- 6 minutes ago
Documentary, Ken Burns Films 1992, 1996, 2000 - Seeing, Searching, Being -William Segal
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:09I think in painting one is brought to see, to see in a different way, ordinarily we're
00:00:24rather asleep to the world around us and being forced to look and then to render in paint,
00:00:38paper, compels one to see both inward and outward, to learn a little more about oneself
00:00:51and about, as well as learning about the nature of things.
00:02:27The painter's part is to reveal the potentiality of the everyday objects around one.
00:02:36The seemingly familiar things, events, surroundings and so on.
00:02:46They take on a different quality when the painter looks at them.
00:02:52And this different quality can be conveyed through the painting to the spectator.
00:03:20And in a way the artist is a revealer, a revealer of a world which is ordinarily
00:03:28hidden from us.
00:03:33Cezanne is able to show us, my God, there's an awful lot here.
00:03:38Well, there's an awful lot in everything around us.
00:03:42I'm not ruling out anything, but by showing the potentiality in this small piece of fruit, the intelligent person will
00:03:55be able to, may be able to grasp the fact that there's a whole world all around us of beauty,
00:04:03of interest, complexity.
00:04:04And, uh, my God, I'm being fed by this, looking at that, and yet it's here before me every day.
00:04:11I don't touch it.
00:04:12I don't see it.
00:04:13I don't, I don't see its color.
00:04:18In other words, it's a jumping off point for greater openness to the, to the wonderful world we live in.
00:04:46Okay.
00:05:03I don't know.
00:05:04What is the sunshine?
00:05:10I am alive.
00:05:11I, I am alive.
00:05:14I am alive.
00:05:15Luminosity is a mysterious element which is a reflection of a higher world which sometimes enters your world and my
00:05:26world through a face, through an apple, through a painting.
00:05:36It's always here, this luminosity, but it's so densely hidden.
00:05:41Luminosity is all around us and everything, but the painter, with a certain quality in himself, is able to evoke
00:05:53this on a canvas.
00:06:10Let's go.
00:06:11Let's go.
00:06:12Let's go.
00:06:23Let's go.
00:06:33Let's go.
00:06:38Let's go.
00:06:38Let's go.
00:06:40Let's go.
00:06:48Let's go.
00:06:51Let's go.
00:06:53Let's go.
00:06:53Let's go.
00:06:54Let's go.
00:06:55Let's go.
00:06:55Let's go.
00:06:55Let's go.
00:06:56Let's go.
00:06:56Let's go.
00:06:57Let's go.
00:06:58Let's go.
00:07:20One day in the studio, I had a studio on 14th Street in New York, and I would work over
00:07:29the weekend, and I was a hard worker.
00:07:34One day I had been painting for two or three or four hours, and just painting, and then
00:07:43suddenly, as if the brush was painting by itself.
00:07:52And I stepped back, and surprised I stopped, and there was a beautiful piece of painting
00:07:56within a bad large painting.
00:08:02And I suddenly said to myself, my God, there is something here that goes beyond the painting,
00:08:10applying paint on a canvas.
00:08:12And it indicated to me that through continuing the paint, persisting, there will come a moment
00:08:24where there is an opening which can teach you what I cannot speak about or tell you.
00:08:38As if you are suddenly, you suddenly know something, may not be much, but you know something that
00:08:47you didn't know before.
00:08:48And at that moment I said, well, I have to keep going.
00:08:52Maybe I'm not so talented, but if I keep looking, looking, trying to be here, working, applying
00:09:03and so on, one has a moment of a breakthrough moment.
00:09:19The great energy is here, and our responsibility is to open to it.
00:09:25And through painting, the painter is able to let this other force come through.
00:10:22The painter is able to let this other force come through.
00:10:25The painter is able to let this other force be able to let it, and that is.
00:10:49Forget everything except what's here now in front of you.
00:10:55Because only by that being here are you able to tap the full resources of the organism.
00:11:08Otherwise the distraction of thought eats up energies which could be used and applied to the work itself.
00:11:41The demand to be here to maintain attention for a sustained period of time kind of dispels the clouds.
00:11:54Which obscure the luminosity we're speaking of.
00:12:09So from that point of view I would like to see a wholehearted application to the moment, to the job
00:12:19which is in front of me.
00:12:21And that goes not only for painting, for everything.
00:12:33When you pick up something or you apply or paint or you do anything or when I speak now I
00:12:43would like to be here entirely despite the distractions of the mind.
00:12:48And that's very much the secret of good work and anything.
00:14:11I look at myself sitting here.
00:14:18I'm aware of the body that sits here.
00:14:27there's a new relationship
00:14:30to be made
00:14:33a relationship
00:14:37with another reality
00:14:43I see
00:14:46the breathing
00:14:49how the breath comes and goes
00:14:57we see
00:14:58the tension
00:15:00or the relaxation
00:15:04in different parts of my body
00:15:10I begin to be aware
00:15:15of this immense
00:15:16silence
00:15:21all my attention
00:15:23now
00:15:25is concentrated
00:15:28on the stillness
00:15:34there's a reality
00:15:36behind this silence
00:15:38which
00:15:41I try to understand
00:15:47my breathing anchors me here
00:15:55I begin to be more sensitive
00:16:01to this moment
00:16:04this moment
00:16:05which comes to me pure
00:16:11I try to see
00:16:17the onset of a feeling
00:16:21the intrusion of thought
00:16:27see I need to be more still
00:16:33more in touch
00:16:38with the indescribable
00:16:39the indescribable energy
00:16:45now the stillness
00:16:47begins to help me
00:16:51breathing is quieter
00:16:55body begins to relax
00:17:01mind is freer
00:17:03if thoughts do come
00:17:06I simply watch
00:17:14a new
00:17:15a new level
00:17:18of letting go
00:17:20of opening
00:17:23of being here
00:17:28listening
00:17:30listening
00:17:31listening
00:17:32to this silence
00:17:36this immense
00:17:38moment
00:17:38of silence
00:17:43I try
00:17:44to go deeper
00:17:47but the trying
00:17:48is not a trying
00:17:53it's a kind
00:17:54of surrendering
00:17:55to the moment
00:18:01always
00:18:03always
00:18:04I can return
00:18:07to the breathing
00:18:11I watch the intake
00:18:13of breath
00:18:14of air
00:18:17I see the end
00:18:19the end
00:18:21of the breath
00:18:27now
00:18:32in the stillness
00:18:38I begin
00:18:39to be aware
00:18:42of a new relation
00:18:44with another reality
00:18:49who am I
00:18:50who am I
00:18:53becomes
00:18:55question
00:18:57true
00:18:58or real
00:18:59question
00:19:03I try
00:19:04to work
00:19:04now
00:19:05in silence
00:19:06in the stillness
00:19:09stillness
00:19:11which is
00:19:12helping
00:19:39to be
00:21:41There seems to be an innate need or an innate call
00:21:49in each human being to search, to know who one is, what we're here for, what our destiny
00:22:03is.
00:22:04Each one of us, we have the feeling that we are for something.
00:22:10We're part of a great scheme, a great drama, one might say, where each one contributes
00:22:18and is part of this drama.
00:22:21The search begins with a realization that I really don't know myself.
00:22:27Well, who is this creature that takes in foods and possessions and loves and relationships
00:22:34and is still not satisfied?
00:22:37What does it say?
00:22:39Who is he and who am I becomes a really burning question.
00:22:56There are forces, I believe, around a place like Besolet, which remind one.
00:23:10There's a stillness here.
00:23:13There's a silence.
00:23:38There's a stillness here.
00:23:42There's a stillness here.
00:23:48There's a stillness here.
00:23:50There's a stillness here.
00:23:52There's a stillness here.
00:24:11People as a pale Wesleyan said, so feel free to be free.
00:24:13And if you never get home, don't you graduate?
00:24:14with good intentions, with what we might call
00:24:17good vibrations in quotation marks.
00:24:22These deposits are somehow rather felt,
00:24:29just as one feels the atmosphere of a prison
00:24:32or of a place where crimes have been committed.
00:24:37We feel, we feel a beneficent atmosphere.
00:25:08Right now,
00:25:10Now, the search begins when one is present to something, sounds very vague, something,
00:25:20something in oneself that's relatively changeless, that's always here.
00:25:28We know that our minds change at each moment, our bodies are always changing.
00:25:34Our desires, our wishes, our prejudices, but underneath there is the feeling of I,
00:25:45a reality which is not subject to the change which ordinarily characterizes our lives.
00:26:27Veselay is different from most places because it has the virtue
00:26:32of being isolated, closer to nature, closer to the sky, one might say to the open heavens.
00:26:48Here, things that have been man-created have been created with a certain reverence, a certain love,
00:26:56a certain attention, a certain respect.
00:27:18The search is both solitary and shared, and when one comes to Veselay,
00:27:25one feels the beginnings of an impulse towards sharing with others.
00:27:37But it's so difficult, we cannot seem to shake the old habits of a me, me, mine, selfishness, egoism.
00:27:49But when we come to Veselay, or Veselay particularly,
00:27:58there's a beginning of an openness to this communal sharing, if you wish.
00:28:05We're not so egocentric as we are in our ordinary environment.
00:28:14The unseen but probably effective evidences of this are the stones, the structure,
00:28:23the building itself, the mass, the way the people are,
00:28:31the stones of themselves of this place, speak of a sharing.
00:28:42This, in a way, is very alien to our modern life, where each of us goes our own way.
00:28:50And perhaps here, we begin to re-realize the necessity for a sharing with each other
00:29:02of another kind of relationship.
00:29:49and to our community, and to our communities, and to our partners,
00:29:50and to our partners, see theuela-bkharap.
00:30:00There are many members of theعت-cang faze,
00:30:00that are two-best friends,
00:30:00they are one-and-unit-sort,
00:30:01those who have been redesigned with each other,
00:30:01and they are all the same.
00:31:50Every moment is a ritual.
00:31:55Every gesture can be a ritual.
00:32:06I have my morning coffee.
00:32:08It could be a ritual.
00:32:19Walking, turning, breathing is a ritual.
00:32:23It's giving and receiving.
00:32:25It could be a ritual.
00:32:52It could be a ritual.
00:33:16Every ritual can be a reminder and is a reminder.
00:33:24But it's up to each one of us to make the ritual meaningful.
00:33:27Amen.
00:33:29Amen.
00:33:29Amen.
00:33:35Amen.
00:33:38Amen.
00:33:45Amen.
00:33:54Amen.
00:34:05Amen.
00:34:06Amen.
00:34:07Amen.
00:34:10Amen.
00:34:12Amen.
00:34:14Amen.
00:34:21Amen.
00:34:25Amen.
00:34:29Amen.
00:34:35Amen.
00:34:58The more one searches, the more one discovers, and the more hungry, it's like love.
00:35:04Love, as my wife says, multiplies.
00:35:11The experience itself cannot be discounted when you have a taste of the fruit of search.
00:35:22Let's call it the inner peace, the freedom, the joy, the not being attached.
00:35:33All of these feelings of being, of shaking off the bondages of my ordinary small self.
00:35:45And then I begin to see that there is something else in the equation of life.
00:35:55And that something else touches sensitive parts of myself and beckons me to a still further
00:36:05search, to know still more.
00:36:21God is everywhere, it's true.
00:36:28Especially when one stops for a moment and listens, then something appears which illuminates
00:36:39and vivifies and changes, transforms.
00:36:47One has to know how to search.
00:36:52And here we come to the necessity of being able to concentrate in the same way that if I wish
00:37:03to be a good baker, I have to concentrate on baking.
00:37:14I think eventually one has to come to appreciate and to give more time to being quiet and to
00:37:24meditation.
00:37:36so much,qual.
00:37:59Sure.
00:38:04In search, one is faced with the necessity of concentrating one's entire attention on
00:38:12this small, weak-voiced element in oneself that's crying to be heard.
00:38:19It requires a sort of a watching, a witnessing, if you wish, of what is.
00:38:29And then the question of what is search will probably be answered by itself.
00:38:57It isn't the place, it's the places in the interior of oneself.
00:39:12Veselets are here inside of one.
00:39:15You create Veselets in this moment.
00:39:22If one remembers, be still and know that I am, Veselets is here.
00:39:37Well, I can't answer some question.
00:39:42Words are, words are not very adequate to express what one might find.
00:39:56One finds this moment.
00:40:26Veselets
00:40:28Veselets
00:41:16I begin to be able to be here, to be here more entirely.
00:41:26To know more about what is changeless in myself and what comes and goes.
00:41:38I see that everything will change, but this vibration of the silence, which is here, in
00:41:52all its profundity, always is, always will be.
00:42:08I work as I know how, with the stillness.
00:42:25Now, as I prepare to stop, I have an impression of myself as I sit here.
00:42:38I try to remember the way I am now.
00:42:45And the true sitting, true meditation begins when I get up, when I move, when I'm in the
00:42:58midst of the world's activities.
00:43:03I try to continue to listen to the stillness as I move.
00:44:37The ox-herding pictures symbolize the search of a human being for the understanding of himself
00:44:46and of the universe.
00:44:49It has had a great, great influence in Zen Buddhist training, these pictures, and it
00:44:58takes one from the early stages of search to the completion of a developed human being.
00:45:07They go from the young man with stirrings of something, of aspiration inside of himself,
00:45:17and then he feels there's something he's looking for.
00:45:25So he goes in search for the, symbolically, it's the ox.
00:45:32He goes in search for this something, quotes, and then he realizes that in order to be in
00:45:43touch with the ox and to be in control of the ox, which is his inner life, he needs to
00:45:49develop
00:45:50qualities of attention, of work ethics, and of right relationship with himself and with
00:45:59others.
00:46:05So the series takes one around to the different stages, where finally he knows a little more
00:46:11about his inner life.
00:46:16And he's more in touch with this inner life.
00:46:23And then finally, it brings us to the old man in the marketplace, which for me is the most
00:46:31interesting picture, because the old man symbolizes someone who's gathered the fruit and is now ready
00:46:41to share it and to impart to others the fruit of his own life and of his experience.
00:47:17Nature is not quite enough.
00:47:26Nature is beautiful in itself, and nature should be in accordance and harmony with people.
00:47:41But people give off a certain vibration, a certain energy, which interacting with each other produces
00:47:49something special.
00:47:53Nature is beautiful in itself.
00:47:53The monastic life is more a question of preparing to go into life.
00:48:04If I retire into my little ivory tower, what good am I?
00:48:17Unless we're engaged, life is pretty dull, isn't it?
00:48:23You can't just sit around contemplating your navel.
00:48:29Without the world, one doesn't live for oneself alone, after all.
00:48:36And without mingling, without relationships, I think life would be much more barren and not
00:48:45as rich as it is with contacts that one has.
00:48:48It's very simply that.
00:49:15It's very good.
00:49:31The whole secret in life, whether it's in or out of work, is to give total attention
00:49:39to what one is doing now.
00:49:47If people would concentrate and really look and see how they're working and what they're
00:49:54doing and give their total interest and attention to the moment or to the task at hand, it would
00:50:03change many things.
00:52:05It's out.
00:52:13This is out too, you know, these lines.
00:52:17It's clean.
00:52:18Just to see how it gives.
00:52:23Now we go two on fifty.
00:52:36Three on fifty.
00:52:47If I had nothing to do, I would get tired so quickly.
00:52:52But when we've got things to do, some energy comes out that we didn't even believe exists.
00:53:25You see, look outside.
00:53:27Here's the hustle and the bustle of Paris or New York or London and the people moving about.
00:53:35A lot of it is useless and unnecessary, but sometimes something creative and new and very beautiful comes about.
00:53:45And you can't do it.
00:53:51You can't do it.
00:54:50New energies are developed, new combinations come into being.
00:55:00New possibilities arise which could not have arisen without being in the city itself.
00:55:07New energies are developed.
00:55:19New energies are developed.
00:55:40New energies are developed.
00:55:41New energies are developed.
00:55:45New energies are developed.
00:55:58I think that the city is a visible deposit of what we have been and what we wish to be.
00:56:13Every move we make, every thought we have, leaves a deposit, which unfortunately is where
00:56:21in our perceptions are unable to grasp the fact that this room is filled with materials.
00:56:36But sometimes we do have an intuition about places, streets, buildings, rooms, and we sense
00:56:44the difference between one atmosphere and another.
00:56:55The city is where the game is really serious.
00:57:02You can't get away from the city itself.
00:57:10But the city at the same time feeds one.
00:57:15The trick here is to know how to eat the energies which are all around us.
00:57:23The city of Cambridge
00:57:24And you can't get away from the city itself.
00:57:42The city of Cambridge
00:57:47Most of the time we don't avail ourselves of the city itself,
00:57:51There's a wonderful array of impressions
00:57:54which come in through vision, through hearing, through sensing.
00:58:29Most people never stop. They don't know the immensity of the moment of stop.
00:58:40If one paused for a moment, one would change many things
00:58:44in the midst of the early-burly game of life.
00:58:54One pauses and then is stopped.
00:59:00There's a great ingathering, ingathering,
00:59:06which can help more to change one's life.
00:59:17It's only in a moment of stillness
00:59:22that one is aware of another life within one,
00:59:31which is truly, truly important for us,
00:59:35which we're not enough in touch with.
00:59:55This all comes down to a question of being attentive.
01:00:02If one gives attention to this moment, one begins to be in touch with the body,
01:00:11to know your feet are touching the floor,
01:00:17and then to be aware of the onset of emotion,
01:00:24and always to be attentively watching.
01:00:34To be continued.
01:00:34To be continued.
01:00:40To be continued.
01:00:48To be continued.
01:01:19In the city, there are certainly more opportunities to see oneself in action and to receive the abounding energies which
01:01:28are all around one.
01:01:39If one lives wholeheartedly, what more can we ask of ourselves?
01:01:44What do we have?
01:01:46In this procedure, we have to dispose of that.
01:01:53Yeah.
01:01:59Are you able to get it?
01:02:01Right.
01:02:04So, along the way of being engaged in life, one may have moments of, ah, this is what is meant
01:02:13by being whole, even holy.
01:02:17It's meant to be here.
01:02:19All right.
01:02:19We leave that the way it is.
01:02:23So now we have the possibility to move this out of the way.
01:02:28And then when everything is important, there is no inner, there is no outer.
01:02:35And this is on the way to uncovering a still, further energy of a very fine, special nature.
01:02:46.
01:03:17PIANO PLAYS
01:03:19At times one wonders how it had come about, how much intention there really was.
01:03:37See, this proves that there are no insignificant objects, nothing is too small.
01:03:46So I like to draw these little things and show the life and the things that are all around us
01:03:52at every time.
01:03:55This gave a theme for the show, which was transfer appearances.
01:04:06Well, if it awakens some people to the objects and life around them, it's not bad.
01:04:18PIANO PLAYS
01:04:32PIANO PLAYS
01:05:04PIANO PLAYS
01:05:13PIANO PLAYS
01:05:23Yes, yes, yes, I did.
01:05:46Oh, my God.
01:05:53Happy to see you.
01:05:55It's wonderful.
01:05:57It's wonderful.
01:05:59You're wonderful.
01:06:01You're wonderful.
01:06:03You're wonderful.
01:06:03Yes, sir.
01:06:50I think all ways lead to life itself.
01:06:56No discrimination between the monastery, the churches, synagogues, or whatever, and life itself.
01:07:06This, where you're sitting and where I'm sitting, can be a sacred place.
01:07:11I don't like to use that word, but in a certain sense, there's a vibration which can change
01:07:19this place that we're sitting.
01:07:23And if we knew this better, if we felt this, the world would change.
01:07:37One has to be in touch with this element in oneself, this silence if you wish, this interior
01:07:47silence which is behind my talking, my machine just spouting, or my relationships with outside.
01:08:02There's always this vibration which is inside, outside, everywhere.
01:08:13And so the marketplace becomes a place of potentiality and relationships.
01:08:30And so, here's what I found.
01:08:31And so, here's what I would say.
01:08:31What I would say is that I would say hello to the people of the country who sit down and
01:08:33add in your teacher and say hello to the people of the country.
01:08:34What I would say to the people of the country, well.
01:09:04Even when one goes to literally the marketplace, one sees presentations of fruits and vegetables
01:09:12and fish and fowl.
01:09:20And for me this means that there's an innate, an inborn drive towards the aesthetic.
01:09:33Even the humblest grocery store keeper, she wants to arrange the fruit just so.
01:09:53And you see a fish market, the way he places his fish and his oysters and so and so.
01:10:06Now, when one is in a marketplace, one realizes that behind all the haggling and behind the
01:10:13bargaining and the shouting and the fuss, there is a possibility of seeing the sacred, if you wish,
01:10:22and every human being and every piece of fruit that we have here and every shouting merchant.
01:10:33If you are calm in the marketplace, wherever you go you spread that harmony.
01:10:57Within each individual human being, there is the spark of the divine.
01:11:05There really is.
01:11:10But we have been trained to ignore it.
01:11:16We don't know how to be in touch with it, except at special moments.
01:11:29When one doesn't want anything, when one is not grasping, and one can be stilled interiorly,
01:11:39one then is open to this fullness which is all around us.
01:11:49So, symbolically, it ends with a circle, which is nothingness or emptiness,
01:11:57and then goes back again to the old man, just an old man walking around,
01:12:03buying a few pennies worth of vegetables and so and so.
01:12:09The old man in the marketplace, mingling with people, and as they, as the saying goes,
01:12:18with bliss bestowing hands.
01:12:21He doesn't do anything, but when he passes by, the flowers grow, and people are happy and sharing.
01:12:27And he changes things, the old man, just doing nothing.
01:12:47You could send Marielle your love right now.
01:12:50Do you want to send your love to Marielle?
01:12:51Yeah, how do I do it?
01:12:51Just say whatever you want to say, and we'll make sure she's...
01:12:54Marielle, you are the most loved of all. No question. Most, most, most loved. Beloved.
01:13:02Now clap your hands so we'll have a sync.
01:13:05Okay, great. Thank you.
01:13:16Great. medida.
Comments