4
" How do I love thee? wondered Orion. " Let me see. I love thee passionately and eternally...obviously eternally-that goes without saying." Holly blinked sweat from her eyes. " Is he serious?" she called over her shoulder to Foaly. " Oh, absolutely," said the centaur " If he asks you to look for birthmarks, say no immediately." " Oh, I would never." Orion assured her. " Ladies don't look for birthmarks; that is work for jolly fellows like the Goodly Beast and myself. Ladies, like Miss Short, do enough by simply existing. They exude beauty, and that is enough." " I am not exuding anything." said Holly, through gritted teeth. Orion tapped her shoulder. " I beg to differ. You're exuding right now, a wonderful aura. It's pastel blue with little dolphins." Holly gripped the wheel tightly. " I'm going to be sick. Did he just say pastel blue?" " And dolphins, little ones," said Foaly. "
7
" Many women are singing together of this:
one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,
one is at the aquarium tending a seal,
one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,
one is at the toll gate collecting,
one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,
one is straddling a cello in Russia,
one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,
one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,
one is dying but remembering a breakfast,
one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,
one is wiping the ass of her child,
one is staring out the window of a train
in the middle of Wyoming and one is
anywhere and some are everywhere and all
seem to be singing, although some can not
sing a note. "
― Anne Sexton , The Complete Poems
8
" On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze.A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that?Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. " Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind.In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday.Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us.It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: " nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning " everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral.All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being. "
9
" Only love can dispel hate From Satsang with Giten on Buddha,November 12, 2015, in StockholmBuddha says: SPEAK OR ACT WITH AN IMPURE MINDAND TROUBLE WILL FOLLOW YOUAS THE WHEEL FOLLOWS THE OX THAT DRIVES THE CART When Buddha uses the concept " impure mind" , he means mind.Mind is impure, and no-mind is pure.SPEAK OR ACT WITH AN IMPURE MIND means to speak or act from the mind. AND TROUBLE WILL FOLLOW YOU means that misery and suffering is the result of the mind, because the mind means unawareness. Mind will bring trouble and suffering as certain AS THE WHEEL FOLLOWS THE OX THAT DRIVES THE CART. WE ARE WHAT WE THINKALL THAT WE ARE ARISES WITH OUR THOUGHTS SPEAK OR ACT WITH A PURE MINDAND HAPPINESS WILL FOLLOW YOU AS YOUR SHADOW, UNSHAKABLE When Buddha says " pure mind" , he means no-mind, awareness.Happiness will follow you if you have a pure mind or no-mind. Suffering is a result of mind, of unawareness, happiness is a result of no-mind, of awareness. Happiness cannot be searched for directly, happiness can only be found if you do not search it directly. On the contrary, you have to search for awareness. When awareness comes, happiness comes of its own accord. " LOOK HOW HE ABUSED ME AND BEAT ME, HOW HE THREW ME DOWN AND ROBBED ME" LIVE WITH SUCH THOUGHTS AND YOU LIVE IN HATE " LOOK HOW HE ABUSED ME AND BEAT ME HOW HE THREW ME DOWN AND ROBBED ME" ABANDON SUCH THOUGHTS AND LIVE IN LOVE Fear and hate exists in the past and the future, love exists in the moment, in the here and now. Love exists in the present moment. Fear and hate has a reference in the past. Somebody has abused you in the past, and you are carrying it like a wound. Fear and hate is a limitation. If you hate somebody, you also create a hate in the heart of that person towards you. The world lives in fear, hate, destructiveness and violence. Hate creates hell on earth, love creates a paradise on earth. True love comes from your inner being.It is spontaneously welling up of joy, which has nothing to do with the past or the future. True love is in the moment. IN THIS WORLDHATE NEVER YET DISPELLED HATEONLY LOVE DISPELS HATETHIS IS THE LAW ANCIENT AND INEXHAUSTIBLE Hate never dispels hate, darkness cannot dispel darkness. Only love can dispel hate. The eternal law is that only love dispels hate, only light dispels darkness. Bring light into a room and the darkness disappears by itself. How can you bring light into your own being? Through becoming silent, aware, awake and conscious. That is how to bring the light in. The moment you are aware and awake, hate will not be found. It is not possible to hate somebody with awareness. You can only hate somebody in unawareness. When you are conscious, hate disappears, when you are not conscious, then hate is there. Love and hate, light and darkness, cannot exist together, because hate is the absence of love, darkness is the absence of light. YOU TOO SHALL PASS AWAYKNOWING THIS, HOW CAN YOU QUARREL We waste our life in quarreling, in conflict, when life is so short.Use your whole energy for awareness and meditation.Then you can become a light. Meditation will make you awake, because you will discover your inner being. Meditation brings an awakening. For the first time you will feel the truth of your own being. "
18
" I had all kinds of answers ready for the commissions that called me in and asked me what had made me become a Communist, but what had attracted me to the movement more than anything, dazzled me, was the feeling (real or apparent) of standing near the wheel of history. For in those days we actually did decide the fate of men and events, especially at the universities; in those early years there were very few Communists on the faculty, and the Communists in the student body ran the universities almost single-handed, making decisions on academic staffing, teaching reform, and the curriculum. The intoxication we experienced is commonly known as the intoxication of power, but (with a bit of good will) I could choose less severe words: we were bewitched by history; we were drunk with the thought of jumping on its back and feeling it beneath us; admittedly, in most cases the result was an ugly lust for power, but (as all human affairs are ambiguous) there was still (and especially, perhaps, in us, the young), an altogether idealistic illusion that we were inaugurating a human era in which man (all men) would be neither outside history, nor under the heel of history, but would create and direct it. "
― Milan Kundera , The Joke
