hermit's chronicles

Only You Could have inspired This Salt Doll To Dive Into the Ocean. - offered at the feet of my Guru on his birthday, May 25, 2009

I'd known bad men in Paris, and when I got back to Chicago I knew more, but for the most part their badness was due to heredity, which they couldn't help, or to their environment, which they didn't choose. I'm not sure that society wasn't more responsible for their crimes than they were. If I'd been God I couldn't have brought myself to condemn one of them, not even the worst, to eternal damnation... After all He created men: if He so created them that it was possible for them to sin, it was because He willed it. If I trained a dog to fly at the throat of any stranger who came into my backyard, it wouldn't be fair to beat him when he did so. - Larry Darrell in W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge

He [Father Ensheim] softly drummed his fingers on the table as though he were turning a notion over in his mind. "Our wise old Church," he said then, "has discovered that if you will act as if you believed, belief will be granted to you; if you pray with doubt, but pray with sincerity, your doubt will be dispelled; if you will surrender yourself to the beauty of that liturgy, the power of which over the human spirit has been proved by the experience of the ages, peace will descend upon you." - From W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge

...And what does 'duality' mean? There are pairs of interconnected opposites, neither of which can exist without the other. Duality is the main mechanism by which the totality of Manifestation operates, the very basis for life as we know it, life as it happens. However Ramesh points out: "The ordinary person in every moment judges. The ego is not prepared to accept what-is in the moment." It is when the ego becomes involved in making an apparent choice between the interconnected opposites that duality becomes dualism, the whole becomes split. - From the Editor’s Introduction to Advaita, The Buddha and the Unbroken Whole by Ramesh S. Balsekar

When it comes to the art of day to day living, shunyayogi heartily endorses Urdu poet Zauf's sentiments expressed in this verse: 'Gar tu jo bhala hai toh bura ho nahin sakta, ai Zauf Bura woh hai jo tujhe bura mantaa hai. Aur 'gar tu bura hai Toh woh sachh kehta hai Bhalaa uski baat ka bura kyon mantaa hai. Roughly translated: Says Zauf, If you know in your heart that you're a good soul, You cannot be otherwise. The one who accuses you of being 'bad', is probably 'bad' himself. However, if you know it within you that you are 'bad', then he speaks the the truth. Why take offense?

Prince Siddhartha is invited by his father King Suddhodana to the Ploughing Festival at his farm. As his father is engaged in ploughing, Prince Siddhartha sits in the cool shade of the rose-apple tree. And, as he sits there enjoying the sights and sounds and the splendour of Nature, he is given a deep insight into Life and Living. This is how Edwin Arnold describes the incident in his wonderful book The Light Of Asia : But on another day the King said, "Come, sweet son, and see the pleasance of the spring. And how the fruitful earth is wooed to yield Its riches to the reaper; how my realm - Which shall be thine when the pile flames for me - Feeds all its mouths and keeps the King's chest filled. Fair is the season with new leaves, bright blooms, Green grass, and cries of plough-time." So they rode Into a garden of wells and gardens, where, All up and down the rich red loam, the steers Strained their strong shoulders in the creaking yoke Dragging the ploughs; the fat soil ...

Anxiety can enter only when Faith exits. - Dada Vaswani