To know the place for the first time We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding The Dark Tower timecyclesendingexploration
Perilous to be sure It would not be clear where the boundary of sanctioned speech lay until an attempt had been made to cross it and that attempt had failed. Such efforts Wittgenstein regarded with benevolence. He treated them as reconnaissance expeditions, perilous to be sure, but well worth the effort expended on them. H. Stuart Hughes, The Sea Change wordsexplorationspeech
The vast open seas We didn't have Google in the early days. Other search engines like Lycos, Excite and Northern Lights did exist but were nowhere near as efficient as modern search engines. Finding something you were interested in was not as simple as typing a few words and getting to that information in one click. No, the web was much more of an adventure. It was a place that you wandered to discover new areas, like exploring the vast open seas. A new virtual space that lead to all kinds of strange, interesting, exciting places. This is what the web was like, at least, in our collective imagination. Parimal Satyal, Rediscovering the Small Web explorationwww
The Alchemist A Novel by Paulo Coelho en.wikipedia.org My own beauty reflectedThicker booksTo find God in the seminaryWhat others want them to beThe soul of the universe+25 More The alchemists in their mixings destinyloveadventureexploration
Don’t Play It Like the Flute An Article by Matthias Ott matthiasott.com Don’t play it like the flute. Play it as if it was the wind whistling through the desert dunes. No matter what you love to create, there is something to be learned from the way Hans Zimmer approached the Dune score. We are all striving to create work that is novel, innovative, memorable, and inspiring. To get there, however, we tend to focus on getting things right, on avoiding mistakes, on “being professional”. Yes, it is important to have the commitment, dedication, and attention to detail of a professional. But being right? That will only take you so far. What is much more important is to approach the problem in front of you with curiosity and an open mind. With an urge to explore what can be found beyond the ordinary, beyond the right way of doing things. If you want to create something that nobody has come up with yet, it is important that you try out all the crazy ideas others are afraid to try, that you build prototypes, improvise, and freely play with the materials and the technologies you have at hand. musiccreativitynoveltyexplorationcuriosity
Psychogeography A Definition by Guy Debord en.wikipedia.org Psychogeography is an exploration of urban environments that emphasizes playfulness and "drifting". It was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as: "The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." "A total dissolution of boundaries between art and life." "A whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape." Who the fuck is Guy Debord?20 Minutes in ManhattanThe driftRaindrops leaving an erratic trail walkingcitiesurbanismplayexploration
The Gateless Gate A Book by Kōun Yamada en.wikipedia.org It doesn't look like anything to meBarriersOne striking soundA thousand different roads
It doesn't look like anything to me It is related that the bodhisattva Manjusri was once standing at the gate, and seeing him, Shakyamuni Buddha called to him, "Manju, Manju, why don't you come inside the gate?" Manjusri replied, "I don't see anything outside the gate." I don't see a wall zen
Barriers When you once attain true self-realization, these barriers disappear in an instant as though they were nothing but mirages, and you will find that from the very beginning you have always been in a world where there is neither inside nor outside. That is what "gateless" means. Therefore, all koans are impassable barriers for those who are unenlightened, but for the enlightened there is no gate at all. They can come and go quite freely.
One striking sound One day, as Kyogen was clearing the undergrowth, a pebble bounced off the tip of his broom and resounded against a bamboo tree. Hearing the sound, he suddenly experienced great enlightement. The first stanza of the poem he composed on this occasion is very famous: One striking sound, and I have forgotten all I knew.
A thousand different roads They great Way has no gate; There are a thousand different roads. If you pass through this barrier once, you will walk independently in the universe. zen