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Post by Tamrin on Dec 18, 2013 7:12:22 GMT 10
The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of mono- tonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity
Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking
An old master brought out his stick before an assemblage of monks and said: 'O monks, do you see this? If you see it, what is it you see? Would you say, "It is a stick"? If you do you are ordinary people, you have no Zen. But if you say, 'We do not see any stick,' then I would say, "Here I hold one, and how can you deny the fact?"' There is no trifling in Zen. Until you have a third eye opened to see into the inmost secret of things, you cannot be in the company of the ancient sages. What is this third eye that sees the stick and yet sees it not?
In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense. The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on
Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?
Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities
Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious Daisetz Teitaro SuzukiZen Buddhist scholar ( Introduction to Zen Buddhism(Born this day 1870) The right art is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede
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Post by Tamrin on Dec 18, 2013 7:20:09 GMT 10
Each new generation asks — “What is the meaning of life?” A more fertile way of putting the question would be — “Why does man need a meaning to life?”
Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world
The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn’t seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer
We come from an inconceivable nothingness. We stay a while in something which seems equally inconceivable, only to vanish again into the inconceivable nothingness
Why, then, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during great epidemics of madness? Why do only a fairly minor number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the strain of living- because cognition gives them more than they can carry? Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness
The immediate facts are what we must relate to. Darkness and light, beginning and end
If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains "peace of mind"Peter Wessel ZapffeNorwegian metaphysician, author and mountaineer (Born this day 1899) I myself am no longer very much afflicted by the thought of my own death. The synthesis, Peter Wessel Zapffe , did not originate until 1899. It was spared from immediate participation in the horrors of the previous years, and it will not miss what awaits mankind at the end of its vertiginous madness
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Post by Tamrin on Dec 18, 2013 7:21:42 GMT 10
What's got into your head? That I'm returning to my origins? The important things I have in my blood and nobody is going to take them away. I'm here to drink a bottle of my wine and sing a little — with anybody
If all this were true, how easy it would be to understand people
What doesn't slumber under the shells of us all? One just needs courage to uncover it and be oneself. Or at least to discuss it. There isn't enough discussion in the world
People who don't know any better will always be in the dark because the power lies in the hands of men who take good care that ordinary folk don't understand, in the hands, that is, of the government, of the clerical party, of the capitalists
There's nothing that tastes of death more than the summer sun, the powerful light, exuberant nature. You sniff the air and listen to the woods and know that the plants and animals don't give a damn about you. Everything lives and consumes itself
Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health
What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach itCesare PaveseItalian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator (Born this day 1908) The courage to stand alone as if others didn't exist and think only of what you're doing. Not to get scared if people ignore you. You have to wait for years, have to die. Then after you're dead, if you're lucky, you become somebody
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Post by Tamrin on Dec 18, 2013 7:22:46 GMT 10
'Faith in faith' he answered himself. 'It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief’
Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you! All right, God damn you! I challenge you, me. Die or live and be great. Blow yourselves to Christ gone or come and find me, Gully Foyle, and I make you men. I make you great. I give you the stars.
'Make it a human war,' she said fiercely. 'You're the first not to be deceived by my looks. Oh God! The boredom of the chivalrous knights and their milk-maid passion for the fairy tale princess. But I'm not like that... inside. I'm not. I'm not. Never. Make it a savage war between us. Don't win me... destroy me!'
Be grateful that you only see the outward man. Be grateful that you never see the passions, the hatreds, the jealousies, the malice, the sicknesses ... Be grateful you rarely see the frightening truth in people
You pigs, you. You rut like pigs, is all. You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All a you. Every you ...
If a man's got talent and guts to buck society, he's obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you've got left are the sheep
And the bar tender says to Renee Descartes, "Another beer?" And Descartes says, "I think not," and disappearsAlfred Bester, US science fiction author (Born this day 1913) You're all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory
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Post by Tamrin on Dec 18, 2013 7:27:29 GMT 10
Time is the enemy of identity
Arthuriana has become a genre in itself, more like TV soap opera where people think they know the characters. All that's fair enough, but it does remove the mythic power of the feminine and masculine principles. So I prefer it in its original form, even if you have to wade through Mallory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur' — people smashing people for pages and pages! It still has the resonances of myth about it, which makes it work for me. I don't want to know if Mordred led an unhappy childhood or not
Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful
If the bulk of American SF can be said to be written by robots, about robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits
Treasures are not won by care and forethought but by swift slaying and reckless attack
Our scientific advances will be merely obscene unless they help the large part of our world's population emerge from miserable uncertainty and debilitating terror
It's History that's caused all the troubles in the pastMichael MoorcockEnglish science fiction author and editor ( New Worlds) (Born this day 1939) The book trade invented literary prizes to stimulate sales, not to reward merit
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Post by Tamrin on Dec 18, 2013 7:28:12 GMT 10
The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion
So as a prelude whites must be made to realize that they are only human, not superior. Same with blacks. They must be made to realize that they are also human, not inferior
There's no transformation process that could bear the desired outcomes without women throwing their weight behind that change initiative, and the same holds for the nation-building process
Women must be at the forefront of nation-building to bring the South African citizenry together and, therefore, develop a whole new ethos of human co-existence
It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realize that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality
In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift — a more human face
The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressedSteve BikoSouth African anti-apartheid activist (Born this day 1946) You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway
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Post by Tamrin on Dec 18, 2013 7:29:19 GMT 10
I dream for a living
Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about
The public has an appetite for anything about imagination — anything that is as far away from reality as is creatively possible
I've discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued by large forces
People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning
There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility
All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our livesSteven SpielbergAmerican film director (Jaws; ET; Schindler's List) (Born this day 1946) I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends' lives
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Post by Tamrin on Dec 19, 2013 6:17:38 GMT 10
Thursday’s Quotes:Whoever said, 'It's not whether you win or lose that counts.' probably lost
We may prove deserters or traitors, and struggle to the rear during the conflict, or go over to the enemy and fight under the flag of wrong. But the fact remains that we are all drafted into the battle of life, and are expected to do our duty according to the best of our ability
For humanity has moved forward to an era when wrong and slavery are being displaced, and reason and justice are being recognized as the rule of life
One would suppose in reading them that women possess but one class of physical organs, and that these are always diseased. Such teaching is pestif- erous, and tends to cause and perpetuate the very evils it professes to remedy
Above the titles of wife and mother, which, although dear, are transitory and accidental, there is the title human being, which precedes and out-ranks every other
The age looks steadily to the redressing of wrong, to the righting of every form of error and injustice; and a tireless and prying philanthropy, which is almost omniscient, is one of the most hopeful characteristics of the time
Courage, then, for the end draws near! A few more years of persistent, faithful work and the women of the United States will he recognized as the legal equals of menMary Ashton LivermoreUS Teacher, Author, Wife, Mother, Army Nurse, Soldier’s Friend, Lecturer, and Reformer (Born this day 1821) What shall we do with our daughters?
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Post by Tamrin on Dec 19, 2013 6:18:12 GMT 10
I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide
A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly
Vain are the thousand creeds that move men's hearts, unutterably vain, worthless as wither'd weeds
Having leveled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home
The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them
I cannot express it: but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you
Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'tis all that I implore: In life and death a chainless soul, with courage to endureEmily Brontë, English author (Wuthering Heights) (Died this day 1848) Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, how could I seek the empty world again?
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Post by Tamrin on Dec 19, 2013 6:19:23 GMT 10
When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary
The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in con- formity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples
As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching
Even schools for Negroes, then, are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority
If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do
Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination
I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help meCarter G. WoodsonAfrican-American historian, author, journalist (Born this day 1875) The mere imparting of information is not education
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