陶渊明 归去来兮 - The Return by Taoyuanming

Hermann Hesse's Long Summer [Part 1 of 4]

Interview with Dan Dennett on the Mind

never really end

Travel is like love, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end. -Pico Iyer

silence

Speech is great, silence is greater. Thomas Carlyle

what we feel

What we feel arises out of what I feel for what you feel for what I feel about your feelings about me - Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary

Dr. Iain McGilchrist on The Divided Brain

who can lay hold of the heart

"Who can lay hold of the heart and give it fixity, so that for some little moment it may be stable, and for a fraction of time may grasp the splendor of a constant eternity." - St Augustine

final wisdom

There are no simple congruities in life or history. The cult of happiness erroneously assumes them. It is possible to soften the incongruities of life endlessly by the scientific conquest of nature's caprices, and the social and political triumph over historic injustice. But all such strategies cannot finally overcome the fragmentary character of human existence. The final wisdom of life requires, not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it. Reinhold Niebuhr

Kafka a clean keyhole

Life is infinitely great and profound as the immensity of the stars above us. One can only look at it through the narrow keyhole of one's personal existence. But through it one perceives more than one can see. So above all one must keep the keyhole clean. Kafka

what he cannot reveal

The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you, but what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says, but rather to what he does not say. Kahlil Gibran

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