Inspiring Thoughts

Casual conversation between friends. Anything goes (almost).
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Do not be afraid to correct your faults,
If you can correct your faults, the will cease to exist.
Inferior people say they have no faults,
But the superior person changes his faults.
Confucius
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Kim O'Hara »

:emb: duplicate post.
Last edited by Kim O'Hara on Thu Aug 11, 2016 12:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Nicholas Weeks wrote:
The myth of inevitable and perpetual progress has been exploded by the impact of world wars, with their demonstration that autonomous man cannot solve the vast problems of racial and cultural conflict, economic welfare and political order...He is overwhelmed by his own machinery, and by social torrents set loose through his unwillingness to affirm his solidarity with his fellow men. The judgments of God are manifest in the world of today. The time has come to bring home to men that these are right judgments on human sin; that men bear these consequences inevitably, because they are morally responsible beings who have denied their own nature in denying their responsibility to their neighbors.
R. B. Y. Scott, The Relevance of the Prophets: An Introduction to the Old Testament Prophets and their Message (New York, 1968), 225.
This only makes sense in a theistic framework, and even there it's pure defeatism. In what way is it an "Inspiring Thought", Nicholas?
Especially to a Buddhist?

:namaste:
Kim
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Kim O'Hara wrote:
Nicholas Weeks wrote:
The myth of inevitable and perpetual progress has been exploded by the impact of world wars, with their demonstration that autonomous man cannot solve the vast problems of racial and cultural conflict, economic welfare and political order...He is overwhelmed by his own machinery, and by social torrents set loose through his unwillingness to affirm his solidarity with his fellow men. The judgments of God are manifest in the world of today. The time has come to bring home to men that these are right judgments on human sin; that men bear these consequences inevitably, because they are morally responsible beings who have denied their own nature in denying their responsibility to their neighbors.
R. B. Y. Scott, The Relevance of the Prophets: An Introduction to the Old Testament Prophets and their Message (New York, 1968), 225.
This only makes sense in a theistic framework, and even there it's pure defeatism. In what way is it an "Inspiring Thought", Nicholas?
Especially to a Buddhist?

:namaste:
Kim
If one is not a sectarian, rigid person, hung up on the words, just replace 'judgments of God' with karmic effects and it works fine.

I am inspired when I read a Xtian or any person saying we humans have, in general, failed in our moral responsibility to our fellow humans. Defining the problem is a good first step to the solution.

Besides this is not the Dharma Gems thread, it is in the Lounge where a certain flexibility is permitted.
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Kim O'Hara »

:thanks:
:namaste:
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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In 1928, a small party led by a British explorer, L. M. Nesbitt, was trapped by a band of fierce Danakils in the Danakil Depression of Africa. They were saved from massacre by a kind of Danakil prophet, a very ancient man named Suni Maa, who lived by a moral order that the young men of his clan could not apprehend. Nesbitt asked this “living skeleton” if the lives of the explorers were in danger.

“In great danger indeed,” replied Suni Maa, “especially with the younger men who are avaricious, and whose short life has not yet raised them above the soil to which they cling. They do not know that there are things, not of this world, but mysterious and superior, and worthy of being sought to the exclusion of everything else.”
Russell Kirk quoting L. M. Nesbitt, Desert and Forest: The Exploration of Abyssinian Danakil (London, 1955), 269.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

To perfect the inferior and provide for the lesser belongs even to souls as souls, since their descent was occasioned by forethought for things involved in process and by care for mortals.
Proclus
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh or grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Wordsworth, from "Lines Above Tintern Abbey"
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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How pure and still is the Supreme Being!
How deep and unfathomable,
as if the Honored Ancestor of all things!

Knowing the Eternal, means enlightenment.
Not knowing the Eternal, causes passions to arise,
And that is evil.

There is a Being wondrous and complete.
Before heaven and earth It was.
How calm It is! How spiritual!

Alone It standeth; and It changeth not.
Around It moveth; and It suffereth not.
Yet therefore can It be called the World's-Mother.

It is only the Supreme that excels
in imparting itself to men,
and enabling them to achieve merit.

Even if one has but a little knowledge,
he can walk in the ways of the Great Supreme.
Taoism
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Benevolence is the most honorable dignity
conferred by Heaven,
and the quiet home in which men should dwell
Confucianism
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Kim O'Hara »

....ism isn't an author nor yet a book.
:shrug:
Sources?

:thanks:
Kim
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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Kim O'Hara wrote:....ism isn't an author nor yet a book.
:shrug:
Sources?

:thanks:
Kim
Just getting lazy, I have been quoting recently from an old interfaith book by R.E. Hume Treasure House of Living Religions, look in the back matter where the sources are given.

http://www.squarecircles.com/urantiaboo ... igions.pdf
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Laziness is not inspiring, but thanks for your honesty.

:namaste:
Kim
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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Kim O'Hara wrote:Laziness is not inspiring, but thanks for your honesty.

:namaste:
Kim
Nor is your habit of petty, nitpicking.
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Ah! But it's your thread. Your responsibility to make sure it as inspiring as possible.
I don't have to be inspiring, although I would (really) like to be inspired.

:namaste:
Kim
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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kim o: I would (really) like to be inspired.
One can see why.
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Kim O'Hara »

:smile:
Everyone benefits from being inspired.

:meditate:
Kim
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Kim O'Hara wrote::smile:
Everyone benefits from being inspired.

:meditate:
Kim
Perhaps you have a scholarly interest in the exact citation, so I gave the source in a link where you could check. Is Kim grateful for that? No, that would not do for Kim. I wonder if your fault-finding habit has something to do with Kim's craving to find errors, faults, mistakes, blunders etc mainly in others - but not in Kim?
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

For those who have lost a beloved one recently, as I have. This quote was sent to me by son who loved his mother (my wife) much:

I asked the leaf whether it was frightened because it was

autumn and the other leaves were falling. The leaf told me,

“No. During the whole spring and summer I was completely

alive. I worked hard to help nourish the tree, and now much

of me is in the tree. I am not limited by this form. I am also

the whole tree, and when I go back to the soil, I will continue

to nourish the tree. So I don’t worry at all. As I leave this

branch and float to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell

her, ‘I will see you again very soon.’"

Suddenly I saw a kind of wisdom very much like the Wisdom contained in the Heart Sutra. You have to see life. You should not say, life of the leaf, you should only speak of life in the leaf and life in the tree. My life is just Life, and you can see it in me and in the tree. That day there was a wind blowing and, after a while, I saw the leaf leave the branch and float down to the soil, dancing joyfully, because as it floated it saw itself already there in the tree. It was so happy. I bowed my head, knowing that I have a lot to learn from the leaf because it is not afraid - it knew nothing can be born and nothing can die.
From Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary on the Heart Sutra.
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Nicholas Weeks wrote:
Kim O'Hara wrote::smile:
Everyone benefits from being inspired.

:meditate:
Kim
Perhaps you have a scholarly interest in the exact citation, so I gave the source in a link where you could check. Is Kim grateful for that?

Not pathetically grateful, but pleased. Thank you for supplying the reference.
No, that would not do for Kim. I wonder if your fault-finding habit has something to do with Kim's craving to find errors, faults, mistakes, blunders etc mainly in others - but not in Kim?
There's a fairly strong possibility :emb: that some of the tendency comes from Kim having been a teacher for decades. Pedantic accuracy can become reflexive, as can a feeling of being entitled and authorised to correct and, yes, teach anyone and everyone.
On the other hand, I do deny any craving to find errors, faults, mistakes, blunders etc, and do hold myself to the same standards as I hold others. If I'm publishing (even in a forum like this) a "quotation", I will find the most authoritative version of it that I can, and I will provide a reference to my source/s.

:namaste:
Kim
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