Sublime

So the issue is keeping your ground, where you came from. You should not be ashamed of that.

Occidental Great Eastern Sun.

that which is purely cultural and that which is basically noncultural.

Symbolism is not simply an art-school project—it’s much more serious than that. There is a lot of power behind the whole thing.

One of the things we should overcome in order to become a genuine artist is aggression. The attitude of aggression is one where everything’s the same, so what’s the difference?

So visual dharma is based on having these three foundations: a nonindividualistic sense of humor, a sense of all-pervasive space, and an appreciation of the play of phenomena.

I think the problem is that people are afraid they might be ignored, they might become failures, so they end up explaining everything they know, all the reference points at once. That attitude of poverty or failure makes your theater dirt, your poetry dirt.

Usually people don’t like to show their initial blankness. Particularly people who are highly trained or have studied too much philosophy or have become too involved with the professional world would like to hide that blankness. But that blankness is the basic ground.

The slogan “First thought is best thought!” is an expression of that second principle, which is earth.