Do not feed on the spectres of books or information, but take everything and filter it through yourself.
-Simon Wilder
I think it’s fair to say, if you give thought to the consequences of violence, the logical choice would be do your best to avoid it. Fight or flight is still buried deep down in that part of the brain that controls blinking and breathing heavy with our mouth open while leaning over my shoulder and looking at my computer screen in turn causing the little hairs on my neck to stand up from the phantom feeling of moisture collecting on my ear from the hot wind blowing by it.
For people living alone, that might catch them off guard and they lash out or run by reflex. For me, I’d say “oh, that’s just gam gam bringing me some ramen and makin sure i ain’t telling lies on the internet.” If someone told me that I had to beat up my grandma, I’d have to force myself not to think about it because if I did think about it, my immediate thought is “grampa is gonna whoop my ass for doing this.” And then I wouldn’t want to do it. I reckon if I didn’t have a mind, I could beat up grandma, no shot she could take me.
In order to succeed the attacker must destroy. But the defender only needs to survive to succeed.
Sounds like grandma needs an old fashioned talking too.
“To surmount maya (delusion) was the task assigned to the human race by the millennial prophets. To rise above the duality of creation and perceive the unity of the Creator was conceived of as man’s highest goal. Those who cling to the cosmic illusion must accept its essential law of polarity: flow and ebb, rise and fall, day and night, pleasure and pain, good and evil, birth and death. This cyclic pattern assumes a certain anguishing monotony, after man has gone through a few thousand human births; he begins to cast a hopeful eye beyond the compulsions of maya.”
Autobiography of A Yogi is an incredible book I recommend everyone read. You can actually read it free online. A fascinating autobiography of A Hindu saint who came to American to teach yoga 100 years ago.
I choose to think otherwise, but it’s just my opinion.
There is no difference, a glimpse of eternal love is a glimpse of death, which is a disguise of birth.
The energy we embody does not disappear, it goes home.
We’re on vacation from eternal bliss and starting to remember we’re only on vacation,
we can go back home any time, while we’re still alive too.
“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.”
~ James Baldwin
Thanks for sharing…my Ma gave me this book many years ago when I was struggling with a brown sugar habit and it put me on a path that led me to what I am today
Thank you for still being here, and thanks to your Ma!
There is no without, without the within.
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
— Socrates
Peace is not having what you want, it’s wanting what you have.
One day the Buddha was sittng silently in meditation when a monk approached to tell him that his home state had been conquered and his people enslaved. The Buddha sat there quietly, seeming to have not heard. When the messenger began to repeat the report the buddha responded. “Until the hearts of men can be changed, there will never be peace in the world. “
In the great mirror of consciousness, images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material - destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence - vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion, “I am so-and-so,” obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.
Nisargadatta Maharaj