Inspiring Thoughts

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dreambow
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by dreambow »

'Somethings about life do not feel ok or right

but with my camera and fresh air I was able to seize many wonderful images today that allow peace in my own heart

I can't describe the beauty and maybe you can try visualizing it.

I was at a pond in a nearby shrine. It is one of my new routes because I needed to begin to create a hobby other than accomplishing brooding and depression.

Anyway-took many lovely photos today. buildings, frogs, lily pads, the flower of the lily pad. Not sure if it is considered a lotus.

but the one I savored the most is my last photo of the day.....it was a rolled up lily pad in the shape of a heart.

It could not get better than this.

then the rain came making it all the more beautiful'

Not sure who wrote this but its both beautiful and poignant
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.
Emerson - ‘Ode’ Inscribed to W. H. Channing (1847)
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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There is nothing more wholesome than to dip into the strong and steady current of wise judgment.
Paul Elmer More -Shelburne Essays vol. III (1905)
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Nor is a myth simply a work of fancy: true myth is only represented, never created, by a poet. Prometheus and Pandora were not invented by the solitary imagination of Hesiod. Real myths are the product of the moral experience of a people, groping toward divine love and wisdom—implanted in a people’s consciousness, before the dawn of history, by a power and a means we never have been able to describe in terms of mundane knowledge.
Excerpt From: The Essential Russell Kirk, p. 23
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
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Grigoris
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Grigoris »

Some person somewhere said...
hmmmmmm....jpg
hmmmmmm....jpg (20.42 KiB) Viewed 3637 times
"My religion is not deceiving myself."
Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."
The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.

There are two laws discrete
Not reconciled,
Law for man, and law for thing;
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking.
Emerson, "Ode to William H. Channing"
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

But what is the purpose of all this? That we may understand—since we have been born into this condition of being what we choose to be—that we ought to be sure above else that it may never be said against us that, born to a high position, we failed to appreciate it, but fell instead to the estate of brutes and uncomprehending beasts of burden; and that the saying of Asaph the Prophet, “You are all Gods and sons of the Most High,” might rather be true; and finally that we may not, through abuse of the generosity of a most indulgent Father, pervert the free option which He has given us from a saving to a damning gift. Let a certain saving ambition invade our souls so that, impatient of mediocrity, we pant after the highest things and (since, if we will, we can) bend all our efforts to their attainment.
Excerpt From: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Oration on the Dignity of Man.
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

As faith works miracles in man, so this power, the true efficacy, brings them about in matter. This truth is the highest power and impregnable fortress wherein the stone of the philosophers lies hid.
Gerhard Dorn (c.1530-1584)
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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A poignant dissatisfaction, whatever be its cause, is at bottom a dissatisfaction with ourselves. It is surprising how much hardship and humiliation a man will endure without bitterness when he has not the least doubt about his worth or when he is so integrated with others that he is not aware of a separate self.
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind page 1
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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The idea of the good is the greatest discipline.


Socrates, The Republic
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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For if we are temperate, we shall still continue to be so, though these calamities may befall us, and if we are contemplators of true beings, neither shall we be plundered of this habit; but all these dreadful events taking place, we shall still persevere in celebrating the rulers of all things, and in investigating the causes of effects.
- Proclus, On Providence, Fate, and that which is in our Power, 22, 20
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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If powers fail, there shall be praise for daring; and in great undertaking, to have willed is enough
.

Propertius II, 10, 5-6
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

It is the characteristic of the impotent (as Seneca writes) to have their knowledge all written down in note-books, as though the discoveries of those who preceded us had closed the path to our own efforts, as though the power of nature had become effete in us and could bring forth nothing which, if it could not demonstrate the truth, might at least point to it from afar. The farmer hates sterility in his field; and even more then must the divine mind hate the sterile mind with which it is joined and associated, because it hopes from that source to have offspring of such a higher nature.
Excerpt From: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Oration on the Dignity of Man, Caponigri trans.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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The ethics of the Vedanta is dependent on its metaphysics. According to the Vedanta metaphysics, the Brahman is the sole reality, and the individuals are only modifications of it. The Vedanta postulates the absolute oneness of all things. “In a Brahmana endowed with wisdom and humility, in a cow, in an elephant, as also in a dog and a dog-eater, the wise see the same” (Bhagavadgita, Chap. V, 18). This metaphysical monism requires us to look upon all creation as one, upon all thinking beings and the objects of all thought as non-different. In morals, the individual is enjoined to cultivate a spirit of abheda, or non-difference. Thus, the metaphysics of the Vedanta naturally leads to the ethics of love and brotherhood. Every other individual is to be regarded as your coequal, and treated as an end and not a means. In the Mahabharata, Parasara says to Janaka: “Let no man, however unhappy his lot, despise himself; man as such, though a chandala, is a noble creature in every way.” The Vedanta requires us to respect human dignity and demands the recognition of man as man.
S. Radhakrishnan. "The Ethics of Vedanta"
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

All the aspects of any civilization arise out of a people’s religion: its politics, its economics, its arts, its sciences, even its simple crafts are the by-products of religious insights and a religious cult. For until human beings are tied together by some common faith, and share certain moral principles, they prey upon one another. In the common worship of the cult, a community forms. At the heart of every culture is a body of ethics, of distinctions between good and evil; and in the beginning, at least, those distinctions are founded upon the authority of revealed religion.

Excerpt From: George A. Panichas. The Essential Russell Kirk.
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 »

Hi, Nicholas,
Reading your latest additions to this collection, it occurred to me that you may like the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html. Do you know them?

:reading:
Kim
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Kim O'Hara wrote:Hi, Nicholas,
Reading your latest additions to this collection, it occurred to me that you may like the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html. Do you know them?

:reading:
Kim
Sure; and Long's may have been the first translation I read, his has been around for a long time.
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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Such is the nature of true social justice, [Orestes] Brownson declares: not the selfish loneliness of the Benthamite philosophy, nor the mean equality of the Socialists, but a liberation of every man, under God, to do the best that is in him. Poverty is no evil, in itself; obscurity is no evil; labor is no evil; even physical pain may be no evil, as it was no evil to the martyrs. This world is a place of trial and struggle, so that we may find our higher nature in right response to challenge.
To the Socialist, says Brownson, poverty, obscurity, and physical suffering are positive evils, because the Socialist does not perceive that these challenges are put into the world to save us from apathy and sloth and indifference. The Socialist would condemn humanity to a condition of permanent injustice, in which no man could hope for what is his due, the right to exercise his talents given him by God; the Socialist would keep us all in perpetual childhood.

Excerpt From: The Essential Russell Kirk.
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

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.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

By mutual confidence and mutual aid,
Great deeds are done, and great discoveries made;
The wise new prudence from the wise acquire,
And one brave hero fans another's fire.
The Iliad, Book X, trans. Pope.
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
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