Monday 11 October 2010

I Do Not Seek

Reading a Thoreau biography, I came across the following from Picasso:
I do not seek. I find.
The saying clears a middle ground between effort and the effortless.

Picasso doesn't enjoin us to seek anything. (What is there to seek if I already possess buddha nature?) But he also doesn't encourage us to marinade in a stupor.

Between seeking and not seeking is the middle way: finding.

This, I think, is the way marked out by Gotama.

Where seeking and not seeking are desperate activities organized by my own selective preferences, finding is a work of kenosis organized by the concretion of whatever already happens to be given.

There is work to be done. But it is not the work of seeking. It is the work of finding.

1 comment:

  1. I like that, "I do not seek. I find." Your analysis is perfect.

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