Emily Dickinson on life

Poems series I


Life


6

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.


11

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, -- you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.


14- The Secret

Some things that fly there be, --
Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:
Of these no elegy.

Some things that stay there be, --
Grief, hills, eternity:
Nor this behooveth me.

There are, that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the riddle lies!

15- The Mystery of Pain

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

26- Rouge Gagne

'T is so much joy! 'T is so much joy!
If I should fail, what poverty!
And yet, as poor as I
Have ventured all upon a throw;
Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so
This side the victory!

Life is but life, and death but death!
Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!
And if, indeed, I fail,
At least to know the worst is sweet.
Defeat means nothing but defeat,
No drearier can prevail!

And if I gain, -- oh, gun at sea,
Oh, bells that in the steeples be,
At first repeat it slow!
For heaven is a different thing
Conjectured, and waked sudden in,
And might o'erwhelm me so!

33- Hope (1)

Hope is a thing with feathers
That perches on the soul,
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.


42- A Word

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.


44- Compensation

For each ecstatic instant
We must in anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.


49- Experience

I stepped from plank to plank
So slow and cautiously;
The stars above my head I felt,
About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch,-
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experience.


69

Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God's residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.


83- The Brain

The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.


98- Returning

I years had been from home,
And now, before the door,
I dared not open, lest a face
I never saw before

Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business,- just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?

I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near;
The silence like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear.

I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and the dead had faced,
But never quaked before.

I fitted to the latch
My hand, with trembling care,
Lest back the awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there.

I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears, and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house.


100- Sight

Before I got my eye put out,
I liked as well to see
As other creatures that have eyes,
And know no other way.

But were it told to me today,
That I might have the sky
For mine, I tell you that my heart
Would split, for size of me.

The meadows mine, the mountains mine,-
All forests, stintless stars,
As much of noon as I could take
Between my finite eyes.

The motions of the dipping birds,
The lightning's jointed road,
For mine to look at when I liked,-
The news would strike me dead!

So, safer, guess, with just my soul
Upon the window pane
Where other creatures put their eyes,
Incautious of the sun.

Friedrich W. Nietzsche- quotes and life

"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.
   Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
   'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the last man, and blinks.
   The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest.
   'We have invented happiness,'say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth...
   One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion.
   No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
   'Formerly, all the world was mad,' say the most refined, and they blink...
   One has one's little pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for health.
   'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink."

   "Of the three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.
   There is much that is difficult for the spirit, the strong, reverent spirit that would bear much: but the difficult and the most difficult are what its strength demands.
   What is difficult? asks the spirit that would bear much, and kneels down like a camel wanting to be well loaded. What is most difficult, O heroes, asks the spirit that would bear much, that I may take it upon myself and exult in my strength? Is it not humbling oneself to wound one's haughtiness? Letting one's folly shine to mock one's wisdom?...
   Or is it this: stepping into filthy waters when they are the waters of truth, and not repulsing cold frogs and hot toads?
   Or is it this: loving those that despise us and offering a hand to the ghost that would frighten us?
   All these most difficult things the spirit that would bear much takes upon itself: like the camel that, burdened, speeds into the desert, thus the spirit speeds into its desert.
   In the loneliest desert, however, the second metamorphosis occurs: here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master in his own desert. Here he seeks out his last master: he wants to fight him and his last god; for ultimate victory he wants to fight with the great dragon.
   Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? "Thou shalt" is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, "I will." "Thou shalt" lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden "thou shalt."
   Values, thousands of years old, shine on these scales; and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: "All value has long been created, and I am all created value. Verily, there shall be no more 'I will.'" Thus speaks the dragon.
   My brothers, why is there a need in the spirit for the lion? Why is not the beast of burden, which renounces and is reverent, enough?
   To create new values -- that even the lion cannot do; but the creation of freedom for oneself and a sacred "No" even to duty -- for that, my brothers, the lion is needed. To assume the right to new values -- that is the most terrifying assumption for a reverent spirit that would bear much. Verily, to him it is preying, and a matter for a beast of prey. He once loved "thou shalt" as most sacred: now he must find illusion and caprice even in the most sacred, that freedom from his love may become his prey: the lion is needed for such prey.
   But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred "Yes." For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred "Yes" is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers the world."

 "I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
   All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment...
   Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.
   Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth...
   What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue.
   The hour when you say, 'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself.'
   The hour when you say, 'What matters my reason? Does it crave knowledge as the lion his food? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'
   The hour when you say, 'What matters my virtue? As yet it has not made me rage. How weary I am of my good and my evil! All that is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'

   "Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope over an abyss...
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under..."

- From "Thus spoke Zarathustra", Walter Kaufmann translation

Perspectives of Nietzsche

Nietzsche and Buddhism

"Human, all too human", 1999- an excellent documentary on Nietzsche.

"Siddharta" online, quotes and film

"Now, he thought, that all transitory things have slipped away from me again, I stand once more beneath the sun, as I once stood as a small child. Nothing is mine, I know nothing, I possess nothing, I have learned nothing...when I am no longer young, when my hair is fast growing gray...now I am beginning again like a child."

"The river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth...in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the future...Siddhartha the boy, Siddhartha the mature man and Siddhartha the old man [are] only separated by shadows, not through reality...Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence."

"[Siddhartha learns that] a true seeker could not accept any teachings, not if he sincerely wished to find something. But he who found, could give his approval to every path, every goal; nothing separated him from all the other thousands who lived in eternity, who breathed the Divine."

"[A]ll the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life...then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om - perfection."

"From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny. There shone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of things."

"When someone is seeking...it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything...because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal."

"Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good - death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me...I needed lust [and] to strive for property...to learn not to resist them."

"He saw the face of a newly born child, red and full of wrinkles, ready to cry. He saw the face of a murderer, saw him plunge a knife into the body of a man; at the same moment he saw this criminal kneeling down, bound, and his head cut off by an executioner. He saw the naked bodies of men and women in postures and transports of passionate love. He saw corpses stretched out, still, cold, empty. He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships to each other, all helping each other, loving, hating, destroying each other and become newly born. Each one of them was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that was transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another."

Hermann Hesse's "Siddharta" online

Here's the movie as well, though I have to say that all the movies that have been inspired by my favourite books have always disappointed me immensely. No film can give justice to the talent of the author themselves, it can give a poor duplication at best (that's if they don't change the plot like Hollywood disastrously often does).

We are all one

Guaranteed to touch the heart and inspire the mind,
this incredible short film shares an Indigenous Native American Prophecy that links all of life and the future of our planet.

"... And every day that you don't do what's right is a day when you've lost an option."





Help spread the message and send this video to your friends. More info on how you can help on http://www.weareallone-support.org/

Laughter- a special gift from evolution

The first hoots of laughter from an ancient ancestor of humans rippled across the land at least 10 million years ago, according to a study of giggling primates.

Researchers used recordings of apes and babies being tickled to trace the origins of laughter back to the last common ancestor that humans shared with the modern great apes, which include chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.

The finding challenges the view that laughter is a uniquely human trait, suggesting instead that it emerged long before humans split from the evolutionary path that led to our primate cousins, between 10m and 16m years ago.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jun/04/laughter-primates-apes-evolution-tickling

Laughter brings with it a host of positive effects that operate on both the physical and mental levels. It is also fun, expressive, and a way to release tension. Learn to laugh in the present moment, and you'll find that joy is always there.

http://www.dailyom.com/articles/2005/584.html

Talks and lectures of Alan Watts

http://watts.progressiveradionetwork.org/
Recommended blog with regular uploads of his talks and seminars.

DNA secrets

As an ex-genetics student I am still interested in the subject and always keep an eye out for something interesting on the field. I ended up quitting the study, first because I had a mind-blowing spiritual experience that made me see everything differently. Second because after the experience I got utterly disillusioned with formal study. I found that what they teach in universities, and even the most current research is still too far behind the knowledge that we are able to get about reality and ourselves experientially, just by going within, that Buddha's way was in the end the most practical way. It is really more useful to do meditation than follow any science curriculum in schools, which is completely out-dated and still stuck in ancient misconceptions and dogmas. I do not see any advance in this in the near future either and have abandoned the idea of trying to find another formal study, which of course would make my own life more easy, but anything partial, incomplete and riddled with illusions and ancient paradigms simply does not interest me.
Because until the science-religion debate is finally binned, progress in formal science to my mind is simply not possible. (The only exception probably quantum physics, which is based of the mind-matter connection). Of course there are many scientists who are aware of the limitations and the importance of transcending the limitations of old newtonian materialistic world-view, but they face a terrible compromise- they can a) stay in mainstream science in which in order to get scientific support to their theories they have to abandon any spiritual ideas or b) move outside of these rigid limits, into something which the blind have turned into the ridiculous, dubbing indiscriminately everything, either illuminating or hoax with a curse word- new age. Just like the ridicule and hate that hippie culture now experiences, there seems to be a powerful resistance towards true values and anything that does not support materialism, consumerism and ego-mind.

I have found however more truth in whatever out-there "new-age" underground scientific research there has been, than in any scientific newspaper ultimately controlled by the corporate world and advertising and most of all- the very minds of the traditional scientists still unaware of who they are. Sad state of affairs, but the truth in any case.

Here is a very "enlightened" video on DNA

YouTube - Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason With Pema Chodron - Part 5

YouTube - Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason With Pema Chodron - Part 3

Evolution

Just a few videos that I love on the subject. The theme itself is an endless and amazing discovery. The responsibility is there of course. But so is the divine sense of wonder about being part of it. If we only remembered all the time the big picture, then who of us would feel small, meaningless, separate, alone, without a purpose. Amazement, awe, wonder, sense of beauty, oneness, belonging- those are the only states of mind which are based on the truth. 

Special attention to the second video (series) by Ian Xel Lungold on the Mayans visionary understanding of evolution of consciousness. Really important stuff.

"We are star stuff, which has taken its destiny into its own hands." - Carl Sagan