blitz of verbal noise. Radios,
pagers, email, billboards, and television are only a few of the sources
of the conceptual torrent that numbs the mind and the senses. To exist
and be recognized, and to ensure speed and efficiency in a society that
worships economic productivity, things must be labeled, categorized, defined
and pigeonholed. We, therefore, see through a thick screen of concepts
and abstractions. We see labels and numbers, convenient units of perception,
rather than actual reality. As Jung said, no concept is a carrier of life.
We are crippled by habits of the mind, preconceptions reinforced endlessly
by others blinded in the same ways. Such conceptualization is one-dimensional
and blinds us to the uniqueness and idiosyncrasies of every concrete object.
We live with blinders on. As we sow, so we reap.
We see what we expect to see, what we have been taught to see. As photographers,
we must focus on the details of life and bypass the generalities. There
is a saying in Zen: examine the living words and not the dead ones. We
must open a direct line to reality, unclouded by the dust of the past
- see Eden before the expulsion. Our challenge is to see the living fact
- to become intimate with life.
