Our business in living (according to John Cage) and bendiness

As a part of my Amida Buddhist psychotherapy training, I'm getting to read a lot of interesting books.

'Psychotherapy without the Self' by Mark Epstein is a psychodymanic (Freud and all that) as opposed to a person-centred take on using buddhist psychology in psychotherapy practice.

I do like the epigram (that's the word for the quote at the beginning of books, isn't it?), by John Cage.

"The great Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki came to Columbia to teach [in 1951] and I went for two years to his classes. From Suzuki's teaching I began to understand that a sober and quiet mind is one in which the ego dose not obstruct the fluency of the things that come in through our senses and up through our dreams. Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this."

Good, eh? To become fluent with the things that come in through our senses and up through our dreams. To allow them in as they are, rather than as what we need them to be. To allow our ego's tight structures to loosen a little, like a stiff old piece of rubber that can be warmed and massaged and made bendy again.

Here's to getting a bit more bendy, and welcoming the world in as it is. Happy bendy weekends. And thank you for all the love after my last post. x

PS here's a live version of a song I'm much enjoying on the radio at the moment - Four Dreams by Jesca Hoop. It's lovely and chirpy and makes me happy.