'Zines and the wisdom of emptiness...

I will loosely sketch out a Buddhist principle, which I found on the Limited Fork Theory website, that resonates with the ethic of zine-making.

According to the Buddhist teacher Robina Courtin, human beings apprehend their surroundings and fellow humans with two very different attitudes. The first mode of thought that she mentions is the "conventional" --- we tend to either treat people and things that are not ourselves as basically utilitarian and "real" and unchanging in their nature and meaning to us. She refers to the "cup-ness" of a cup, the "carpet-ness" of a carpet, and so on. This in contrast to an "ultimate" mode of existence, or point of view, which says that ultimately there is nothing inherently meaningful or permanent about the physical nature of the things that we use, the relationships that we value, or the symbols that are important to us. Mostly, she says, human perspective is confined to the conventional position toward things because this is a framework based on the functionality of things in relation to the "I" to which each person belongs. The "I" finds Facebook instantly and briefly gratifying. The "I" occasionally puts up a front in situations where emotional openness is paramount. The "I" reads the newspaper passively without ever making or writing "its" own newspaper or 'zine to share with others. The "I" relies on comfort food like mac and cheese and holing up in her room when the idea of possessing something gains primacy over the experience of a thing, the active participation and reconciliation with the impermanence and emptiness of a thing or person or relationship. Courtin calls the trinity of conventional assumptions of ownership, permanence and intrinsic nature the "mother of all lies," that actually prevents a person from appreciating the transient, perpetually changing non-meaning of reality. The more one is aware of the impermanence and eventual "breaking down" of all things, the more thoroughly and fully one can appreciate the smaller functionality and usefulness of material things. One can appreciate the necessity of the small items without relying on their thing-ness. One becomes aware of a more general current to whichall things are inescapably drawn.

To be continued --- I will relate zines and the materiality of zines to this principle.