The Poetry of Science: Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson

in that the world is monstrous

In that the world is monstrous. In that the world can lead a man to nothing but despair, and a despair so complete, so resolute, that nothing can open the door of this prison, which is hopelessness, A. peers through the bars of his cell and finds only one thought that brings him any consolation: the image of his son. And not just his son, but any son, any daughter, any child of any woman or man.

In that the world is monstrous. In that it seems to offer no hope of a future, A. looks at his son and realizes that he must not allow himself to despair. There is this responsibility for a young life, and in that he has brought this life into being, he must not despair. Minute by minute, hour by hour, as he remains in the presence of his son, attending to his needs, giving himself up to this young life, which is a continual injunction to remain in the present, he feels his despair evaporate. And even though he continues to despair, he does not allow himself to despair.

The thought of a child's suffering, therefore, is monstrous to him. It is even more monstrous than the monstrosity of the world itself. For it robs the world of its one consolation, and in that a world can be imagined without consolation, it is monstrous.

He can go no farther than this.



The invention of solitude - Paul Auster, Collected Prose

true overcoming

You dread the depths; it should horrify you, since the way of what is to come leads through it.
You must endure the temptation of fear and doubt, and at the same time acknowledge to the bone that your fear is justified and your doubt is reasonable. How otherwise could it be a true temptation and a true overcoming?


Carl Jung, The Red Book

call of solitude

Have you not had monasteries?
Have not countless thousands gone into the desert?
You should carry the monastery in yourself.
The desert is within you.
The desert calls you and draws you back,
and if you were fettered to the world of this time with iron,
the call of the desert would break all chains.
Truly, I prepare you for solitude.


Carl Jung, The Red Book

fifty days of solitude

In a letter sent to me from Hereford, England, the writer D. M. Thomas explained why he had left his academic appointment at American University in Washington, D.C., so precipitously:
"It was a dreadful thing to do - my flight - but I had a sense of peril, as a person and as a writer (the same thing).... I knew that if I spent three months being 'the successful author of The White Hotel' I would quite likely become that and that only. I have to be the unsuccessful writer of the blank page before me."


Taken from Fifty days of solitude by Doris Grumbach

and so it is with awakening

The Abbess once said,

"If a person is always surrounded by music, she may never imagine there is an alternative. But if, after many years, she comes to a place where there is no music, she may be surprised, may be even shocked, by the relief of not hearing any sound.

If her experience of silence makes a strong enough impression, then when she returns to the world of music, she will not only hear the music but also the silence which is always here with the music.

With awakening, you will know a peace which is always here."


Taken from Monastery Within - Gil Fronsdal

sunyata

In the emptiness
is fullness.

Gil Fronsdal - a monastery within

A new book by Gil Fronsdal.

Inspired by his years of Buddhist monastic life, Gil Fronsdal has written these warm-hearted stories as part of the tradition of teaching through storytelling. These are tales of transformation and spiritual growth. They delight and challenge as they express different facets of the Buddhist path to liberation in familiar, yet fresh and engaging, ways. These stories can be reread often, each time supporting new reflections on the spiritual life and the possibility of each person awakening to the kindness, clarity and insight available to all of us. A Monastery Within points to how each person can build an inner home for the awakened life.

Taken from Insight Meditation Center

merton - only in the void

Only in the void
are all ways one;

Only in the darkness
are all the lost
found.


Thomas Merton

Nietzsche - on those who are sublime

Let your kindness be your final self-conquest.


Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra

the heart crosses it

The mind creates the abyss
but the heart crosses it.


Stephen Levine

a higher love

The best relationship is one in which
your love for each other exceeds
your need for each other.

HH 14th Dalai Lama

Meditation And Modern Art Meet In Rothko Chapel : NPR

Meditation And Modern Art Meet In Rothko Chapel : NPR

not everything assumes a name - Solzhenitsyn

Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words. Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience. Through art we are sometimes visited - dimly, briefly - by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking.

Alexander Solzhenitysyn
Nobel Lecture in Literature 1970

eternal return

This slow spider dragging itself toward the light of the moon
and that same moonlight,
and you and I whispering at the gateway,
whispering of eternal things,
haven't we already coincided in the past?
And won't we happen again on the long road,
on this long tremulous road,
won't we recur eternally?

Nietzsche

Nietzsche and Buddhsim

Nietzsche and Buddhism by Benjamin A. Elman

Journal of the History of Ideas Vol 44 No 4 Oct-Dec 1983

James Nachtwey: "Struggle to Live - the fight against TB"

James Nachtwey has documented the resurgence of tuberculosis and its varying strains MDR and XDR in seven countries around the world. These countries include Cambodia, Lesotho, South Africa, Siberia, India, Swaziland, and Thailand. He has captured the lives of both patients and health care workers in the struggle against this ancient disease, which still remains very much a part of the present. Not only does TB remain a killer disease in its most recognizable form but it is mutating into even more deadly forms: multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extremely drug resistant (XDR) TB. While still a small subset of the TB cases, these new strains pose a grave global health threat. XDR-TB is a man-made catastrophe, resulting from too few resources being allocated for the proper diagnosis and treatment of TB patients in developing countries.

Despite the fact that tuberculosis afflicts a huge number of people its not on the radar screen in terms of public awareness. Normal tuberculosis, if diagnosed and treated diligently, is very inexpensive and doesnt take very long to cure. But if normal TB is not treated, it mutates and becomes 100 times more expensive, requires a two-year cure and a long stay in the hospital, which many of those infected cannot afford. The thought of XDR getting out of control is truly frightening, says James Nachtwey.

NOTE: THIS ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT.

(c) 2010 James Nachtwey, BURN Magazine. All Rights Reserved.

sutta-nipata: the worn-out skin

The Worn-out Skin - Reflections on the Uraga Sutta by
Nyanaponika Thera

Introduction

The Sutta Nipata, in its oldest and most characteristic parts, is a deeply stirring Song of Freedom. The verses of this ancient book are a challenging call to us to leave behind the narrow confines of our imprisoned existence with its ever-growing walls of accumulated habits of life and thought. They beckon us to free ourselves from the enslavement to our passions and to our thousand little whims and wishes. A call to freedom is always timely because in our lives we constantly bind ourselves to this and that, or let ourselves be bound in various ways by others and by circumstances. To some extent, normal life cannot entirely escape from such a situation. In fact, "binding" oneself to a worthy task and duty or to an ennobling human relationship is an indispensable antidote to the opposite tendency: the dissipation of our energies. The physical act of walking consists not only in the "freeing" action of lifting and stretching the foot, but also in the "binding" function of lowering it and placing it firmly on the ground. Analogously, in mental movement, there is the same need for support as well as for uplift and forward advancement.

But, having the comfort of a "secure footing" in life, we too easily forget to walk on. Instead, we prefer to "strengthen our position," to improve and embellish the little cage we build for ourselves out of habits, ideas and beliefs. Once we have settled down in our habitual ways of living and thinking, we feel less and less inclined to give them up for the sake of risky ventures into a freedom of life and thought full of dangers and uncertainties. True freedom places on us the uncomfortable burden of ever-fresh responsible decisions, which have to be guided by mindfulness, wisdom and human sympathy. Few are willing to accept the full weight of such a burden. Instead, they prefer to be led and bound by the rules given by others, and by habits mainly dominated by self-interest and social conventions. With the habituation to a life of inner and outer bondage, there grows what Erich Fromm calls a "fear of freedom." Such fear, if allowed to persist and take root, inevitably leads to a stagnation of our inner growth and creativeness as well as to a stagnant society and culture. In a state of stagnation, toxic elements will endanger mankind's healthy progress — physical and mental, social and spiritual. Then William Blake's words will prove true: "Expect poison from stagnant water."

Those too who say "Yes" to life and wish to protect mankind from decline by its self-produced toxins — biological and psychological — will also have to shed that "fear of freedom" and enter freedom's arduous way. It is an arduous way because it demands of us that we break the self-forged fetters of our lusts and hates, our prejudices and dogmas — fetters we foolishly cherish as ornaments. But once we see them for what they really are, obstacles to true freedom, the hard task of discarding them will become at the same time a joyous experience.

The Sutta Nipata, however, warns repeatedly of false ideas of freedom. He is not truly free who only follows his self-willed whims and desires (chandagu, v.913), who is carried along by them (chandanunito, v.731). Nor can true freedom be found by those who only seek to exchange one bondage for another.


Continue reading: Access to Insight

Other writings by Nyanaponka Thera: More articles at Access to Insight

self-transformation

What distinguishes the Buddha's program for self-transformation from the multitude of other systems proposing a similar end is the contribution made by another principle with which it is invariably conjoined. This is the principle of self-transcendence, the endeavor to relinquish all attempts to establish a sense of solid personal identity. In the Buddhist training the aim of transforming the personality must be complemented by a parallel effort to overcome all identification with the elements that constitute our phenomenal being. The teaching of anatta or not-self is not so much a philosophical thesis calling for intellectual assent as a prescription for self-transcendence. It maintains that our ongoing attempt to establish a sense of identity by taking our personalities to be "I" and "mine" is in actuality a project born out of clinging, a project that at the same time lies at the root of our suffering. If, therefore, we seek to be free from suffering, we cannot stop with the transformation of the personality into some sublime and elevated mode as the final goal. What is needed, rather, is a transformation that brings about the removal of clinging, and with it, the removal of all tendencies to self-affirmation.


Bhikkhu Bodhi


Continue reading: Access to Insight

Finding Happiness in Troubled Times

Always such a joy to listen to His Holiness.