Question & Answer with a Group from Southeast Asia

love is passion

Love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. I say fall head over heels, find someone you can love like crazy and who'll love you the same way back. How do you find him? Well, you forget your head and you listen to your heart and I'm not hearing any heart. Because, the truth is there is no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love - well, you haven't lived a life at all. But You have to try, because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived... Meet Joe Black

let the little things go

Let the little things go. People who struggle often fight over little things. We obsess over things that don’t really matter. We create resistance instead of letting things glide off us. Let the little things go, breathe, and move on to the important things. – Leo Baubauta

Adorno on art

We don't understand music, it understands us. Theodor Adorno

Rilke on love

…Didn’t love and parting sit so gently on their shoulders that they appeared to be made of material other than this world? Remember how lightly the hands pressed, though there was such great strength in the torsos? Those people knew such self-control… Rainer Maria Rilke

Tagore

Where the mind is without fear, and the heart is held high, Where the world is not broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls, Where the words came out from the depths of truth, Where tireless striving stretches out its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert of dead habits, Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action, Into that heaven of freedom, My father, let my country awake. R. Tagore

Borges on love and loss

You Learn After a while you learn the subtle difference Between holding a hand and chaining a soul, And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning And company doesn't mean security. And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts And presents aren't promises, And you begin to accept your defeats With your head up and your eyes open With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child, And you learn to build all your roads on today Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight. After a while you learn... That even sunshine burns if you get too much. So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul, Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure... That you really are strong And you really do have worth... And you learn and learn... With every good-bye you learn.

pure mind

Running is pure mind.

Wendell Berry - spiritual journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home. - Wendell Berry

love flowers best in openness and freedom

The wind will not stop. Gusts of sand swirl before me, stinging my face. But there is still too much to see and marvel at, the world very much alive in the bright light and wind, exultant with the fever of spring, the delight of morning. Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom. Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Khalil Gibran on love

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.” ― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

oscar wilde

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul. Oscar Wilde

they say that hope is happiness

They say that Hope is happiness But genuine Love must prize the past; And memory wakes the thoughts that bless They rose the first—they set the last. And all that memory loves the most Was once our only hope to be: And all that hope adored and lost Hath melted into memory. Alas! it is delusion all The future cheats us from afar, Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are. Lord Byron

Einstein: The religious spirit of science

You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religiosity of the naive man. For the latter, God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands, so to speak, in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe. But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality; it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and his work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages. Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions

Einstein on religion and science

Albert Einstein on religion and science: Each has a place, but each must be relegated to its sphere. Let's assume that we are dealing with a theoretical physicist or scientist who is very well-acquainted with the different laws of the universe, such as how the planets orbit the sun and how the satellites in turn orbit around their respective planets. Now, this man who has studied and understands these different laws-how could he possibly believe in one God who would be capable of disturbing the paths of these great orbiting masses? No, the natural laws of science have not only been worked out theoretically but have been proven also in practice. I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws. As I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science. If there is any such concept as a God, it is a subtle spirit, not an image of a man that so many have fixed in their minds. In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds . I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics and the amount of consideration that he has for others. Education has a great role to play in this respect. Religion should have nothing to do with a fear of living or a fear of death, but should instead be a striving after rational knowledge. Albert Einstein

Einstein - a lone traveller

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a "lone traveller" and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude - feelings which increase with the years. One becomes sharply aware, but without regret, the limits of mutual understanding and consonance with other people. No doubt, such a person loses some of his innocence and unconcern; on the other hand, he is largely independent of the opinions, habits and judgements of his fellows and avoids the temptation to build his inner equilibrium upon such insecure foundations. Albert Einstein

Meeting of global icons: The Dalai Lama meets Suu Kyi on her birthday - www.phayul.com

Meeting of global icons: The Dalai Lama meets Suu Kyi on her birthday - www.phayul.com

true love

True love isn't about being inseparable. It's about two people being true to each other even when they are separated. www.marcandangel.com

the impossibility of "I"

Sometimes I could put myself to sleep saying that over and over until after the honeysuckle got all mixed up in the whole thing come to symbolise night and unrest I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray halflight where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

subjectivity

The self is an other. Jacques Lacan