The Limits of Explanation

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour - Wallace Stevens

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Tagore Letters from a young poet

Bolpur
14 May 1892

The universe has many paradoxes, one among which is that where there's an extensive landscape, endless sky, dense clouds, a deep feeling, in other words in a place where the eternal is manifest, there its appropriate companion can be only one person - too many people make it too petty and messy. Infinity and one person are both evenly balance in relation to one another - both deserve to sit on their individual thrones face-to-face. And if you have many people staying together, they tend to cut one another down to size - if a person wants to spread out his entire soul, he needs so much space that there's no room for five or six people near him. In my judgement, if you want a good fit, then in this wide world it is possible to fit only an intimate two - there's no space for more - the moment you gather a number in excess of that, you have to lessen yourself in order to accommodate one another's demands - you have to insert yourself into the available gaps. In the meantime, I am unable to receive - with hands cupped and arms extended in prayer - the blessings of nature's deep, limitless expanse that is given so generously.

R. Tagore

Yehuda Amichai - God has pity on kindergarten children

God has pity on kindergarten children.
He has less pity on school children
And on grownups he has no pity at all,
he leaves them alone,
and sometimes they must crawl on all fours
in the burning sand
to reach the first–aid station
covered with blood.

But perhaps he will watch over true lovers
and have mercy on them and shelter them
like a tree over the old man
sleeping on a public bench.

Perhaps we too will give them
the last rare coins of charity
that Mother handed down to us
so that their happiness may protect us
now and on other days.

Yehuda Amichai

Eric Metaxas Interviews Christian Wiman

How Great is the Dharma Drum(2013 edition)

Dalai Lama's 18 rules for daily living

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk. Risk is involved in every great opportunity in life. It it isn’t risky, then everyone would be doing, thus making it ordinary and not “great.” Separate yourself from the crowd as one who not only can take risks, but enjoys doing so. Certainty in life can only be so comforting until it gets boring.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson. If you lose what you have learned not to do, you will be doomed to repeat it. More importantly, however, do fear failure. Failure is the precursor to success. Hardly any great thing that you wish to accomplish will come without failure. This ties back to the rule of risk mentioned above.
3. Follow the three Rs: 

1. Respect for self – Confidence is key in success and one who does you respect himself does not believe in himself. Thus, if you do not respect yourself, you cannot possibly succeed in anything great, nor can you respect others.
2. Respect for others – And you will be respected in return. Anyone who does not return that respect is immediately letting you know that they are not worth your time, and that they do not respect themselves. Avoid weak/insecure/self-loathing people.
3. Responsibility for all your actions – You alone are responsible for your feelings, actions, success, etc. You are in complete control of your life, so do not try and blame other people for your mistakes or misfortunes.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. Not everything that you desire will be necessarily good for you in the long run. If something just seems to not work out continually, in such a way that it seems almost like fate intervened, consider letting it go or coming back to it at another time. The Universe works in mysterious ways and should be trusted. Just be sure you are not mistaking your own failure as the Universe telling you something.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly. Rules are meant to be broken. Most of them are put in place by archaic, corrupt institutions that seek only to enslave and maintain their own power. When it comes to breaking them, be sure to do it properly to avoid punishment. But above all things, make sure you DO in fact break rules. If authority was never questioned, we could be a stagnant civilization.

6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship. Obviously friendship is more important that one small fight, but very few people actually put this rule into practice. They also need to be able to follow rule #7 in order to truly follow #6.

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it. And do not let your pride get in the way of taking those steps. Apologize, taking full responsibility. That will speak for your character more strongly than the action of making the mistake in the first place. 

8. Spend some time alone every day. No matter what you do, take at least 30 minutes out of your day to spend alone in a quiet place. This will give you at least a half-hour to examine what is going on in your life, to examine yourself and to figure out what you want. Whether it be through prayer, meditation, yoga or golf, this ritual is a must. The Law of Attraction is the best way to spend this time. 

9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values. This world is constantly changing. If you are not open to change, then you are going to live a very miserable life. You, yourself, are going to change as well, but that does not mean that your values have to change as well. Welcome new places, new faces and new loves, but never change those core parts of you unless you have strong reasons to believe you were wrong to believe them in the first place.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer. Silence leads to relaxed contemplation during which emotions have less influence and logic can take over. For example, in an argument with a friend, remaining silent instead of retaliating with something anger-driven is more efficient in ending the argument faster and with less hurt for both parties. Or consider Gandhi, who took down the British Empire through silent, pacifistic behavior. Silence is a powerful tool that few choose to use over irrational action. Consider it next time you find yourself in a difficult situation. 

11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time. You are going to have to live with your actions for the rest of your life, so save yourself the regret and anguish and live with honor now. Good things also come to good people. You will never be punished for acting with integrity, only rewarded.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life. This is the rule that you have the least amount of control over. Your family dynamic will ultimately determine your home atmosphere, but you can definitely help it along by showing your family that you love them. As in rule #3, if you respect (love) your family, they will provide you with respect and love in return. This rule comes to play again when starting a family. Inject love into your home. Make the walls glisten with endearment. That will set a solid foundation for the lives of your children.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past. The past is constant, unchanging. Bringing it up can only bring more pain to the current situation. This is a problem especially with loved ones because relationships with them go so far back into the past and are so fueled by emotion. Forgive any past actions and focus on the present. 

14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality. One learns so much just from living a lifetime. Share that knowledge with the people you come across, it can only help them in their journeys. Even more important, share your failures so that others will not repeat them. 

15. Be gentle with the earth.The earth is where we live. So this should be obvious. Hurting the earth is hurting yourself and the futures of your children and loved ones.

16. Once a year As often as possible, go someplace you’ve never been before. Experience new places and new things. You might find yourself with someone or somewhere that makes you much happier than your previous circumstance. The Earth is so vast with unique and beautiful places, why wouldn’t you want to go explore them?

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other. The opposite is a sign that the relationship should end. If you need someone more than you love them, it is a sign of dependency, not affection. Find someone where love is the dominant force and you will find yourself in a much more fulfilling relationship. 

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it. Success is not truly success if you had to compromise yourself or your loved ones in order to achieve it. Decide what you want. Design your ideal life and go for it. Do not let any part of that dream slip away in order to get the rest of you will live in regret. 

27. How to Stop - Ven Ajahn Brahm

Steinbeck on love

New York
November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First — if you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second — There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply — of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

Day1 am - 18 Great Stages of the Path (Lam Rim) Commentaries - 2014

Wallace Stevens - The poem of the mind

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice.
It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed To something else.
Its past was a souvenir.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time
and to meet
The women of the time.
It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice.
It has To construct a new stage.
It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear,
at the sound Of which,
an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself,
expressed In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one.
The actor is A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
It must Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.


 Wallace Stevens

The meaning of true love (from a Buddhist perspective)

The meaning of true love

Wendell Berry - Standing by words

Properly used, a verse form, like a marriage, creates impasses, which the will and present understanding can solve only arbitrarily and superficially. These halts and difficulties do not ask for immediate remedy; we fail them by making emergencies of them. They ask, rather, for patience, forbearance, inspiration — the gifts and graces of time, circumstance, and faith. They are, perhaps, the true occasions of the poem: occasions for surpassing what we know or have reason to expect. They are points of growth, like the axils of leaves. Writing in a set form, rightly understood, is anything but force and predetermination. One puts down the first line of the pattern in trust that life and language are abundant enough to complete it. Rightly understood, a set form prescribes its restraint to the poet, not to the subject. Marriage too is an attempt to rhyme, to bring two different lives-within the one life of their troth and household — periodically into agreement or consent. The two lives stray apart necessarily, and by consent come together again: to “feel together,” to “be of the same mind.” Difficult virtues are again necessary. And failure, permanent failure, is possible. But it is this possibility of failure, together with the formal bounds, that turns us back from fantasy, wishful thinking, and self-pity into the real terms and occasions of our lives. It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. In this way the keeping of the form instructs us… The world, the truth, is more abounding, more delightful, more demanding than we thought. What appeared for a time perhaps to be mere dutifulness, that dried skull, suddenly breaks open in sweetness — and we are not where we thought we were, nowhere that we could have expected to be. It was expectation that would have kept us where we were. Wendell Berry, Standing by words

Buddhism, Mind and Cognitive Science Conference 2014 Berkeley

On the Path of the Buddha: Buddhist Pilgrimage in North India

Consciousness on-off switch discovered deep in brain - life - 02 July 2014 - New Scientist

Consciousness on-off switch discovered deep in brain - life - 02 July 2014 - New Scientist

Chan Master Hongzhi

Empty and desire-less, cold and thin, simple and genuine, this is how to strike down and fold up the remaining habits of many lives. When the stains of old habits are exhausted, the original light appears, blazing through your skull, not admitting any other matters. Vast and spacious, like sky and water merging during autumn, like snow and moon having the same color, this field is without boundary, beyond direction, magnificently one entity without edge or seam. Further, when you turn within and drop off everything completely, realization occurs. Right at the time of entirely dropping off, deliberation and discussion are one or ten thousand miles away. Still, no principle is discernible, so what could there be to point to or explain?

Hermann Hesse - Der Pilger

a dream pang - robert frost

A dream pang I had withdrawn in forest, and my song Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway; And to the forest edge you came one day (This was my dream) and looked and pondered long, But did not enter, though the wish was strong: You shook your pensive head as who should say, ‘I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray— He must seek me would he undo the wrong. Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all Behind low boughs the trees let down outside; And the sweet pang it cost me not to call And tell you that I saw does still abide. But ’tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof, For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

My dinner with Andre

My Dinner With AndréMy Dinner With André by Wallace Shawn ANDRÉ: Okay. Yes. We’re bored now. We’re all bored. But has it ever occurred to you, Wally, that the process which creates this boredom that we see in the world now may very well be a self-perpetuating unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government based on money? And that all of this is much more dangerous, really, than one thinks? And that it’s not just a question of individual survival, Wally, but that somebody who’s bored is asleep? And somebody who’s asleep will not say no? ANDRÉ: . . . And when I was at Findhorn I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted himself to saving trees, and he’d just got back from Washington lobbying to save the Redwoods. And he was eighty-four years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he’s going to be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn he said to me, “Where are you from?” And I said, “New York.” And he said, “Ah, New York, yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?” And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?” And I gave him different banal theories. And he said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.” He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.” And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, “This is a pine tree.” And he put it in my hand. And he said, “Escape before it’s too late.” ― Wallace Shawn, My Dinner With André