from Parabola:
Anker (1831-1910), Girl Peeling Potatoes.
Is it possible for the rose to say,
“I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me,
but I will withhold it from the bad?”
Or is it possible for the lamp to say,
“I will give my light to the good people in this room,
but I will withhold it from the evil people”?
Or can a tree say,
“I’ll give my shade to the good people who rest under me,
but I will withhold it from the bad”?
These are images of what love is about.
—Anthony de Mello from Awareness: The perils and opportunities of reality. By way of The Beauty We Love.
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Edward Henry Potthast (1857-1927), Along the Mystic River.
"There is the ability to be engaged very actively in life, but at the same time to be non-attached. One does what one does with full enthusiasm: I love to drink coffee, to paint, to dig a garden or chop wood. But can I be wholly in the act but not attached to it? And at the same time, be in relation to this “other,” this stillness, which is in me, in you, in everything. This requires discipline, which one reaches through various methods. It’s not only meditation, and it certainly isn’t through scholastic studies or through prayer of the ordinary kind, although prayer can be a cessation of thought, a giving up, a letting go and being here totally. Now, perhaps, to be that way does require a great preliminary doing; I’m not sure about that. As an old man who has been through a lot of that sort of practice, I don’t think it’s really necessary. I don’t see the sense of it now. I think if I were in the hands of a master today, he would simply tell me, “Look, mister, just be still. Watch your breathing. Get your center of gravity down here.” And then this appears. This is in you, it’s always here. All one has to do is open to it. So I don’t see the sense of all these schools and all these disciplines. I do see the sense, because one is unable, one is not capable as one is, in ordinary life."
—William Segal
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
René Daumal (16 March, 1908 - 1944, tuberculosis) was a French writer, philosopher and poet. He was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France.
"I am dead because I lack desire,
I lack desire because I think I possess.
I think I possess because I do not try to give.
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;
Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing:
Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.”
—In a brief Postface to Mount Analogue written by René Daumal’s wife, Véra, she writes, “On one occasion [René] did describe in concise terms the path he saw before him. The text appears in one of the last letters he wrote me.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Segal
At This Moment
When we turn to anything other than God
we miss the mark.
Even when we turn to God as an image
or concept
or idea,
we miss the mark
This is what separates the mystics
and the literal minded religious.
At this point, too,
The mystics sometimes flounder.
Turning to God
in the sense of
absolute stillness, in the sense that
one dwells in the great void
cannot be described. But it is here
that we enter fully
into the experience. It is here
that the words
void
or emptiness
take their meaning and significance
for the seeker.
The knowledge
of higher presence
of the ever-present merging
of one ordinary,
small
existence
with a limitless force
comes together.
All the words merge
and disappear
at this moment.
— The text as well as the photograph are from the autobiography of William Segal, entitled A Voice at the Borders of Silence. Edited by Mark Magill. The Overlook Press, New York, 2003, p. 234.
Anker (1831-1910), Girl Peeling Potatoes.
Is it possible for the rose to say,
“I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me,
but I will withhold it from the bad?”
Or is it possible for the lamp to say,
“I will give my light to the good people in this room,
but I will withhold it from the evil people”?
Or can a tree say,
“I’ll give my shade to the good people who rest under me,
but I will withhold it from the bad”?
These are images of what love is about.
—Anthony de Mello from Awareness: The perils and opportunities of reality. By way of The Beauty We Love.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edward Henry Potthast (1857-1927), Along the Mystic River.
"There is the ability to be engaged very actively in life, but at the same time to be non-attached. One does what one does with full enthusiasm: I love to drink coffee, to paint, to dig a garden or chop wood. But can I be wholly in the act but not attached to it? And at the same time, be in relation to this “other,” this stillness, which is in me, in you, in everything. This requires discipline, which one reaches through various methods. It’s not only meditation, and it certainly isn’t through scholastic studies or through prayer of the ordinary kind, although prayer can be a cessation of thought, a giving up, a letting go and being here totally. Now, perhaps, to be that way does require a great preliminary doing; I’m not sure about that. As an old man who has been through a lot of that sort of practice, I don’t think it’s really necessary. I don’t see the sense of it now. I think if I were in the hands of a master today, he would simply tell me, “Look, mister, just be still. Watch your breathing. Get your center of gravity down here.” And then this appears. This is in you, it’s always here. All one has to do is open to it. So I don’t see the sense of all these schools and all these disciplines. I do see the sense, because one is unable, one is not capable as one is, in ordinary life."
—William Segal
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
René Daumal (16 March, 1908 - 1944, tuberculosis) was a French writer, philosopher and poet. He was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France.
"I am dead because I lack desire,
I lack desire because I think I possess.
I think I possess because I do not try to give.
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;
Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing:
Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.”
—In a brief Postface to Mount Analogue written by René Daumal’s wife, Véra, she writes, “On one occasion [René] did describe in concise terms the path he saw before him. The text appears in one of the last letters he wrote me.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Segal
At This Moment
When we turn to anything other than God
we miss the mark.
Even when we turn to God as an image
or concept
or idea,
we miss the mark
This is what separates the mystics
and the literal minded religious.
At this point, too,
The mystics sometimes flounder.
Turning to God
in the sense of
absolute stillness, in the sense that
one dwells in the great void
cannot be described. But it is here
that we enter fully
into the experience. It is here
that the words
void
or emptiness
take their meaning and significance
for the seeker.
The knowledge
of higher presence
of the ever-present merging
of one ordinary,
small
existence
with a limitless force
comes together.
All the words merge
and disappear
at this moment.
— The text as well as the photograph are from the autobiography of William Segal, entitled A Voice at the Borders of Silence. Edited by Mark Magill. The Overlook Press, New York, 2003, p. 234.
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