Haifa
I went up to Haifa to see an exhibition of 1940s posters. It's part of my research; Shemen was one of the leading brands at the time in Palestine. They were quite clever in their advertising. "The only olive oil pressed under the Union Jack" was one of the slogans.
Later I went to visit T, S's best friend in Israel. Sitting in her tiny flat, I could see through the open front door the green slopes of Mount Carmel. She had made delicious rice, dahl and chapati for lunch; she served them with grated tomato. The view and the sunshine make me optimistic. We were talking about depression. I liked what she said.
'It's important to make the distinction between yourself and your state of being. It's a dark wave, ebbing inside you; a tide which is rising now but will flow out again, soon. If you try, you can watch it, observe it: it's not you, it's something going through you. And it will go away. You have to maintain your position on the face of the water, looking from above, so that you don't get carried away with it, so that you don't drown.'
View from T's garden
posted by mink @ 10:45 PM
2 Comments:
actually, this is an ancient buddhist idea: observing all sensations, pleasant and unpleasant, with equanimity and detachment. i had 10 days of it in the vipassana course.
it makes sense. she's just been to Bodgaya. Did you sit under the tree?
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