Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Bronx boy
wondering
why he is here.
Don DeLillo’s 7-word autobiography, alongside those of other cultural icons. (via explore-blog)
21 July 2013
20 July 2013
If there’s no joy sans love and laughter,
As Mimnermus holds, then live for love and laughter.
Long life!
Horace: The Epistles Book I: Epistle VI
“But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.”
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
I sit on the lawn overlooking Waterfall Bay in Hong Kong, wind chimes sounding inside the sporadic whoosh of the warm wet wind blowing off the fecund tropical trees here in Hong Kong, my feet curled atop the stubby grass, my third cup of coffee in my hand, the ever friendly and attentive Sal, my friend Steve's chocolate Lab circling me the same way my thoughts circle now around this place, my place, where I am.
Don’t Go Back To Sleep
For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
—Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks from The Essential Rumi.
For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
—Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks from The Essential Rumi.
The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do, with great artists; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star.
Marcel Proust, courtesy of Whiskey River.
Here is an
illuminating interview with James George, former high commissioner to
India and former ambassador to Iran. The Dalai Lama calls him “my old
friend.” Chogyam Trungpa referred to him as “a wise and benevolent man,
an ideal statesman.”
He has been a gentle teacher and a friend who has inspired many to engage in a spiritual practice in the midst of life–one that can bridge the external world with the inner world.
He has been a gentle teacher and a friend who has inspired many to engage in a spiritual practice in the midst of life–one that can bridge the external world with the inner world.
It is useful to consider the body as the anchor for the senses and the mind; they are all interrelated. Feel your entire physical body. Allow your breathing to become relaxed and quiet. When your body and breath become very still, you may feel a very light sensation, almost like flying, which carries with it a fresh, alive quality. Open all your cells, even the molecules that make up your body, unfolding them like petals. Hold nothing back: open more than your heart; open your entire body, every atom of it. Then a beautiful experience can arise that has a quality you can come back to again and again, a quality that will heal and sustain you.
Benoit Courti. Thank you, la-journee.
Fernando Lemos, 1949. Thank you, la-journee.
We must
suppose that we go deep within ourselves, deeper and deeper into our
most hidden self. There in our innermost being, in the very core of
ourselves, we will find a place where there is peace, stillness, and
above all, love.
After having found the place, we must imagine that we are seated there, immersed into, surrounded by the Love of God. We are in deepest peace … All of us is there, physical body and all; nothing is outside, not even a fingertip, not even the tiniest hair. Our whole being is connected with the Love of God.
Nothing will remain.
—Irina Tweedie, Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master (California: The Golden Sufi Center, 2006)
Painting: Odilon Redon, Le Silence, 1900
From parabola-magazine.
After having found the place, we must imagine that we are seated there, immersed into, surrounded by the Love of God. We are in deepest peace … All of us is there, physical body and all; nothing is outside, not even a fingertip, not even the tiniest hair. Our whole being is connected with the Love of God.
Nothing will remain.
—Irina Tweedie, Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master (California: The Golden Sufi Center, 2006)
Painting: Odilon Redon, Le Silence, 1900
From parabola-magazine.
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