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Jan 28, 2008

"Every day I gained more and more pleasure from this listening and looking, always seeing and hearing more clearly. As time went on, I appreciated how glorious and beautiful existence is, living. I saw how busy, preoccupied were most people with doing, making. Existence was already so much to enjoy, so grand and lovely, so exquisite." --Laurie Seagel

A Man Impossible to Classify

"The year was 1965. We were headed toward the Haight-Ashbury. Maybe thirty yards short of the intersection, I saw him standing on the curb, a disheveled young man, not quite in the hippie mold. He was looking directly at me, it seemed, and gesturing emphatically, an incongruous grin on his face." So starts this piece from Works & Conversations Magazine, describing meetings with and reflections by Laurie Seagel, a Stanford Philosophy student turned "street person," who lived his life trying to break the habit of thinking 'where' and where to, emphasizing listening and looking, exploring the line between need and want, and having experiences ranging from being around Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki in San Francisco, to raising his children as a social worker in Israel. Not all his life was easy and ideal, but distinctly compelling and soaringly human.