Poems, Paintings, Sculptures, Analects, Prophecies, Plays, Quotes, Axioms, Photographs....

From Parabola:

Photo of Swami Vishnudevananda posted by Flex Yoga on Flickr.

"This is one of the most fundamental principles that he taught us. It is a very profound principle. You cannot bestow on others what you do not possess. Unless you possess peace, you cannot give peace to others. Swami Vishnudevananda taught that the key to external peace is inner peace. Once inner peace is found, it can be given to others, it can be shared with others."

ARCS

Albert Einstein sailing his boat on Saranac Lake (Courtesy: The Fantova Collection, Princeton University)

‎"A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels."—From "Atomic Education Urged by Einstein," New York Times (May 25, 1946), and later quoted in the article "The Real Problem is in the Hearts of Man" by Michael Amrine, from the New York Times Magazine (June 23, 1946). A slightly modified version of the June 23 article was reprinted in Einstein on Peace by Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden (1960), and it was also reprinted in Einstein on Politics by David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann (2007), p. 383.

In the 23 June article Einstein expanded somewhat on the original quote from the 25 May article:

"Many persons have inquired concerning a recent message of mine that "a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels." Often in evolutionary processes a species must adapt to new conditions in order to survive. Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we knew it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking.
In the light of new knowledge, a world authority and an eventual world state are not just desirable in the name of brotherhood, they are necessary for survival. In previous ages a nation's life and culture could be protected to some extent by the growth of armies in national competition. Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars."

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Edouard Boubat, Child with Seashell

"There are certain pictures I can never take. We turn on the TV and are smothered with cruelty and suffering and I don’t need to add to it. So I just photograph peaceful things. A vase of flowers, a beautiful girl. Sometimes, through a peaceful face, I can bring something important into the world."

—Edouard Boubat, Paris, 1991

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Thomas Eakins, Walt Whitman,1891

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

—Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

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Ran Ortner, Swell No. 25, 2009. 48 x 48 in. Oil on panel

Oceans

“I have a feeling that my boat,
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing. . .
–nothing happens?
Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?”
—Juan Ramon Jimenez