Talent or genius

Talent hits a target no one else can hit;
    Genius hits a target no one else can see.

            Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

 

 

 

 

Faith

Faith is not about finding meaning in the world,
there may be no such thing ―
faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives.

                Terry Tempest Williams, Leap

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

                             William E. Stafford 

Integrity counts

When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent illiterate.
Since I've been born, the population has doubled
and that total population is now 65 per cent literate.
That's a gain of 130-fold of the literacy.
When humanity is primarily illiterate, it needs leaders
to understand and get the information and deal with it.
When we are at the point where the majority of humans themselves are literate,
able to get the information, we're in an entirely new relationship to Universe.
We are at the point where the integrity of the individual counts
and not what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do.

                Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path

 

 

 

 

Continue on

Our business in this world is not to succeed,
        but to continue to fail, in good spirits.

                 Robert Louis Stevenson, Reflections and Remarks on Human Life

 

 

 

 

 

Old tricks

An old trick well done is far better than a new trick with no effect.

                Harry Houdini, The Right Way to Do Wrong

 

 

 

 

 

 

Success

Never be discouraged from being an activist
because people tell you that you'll not succeed.
You have already succeeded if you're out there
representing truth or justice or compassion or fairness or love.

        Doris Haddock, Granny D: Walking Across America in My Ninetieth Year

 

 

 

Don't worry...

Basically, there is simply nothing to worry about,
because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe.

                Alan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology

 

 

 

 

A lesson in compassion

I was at a lunch with the Dalai Lama and five Buddhist teachers at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. We were sitting in a charming room with white carpets and many windows. The food was a delightful, fragrant, vegetarian Indian meal. There were lovely flower arrangements on the table.

We were discussing sexual misconduct among Western Buddhist teachers. A woman Buddhist from California brought up someone who was using his students for his own sexual needs. One woman said, ‘We are working with him with compassion, trying to get him to understand his motives for exploiting female students and to help him change his actions.’

The Dalai Lama slammed his fist on the table, saying loudly, ‘Compassion is fine, but it has to stop! And those doing it should be exposed!’ All the serving plates on the table jumped, the water glasses tipped precariously, and I almost choked on the bite of saffron rice in my mouth.

Suddenly I saw him as a fierce manifestation of compassion and realized that this clarity did not mean that the Dalai Lama had moved away from compassion. Rather, he was bringing compassion and manifesting it as decisive fierceness. His magnetism was glowing like a fire.

I will always remember that day, because it was such a good teaching on compassion and precision. Compassion is not a wishy-washy ‘anything goes’ approach. Compassion can say a fierce no!

Lama Tsültrim Allione, Wisdom Rising

Poem: Morning Bell

The eye opens like a curtain rising
In the dark, feet search for something real
Consciousness hasn’t happened yet
And the floorboards are skin temperature
A fresh repetition, today will be one more or one less
An impromptu concert strikes up in the kitchen
Maybe this black coffee is the morning bell-
the prize you win for returning safe from sleep.

                Iman Mersal, translated by Robyn Creswell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No boaster and buffoons

Our America has a bad name for superficialness.
Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons,
but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

                    Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fate

 

 

 

 

 

If only

The things you think are the disasters
in your life are not the disasters really.
Almost anything can be turned around:
out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

                Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

 

 

 

 

 

Hard choices

And that's when you realize that God gave you a penis and a brain
        and only enough blood to run one at a time.

                         Robin Williams, Live on Broadway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your point is?

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

        Steve Weinberg, 1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Dreams of a Final Theory 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good advice

When you win, say nothing;
        when you lose, say less.

            Paul Brown, Cleveland Browns coach

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The task

There is immense silent agony in the world,
and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor,
to prevent the desecration of the soul
and the violation of our dream of honesty.
The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets,
the more powerfully it became clear to me
what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey:
that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern
one must feel for the suffering of human beings,
that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself,
that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

            Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity