This is part II of previous post WHY WE LIVE. This I have recollected from my journal but unfortunately I just lost the reference, but never the less the argument is there:
Every individual is an experiment on part of nature, a throw into the unknown; his only vocation should be to allow this throw to work itself out in his inner most being. Humanity is not something complete that must be maintained and protected, but a distant goal towards which we were marching. Moreover because darkness and light resides within each of us, becoming conscious of our own evil is our only hope in a world where our capacity for destruction is weighed against the soul’s capacity for compassion and regeneration.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Why We Live
The greatest Sufi Master Sheikh Muhammad Mohiuddin Ibn ul Arabi (1165-1240) commonly known as Ibn Arabi said "meaning of Life is nothing but Life itself". In my journal where I write reminisces I wrote following after reading a Book “Good and Evil” by Richard Taylor. The following point of view so effectively resonates with greatest Sufi master’s remarks, but then Sheikhs remarks are always elusive. This is one point of view; I would come up with others’ also, as this remark always fascinated me to look for its all possible dimensions and meanings.
The point of any living thing's life is, evidently, nothing but life itself. If the builders of a great and flourishing ancient civilization could somehow return now to see archaeologists unearthing the trivial remnants of what they had once accomplished with such effort-see the fragments of pots and vases, a few broken statues, and such token of another age and greatness-they could indeed ask themselves what the point it all was, if this is all it finally came to. Yet, it did not seem so to them then, for it was just the building, and not what was finally built, that gave their life meaning. This is surely the way to look at all of life-at one's own life, and each day and moment it contains; of the life of a nation; of the species; of the life of the world; and of everything that breathes. Even the glow worms, whose cycles of existence over the millions of years seem so pointless when looked at by us, will seem entirely different to us if we can somehow try to view from within. Their endless activity, which gets nowhere, is just what it is their will to purse. This is its whole justification and meaning. Nor would it be any salvation to the birds that span the globe every year back and forth, to have a home made for them in a cage with plenty of food and protection, so that they would not have to migrate any more. It would be their condemnation, for it is the doing that counts for them, and not what they hope to win by it. You no sooner drew your first breath than you responded to the will that was in you to live. You no more ask whether it will be worthwhile, or whether anything of significance will come of it, than the worm and the birds. The point of living is simply to be living, in the manner that it is your nature to be living.
You go through life building your castles, each of these beginning to fade into time as the next is begun; yet it would be a condemnation, and one that would in no way be redeemed were you able to gaze upon the things you have done, even if these were beautiful and absolutely permanent, as they never are. What counts is that you should be able to begin a new task, a new castle, a new bubble. It counts only because it is there to be done and you have the will to do it.
COMING UP OTHER POINTS OF VIEW SOON.
The point of any living thing's life is, evidently, nothing but life itself. If the builders of a great and flourishing ancient civilization could somehow return now to see archaeologists unearthing the trivial remnants of what they had once accomplished with such effort-see the fragments of pots and vases, a few broken statues, and such token of another age and greatness-they could indeed ask themselves what the point it all was, if this is all it finally came to. Yet, it did not seem so to them then, for it was just the building, and not what was finally built, that gave their life meaning. This is surely the way to look at all of life-at one's own life, and each day and moment it contains; of the life of a nation; of the species; of the life of the world; and of everything that breathes. Even the glow worms, whose cycles of existence over the millions of years seem so pointless when looked at by us, will seem entirely different to us if we can somehow try to view from within. Their endless activity, which gets nowhere, is just what it is their will to purse. This is its whole justification and meaning. Nor would it be any salvation to the birds that span the globe every year back and forth, to have a home made for them in a cage with plenty of food and protection, so that they would not have to migrate any more. It would be their condemnation, for it is the doing that counts for them, and not what they hope to win by it. You no sooner drew your first breath than you responded to the will that was in you to live. You no more ask whether it will be worthwhile, or whether anything of significance will come of it, than the worm and the birds. The point of living is simply to be living, in the manner that it is your nature to be living.
You go through life building your castles, each of these beginning to fade into time as the next is begun; yet it would be a condemnation, and one that would in no way be redeemed were you able to gaze upon the things you have done, even if these were beautiful and absolutely permanent, as they never are. What counts is that you should be able to begin a new task, a new castle, a new bubble. It counts only because it is there to be done and you have the will to do it.
COMING UP OTHER POINTS OF VIEW SOON.
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
When Life is Bitter
THE GREATEST MINDS AND IDEAS OF ALL TIME is compilation of Will Durant’s essays, compiled and edited by John Little. Following is a beautiful passage from this book on LIFE, RELATIONSHIPS and BOOKS which is worth reading and remembering:
This, then, is our Odyssey of books. Here is another world, containing the selected excellence of a hundred generations; not quite so fair and vital as this actual world of nature and human enterprise, but abounding nevertheless in unsuspected wisdom and beauty unexplored. Life is better than literature, friendship is sweeter than philosophy, and children reach into our hearts with profounder music than comes from any symphony, but even so these living delights offer no derogation to the modest and secondary pleasures of our books.
When life is bitter, or friendship slips away, or perhaps our children leave us for their own haunts and homes, we shall come and sit at the table with Shakespeare and Goethe, and laugh at the world of Rabelais, and see its autumn loveliness with John Keats. For these are friends who give us only their best, who never answers back and always wait our call. When we have walked with them awhile, and listened humbly to their speech, we shall be healed of our infirmities, and know the peace that comes of understanding.
This, then, is our Odyssey of books. Here is another world, containing the selected excellence of a hundred generations; not quite so fair and vital as this actual world of nature and human enterprise, but abounding nevertheless in unsuspected wisdom and beauty unexplored. Life is better than literature, friendship is sweeter than philosophy, and children reach into our hearts with profounder music than comes from any symphony, but even so these living delights offer no derogation to the modest and secondary pleasures of our books.
When life is bitter, or friendship slips away, or perhaps our children leave us for their own haunts and homes, we shall come and sit at the table with Shakespeare and Goethe, and laugh at the world of Rabelais, and see its autumn loveliness with John Keats. For these are friends who give us only their best, who never answers back and always wait our call. When we have walked with them awhile, and listened humbly to their speech, we shall be healed of our infirmities, and know the peace that comes of understanding.
Sunday, 13 September 2009
Relationship is Existence
I have been keeping a journal for a long time, sometimes writing my reminisces, poetry, sketches of people whom I meet-drawing and writing about them, writing some words again and again without any reason or rhyme and noting lines and passages from the books which inspires during their reading. Following are two notes from my reading of J.KRISHNAMURTI, from whom I learned that truth is pathless territory and one cannot approach it by any path!
RELATIONSHIPS
Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without relationship you are not; to be is to be related; to be related is existence. You exist only in relationship; otherwise you do not exist; existence has no meaning. It is not because you think you are that you come into existence. You exist because you are related; and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict.
MEDITATION
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life-perhaps the greatest and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealously, if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.
RELATIONSHIPS
Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without relationship you are not; to be is to be related; to be related is existence. You exist only in relationship; otherwise you do not exist; existence has no meaning. It is not because you think you are that you come into existence. You exist because you are related; and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict.
MEDITATION
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life-perhaps the greatest and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealously, if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
If there is magic
LOREN EISELEY (1907-1977) naturalist, philosopher, poet was the man who showed us, how to love nature, not as a bystander or the observer but as a part of it, as one that is observed. How to love, even the small and insignificant, the big and the mighty, all as friends, nobody in this natural park was an enemy , as all were contributing towards a single and most sacred path, the path of Life, and protecting its uninterrupted glorious cycle.
LOREN EISELEY wrote several books, THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, THE FIREMAMENT OF TIME, THE NIGHT COUNTRY and THE LOST NOTE BOOKS are my most cherished treasure. I would like to share a passage from THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, Chapter, Flow of the River:
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. Its least stir even, as now in a rain pond on a flat roof opposite my office, is enough to bring me searching to the window. A wind ripple may be translating itself into life. I have a constant feeling that some time I may witness that momentous miracle on a city roof, see life vertiably and suddenly boiling out of a heap of rusted pipes and old telivision aerials. I marvel at how a sudden water beetle has come and is submarining there in a spatter of green algae. Thin vapors, rust, wet tar and sun are alembic remarkably like the mind; they throw off odorous shadows that threaten to take real shape when no one is looking.
Onec in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole enos, the enos that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort. The mind has sunk away into its beginings among old roots and the obscure tricklings and moving that stir inanimate things.
No utilitarian philosophy explains a snow crystal, no doctrine of use or disuse. Water has merely leapt out of vapor and thin nothingness in the night sky to array itself in form. There is no logical reason for existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution. it is an apparition from that mysterious shadow world beyond nature, that final world which contains-if anything contains-the explanation of men and catsish and green leaves.
LOREN EISELEY wrote several books, THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, THE FIREMAMENT OF TIME, THE NIGHT COUNTRY and THE LOST NOTE BOOKS are my most cherished treasure. I would like to share a passage from THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, Chapter, Flow of the River:
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. Its least stir even, as now in a rain pond on a flat roof opposite my office, is enough to bring me searching to the window. A wind ripple may be translating itself into life. I have a constant feeling that some time I may witness that momentous miracle on a city roof, see life vertiably and suddenly boiling out of a heap of rusted pipes and old telivision aerials. I marvel at how a sudden water beetle has come and is submarining there in a spatter of green algae. Thin vapors, rust, wet tar and sun are alembic remarkably like the mind; they throw off odorous shadows that threaten to take real shape when no one is looking.
Onec in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole enos, the enos that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort. The mind has sunk away into its beginings among old roots and the obscure tricklings and moving that stir inanimate things.
No utilitarian philosophy explains a snow crystal, no doctrine of use or disuse. Water has merely leapt out of vapor and thin nothingness in the night sky to array itself in form. There is no logical reason for existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution. it is an apparition from that mysterious shadow world beyond nature, that final world which contains-if anything contains-the explanation of men and catsish and green leaves.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)