Well, I won’t take much of your time here as this post is already around 23,500 characters long. So as I shared about Swamiji’s booklist website in the last post of this series and was able to restore 13 shared passages from books, well actually only 3 were able to be restored through Wayback Machine about which I talked in the intro part although through RSS I was able to restore all 13 of them and in the last post I said I managed to restore around 10 however there were no more shares after no. 13 as after the post on 2014-07-03 the website had no activity until the domain name’s expiry date.
If You Want to Write :: Brenda Ueland :: The Inner Genius
Posted:2014-07-03 00:01:39 UTC 05:30
Chekhov did not know that he was a great writer. Or I should put it this way: van Gogh and Chekhov and all great people have known inwardly that they were something. They have had a passionate conviction of their importance, of the life, the fire, the god in them. But they were never sure that others would necessarily see it in them, or that recognition would ever come.
But this is the point: everybody in the world has the same conviction of inner importance, fire, of the god within. The tragedy is that either they stifle their fire by not believing in it and using it; or they try to prove to the world and themselves that they have it, not inwardly and greatly, but externally and egotistically, by some second-rate thing like money or power or more publicity.
Therefore all should work. First because it is impossible that you have no creative gift. Second: the only way to make it live and increase is to use it. Third: you cannot be sure that it is not a great gift.
And so I think Blake’s attitude toward his genius is the right one. We should all feel as he did. He knew about his inner fire and believed in it. “He knows himself greatly who never opposes his genius.”
Source: If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland | Submitted by: booklish
The Prophet :: Gibran :: Love
Posted:2014-05-07 18:26:33 UTC 05:30
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And When his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And When he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
Source: The Prophet by Khalil Gibran | Submitted by: booklish
If You Want to Write :: Brenda Ueland :: Eternal Knowledge
Posted:2013-12-20 08:07:24 UTC 05:30
In Plato’s dialogue, “The Meno,” Socrates talks to a young Thracian aristocrat named Meno, and they discuss whether anything can be taught; that is, does a person when he is taught, learn something new or just recollect what he knew already, what his soul learned in former states of being.
Socrates calls to Meno’s little slave boy, a child without education. “Attend now, Meno,” Socrates says, “to the questions which I ask him, and observe whether he learns of me, or only remembers…. Tell me, boy, do you know that a figure like this is a square?” (Socrates draws it for him).
Boy: I do.
Socrates: And you know that a square figure has these four lines equal?
Boy: Certainly.
…
“Do you observe, Meno,” he says, “that I am not teaching the boy anything, but only asking him questions?”
And Socrates goes on with his questions. “And how many spaces are there in this section?”
Boy: Four.
…
Socrates: And from what line do you get this figure?
Boy: From this.
And presently Socrates is saying:
“And that is the line which the learned call the diagonal. And if this is the proper name, then you, Meno’s slave, are prepared to affirm that the double space is the square of the diagonal?”
Boy:. Certainly, Socrates.
“Well,” says Socrates to Meno, “what do you say to that?
I didn’t tell him that! I just asked questions. He must have known it already. It was in him!–all that knowledge.”
Source: If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland | Submitted by: booklish
The Mahabharata: A Modern Rendering :: Menon :: Suffering
Posted:2013-11-17 10:27:18 UTC 05:30
A little saddened, Yudhishtira turned to Lomasa and said, “Muni, why do I suffer like this? I have always walked the way of dharma, even at some cost to myself. My enemies, Duryodhana and his brothers, care nothing for truth. They will do anything to gratify themselves, with no thought for what is right or wrong. Yet, they live in comfort in a palace and here I am in the jungle with my unhappy family. I cannot understand this. Why does a man who treads the path of dharma suffer, while those that are steeped in evil come to no harm?”
The muni replied, “… The answer is simple: the evil ones do not prosper but only appear to, at that, very briefly. No man prospers by sin. His own conscience gives him no rest and his crime consumes him from within. Some day, those he has sinned against will recover from the harm he did to them. But the sinner’s guilt remains with him, tormenting him until the hour of retribution arrives.
…
But remember, Yudhishtira, life is not simple, neither is it as short as we think. All this began long ago. You have lived many lives before this one, so have your brothers and all of us. What you suffer today might well be punishment for some forgotten crime of your own. Of course, that does not justify what has been done to you, but it might explain it.”
Source: The Mahabharata :: ebook :: Paperback :: by Ramesh Menon
Bird by Bird :: Anne Lamott :: A Step at a Time
Posted:2013-10-28 12:54:40 UTC 05:30
So after I’ve completely exhausted myself thinking about the people I most resent in the world, and my more arresting financial problems, and, of course, the orthodontia, I remember to pick up the one-inch picture frame and to figure out a one-inch piece of my story to tell, one small scene, one memory, one exchange. I also remember a story that I know I’ve told elsewhere but that over and over helps me to get a grip: thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
I tell this story again because it usually makes a dent in the tremendous sense of being overwhelmed that my students experience. Sometimes it actually gives them hope, and hope, as Chesterton said, is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.
Source: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott | Submitted by: booklish
In Search of the Miraculous :: Ouspensky :: What can We Do?
Posted:2013-10-07 09:54:12 UTC 05:30
I asked G. what a man had to do to assimilate this…
“What to do?” asked G. as though surprised. “It is impossible to do anything. A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before.”
“How can one get rid of false ideas?” I asked…
“Again you speak of something different,”‘ he said. “You speak of errors arising from perceptions but I am not speaking of these. Within the limits of given perceptions man can err more or err less. As I have said before, man’s chief delusion is his conviction that he can do. All people think that they can do, all people want to do, and the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But actually nobody does anything and nobody can do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood.
Everything happens. All that befalls a man, all that is done by him, all that comes from him—all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result of a change in the temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere or the surrounding clouds, as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the wind.
Source: In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky | Submitted by: booklish
Flow (P.S):: Csikszentmihalyi :: Happiness is the Outcome
Posted:2013-10-02 11:57:42 UTC 05:30
What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.
Yet we cannot reach happiness by consciously searching for it. “Ask yourself whether you are happy,” said J. S. Mill, “and you cease to be so.” It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly. Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist, summarized it beautifully in the preface to his book Man’s Search for Meaning: “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”
Source: Flow (P.S) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi | Submitted by: booklish
Siddhartha :: Hesse :: Like the Falling Rock
Posted:2013-10-02 11:57:25 UTC 05:30
You were willing. Look, Kamala: When you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. This is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution. Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him, because he doesn’t let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal. This is what Siddhartha has learned among the Samanas. This is what fools call magic and of which they think it would be effected by means of the daemons. Nothing is effected by daemons, there are no daemons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.
Source: Siddhartha by Herman Hesse | Submitted by: booklish
In Search of the Miraculous :: Ouspensky :: We are Machines
Posted:2013-10-02 11:57:11 UTC 05:30
“Everything flows, and secondly,” he continued, “the mechanization you speak of is not at all dangerous. A man may be a man” (he emphasized this word), “while working with machines. There is another kind of mechanization which is much more dangerous: being a machine oneself. Have you ever thought about the fact that all peoples themselves are machines?”
“Yes,” I said, “from the strictly scientific point of view all people are machines governed by external influences. But the question is, can the scientific point of view be wholly accepted?”
“Scientific or not scientific is all the same to me,” said G. “I want you to understand what I am saying. Look, all those people you see,” he pointed along the street, “are simply machines—nothing more.”
“I think I understand what you mean,” I said. “And I have often thought how little there is in the world that can stand against this form of mechanization and choose its own path.”
“This is just where you make your greatest mistake,” said G. “You think there is something that chooses its own path, something that can stand against mechanization; you think that not everything is equally mechanical.”
“Why, of course not!” I said. “Art, poetry, thought, are phenomena of quite a different order.”
“Of exactly the same order,” said G. “These activities are just as mechanical as everything else. Men are machines and nothing but mechanical actions can be expected of machines.”
Source: In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky | Submitted by: booklish
Thus Spoke Zarathustra :: Nietzsche :: Superman
Posted:2013-10-02 11:56:57 UTC 05:30
All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.
Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?
Lo, I teach you the Superman!
The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman SHALL BE the meaning of the earth!
I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.
Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!
…
But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency?
Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche | Submitted by: booklish
Jonathan Livingston Seagull :: Bach :: Not Faith But Understanding
Posted:2013-10-02 11:56:37 UTC 05:30
Chiang spoke slowly and watched the younger gull ever so carefully. “To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is,” he said, “you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived …”
The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty-two inch wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time. Jonathan kept at it, fiercely, day after day, from before sunrise till past midnight. And for all his effort he moved not a feather width from his spot.
“Forget about faith!” Chiang said it time and again. “You didn’t need faith to fly, you needed to understand flying. This is just the same. Now try again …”
Then one day Jonathan, standing on the shore, closing his eyes, concentrating, all in a flash knew what Chiang had been telling him. “Why, that’s true! I am a perfect, unlimited gull!” He felt a great shock of joy.
Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach | Submitted by: booklish
The Kybalion :: Three Initiates :: The Principle of Rhythm
Posted:2013-10-02 11:56:21 UTC 05:30
“Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.”
This Principle embodies the truth that in everything there is manifested a measured motion, to and fro; a flow and inflow; a swing backward and forward; a pendulum-like movement; a tide-like ebb and flow; a high-tide and low-tide; between the two poles which exist in accordance with the Principle of Polarity described a moment ago. There is always an action and a reaction; an advance and a retreat; a rising and a sinking. This is in the affairs of the Universe, suns, worlds, men, animals, mind, energy, and matter. This law is manifest in the creation and destruction of worlds; in the rise and fall of nations; in the life of all things; and finally in the mental states of Man (and it is with this latter that the Hermetists find the understanding of the Principle most important).
…
“Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law.”
Source: The Kybalion: A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of… by Three Initiates | Submitted by: booklish
Siddhartha :: Hesse :: Realization
Posted:2013-10-02 11:56:04 UTC 05:30
Wondrous indeed was my life, so he thought, wondrous detours it has taken. As a boy, I had only to do with gods and offerings. As a youth, I had only to do with asceticism, with thinking and meditation, was searching for Brahman, worshipped the eternal in the Atman. But as a young man, I followed the penitents, lived in the forest, suffered of heat and frost, learned to hunger, taught my body to become dead. Wonderfully, soon afterwards, insight came towards me in the form of the great Buddha’s teachings, I felt the knowledge of the oneness of the world circling in me like my own blood. But I also had to leave Buddha and the great knowledge. I went and learned the art of love with Kamala, learned trading with Kamaswami, piled up money, wasted money, learned to love my stomach, learned to please my senses. I had to spend many years losing my spirit, to unlearn thinking again, to forget the oneness. Isn’t it just as if I had turned slowly and on a long detour from a man into a child, from a thinker into a childlike person? And yet, this path has been very good; and yet, the bird in my chest has not died. But what a path has this been! I had to pass through so much stupidity, through so much vices, through so many errors, through so much disgust and disappointments and woe, just to become a child again and to be able to start over.
Source: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse | Submitted by: booklish
PS: Siddartha and The Prophet are in the public domain. Here are the links for Siddartha and The Prophet. P.D. Ouspensky refers to George Gurdjieff (enlightened mystic from Russia) when he refers “G.” . “Thus Spake/Spoke Zarathustra” is Osho’s most loved book out of 150,000 books that he read, here is the complete list. For book recommendations by Swamiji watch this Swaminar.
PPS: And yeah, later on, please don’t blame me as a procrastinator( which I really am 🙂 ) saying that in the intro I said there will be around 20 posts in this series, I included 13 of them here only which I was counting separately earlier.
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