KEYS (10k)
39 The Mother
9 Sri Aurobindo
4 Sri Ramana Maharshi
3 Sri Ramakrishna
2 Swami Saradananda
2 Sri Sarada Devi
1 SWAMI VIRAJANANDA
1 Swami Adbhutananda
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
46 The Mother
21 Sri Aurobindo
20 Mata Amritanandamayi
20 Frederick Lenz
13 Anonymous
9 Amit Ray
8 Narendra Modi
8 Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi
8 George Harrison
7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
6 Gillian Flynn
6 Elizabeth Gilbert
5 Stephen Cope
5 Robin S Sharma
5 Max Brooks
4 Walter Isaacson
4 Sumantra Ghoshal
4 Stephen R Covey
4 Michael Wolff
4 John Green
1:Savitri is a mantra for the transformation of the world.
~ The Mother, (to Udar Pinto),#KEYS |
| 2:Calling upon God with one's mind steadfast is equivalent to a million repetitions of the Mantra. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS |
| 3:You must think of the one who repeats the mantra. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 606, #KEYS |
| 4:Sight is the essential poetic gift. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 5:All great poetic utterance is discovery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 6:The mantra-siddha is one who attains perfection by means of some sacred text or mantra. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS |
| 7:The giver of the Mantra is the real Guru, for by the repetition of this Mantra one obtains dispassion, and renunciation. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS |
| 8:Vision is the characteristic power of the poet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 9:Repeat your mantra several thousand times a day. That will give you strength. If evil thoughts appear be indifferent to them. ~ Swami Saradananda, #KEYS |
| 10:In this immoral and imperfect world even sin has sometimes its rewards. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Mantra, #KEYS |
| 11:Sheer objectivity brings us down from art to photography. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 12:The utterance of the Mantra in a proper spirit even for once purifies the mind. Instantly the mind becomes delighted and blissful. ~ Swami Saradananda, #KEYS |
| 13:Meditate on the deity of the mantra by performing special rites. While engaged, perform the japa of the mantra. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS |
| 14:Surrender to the Feet of the Guru is the real mantra, in which there will be no fear of Maya's delusion. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS |
15:Surrender to the Feet of the Guru is the real mantra, in which there will be no fear of Maya's delusion.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, [T5],#KEYS |
| 16:The native power of poetry is in its sight, not in its intellectual thought-matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 17:Once I took as Mantra the name of Allah from a Mohammedan teacher and repeated the name for several days, strictly observing their ways. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS |
| 18:Be fearless! Courage! Courage! Do not allow even the thought of defeat to enter your mind. Realization of the Goal, or let the body fall ! - let this be your Mantra. ~ SWAMI VIRAJANANDA, #KEYS |
| 19:The Mantra in other words is a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry, #KEYS |
| 20:One cannot achieve everything merely by receiving the mantra; one must perform sadhana—severe sadhana. One should perform sadhana exactly as the Guru has instructed and with full faith. ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS |
21:Building of the Soul
For the most part we are much too busy living and thinking to have leisure to be silent and see. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,#KEYS |
| 22:If the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 23:Realistic art does not and cannot give us a scientifically accurate presentation of life, because Art is not and cannot be Science. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 24:It is not sufficient for poetry to attain high intensities of word and rhythm; it must have, to fill them, an answering intensity of vision. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 25:The attempt to diminish the subjective view to the vanishing-point so as to get an accurate presentation is proper to science, not to poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 26:The poet really creates out of himself and not out of what he sees outwardly: that outward seeing only serves to excite the inner vision to its work. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS |
| 27:Remember the true basis of yoga... Obedience to the divine Will, nor assertion of self-will is the very first mantra... learn thou first absolutely to obey. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Ashram Diary 1984, August 21 and September 9, #KEYS |
| 28:The period of sadhana is like climbing a high mountain. You need a lot of strength and energy. Mountain climbers use a rope to pull themselves up. For you, the only rope is japa. Therefore, try to repeat your mantra constantly. ~ MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI, #KEYS |
29:The other quotation is a mantra.
OM Sri Aurobindo Mira
Open my mind, my heart, my life to your Light,
your Love, your Power. In all things may I see the Divine.
16 July 1938
On Himself, 26.512 ~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 11,#KEYS |
| 30:Be pure. Then you will be able to understand everything. Pray to Him. Crave for the strength to develop purity. Everything will happen by His grace. Unless He bestows the power, no one can become pure. Purity, purity, purity—chant this mantra. ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS |
31:There is one God, eternal truth is his name,
Creator of all things, and the all-pervading
spirit.
Fearless and without hatred, timeless and
formless.
Beyond birth and death, self-enlightened.
He is known by the grace of the Guru. ~ Guru Nanak, Mul Mantra,#KEYS |
32:As when the mantra sinks in Yoga's ear,
Its message enters stirring the blind brain
And keeps in the dim ignorant cells its sound;
The hearer understands a form of words
And, musing on the index thought it holds,
He strives to read it with the l ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest,#KEYS |
| 33:The highest inspiration brings the intrinsic word, the spiritual mantra; but even where the inspiration is less than that, has a certain vagueness or fluidity of outline, you cannot say of such mystic poetry that it has no inspiration, not the inspired word at all. Where there is no inspiration, there can be no poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS |
34:Nobody can give you the true mantra. It's not something that is given: it's something that wells up from within. It must spring from within all of a sudden, spontaneously, like a profound, intense need of your being - then it has power, because it's not something that comes from outside, it's your very own cry.
~ The Mother, 11 May 1963,#KEYS |
| 35:Who am I?' is not a mantra. It means that you must find out where in you the 'I-thought' arises, which is the source of all other thoughts. But if you find that vichara marga (path of enquiry) is too hard for you, you go on repeating 'I-I' and that will lead you to the same goal. There is no harm in using 'I' as a mantra. It is the first name of God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Gems, #KEYS |
36:The ground is composed of gold, the trees are wish-fulfilling trees, and the rain is the rainfall of nectar. All beings are dakas and dakinis; the calls of the birds are the sounds of Dharma; the sounds of nature, wind, water, and fire reverberate as the Vajra Guru mantra; and all thoughts are expressions of wisdom and bliss. So here the perception of purity is much vaster and more omnipresent than in the sutras.
~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Guru Yoga,#KEYS |
37:A might no human will nor force can gain,
A knowledge seated in eternity,
A bliss beyond our struggle and our pain
Are the high pinnacles of our destiny. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Evolution - II
Man's destiny
The Mantra is born through the heart and shaped or massed by the thinking mind into a chariot of that godhead of the Eternal of whom the truth seen is a face or a form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,#KEYS |
38:Mr. Venkatakrishnayya, a lawyer-devotee, visited Sri Bhagavan ten years before and asked Him what he should do to improve himself.
Sri Bhagavan told him to perform Gayatri Japa. The young man went away satisfied. When he returned after some years, he asked:
D.: If I meditate on the meaning of the Gayatri mantra, my mind again wanders. What is to be done?
M.: Were you told to meditate on the mantra or its meaning? You must think of the one who repeats the mantra. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 606,#KEYS |
| 39:The Mantra in other words is a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word which embodies an intuitive and revelatory inspiration and ensouls the mind with the sight and the presence of the very self, the inmost reality of things and with its truth and with the divine soul-forms of it, the Godheads which are born from the living Truth. Or, let us say, it is a supreme rhythmic language which seizes hold upon all that is finite and brings into each the light and voice of its own infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, #KEYS |
40:So, first of all, it is most important to turn inwards and change your motivation.
If you can correct your attitude, skilful means will permeate your positive actions, and you will have set out on the path of great beings.
If you cannot, you might think that you are studying and practising the Dharma but it will be no more than a semblance of the real thing.
Therefore, whenever you listen to the teachings and whenever you practise, be it meditating on a deity, doing prostrations and circumambulations, or reciting a mantra-even a single mani it is always essential to give rise to bodhicitta. ~ Patrul Rinpoche,#KEYS |
| 41:As a rule the only mantra used in this sadhana is that of the Mother or of my name and the Mother. The concentration in the heart and the concentration in the head can both be used - each has its own result. The first opens up the psychic being and brings bhakti, love and union with the Mother, her presence within the heart and the action of her Force in the nature. The other opens the mind to self-realisation, to the consciousness of what is above mind, to the ascent of the consciousness out of the body and the descent of the higher consciousness into the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #KEYS |
| 42:The word is a sound expressive of the idea. In the supra-physical plane when an idea has to be realised, one can by repeating the word-expression of it, produce vibrations which prepare the mind for the realisation of the idea. That is the principle of the Mantra and of japa. One repeats the name of the Divine and the vibrations created in the consciousness prepare the realisation of the Divine. It is the same idea that is expressed in The Bible, God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light. It is creation by the Word. 6 May 1933 ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Poetry And Art, 1.1.1.02 - Creation by the Word / 2.3.02 - Mantra and Japa, #KEYS |
43:How to open to the Mother? The following are the means:
(1) To remember You constantly or from time to time--
Good.
(2) By taking Your name through Japa [mantra; repeating the Mother's name]--
Helpful.
(3) With the help of meditation--
More difficult if one has not the habit of meditation.
(4) By conversation about You with those who love and respect You--
Risky because, when talking, often some nonsense or at least some useless things can be said.
(5) By reading Your books--
Good.
(6) By spending time in thoughts of You--
Very good.
(7) By sincere prayers--
Good. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS |
44:The wand weapon similarily appears in a profusion of forms. As an instrument to assist the projection of the magical will onto the aetheric and material planes, it could be a general purpose sigil, an amulet, a ring, an enchanting mantra, or even an act or gesture one performs. As with the pentacle, there is a virtue in having a small, portable, and permanent device of this class, for power accrues to it with use. As with the cup, the power of the wand is partly to fascinate the surface functions of the mind and channel the forces concealed in the depths. Like the sword, the wand is manipulated in such a way as to describe vividly to the will and subconscious what is required of them.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS |
45:Faith :::
One must say, "Since I want only the Divine, my success is sure, I have only to walk forward in all confidence and His own Hand will be there secretly leading me to Him by His own way and at His own time." That is what you must keep as your constant mantra. Anything else one may doubt but that he who desires only the Divine shall reach the Divine is a certitude and more certain than two and two make four. That is the faith every sadhak must have at the bottom of his heart, supporting him through every stumble and blow and ordeal. It is only false ideas still casting their shadows on your mind that prevent you from having it. Push them aside and the back of the difficulty will be broken. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS |
46:Visitor. I am taught that Mantra Japam is very potent in practice.
Bhagavan. The Self is the greatest of all mantras and goes on automatically and eternally. If you are not aware of this internal mantra, you should take to do it consciously as japam, which is attended with effort, to ward off all other thoughts.
By constant attention to it, you will eventually become aware of the internal mantra, which is the state of Realisation and is effortless. Firmness in this awareness will keep you continually and effortlessly in the current, however much you may be engaged on other activities.
Listening to Veda chanting and mantras has the same result as conscious repetitions of japam - its rhythm is the japam. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,#KEYS |
47: Swami Vivekananda summarised Yoga under four headings, and I do not think that one can improve on that classification. His four are: Gnana, Raja, Bhakti and Hatha, and comprise all divisions that it is desirable to make. As soon as one begins to add such sections as Mantra Yoga, you are adding to without enriching the classification, and once you begin Where are you to stop? But I honestly believe that the excessive simplication given in Eight Lectures on Yoga is a practical advantage. Any given type of Yogas is the work of a lifetime and for that reason alone it is desirable to confine oneself from the beginning to an absolutely simple programme.
What then is the difference between Yoga and Magick? Magick is extraversion, the discovery of and subsequently the classification of and finally the control of new worlds on new planes. So far as it concerns the development of the mind its object and method are perfectly simple. What is wanted is exaltation. The aim is to identify oneself with the highest essence of whatever world is under consideration. ~ Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears, 1.83 - Epistola Ultima, #KEYS |
48:A certain inertia, tendency to sleep, indolence, unwillingness or inability to be strong for work or spiritual effort for long at a time, is in the nature of the human physical consciousness. When one goes down into the physical for its change (that has been the general condition here for a long time), this tends to increase. Even sometimes when the pressure of the sadhana on the physical increases or when one has to go much inside, this temporarily increases - the body either needing more rest or turning the inward movement into a tendency to sleep or be at rest. You need not, however, be anxious about that. After a time this rights itself; the physical consciousness gets the true peace and calm in the cells and feels at rest even in full work or in the most concentrated condition and this tendency of inertia goes out of the nature. Even for those who have never been in trance, it is good to repeat a mantra, a word, a prayer before going into sleep. But there must be a life in the words; I do not mean an intellectual significance, nothing of that kind, but a vibration. And its effect on the body is extraordinary: it begins to vibrate, vibrate, vibrate... and quietly you let yourself go, as though you wanted to go to sleep. The body vibrates more and more, more and more, more and more, and away you go. That is the cure for tamas.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS |
49:CHAPTER V
The Actual Practice:The Yoga of Meditative Equipoise
Part II
The Yoga of the Speech Recitation
The next section explains the yoga of vajra recitation in seven parts:
(1) general understanding, (2) the particular necessity for practice, (3) the actual nature of the recitation, (4) different types of recitation, (5) the manner of reciting the mantra, (6) number of recitations and (7) activity upon completion.
General Understanding
A general understanding of the yoga of vajra recitation is approached by considering the object that needs to be purified by the yoga, the means of purification and the result. The object that needs to be purified through the yoga of speech is the habit of perceiving all sounds-names, words, syllables and anything that is spoken-as merely ordinary sounds with ordinary meanings.
Simply stated, the object to purify is your present, obscured experience of speech and the habitual instincts that accompany it.
The practice of mantra recitation purifies this impure experience and results in pure, vajra-like speech. One achieves the Sambhogakaya and becomes imbued with the sixty qualities of the Buddha's speech. All of one's words become pleasing, meaningful and helpful. The means of purification is to recite the mantra, the pure sounds which the buddhas have given to us, over and over until they are like a spinning wheel of sound. ~ Gyatrul Rinpoche, Generating the DeityZ,#KEYS |
50:Some young men who had come with an introduction from the Ramakrishna Mission at Madras asked Bhagavan, "Which is the proper path for us to follow?"
Bhagavan: When you speak of a path, where are you now? and where do you want to go? If these are known, then we can talk of the path. Know first where you are and what you are. There is nothing to be reached. You are always as you really are. But you don't realise it. That is all.
A little while after, one of the visitors asked Bhagavan, "I am now following the path of japa. Is that all right?"
Bhagavan: Yes. It is quite good. You can continue in that. The gentleman who asked about creation said, "I never thought I was going to have the good fortune of visiting Bhagavan. But circumstances have brought me here and I find in his presence, without any effort on my part, I am having santi. Apparently, getting peace does not depend on our effort.
It seems to come only as the result of grace!" Bhagavan was silent. Meanwhile, another visitor remarked, "No. Our effort is also necessary, though no one can do without grace." After some time, Bhagavan remarked, "Mantra japa, after a time, leads to a stage when you become Mantra maya i.e., you become that whose name you have been repeating or chanting.
First you repeat the mantra by mouth; later you do it mentally.
First, you do this dhyana with breaks. Later, you do it without any break. At that stage you realise you do dhyana without any effort on your part, that dhyana is your real nature. Till then, effort is necessary." ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day By Day, #KEYS |
51:The Nirmanakaya manifestation of Amitabha, I,
the Indian Scholar, the Lotus Born,
From the self-blossoming center of a lotus,
Came to this realm of existence through miraculous powers
To be the prince of the king of Oddiyana.
Then, I sustained the kingdom in accordance with Dharma.
Wandering throughout all directions of India,
I severed all spiritual doubts without exception.
Engaging in fearless activity in the eight burial grounds,
I achieved all supreme and common siddhis.
Then, according to the wishes of King Trisong Detsen
And by the power of previous prayers, I journeyed to Tibet.
By subduing the cruel gods, nagas, yakshas, rakshas,
and all spirits who harm beings,
The light of the teachings of secret mantra has been illuminated.
Then, when the time came to depart for the continent of Lanka,
I did so to provide refuge from the fear of rakshas
For all the inhabitants of this world, including Tibet.
I blessed Nirmanakaya emanations to be representatives of my body.
I made sacred treasures as representatives of my holy speech.
I poured enlightened wisdom into the hearts of those with fortunate karma.
Until samsara is emptied, for the benefit of sentient beings,
I will manifest unceasingly in whatever ways are necessary.
Through profound kindness, I have brought great benefit for all.
If you who are fortunate have the mind of aspiration,
May you pray so that blessings will be received.
All followers, believe in me with determination.
Samaya. ~ The Wrathful Compassion of Guru Dorje Drollo, Vajra Master Dudjom Yeshe Dorje, translated by Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche,#KEYS |
52:In the Indian spiritual tradition, a heart's devotion to God, called Bhakti, is regarded as the easiest path to the Divine. What is Bhakti? Is it some extravagant religious sentimentalism? Is it inferior to the path of Knowledge? What is the nature of pure and complete spiritual devotion to God and how to realise it?
What Is Devotion?
...bhakti in its fullness is nothing but an entire self-giving. But then all meditation, all tapasya, all means of prayer or mantra must have that as its end... [SABCL, 23:799]
Devotion Is a State of the Heart and Soul
Bhakti is not an experience, it is a state of the heart and soul. It is a state which comes when the psychic being is awake and prominent. [SABCL, 23:776]
...Worship is only the first step on the path of devotion. Where external worship changes into the inner adoration, real Bhakti begins; that deepens into the intensity of divine love; that love leads to the joy of closeness in our relations with the Divine; the joy of closeness passes into the bliss of union. [SABCL, 21:525]
Devotion without Gratitude Is Incomplete
...there is another movement which should constantly accompany devotion. ... That kind of sense of gratitude that the Divine exists; that feeling of a marvelling thankfulness which truly fills you with a sublime joy at the fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that it is not just the monstrosity we see, that there is the Divine, the Divine exists. And each time that the least thing puts you either directly or indirectly in contactwith this sublime Reality of divine existence, the heart is filled with so intense, so marvellous a joy, such a gratitude as of all things has the most delightful taste.
There is nothing which gives you a joy equal to that of gratitude. One hears a bird sing, sees a lovely flower, looks at a little child, observes an act of generosity, reads a beautiful sentence, looks at the setting sun, no matter what, suddenly this comes upon you, this kind of emotion-indeed so deep, so intense-that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world which is the Divine.
So I find that devotion without gratitude is quite incomplete, gratitude must come with devotion. ~ The Mother,#KEYS |
53:There is also the consecration of the thoughts to the Divine. In its inception this is the attempt to fix the mind on the object of adoration, -for naturally the restless human mind is occupied with other objects and, even when it is directed upwards, constantly drawn away by the world, -- so that in the end it habitually thinks of him and all else is only secondary and thought of only in relation to him. This is done often with the aid of a physical image or, more intimately and characteristically, of a Mantra or a divine name through which the divine being is realised. There are supposed by those who systematise, to be three stages of the seeking through the devotion of the mind, first, the constant hearing of the divine name, qualities and all that has been attached to them, secondly, the constant thinking on them or on the divine being or personality, thirdly, the settling and fixing of the mind on the object; and by this comes the full realisation. And by these, too, there comes when the accompanying feeling or the concentration is very intense, the Samadhi, the ecstatic trance in which the consciousness passes away from outer objects. But all this is really incidental; the one thing essential is the intense devotion of the thought in the mind to the object of adoration. Although it seems akin to the contemplation of the way of knowledge, it differs from that in its spirit. It is in its real nature not a still, but an ecstatic contemplation; it seeks not to pass into the being of the Divine, but to bring the Divine into ourselves and to lose ourselves in the deep ecstasy of his presence or of his possession; and its bliss is not the peace of unity, but the ecstasy of union. Here, too, there may be the separative self-consecration, which ends in the giving up of all other thought of life for the possession of this ecstasy, eternal afterwards in planes beyond, or the comprehensive consecration in which all the thoughts are full of the Divine and even in the occupations of life every thought remembers him. As in the other Yogas, so in this, one comes to see the Divine everywhere and in all and to pour out the realisation of the Divine in all ones inner activities and outward actions. But all is supported here by the primary force of the emotional union: for it is by love that the entire self-consecration and the entire possession is accomplished, and thought and action become shapes and figures of the divine love which possesses the spirit and its members.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Devotion [T2],#KEYS |
54:Ekajaṭī or Ekajaṭā, (Sanskrit: "One Plait Woman"; Wylie: ral gcig ma: one who has one knot of hair),[1] also known as Māhacīnatārā,[2] is one of the 21 Taras. Ekajati is, along with Palden Lhamo deity, one of the most powerful and fierce goddesses of Vajrayana Buddhist mythology.[1][3] According to Tibetan legends, her right eye was pierced by the tantric master Padmasambhava so that she could much more effectively help him subjugate Tibetan demons.
Ekajati is also known as "Blue Tara", Vajra Tara or "Ugra Tara".[1][3] She is generally considered one of the three principal protectors of the Nyingma school along with Rāhula and Vajrasādhu (Wylie: rdo rje legs pa).
Often Ekajati appears as liberator in the mandala of the Green Tara. Along with that, her ascribed powers are removing the fear of enemies, spreading joy, and removing personal hindrances on the path to enlightenment.
Ekajati is the protector of secret mantras and "as the mother of the mothers of all the Buddhas" represents the ultimate unity. As such, her own mantra is also secret. She is the most important protector of the Vajrayana teachings, especially the Inner Tantras and termas. As the protector of mantra, she supports the practitioner in deciphering symbolic dakini codes and properly determines appropriate times and circumstances for revealing tantric teachings. Because she completely realizes the texts and mantras under her care, she reminds the practitioner of their preciousness and secrecy.[4] Düsum Khyenpa, 1st Karmapa Lama meditated upon her in early childhood.
According to Namkhai Norbu, Ekajati is the principal guardian of the Dzogchen teachings and is "a personification of the essentially non-dual nature of primordial energy."[5]
Dzogchen is the most closely guarded teaching in Tibetan Buddhism, of which Ekajati is a main guardian as mentioned above. It is said that Sri Singha (Sanskrit: Śrī Siṃha) himself entrusted the "Heart Essence" (Wylie: snying thig) teachings to her care. To the great master Longchenpa, who initiated the dissemination of certain Dzogchen teachings, Ekajati offered uncharacteristically personal guidance. In his thirty-second year, Ekajati appeared to Longchenpa, supervising every ritual detail of the Heart Essence of the Dakinis empowerment, insisting on the use of a peacock feather and removing unnecessary basin. When Longchenpa performed the ritual, she nodded her head in approval but corrected his pronunciation. When he recited the mantra, Ekajati admonished him, saying, "Imitate me," and sang it in a strange, harmonious melody in the dakini's language. Later she appeared at the gathering and joyously danced, proclaiming the approval of Padmasambhava and the dakinis.[6] ~ Wikipedia,#KEYS |
55:Sweet Mother, there's a flower you have named "The Creative Word".
Yes.
What does that mean?
It is the word which creates.
There are all kinds of old traditions, old Hindu traditions, old Chaldean traditions in which the Divine, in the form of the Creator, that is, in His aspect as Creator, pronounces a word which has the power to create. So it is this... And it is the origin of the mantra. The mantra is the spoken word which has a creative power. An invocation is made and there is an answer to the invocation; or one makes a prayer and the prayer is granted. This is the Word, the Word which, in its sound... it is not only the idea, it is in the sound that there's a power of creation. It is the origin, you see, of the mantra.
In Indian mythology the creator God is Brahma, and I think that it was precisely his power which has been symbolised by this flower, "The Creative Word". And when one is in contact with it, the words spoken have a power of evocation or creation or formation or transformation; the words... sound always has a power; it has much more power than men think. It may be a good power and it may be a bad power. It creates vibrations which have an undeniable effect. It is not so much the idea as the sound; the idea too has its own power, but in its own domain - whereas the sound has a power in the material world.
I think I have explained this to you once; I told you, for example, that words spoken casually, usually without any re- flection and without attaching any importance to them, can be used to do something very good. I think I spoke to you about "Bonjour", "Good Day", didn't I? When people meet and say "Bonjour", they do so mechanically and without thinking. But if you put a will into it, an aspiration to indeed wish someone a good day, well, there is a way of saying "Good Day" which is very effective, much more effective than if simply meeting someone you thought: "Ah! I hope he has a good day", without saying anything. If with this hope in your thought you say to him in a certain way, "Good Day", you make it more concrete and more effective.
It's the same thing, by the way, with curses, or when one gets angry and says bad things to people. This can do them as much harm - more harm sometimes - than if you were to give them a slap. With very sensitive people it can put their stomach out of order or give them palpitation, because you put into it an evil force which has a power of destruction.
It is not at all ineffective to speak. Naturally it depends a great deal on each one's inner power. People who have no strength and no consciousness can't do very much - unless they employ material means. But to the extent that you are strong, especially when you have a powerful vital, you must have a great control on what you say, otherwise you can do much harm. Without wanting to, without knowing it; through ignorance.
Anything? No? Nothing?
Another question?... Everything's over? ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 347-349,#KEYS |
56:HOW CAN I READ SAVITRI?
An open reply by Dr Alok Pandey to a fellow devotee
A GIFT OF LOVE TO THE WORLD
Most of all enjoy Savitri. It is Sri Aurobindo's gift of Love to the world. Read it from the heart with love and gratitude as companions and drown in its fiery bliss. That is the true understanding rather than one that comes by a constant churning of words in the head.
WHEN
Best would be to fix a time that works for you. One can always take out some time for the reading, even if it be late at night when one is done with all the daily works. Of course, a certain receptivity is needed. If one is too tired or the reading becomes too mechanical as a ritual routine to be somehow finished it tends to be less effective, as with anything else. Hence the advice is to read in a quiet receptive state.
THE PACE
As to the pace of reading it is best to slowly build up and keep it steady. To read a page or a passage daily is better than reading many pages one day and then few lines or none for days. This brings a certain discipline in the consciousness which makes one receptive. What it means is that one should fix up that one would read a few passages or a page or two daily, and then if an odd day one is enjoying and spontaneously wants to read more then one can go by the flow.
COMPLETE OR SELECTIONS?
It is best to read at least once from cover to cover. But if one is not feeling inclined for that do read some of the beautiful cantos and passages whose reference one can find in various places. This helps us familiarise with the epic and the style of poetry. Later one can go for the cover to cover reading.
READING ALOUD, SILENTLY, OR WRITING DOWN?
One can read it silently. Loud reading is needed only if one is unable to focus with silent reading. A mantra is more potent when read subtly. I am aware that some people recommend reading it aloud which is fine if that helps one better. A certain flexibility in these things is always good and rigid rules either ways are not helpful.
One can also write some of the beautiful passages with which one feels suddenly connected. It is a help in the yoga since such a writing involves the pouring in of the consciousness of Savitri through the brain and nerves and the hand.
Reflecting upon some of these magnificent lines and passages while one is engaged in one\s daily activities helps to create a background state for our inner being to get absorbed in Savitri more and more.
HOW DO I UNDERSTAND THE MEANING? DO I NEED A DICTIONARY?
It is helpful if a brief background about the Canto is known. This helps the mind top focus and also to keep in sync with the overall scene and sense of what is being read.
But it is best not to keep referring to the dictionary while reading. Let the overall sense emerge. Specifics can be done during a detailed reading later and it may not be necessary at all. Besides the sense that Sri Aurobindo has given to many words may not be accurately conveyed by the standard dictionaries. A flexibility is required to understand the subtle suggestions hinted at by the Master-poet.
In this sense Savitri is in the line of Vedic poetry using images that are at once profound as well as commonplace. That is the beauty of mystic poetry. These are things actually experienced and seen by Sri Aurobindo, and ultimately it is Their Grace that alone can reveal the intrinsic sense of this supreme revelation of the Supreme. ~ Dr Alok Pandey,#KEYS |
57:The true Mantra must come from within OR it must be given by a Guru
Nobody can give you the true mantra. It's not something that is given; it's something that wells up from within. It must spring from within all of a sudden, spontaneously, like a profound, intense need of your being - then it has power, because it's not something that comes from outside, it's your very own cry.
I saw, in my case, that my mantra has the power of immortality; whatever happens, if it is uttered, it's the Supreme that has the upper hand, it's no longer the lower law. And the words are irrelevant, they may not have any meaning - to someone else, my mantra is meaningless, but to me it's full, packed with meaning. And effective, because it's my cry, the intense aspiration of my whole being.
A mantra given by a guru is only the power to realize the experience of the discoverer of the mantra. The power is automatically there, because the sound contains the experience. I saw that once in Paris, at a time when I knew nothing of India, absolutely nothing, only the usual nonsense. I didn't even know what a mantra was. I had gone to a lecture given by some fellow who was supposed to have practiced "yoga" for a year in the Himalayas and recounted his experience (none too interesting, either). All at once, in the course of his lecture, he uttered the sound OM. And I saw the entire room suddenly fill with light, a golden, vibrating light.... I was probably the only one to notice it. I said to myself, "Well!" Then I didn't give it any more thought, I forgot about the story. But as it happened, the experience recurred in two or three different countries, with different people, and every time there was the sound OM, I would suddenly see the place fill with that same light. So I understood. That sound contains the vibration of thousands and thousands of years of spiritual aspiration - there is in it the entire aspiration of men towards the Supreme. And the power is automatically there, because the experience is there.
It's the same with my mantra. When I wanted to translate the end of my mantra, "Glory to You, O Lord," into Sanskrit, I asked for Nolini's help. He brought his Sanskrit translation, and when he read it to me, I immediately saw that the power was there - not because Nolini put his power into it (!), God knows he had no intention of "giving" me a mantra! But the power was there because my experience was there. We made a few adjustments and modifications, and that's the japa I do now - I do it all the time, while sleeping, while walking, while eating, while working, all the time.[[Mother later clarified: "'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't MY mantra, it's something I ADDED to it - my mantra is something else altogether, that's not it. When I say that my mantra has the power of immortality, I mean the other, the one I don't speak of! I have never given the words.... You see, at the end of my walk, a kind of enthusiasm rises, and with that enthusiasm, the 'Glory to You' came to me, but it's part of the prayer I had written in Prayers and Meditations: 'Glory to You, O Lord, all-triumphant Supreme' etc. (it's a long prayer). It came back suddenly, and as it came back spontaneously, I kept it. Moreover, when Sri Aurobindo read this prayer in Prayers and Meditations, he told me it was very strong. So I added this phrase as a kind of tail to my japa. But 'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't my spontaneous mantra - it came spontaneously, but it was something written very long ago. The two things are different."
And that's how a mantra has life: when it wells up all the time, spontaneously, like the cry of your being - there is no need of effort or concentration: it's your natural cry. Then it has full power, it is alive. It must well up from within.... No guru can give you that. ~ The Mother, Agenda, May 11 1963,#KEYS |
58:PRATYAHARA
PRATYAHARA is the first process in the mental part of our task. The previous practices, Asana, Pranayama, Yama, and Niyama, are all acts of the body, while mantra is connected with speech: Pratyahara is purely mental.
And what is Pratyahara? This word is used by different authors in different senses. The same word is employed to designate both the practice and the result. It means for our present purpose a process rather strategical than practical; it is introspection, a sort of general examination of the contents of the mind which we wish to control: Asana having been mastered, all immediate exciting causes have been removed, and we are free to think what we are thinking about.
A very similar experience to that of Asana is in store for us. At first we shall very likely flatter ourselves that our minds are pretty calm; this is a defect of observation. Just as the European standing for the first time on the edge of the desert will see nothing there, while his Arab can tell him the family history of each of the fifty persons in view, because he has learnt how to look, so with practice the thoughts will become more numerous and more insistent.
As soon as the body was accurately observed it was found to be terribly restless and painful; now that we observe the mind it is seen to be more restless and painful still. (See diagram opposite.)
A similar curve might be plotted for the real and apparent painfulness of Asana. Conscious of this fact, we begin to try to control it: "Not quite so many thoughts, please!" "Don't think quite so fast, please!" "No more of that kind of thought, please!" It is only then that we discover that what we thought was a school of playful porpoises is really the convolutions of the sea-serpent. The attempt to repress has the effect of exciting.
When the unsuspecting pupil first approaches his holy but wily Guru, and demands magical powers, that Wise One replies that he will confer them, points out with much caution and secrecy some particular spot on the pupil's body which has never previously attracted his attention, and says: "In order to obtain this magical power which you seek, all that is necessary is to wash seven times in the Ganges during seven days, being particularly careful to avoid thinking of that one spot." Of course the unhappy youth spends a disgusted week in thinking of little else.
It is positively amazing with what persistence a thought, even a whole train of thoughts, returns again and again to the charge. It becomes a positive nightmare. It is intensely annoying, too, to find that one does not become conscious that one has got on to the forbidden subject until one has gone right through with it. However, one continues day after day investigating thoughts and trying to check them; and sooner or later one proceeds to the next stage, Dharana, the attempt to restrain the mind to a single object.
Before we go on to this, however, we must consider what is meant by success in Pratyahara. This is a very extensive subject, and different authors take widely divergent views. One writer means an analysis so acute that every thought is resolved into a number of elements (see "The Psychology of Hashish," Section V, in Equinox II).
Others take the view that success in the practice is something like the experience which Sir Humphrey Davy had as a result of taking nitrous oxide, in which he exclaimed: "The universe is composed exclusively of ideas."
Others say that it gives Hamlet's feeling: "There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so," interpreted as literally as was done by Mrs. Eddy.
However, the main point is to acquire some sort of inhibitory power over the thoughts. Fortunately there is an unfailing method of acquiring this power. It is given in Liber III. If Sections 1 and 2 are practised (if necessary with the assistance of another person to aid your vigilance) you will soon be able to master the final section. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS |
59:Coded Language
Whereas, breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diasporic community to its drum woven past
Whereas the quantised drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to calculate the ever changing distance between rock and stardom.
Whereas the velocity of the spinning vinyl, cross-faded, spun backwards, and re-released at the same given moment of recorded history , yet at a different moment in time's continuum has allowed history to catch up with the present.
We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.
Statements, such as, "keep it real", especially when punctuating or anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or physically or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as retro-active and not representative of the individually determined is.
Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness of this state of being and the lessened distance between thought patterns and their secular manifestations, the role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased by a number no less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal aggressors.
Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize
We have found evidence that hip hops standard 85 rpm when increased by a number as least half the rate of it's standard or decreased at ¾ of it's speed may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.
Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.
Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season
Our cyclical relationship to phenomenon has encouraged scholars to erase the centers of periods, thus symbolizing the non-linear character of cause and effect
Reject mediocrity!
Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given for you to understand.
The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the diet of an infant.
The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and deformative symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce and crushed pears
Light years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness.
The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.
Thus, in the name of:
ROBESON, GOD'S SON, HURSTON, AHKENATON, HATHSHEPUT, BLACKFOOT, HELEN
LENNON, KHALO, KALI, THE THREE MARIAS, TARA, LILITH, LOURDE, WHITMAN
BALDWIN, GINSBERG, KAUFMAN, LUMUMBA, GHANDI, GIBRAN, SHABAZZ, SIDDHARTHA
MEDUSA, GUEVARA, GURDJIEFF, RAND, WRIGHT, BANNEKER, TUBMAN, HAMER, HOLIDAY
DAVIS, COLTRANE, MORRISON, JOPLIN, DUBOIS, CLARKE, SHAKESPEARE, RACHMANINOV
ELLINGTON, CARTER, GAYE, HATHAWAY, HENDRIX, KUTI, DICKINSON, RIPPERTON
MARY, ISIS, THERESA, HANSBURY, TESLA, PLATH, RUMI, FELLINI, MICHAUX, NOSTRADAMUS, NEFERTITI
LA ROCK, SHIVA, GANESHA, YEMAJA, OSHUN, OBATALA, OGUN, KENNEDY, KING, FOUR
LITTLE GIRLS, HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, KELLER, BIKO, PERÓN, MARLEY, MAGDALENE, COSBY
SHAKUR, THOSE WHO BURN, THOSE STILL AFLAME, AND THE COUNTLESS UNNAMED
We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter.
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone
Our music is our alchemy
We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down supply the percussion factor of forever.
If you must count to keep the beat then count.
Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious.
Curve you circles counterclockwise
Use your cipher to decipher, Coded Language, man made laws.
Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.
Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry, crafts, love, and love.
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference.
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
~ Saul Williams,#KEYS |
60:How to Meditate
Deep meditation is a mental procedure that utilizes the nature of the mind to systematically bring the mind to rest. If the mind is given the opportunity, it will go to rest with no effort. That is how the mind works.
Indeed, effort is opposed to the natural process of deep meditation. The mind always seeks the path of least resistance to express itself. Most of the time this is by making more and more thoughts. But it is also possible to create a situation in the mind that turns the path of least resistance into one leading to fewer and fewer thoughts. And, very soon, no thoughts at all. This is done by using a particular thought in a particular way. The thought is called a mantra.
For our practice of deep meditation, we will use the thought - I AM. This will be our mantra.
It is for the sound that we will use I AM, not for the meaning of it.
The meaning has an obvious significance in English, and I AM has a religious meaning in the English Bible as well. But we will not use I AM for the meaning - only for the sound. We can also spell it AYAM. No meaning there, is there? Only the sound. That is what we want. If your first language is not English, you may spell the sound phonetically in your own language if you wish. No matter how we spell it, it will be the same sound. The power of the sound ...I AM... is great when thought inside. But only if we use a particular procedure. Knowing this procedure is the key to successful meditation. It is very simple. So simple that we will devote many pages here to discussing how to keep it simple, because we all have a tendency to make things more complicated. Maintaining simplicity is the key to right meditation.
Here is the procedure of deep meditation: While sitting comfortably with eyes closed, we'll just relax. We will notice thoughts, streams of thoughts. That is fine. We just let them go by without minding them. After about a minute, we gently introduce the mantra, ...I AM...
We think the mantra in a repetition very easily inside. The speed of repetition may vary, and we do not mind it. We do not intone the mantra out loud. We do not deliberately locate the mantra in any particular part of the body. Whenever we realize we are not thinking the mantra inside anymore, we come back to it easily. This may happen many times in a sitting, or only once or twice. It doesn't matter. We follow this procedure of easily coming back to the mantra when we realize we are off it for the predetermined time of our meditation session. That's it.
Very simple.
Typically, the way we will find ourselves off the mantra will be in a stream of other thoughts. This is normal. The mind is a thought machine, remember? Making thoughts is what it does. But, if we are meditating, as soon as we realize we are off into a stream of thoughts, no matter how mundane or profound, we just easily go back to the mantra.
Like that. We don't make a struggle of it. The idea is not that we have to be on the mantra all the time. That is not the objective. The objective is to easily go back to it when we realize we are off it. We just favor the mantra with our attention when we notice we are not thinking it. If we are back into a stream of other thoughts five seconds later, we don't try and force the thoughts out. Thoughts are a normal part of the deep meditation process. We just ease back to the mantra again. We favor it.
Deep meditation is a going toward, not a pushing away from. We do that every single time with the mantra when we realize we are off it - just easily favoring it. It is a gentle persuasion. No struggle. No fuss. No iron willpower or mental heroics are necessary for this practice. All such efforts are away from the simplicity of deep meditation and will reduce its effectiveness.
As we do this simple process of deep meditation, we will at some point notice a change in the character of our inner experience. The mantra may become very refined and fuzzy. This is normal. It is perfectly all right to think the mantra in a very refined and fuzzy way if this is the easiest. It should always be easy - never a struggle. Other times, we may lose track of where we are for a while, having no mantra, or stream of thoughts either. This is fine too. When we realize we have been off somewhere, we just ease back to the mantra again. If we have been very settled with the mantra being barely recognizable, we can go back to that fuzzy level of it, if it is the easiest. As the mantra refines, we are riding it inward with our attention to progressively deeper levels of inner silence in the mind. So it is normal for the mantra to become very faint and fuzzy. We cannot force this to happen. It will happen naturally as our nervous system goes through its many cycles ofinner purification stimulated by deep meditation. When the mantra refines, we just go with it. And when the mantra does not refine, we just be with it at whatever level is easy. No struggle. There is no objective to attain, except to continue the simple procedure we are describing here.
When and Where to Meditate
How long and how often do we meditate? For most people, twenty minutes is the best duration for a meditation session. It is done twice per day, once before the morning meal and day's activity, and then again before the evening meal and evening's activity.
Try to avoid meditating right after eating or right before bed.
Before meal and activity is the ideal time. It will be most effective and refreshing then. Deep meditation is a preparation for activity, and our results over time will be best if we are active between our meditation sessions. Also, meditation is not a substitute for sleep. The ideal situation is a good balance between meditation, daily activity and normal sleep at night. If we do this, our inner experience will grow naturally over time, and our outer life will become enriched by our growing inner silence.
A word on how to sit in meditation: The first priority is comfort. It is not desirable to sit in a way that distracts us from the easy procedure of meditation. So sitting in a comfortable chair with back support is a good way to meditate. Later on, or if we are already familiar, there can be an advantage to sitting with legs crossed, also with back support. But always with comfort and least distraction being the priority. If, for whatever reason, crossed legs are not feasible for us, we will do just fine meditating in our comfortable chair. There will be no loss of the benefits.
Due to commitments we may have, the ideal routine of meditation sessions will not always be possible. That is okay. Do the best you can and do not stress over it. Due to circumstances beyond our control, sometimes the only time we will have to meditate will be right after a meal, or even later in the evening near bedtime. If meditating at these times causes a little disruption in our system, we will know it soon enough and make the necessary adjustments. The main thing is that we do our best to do two meditations every day, even if it is only a short session between our commitments. Later on, we will look at the options we have to make adjustments to address varying outer circumstances, as well as inner experiences that can come up.
Before we go on, you should try a meditation. Find a comfortable place to sit where you are not likely to be interrupted and do a short meditation, say ten minutes, and see how it goes. It is a toe in the water.
Make sure to take a couple of minutes at the end sitting easily without doing the procedure of meditation. Then open your eyes slowly. Then read on here.
As you will see, the simple procedure of deep meditation and it's resulting experiences will raise some questions. We will cover many of them here.
So, now we will move into the practical aspects of deep meditation - your own experiences and initial symptoms of the growth of your own inner silence. ~ Yogani, Deep Meditation,#KEYS |
61:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS |
*** WISDOM TROVE *** |
| 1:Remember my mantra: distinct... or extinct. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove |
| 2:Feel your prayers, feel your mantra and you will feel God. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 3:For a true disciple, the repetition of the mantra is like food. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 4:If you are unable to meditate, chant your mantra or sing bhajans. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 5:Chant your mantra while engaged in work. This way, the mind will be continuously focused on Him. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 6:Food should be consumed while chanting your mantra inwardly. This will purify the food and the mind at the same time. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 7:Your mantra is thank you. Just keep saying thank you. Don't explain. Don't complain. Just say thank you. Say thank you to existence. ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove |
| 8:How do you end a meditation session? It's nice to chant a mantra again. Maybe repeat it a few times. It seals the meditation. Do your best and then just give it to eternity. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove |
| 9:When doing archana (daily prayers) as a group, one person should chant the mantra and the others should repeat it. Mantras should be chanted slowly, clearly and with devotion. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 10:There is the path of karma, selfless action, the path of love and devotion, the path of training the mind and the path of Yoga, mantra and tantra this is what the various saints advocated. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 11:Make use of all free time at the office and elsewhere for chanting your mantra or reading spiritual books. Avoid indulging in unnecessary gossip and try to talk about spiritual subjects with others. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 12:Sring is the mantra of beauty. Traditionally it is connected with Lakshmi, the Indian goddess of beauty. Chant "Sring" slowly, elongating each sound. As you do, you will see the consciousness of beauty of everywhere. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove |
| 13:Let us all dedicate our lives for the sake of the entire humanity. With every minute, every breath, every atom of our bodies we should repeat this mantra: dedication, dedication, giving, giving, loving, loving. ~ swami-satchidananda-saraswati, @wisdomtrove |
| 14:Try not to have any break in chanting the mantra even for a moment. Continue repeating the mantra while engaged in any task. Chanting in the mind may not always be possible at first, so in the beginning, practice japa by moving the lips incessantly-like a fish drinking water. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 15:The mental disposition of the one who prepares the food is transmitted to all those who consume it. Therefore, as far as possible the mothers should do the cooking for the entire family. If it is done while chanting the mantra, the food will benefit everyone in a spiritual way. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 16:In the beginning, not everyone may be able to clearly repeat every mantra in the 1000 Names. In that case, everyone can respond to the chants with just one mantra. While chanting the 1000 Names, the response may be & |
| 17:Children, in the present dark age of materialism, chanting the mantra is the easiest way for us to obtain inner purification and concentration. Japa can be done at any time, anywhere, without observing any rule regarding the purity of mind and body. Japa can be done while engaged in any task. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 18:I can't be paralyzed anymore by the critics. My new mantra is, if you're not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, then I'm not interested in your feedback. You don't get to sit in the cheat seat and criticize my appearance or my work with mean-spiritedness if you're also not in the arena. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove |
| 19:Children, set aside at least half an hour in the morning and in the evening for spiritual practices. After bathing in the morning, a family should sit together and worship. Archana may be performed by chanting the 108 or 1000 Names of Devi or our chosen deity. We can also chant our mantra, meditate or sing hymns at this time. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 20:Deciding to chant the mantra a certain number of times daily will help foster the japa habit. We should always keep a rosary with us for doing japa. A rosary can be made of 108, 54, 27 or 18 beads of rudraksha, tulsi, crystal, sandalwood, gems, etc, with one & |
| 21:We should forgive and forget the faults of others. Anger is the enemy of every spiritual aspirant. Anger causes loss of power through every pore of our body. In circumstances when the mind is tempted to get angry, we should control ourselves and resolve firmly, & |
| 22:Children, pray for the good of everyone. We should pray to God to give a good mind even to those who harm us. One cannot sleep peacefully when there is a theif in the neighborhood. Likewise, when we pray for the well-being of others, it is we who gain peace and quietude. Children, the mantra & |
| 23:It is a good practice to write at least on page of mantra daily. Many people get better concentration by writing than by chanting. Try also to inculcate in children the habit of chanting and neatly writing the mantra. This will help to improve their handwriting, too. The book in which the mantra is written should not be thrown around; it should be carefully kept in our meditation or shrine room. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 24:Mental purity will come through constant chanting of the divine name. This is the simplest way. You are trying to cross the ocean of transmigration, the cycle of birth and death. The mantra is the oar of the boat; it is the instrument you use to cross the samsara of your restless mind, with its unending thought waves. The mantra can also be compared to a ladder that you climb to reach the heights of God realization. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove |
| 25:It is always advisable to obtain a mantra from a self-realized master. Until then we may use one of the mantras of our beloved deity like & |
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M *** |
| 1:C.E.O.’s management by mantra ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 2:Our mantra was simplicity. ~ Donna Dubinsky, #NFDB |
| 3:My mantra is "Better is better". ~ David Ayer, #NFDB |
| 4:Everyone has their own mantra. ~ Russell Brand, #NFDB |
| 5:Freebird, the mantra of the moron. ~ Bill Hicks, #NFDB |
| 6:Remember my mantra: distinct... or extinct. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB |
| 7:Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB |
| 8:mantra that “I can write through anything” to ~ Pam Jenoff, #NFDB |
| 9:MANTRA I light up the world by being me. ~ Rebecca Campbell, #NFDB |
| 10:It will be all right” will be my new mantra. ~ Patricia Sands, #NFDB |
| 11:My mantra is if you raise money, don't waste it. ~ Elton John, #NFDB |
| 12:My real mantra for my life is "empower others". ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB |
| 13:My mantra is, 'This or something better.' ~ John Paul Caponigro, #NFDB |
| 14:Nothing a Little Sparkle Won’t Fix. My mantra. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB |
| 15:Sab kaa saath, sab kaa vikas. This is our mantra. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB |
| 16:(The shortest mantra is the single Hindi word “Om.”) ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB |
| 17:Think solutions — is the mantra for success. ~ Radhakrishnan Pillai, #NFDB |
| 18:mantra is a phrase that is designed to free the mind. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB |
| 19:It was the mantra of every dark operative in history. He ~ Abigail Roux, #NFDB |
| 20:the real mantra of success is sustainability and growth. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB |
| 21:Do not compare” is the mantra of moral blackmailers. ~ Norman G Finkelstein, #NFDB |
| 22:Repeat mantra: Donuts are not vitamins, donuts are not. ~ William Howard Taft, #NFDB |
| 23:The enduring mantra of the fanatical prospector is: One more call. ~ Jeb Blount, #NFDB |
24:There are no gurus of love.
There is no mantra to make love. ~ Santosh Kalwar,#NFDB |
| 25:the sniper’s mantra—slow, smooth, straight, steady, and squeeze. ~ Toni Anderson, #NFDB |
| 26:Feel your prayers, feel your mantra and you will feel God. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
27:Wesley mantra
Look but don’t touch…look but don’t touch… ~ Tiffany Reisz,#NFDB |
| 28:the mantra of ‘you can be anything’ creates more pain than pleasure. ~ Derren Brown, #NFDB |
| 29:You must think of the one who repeats the mantra. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 606, #NFDB |
| 30:The mantra was that one great engineer will replace three medium ones, ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB |
| 31:A mantra is like meeting the Buddha or Bodhisattva himself. ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, #NFDB |
| 32:As I began reconsidering my recently adopted “single forever” mantra, ~ Scott Hildreth, #NFDB |
| 33:For a true disciple, the repetition of the mantra is like food. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 34:My mother had a mantra: musical instrument, foreign language, martial art. ~ E L James, #NFDB |
| 35:The mantra should change from 'Always Be Closing' to 'Always to helping'. ~ David Hahn, #NFDB |
| 36:Gratitude is the greatest prayer. Thank you is the greatest mantra. ~ Swami Nithyananda, #NFDB |
| 37:I am a blade of silver, a sickle of ice - Assassin Ghe, old assassin mantra ~ Greg Keyes, #NFDB |
| 38:If you are unable to meditate, chant your mantra or sing bhajans. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 39:My mantra: Brainless exercise is a lost opportunity for improvement. ~ Michael Merzenich, #NFDB |
| 40:Nothing to it but to do it, nothing to it but to do it.” Diane’s mantra. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB |
| 41:(“Trust no one” is the mantra we all learn to live by in surgical training.) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
42:Savitri is a mantra for the transformation of the world.
~ The Mother, (to Udar Pinto),#NFDB |
| 43:The shit is *not* the shit (this was Mo's mantra,) the *pigeon* is the shit. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB |
| 44:Mantra for happiness - Love your family, love your job and live your passion. ~ Shikha Kaul, #NFDB |
| 45:The mantra is forget your size discover your shape and transform yourself. ~ Trinny Woodall, #NFDB |
| 46:My mantra is if you want to help people accomplish some goal, make it easy. ~ Richard Thaler, #NFDB |
| 47:Or recite this mantra: om mani padme hum (pronounced “om mani padmay hum”). ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB |
| 48:I have a new mantra, which I chant softly to myself: "Oh My God Oh My God. ~ Suzanne Finnamore, #NFDB |
| 49:My resolution is to make positivity, thankfulness and happiness my new mantra. ~ Francisco Costa, #NFDB |
| 50:will end up being a kind of mantra for this chapter, “dialects is all there is. ~ John McWhorter, #NFDB |
| 51:Behavioral contagion, Harry. Remember the mantra: this is not my stress. ~ Barbara Claypole White, #NFDB |
| 52:My mantra is always, "Take a nap first, Matt! Then think." It's silly, but it works. ~ Matthew Moy, #NFDB |
| 53:The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you. ~ Chanakya, #NFDB |
| 54:Easier said than done' is the mantra of the stagnant; the creed of the unchanging. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB |
| 55:If there is one mantra a Freak lives by, it is this: people respond to incentives. ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB |
| 56:Sight is the essential poetic gift. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB |
| 57:"What's the next thing that's going to kill me?" is a mantra for pilots and astronauts. ~ Chris Hadfield, #NFDB |
58:His last thought flashed like a mantra over and over again.
Let the challenge begin. ~ Jennifer Probst,#NFDB |
| 59:All great poetic utterance is discovery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB |
| 60:God has given the fingers, make the best use of them by counting His mantra. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB |
| 61:My mantra, and the key to all my success is simple: relationships over results, always. ~ Gary W Goldstein, #NFDB |
| 62:Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty. ~ Chuck Wendig, #NFDB |
| 63:The Mantra purifies the body. Man becomes pure by repeating the Mantra of God. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB |
| 64:You want people to stop walking over you, you have to start acting like it, was her new mantra. ~ Terah Edun, #NFDB |
| 65:Extinct,” Steep murmured. “Yes.” He smiled. “Extinct, extinct, extinct.” It was like a mantra: ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB |
| 66:Kata-kata dapat menjadi mantra. Mantra yang akan terkabul, karena kamu jadi memercayainya. ~ Primadonna Angela, #NFDB |
| 67:You need a mantra to help you. You can borrow mine, if you want: ‘Whatever happens, love that. ~ Maddie Dawson, #NFDB |
| 68:Kring is the mantra of power. "Kring" should only be repeated when you are in deep meditation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 69:The mantra becomes” M. K. Gandhi. Self Restraint v. Self-Indulgence. Navajivan Publishing, 1947, ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB |
| 70:A guy who was taught the front-sight mantra might focus so hard he could lose his peripheral vision. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB |
| 71:A mantra is nothing more than a collection of words strung together to create a positive effect. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB |
| 72:Blend in. don't make waves. Don't look up.' That was the mantra I lived by. But not today. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes, #NFDB |
| 73:Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it. I drank more and continued my mantra. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB |
| 74:Vision is the characteristic power of the poet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB |
| 75:We can definitely afford this; we’ll just pay for it with the refund check” became a Christmas mantra. ~ J D Vance, #NFDB |
| 76:Mantra of The Mother Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry Whatever we do, we must always remember out aim. ~ The Mother, #NFDB |
| 77:Repetitive chanting of the Gayatri Mantra is also a powerful way to bring your intentions to fruition. ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB |
| 78:Spare me the mantra that the “fundamentals” are sound. Credit is the ultimate fundamental. ~ Ambrose Evans Pritchard, #NFDB |
| 79:Today, and everyday, take as your personal mantra: I am what I am and what I am is wonderful. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach, #NFDB |
| 80:We should walk together, work together and progress together. We should move ahead with this mantra. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB |
| 81:If it’s meant for me, it will be.' Those words are my mantra in life, and it has never let me down. ~ Jennifer Hudson, #NFDB |
| 82:I think there is no mantra for success. One just has to be positive and keep doing good work. One must ~ Madhuri Dixit, #NFDB |
| 83:My mantra about everything that has to do with public policy is: identify and reject the false choice. ~ Kamala Harris, #NFDB |
| 84:Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it. I drank more and continued my mantra. Stop ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB |
| 85:Chant your mantra while engaged in work. This way, the mind will be continuously focused on Him. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 86:In this immoral and imperfect world even sin has sometimes its rewards. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Mantra, #NFDB |
| 87:One cannot transcend the body or mind just by repeating the mantra "I am not the body and I am not the mind". ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB |
| 88:Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression. ~ Arthur Erickson, #NFDB |
| 89:She wasn't sure what Mississippi was, but it must be a horrible thing if it was used as a mantra for the guns ~ John Ringo, #NFDB |
| 90:The mantra was simple: if there was no Wall, there was no Trump. Stopping immigration was the Trump story. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB |
| 91:Sheer objectivity brings us down from art to photography. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB |
| 92:Mantra is a spiritual guide which dispels the fear of death and leads one fearlessly to the other shore of life. ~ Swami Rama, #NFDB |
| 93:She thought: It doesn't hurt, it's just my body. They can't touch my soul. It had become her mantra. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB |
| 94:The seeds of divinity live in everyone. Chanting of Om Namah Shivaya mantra is the art of sprouting that divinity. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB |
| 95:Surrender to the Feet of the Guru is the real mantra, in which there will be no fear of Maya’s delusion. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB |
| 96:They had one mantra, and it came straight from the founder of the OSS, Wild Bill Donovan. If you fall, fall forward ~ Brad Thor, #NFDB |
| 97:A mantra is a thought. Use a mantra to help you still your mind initially and then move into silent meditation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 98:It is more important to repeat a mantra several times with total absorption than to parrot it for hours on end. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 99:Use pain to make yourself stronger. Use heartbreak to make yourself wiser. With that mantra, I made my way aro ~ Ilsa Madden Mills, #NFDB |
| 100:I couldn’t help it,” I said, knowing how lame that sounded. It was as bad as Angeline’s “it’s not my fault” mantra. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB |
| 101:But every time she tried yoga she found herself silently chanting her own mantra: I’m so boooored, I’m so boooored. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB |
| 102:The Budget is in line with our vision for a skilled & digital India, guided by Mantra of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas'. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB |
| 103:Fulfillment of Central Committee directives became Stalin’s mantra, and suspicion of non-fulfillment, his obsession. ~ Stephen Kotkin, #NFDB |
| 104:I sit quietly and repeat my mantra until I'm in a meditative state, taking it all in but not focusing on any one thing. ~ Donna Karan, #NFDB |
105:The more I heard it in my thoughts, the
more sense it made. And beyond sense, it became a kind of seductive mantra. ~ Jeff Lindsay,#NFDB |
| 106:Don't take life too seriously. Have fun in your life. And, never forget my mantra - love and laughter supersede all! ~ Lisa Vanderpump, #NFDB |
| 107:My goal was for acting to become my main income. I would say to myself, 'I'm good enough'. That became my mantra. ~ Michael Fassbender, #NFDB |
| 108:Colin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie. ~ John Green, #NFDB |
109:Surrender to the Feet of the Guru is the real mantra, in which there will be no fear of Maya's delusion.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, [T5],#NFDB |
| 110:De hecho, si Da Vinci hubiera tenido un mantra, sería algo así como: “Esto funciona en la práctica, pero no en teoría”. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB |
| 111:I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. He had used the John Burroughs quote as a mantra ~ Tami Hoag, #NFDB |
| 112:Staying in my three-foot world became a mantra for me. It is liberating once you let go of the things that you can’t control. ~ Mark Owen, #NFDB |
| 113:Any good album title has multiple meanings, and I like choosing titles where I find myself repeating it, almost like a mantra. ~ DJ Shadow, #NFDB |
| 114:Lady Gaga listens to me. Her mantra is only one word - 'Bikram' - because Bikram makes her what she is today. It works. ~ Bikram Choudhury, #NFDB |
| 115:Ni su mantra, ni su cordura y desde luego no su suerte, pudieron ayudarlo contra el suave toque de ese angelito demoníaco. ~ Lissa D Angelo, #NFDB |
| 116:Food should be consumed while chanting your mantra inwardly. This will purify the food and the mind at the same time. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 117:Music is a mantra that soothes the soul...something our body has to have. It's important to understand the power of music. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB |
| 118:Our mantra is that 90 percent of all television is bad, and ten percent has never been better. We make fun of that 90 percent. ~ Joel McHale, #NFDB |
| 119:Write your Miracle Mantra: I will (insert your goals and daily actions, here), no matter what. There is no other option. ~ Hal Elrod, #NFDB |
| 120:Your mantra is thank you. Just keep saying thank you. Don't explain. Don't complain. Just say thank you. Say thank you to existence. ~ Mooji, #NFDB |
| 121:Women only like jerks.’ That’s the mantra of dudes who have made themselves undateable but aren’t willing to take the blame. ~ Victor LaValle, #NFDB |
| 122:...your name repeats itself mantra-like in my head. At night I fall asleep clinging to the hope that you are happy and well... ~ Shani Mootoo, #NFDB |
123:Think for yourself. That's the golden rule. Think for yourself.
Make it your mantra. Tattoo it on the inside of your eyelids. ~ Jed McKenna,#NFDB |
| 124:Mantra can be defined as the science of vibration in mind, matter, energy, and consciousness to bring beauty into the manifestation. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB |
| 125:Only God has no limits (except those he voluntarily imposes on himself). The mantra "no limits" is actually a call to idolatry. ~ Roger E Olson, #NFDB |
| 126:a mantra she attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: women in politics, she said, “need to develop skin as tough as a rhinoceros hide. ~ Mark Leibovich, #NFDB |
| 127:MANTRA I am connected to the never-ending flow of light. Everything I am searching for is ready to flow through me right now. ~ Rebecca Campbell, #NFDB |
| 128:I have a vision of a Modern India. I have embarked on a huge mission to convert that vision into reality. My mantra is Development. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB |
| 129:All along, my mantra was: Don't write unless it contributes to the emotion, and do anything you do in service of the emotion only. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB |
| 130:The giver of the Mantra is the real Guru, for by the repetition of this Mantra one obtains dispassion and renunciation. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB |
| 131:The native power of poetry is in its sight, not in its intellectual thought-matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB |
132:- Üç . Bu, senin yazgının sayısıdır.
- Üç sayısı mı?
- Evet, üç sayısı gizemlidir. Üç, mantra’nın kalbinde durur.
- Hangi üç? ~ Stephen King,#NFDB |
| 133:I have my mantra about silhouette, proportion, and fit. I believe that when they are in harmony and balance, you’ll look great in anything. ~ Tim Gunn, #NFDB |
| 134:That's basically the mantra of Herr Silverman's teaching - think for yourself and do what's right for you, but let others do the same. ~ Matthew Quick, #NFDB |
| 135:If all the fish in the sea kept their mouths shut, they’d never get caught” is an often repeated mantra in the world of organized crime. ~ Philip Carlo, #NFDB |
| 136:How much I can learn from a tree! The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer. ~ Satish Kumar, #NFDB |
| 137:Spiritual process is not about chanting a mantra or closing your eyes, spiritual process is essentially about enhancing your perception. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB |
| 138:Whenever I get down about life going by too quickly, what helps me is a little mantra that I repeat to myself: at least I'm not a fruit fly. ~ Ray Romano, #NFDB |
| 139:Our content carries the Forbes name, and our whole mantra is to put authoritative journalism at the center of the social media experience. ~ Michael Perlis, #NFDB |
| 140:Snyder had scaled the rocky heights of the American political landscape by adhering to a simple mantra: Do unto others before they do unto you. ~ Brad Thor, #NFDB |
| 141:He began to practice the mantra, chanting Rama, Rama, Rama over and over again to himself—both aloud and silently. The mantra eased his fear— ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB |
| 142:The function of a neuron is defined chiefly by its connections with other neurons. This mantra defines a doctrine I’ll call connectionism. ~ Sebastian Seung, #NFDB |
| 143:I hate to keep repeating my mantra, but, boy, there are things happening that we did not expect to happen in any way, shape, manner, or form. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB |
| 144:I need to stay in the present and use that new-age mantra: 'I'm okay right now.' But I worry about all the things I'm failing at every moment. ~ Jonathan Ames, #NFDB |
| 145:The mantra of the makeover junkie, sucking it in, letting it out; unwilling to settle for genetic fate; waiting instead for her transformation... ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB |
| 146:The mantra of the “least worse” does not work—look at the steady deterioration in American politics. The “least worst” paves the way for the worst. ~ Chris Hedges, #NFDB |
| 147:He said the HP mantra was “MBWA.” Translation: Managing By Wandering Around. It stands for being in touch, being human—and learning from everyone. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB |
| 148:The word Hare is the word that calls upon the energy that's around the Lord. If you say the mantra enough, you build up an identification with God. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB |
| 149:And so I was left with a mantra, a sort of haiku version of our relationship: I don’t regret one day I spent with him, nor did I leave a moment too soon. ~ Padma Lakshmi, #NFDB |
| 150:Maybe all of the mysteries of particle theory can be solved by invoking the same mantra: if the universe were any other way, we could not live in it. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB |
| 151:When your thoughts come and you're trying to stop them, simply say "No". Learn the mantra "No". Every time a thought comes in your mind ... just say no. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 152:Had a powerful meditation just now - caused an earthquake in Southern California. Was meditating on Shiva mantra & earth began to shake. Sorry about that. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB |
| 153:Timothy Leary declared that personal computers had become the new LSD and years later revised his famous mantra to proclaim, “Turn on, boot up, jack in. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB |
| 154:When you chant "Aum" or any mantra, do so softly and gently. Extend the sound. Focus your awareness on the sound of the mantra and become absorbed in it. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 155:A different sort of life, she thought, and the words became a mantra to the melody of the Emberlin. A different sort of life, a different sort of life. Where ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB |
| 156:It was a kind of sado-masochism. I would take the things that were painful to me and elevate them and, through the mantra of music, make them into a release. ~ Michael Gira, #NFDB |
| 157:The mantra that you're given in Transcendental Meditation you keep to yourself. The reason being, true happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within. ~ David Lynch, #NFDB |
| 158:Atal Bihari Vajpayee ji gave the mantra- Insaniyat, Jamhooriyat, Kashmiriyat. He based Jammu and Kashmir's development on this, and we need to take it ahead. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB |
| 159:Just as you've deceived me, so will your mind deceive you. When you need the Brahmastra the most, you'll forget the mantra needed to call it up. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, #NFDB |
| 160:I have a mantra of my own that has helped me through the most chaotic of times. I remind myself that: I am the best, I have the best, and I deserve the best. ~ Allison Holker, #NFDB |
| 161:My mantra is "I don't want to let anybody down." Maybe that's not the right attitude, because you can't please everybody. But I'm giving it everything I've got. ~ Terry Crews, #NFDB |
| 162:None of this was his fault, but it wasn’t equal, either, and for any woman who lives by the mantra that equality is important, this can be a little confusing ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB |
| 163:A song is a mantra, something you repeat over and over. We need peace, we need giving, we need love, we need unity. I want the whole world to sing this song. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB |
| 164:The word of the Mantra is living. Can anyone, who has received it, give it back? Can he, once having felt attraction for the Guru, get rid of him? ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB |
| 165:When we’re struggling, we don’t need a book in our hands. We need the right words in our minds. When things are tough, a mantra does more good than a manifesto. ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB |
| 166:it’s a point of pride whenever you can point to the ways in which you’re avoiding your progenitor’s defective character. I’m not like him becomes your mantra, ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB |
| 167:The Mantra in other words is a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry, #NFDB |
| 168:Don’t be closer to twice a friend’s weight than to her actual weight,” I told myself. This little mantra has helped me stave off obesity for more than two decades. ~ Mindy Kaling, #NFDB |
| 169:His management mantra was “Focus.” He eliminated excess product lines and cut extraneous features in the new operating system software that Apple was developing ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB |
| 170:Staying in my three-foot world became a mantra for me. It is liberating once you let go of the things you can't control. It seems to work for just about any situation. ~ Mark Owen, #NFDB |
| 171:Stop being conned by the old mantra that says, 'Leaders are cool, managers are dweebs.' Instead, follow the Peters Principle: Leaders are cool. Managers are cool too! ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB |
| 172:Neither Mantra nor scripture is of any avail; Bhakti, love, accomplishes everything. The Master is everything - both Guru and Ishta. He is all in all. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB |
| 173:Prana... is the spirit of mantra. Mantra in turn is the expression of prana. Whatever most engages our prana or vital energy becomes the main subject of our speech. ~ David Frawley, #NFDB |
| 174:Throughout my training we always had a mantra; They come first. If I had really and truly screwed up my future, I'd have a new mantra; A comes first. The B, C, D... ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB |
| 175:Lakshmi is a celestial being who lives in a higher plane of existence. Her mantra is "Sring." When you chant it, it brings beauty and light into your consciousness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 176:RIM’s chief saw the semiconductor giant as a dangerous, tricky heavyweight whose every employee lived by former CEO Andy Grove’s mantra, “Only the paranoid survive. ~ Jacquie McNish, #NFDB |
| 177:Throughout my training we always had a mantra; They come first. If I had really and truly screwed up my future, I'd have a new mantra; A comes first. Then B, C, D... ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB |
| 178:When blame inevitably arises, the most senior people in the room should repeat this mantra: if a mistake happens, shame on us for making it so easy to make that mistake. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB |
| 179:The mantra of independence was Satyagraha. And the warriors were Satyagrahis. The mantra of New Age India must be Swachhagrah. And the warriors will be Swachhagrahis. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB |
| 180:Play, don’t pray” was the mantra for some, who according to the insiders included dinner parties of clerics and male prostitutes that ended in nights of drugs and sex. ~ Gerald Posner, #NFDB |
| 181:We embraced the second two affirmations. “I am good at art, I am learning” became the final words to any argument, the punch line of any joke, and our collective mantra. ~ Rob Spillman, #NFDB |
| 182:By this point, I hope you’re moving your lips to this familiar mantra: because risk is high, prices are low. And because prices are low, future returns are high. So ~ William J Bernstein, #NFDB |
| 183:The answering call causes my ears to ring. Pigpen stares at me, unblinking as the mantra is repeated three more times followed by over a hundred men howling into the night. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB |
| 184:The definition of mantra is "that which protects the mind." That which protects the mind from negativity, or that which protects you from your own mind, is called mantra. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #NFDB |
| 185:What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Hell if he knew. Mitch was in pure reaction mode—the words “keep her” pounded in his brain like a mantra, refusing to be ignored. ~ Jennifer Dawson, #NFDB |
| 186:Is there any Mantra prescribed for giving up the fruits of Japa?The Mother said, "Don't say 'Giving up the fruits of Japa'; say 'offering the fruits of Japa.'" ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB |
| 187:My mantra is that I can go back home at anytime. I have a degree, I am smart, and I am honest. I care about my career and what I do, yet I know my lane and where I desire to go. ~ Tone Bell, #NFDB |
| 188:Conservation of thoughts are valid in classical, relativistic, and quantum theory. Symmetries and conservation of thoughts are the two fundamentals laws of ancient mantra systems. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB |
| 189:How do you end a meditation session? It's nice to chant a mantra again. Maybe repeat it a few times. It seals the meditation. Do your best and then just give it to eternity. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 190:I don't want an angry song with no silver lining ending up on my album. Then I'd have to play, or feel obliged to play, that song every night in repetition as a mantra of anger. ~ Alex Ebert, #NFDB |
| 191:I'm Godless. And so I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking, which is -- ultimately what my God becomes, which is what my mantra becomes, is the theme. ~ Darren Aronofsky, #NFDB |
| 192:The march of history is that of the human race obeying the mantra of the motivational triad—attempting to attain more pleasure, for less pain, with ever-greater efficiency. ~ Douglas J Lisle, #NFDB |
| 193:When I was shooting 'The Bourne Identity,' I had a mantra: 'How come you never see James Bond pay a phone bill?' It sounds trite, but it became the foundation of that franchise. ~ Doug Liman, #NFDB |
| 194:Om Mani Padme Hum is the mantra of love and compassion. It is the mantra of awakening the collective consciousness. It is the mantra of connecting with the Universal Consciousness. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB |
| 195:It is not a good idea to continually repeat a mantra during meditation. Repeating a mantra throughout your mediation causes you to fixate on a specific level of consciousness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 196:A mantra is a very powerful word. It vibrates like music does, only not on this plane but on other planes of reality. It creates a powerful force. It starts the kundalini moving. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 197:If the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB |
| 198:I kept my mantra in mind: The brick walls are there for a reason. They're not there to keep us out. the brick walls are there to give us chance to show how badly we want something. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB |
| 199:Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it. I drank more and continued my mantra. 'Stop thinking', swig, 'empty your head', swig, 'now, seriously empty your head'. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB |
| 200:The mantra of the National Commercial Bank is 'building a better Jamaica.' If this bank is going to be everlastingly successful, it has to take on the ailments of this society. ~ Michael Lee Chin, #NFDB |
| 201:The mantra becomes one’s staff of life,” he wrote, “and carries one through every ordeal … Each repetition … has a new meaning, each repetition carries you nearer and nearer to God. ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB |
| 202:Grove’s mantra was “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” Noyce and Moore may not have been paranoid, but they were never complacent. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB |
| 203:Realistic art does not and cannot give us a scientifically accurate presentation of life, because Art is not and cannot be Science. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB |
| 204:When doing archana (daily prayers) as a group, one person should chant the mantra and the others should repeat it. Mantras should be chanted slowly, clearly and with devotion. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 205:Finally, my mind just settled into the realization that accidents happen, and a mantra suddenly appeared in my mind, one that has served me well since: anything can happen anytime. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB |
| 206:Start a meditation session by repeating a mantra, perhaps, "Aum", which is the most powerful of all mantras. Then, after repeating the mantra perhaps a dozen times, focus on a yantra. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 207:This is politics" was always the mantra, as if we could do nothing about it, as if we'd all moved to a new city on a new planet called Politics, where none of the normal rules applied. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB |
| 208:Our shared mantra became “It can always get worse.” We literally repeated it aloud every day, as a charm to ward off the possibility that our situation might grow even more unpleasant. The ~ Piper Kerman, #NFDB |
| 209:I feel insanity stalking me again, threatening to curl me up fetal and shatter me into a million pieces. But I shit it down, returning to my new mantra. I am not allowed to think I’m crazy. ~ Blake Crouch, #NFDB |
| 210:I remembered a mantra that one of my teachers used to tell me at drama school, that every thought will pass across your face. Even if you're thinking about Shreddies the camera will read it. ~ Ruth Wilson, #NFDB |
| 211:Surely there were others like me, born without an inkling of direction. The wanderers, the amblers, the dabblers, united by our purposeless mantra-I have no idea what to do with my life. ~ Suzanne Selfors, #NFDB |
| 212:The thing to remember is that the work comes first, and not to get distracted by anything else. If you keep focused on the work, everything else will fall into place. That's my mantra now. ~ James Nesbitt, #NFDB |
| 213:We have a mantra: don't be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing. ~ Larry Page, #NFDB |
| 214:It is not sufficient for poetry to attain high intensities of word and rhythm; it must have, to fill them, an answering intensity of vision. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB |
| 215:Definitely do the work. Don't expect to blow up overnight. Go out, do the work, and enjoy the ride. That's really my mantra. I'm not in a hurry to be anywhere fast. I'm just enjoying the ride. ~ Kam Williams, #NFDB |
| 216:The attempt to diminish the subjective view to the vanishing-point so as to get an accurate presentation is proper to science, not to poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB |
| 217:I will adapt. I will see love in the light of truth rather than experience. Only then will I strengthen my own self and speak fluently the language of love. That is my mantra. My saving grace. ~ Tarryn Fisher, #NFDB |
| 218:She loved to put her hands in the water and repeat her mantra: “Just for today. Just for today I will choose water over alcohol. Just for today I will allow water to cleanse me, to purify me. ~ Laura Esquivel, #NFDB |
| 219:If one watches whence the notion 'I' arises, the mind gets absorbed there; that is tapas. When a mantra is repeated, if one watches whence that mantra sound arises, the mind gets absorbed ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB |
| 220:Live your life’s choices to extremes, do everything to the best of your ability, and take pride in what you achieve and then, whatever you choose is enough.’ It sounds like an often-spoken mantra. ~ Sara Alexi, #NFDB |
| 221:The coupling between the heart and the mind is man's sole soundless mantra which when put out, no more sacrifices are offered by him/her anymore to The Lord; this is when satan makes his move. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB |
| 222:A mantra like one of those ridiculous self-help hypnosis cds playing in my head on a loop: I am a strong, confident, sexually experienced woman who does not need to feel ashamed of her nudity. ~ Jessica Gadziala, #NFDB |
| 223:Calling upon God with one's mind steadfast is equivalent to a million repetitions of the Mantra. What is the good in doing Japa for a whole day if there is no concentration of mind? ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB |
| 224:most dog owners, having heard the mantra of “be a strong alpha” for so long, quite understandably reproduce a pack structure that’s dysfunctionally skewed toward dominance rather than cooperation. ~ Ted Kerasote, #NFDB |
| 225:There is the path of karma, selfless action, the path of love and devotion, the path of training the mind and the path of Yoga, mantra and tantra this is what the various saints advocated. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 226:My new one (tattoo) says 'Never a failure, always a lesson' and is kind of my mantra to life, just a reminder. My life is just a crazy rollercoaster every day and whenever I read that it just reassures me. ~ Rihanna, #NFDB |
| 227:The poet really creates out of himself and not out of what he sees outwardly: that outward seeing only serves to excite the inner vision to its work. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB |
| 228:Your mind makes you dance like a monkey all the time... Now you have to become stronger; you have to make the mind dance. Make it dance on the stage of mantra. For that, mediate and repeat mantra. ~ Swami Muktananda, #NFDB |
| 229:The modern Establishment relies on a mantra of 'There Is No Alternative': potential opposition is guarded against by enforcing disbelief in the idea that there is any other viable way of running society. ~ Owen Jones, #NFDB |
| 230:What if where I am is what I need?’ Before you, I had always thought of this mantra as a means of making peace with a bummer or even catastrophic situation. I never imagined it might apply to joy, too ~ Maggie Nelson, #NFDB |
| 231:What if where I am is what I need? Before you, I had always thought of this mantra as a means of making peace with a bummer or even catastropjic situation. I never imagined it might apply to joy, too. ~ Maggie Nelson, #NFDB |
| 232:I have been absolutely clear where I'm coming from about health care reform. This is something this nation has to do and a robust public option has been the mantra of my campaign from the very outset. ~ John Garamendi, #NFDB |
| 233:It represents a Bible verse I wear on my shoe. Philippians 4:13. It says 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.' It's also my mantra, how I get up for games and why I play the way I do. ~ Stephen Curry, #NFDB |
| 234:The maha-mantra was prescribed for modern times because of the fast-paced nature of things today. Even when people do get into a little quiet place, it's very difficult to calm the mind for very long. ~ Mukunda Goswami, #NFDB |
| 235:We're not gonna die We're not gonna die We're not gonna die, leading them in a chant, a mantra that was joyful and mock joyful at the same time because this is New York, New York and we want it both ways. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB |
| 236:I have a mantra that kind of explains my feelings on this subject, which is, "The past is the present is the future." When you're recording something, you're making something that will exist in the future. ~ Will Oldham, #NFDB |
| 237:Keep a cool head and a warm heart. A mantra that became a song, inspired by the wise words of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. If we all take the time to listen and love each other, this world would be a better place. ~ Mike Love, #NFDB |
| 238:Remember the true basis of yoga... Obedience to the divine Will, nor assertion of self-will is the very first mantra... learn thou first absolutely to obey. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Ashram Diary 1984, August 21 and September 9, #NFDB |
| 239:Thoughts are one of the most creative powers we have as human beings. If you hold the mantra in your mind that you are continually becoming more healthful and radiant, that is what you will become. ~ Dashama Konah Gordon, #NFDB |
| 240:Make use of all free time at the office and elsewhere for chanting your mantra or reading spiritual books. Avoid indulging in unnecessary gossip and try to talk about spiritual subjects with others. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 241:My current mantra is that sometimes we need teachers in our lives. I never had that in my life, parents and stuff like that; I tried to stay on the outside of them or anybody that had that kind of influence. ~ Taylor Dane, #NFDB |
| 242:The government is committed towards helping the poor and neo- middle class with the success mantra of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas. It is in line with government's vision to create a skilled and digital India. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB |
| 243:I think there's beauty in repetition. And that's part of my culture and African culture as well: repeated things, mantra. It's spiritual, it's meditation, it's Buddhism, it's praying, it's all these things. ~ Robert Glasper, #NFDB |
| 244:There is a wonderful interpretation for the word, 'mantra' ~ 'man' meaning the awareness, 'tra' meaning 'that which engages' ~ so, mantra becomes 'that which engages the awareness' :) #SpiritChat twitter.com/joanncorley/st…, #NFDB |
| 245:Jeff Bezos’s favourite saying is ‘Start with the customer and work backwards,’ but it is repeated as a mantra so frequently by his staff that you cannot help thinking they start with the boss and work forwards. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB |
| 246:Mantras have an important place in meditation. But the idea has become somewhat prevalent in the West, and in the East to some extent, that the simple repetition of a mantra will eventually cause enlightenment ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 247:It’s every asshole’s mantra: I married a psycho bitch. But I got a small, nasty bite of gratification: I really did marry a genuine, bona fide psycho bitch. Nick, meet your wife: the world’s foremost mindfucker. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB |
| 248:Um corredor contou a respeito de um mantra que seu irmão mais velho, também corredor, lhe ensinara, e sobre o o qual ele refletia desde que começara a correr. Ei-lo aqui: a dor é inevitável. Sofrer é opcional. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB |
| 249:If there is one mantra a Freak lives by, it is this: people respond to incentives. As utterly obvious as this point may seem, we are amazed at how frequently people forget it, and how often it leads to their undoing. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 250:Trump was not a politician who could parse factions of support and opprobrium; he was a salesman who needed to make a sale. “I won. I am the winner. I am not the loser,” he repeated, incredulously, like a mantra. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB |
| 251:A mantra is basically a means of talking with your thoughts and feelings. It's a time-honored method sometimes referred to as prayer, but really it's an opening of a conversation between the heart and the mind. ~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche, #NFDB |
| 252:Gayatri Mantra Tat savitur varam rupam jyothih parasyadhimahi, yannah satyena dipayetLet us meditate on the most auspicious [best] form of Savitri, on the Light of the Supreme which shall illumine us with the Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB |
| 253:Social bonds have given way under the collapse of social protections and the attack on the welfare state. Moreover, all solutions to socially produced problems are now relegated to the mantra of individual solutions. ~ Henry Giroux, #NFDB |
| 254:The mantra is a very preliminary exercise for the student to begin to grasp a sense of focus. When they are used by persons who have reached very high levels of attention, they can open up doorways to other worlds. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 255:This chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra is enacted from the spiritual platform and thus this sound vibration surpasses all lower strata of consciouness - namely sensual, mental and intellectual. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, #NFDB |
| 256:Let us all dedicate our lives for the sake of the entire humanity. With every minute, every breath, every atom of our bodies we should repeat this mantra: “dedication, dedication, giving, giving, loving, loving. ~ Swami Satchidananda, #NFDB |
| 257:Sring is the mantra of beauty. Traditionally it is connected with Lakshmi, the Indian goddess of beauty. Chant "Sring" slowly, elongating each sound. As you do, you will see the consciousness of beauty of everywhere. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 258:I have tried to advocate for the roll-up-your-sleeves productivity and management skills required to push ideas to fruition. My mantra has always been, “It’s not about ideas, it’s about making ideas happen.” Frequently ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB |
| 259:Many companies claim they’re data-driven. Unfortunately, while they embrace the data part of that mantra, few focus on the second word: driven. If you have a piece of data on which you cannot act, it’s a vanity metric. ~ Alistair Croll, #NFDB |
| 260:This too shall pass" has become my mantra on the LOW days, havin one, but the day is half done and though my two year old does'nt want to give up the tantrum, I can begin my day again any time I should so choose. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 261:Be compassionate,” Morrie whispered. “And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place.” He took a breath, then added his mantra: “Love each other or die. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB |
262:»Schschscht«, machte Gideon. »Alles ist gut, Gwenny. Ich bin bei dir.«
»Ja, du bist bei mir«, sagte ich und wiederholte gleich noch einmal, wie ein beruhigendes Mantra. »Du bist bei mir du bist bei mir du bist bei mir.« ~ Kerstin Gier,#NFDB |
| 263:The mantra of the traveler is to make peace with waiting. The mantra of the quester is to keep moving forward. Whatever it takes, whether facing an immense challenge or spirit-sapping tedium, just keep making progress. ~ Chris Guillebeau, #NFDB |
| 264:Initially the student, in some traditions, is given a mantra, a particular word of power to focus on. While thoughts are cascading through your mind during meditation, you should be absorbed in the repetition of a mantra. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 265:IBM's long-standing mantra is 'Think.' What has always made IBM a fascinating and compelling place for me, is the passion of the company, and its people, to apply technology and scientific thinking to major societal issues. ~ Ginni Rometty, #NFDB |
| 266:My big mantra is 'food is medicine,' so I really love being able to talk about how you can make food your medicine, how you can make food be the thing that hopefully allows you to live a longer, happier, healthier life. ~ Travis Lane Stork, #NFDB |
267:The other quotation is a mantra.
OM Sri Aurobindo Mira
Open my mind, my heart, my life to your Light,
your Love, your Power. In all things may I see the Divine.
16 July 1938
On Himself, 26.512 ~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 11,#NFDB |
| 268:The words of Peter then became the new mantra for the Christian movement: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him” (10:34–35). ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB |
| 269:Wood burns. Roots nourish. Branches shelter. Leaves heal.” The words had become her mantra, her way of reigniting her courage when it started to falter. My life depends on a tree, she thought wryly as she cinched her pack. ~ Teresa Tsalaky, #NFDB |
| 270:Saraswati, in her manifestation as Divine Speech, represents a route, through mantra, to grasping the underlying spiritual laws of the universe and through them the attainment of personal spiritual and material power. ~ Thomas Ashley Farrand, #NFDB |
271:Be compassionate," Morrie whispered. And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place."
He took a breath, then added his mantra: "Love each other or die. ~ Mitch Albom,#NFDB |
| 272:The modern-day mantra we hear so often, 'I will follow Christ but don't bother me with organised religion', is symptomatic of the disembodied assumptions of the digital age. In reality the Christian life could not be more embodied. ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB |
| 273:Pleši s onim tko te pozvao. Taj klišej koji su mi roditelji često ponavljali ne odnosi se samo na maturalnu večer. On bi trebao biti mantra u poslovnim i akademskim krugovima, ali i u kući. On nas podsjeća na lojalnost i poštovanje. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB |
| 274:that crack of the bat against a ball has been my mantra, a sound I hear in desperate moments, at times when I crave total satisfaction, a sound I hear over and over when I want something very badly but can't express what it is. ~ Lucy Jane Bledsoe, #NFDB |
| 275:There it is again, the mantra “if only.” I am always made aware of the alternative universe where things turned out differently, in which lives were saved. I am used to the mantra. For immigrants, regret can become a way of life. Shouts ~ Suki Kim, #NFDB |
| 276:Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people, the mantra of the Left, and therefore of the universities and the media, has been for generations that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare state, produces selfish people. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB |
| 277:Lulit had bemoaned the fact that, despite the three Ivy League degrees between us, it still came down to the length of our skirts, but we’d stuck to our mantra—Go. Sell. Art. To rich white men—and sold out our entire booth at the fair. ~ Robinne Lee, #NFDB |
| 278:When your inner mantra becomes 'How may I serve?' rather than 'What am I going to get?' and 'Who do I need to defeat?,' you start to see the unfolding of God in everything and everyone around you and you shift into higher consciousness. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB |
| 279:The notion that business and government are and should be partners is ubiquitous, unremarkable, and repeated like a mantra by leaders in both domains. It seems a compelling and innocuous idea - until you think about what it really means. ~ Joel Bakan, #NFDB |
| 280:Chanting Hare Krishna is really the same sort of thing as meditation, but I think it has a quicker effect. I mean, even if you put your beads down, you can still say the mantra or sing it without actually keeping track on your beads. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB |
| 281:It's a widely accepted principle,' he says, 'that you can claim a piece of land which has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years, if only you repeat this mantra endlessly: 'We discovered it, we discovered it, we discovered it.... ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB |
| 282:Embodied cognition is the science linked with the ancient science of mantra-tantra-yantra systems. It deals with body-mind and ego simultaneously as an integrated system. It encompasses biological, psychological and cultural context together. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB |
| 283:It’s a widely accepted principle,” he says, “that you can claim a piece of land which has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years, if only you will repeat this mantra endlessly: ‘We discovered it, we discovered it, we discovered it…. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB |
| 284:Always be respectful and open-minded when listening to another man's beliefs. What you reject today could be your mantra tomorrow. Man's evolution is all about transformations. An unexpected experience you have one day can change you forever. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB |
| 285:The imminent demise of the church has been predicted since the middle of the 18th century. This is the regular secular mantra if churchgoing declines. I could take you to plenty of churches that are full to bursting and new churches being built. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB |
| 286:I’m not afraid, I said, calling up my old mantra to calm my mind. But it didn’t feel the same as it usually did to say it. Perhaps because that wasn’t entirely true anymore. Perhaps by now I’d come far enough that I had the guts to be afraid. ~ Cheryl Strayed, #NFDB |
| 287:Los tibetanos tienen una palabra para ello: barche, y la oración para superarlo se llama barche lam sum. Los budistas estrictos piden a los monjes que reciten ese mantra de su parte para que desaparezcan esos obstáculos del camino de su vida. ~ Yangzom Brauen, #NFDB |
| 288:It's a widely accepted principle," he says, "that you can claim a piece of land which has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years, if only you will repeat this mantra endlessly: 'We discovered it, we discovered it, we discovered it. . . . ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB |
| 289:The Ancient Desert Fathers, when they were disconsolate and without hope, would repeat one word, over and over, as a kind of soothing mantra. And the word wasn't "Jesus" or "God" or "Love." The word was "Today." It kept them where they needed to be. ~ Gregory Boyle, #NFDB |
| 290:An affirmation is almost like a mantra. It does not really matter if what you are affirming is not totally true as yet. By repeating an affirmation over and over again, it becomes embedded in the subconscious mind, and eventually it becomes your reality. ~ Stuart Wilde, #NFDB |
| 291:Are you going to the lab tonight?” “Yes, but I’ll be back before you wake up,” I assured him. “Daddy is just across the hall, and Coco is watching you while you sleep. This house is full of people who love you,” I chanted, our customary bedtime mantra. He ~ Hope Jahren, #NFDB |
| 292:Doing meditation you may need to experiment to discover what kinds of thoughts are best for your own unique interests and situation. For you it might be a repetitive "mantra," or simply an open state of watching your breath, like in the Buddhist tradition. ~ Tim McCarthy, #NFDB |
| 293:I think a mantra I always told myself is, "No matter how many times somebody pitches the ball at you, if you swing every time, eventually one of them is going to connect." Being yourself and persistence are two things that became my daily mantras, I suppose. ~ Jamie Bell, #NFDB |
| 294:My mantra is "stay perpendicular." Horizontal is not as good. Half the people that came along and up with with me are either gone to another dimension or don't remember what they had for lunch. I'm fortunate. I don't know why. I just want to have a good time. ~ Martin Landau, #NFDB |
| 295:Mantra science deals with power of words, thought vibrations, concentrations, visualization, manifestation, with the structure of mind, matter, energy, consciousness and the interactions between the fundamental constituents of the observable universe and the beyond. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB |
| 296:Who gives a shit what everyone thinks?” he said. I see now that this has long been some sort of mantra for him. I've never been that free. I want to be, and sometimes I pretend to be, but I’m not. I’m forever chained to giving a shit about what someone thinks. ~ Tammara Webber, #NFDB |
| 297:You might wish to try Kali's mantra. Kali is another celestial being. She offers very fast spiritual progress through intensity. Her mantra is "Kring!" When you chant Kring, chant it very intensely and sharply. Only chant Kring when you are in a high meditation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 298:I remember the mantra of visitors when she was a newborn—sleep when the baby sleeps! And I wanted to laugh. I wanted to say, Don’t you get it? I can’t ever sleep again, not completely. Not into that complete, solid unconsciousness I used to have before she came along, ~ Ruth Ware, #NFDB |
| 299:To begin your commitment to new perceptions, start by paying attention to attack thoughts toward yourself and others. Whenever you notice your thoughts detour into attack mode, say out loud or to yourself: Happiness is a choice I make. Make this your mantra. ~ Gabrielle Bernstein, #NFDB |
| 300:If there is a Nora Ephron signature anything it is that there's slightly too much food. I have a friend whose mantra is: You must choose. And I believe the exact opposite: I think you should always have at least four desserts that are kind of fighting with each other. ~ Nora Ephron, #NFDB |
| 301:Chanting a mantra at the beginning of your meditation helps you clear the mind and takes you deep within the self. Chanting a mantra at the end of meditation helps you seal the meditation. It helps you bring the awareness of the meditation down into your daily life. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB |
| 302:For the last 20 years of my life, I've had the mantra to do amazing parts with amazing people in amazing projects, so I'm attracted to good story, writing and character and good people. That's what I'm always searching for and I don't think that's ever going to change. ~ John Hawkes, #NFDB |
| 303:Take some time to be silent and repeat the sound of God as an inner mantra. Meditation allows you to make conscious contact with your Source and achieve success in every area. If a problem arises, then go within, get very quiet about it and find the answers inside of you ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB |
| 304:Regarding the mantra..."There is no overtraining" Just because you can handle large amounts of volume doesn't mean it's needed. That's the crux of the issue. Just because the body can tolerate something doesn't mean it's a necessity for progress. This is simply poor logic. ~ Steve Shaw, #NFDB |
| 305:Remember: "For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost, for want of a horseshoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the battle was lost, for want of a battle, the war was lost." This parable should be the mantra of everyone who thinks her or his vote doesn't count. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB |
| 306:Effective education may also require co-opting old faculties to deal with new demands. . . Because much of the content of education is not cognitively natural, the process of mastering it may not always be easy and pleasant, notwithstanding the mantra that learning is fun. ~ Steven Pinker, #NFDB |
| 307:One more tip. Gay Hendricks came up with what he calls the “Ultimate Success Mantra” as a good place to start. Every morning before you get out of bed, say the following: “I expand in abundance, success, and love every day as I inspire those around me to do the same. ~ Christiane Northrup, #NFDB |
| 308:And doubts regarding how high the price might prove. But this is our way. This is our creed. This is the mantra of the Companions of the Hall. It can be no other way. And since we knew our course to be true, doubts could not equal regret. No matter the price. —Drizzt Do’Urden ~ R A Salvatore, #NFDB |
| 309:I think with each generation comes more opportunity. At least that's the way that I see it. I grew up in a generation that watched the birth of the internet. We all have. But I feel like I look around at the generation younger than me and it's a very opportunistic mantra. ~ Justin Timberlake, #NFDB |
| 310:None of this was his fault, but it wasn't equal, either, and for any woman who lives by the mantra that equality is important, this can be a little confusing. It was me who'd alter everything, putting my passions and career dreams on hold, to fulfill this piece of our dream. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB |
| 311:The mantra of the new historicists was "we have betrayed ourselves." Since their emergence, there have been more or less interesting paradigm shifts having mainly to do with Habermas and the increased focus on media studies, but the talismanic word has never ceased to be "history." ~ Paul Fry, #NFDB |
| 312:I always like to cite John Cage's mantra, "If you can stand it for two-minutes, try it for four." In fact, when I look at some of those early films of mine, I think, "Oh my God. Cut it, cut it." The general sense of duration has changed over the years, my own sensibility with it. ~ Yvonne Rainer, #NFDB |
| 313:This “holy man,” a peasant from Siberia, had somehow gained entry to the highest levels of St. Petersburg society by preaching that people should sin as much as possible to find their path to God. He fully embodied his mantra by drinking to excess and hosting orgies at his home. ~ Gwendolyn Womack, #NFDB |
| 314:Try not to have any break in chanting the mantra even for a moment. Continue repeating the mantra while engaged in any task. Chanting in the mind may not always be possible at first, so in the beginning, practice japa by moving the lips incessantly-like a fish drinking water. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 315:The mental disposition of the one who prepares the food is transmitted to all those who consume it. Therefore, as far as possible the mothers should do the cooking for the entire family. If it is done while chanting the mantra, the food will benefit everyone in a spiritual way. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 316:In the beginning, not everyone may be able to clearly repeat every mantra in the 1000 Names. In that case, everyone can respond to the chants with just one mantra. While chanting the 1000 Names, the response may be 'Om Parashaktyai Namaha' or 'Om Sivasaktyaikya Rupinyai Namaha'. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
317:I am the fire,” Crash whispered. “I am the darkness.” It was a mantra, a prayer, the beginnings of a ritual, a ceremonial killing. He could see recognition on the bandit's face, the spasm of fear.
Crash never broke eye contact. “I am not Death,” he finished the verse. “I am its vessel. ~ T L Shreffler,#NFDB |
| 318:I think the most important thing to remember is that pain passes. And artistically, the pain is going to pass. It's what you want to express out of the pain as opposed to indulging in the agony-and-pain mantra of songwriting that became such a hit in the '90s and still, all the way up to now. ~ Alex Ebert, #NFDB |
| 319:Our perceptions take on richness and depth as a result of all the things that we learn. The eye is not a camera that objectively takes a photo of the “world out there.” Rather, what the eye sees is determined by what the brain has learned. This suggests a short mantra: learn more, see more. ~ Richard Restak, #NFDB |
320:As when the mantra sinks in Yoga’s ear,
Its message enters stirring the blind brain
And keeps in the dim ignorant cells its sound;
The hearer understands a form of words
And, musing on the index thought it holds,
He strives to read it with the l ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest,#NFDB |
| 321:You could pay Arthur Janov to teach you to scream about history, or you could learn prayer or a mantra, or you could write your life down and hope to make peace with it, write it down, or paint it, or turn it into improvisational theater, but that was the best you could probably do. You were stuck. ~ Rick Moody, #NFDB |
| 322:A Mantra is composed of certain letters arranged in definite sequence of sounds, of which the letters are the representative signs. To produce the designed effect, Mantra must be intoned in the proper way, according to rhythm and sound...a Mantra is a potent compelling force, a word of power. ~ Sir John Woodroffe, #NFDB |
323:Om Namah Shivaya.
I honor the divinity that resides within me.
...I repeat it again. Again. And again. It's not so much that I'm meditating as unpacking the mantra carefully, the way you would unpack your grandmother's best china if it had been stored in a box for a long time, unused. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,#NFDB |
| 324:The mantra of her parents seemed to echo in her head, almost as if they were both talking to her like the angels Olivia had imagined. If they were here, they would have told her the only way to survive heartache and pain this intense was to throw herself into doing something nice for someone else. ~ RaeAnne Thayne, #NFDB |
| 325:Children, in the present dark age of materialism, chanting the mantra is the easiest way for us to obtain inner purification and concentration. Japa can be done at any time, anywhere, without observing any rule regarding the purity of mind and body. Japa can be done while engaged in any task. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 326:History repeated itself. The 'don't do the things I did' mantra was tiresome pish. The best way to make sure your children don't grow up as cunts is not to be one yourself - or not to let them SEE you being one. This is easier as a sober artist in Santa Barbara than as an alcoholic jailbird in Leith. ~ Irvine Welsh, #NFDB |
| 327:I can't be paralyzed anymore by the critics. My new mantra is, if you're not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, then I'm not interested in your feedback. You don't get to sit in the cheat seat and criticize my appearance or my work with mean-spiritedness if you're also not in the arena. ~ Brene Brown, #NFDB |
| 328:Tony had known going into this that loving a man this deep in the closet would involve compromises. He was still feeling his way around his relationship with Mac. Let it go for now was currently his mantra. But he was aware of a deep, steadily building desire to know when for now was going to be over. ~ Kaje Harper, #NFDB |
| 329:All the time, I was telling myself, just enjoy it for what it is, don’t be weird, don’t get all screwed up over something it isn’t. The usual mantra when you’re with someone who you’re not really with and desperately want to be. Have you noticed how telling yourself all that shit never actually helps? ~ Warren Ellis, #NFDB |
330:Then the Dean repeated the mantra that has had such a marked effect on the progress of knowledge throughout the ages.
“Why don’t we just mix up absolutely everything and see what happens?” he said.
And Ridcully responded with the traditional response.
“It’s got to be worth a try,” he said. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB |
331:Jessica..." The sound of his voice saying my name soothed me, and it's all I wanted to hear him say. Just my name, over and over and over again in his buttery baritone. I wanted my name to be his mantra, the word he meditated on, his tool for finding calm in the world.
But he kept on talking. ~ Megan McCafferty,#NFDB |
332:All the time, I was telling myself, just enjoy it for what it is, don’t be weird, don’t get all screwed up over something it isn’t. The usual mantra when you’re with someone who you’re not really with and desperately want to be.
Have you noticed how telling yourself all that shit never actually helps? ~ Warren Ellis,#NFDB |
| 333:The narcissist is like a bucket with a hole in the bottom: No matter how much you put in, you can never fill it up. The phrase “I never feel like I am enough” is the mantra of the person in the narcissistic relationship. That’s because to your narcissistic partner, you are not. No one is. Nothing is. ~ Ramani Durvasula, #NFDB |
| 334:I say things that can be defined as prayers. But I don't pray to a power or ask an entity to intercede in the earthly scheme, because I don't believe that happens. But if I see a really unfortunate person in the street, I do pray, yes, though I suppose it's really more like a mantra to ease my own sorrow. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB |
| 335:It’s important to remember that even though their brains are learning at peak efficiency, much else is inefficient, including attention, self-discipline, task completion, and emotions. So the mantra “one thing at a time” is useful to repeat to yourself. Try not to overwhelm your teenagers with instructions. ~ Frances E Jensen, #NFDB |
| 336:Costume designers don't care about trends. They appreciate, above so many other qualities, that tailoring is everything, which is a mantra for the way I dress. Ladies: The most important thing in clothing is to find a good, inexpensive tailor, because clothes at the stores are made for bodies that are anomalies. ~ Ginnifer Goodwin, #NFDB |
| 337:Whenever I'm faced with a vulnerable situation, I get deliberate with my intentions by repeating this to myself: "Don't shrink. Don't puff up. stand your sacred ground." Saying this little mantra helps me remember not to get too small so other people are comfortable and not throw up my armor as a way to protect myself. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB |
| 338:Hellish and demoniac persons do not actually know what is the ultimate attainment in perfection, and therefore they think that sense gratification is the highest goal of life. They advise that one can satisfy the senses and at the same time, by reciting some mantra and by some practice, can cheaply aspire for perfection. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 339:Greenspan advised the American people to buy - he repeated the old mantra: 'spending is patriotic'. He also managed to convince them that if they did not have the money, that shouldn't stop them. They would 'pay later'. To a certain extent he was correct, we are all having to 'pay later'... we may even never stop paying. ~ Gilad Atzmon, #NFDB |
| 340:No scandals. No elopements or rushed marriages. You are to be everything and all things proper. All the time. Those words had become a mantra so familiar in their household that the Tidemore girls had taken to concluding their mother’s prayer with a firm “Amen”. Of which she was wholly unappreciative each time. Alas, ~ Christi Caldwell, #NFDB |
| 341:One day, I remember it was in television. I was a fan of the Rolling Stones. One of the members, the guitarist, had died from an overdose of drugs. I cried tears – my model had died. After this, an exciting new group, the Radha Krishna Temple, came on and sang the Hare Krishna mantra. I immediately felt deep solace. ~ Sacinandana Swami, #NFDB |
| 342:The highest inspiration brings the intrinsic word, the spiritual mantra; but even where the inspiration is less than that, has a certain vagueness or fluidity of outline, you cannot say of such mystic poetry that it has no inspiration, not the inspired word at all. Where there is no inspiration, there can be no poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB |
343:The feel of her body against his was exhilarating, driving all rational thought from his head. “All right, prepare
yourself, Claire Brennan.”
She looked up at him curiously. “Prepare myself for
what?”
He gazed at her affectionately. “Repeat your mantra, or
whatever it is you do. Because I’m about to kiss you. ~ Syrie James,#NFDB |
| 344:It is not a question of sitting silently, it is not a question of chanting a mantra. It is a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. As you understand those workings of the mind a great awareness arises in you, which is not of the mind. That awareness arises in your being, in your soul, in your consciousness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB |
345:Nobody can give you the true mantra. It's not something that is given: it's something that wells up from within. It must spring from within all of a sudden, spontaneously, like a profound, intense need of your being - then it has power, because it's not something that comes from outside, it's your very own cry.
~ The Mother, 11 May 1963,#NFDB |
| 346:We’re being misled and misinformed by an unfounded yet constantly repeated mantra about the naturalness of wedded bliss, female sexual reticence, and happily-ever-after sexual monogamy—a narrative pitting man against woman in a tragic tango of unrealistic expectations, snowballing frustration, and crushing disappointment. ~ Christopher Ryan, #NFDB |
| 347:I visualise what I want through meditation. The process of meditating is a great way of making sure I have my priorities sorted. It's not about money - I focus on my career and the kind of film projects I want to do. Film-making is a passion for me, and my mantra is that you should do what you love, and the money will follow. ~ Shilpa Shetty, #NFDB |
| 348:Embrace failure. Never never quit. Get very comfortable with that uneasy feeling of going against the grain and trying something new. It will constantly take you places you never thought you could go. This has been my mantra for years. I always remember I won't do things right on the first try. So failure is mandatory for success! ~ Terry Crews, #NFDB |
| 349:They were not constructed for a life of contemplation or quiet reflection. Discomfort was incorporated into the design. It made sure the occupants were never able to relax or get a moment alone. It keeps them keen for work was the landlords’ mantra when they erected these match stick hovels across England’s hills and dales. ~ Harry Leslie Smith, #NFDB |
| 350:Children, set aside at least half an hour in the morning and in the evening for spiritual practices. After bathing in the morning, a family should sit together and worship. Archana may be performed by chanting the 108 or 1000 Names of Devi or our chosen deity. We can also chant our mantra, meditate or sing hymns at this time. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 351:Few knew in 2000 that Bush was going to end up with neoconservatives all over the place. And once 9/11 happened, I think it's fair to say that eight or nine neocons have had an enormous influence. The whole solution to every problem was to go after Iraq. This had been a neoconservative mantra for ten years. There was no secret about it. ~ Seymour Hersh, #NFDB |
| 352:Since whites in general were not held responsible for harm to blacks, it followed that only those whites who were found liable for intentional discrimination should be penalized. As I suggested earlier, the Brown decision substituted one mantra for another: where "separate" was once equal, "separate" would be now categorically unequal. ~ Derrick A Bell, #NFDB |
| 353:'Nobody goes to jail.' This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth - and nobody went to jail. ~ Matt Taibbi, #NFDB |
| 354:The need to produce today is today’s reality and represents the demands of capital, but the real mantra of success is sustainability and growth. You may be able to meet your quarterly numbers, but the real question is, are you making the necessary investment that will sustain and increase that success one, five, and ten years from now? ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB |
| 355:The color red is symbolic of passion and action, so this Vajrayogini, as she's called, comes with a mantra and she comes with these various weapons and accouterments that are all symbolic of the kind of activity that this principle, as it were, this psychological principle, does or activates in the world. And there's text and mantra as well. ~ Anne Waldman, #NFDB |
| 356:Meditation means you don't have anything, any object to think about. You are just in a state of absolute aloneness. You don't have anything on which you can focus yourself - not a sutra, not a mantra, not any great value of life, just pure space all around you. Then you are in meditation. Meditation is never about something. Meditation is a state. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB |
| 357:There is one statement I want you to keep after you are finished with this book. It is more of a mantra, really. Nonetheless, let it crawl across your mind any time you feel you have been backed into a corner spiritually. It is very simple: Live your life, no matter what life is. Take that with you. Live your life. No matter what that life is. ~ Corey Taylor, #NFDB |
| 358:The cognitive psychology revolution has had a dramatic impact on mental health, and two of its major names are David D. Burns and Albert Ellis. Their mantra that thoughts create feelings, not the other way around, has helped many people to get back in control of their lives because it applies logic and reason to the murky pool of emotions. ~ Tom Butler Bowdon, #NFDB |
| 359:Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells. ~ Max Brooks, #NFDB |
| 360:30:20 — This is the way of an adulterous woman: she eats and wipes her mouth, and says, “I have done no wickedness.” It’s become a mantra in our society: “But I’m really a good person!” Unbelievers and believers alike often make this claim after they do what God’s Word calls sin. But sin requires repentance, not self-justification or denial. ~ Charles F Stanley, #NFDB |
| 361:I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought. ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB |
| 362:Que je croie. Que tu croies. Qu'il ou qu'elle croie. She said it over and over, like it wasn't a verb so much as a a Buddhist mantra. Que je croie. Que tu croies. Qu'il ou qu'elle croie. What a funny thing to say over and over again: I would believe; you would believe; he or she would believe. Believe what? I thought, and right then, the rain came. ~ John Green, #NFDB |
| 363:dans la tradition hindoue, le mantra qui a été appris autrement que de la bouche d’un guru autorisé est sans aucun effet, parce qu’il n’est pas « vivifié » par la présence de l’influence spirituelle dont il est uniquement destiné à être le véhicule. Ceci s’étend d’ailleurs, à un degré ou à un autre, à tout ce à quoi attachée une influence spirituelle. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB |
| 364:Deciding to chant the mantra a certain number of times daily will help foster the japa habit. We should always keep a rosary with us for doing japa. A rosary can be made of 108, 54, 27 or 18 beads of rudraksha, tulsi, crystal, sandalwood, gems, etc, with one 'guru bead'. We should resolve to chant a certain number of rosaries (rounds) daily. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 365:My wife was crazy. I was married to a crazy woman. It's every asshole's mantra: I married a psycho bitch. But I got a small, nasty bite of gratification: I really did marry a genuine, bona fide psycho bitch. Nick, meet your wife: the world's foremost mindfucker. I was not as big an asshole as I'd thought. An asshole, yes, but not on a grandiose scale. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB |
| 366:So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.” Apple’s design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB |
| 367:If you decide to go on a Buddhist path, you have to be careful if you start mixing a lot of different traditions you are not totally familiar with - mixing this kind of meditation with that kind of practice or this kind of visualization with that kind of mantra. Then you really are concocting your own thing, and you have no idea what is going to happen. ~ Sakyong Mipham, #NFDB |
368:One of the more difficult questions I used to find myself being asked as a United Nations official, especially when I had been addressing a generalist audience, was: What is the single most important thing that can be done to improve the world?...
If I had to pick one thing we must do above all else, I now offer a two-word mantra: "Educate girls. ~ Shashi Tharoor,#NFDB |
| 369:Why can't I solve this problem by killing someone? she though petulantly, then comforted herself with the mantra that had kept her going in prison: "Soon all the humans will be dead," she said, droning in the time-honored fashion of gurus everywhere. "And then Opal will be loved." And even if I'm not loved, she thought, at least all the humans will be dead. ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB |
| 370:That kind of betrayal could not, and would not be forgiven, he reminded himself. It wasn’t much of a mantra, but it had kept him going all day while he knew that the woman that just very well might be the one was sitting in a restaurant that discriminated against him simply because he’d had the misfortune of being born into a family with a food disability. ~ R L Mathewson, #NFDB |
371:Why can't I solve this problem by killing someone? she though petulantly, then comforted herself with the mantra that had kept her going in prison: "Soon all the humans will be dead," she said, droning in the time-honored fashion of gurus everywhere. "And then Opal will be loved."
And even if I'm not loved, she thought, at least all the humans will be dead. ~ Eoin Colfer,#NFDB |
| 372:We should forgive and forget the faults of others. Anger is the enemy of every spiritual aspirant. Anger causes loss of power through every pore of our body. In circumstances when the mind is tempted to get angry, we should control ourselves and resolve firmly, 'No.' We can go to a secluded spot and chant our mantra. The mind will become quiet by itself. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 373:Who am I?' is not a mantra. It means that you must find out where in you the 'I-thought' arises, which is the source of all other thoughts. But if you find that vichara marga (path of enquiry) is too hard for you, you go on repeating 'I-I' and that will lead you to the same goal. There is no harm in using 'I' as a mantra. It is the first name of God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Gems, #NFDB |
| 374:I find that using repetitious sound patterns such as mantra (which literally means “place to rest the mind”) is very helpful. By breathing deeply and repeating the phrase In this moment I reclaim my JOY or In this moment I am perfect, whole and beautiful, or I am an innocent and peaceful child of the universe, I shift back into the consciousness of my right mind. ~ Jill Bolte Taylor, #NFDB |
| 375:Children, pray for the good of everyone. We should pray to God to give a good mind even to those who harm us. One cannot sleep peacefully when there is a theif in the neighborhood. Likewise, when we pray for the well-being of others, it is we who gain peace and quietude. Children, the mantra 'Loka samasta sukhino bhavantu' should be chanted at least once daily. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 376:sure, I’ve heard the weight-loss gurus spouting their “nothing tastes as good as being thin feels” mantra, and as I’ve said before—BULLSHIT. The times in my life when I have been thin, I enjoyed it well enough, but trust me, PLENTY of stuff tastes WAY better than being thin feels. For that matter, come to think of it, FEELING FULL FEELS better than being thin does. ~ Jill Conner Browne, #NFDB |
| 377:How long it will take until we get to a Golden Age where everybody's perfectly in tune with God's will, I don't know; but because of Prabhupada, Krishna consciousness has certainly spread more in the last sixteen years than it has since the sixteenth century, since the time of Lord Caitanya. The mantra has spread more quickly and the movement's gotten bigger and bigger. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB |
| 378:In the nearly fifty years since, it’s become a mantra for me and our family that, win or lose, it’s important to “get caught trying.” Whether you’re trying to win an election or pass a piece of legislation that will help millions of people, build a friendship or save a marriage, you’re never guaranteed success. But you are bound to try. Again and again and again. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB |
| 379:The whole idea is that these yidams must not be regarded as external gods who will save you, but they are expressions of your true nature. You identify yourself with the attributes and colors of particular yidams and feel the sound that comes from the mantra so that finally you begin to realize that your true nature is invincible. You become completely one with the yidam. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa, #NFDB |
| 380:He sent his new press secretary, Sean Spicer—whose personal mantra would shortly become “You can’t make this shit up”—to argue his case in a media moment that turned Spicer, quite a buttoned-down political professional, into a national joke, which he seemed destined to never recover from. To boot, the president blamed Spicer for not making the million phantom souls seem real. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB |
| 381:"Hallelujah" is a joyous expression the Christians have, but "Hare Krishna" has a mystical side to it. It's more than just glorifying God; it's asking to become His servant. And because of the way the mantra is put together, with the mystic spiritual energy contained in those syllables, it's much closer to God than the way Christianity currently seems to be representing Him. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB |
| 382:If you feel irritation or depression or despair, recognize their presence and practice this mantra: "Dear one, I am here for you." You should talk to your depression or your anger as you would to a child. You embrace it tenderly with the energy of mindfulness and say, "Dear one, I know you are there, and I am going to take care of you," just as you would with your crying baby. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB |
| 383:I did it on a wing and a prayer, and even though I didn’t have enough confidence to do the show, I had a theory; if I assume I have the confidence, I’ll tell everyone I’m doing it, and then people will come and we’ll actually do it. Once we’ve done it, I’ll have the confidence to do it again. It was some sort of weird positive-thinking confidence mantra because I had to get there. ~ Eddie Izzard, #NFDB |
| 384:He was pleased with it, and repeated it over and over in the back of his head, part mantra, part nursery rhyme, rattling along to the drumbeat of his heart. It’s easy, there’s a trick to it, you do it or you die. It’s easy, there’s a trick to it, you do it or you die. It’s easy, there’s a trick to it, you do it or you die. It’s easy, there’s a trick to it, you do it or you die. Time ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB |
| 385:If you visit a temple, you can see pictures of God, you can see the Deity form of the Lord, and you can just hear Him by listening to yourself and others say the mantra. It's just a way of realizing that all the senses can be applied toward perceiving God, and it makes it that much more appealing, seeing the pictures, hearing the mantra, smelling the incense, flowers, and so on. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB |
386:Kaminski plunged ahead. "I am not going to sign off on anything related to the Raptors," he said. "And I don't care if I'm fired for it."
Buy raised a hand. "Whoa, wait a minute, I don't think you'll be fired," he replied quickly. "Now that Skilling's gone, we have a different mantra in Enron."
He looked Kaminski in the eye. "We're expected to be honest", he said.
p.525 ~ Kurt Eichenwald,#NFDB |
| 387:Competition is fierce; survival is at stake. The need to produce today is today’s reality and represents the demands of capital, but the real mantra of success is sustainability and growth. You may be able to meet your quarterly numbers, but the real question is, are you making the necessary investment that will sustain and increase that success one, five, and ten years from now? ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB |
| 388:It is very possible (and perfectly okay) for someone who is Catholic, Muslim, Atheist or Jewish, for example, to still find the Buddha’s teachings inspirational. You can love Jesus, repeat a Hindu mantra, and still go to temple after morning meditation. Buddhism is not a threat to any religion, it actually strengthens your existing faith by expanding your love to include all beings. ~ Timber Hawkeye, #NFDB |
| 389:Russian-Polish immigrant and labor organizer and suffragist Rose Schneiderman, who would never marry. Her 1911 speech, in which she implored, “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too” became the mantra of the 1912 Bread and Roses strike of female textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and an anthemic phrase in the labor and women’s movements that were to come. ~ Rebecca Traister, #NFDB |
| 390:Growth is the mantra of our society because the economy can't remain healthy without growth.Impregnable monopolies aside (and these are few), profits are both the hallmark of capitalism and its Achilles heel, for no business can permanently maintain its prices much above its costs. There is only one way in which profits can be perpetuated; a business-or an entire economy-must grow. ~ Robert Heilbroner, #NFDB |
| 391:I think you are looking at sexuality and not attributes, and I think it's odd because the conservative mantra is a meritocracy. And I think what you're suggesting is the fact that being gay parents makes you not as good as others. And I would suggest that a loving, gay family with a financially secure background beats the hell out of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline any day of the week. ~ Jon Stewart, #NFDB |
| 392:Mantra de transfiguración «En el nombre de Dios, decreto en nombre de [di el nombre de la persona o descríbela si no lo sabes]». A continuación, recita este mantra con la autoridad de la Palabra de Dios dentro de ti: yo soy quien transforma todas mis prendas, cambiando las viejas por el nuevo día; con el sol radiante del entendimiento por todo el camino yo soy el que brilla. yo ~ Elizabeth Clare Prophet, #NFDB |
| 393:At times, intuition can lead to mistakes, although maybe less often than numbers-based decision-making. We’ve made our share of intuitive mistakes at Semco. Life is full of mistakes. But you won’t catch me subscribing to the new age management mantra—to err is human, but erring twice is not so hot. I don’t buy the notion that we must carefully study our mistakes in order not to repeat them. ~ Ricardo Semler, #NFDB |
| 394:Defining away the question by arguing that the buck stops with God may seem to obviate the issue of infinite regression, but here I invoke my mantra: The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. The existence or nonexistence of a creator is independent of our desires. A world without God or purpose may seem harsh or pointless, but that alone doesn’t require God to actually exist. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB |
| 395:It is always advisable to obtain a mantra from a self-realized master. Until then we may use one of the mantras of our beloved deity like 'Om Namah Shivaya', 'Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya', 'Om Namo Narayanaya', 'Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare, Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare', 'Om Shivashaktyaikya Rupinyai Namaha' or even the names of Christ, Allah or Buddha. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 396:The threefold Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison ('Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy') is so intensely used in Orthodox liturgy that its repetition can almost sound like a mantra; in the Western Church its appearance is much more restricted, but it is one of the fixtures in the preparatory sections of the Eucharist, the inspiration for much sacred music over the centuries. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 397:I refused to worry about something I could not change, and I still refuse. Look, I'm like any other woman. All this evolved b.s. that I'm telling you is my mantra. It's not something I practice naturally. I had to surrender to not worrying about the way I looked, how much I weighed, because that's just part of the journey of having a baby. I am not a woman whose self-worth comes from her dress size. ~ Kristen Bell, #NFDB |
| 398:You are what you think about all day long. You are also what you say to yourself all day long. If you say that you are old and tired, this mantra will be manifested in your external reality. If you say you are weak and lack enthusiasm, this too will be the nature of your world. But if you say that you are healthy, dynamic and fully alive, your life will be transformed. Words have remarkable power. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB |
| 399:It is a good practice to write at least on page of mantra daily. Many people get better concentration by writing than by chanting. Try also to inculcate in children the habit of chanting and neatly writing the mantra. This will help to improve their handwriting, too. The book in which the mantra is written should not be thrown around; it should be carefully kept in our meditation or shrine room. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 400:Decurion exposes and overturns the assumption that work is public and the personal is private, and so the personal should not be part of work. In the same way, Decurion rejects the idea of work-life balance as a simple goal or mantra. After all, if your life is everything outside the workplace, then that leaves a bleak notion of what work is—something that we’re forced to trade off against joyful living. ~ Robert Kegan, #NFDB |
401:...Ibuku rajin meronce air mata.
Kemudian ronce itu dimasukkan
ke dalam kantung kain kafan.
Setiap purnama dia membacakan mantra.
Sebutir air mata menetes di ubun-ubunku
lalu hilang dilarung asap dupa ke Tukad Cebol.
Negeriku tercipta dari air mata ibu yang penuh luka sayatan.
Luka ibu akan sembuh bila memandang anak lelakinya tumbuh
menghijau seperti pohon pisang di dekat dapur.... ~ Oka Rusmini,#NFDB |
| 402:Low-fat had become the new mantra of the times, something we like to call the “Snackwell Phenomenon.” Food companies rushed to create low-fat versions of every food imaginable, all marketed as “heart-healthy,” with no cholesterol. (No one seemed to notice that manufacturers replaced the missing fat with tons of sugar and processed carbs, both of which are far more dangerous to our hearts than fat ever was.) ~ Jonny Bowden, #NFDB |
| 403:Face the facts. Then act on them. It’s the only mantra I know, the only doctrine I have to offer you, and it’s harder than you’d think, because I swear humans seem hardwired to do anything but. Face the facts. Don’t pray, don’t wish, don’t buy into centuries-old dogma and dead rhetoric. Don’t give in to your conditioning or your visions or your fucked-up sense of . . . whatever. Face the facts. Then act. ~ Richard K Morgan, #NFDB |
| 404:In Because, Joseph Riippi says he wants this book to be ‘a love letter, a prayer, a purge’ but it actually becomes even more than that. It’s a bursting-at-the-seams dream that cradles so many wishes and passions into its wide scope that it constantly surprises with unexpected turns and brilliant thoughts. It transcends its simple mantra-like structure and becomes a reverberating world of beauty and wonder. ~ Kevin Sampsell, #NFDB |
405:Colin thought about the dork mantra:
sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie. This, right here, was the true abdominal snowman: it felt like something freezing in his stomach.
"I love you so much and I just want you to love me like I love you," he said as softly as he could. "You don't need a girlfriend, Colin. You need a robot who says nothing but 'I love you. ~ John Green,#NFDB |
| 406:when you are in positions of power, the trappings of power are many and may often hinder you in taking the right decision. When your mind knows not what to do, here is a mantra for differentiating between right and wrong: any decision you take will affect some people favourably and others unfavourably. The right decision is always based on the greatest common good and not in favour of one particular group. ~ Anand Neelakantan, #NFDB |
| 407:Fair value and change are therefore two sides of the same coin; the more ways in which a security can lose value from a future market move, the less it should rationally be worth today, and hence the mantra: more risk, more return. This difference between the quant’s view of value as an average versus the trader’s need to worry about any change makes this kind of professional cross-communication difficult. Tour ~ Emanuel Derman, #NFDB |
408:It drew from sight and sound spiritual power,
Made sense a road to reach the intangible:
It thrilled with the supernal influences
That build the substance of life’s deeper soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Paradise of the Life-Gods
Building of the Soul
For the most part we are much too busy living and thinking to have leisure to be silent and see. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,#NFDB |
| 409:Transcendental meditation is like a car, a vehicle that allows you to go within. It's a mental technique. You're given a mantra - the mantra that Maharishi gives is very specific, and you start to dive into subtler levels of mind, subtler levels of intellect. You transcend the whole show, into pure bliss consciousness. From your first meditation, you say, "Whoa!" It's a unique experience, but a familiar experience. ~ David Lynch, #NFDB |
| 410:Face the facts. Then act on them. It’s the only mantra I know, the only doctrine I have to offer you, and it’s harder than you’d think, because I swear humans seem hardwired to do anything but. Face the facts. Don’t pray, don’t wish, don’t buy into centuries-old dogma and dead rhetoric. Don’t give in to your conditioning or your visions or your fucked-up sense of . . . whatever. Face the facts. Then act. QUELLCRIST ~ Richard K Morgan, #NFDB |
| 411:[…] comme nous autres bobos pour qui le cours de yoga du dimanche matin a remplacé la messe marmonnons un mantra, à la suite de notre maître, avant de commencer la pratique. Dans ce mantra, cependant, on souhaite que les pluies tombent à point nommé et que tous les hommes vivent en paix, ce qui relève sans doute du vœu pieux mais n’offense pas la raison, et c’est une différence notable avec le christianisme. (p. 17) ~ Emmanuel Carr re, #NFDB |
| 412:In the center of Blizzard’s sprawling Irvine campus is a giant statue of a Warcraft orc. Surrounding that statue is a ring of plaques, each with a different message that’s meant to be a mantra for Blizzard employees. Some of them seem like they’ve been ripped from parody motivational posters—“Think Globally”; “Commit to Quality”—but one resonated strongly with the Diablo III team throughout 2012: “Every Voice Matters. ~ Jason Schreier, #NFDB |
| 413:fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells.” When ~ Max Brooks, #NFDB |
| 414:I made it the mantra of those days; when I paused before yet another series of switchbacks or skidded down knee-jarring slopes, when patches of flesh peeled off my feet along with my socks, when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one. ~ Cheryl Strayed, #NFDB |
| 415:Mental purity will come through constant chanting of the divine name. This is the simplest way. You are trying to cross the ocean of transmigration, the cycle of birth and death. The mantra is the oar of the boat; it is the instrument you use to cross the samsara of your restless mind, with its unending thought waves. The mantra can also be compared to a ladder that you climb to reach the heights of God realization. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB |
| 416:The Heart Sutra ends with “the great spell” or mantra. It says in the Tibetan version: “Therefore the mantra of transcendent knowledge, the mantra of deep insight, the unsurpassed mantra, the unequalled mantra, the mantra which calms all suffering, should be known as truth, for there is no deception.” The potency of this mantra comes not from some imagined mystical or magical power of the words but from their meaning. It ~ Ch gyam Trungpa, #NFDB |
| 417:When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart. ~ Diane Ackerman, #NFDB |
| 418:Como se imaginaba su equipo ya estaba trabajando a marchas forzadas. Cada uno se afanaba en su misión, pero nadie iba con prisas. Trabajar rápidamente, les había enseñado Caine, invocando una antigüa regla de entrenador, pero sin prisas. No era un mantra sin sentido: cuando vas con prisas, pasas por alto cosas. No obstante, la lluvia empeoraba y les quedaba poco tiempo. La madre naturaleza hacía de cómplice de un asesino. ~ Max Allan Collins, #NFDB |
419:I made it the mantra of those days; when I paused before yet another series of switchbacks or skidded down knee-jarring slopes, when patches of flesh peeled off my feet along with my socks, when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me?
The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one. ~ Cheryl Strayed,#NFDB |
| 420:A lifetime of believing that your value—or lack thereof—is determined by your body or your face or your whatever means that you’ve got a lifetime of negative talk in your head playing on repeat. You need to replace that voice with something positive. You need to replace that voice with the opposite truth—the thing you most need to believe. So come up with a mantra and say it to yourself a thousand times a day until it becomes real. ~ Rachel Hollis, #NFDB |
| 421:the Russian people carry a special gene that precludes them from living in a rule of law state. This is, of course, a racist way of looking at Russians. Let me remind you that the Russian elite in fact came forward with this hypocritical dichotomy: it talks of humiliation on one hand and Western decay on the other. But how can a feeble and decaying power humiliate anyone? And why do Western observers readily repeat this Kremlin mantra? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 422:instead of dismay at Gekko's lack of moral restraint and excessive greed and overarching narcissism, Gekko's "greed is good" creed became the marching anthem of an entire generation of U.S. finance professionals (as well as subsequent generations of finance professionals in the U.S.). The wide acceptance of this as a mantra for success in America explains, to a large extent, what has happened to the U.S. economy in the intervening years ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
423:SCREW CHILDREN!
That's the mantra of the world.
Instead of burying them with a national debt, shoving them in shitty schools, drugging them if they don't comply, hitting them, yelling at them, indoctrinating them with religion and statism and patriotism and military worship, what if we just did what was right for them? The whole world is built on "screw children", and if we changed that, this would be an alien planet to us. ~ Stefan Molyneux,#NFDB |
424:The ground is composed of gold, the trees are wish-fulfilling trees, and the rain is the rainfall of nectar. All beings are dakas and dakinis; the calls of the birds are the sounds of Dharma; the sounds of nature, wind, water, and fire reverberate as the Vajra Guru mantra; and all thoughts are expressions of wisdom and bliss. So here the perception of purity is much vaster and more omnipresent than in the sutras.
~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Guru Yoga,#NFDB |
| 425:One night when I was pregnant with Henry, I lay in bed thinking for some reason, about "Treasure Island." I realized that from the entire book there was only one sentence I remembered verbatim, something that Ben Gunn, who has been marooned for three years, says to Jim Hawkins: "Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese -- toasted mostly." I repeated the last two words over and over again, like a mantra. "Toasted, mostly. Toasted mostly. ~ Anne Fadiman, #NFDB |
| 426:Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells. ~ Max Brooks, #NFDB |
| 427:You honor your writing space by recovering, if you are an addict. You honor your writing space by becoming an anxiety expert, a real pro at mindfulness and personal calming. You honor your writing space by affirming that you matter, that your writing life matters, and that your current writing project matters. You honor your writing space by entering it with this mantra: “I am ready to work.” You enter, grow quiet, and vanish into your writing. ~ Eric Maisel, #NFDB |
428:A might no human will nor force can gain,
A knowledge seated in eternity,
A bliss beyond our struggle and our pain
Are the high pinnacles of our destiny. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Evolution - II
Man's destiny
The Mantra is born through the heart and shaped or massed by the thinking mind into a chariot of that godhead of the Eternal of whom the truth seen is a face or a form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,#NFDB |
| 429:While I was still going to embrace social media, I knew I had to do things that nobody else was doing. I decided I had to meet as many people as I could - face to face. While most artists would email galleries, I would show up in the lobby. Instead of liking an art show or exhibition, I would go there and meet everyone. And while most would send a magazine a press kit, I go and meet the editor. This notion of face to face contact became my mantra. ~ Mark Edward, #NFDB |
| 430:Twenty minutes into French class, Madame O’Malley was conjugating the verb to believe in the subjunctive. Que je croie. Que tu croies. Qu’il ou qu’elle croie. She said it over and over, like it wasn’t a verb so much as a Buddhist mantra. Que je croie; que tu croies; qu’il ou qu’elle croie. What a funny thing to say over and over again: I would believe; you would believe; he or she would believe. Believe what? I thought, and right then, the rain came. ~ John Green, #NFDB |
| 431:Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign mantra of “hope and change” was meaningless, thus leaving him free to act without fear of being accused of violating his principles, because he stated so few. In comparison, at this early stage in her campaign, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is a ball of contradictions and hypocrisy that Republican candidates will pick at for the next 18 months until one of them defeats her in the 2016 presidential election. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 432:By specifying energy or caloric content as the instrument through which foods influence body weight, it implies that a calorie of sugar would be no more or less capable of causing obesity, and thus diabetes, than a calorie of broccoli or olive oil or eggs or any other food. By the 1960s, the phrase “a calorie is a calorie” had become a mantra of the nutrition-and-obesity research community, and it was invoked to make just this argument (as it still is). ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB |
| 433:Liberals correctly perceive the Reagan record as their most dangerous enemy. Why? Because what happened during the 1980s - prosperity at home the longest period of peacetime growth in this nation's history, strength abroad - directly contradicts every liberal belief. Bill Clinton has confused many about the 1980s and the Reagan legacy. His patently false mantra states, "The rich got richer, the poor got poorer. The rich didn't pay their fair share, etc." ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB |
| 434:I sank into a chair at a corner table and took deep slow breaths, as advised by the small rodent-like man who taught Beginner’s Yoga courses at the Broadview Community Centre. It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. It is better to remain silent . . . In yoga classes we were urged to use ‘I am a clear vessel filled with pure white light’ as our mantra, but I was adapting as the situation required. ~ Danielle Hawkins, #NFDB |
| 435:Because Shingon is Vajrayana, the main meditation practice involves working with visualizations, mantras, and mudra gestures. You replace your self-image with that of an archetype, you replace your usual mental talk with the mantra of that archetype, and you take on the physical and emotional body experience of that archetype through making mudras—ritual hand gestures. If your concentration is good enough, your identity briefly shifts. You become that archetype. ~ Shinzen Young, #NFDB |
| 436:Washington clearly enjoyed himself in Annapolis. He danced every dance at the governor’s ball, accommodating all the ladies who lined up for the privilege of getting a touch of him. After the thirteen formal toasts at Congress’s banquet, he added a concluding one of his own: “Competent Powers to Congress for general purposes.”59 It had become his mantra. As much as he wished to get home to Virginia, he was also at home here in the swirl of continental politics. ~ Edward J Larson, #NFDB |
| 437:The mantra of the victim is, “If not for the events and circumstances of the world, I would be happy.” The world is often unfair and unjust, but that alone is not enough to create a victim. Victims believe they lack the power to choose. While you may not always be able to choose the circumstances of your life, you can choose how you respond. Through spiritual practice, we can choose inner harmony even when the world around us is filled with pain, suffering, and chaos. ~ Darren Main, #NFDB |
| 438:When you let go of control and commit yourself to happiness, it is so easy to offer compassion and forgiveness. This propels you from the past, into the present. People that are negative, spend so much time trying to control situations and blame others for their problems. Committing yourself to staying positive is a daily mantra that states, “I have control over how I plan to react, feel, think and believe in the present. No one guides the tone of my life, except me! ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB |
| 439:Hie!” it cried in a buzzing voice, like a thousand flies fluttering their wings in unison. “You! On our wavelength! Carry our message! It’s heavy, made of rocks!” “You aren’t real,” Sophia repeated like a mantra, shaking her head violently as she rummaged through the cluttered pantry. “You’re a hallucination, not real, no, nothing to see here.” “Apocalypso dancing! Sunday Sunday Sunday! You’ll want to cut your wrists with the whole knife, but you’ll only need the edge! ~ Craig Schaefer, #NFDB |
| 440:For a period of time after this discovery, Gandhi walked many miles each day, repeating the mantra to himself until it began to coordinate itself with the movement of his body and breath. The practice not only calmed him, but brought him into periods of bliss and rapture—and, as he said, “opened the doorway to God.” Rama, Rama, Rama. Eventually, the mantra developed a life of its own within him. The mantra began to chant itself, arising spontaneously whenever he needed it. ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB |
| 441:Yes, people will tell us they believe in a “God of love.” But they are self-deceived, and their lives reveal it. They neither love Him with heart, soul, mind, and strength in return, nor do they worship Him with zeal and energy. The truth is that their mantra “My God is a God of love” is a smokescreen, a phantasm of their imagination. Underneath it all is a deep mistrust of God—otherwise, why not yield the whole of life in joyful abandon to whatever He says or asks? ~ Sinclair B Ferguson, #NFDB |
| 442:After a time, he felt a deeper rhythm, the rhythm of the stone and water, not the rhythm of his words and heartbeat. He breathed into this deeper rhythm, let it teach him a new mantra, a wordless mantra that waxed and waned, ebbed and flowed, moon and stars and clouds, river and sun, the wordless singing of the earth beneath it all like the world's own heartbeat. He laid his palms flat on the stone beneath him and listened in quiet rapture to the mantra of the world's praying. ~ Katherine Addison, #NFDB |
| 443:Once I chanted the Hare Krishna mantra all the way from France to Portugal, nonstop. I drove for about twenty-three hours and chanted all the way. It gets you feeling a bit invincible. The funny thing was that I didn't even know where I was going. I mean I had bought a map, and I knew basically which way I was aiming, but I couldn't speak French, Spanish, or Portuguese. But none of that seemed to matter. You know, once you get chanting, then things start to happen transcendentally. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB |
| 444:We repeat like a religious mantra the unquestioned benefits and power of science, information and economics, without inspecting the structures and methodology on which they are built. Many of these beliefs are insupportable and dangerous. For example, the notion that human beings are so clever that we can use science and technology to escape the restrictions of the natural world is a fantasy that cannot be fulfilled. Yet it underlies much of government’s and industry’s rhetoric and programs. ~ David Suzuki, #NFDB |
| 445:Hence, within twenty-four hours of the inauguration, the president had invented a million or so people who did not exist. He sent his new press secretary, Sean Spicer—whose personal mantra would shortly become “You can’t make this shit up”—to argue his case in a media moment that turned Spicer, quite a buttoned-down political professional, into a national joke, which he seemed destined to never recover from. To boot, the president blamed Spicer for not making the million phantom souls seem real. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB |
| 446:Sam Fuller and 'Shock Corridor' can only be conjured as a mantra. 'Shock Corridor' is a classic work of art - it's unique. It comes from the unique experience of being Sam Fuller and yes, there's always that element of 'Shock Corridor' hovering around the picture, but never specifically. In fact, I didn't even screen it because it's in us. It's in me anyway. It's in me. It was a way of conjuring up support just by saying the name, 'Shock Corridor,' as I was going to shoot. Poor Sam [Fuller]... ~ Martin Scorsese, #NFDB |
447:Mr. Venkatakrishnayya, a lawyer-devotee, visited Sri Bhagavan ten years before and asked Him what he should do to improve himself.
Sri Bhagavan told him to perform Gayatri Japa. The young man went away satisfied. When he returned after some years, he asked:
D.: If I meditate on the meaning of the Gayatri mantra, my mind again wanders. What is to be done?
M.: Were you told to meditate on the mantra or its meaning? You must think of the one who repeats the mantra. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 606,#NFDB |
448:deixar a barriga da minha mãe vazia
foi meu primeiro ato de desaparecimento
aprender a encolher para uma família
que gosta de ver as filhas invisíveis
foi o segundo
a arte de se esvaziar
é simples
acredite quando eles dizem
que você não é nada
vá repetindo
como um mantra
eu não sou nada
eu não sou nada
eu não sou nada
tão concentrada
que o único jeito de saber
que você ainda existe é
o seu peito ofegante
- a arte de se esvaziar ~ Rupi Kaur,#NFDB |
| 449:Henry, you want to take a guess?” Henry ignored them. Nothing new there. “Liberace only appeared in that one episode,” Win repeated, his nose in the air. Myron made a soft buzzing sound. “Sorry, that answer is incorrect. What do we have for our player, Don? Well, Myron, Windsor gets the home version of our game plus a year’s supply of Turtle Wax. And thank you for playing our game!” Win was unmoved. “Liberace only appeared in that one episode.” “That your new mantra?” “Until you prove otherwise.” Win ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB |
| 450:Rambha had given Gandhi an enchanting image to describe the power of mantra. She compared the practice of mantra to the training of an elephant. “As the elephant walks through the market,” taught Rambha, “he swings his trunk from side to side and creates havoc with it wherever he goes—knocking over fruit stands and scattering vendors, snatching bananas and coconuts wherever possible. His trunk is naturally restless, hungry, scattered, undisciplined. This is just like the mind—constantly causing trouble. ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB |
| 451:Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine. In the early twentieth century, you needed only a high school diploma and a one-year medical degree to practice medicine. By the century’s end, all doctors had to have a college degree, a four-year medical degree, and an additional three to seven years of residency training in an individual field of practice—pediatrics, surgery, neurology, or the like. In recent years, though, even this level of preparation has not been enough for the new complexity of medicine. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB |
| 452:Beginning today, make the decision to love and accept yourself just the way you are. Say your name followed by the words "I love you" and make this your daily mantra, repeating it often, especially during times of stress. Let it be your first thought upon arising and the last you think before falling asleep at night. This simple act of self-courtship can profoundly change your world. Try it for yourself and see. Make a personal decision to be in love with the most beautiful, exciting, worthy person ever - you. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB |
| 453:Sometimes I come across a tree which seems like Buddha or Jesus: loving, compassionate, still, unambitious, enlightened, in eternal meditation, giving pleasure to a pilgrim, shade to a cow, berries to a bird, beauty to its surroundings, health to its neighbors, branches for the fire, leaves for the soil, asking nothing in return, in total harmony with the wind and the rain. How much can I learn from a tree? The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer. ~ Satish Kumar, #NFDB |
| 454:It is six months before the election, and the Republicans have already done their focus groups. How do I know? I can hear it in their “message,” which they repeat over and over again like a mantra: “Bernie Sanders is ineffective. Bernie Sanders is out of touch. Bernie Sanders is a left-wing extremist. Bernie Sanders rants and raves on the House floor and still no one listens to him. Susan Sweetser, on the other hand, is a sensible moderate who can work with everyone.” They think that’s how they can beat me. Maybe. ~ Bernie Sanders, #NFDB |
| 455:Gabrielle Dunbar paced for ten minutes, chanting the words So Hum over and over. She had learned this particular Sanskrit mantra at yoga. At the end of the class, her teacher would have them all lie on their backs in Corpse pose. She would have them close their eyes and repeat “So Hum” for five straight minutes. The first time the teacher had suggested this, Gabrielle had practically rolled her closed eyes. But then, somewhere around minute two or three, she began to feel the toxins of stress drain from her body. “So ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB |
| 456:Educators and psychologists have a mantra these days: No matter how hectic the schedules of your family members may be, make time to have dinner together. Research shows that family dinners help kids feel they matter to the parent, and as a result they have a positive impact on kids’ mental health and lead to greater self-esteem and greater academic achievement. In addition to talking to our kids about their day or their lives, talking to them about current events scales the level of critical thinking up a level—to ~ Julie Lythcott Haims, #NFDB |
| 457:I had been thinking a lot about how the media has created this complex, fictionalized cartoon version of me, you know, this man-eating, jet-setting serial dater who reels them in, but scares them off because she’s clingy and needy; then she’s all dejected, so she goes into her lair and writes a song as a weapon. I mean, man, that’s pretty intense. And I started thinking about what an interesting character that person is. And, if I was that person, what would my life motto be, my mantra? What would I say? I think I’d own it. ~ Taylor Swift, #NFDB |
| 458:A MANTRA FOR HOME HEALTH CARE I am my own healer. I have a radiant voice within that guides me. I can make decisions for myself. I can rely on others as needed, but at my discretion. It is my body, my health, my balance, and my responsibility to make right choices for myself. Right choices include working with competent health-care professionals when necessary, allowing friends and family to help as needed, and, above all, being true to my beliefs, with the wisdom and willingness to change as part of the path of healing. ~ Rosemary Gladstar, #NFDB |
| 459:And yet this was a liability for the Democrat. McConnell, whose mantra was to repeal Obamacare “root and branch,” won in a wipeout. The absurdity of the outcome was captured in a May poll of Kentuckians by NBC and Marist College. When asked how they felt about both Obamacare and Kynect, respondents disapproved of Obamacare by 56 to 33 percent but they approved of Kynect by 29 to 22 percent, despite the fact that Kynect is Obamacare. Only 22 percent of whites disapproved of Kynect, but 60 percent of them disapproved of Obamacare. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 460:When one hears the word meditation, it conjures an image of Maharishi Yoga talking about finding a mantra and striving for nirvana. The purpose of such meditation is to empty oneself. [Satan] is happy to invade the empty vacuum of your soul and possess it. That is why people serve Satan without ever knowing it or deciding to, but no one can be a child of God without making a decision to surrender to him. Beware of systems of spirituality which tell you to empty yourself. You will end up filled with something you probably do not want. ~ E W Jackson, #NFDB |
| 461:Ours is a technologically proficient but emotionally deficient and inconsistent medical system that is best at treating acute, not chronic, problems: for every instance of expert treatment, skilled surgery, or innovative problem-solving, there are countless cases of substandard care, overlooked diagnoses, bureaucratic bungling, and even outright antagonism between doctor and patient. For a system that invokes “patient-centered care” as a mantra, modern medicine is startlingly inattentive—at times actively indifferent—to patients’ needs. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 462:Like the Sweetness of Gardenias Mother, you died 15 years ago. pain, a rapier, cut until, finally, there was just peace like the sweetness of gardenias in the crystal vase on your yellow kitchen table. so fragrant. your voice lingers in my ear reminding, scolding, guiding a pleasant mantra of tenderness, magic words that move my palms, your palms. together we are molding, helping, creating. in the mirror I see your eyes, your beautiful brown circles looking back, so radiant. "don't forget me," you whispered the day you died. I won't. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB |
| 463:After fifteen years of making my living in stand-up, The Sarah Silverman Program has been a lesson in collaboration. Rob, Dan, and I live by the mantra "Whoever is most passionate." If I was mentoring someone, that's the Shandling-esque advice I would proffer: Find people you really respect and trust, and then at each decision, heed the most passionate voice. I love that because it eliminates nearly all struggle. And when you're doing a show that's mostly about farts, penises, and vaginas, there should be as little struggle as possible. ~ Sarah Silverman, #NFDB |
| 464:What I want to tell you today is not to move into that world where you're alone with yourself and your mantra and your fitness program or whatever it is that you might use to try to control the world by closing it out. I want to tell you just to live in the mess. Throw yourself out into the convulsions of the world. I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't believe progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm telling you to live in it. Try and get it. Take chances, make your own work, take pride in it. Seize the moment. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB |
| 465:The Mantra in other words is a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word which embodies an intuitive and revelatory inspiration and ensouls the mind with the sight and the presence of the very self, the inmost reality of things and with its truth and with the divine soul-forms of it, the Godheads which are born from the living Truth. Or, let us say, it is a supreme rhythmic language which seizes hold upon all that is finite and brings into each the light and voice of its own infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, #NFDB |
| 466:The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. “Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells. ~ Max Brooks, #NFDB |
| 467:The need to produce today is today’s reality and represents the demands of capital, but the real mantra of success is sustainability and growth. You may be able to meet your quarterly numbers, but the real question is, are you making the necessary investment that will sustain and increase that success one, five, and ten years from now? Our culture and Wall Street scream for results today. But the principle of balancing the need to meet today’s demands with the need to invest in the capabilities that will produce tomorrow’s success is unavoidable. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB |
| 468:As Thorstein Veblen correctly surmised over a century ago, the failure of economics to become an evolutionary science is the product of the optimizing framework of the underlying paradigm, which is inherently antithetical to the process of evolutionary change. This is the primary reason why the neoclassical mantra that the economy must be perceived as the outcome of the decisions of utility-maximizing individuals must be squarely rejected. ~ Steve Keen, #NFDB |
| 469:As Thorstein Veblen correctly surmised over a century ago, the failure of economics to become an evolutionary science is the product of the optimizing framework of the underlying paradigm, which is inherently antithetical to the process of evolutionary change. This is the primary reason why the neoclassical mantra that the economy must be perceived as the outcome of the decisions of utility-maximizing individuals must be squarely rejected. ~ Steve Keen, #NFDB |
| 470:Chanting Hare Krishna is a type of meditation that can be practiced even if the mind is in turbulence. You can even be doing it and other things at the same time. That's what's so nice. In my life there's been many times the mantra brought things around. It keeps me in tune with reality, and the more you sit in one place and chant, the more incense you offer to Krishna in the same room, the more you purify the vibration, the more you can achieve what you're trying to do, which is just trying to remember God, God, God, God, God, as often as possible. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB |
| 471:Meanwhile in Iran and Israel the violence is an open wound on TV, so predictable and it’s bloodiness of the mutilated children and howling women become a spectacle you shatter it briefly before zapping over to some Japanese game show. The well-meaning optimism of those Entertainement programs, with their perky nerdiness and banana-skin tomfoolery, provides a counterpoint to the real world grief. Their crude hilarities flit through my head while I swim my laps, like my Spanish Kahlo mantra or fragments of some absurd erotic fantasy, poignantly irrelevant. ~ Liz Jensen, #NFDB |
| 472:A woman put her finger to her lips, though we were not talking. Maybe the Original Mantra was "Shush". I judged her breasts as revenge, but they weren't bad by naked hot springs standards. In the southern part of the state , bodies were tanned and injected to perfection, but here in the north, where we bathed, bodies relaxed and gave in to an idea of perfect acceptance. Signs advertised workshops to reclaim powers long forgotten. People banged drums in the parking lot, unlocked childhood trauma in sacral tissue, painted their penises with raspberries. ~ Rebecca Schiff, #NFDB |
| 473:Some days my mantra was I will stay in this marriage because I am a Christian and Christians stay, but other days, I thought: if the choices are Christianity or divorce then I will just have to embrace secular humanism because I am not even sure I believe any of this anymore and it is one thing to devote twenty minutes every morning to praying when you are not sure you believe anything anymore and it is another thing to organize your whole life around a marriage you don’t want to be in because a God who may or may not exist says let no man put asunder. ~ Lauren F Winner, #NFDB |
| 474:People slip spontaneously into moments of concentration all the time—while reading a book, exercising, playing chess, or creating art. A yogi seeks to experience that same level of concentration intentionally in a practice known as dharana—the act of purposefully narrowing the mind’s focus on the breath, the sensations of the body, a mantra, or a prayer bead. This consistent and purposeful focusing of the mind while on the yoga mat or meditation cushion gives the yogi the same level of focus in life, allowing for wild creativity and unfathomable productivity. ~ Darren Main, #NFDB |
| 475:I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness. ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB |
| 476:Meditation gives you two things: equanimity and creativity. And it does that by taking one from their conscious mind, where there's all that noise and chaos and so on, into the subconscious mind where there's quiet and where creativity emanates from. You have a mantra, and when you repeat it over and over again, all those thoughts go away because you shift them to that mantra. And then eventually that sound disappears, and then you're left not conscious or unconscious - you're left in this subconscious state, and by opening that up, first of all you get control of it. ~ Ray Dalio, #NFDB |
| 477:Transcendental meditation is one particular form of mantra meditation that allows your mind to experience progressively abstract fields of awareness. And ultimately you settle down in the space between your thoughts. The space between your thoughts is pure consciousness, and it's a field of possibilities. It's a field of creativity. It's a field of correlation. It's also a field of uncertainty. It's also a field where intention actualizes its own fulfillment. So that meditation allows you to contact this field, which is very primordial - the ground state of our existence. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB |
| 478:Few knew in 2000 that George W. Bush was going to end up with neoconservatives all over the place. Once 9/11 happened, I think it's fair to say that some neocons have had an enormous influence. The whole solution to every problem was to go after Iraq. This had been a neoconservative mantra for ten years. Bush certainly sees himself as having been given an endorsement. He was asked why Donald Rumsfeld,Condoleezza Rice, and Paul Wolfowitz have been promoted, these people who led us into the debacle in Iraq. Bush said there was accountability-it was the election. So there we are. ~ Seymour Hersh, #NFDB |
| 479:I love how the landscape gives the impression of vast space and intimacy at the same time: the thin brown line of a path wandering up an immense green mountainside, a plush hanging valley tucked between two steep hillsides, a village of three houses surrounded by dark forest, paddy fields flowing around an outcrop of rock, a white temple gleaming on a shadowy ridge. The human habitations nestle into the landscape; nothing is cut or cleared beyond what is requires. Nothing is bigger than necessary. Every sign of human settlement repeat the mantra of contentment: “This is just enough. ~ Jamie Zeppa, #NFDB |
| 480:the old mantra—“Either I can beat him or the police.” I understood it all—the cable wires, the extension cords, the ritual switch. Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB |
481:Remember to delight yourself first, then others can be truly delighted."
This was my mantra when I published my first book in 1990, and still holds true. When we focus on the song of our soul and heart, then others will be touched similarly. Sometimes people wonder or worry whether people will like or approve of their creative expression. It's none of your business. It's your business to stay present and focused for the work of your deepest dreams. It might look crooked or strange, or be very odd-but if it delights you, then it is yours, and will find it's way into other hearts. ~ S A R K,#NFDB |
| 482:As a rule the only mantra used in this sadhana is that of the Mother or of my name and the Mother. The concentration in the heart and the concentration in the head can both be used - each has its own result. The first opens up the psychic being and brings bhakti, love and union with the Mother, her presence within the heart and the action of her Force in the nature. The other opens the mind to self-realisation, to the consciousness of what is above mind, to the ascent of the consciousness out of the body and the descent of the higher consciousness into the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #NFDB |
| 483:Every morning I wake up and I tell myself this: It's just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through. I Don't know when exactly I started giving myself this daily pep talk-or why. It sounds like a twelve-step mantra and I'm not in Anything Anonymous, though to read some of the crap they write about me, you'd think I should be. I have the kind of like a lot of people would probably sell a kidney to just experience a bit of. But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today. ~ Gayle Forman, #NFDB |
| 484:You win, you lose, it’s a total crapshoot. The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. “Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells. ~ Max Brooks, #NFDB |
485:Tell me, Harry, what difference would it make if it wasn't real?"
Harry thought a moment, his chinless face sour. "We wouldn't have to do what we think we have to do. But even if we don't have to do what we think we have to do, it won't make any difference if we do it Which means we should just go ahead."
Mavis sighed. "Just go ahead."
"Just go ahead," said Hagbard. "A powerful mantra."
"And if we don't go ahead," said George, "it doesn't matter either. Which means that we just do go ahead."
"Another powerful mantra," said Hagbard. "Just do go ahead. ~ Robert Anton Wilson,#NFDB |
| 486:My vision of being a professional, as opposed to being a football player before, has completely changed. Being a pro is doing everything right all the time. It sounds cliche, but if you apply that to strength training, if you apply that to a lot of body work, if you apply that to making good decisions, all the work I did on myself and all the time I spent with therapists and doctors and family, that was my mantra: "Do it right all the time." It started to build momentum, and it started to build up steam. Once I got the opportunity to come back and play, I just kept using that and it helped. ~ Richie Incognito, #NFDB |
| 487:frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair—it just won’t behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward ~ E L James, #NFDB |
| 488:If my opinion runs more than twenty pages,” she said, “I am disturbed that I couldn’t do it shorter.” The mantra in her chambers is “Get it right and keep it tight.” She disdains legal Latin, and demands extra clarity in an opinion’s opening lines, which she hopes the public will understand. “If you can say it in plain English, you should,” RBG says. Going through “innumerable drafts,” the goal is to write an opinion where no sentence should need to be read twice. “I think that law should be a literary profession,” RBG says, “and the best legal practitioners regard law as an art as well as a craft. ~ Irin Carmon, #NFDB |
| 489:If Catherine would just let go' had been their mantra for so long. Now Mamah understood Catherine's dilemma better. She wouldn't divorce Frank because she feared he wouldn't pay her child support and alimony. And there was revenge to be sure: By refusing to divorce after twenty years of accommodating him, Catherine was squeezing recompense from Frank for a longstanding emotional debt. But that was only part of it. Catherine held on because she still loved him, and remembered what it was like to be loved by him. Nothing else in the world compared to the incandescent joy Frank brought to his best beloved. ~ Nancy Horan, #NFDB |
490:So, first of all, it is most important to turn inwards and change your motivation.
If you can correct your attitude, skilful means will permeate your positive actions, and you will have set out on the path of great beings.
If you cannot, you might think that you are studying and practising the Dharma but it will be no more than a semblance of the real thing.
Therefore, whenever you listen to the teachings and whenever you practise, be it meditating on a deity, doing prostrations and circumambulations, or reciting a mantra-even a single mani it is always essential to give rise to bodhicitta. ~ Patrul Rinpoche,#NFDB |
| 491:you find that you have a constant influx of thoughts, it may be helpful for you to focus on a single word, phrase, or mantra and repeat it over and over again to yourself as you inhale and exhale. For example, you might try something like this: (On the inhale) “I inhale confidence…” (As you exhale) “I exhale fear...” You can swap the word confidence with whatever you feel like you need to bring more of into your life (love, faith, energy, etc.), and swap the word fear with whatever you feel like you need to let go of (stress, worry, resentment, etc.). Meditation is a gift you can give yourself every day. ~ Hal Elrod, #NFDB |
| 492:When I was in high school, my math teacher Mr. Packwood used to say, “If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.” During that early self-employment period, when I struggled every day, completely clueless about what to do and terrified of the results (or lack thereof), Mr. Packwood’s advice started beckoning me from the recesses of my mind. I heard it like a mantra: Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow. In ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB |
493:I drink no ordinary wine, but Wine of Everlasting Bliss, As I repeat my Mother Kali's name; It so intoxicates my mind that people take me to be drunk! First my guru gives molasses for the making of the Wine; My longing is the ferment to transform it. Knowledge, the maker of the Wine, prepares it for me then; And when it is done, my mind imbibes it from the bottle of the mantra, Taking the Mother's name to make it pure. Drink of this Wine, says Ramprasad, and the four fruits of life are yours. [1008.jpg] -- from Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar, by Elizabeth U. Harding
~ Ramprasad, I drink no ordinary wine
,#NFDB |
| 494:vipassana, una técnica de meditación budista ul traortodoxa, simple pero intensa. Consiste en sentarse, sencillamente. Un curso de preparación para la meditación vipassana dura diez días y consiste en sentarse durante diez horas al día en tramos de silencio de entre dos y tres horas. Es el «deporte de riesgo» de la trascendencia. El maestro de vipassana ni siquiera te da un mantra, porque eso se considera una especie de trampa. La meditación vipassana es la práctica de la contemplación pura; consiste en observarte la mente y examinar exhaustivamente elmecanismo de tu pensamiento sin levantarte de tu sitio en ningún momento. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 495:And then he thrusts into me so fast and deep that my lungs seize up. The punishing stroke rips the orgasm out of me. I gasp for air as a burst of ecstasy rocks into me like a shockwave. I hear things. I think it’s my voice. I think…yup, I’m moaning Blake’s name, over and over again. And I think he might be chuckling as he fucks me into oblivion. But any amusement he might have felt disappears the moment he starts trembling on top of me. I’m no longer embarrassed about chanting his name like a meditation mantra, because when he comes, it’s with a hoarse, passion-drenched “Jess!” that echoes in the bedroom and vibrates in my heart. ~ Sarina Bowen, #NFDB |
496:How to open to the Mother? The following are the means:
(1) To remember You constantly or from time to time--
Good.
(2) By taking Your name through Japa [mantra; repeating the Mother's name]--
Helpful.
(3) With the help of meditation--
More difficult if one has not the habit of meditation.
(4) By conversation about You with those who love and respect You--
Risky because, when talking, often some nonsense or at least some useless things can be said.
(5) By reading Your books--
Good.
(6) By spending time in thoughts of You--
Very good.
(7) By sincere prayers--
Good. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB |
| 497:He watched his booted feet, dark and distant hillocks, waver before him as he was borne aloft. Feet first, it would have to be feet first. He barely felt the prick of the first IV in his arm. He heard Elena’s voice, raised tremblingly behind him. “All right you clowns! No more games. We’re going to win this one for Admiral Naismith!” Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread. “Damn it,” he moaned. “Damn it, damn it, damn it . . .” He repeated this litany like a mantra, until the medtech’s second sedative injection parted him from his pain, frustration, and consciousness. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB |
| 498:Men cannot be men—much less good or heroic men—unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors ~ Jack Donovan, #NFDB |
499:He stood up. In his own mind, he stepped sideways. Shifting his
thoughts. His fears were his own, weren’t they? He’d spun them out
from himself. He’d forged them from every hurt and fury. Fear was a
reminder that even the insubstantial could kill. But insubstantial meant it had no shape. It couldn’t be conquered or tamed or avoided. Only moved through, with force and will. Vikram crouched, his fingers splayed on the ground, his breath forming icicles in the air.
His fears bore down. Sharp. Hungry. He grinned.
I made you.
I own you.
He repeated the words like a mantra, until he found the strength to
stand . . .
And run. ~ Roshani Chokshi,#NFDB |
| 500:I SCOWL WITH frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair—it just won’t behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward hair in a ponytail and hope that I look semi-presentable. ~ E L James, #NFDB |
| 501:As a new creation, you have been liberated from the struggle of self-improvement. Absolutely flawless, our old fearful, sinful, blemished selves have been eradicated once and for all. Perfected once and for all by His sacrifice, we can drink daily from the fountain of our union with Him, no longer expecting defeat. As our mind changes regarding the truth of our identity, our outward lives bear corresponding fruit. No longer believing the false humility pop mantra of our times that we are “still sinners” bound to decay, poverty, disease or addiction. We are sons and daughters – our true identity shines from the inside out chock-full of inheritance. Right here. Right now. ~ John Crowder, #NFDB |
| 502:Here are the words that have brought me to a new understanding. Here are the words that will bind us forever. From this day forward, I will speak your name with gratitude, knowing it is the mantra of my soul. I will let you go, knowing we are eternal. We were born to walk this world in intersecting lines. We are circles and signposts and parallels. I have left markers for you at every turn. Look for me in everything that catches your breath. Let the simple miracle of your own presence overwhelm you. For you are beautiful, in ways that can't be described. And we are love at its most inexplicable. With these words, I am one with divinity. With these words, I am one with you. ~ Lang Leav, #NFDB |
| 503:Absorbed totally, absorbed in whatsoever she was doing… He understood for the first time: this is what meditation is. Not that you sit for a special period and repeat a mantra, not that you go to the church or to the temple or to the mosque, but to be in life – to go on doing trivial things, but with such absorption that the profundity is revealed in every action. He understood what meditation is, for the first time. He had been meditating, he had been struggling hard, but for the first time meditation was there, alive. He could feel it. He could have touched it, it was almost tangible, and then he remembered that closing one eye and opening the other is a symbol, a Buddhist symbol. ~ Osho, #NFDB |
| 504:In Webvan’s case premature scaling was an integral part of the company culture and the prevailing venture capital “get big fast” mantra. Webvan spent $18 million to develop proprietary software and $40 million to set up its first automated warehouse before it had shipped a single item. Premature scaling had dire consequences since Webvan’s spending was on a scale that ensures it will be taught in business school case studies for years to come. As customer behavior continued to differ from the predictions in Webvan’s business plan, the company slowly realized it had overbuilt and over-designed. The business model made sense only at the high volumes predicted on the spreadsheet. ~ Steve Blank, #NFDB |
| 505:Students often ask if they should only invoke the guru in the context of a formal daily practice, or if it can be done anywhere. The answer is that it depends on the student. Dharma bums who roam the streets of Kathmandu smoking hashish and sitting in cafés nursing a half-empty cup of cappuccino for most of the day should probably sit formally and recite ten million or one hundred million mantras. Whereas those who have demanding jobs in London, New York or Paris might benefit more from reciting the mantra on their way to work, or as they wait for a bus. The method each student is given will depend entirely on their personal situation and how disciplined they are. ~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, #NFDB |
| 506:In the mantra of shared hatred and placing the blame on Israel, our cowardice to face the barbarity of our heads of states was replaced with a divine purpose. Contemplating the manifestation of the eradication of hatred I often concluded, the entirety of the Middle East’s theocracies and dictatorships would be replaced by total anarchy. We would be left with nothing, as our brotherhood of hatred was the only bond known to us. Enculturated in the malarkey of that demagoguery, forces beyond our control and comprehension seem to deceive us into a less harmful and satisfactory logic as opposed to placing some blame on ourselves and thus, having to act to reverse that state of affairs. ~ Asaad Almohammad, #NFDB |
507:Once your focus was pinpointed on your breathing, you began running your own personal mantra through your head. Something that guided you, brought pleasant memories. Something that would take you to the next state of being. For Aunt Sue, it was The Wizard of Oz. Go figure.
That morning, mine was something that would bring me a great deal of satisfaction: Break a leg. Break a leg. Break a leg.
I was directing it toward Cynthia, which really isn’t how meditation works. It’s not like voodoo or something, where you try to throw a curse on someone, and, okay, it was a mean thought that I didn’t really want to come true. And it wasn’t exactly releasing negative energy . . . ~ Rachel Hawthorne,#NFDB |
| 508:Look, if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing as a church planter, if you need to write out a statement in order to remember that your church is supposed to evangelize the lost and help Christians grow in Christ, friend, you shouldn’t be a church planter. How about casting vision the way Protestants have cast vision for the past five hundred years! Teach God’s Word! Explain it to God’s people, and tell them God’s mission and vision and values and purpose and strategy for their life. Don’t refer them back to some mantra that you make sure everyone in the congregation has memorized. Teach them what the Bible says about what it means to be a faithful Christian and a faithful church. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 509:The next step is to create a three- to four-word mantra that explains the meaning that your startup is seeking to make. For startups, the definition of “mantra” from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is perfect: A sacred verbal formula repeated in prayer, meditation, or incantation, such as an invocation of a god, a magic spell, or a syllable or portion of scripture containing mystical potentialities. Here are five examples (some hypothetical) that illustrate the power of a good mantra to communicate the meaning of organizations: Authentic athletic performance (Nike)* Fun family entertainment (Disney)* Rewarding everyday moments (Starbucks)* Democratize commerce (eBay) ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB |
| 510:Don’t do anything—no repetition of mantra, no repetition of the name of God—just watch whatever the mind is doing. Don’t disturb it, don’t prevent it, don’t repress it; don’t do anything at all on your part. You just be a watcher, and the miracle of watching is meditation. As you watch, slowly, slowly mind becomes empty of thoughts; but you are not falling asleep, you are becoming more alert, more aware. As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes a flame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing—without any judgment, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind. ~ Osho, #NFDB |
511:Earlier that day I had found a sheet of paper on which Min’s grandmother had written her definition of the “superior woman.” At the top of the page is said, “Formula for Woman, According to Dignity.” The formula was “Has excellent posture, which is two-thirds contentment and one-third desire."
At first I thought this a bit arbitrary. But all day the idea had been passing through my mind like a mantra. I began to think, in this strange place—half kingdom, half city—that the grandmother’s formula caught the entire world in its tiny palm. Two-thirds contentment, one-third desire. Of course, I thought, as I spiraled my way through the trees to Asia Foodstore, that is the composition of the world. ~ Rebecca Lee,#NFDB |
| 512:OK, but what do I do about the debt I have? While the mantra here is “avoid debt at all costs,” if you already have it, it is worth considering if paying it off ahead of schedule is the best use of your capital. In today’s environment, here’s my rough guideline: If your interest rate is... Less than 3%, pay it off slowly and route the money to your investments instead. Between 3-5%, do whatever feels most comfortable: Either put the money to debt payment or investments. More than 5%, pay it off ASAP. But this is just looking at the numbers. There is a lot to be said for focusing on just getting it out of your life and moving on. Especially if keeping your debt under control has been a problem for you. ~ J L Collins, #NFDB |
513:The wand weapon similarily appears in a profusion of forms. As an instrument to assist the projection of the magical will onto the aetheric and material planes, it could be a general purpose sigil, an amulet, a ring, an enchanting mantra, or even an act or gesture one performs. As with the pentacle, there is a virtue in having a small, portable, and permanent device of this class, for power accrues to it with use. As with the cup, the power of the wand is partly to fascinate the surface functions of the mind and channel the forces concealed in the depths. Like the sword, the wand is manipulated in such a way as to describe vividly to the will and subconscious what is required of them.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#NFDB |
| 514:I, like every kid I knew, loved The Dukes of Hazzard. But I would have done well to think more about why two outlaws, driving a car named the General Lee, must necessarily be portrayed as “just some good ole boys, never meanin’ no harm”—a mantra for the Dreamers if there ever was one. But what one “means” is neither important nor relevant. It is not necessary that you believe that the officer who choked Eric Garner set out that day to destroy a body. All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB |
| 515:All right, here comes the philosophy. You can leave if you like but I suggest you stick it out. You don’t measure your own success against the size or volume of the effect you’re having. You gauge it from the difference you make to the subject you’re working on. Is leading an army that wins a war really that much more satisfying than teaching a four-year-old to ride a bicycle? At our age,” she said, “you go for the small things and you do them as well as you can.” In the back of the pony trap, squashed beside his two large boxes, Siri still felt Daeng’s lip prints on his cheek and heard her whisper, “Go for the small things and do them well.” It would be his new mantra. Forget the planet, save the garden. ~ Colin Cotterill, #NFDB |
| 516:He postulated that many neurons can combine into a coalition, becoming a single processing unit. The connection patterns of these units, which can change, make up the algorithms (which can also change with the changing connection patterns) that determine the brain’s response to a stimulus. From this idea came the mantra “Cells that fire together wire together.” According to this theory, learning has a biological basis in the “wiring” patterns of neurons. Hebb noted that the brain is active all the time, not just when stimulated; inputs from the outside can only modify that ongoing activity. Hebb’s proposal made sense to those designing artificial neural networks, and it was put to use in computer programs. ~ Michael S Gazzaniga, #NFDB |
| 517:Learning is a continuous process and your training has merely prepared you for that never-ending journey. Learn from everyone, everywhere, and everything. Use every moment to do so. That is the only legacy we leave behind when the Great God of Time, calls us back to his abode. My second piece of advice is, when you are in positions of power, the trappings of power are many and may often hinder you in taking the right decision. When your mind knows not what to do, here is a mantra for differentiating between right and wrong: any decision you take will affect some people favourably and others unfavourably. The right decision is always based on the greatest common good and not in favour of one particular group.” Bhishma ~ Anand Neelakantan, #NFDB |
518:Visitor. I am taught that Mantra Japam is very potent in practice.
Bhagavan. The Self is the greatest of all mantras and goes on automatically and eternally. If you are not aware of this internal mantra, you should take to do it consciously as japam, which is attended with effort, to ward off all other thoughts.
By constant attention to it, you will eventually become aware of the internal mantra, which is the state of Realisation and is effortless. Firmness in this awareness will keep you continually and effortlessly in the current, however much you may be engaged on other activities.
Listening to Veda chanting and mantras has the same result as conscious repetitions of japam – its rhythm is the japam. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,#NFDB |
519:There was a car parked in the driveway. She hadn’t seen what appeared to be a rental car, a light blue Ford Taurus, drive up the hill, and apparently neither had Call.
“Looks like you’ve got company,” he said.
“Looks like. I wonder who it is.” Just then, the door swung and a man stood framed in the opening. Charity froze in her tracks as Jeremy Hauser stepped out on the porch.
For a moment she just stood there, her stomach churning, trying to convince herself she was still asleep and this was a very bad dream.
Please God, I promise to be a good girl if you’ll just…She didn’t finish the mantra. The fervent prayer hadn’t worked when she was a kid wanting a new pony and it wasn’t going to make Jeremy disappear. ~ Kat Martin,#NFDB |
520:Faith :::
One must say, "Since I want only the Divine, my success is sure, I have only to walk forward in all confidence and His own Hand will be there secretly leading me to Him by His own way and at His own time." That is what you must keep as your constant mantra. Anything else one may doubt but that he who desires only the Divine shall reach the Divine is a certitude and more certain than two and two make four. That is the faith every sadhak must have at the bottom of his heart, supporting him through every stumble and blow and ordeal. It is only false ideas still casting their shadows on your mind that prevent you from having it. Push them aside and the back of the difficulty will be broken. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#NFDB |
521:Just before the light completely vanished, I saw Dimitri's face join Lissa's. I wanted to smile. I decided then that if the two people I loved most were safe, I could leave this world. The dead could finally have me. And I'd fulfilled my purpose, right? To protect? I'd done it. I'd saved Lissa, just like I'd sworn I'd always do. I was dying in battle. No appointment books for me.
Lissa's face shown with tears, and I hoped that mine could convey how much I loved her. With the last spark of life that I had left, I tried to speak, tried to let Dimitri know I loved him too and that he had to protect her now. I don't think he understood, but the words of the guardian mantra were my last conscious thought.
They come first. ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB |
522:If you prefer smoke over fire
then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume
your mind's clothing
with more sooty knowledge.
No, I have something else in mind.
Today I hold a flame in my left hand
and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today.
For God is in a mood
to plunder your riches and
fling you nakedly
into such breathtaking poverty
that all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine.
So don't just sit around this flame
choking on your mind.
For this is no campfire song
to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.
Jump now into the space
between thoughts
and exit this dream
before I burn the damn place down. ~ Adyashanti,#NFDB |
523:The thought occurred to me that I was in danger of becoming a slave to a tiger as well. Hah! I’d probably like it too. I rolled my eyes at the thought. I disgust myself. I’m so darn weak! I hated the idea that all he’d have to do was crook his finger at me, beckon me to come to him, and I probably would. The fiercely independent side of me flared up. That’s it! No more! I’m going to talk it all out with him when we get back and hope that we can still be friends.
This was pretty much my line of thought for the entire trip home. I’d daydream and then stop, lecture myself, and repeat my stubborn mantra. I tried to read, but I kept rereading the same paragraph over and over. Eventually, I gave up and napped a little. ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB |
| 524:Primordial wisdom [Skt. jñāna; Tib. ཡེ་ཤེས་, yeshé; Wyl. ye shes] has many names, but in truth it refers simply to the inseparability of the ground and fruit, the one and only essence-drop [thig le nyag gcig] of the dharmakaya. If it is assessed from the standpoint of its utterly pure nature, it is the actual dharmakaya, primordial Buddhahood. For, from its own side, it is free from every obscuration. We must understand that we are Buddha from the very beginning. Without this understanding, we will fail to recognize the spontaneously present mandala of the ground, and we will be obliged to assert, in accordance with the vehicle of the paramitas, that Buddhahood has a cause. We will fail to recognize the authentic view of the Secret Mantra. ~ Jamg n Mipham, #NFDB |
| 525:He was saved not by the sky but by writing. He had written a number of books during his time in the re-education camp—always on the one piece of paper he possessed, page by page, chapter by chapter, an unending story. Without writing, he wouldn’t have heard the snow melting or leaves growing or clouds sailing through the sky. Nor would he have seen the dead end of a thought, the remains of a star or the texture of a comma. Nights when he was in his kitchen painting wooden ducks, Canada geese, loons, mallards, following the colour scheme provided by his other employer, he would recite for me the words in his personal dictionary: nummular, moan, quadraphony, in extremis, sacculina, logarithmic, hemorrhage—like a mantra, like a march towards the void. ~ Kim Th y, #NFDB |
| 526:But when something like Angelina's murder happens," the doctor told him (Decker), "it's human nature to assume a bunker mentality. Let's shore up our defenses and put up our guard so that when something like this happens again -- when, not if -- we won't be blindsided. Problem is, we become so risk averse, we cut ourselves off from the potentially dangerous things that could bring great happiness and joy. We stop taking chances, and without those sometimes risky chances, there's no way we can win big. Our best case scenario become losing not /too/ badly. /At least no one died/ becomes our mantra. Yes, we're trapped here in this prison that we've made, where we can't possibly be happy, but at least we're not devastated by our loss and our grief. ~ Suzanne Brockmann, #NFDB |
| 527:Avalokiteśvara’s mantra is: Gate, gate, pāragate, pārasaṃgate, bodhi svāhā. Gate means gone: gone from suffering to the liberation from suffering. Gone from forgetfulness to mindfulness. Gone from duality to nonduality. Gate, gate means gone, gone. Pāragate means gone all the way to the other shore. So this mantra is said in a very strong way. Gone, gone, gone all the way over. In Pārasaṃgate, saṃ means everyone, the sangha, the entire community of beings. Everyone gone over to the other shore. Bodhi is the light inside, enlightenment, or awakening. You see, and the vision of reality liberates you. Svāhā is a cry of joy and triumph, like “Eureka!” or “Hallelujah!” “Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svāhā! ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB |
| 528:My twin, Go. I've said this phrase so many times, it has become a reassuring mantra instead of actual words: Mytwingo. We were born in the '70s, back when twins were rare, a bit magical: cousins of the unicorn, siblings of the elves. We even have a dash of twin telepathy. Go is truly the one person in the entire world I am totally myself with. I don't feel the need to explain my actions to her. I don't clarify, I don't doubt, I don't worry. I don't tell her everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, by far. I tell her as much as I can. We spent nine months back to back, covering each other. It became a lifelong habit. It never mattered to me that she was a girl, strange for a deeply self-conscious kid. What can I say? She was always just cool. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB |
529:The good news is, you’re less of an ass nowadays.”
Duncan put his head back and laughed. Hard. It took him a moment to stop laughing. “That was the nicest backhanded compliment anyone has paid me in a very long time.”
She shrugged. “I only said it because it’s true.”
“I like you, Lena.”
She sat upright, placed her glass on a side table, and put her cute bare feet back on the porch floor. She blinked at him. “I like you, too, Duncan.”
“You’re an intriguing woman.”
“You’re a complicated man.”
That little voice in his head was now a screaming banshee. Over and over it yelled for his attention. Like a warning, like a mantra . . . Don’t do it. Don’t say it. Don’t go there. Duncan ignored the warning and told the banshee that he had the situation on lock. ~ Susan Donovan,#NFDB |
| 530:Do you understand economics? I mean big-time, prewar, global capitalism. Do you get how it worked? I don’t, and anyone who says they do is full of shit. There are no rules, no scientific absolutes. You win, you lose, it’s a total crapshoot. The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. “Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells. ~ Max Brooks, #NFDB |
531:But I've since realized that I'm fine with my anxious-ass, can't-touch-my-toes life. In my soul, I am not chill, and I do not want to be calm, and no part of me aspires to Zen. Sure, through yoga I learned to take time for myself, and I learned how to deep-breathe through pain, but the most valuable thing yoga taught me was that I'm not built to be a yogi -- and that's the only mantra I need.
For anyone who wants to be a yogi but hears the internal cries of "Oh my God, I hate this so much" from start to finish? Fuck it. Oh man, fuck it all the way back to wherever you bought your mat from. There are other outlets for your energy, other ways to carve out some peace. Nobody here needs to force themselves into downward dog when they'd rather be walking super-fast around the mall. ~ Anne T Donahue,#NFDB |
| 532:you understand economics? I mean big-time, prewar, global capitalism. Do you get how it worked? I don’t, and anyone who says they do is full of shit. There are no rules, no scientific absolutes. You win, you lose, it’s a total crapshoot. The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. “Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells.” When ~ Max Brooks, #NFDB |
| 533:She believed that a good teacher should make a poor student good, and a good student superior. I remember her saying, “When our students fail, we, as teachers, have also failed.” She focused on identifying and magnifying each student’s unique gifts. Her mantra to her students was “Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself.” She embodied the philosophy “You can’t teach what you don’t know, and you can’t guide where you don’t go.” We don’t have to teach thousands, hundreds, or even dozens. If we can show one person the way, if we can bring one person from darkness into light, if we can make a difference in one person’s development, we have succeeded as a teacher and a coach. It is true that when you light someone else’s path, you see your own more clearly. ~ Kevin Hall, #NFDB |
| 534:When Maharajji came out you never knew what to expect. He could do the same thing a week in a row until you’d think, “Well, he’ll come out at 8:00.” Then he might not come out all day, or he might just go into another room and close the door and be in there for two days. You had to learn to expect the unexpected. One day he came out and all he said all day long was “Thul-Thul, Nan-Nan,” repeating these words to himself like a mantra. Days went by like this and somebody finally said, “Maharajji, what are you saying?” And it turned out to be an old Behari dialect, and all it meant was “Too big, too big, too little, too little.” When he was finally asked why he was saying this, he said, “Oh, all you people, you all live in Thul-Thul, Nan-Nan; you live in the world of judgement. It’s always too big or too little. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB |
| 535:key to health and happiness. Living in the twenty-first-century American culture seems to promote an unbalanced life: too much work and not enough play, excessive calories and not enough natural fresh foods, too much stress and not enough fun, and too much TV and too little exercise, too much rushing around—insufficient restful sleep, too much materialism and too little spirituality. As Dr. Phil would ask, “Is it work in’ for ya?” We can tell you that it doesn’t work for us. One of the best ways to avoid getting swept away in the tide of the often self-defeating modern lifestyle is to live by the mantra: “Good Things First.” Get in the habit of prioritizing the things that will make your life better in the long run: exercise, eating breakfast each morning, good food and healthy beverages, time to play, plenty ~ James O Keefe, #NFDB |
| 536:She looked at me. “You’re an assassin, aren’t you? When there are rumors the government has someone on the payroll, they’re talking about you, right?” I let out a long exhalation. “Something like that.” There was a pause. Then she asked, “How many people have you killed?” My eyes moved to my glass. “I don’t know.” “I’m not talking about Vietnam. Since then.” “I don’t know,” I said again. “Don’t you think that’s too many?” The mildness of her voice made the question worse. “I don’t… I have rules. No women. No children. No acts against nonprincipals.” The words echoed flatly in my ears like a moron’s mantra, talismanic sounds suddenly stripped of their animating magic. She laughed without mirth. “ ‘I have rules.’ You sound like a whore who wants credit for virtue because she won’t kiss the clients she fucks.” It stung. But I took it. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB |
| 537:based on my personal experiences. Theoretical exposition is mostly my own but the majority of the base concepts are traditional and time-honored views of remarkable sages who existed before me. Therefore, if you wish to read more on the mantra sadhana, you can check out the following texts that I grew up reading. With a bit of research, you should be able to get your hands on good translations. I know that Hindi translations must be available for most of these books and English translation only for some. This is not your standard bibliography with publishers and translators, for I don’t have much of that information. Nevertheless, I’m sharing with you the names of various books you can read to know more about mantra yoga. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the translation of Mantra Maharnava by Ram Kumar Rai, Mantra Rahasya by Narayandutt ~ Om Swami, #NFDB |
538:It was now wintertime, and winter Selection is always considered the tougher course, because of the mountain conditions. I tried not to think about this.
Instead of the blistering heat and midges, our enemies would be the freezing, driving sleet, the high winds, and the short daylight hours.
These made Trucker and me look back on the summer Selection days as quite balmy and pleasant! It is strange how accustomed you become to hardship, and how what once seemed horrific can soon become mundane.
The DS had often told us: “If it ain’t raining, it ain’t training.”
And it rains a lot in the Brecon Beacons. Trust me.
(I recently overheard our middle boy, Marmaduke, tell one of his friends this SAS mantra. The other child was complaining that he couldn’t go outside because it was raining. Marmaduke, age four, put him straight. Priceless.) ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB |
| 539:Exercise: Basic Mantra Practice with So’ham Sit in a comfortable, upright posture and close your eyes. Focus on the flow of the breath. Gently and with relaxed attention, begin to think the mantra So’ham. Coordinate the syllables with the breathing— so on the exhalation, ham on the inhalation. Or simply think the mantra to yourself in a gentle, relaxed rhythm. Listen to the syllables as you repeat them. Allow your attention to focus more and more fully on the mantra’s syllables. Feel that each syllable is softly dropping into your awareness. Gently tune in to the energetic sensation that the mantra creates inside. When thoughts arise, as soon as you notice yourself thinking, bring your attention back to the mantra. If your attention wanders, bring it gently back to the mantra. Little by little, let the mantra become the predominant thought in your mind. ~ Sally Kempton, #NFDB |
| 540:During the early 1980s, the overall black unemployment rate stood at 15.5 percent—“an all time high” since the Great Depression—while unemployment among African American youth was a staggering 45.7 percent. At this point Reagan chose to slash the training, employment, and labor services budget by 70 percent—a cut of $3.805 billion.90 The only “ ‘urban’ program that survived the cuts was federal aid for highways—which primarily benefited suburbs, not cities.” In keeping with Lee Atwater’s mantra that “blacks get hurt worse than whites,” Reagan gutted aid to cities so extensively that federal dollars were reduced from 22 percent of a city’s budget to 6 percent. Cities responded with sharp austerity measures that shut down libraries, closed municipal hospitals, and cut back on garbage pickup. Some cities even dismantled their police and fire departments.91 ~ Carol Anderson, #NFDB |
| 541:Twinkle lights are the perfect metaphor for joy. Joy is not a constant. It comes to us in moments—often ordinary moments. Sometimes we miss out on the bursts of joy because we’re too busy chasing down extraordinary moments. Other times we’re so afraid of the dark that we don’t dare let ourselves enjoy the light. A joyful life is not a floodlight of joy. That would eventually become unbearable. I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, inspiration, and faith. For those of you who follow my blog, you’ll recognize this as the mantra for my gratitude posts on Fridays that I call TGIF. I turned this quote into a small badge, and part of my gratitude practice is a weekly post about what I’m Trusting, what I’m Grateful for, what Inspires me, and how I’m practicing my Faith. It’s incredibly powerful to read everyone’s comments. Joy ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB |
| 542:To enter deeply into meditation is to enter into the mystery of suffering love. It is to encounter the woundedness of our human nature. We are all deeply wounded from our infancy and bear these wounds in the unconscious. The repetition of the mantra is a way of opening these depths of the unconsciousness and exposing them to light. It is first of all to accept our woundedness and thus to realize that this is part of the wound of humanity. All the weaknesses we find in ourselves and all the things that upset us, we tend to try to push aside and get rid of. But we cannot do this. We have to accept that "this is me" and allow grace to come and heal it all. That is the great secret of suffering, not to push it back but to open the depths of the unconscious and to realize that we are not isolated individuals when we meditate, but are entering into the whole inheritance of the human family. ~ Bede Griffiths, #NFDB |
| 543:The kitchen was baby-proofed, with locking mechanisms on all the below counter cabinets. The smell of rot was more prevalent, and Taylor spied a Wild Oats bag with a package of chicken in the deep stainless steel sink. Well, that accounted for the stink downstairs. If the victim hadn’t talked to her sister for two days, and the chicken was coming back to life, then there was a good chance she’d been dead at least a day. Taylor only put chicken in the sink if she needed to defrost it and had the time to do so. That would give a convenient timeline—a day to thaw and a day to start smelling. Though it just as easily could be the victim came home from grocery shopping and didn’t get all the packages stored before her assailant appeared. They’d need a liver temp or a potassium level from the vitreous fluid for something more accurate, but it was a start. Never assume, that was her mantra. Fruit ~ J T Ellison, #NFDB |
| 544:In the process, Albuquerque was consolidating a revolutionary concept of empire. The Portuguese were always aware of how few they were; many of their early contests were against vastly unequal numbers. They quickly abandoned the notion of occupying large areas of territory. Instead, they evolved as a mantra the concept of flexible sea power tied to the occupation of defendable coastal forts and a network of bases. Supremacy at sea; their technological expertise in fortress building, navigation, cartography, and gunnery; their naval mobility and ability to coordinate operations over vast maritime spaces; the tenacity and continuity of their efforts—an investment over decades in shipbuilding, knowledge acquisition, and human resources—these facilitated a new form of long-range seaborne empire, able to control trade and resources across enormous distances. It gave the Portuguese ambitions with a global dimension. ~ Roger Crowley, #NFDB |
| 545:Motherhood often feels like a game of guilt management. Sometimes the guilt is overwhelming and debilitating. Sometimes just a low simmer, but it always feels right there. There is never any shortage of fuel to feed the beast, so the whole mechanism is constantly nourished to administer shame and a general feeling of incompetency. Add our carefully curated social media world, which not only affects our sense of success and failure, but also furnishes our children with an unprecedented brand of expectations, and BOOM – we’re the generation that does more for our kids than ever in history, yet feels the guiltiest. Virtually every one of my friends provides more than they had growing up, and still the mantra we buy into is ‘not enough, not enough, not enough.’ Meanwhile, if we developed the chops to tune out the ordinary complaints of children, we’d see mostly happy kids, loved and nurtured, cared for and treasured. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB |
546:Il modo in cui si muovevano all’unisono era quasi irreale. Tutto quello che Red vedeva e sentiva era Terry. “Ti amo,” sussurrò, con le parole che sfuggivano perché non riusciva più a trattenerle. Al diavolo il suo cuore e la sicurezza. Era quello che provava, e se alla fine fosse rimasto ferito, allora pazienza. “Ti amo,” sussurrò di nuovo. Non era sicuro di quante volte lo avesse detto, ma quelle parole continuavano a risuonargli nella mente e nel petto.
“Ti amo anch’io,” sentì attraverso il proprio mantra. Gli si allargò il cuore.
Perse la cognizione di tutto a parte Terry mentre gemevano, mugolavano e si esploravano l’anima a vicenda… mentre facevano l’amore. I secondi e i minuti si fusero assieme, trascorrendo nei battiti delle palpebre di Terry e nel calore del suo respiro. Era un’esperienza nuova, avere il cuore che si impegnava assieme al corpo, ed era un’esperienza che Red sperava con tutte le forze di ripetere per molto tempo ~ Andrew Grey,#NFDB |
547:English version by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche and Erik Pema Kunsang
This mind that knows emptiness
Is itself the awakened mind, bodhicitta.
The Buddha potential is just this.
The sugata essence is just this.
Because of tasting what is,
It is also the great bliss.
The understanding of secret mantra is just this.
Means and knowledge is just this.
This self-knowing, while one is still defiled,
Does not depend on other things,
So self-existing wakefulness is just this.
Being aware, it is cognizance.
A natural knowing that is free of thought.
This self-knowing cannot possibly form thoughts.
Without conceptualizing 'a mind,'
Since it is not something to be conceived,
This original wakefulness, cognizant yet thought-free,
Is like the wisdom of the Tathagata.
Therefore, it is taught, "Realize that luminous mind
Is the mind of original wakefulness,
And don't seek an enlightenment separate from that."
~ Naropa, The Viewm Concisely Put
,#NFDB |
548:Mantra to Overcome Depression
Vitamin D. Sunlight. Go
outside. Get a good night
of sleep. Not too good.
Not shades drawn forever
good. Not like you used to.
Open the windows.
Buy more houseplants.
Breathe. Meditate. One day,
you will no longer be
afraid of being alone
with your thoughts.
Exercise. Actually exercise
instead of just Googling it.
Eat well. Cook for yourself.
Organize your closet, the
garage. Drink plenty of
water and repeat after me:
I am not a problem
to be solved. Repeat after me:
I am worthy I am worthy
I am neither the mistake nor
the punishment. Forget to take
vitamins. Let the houseplant die.
Eat spoonfuls of peanut butter.
Shave your head. Forget
this poem. It doesn't matter.
There is no wrong way
to remember the grace of your
own body; no choice
that can unmake itself.
There is only now, here
look: you are already
forgiven. ~ Sierra DeMulder,#NFDB |
549:En la izquierda todos tienen la palabra "desliz" en la boca. Él no tiene deslices. Cuando da un paso a un lado, es porque tiene la intención de meter el dedo en la llaga. Lo mismo en la derecha, con sus mamonadas de "yo soy políticamente incorrecto", Una panda de burros. Lo único que buscan es la aprobación del más fuerte. El mantra nacional, tanto de un lado como de otro, es "sobre todo no quiero líos". Él los busca. Desde siempre. (...)
Cuando los jefes de izquierdas te contratan, te hacen firmar los mismo contratos, currar en las mismas condiciones, pero encima te piden que los admires y se ofenden si les hablas de horas extras. Cuando hay un buen puesto que cubrir, hace como los demás: colocan a su hijo, a su amante o a su sobrino. Te contratan por el salario mínimo y te exprimen como a un limón, pero por la mañana deberías estar contento porque te llamen por tu nombre de pila. A él le importa una mierda que lo saluden correctamente, él va por la nómina. Si la cifra de la parte de abajo de la tuya es diez veces superior a la mía, puedes guardarte tu amabilidad. ~ Virginie Despentes,#NFDB |
550:25. Seek Out The Five Fs
My dad always told me that living a good life was about ‘looking after your friends and family and having the courage to go for your dreams’. That was life in a nutshell for him.
Luckily those simple values meant much more to him than my school reports - which weren’t always glowing!
I have always tried to follow his advice, but I also adapted his mantra to take it one stage further…
So here is what I tell young Scouts or young adventurers who ask me what the key is to living a fulfilled life. I keep it pretty simple. I call them the five Fs.
Family.
Friends.
Faith.
Fun.
Follow your dreams.
None of them requires a degree, and all of them are within our reach. Just make them your priority, write them on your bathroom mirror, let them seep into your subconscious over time, and soon they will be like a compass guiding you to make the right decisions for your life.
When faced with big decisions, just ask yourself: ‘Will this choice or that one support or detract from the five Fs in my life? ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB |
| 551:We’ve created mass production at low prices, a system that operates under duress. There are stressed-out pigs who can’t mate, who bite one another’s tails because they’re so confined, or who are so heavy their legs can no longer support their bodies; turkeys who can’t reproduce naturally; chickens who have to be debeaked because they peck at each other in densely packed cages; roosters bred for growth who’ve become so aggressive that they injure or kill their mates; and cows who eat other cows as part of their feed and go mad. All of this is presided over by stressed-out farmers, many of whom have come to accept the industry’s bigger-is-better mantra, though it’s clearly unsustainable for them and the earth. In the process they have become almost as trapped as the animals they “farm.” Farmers, industry, and consumers have created a treadmill that runs ever more rapidly, fueled by all kinds of suffering animals—including us. It’s a system that only takes and doesn’t give back; it extracts and doesn’t replenish, until the creatures and the earth that sustain its existence have nothing more to give. ~ Gene Baur, #NFDB |
| 552:In the West the idea that religion is inherently violent is now taken for granted and seems self-evident. As one who speaks on religion, I constantly hear how cruel and aggressive it has been, a view that, eerily, is expressed in the same way almost every time: “Religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history.” I have heard this sentence recited like a mantra by American commentators and psychiatrists, London taxi drivers and Oxford academics. It is an odd remark. Obviously the two world wars were not fought on account of religion. When they discuss the reasons people go to war, military historians acknowledge that many interrelated social, material, and ideological factors are involved, one of the chief being competition for scarce resources. Experts on political violence or terrorism also insist that people commit atrocities for a complex range of reasons.3 Yet so indelible is the aggressive image of religious faith in our secular consciousness that we routinely load the violent sins of the twentieth century onto the back of “religion” and drive it out into the political wilderness. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB |
| 553:Consciously or not, the Senator (or his staffer) was only attempting to speak the language of the locals. He was value-adding (or adding alpha as very refined managers say). Value-adding is a mantra of modern economics: it describes the increase in value that a particular manufacturing process, or design or labelling or some other enhancement brings to a product before its sale. Those who talk a lot about value-adding often sound as if they are trying to achieve the same effect with the language: they force it into a new mould, streamline it, give it cachet. They make it into a machine with a minimum of moving parts, but with constant upgrades and (naturally) enhancements. And if you want to get reconciliation taken seriously, you had better put your case in these terms. The Senator’s imitation of the style is a remote sign of the gathering belief that the whole world – or such parts of it that function properly – can be understood either as a metaphor for free market economics and the management philosophies it has spawned, or as an actual consequence of them. That is to say, as an outcome or an event. ~ Don Watson, #NFDB |
| 554:What amazes us is that parents all over the world are literally paying thousands of dollars in college tuition so that their sons and daughters can be taught the “truth” that there is no truth, not to mention other self-defeating postmodern assertions such as: 8220;All truth is relative” (Is that a relative truth?); “ There are no absolutes” (Are you absolutely sure?); and, “It’s true for you but not for me!” (Is that statement true just for you, or is it true for everyone?) “True for you but not for me” may be the mantra of our day, but it’s not how the world really works. Try saying that to your bank teller, the police, or the IRS and see how far you get! Of course these modern mantras are false because they are self-defeating. But for those who still blindly believe them, we have a few questions: If there really is no truth, then why try to learn anything? Why should any student listen to any professor? After all, the professor doesn’t have the truth. What’s the point of going to school, much less paying for it? And what’s the point of obeying the professor’s moral prohibitions against cheating on tests or plagiarizing term papers? ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB |
555:Stop.”
“You don’t want me to stop, you stupid, stubborn bastard.” Edgard snarled and devoured Trevor’s mouth in another possessive, bruising kiss.
Before Trevor could break free from the temptation, a distressed gasp somewhere to the left speeded up the process. Trevor shoved Edgard away. He spun so fast he lost his balance. But the damage had been done.
Chassie stood in the shadows in absolute shock.
Chapter Seven
Not happening. Not happening. Not happening.
Her body, her will, her consciousness appeared to be floating in another dimension, as this one shifted and twisted into the surreal. She couldn’t believe her eyes.
Not happening. Not happening. Not happening.
She had not witnessed her husband in the arms of another man. She had not seen him kissing another man like he was everything in his world. She had not heard the details of how they’d been together, what they’d been together. She had not imagined how badly they wanted to be together now.
Not happening. Not happening. Not happening.
The mantra she’d used during her childhood to vanquish nightmares wasn’t working this time. ~ Lorelei James,#NFDB |
| 556:The situation was vastly different way back in 1968-69. The politicians and the bureaucrats hadn’t yet found the open sesame mantra into the national treasury. Most of them depended on the lowly SIB representatives for monetary help, tactical support and for building bridges with the political bosses and the top bureaucrats in Delhi. The situation has now reversed. The local political bosses like their counterparts in Delhi and elsewhere in India, have found the open sesame keys and are in a position to shame some of the millionaire barons of industry. Now, I understand, they are not required to pamper the local SIB station chief. They can shop around in Delhi, right from the top political to the chick bureaucratic shopping mall and spend as much as they like. They arrive in Delhi with suitcases and go back with political support and plan and non-plan budgetary grants and aids. Most of these allocations, even a blind person can perceive, travel straight to the private coffers of the adventurers and fortune hunters. That’s how the development activities are implemented in India to remove poverty and to bring the people up to civilised standard of living! ~ Maloy Krishna Dhar, #NFDB |
557:Reality Check
His lying is not contigent on who you are or what you do. His lying is not your fault. Lying is his choice and his problem, and if he makes that choice with you, he will make it with any other woman he’s with. That doesn’t mean you’re an angel and he’s the devil. It does mean that if he doesn’t like certain things about you, he has many ways to address them besides lying. If there are sexual problems between you, there are many resources available to help you. Nothing can change until you hold him responsible and accountable for lying and stop blaming yourself.
The lies we tell ourselves to keep from seeing the truth about our lovers don’t feel like lies. They feel comfortable, familiar, and true. We repeat them like a mantra and cling to them like security blankets, hoping to calm ourselves and regain our sense that the world works the way we believe it ought to.
Self-lies are false friends we look to for comfort and protection—and for a short time they may make us feel better. But we can only keep the truth at bay for so long. Our self-lies can’t erase his lies, and as we’ll see, the longer we try to pretend they can, the more we deepen the hurt. ~ Susan Forward,#NFDB |
| 558:Now at night, I held you and a great fear, wide as all our American generations, took me. Now I personally understood my father and the old mantra - 'Either I can beat him or the police.' I understood it all - the cable wires, the extension cords, the ritual switch. Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. This is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket. It was only after you that I understood this love, that I understood the grip of my mother's hand. She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy spilled upon the curb like bum wine. And no one wold be brought to account for this destruction, because my death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of 'race,' imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB |
| 559:The Logic of the Double or Triple Threat On “career advice,” Scott has written the following, which is slightly trimmed for space here. This is effectively my mantra, and you’ll see why I bring it up: If you want an average, successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1) Become the best at one specific thing. 2) Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try. The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB |
| 560:she won’t be making evening practice either, then rolls over, pulling her duvet high up around her ears. She feels vaguely surprised that it’s so easy. She’s reminded of her favourite Yeats poem: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Her brain thick with sleep, the idea of Marcus as a falconer strikes her as quite profound. This far from Marcus, she wonders how he ever had such a hold over her. The thought sleepily occurs to her that she may never get out of bed, never return to the pool, again. As she has always suspected, the first practice was the hardest to miss and after that one slip, the whole foundation of her training discipline would come crashing down, falling apart around her. The slacker in her would take over. Yes, the pool, always her centre, has lost its hold. What, she wonders, has held the whole thing together this long? I have an intense burning desire to be a champion. That was the phrase she learned at National Youth Team swim camps. I have an intense burning desire to be a champion. They repeated the mantra over and over—a room full of fourteen-year-olds chanting the words in unison. I have an intense burning desire to be a champion. After ~ Angie Abdou, #NFDB |
| 561:You have been vitally and concretely grafted into the tangible bliss of the Godhead. Miracles. Healing. A flourishing, prosperous life. The daily enjoyment of His intoxicating presence. This is ours. Absolute freedom from sin as you recognize your true God-given righteousness. Not holy in theory alone … your entire old corrupted self was co-crucified with Him, as you shared a death with Him. I have been co-crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Gal. 2:20). As a new creation, you have been liberated from the struggle of self-improvement. Absolutely flawless, our old fearful, sinful, blemished selves have been eradicated once and for all. Perfected once and for all by His sacrifice, we can drink daily from the fountain of our union with Him, no longer expecting defeat. As our mind changes regarding the truth of our identity, our outward lives bear corresponding fruit. No longer believing the false humility pop mantra of our times that we are “still sinners” bound to decay, poverty, disease or addiction. We are sons and daughters – our true identity shines from the inside out chock-full of inheritance. Right here. Right now. ~ John Crowder, #NFDB |
562:The Mantra-Yoga
How should I seek to make a song for thee
When all my music is to moan thy name?
That long sad monotone - the same - the same Matching the mute insatiable sea
That throbs with life's bewitching agony,
Too long to measure and too fierce to tame!
An hurtful joy, a fascinating shame
Is this great ache that grips the heart of me.
Even as a cancer, so this passion gnaws
Away my soul, and will not ease its jaws
Till I am dead. Then let me die! Who knows
But that this corpse committed to the earth
May be the occasion of some happier birth?
Spring's earliest snowdrop? Summer's latest rose?
II
Thou knowest what asp hath fixed its lethal tooth
In the white breast that trembled like a flower
At thy name whispered. thou hast marked how hour
By hour its poison hath dissolved my youth,
Half skilled to agonise, half skilled to soothe
This passion ineluctable, this power
Slave to its single end, to storm the tower
That holdeth thee, who art Authentic Truth.
O golden hawk! O lidless eye! Behold
How the grey creeps upon the shuddering gold!
Still I will strive! That thou mayst sweep
Swift on the dead from thine all-seeing steep And the unutterable word by spoken.
~ Aleister Crowley,#NFDB |
563:
I
How should I seek to make a song for thee
When all my music is to moan thy name?
That long sad monotone - the same - the same -
Matching the mute insatiable sea
That throbs with life's bewitching agony,
Too long to measure and too fierce to tame!
An hurtful joy, a fascinating shame
Is this great ache that grips the heart of me.
Even as a cancer, so this passion gnaws
Away my soul, and will not ease its jaws
Till I am dead. Then let me die! Who knows
But that this corpse committed to the earth
May be the occasion of some happier birth?
Spring's earliest snowdrop? Summer's latest rose?
II
Thou knowest what asp hath fixed its lethal tooth
In the white breast that trembled like a flower
At thy name whispered. thou hast marked how hour
By hour its poison hath dissolved my youth,
Half skilled to agonise, half skilled to soothe
This passion ineluctable, this power
Slave to its single end, to storm the tower
That holdeth thee, who art Authentic Truth.
O golden hawk! O lidless eye! Behold
How the grey creeps upon the shuddering gold!
Still I will strive! That thou mayst sweep
Swift on the dead from thine all-seeing steep -
And the unutterable word by spoken.
~ Aleister Crowley, The Mantra-Yoga
,#NFDB |
| 564:If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why? Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by? The quote I live by is “By any means necessary.” It’s from Malcolm X. When I was in college, I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and was blown away by the determination and commitment that Malcolm X had to his people and to fight against a system that was not designed to support or help him or his people. He really made strides in bringing civil rights to the forefront of the American people. It was a very moving book, and I remember reading it a few times. As I started my label, I wanted to create a slogan with this concept, and I wanted to use this idea of “by any means necessary” as a way of life. When we started [my label] Dim Mak back in 1996, I didn’t have any money to launch the label, as I only had $ 400 to my name. So I would find any way possible to make sure these records came out. I did whatever I could with the tools in front of me with no excuses and no complaining. You gotta find a way to get your project done; you gotta think outside the box. My team also lives and works by the mantra of “by any means necessary,” and because of that, we can get things done that others might not. I feel lucky to have such a great team that will share this way of life with me. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB |
| 565:Por una parte, un replicante podría proporcionarnos la utopía que previeron los visionarios del siglo XIX. Los experimentos utópicos anteriores fracasaron a causa de la escasez, la cual conduce a las desigualdades, las peleas y el desastre. Pero, si los replicantes resuelven el problema de la escasez, quizá se pueda alcanzar la utopía. Las artes plásticas, la música y la poesía florecerán, y la gente tendrá libertad para explorar sus sueños y deseos más profundos. Por otra parte, sin el impulso motivador de la escasez y el dinero, se podría llegar a una sociedad caprichosa y degenerada que se hundiera en lo más bajo. Solo unos pocos, los más motivados artísticamente, se esforzarían por escribir poesía. El resto de nosotros, según afirman las voces críticas, nos convertiríamos en unos holgazanes y gandules. Incluso las definiciones que utilizan los utópicos se pondrían en cuestión. El mantra del socialismo, por ejemplo, es: «De cada uno según su capacidad; a cada uno según su contribución». El del comunismo, el nivel más elevado de socialismo, es: «De cada uno según su capacidad; a cada uno según su necesidad». Pero, si los replicantes son posibles, el mantra se convierte simplemente en: «A cada uno según sus deseos». Sin embargo, hay un tercer modo de ver esta cuestión. Según el Principio del Hombre de las Cavernas, el carácter de la gente ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB |
566:A certain inertia, tendency to sleep, indolence, unwillingness or inability to be strong for work or spiritual effort for long at a time, is in the nature of the human physical consciousness. When one goes down into the physical for its change (that has been the general condition here for a long time), this tends to increase. Even sometimes when the pressure of the sadhana on the physical increases or when one has to go much inside, this temporarily increases - the body either needing more rest or turning the inward movement into a tendency to sleep or be at rest. You need not, however, be anxious about that. After a time this rights itself; the physical consciousness gets the true peace and calm in the cells and feels at rest even in full work or in the most concentrated condition and this tendency of inertia goes out of the nature. Even for those who have never been in trance, it is good to repeat a mantra, a word, a prayer before going into sleep. But there must be a life in the words; I do not mean an intellectual significance, nothing of that kind, but a vibration. And its effect on the body is extraordinary: it begins to vibrate, vibrate, vibrate... and quietly you let yourself go, as though you wanted to go to sleep. The body vibrates more and more, more and more, more and more, and away you go. That is the cure for tamas.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#NFDB |
| 567:No,’ he says very firmly. ‘It doesn’t matter how good a drummer, singer, or trombone-mimer you are, bragging about anything is bad form. They have a mantra in the business – “Lego over ego” – and people follow it.’ He tells me that he and his fellow non-Danes have been guided towards the writings of a 1930s Danish-Norwegian author, Aksel Sandemose, for a better understanding of how best to ‘integrate’ into the workplace in Denmark. Sandemose outlines ten rules for living Danishly (otherwise known as ‘Jante’s Law’) in his novel, A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks. These, as far as Google Translate and I can make out, are: You’re not to think you are anything special You’re not to think you are as good as we are You’re not to think you are smarter than us You’re not to convince yourself that you are better than us You’re not to think you know more than us You’re not to think you are more important than us You’re not to think you are good at anything You’re not to laugh at us You’re not to think anyone cares about you You’re not to think you can teach us anything ‘Crikey, you’re not to do much round here, are you?’ ‘Oh, and there’s another, unspoken one.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘“Don’t put up with presenteeism”. If anyone plays the martyr card, staying late or working too much, they’re more likely to get a leaflet about efficiency or time management dropped on their desk than any sympathy. ~ Helen Russell, #NFDB |
568:The cult of the Virgin Mary enabled the worship of the Goddess to flourish, albeit in a cauterised form. As I keep repeating in a mantra, sex is power. The Virgin was a method of turning the sexual impulse of Christians back into the Church and onto the figure of the crucified Christ. I would describe this as a particularly unsavoury form of magick. This is the use of repression and misery as a spiritual battery. This enslavement of the worshipper’s natural desires is the exact opposite of the natural and healthy lust for Babalon.
With the resolutely chaste Mary in position, churches had a surrogate Goddess back in the house. Christ knows, they needed one. To sell Christianity to the fans of the God who dies and is reborn (like the crops in the fields) the Church used statues of Mary and Jesus that were rather close to those of Isis and the Child Horus. This mother/son icon propaganda was like a Pepsi taste test for the wavering pagans. They failed.
It requires other women to keep women as slaves stripped of their sexual power. The BVM did that job. She was the only role model that you could fixate upon.
As a Goddess she is a clitoridectomy. If you lift her skirt you can see the coarse black thread where she has been snipped and stitched. The thread is plaited from the beard of Jehovah himself. This is not a woman anymore. Look under the hem and learn. ~ Peter Grey,#NFDB |
| 569:But today, journalism schools teach a mantra that scientists will say is completely false: “there is no such thing as objectivity”—a phrase frequently repeated by some of the profession’s leading figures, and contained in many newspaper reporters’ guidelines. This conceit may be true when reporting on politics or interviewing the witnesses to a crime, but it is decidedly not true when it comes to reporting on events or issues that have large inputs of objective knowledge from science, even when those issues or events are political. For such stories, we have developed a unique, reproducible, peer-reviewed method of scientific research whose very purpose is to create the objective knowledge reporters seem to think cannot be had. The process of science is designed to cull out reliable knowledge—no matter who does the investigating or reports on the outcome—from our gender identities, our political identities, our religious identities, our sexual identities, our cultural identities, and so on, trimming away all those subjective forms of bias reporters think we can never escape until we are left with knowledge that is provisionally objective in the stories we tell about reality. While it may not be possible to attain total objectivity, approaching it is what science is all about, and the reliable knowledge it produces is responsible for every advance in the modern world. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB |
| 570:But today, journalism schools teach a mantra that scientists will say is completely false: “there is no such thing as objectivity”—a phrase frequently repeated by some of the profession’s leading figures, and contained in many newspaper reporters’ guidelines. This conceit may be true when reporting on politics or interviewing the witnesses to a crime, but it is decidedly not true when it comes to reporting on events or issues that have large inputs of objective knowledge from science, even when those issues or events are political. For such stories, we have developed a unique, reproducible, peer-reviewed method of scientific research whose very purpose is to create the objective knowledge reporters seem to think cannot be had. The process of science is designed to cull out reliable knowledge���no matter who does the investigating or reports on the outcome—from our gender identities, our political identities, our religious identities, our sexual identities, our cultural identities, and so on, trimming away all those subjective forms of bias reporters think we can never escape until we are left with knowledge that is provisionally objective in the stories we tell about reality. While it may not be possible to attain total objectivity, approaching it is what science is all about, and the reliable knowledge it produces is responsible for every advance in the modern world. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB |
571:
Good and bad; from here to eternity, and from eternity to here. But I have been not here before, remember that. By which I mean that I have been here; I have already been at the destination towards which I’m now heading. I have already been absent, non-existent. Beckett and Nabokov know:
I too shall cease and be as when I was not yet, only all over instead of in store.
From an Abandoned Work
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
Speak, Memory
This thought, this fact, is a genuine comfort, the only one that works, to calm me down when the panic comes. It brings me real solace in the terror of the infinite desert. It doesn’t resolve the question (though, as an atheist I don’t really have one), but it offers me familiarity with ‘The undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveller returns’. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. And it soothes. When I find myself trembling at the prospect of extinction, I can steady myself by thinking of the abyss that I have already experienced. Sometimes I can almost take a kindly, unhurried interest in my own extinction. The not-being that I have already been. I whisper it to myself, like a mantra, or a lullaby. ~ Jenny Diski,#NFDB |
572:Dice che, a pensarci, è curioso che persone normali, intelligenti, possano credere a una cosa tanto pazzesca come la religione cristiana, una cosa in tutto e per tutto identica alla mitologia greca o alle favole. [...]
Eppure viene creduta. Sono in molti a crederci. Durante la messa recitano il Credo, ogni frase del quale è un insulto al buonsenso, e lo recitano nella loro lingua, che si presume capiscano. Quand’ero piccolo, la domenica mio padre mi portava in chiesa e gli dispiaceva che la messa non fosse più in latino, un po’ per passatismo, e un po’ perché, ricordo ancora le sue parole, «in latino non ci si accorgeva che scemenza fosse». Ci si può rassicurare dicendo: non ci credono. Come non credono a Babbo Natale. Fa parte di un retaggio, di abitudini secolari e belle alle quali sono attaccati. Tramandandole, affermano un legame, di cui vanno fieri, con ciò che ha ispirato le cattedrali e la musica di Bach. Borbottano quelle parole perché è la consuetudine, come noialtri radical-chic, per i quali il corso di yoga della domenica mattina ha preso il posto della messa, borbottiamo un mantra seguendo il maestro prima di cominciare la pratica. In questo mantra, tuttavia, ci auguriamo che la pioggia cada al momento giusto e tutti gli uomini vivano in pace, nient’altro che pii desideri, probabilmente, i quali però non offendono la ragione, e questa è una differenza sostanziale con il cristianesimo. ~ Emmanuel Carr re,#NFDB |
573:CHAPTER V
The Actual Practice:The Yoga of Meditative Equipoise
Part II
The Yoga of the Speech Recitation
The next section explains the yoga of vajra recitation in seven parts:
(1) general understanding, (2) the particular necessity for practice, (3) the actual nature of the recitation, (4) different types of recitation, (5) the manner of reciting the mantra, (6) number of recitations and (7) activity upon completion.
General Understanding
A general understanding of the yoga of vajra recitation is approached by considering the object that needs to be purified by the yoga, the means of purification and the result. The object that needs to be purified through the yoga of speech is the habit of perceiving all sounds-names, words, syllables and anything that is spoken-as merely ordinary sounds with ordinary meanings.
Simply stated, the object to purify is your present, obscured experience of speech and the habitual instincts that accompany it.
The practice of mantra recitation purifies this impure experience and results in pure, vajra-like speech. One achieves the Sambhogakaya and becomes imbued with the sixty qualities of the Buddha's speech. All of one's words become pleasing, meaningful and helpful. The means of purification is to recite the mantra, the pure sounds which the buddhas have given to us, over and over until they are like a spinning wheel of sound. ~ Gyatrul Rinpoche, Generating the DeityZ,#NFDB |
574:103. Magic Mantras and Latex Poodles
My father has the irritating habit of saying the same thing whenever something bad happens. “This, too, shall pass,” he says. What annoys me is that he’s always right about it. What annoys me even more is that he always reminds me later when it does pass, as a smug “I told you so.”
He doesn’t say it to me anymore because Mom told him it was trite. Maybe it is, but I find that I say it to myself now. No matter how bad I’m feeling, I make myself say it, even if I’m not ready to believe it. This, too, shall pass. It’s amazing how little things like that can make a big difference.
It’s like that old Nike ad. “Just do it.” My mom likes to tell the story about how she had gained so much weight when Mackenzie was born, and exercise was so daunting, she didn’t know where to begin, so she just ate and got fatter. Finally she started telling herself “Just do it,” and it was the magic mantra to get her exercising regularly again. She dropped the weight before Mackenzie turned two. On the other hand, there was this bizarre cult that committed mass suicide wearing brand-new Nikes as their own warped homage to “Just do it.”
I suppose even a simple slogan can be twisted into whatever shape we want, like a balloon animal—we can even make it loop back around on itself, becoming a noose. In the end, the measure of who we are can be seen in the shapes of our balloon animals. ~ Neal Shusterman,#NFDB |
| 575:en todo el Himalaya budista, este mantra ha acompañado a mi abuela a lo largo de su vida desde la mañana hasta la noche, ya fuera vocalizado, murmurado o sencillamente recitado en sus pensamientos. Es imposible traducirlo de forma literal. El Dalai Lama nos dice: «Esas seis sílabas tienen un significado grande y vasto. La primera, om, simboliza el cuerpo, el habla y la mente, impuros, del practicante; simboliza también el cuerpo, el habla y la mente, puros y exaltados, de un buda. El camino lo indican las cuatro sílabas siguientes. Mani, que significa joya, simboliza el método: la intención altruista de lograr la iluminación, la compasión y el amor. Las dos sílabas peme, que significan lotus, simbolizan la sabiduría. La pureza debe conseguirse a través de la unidad indivisible del método y la sabiduría, simbolizada con la sílaba final hung, que indica la indivisibilidad. Así, las seis sílabas, om mani peme hung, significan que en la subordinación a la práctica de un camino que es la unión indivisible de método y sabiduría podemos transformar nuestros cuerpo, habla y mente impuros en el cuerpo, el habla y la mente puros y exaltados de un buda». Cada una de las seis sílabas representa una de las seis formas de existencia en las que los seres humanos renacen, y de las cuales Bodhisattva y Avalokiteshvara pueden rescatar a los fieles. Este bodhisattva personifica la compasión universal, y está estrechamente relacionado con el difundido mantra mencionado. ~ Yangzom Brauen, #NFDB |
| 576:Most fish—like skate wing—naturally taper off and narrow at the outer edges and toward the tail. Which is fine for moving through the water. Not so good for even cooking. A chef or cook looks at that graceful decline and sees a piece of protein that will cook unevenly: will, when the center—or fattest part—is perfect, be overcooked at the edges. They see a piece of fish that does not look like you could charge $39 for it. Customers should understand that what they are paying for, in any restaurant situation, is not just what’s on the plate—but everything that’s not on the plate: all the bone, skin, fat, and waste product which the chef did pay for, by the pound. When Eric Ripert, for instance, pays $15 or $20 a pound for a piece of fish, you can be sure, the guy who sells it to him does not care that 70 percent of that fish is going in the garbage. It’s still the same price. Same principle applies to meat, poultry—or any other protein. The price of the protein on the market may be $10 per pound, but by the time you’re putting the cleaned, prepped piece of meat or fish on the plate, it can actually cost you $35 a pound. And that’s before paying the guy who cuts it for you. That disparity in purchase price and actual price becomes even more extreme at the top end of the dining spectrum. The famous French mantra of “Use Everything,” by which most chefs live, is not the operative phrase of a three-starred Michelin restaurant. Here, it’s “Use Only the Very Best. ~ Anthony Bourdain, #NFDB |
577:The Living Word has various dimensions in relation to power and will to power. The spoken word stands at the very bottom of the involuted scale, being the faint echo of the inaudible Word. All beings, from the Gods to mankind, possess a sound, an essential name, a key note. By discovering what it is, one acquires the power to decompose and recreate it. It is also a mantra of voluntary death and resurrection. In the current parlance: the individual, chromosomic, genetic code has been deciphered. The secret has been penetrated. The name to which we refer corresponds to the supratemporal being and has nothing to do with the intimate, family name, although sometimes a delicate synchronicity is produced within a turn of the wheel, a mysterious lucky occurrence filled with meaning, and this name may also be symbolic.
'You must discover your Beloved's real name if you are to bring her back to life. And yours, too. They are the names of the God and Goddess to whom they will give a face. 'Of the God within you', as the Hindu greeting says: Namaste. 'I greet the God within you'.
'The essential name cannot be chosen, it isn't arbitrary. It is filled with meaning of the root note. It is mantra, an eternal designation. It is inscribed in the Book of the Stars, on the Tree of Life, awaiting its actualisation. The initiate of our order is given his real name when he has successfully undergone the most difficult tests. Then it is inscribed in the genealogical tree of the family, in the immortal circle of the Hyperborean initiation. ~ Miguel Serrano,#NFDB |
578:Tad Niskala 'That I Am Not'
Om. I am neither the mind,
Intelligence, ego, nor ’chitta’,
Neither the ears, nor the tongue,
Nor the senses of smell and sight,
Neither ether, nor air,
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!
I am neither the ’prana’,
Nor the five vital breaths,
Neither the seven elements of the body,
Nor its five sheaths,
Nor hands, nor feet,
Nor other organs of action.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!
Neither fear, greed, nor delusion,
Loathing, nor liking have I,
Nothing of pride, of ego,
Of ’dharma’ or Liberation,
Neither desire of the mind,
Nor object for its desiring.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!
Nothing of pleasure and pain,
Of virtue and vice, do I know,
Of mantra, of sacred place,
Of Vedas or Sacrifice,
Neither I am the eater,
The food or the act of eating,
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!
Death or fear, I have none,
Nor any distinction of ’caste’,
Neither Father, nor Mother,
Nor even a birth, have I,
20
Neither friend, nor comrade,
Neither disciple, nor Guru.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!
I have no form or fancy,
the All-pervading am I,
Everywhere I exist,
And yet I am beyond the senses,
Neither salvation am I,
Nor anything to be known.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!
~ Adi Shankaracharya,#NFDB |
| 579:The two people were William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. Vogt, born in 1902, laid out the basic ideas for the modern environmental movement. In particular, he founded what the Hampshire College demographer Betsy Hartmann has called “apocalyptic environmentalism”—the belief that unless humankind drastically reduces consumption its growing numbers and appetite will overwhelm the planet’s ecosystems. In best-selling books and powerful speeches, Vogt argued that affluence is not our greatest achievement but our biggest problem. Our prosperity is temporary, he said, because it is based on taking more from Earth than it can give. If we continue, the unavoidable result will be devastation on a global scale, perhaps including our extinction. Cut back! Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! Borlaug, born twelve years later, has become the emblem of what has been termed “techno-optimism” or “cornucopianism”—the view that science and technology, properly applied, can help us produce our way out of our predicament. Exemplifying this idea, Borlaug was the primary figure in the research that in the 1960s created the “Green Revolution,” the combination of high-yielding crop varieties and agronomic techniques that raised grain harvests around the world, helping to avert tens of millions of deaths from hunger. To Borlaug, affluence was not the problem but the solution. Only by getting richer, smarter, and more knowledgeable can humankind create the science that will resolve our environmental dilemmas. Innovate! Innovate! was Borlaug’s cry. Only in that way can everyone win! ~ Charles C Mann, #NFDB |
580:Some young men who had come with an introduction from the Ramakrishna Mission at Madras asked Bhagavan, “Which is the proper path for us to follow?”
Bhagavan: When you speak of a path, where are you now? and where do you want to go? If these are known, then we can talk of the path. Know first where you are and what you are. There is nothing to be reached. You are always as you really are. But you don’t realise it. That is all.
A little while after, one of the visitors asked Bhagavan, “I am now following the path of japa. Is that all right?”
Bhagavan: Yes. It is quite good. You can continue in that. The gentleman who asked about creation said, “I never thought I was going to have the good fortune of visiting Bhagavan. But circumstances have brought me here and I find in his presence, without any effort on my part, I am having santi. Apparently, getting peace does not depend on our effort.
It seems to come only as the result of grace!” Bhagavan was silent. Meanwhile, another visitor remarked, “No. Our effort is also necessary, though no one can do without grace.” After some time, Bhagavan remarked, “Mantra japa, after a time, leads to a stage when you become Mantra maya i.e., you become that whose name you have been repeating or chanting.
First you repeat the mantra by mouth; later you do it mentally.
First, you do this dhyana with breaks. Later, you do it without any break. At that stage you realise you do dhyana without any effort on your part, that dhyana is your real nature. Till then, effort is necessary.” ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day By Day, ,#NFDB |
| 581:There are four independent brain circuits that influence our lasting well-being, Davidson explained. The first is “our ability to maintain positive states.” It makes sense that the ability to maintain positive states or positive emotions would directly impact one’s ability to experience happiness. These two great spiritual leaders were saying that the fastest way to this state is to start with love and compassion. The second circuit is responsible for “our ability to recover from negative states.” What was most fascinating to me was that these circuits were totally independent. One could be good at maintaining positive states but easily fall into an abyss of a negative state from which one had a hard time recovering. That explained a lot in my life. The third circuit, also independent but essential to the others, is “our ability to focus and avoid mind-wandering.” This of course was the circuit that so much of meditation exists to develop. Whether it was focusing on one’s breath, or a mantra, or the analytic meditation that the Dalai Lama did each morning, this ability to focus one’s attention was fundamental. The fourth and final circuit is “our ability to be generous.” That was amazing to me: that we had an entire brain circuit, one of four, devoted to generosity. It is no wonder that our brains feel so good when we help others or are helped by others, or even witness others being helped, which Ekman had described as the elevation that is one dimension of joy. There was strong and compelling research that we come factory equipped for cooperation, compassion, and generosity. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB |
| 582:So we begin with a very simple object of attention, like the breath, and train ourselves to return to it even as we get distracted over and over again. This first insight into the habit of distraction leads us to understand the value and importance of steadying our attention, because the worlds we create in ourselves and around us all have their origins in our own minds. How many different mind-worlds do we inhabit in our thoughts, even between one breath and the next? And how many actions do we take because of these unnoticed thoughts? By first taking a particular object of concentration and then training the mind to stay focused on it, we can develop calmness and tranquillity. The object may be the breath, a sound or mantra, a visual image, or certain reflections, all of which serve to concentrate the mind. At first, this requires the effort of continually returning each time the mind wanders off. With practice, though, the mind becomes trained, and then rests quite easily in the chosen object. In addition to the feelings of restfulness and peace, the state of concentration also becomes the basis for deepening insight and wisdom. We find ourselves opening to the world’s suffering as well as to its great beauty. Through the power of increased awareness, simple experience often becomes magically alive: the silhouette of a branch against the night sky or trees swaying in the invisible wind. The way that we sense the world becomes purified, our perception of the world transformed. Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB |
583:The Nirmanakaya manifestation of Amitabha, I,
the Indian Scholar, the Lotus Born,
From the self-blossoming center of a lotus,
Came to this realm of existence through miraculous powers
To be the prince of the king of Oddiyana.
Then, I sustained the kingdom in accordance with Dharma.
Wandering throughout all directions of India,
I severed all spiritual doubts without exception.
Engaging in fearless activity in the eight burial grounds,
I achieved all supreme and common siddhis.
Then, according to the wishes of King Trisong Detsen
And by the power of previous prayers, I journeyed to Tibet.
By subduing the cruel gods, nagas, yakshas, rakshas,
and all spirits who harm beings,
The light of the teachings of secret mantra has been illuminated.
Then, when the time came to depart for the continent of Lanka,
I did so to provide refuge from the fear of rakshas
For all the inhabitants of this world, including Tibet.
I blessed Nirmanakaya emanations to be representatives of my body.
I made sacred treasures as representatives of my holy speech.
I poured enlightened wisdom into the hearts of those with fortunate karma.
Until samsara is emptied, for the benefit of sentient beings,
I will manifest unceasingly in whatever ways are necessary.
Through profound kindness, I have brought great benefit for all.
If you who are fortunate have the mind of aspiration,
May you pray so that blessings will be received.
All followers, believe in me with determination.
Samaya. ~ The Wrathful Compassion of Guru Dorje Drollo, Vajra Master Dudjom Yeshe Dorje, translated by Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche,#NFDB |
| 584:We had little money but didn’t think of ourselves as poor. Our vision, if I can call it that, was not materialistic. If we had a concept about ourselves, it was egalitarian, although we would not have known what that word meant. We spoke French entirely. There was a bond between Cajuns and people of color. Cajuns didn’t travel, because they believed they lived in the best place on earth. But somehow the worst in us, or outside of us, asserted itself and prevailed and replaced everything that was good in our lives. We traded away our language, our customs, our stands of cypress, our sugarcane acreage, our identity, and our pride. Outsiders ridiculed us and thought us stupid; teachers forbade our children to speak French on the school grounds. Our barrier islands were dredged to extinction. Our coastline was cut with eight thousand miles of industrial channels, destroying the root systems of the sawgrass and the swamps. The bottom of the state continues to wash away in the flume of the Mississippi at a rate of sixteen square miles a year. Much of this we did to ourselves in the same way that a drunk like me will destroy a gift, one that is irreplaceable and extended by a divine hand. Our roadsides are littered with trash, our rain ditches layered with it, our waterways dumping grounds for automobile tires and couches and building material. While we trivialize the implications of our drive-through daiquiri windows and the seediness of our politicians and recite our self-congratulatory mantra, laissez les bons temps rouler, the southern rim of the state hovers on the edge of oblivion, a diminishing, heartbreaking strip of green lace that eventually will be available only in photographs. ~ James Lee Burke, #NFDB |
585:Not if you’ve been where we have. Forty years ago, in Südwest, we were nearly exterminated. There was no reason. Can you understand that? No reason. We couldn’t even find comfort in the Will of God Theory. These were Germans with names and service records, men in blue uniforms who killed clumsily and not without guilt. Search-and-destroy missions, every day. It went on for two years. The orders came down from a human being, a scrupulous butcher named von Trotha. The thumb of mercy never touched his scales.”
“We have a word that we whisper, a mantra for times that threaten to be bad. Mba-kayere. You may find it will work for you. Mba-kayere. It means ‘I am passed over.’ To those of us who survived von Trotha, it also means that we have learned to stand outside our history and watch it, without feeling too much. A little schizoid. A sense for the statistics of our being. One reason we grew so close to the Rocket, I think, was this sharp awareness of how contingent, like ourselves, the Aggregat 4 could be—how at the mercy of small things…dust that gets in a timer and breaks electrical contact…a film of grease you can’t even see, oil from the touch of human fingers, left inside a liquid-oxygen valve, flaring up soon as the stuff hits and setting the whole thing off—I’ve seen that happen…rain that swells the bushings in the servos or leaks into a switch: corrosion, a short, a signal grounded out, Brennschluss too soon, and what was alive is only an Aggregat again, an Aggregat of pieces of dead matter, no longer anything that can move, or that has a Destiny with a shape—stop doing that with your eyebrows, Scuffling. I may have gone a bit native out here, that’s all. Stay in the Zone long enough and you’ll start getting ideas about Destiny yourself. ~ Thomas Pynchon,#NFDB |
586:Sakhiya Wah Ghar Sabse Nyara,
Jaha Puran Purush Humara
Jaha Nahi Sukh Dukh
Sanch Jhuth Nahi
Pap Na Pun Pasara
Nahin Din Reyn Chand Nahi Suraj,
Bina Jyoti Ujyara
Nahin Tahan Gyan Dhyan
Nahin Jap Tap
Ved Kiteb Na Bani
Karni Dharni Rehni Gehni,
Yeh Sub Jahan Hirani
Ghar Nahin Aghar Na Bahar Bhitar,
Pind Brahmand Kachu Nahin
Panch Tatva Gun Tin Nahin Tahan,
Sakhi Shabd Na Tahin
Mul Na Phul Beli Nahin Bija,
Bina Braksh Phal Sohe,
Oham Soham Ardh Urdh Nahin,
Swasa Lekhan Kou Hai
Jahan Purush Tahwan Kachu Nahin,
Kahe Kabir Hum Jana
Humri Sain Lakhe Jo Koi,
Pawe Pad Nirvana
English Translation
Oh Companion That Abode Is Unmatched,
Where My Complete Beloved Is.
In that Place There Is No Happiness or Unhappiness,
No Truth or Untruth
Neither Sin Nor Virtue.
There Is No Day or Night, No Moon or Sun,
There Is Radiance Without Light.
There Is No Knowledge or Meditation
No Repetition of Mantra or Austerities,
Neither Speech Coming From Vedas or Books.
Doing, Not-Doing, Holding, Leaving
All These Are All Lost Too In This Place.
No Home, No Homeless, Neither Outside or Inside,
Micro and Macrocosm Are Non-Existent.
Five Elemental Constituents and the Trinity Are Both Not There
Witnessing Un-struck Shabad Sound is Also Not There.
No Root or Flower, Neither Branch or Seed,
Without a Tree Fruits are Adorning,
Primordial Om Sound, Breath-Synchronized Soham,
This and That - All Are Absent, The Breath Too Unknown
Where the Beloved Is There is Utterly Nothing
Says Kabir I Have Come To Realize.
Whoever Sees My Indicative Sign
Will Accomplish the Goal of Liberation.
~ Kabir, Abode Of The Beloved
,#NFDB |
| 587:The line from the Obamas was “When they go low, we go high.” It’s a dignified and impressive mantra, if only because for the most part, whether you liked them or not, it’s hard to deny that they followed it. But the now cliché remark should not be taken conclusively, for it makes one dangerous omission. It forgets that from time to time in life, we might have to take someone out behind the woodshed. How we have lost this. How squeamish we have become. We now blindly demonize what is often one of the most effective forms of action. How vulnerable this ignorance has made us to the few real conspiracies, successful or not, that exist in the world. In this rare occasion, though, we got a glimpse, a peek behind the curtain, as the title of Gawker’s last post put it, of how things work. Now we know. Peter showed us. And yet our instinct is to turn away, to put our fingers in our ears. It’s why not once in nearly a decade of concentrated effort and scheming directed at a single enemy—at an entity who was obsessively covered and followed by the media—by an opponent who publicly stated his undying hatred of that enemy, did a single spectator, victim, or even many of the participants suspect any of what you read in the pages of this book. There is no question that what Thiel did over those years was brilliant, cunning, and ruthless. It is equally true that Gawker mostly beat itself. Denton and company allowed this to happen. Even the most cynical and aggressive media site on the planet had missed what was happening right in front of them; they did nothing to save themselves. “The idea of a conspiracy,” Thiel would say to me, “is linked with intentionality, with planning, working towards longer-term goals. In a world where you don’t have conspiracies maybe also those things disappear. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB |
588:Mantra of Geometry
In Wheeler's poem, "matter" is a little too poetic. Matter can have several properties (for example, electric charge), but the curvature of space-time responds only to the total density of energy and momentum. So we should say instead:
Energy-momentum tells space-time how to curve.
Also, forces other than gravity influence how matter moves. Those forces will lead to deviations from the straightest possible (geodesic) paths. What we should say is therefore:
Space-time tells energy-momentum what straight is (in space-time).
And so, putting it all together:
Energy-momentum tells space-time how to curve.
Space-time tells energy-momentum what straight is (in space-time).
And now comes the Core Theory of electromagnetism:
Electric charge tells electromagnetic property space how to curve.
Electromagnetic property space tells electric charge what straight is (in electromagnetic property space).
And of the weak force:
Weak charge tells weak property space how to curve.
Weak property space tells weak charge what straight is (in weak property space).
And of the strong force:
Strong charge tells strong property space how to curve.
Strong property space tells strong charge what straight is (in strong property space).
In the full Core Theory, including all four forces, matter has four kinds of properties: energy momentum, electric charge, weak charge, and strong charge. Particles of matter propagate through a more complex space than Wheeler allowed for, which includes electromagnetic, weak, and strong property spaces atop ordinary space-time. But matter follows, according to the Core, the same yin principle, adapted to this more complex environment:
Keep going as straight as you can! ~ Frank Wilczek,#NFDB |
589:O Yogi die; die to the world. Such death is sweet. Die in the manner of Goraksa who died and then saw the Invisible. Speak not in haste, walk not in haste Take slow cautious steps. Let not pride overtake you. Lead a simple life, says Goraksanath. Goraksha says: Listen, O Avadhuta, this is how you should lead your life in this world. See with your eyes, hear with your ears but never speak. Just be a dispassionate witness to the happenings around you. Do not react. Goraksa says one who remains steadfast in observing his sadhna keeping his spiritual practice, food habits and sleeping habits under strict yogic discipline neither grows old nor dies. Goraksa says-- Om Siva Goraksa Yogi is the mantra, which is the substance of all true joys. One should repair to a solitary place and chant this mantra so devoutly that he becomes oblivious of his own body. Om Siva Goraksa Yogi-- this auspicious mantra contains measureless sakti. It is so powerful that even sinners of the worst kind have attained moksa just by chanting this mantra. Goraksa says he who chants the name vocally or non-vocally, meditates, controls the five senses from their pleasures and burns his body in the holy fire of Brahma finds Mahadeva. The mind is dull and fails to comprehend the secret of the the path of yoga. It is very capricious and is always engaged in mischief, thus causing a man to drift away from the true path. The mind itself is the abode of the good as well as of the evil. One may either let the good prevail or may allow free play to the evil instincts. This mind is pure and pious only when it lets the good in it prosper. If the mind promotes the evil instincts residing in it then it becomes impure and impious. Yoga is the means by which the mind can be trained to promote and sustain the good instincts.
~ Gorakhnath, Gorakh Bani
,#NFDB |
590:Walter came from a strong line of self-motivated, determined folk: not grand, not high-society, but no-nonsense, family-minded, go-getters. His grandfather had been Samuel Smiles, who, in 1859, authored the original motivational book, titled Self-Help. It was a landmark work, and an instant bestseller, even outselling Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species when it was first launched.
Samuel’s book Self-Help also made plain the mantra that hard work and perseverance were the keys to personal progress. At a time in Victorian society where, as an Englishman, the world was your oyster if you had the get-up-and-go to make things happen, his book Self-Help struck a chord. It became the ultimate Victorian how-to guide, empowering the everyday person to reach for the sky. And at its heart it said that nobility is not a birthright but is defined by our actions. It laid bare the simple but unspoken secrets for living a meaningful, fulfilling life, and it defined a gentleman in terms of character not blood type.
Riches and rank have no necessary connection with genuine gentlemanly qualities.
The poor man with a rich spirit is in all ways superior to the rich man with a poor spirit.
To borrow St. Paul’s words, the former is as “having nothing, yet possessing all things,” while the other, though possessing all things, has nothing.
Only the poor in spirit are really poor. He who has lost all, but retains his courage, cheerfulness, hope, virtue, and self-respect, is still rich.
These were revolutionary words to Victorian, aristocratic, class-ridden England. To drive the point home (and no doubt prick a few hereditary aristocratic egos along the way), Samuel made the point again that being a gentleman is something that has to be earned: “There is no free pass to greatness. ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB |
591:Mi ricordo e non voglio farlo. Voglio soltanto stare qui con te e scordare tutto il resto.”
“Io non voglio più dimenticare,” disse James. “Mai più.” Continuava a ripetere quelle parole come un mantra o una preghiera. “Mai più. Me ne sono ricordato adesso solo perché erano anni – ma quanti? – che non provavo nulla di così vero. Non ricordavo più cosa volesse dire essere guardato. Toccato. Cosa volesse dire parlare con qualcuno. Siamo stati rinchiusi qui, circondati da fantasmi.”
“Smettila,” disse Peter a metà fra l’ira e la supplica. “Stai rovinando tutto.”
James sembrò finalmente capire che Peter era arrabbiato con lui; lo guardò con le lacrime che gli rigavano le guance. “Peter,” disse, “Sono stato qui da solo e senza nulla. Tu sei l’unica cosa bella, l’unica cosa vera, che mi sia capitata in tutto questo tempo. Sei l’unico ad avermi chiamato per nome.” Gli strinse la mano con dita tremanti. “Dobbiamo andare via da qui. Subito. Prima che l’isola ci faccia dimenticare di nuovo.”
“No!” Peter si staccò dalla sua presa cercando di mettersi in piedi, indietreggiando come se James potesse infettarlo con quei pensieri. “Non m’importa nulla se questo posto non è vero,” disse. “Per me lo è abbastanza. Ed è un posto migliore. È tutto quello che ho. Io voglio… Voglio restare qui fino alla mia morte.”
James era scioccato. “Che stai dicendo? Che tipo di vita pensi di poter avere qui?”
“Sarò Peter Pan. Per sempre.” Sarebbe stato abbastanza. Doveva essere abbastanza. Avrebbe potuto dimenticare anche James un giorno. “Sarò come le fate.”
“Quello che dici non ha senso e lo sai benissimo,” disse James alzandosi in piedi su gambe tremanti. “Vieni via con me. Ti prego.” Allungò una mano.
“Tu vai pure se vuoi,” disse con la voce più fredda possibile. “Io resto qui.”
Volò via prima che James potesse fermarlo ~ Austin Chant,#NFDB |
592:His eyes ran over her hungrily. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” he said, almost to himself, “the way it felt, back at my mother’s house. I was never so hungry for anyone, but it wasn’t completely physical, even then.” He frowned. “I want you, Cecily, and I hate myself for it.”
“What else is new?” She gestured toward the door. “Go home. And I hope you don’t sleep a wink.”
“I probably won’t,” he said ruefully. He moved toward the door, hesitating.
“Good night,” she said firmly, not moving.
He stood with his back to her, his spine very straight. “I can trace my ancestors back before the Mexican War in the early 1800s, pure Lakota blood, undiluted even by white settlement. There are so few of us left…”
She could have wept for what she knew, and he didn’t know. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” she said solemnly. “I know how you feel.”
“You don’t,” he bit off. He straightened again. “I’d die to have you, just once.” He turned, and the fire was in his eyes as they met hers, glittering across the room. “It’s like that for you, too.”
“It’s a corruption of the senses. You don’t love me,” she said quietly. “Without love, it’s just sex.”
He breathed deliberately, slowly. He didn’t want to ask. He couldn’t help it. “Something you know?”
“Yes. Something I know,” she said, lying with a straight face and a smile that she hoped was worldly. She was not going to settle for crumbs from him, stolen hours in his bed. Men were devious when desire rode them, even men like Tate. She couldn’t afford for him to know that she was incapable of wanting any man except him.
The words stung. They were meant to. He hesitated, only for a minute, before he jerked open the door and went out. Cecily closed her eyes and thanked providence that she’d had the good sense to deny herself what she wanted most in the world. Tate had said once that sex alone wasn’t enough. He was right. She repeated it, like a mantra, to her starving body until she finally fell asleep. ~ Diana Palmer,#NFDB |
| 593:Parallel to the idea of the US Constitution as covenant, politicians, journalists, teachers, and even professional historians chant like a mantra that the United States is a “nation of immigrants.” From its beginning, the United States has welcomed—indeed, often solicited, even bribed—immigrants to repopulate conquered territories “cleansed” of their Indigenous inhabitants. From the mid-nineteenth century, immigrants were recruited to work mines, raze forests, construct canals and railroads, and labor in sweatshops, factories, and commercial farm fields. In the late twentieth century, technical and medical workers were recruited. The requirements for their formal citizenship were simple: adhere to the sacred covenant through taking the Citizenship Oath, pledging loyalty to the flag, and regarding those outside the covenant as enemies or potential enemies of the exceptional country that has adopted them, often after they escaped hunger, war, or repression, which in turn were often caused by US militarism or economic sanctions. Yet no matter how much immigrants might strive to prove themselves to be as hardworking and patriotic as descendants of the original settlers, and despite the rhetoric of E pluribus unum, they are suspect. The old stock against which they are judged inferior includes not only those who fought in the fifteen-year war for independence from Britain but also, and perhaps more important, those who fought and shed (Indian) blood, before and after independence, in order to acquire the land. These are the descendants of English Pilgrims, Scots, Scots-Irish, and Huguenot French—Calvinists all—who took the land bequeathed to them in the sacred covenant that predated the creation of the independent United States. These were the settlers who fought their way over the Appalachians into the fertile Ohio Valley region, and it is they who claimed blood sacrifice for their country. Immigrants, to be accepted, must prove their fidelity to the covenant and what it stands for. ~ Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, #NFDB |
594:The ira-vein, the pingala-vein, the sukhmana-vein -- these three converge at one spot. Where the three rivers meet, there is found holy Prayag -- and it is there that the heart bathes and becomes clean. O you saints, it is there that you find the faultless Ram. Only the fortunate few who follow the guru's path understand this truth: the eternal Ram is forever blended therein. What are the manifestations of Deva's abode? There, resounds the Word unspoken. There, neither moon nor sun, air nor water exist. Those who follow the guru's words know all this already. Divine wisdom awakens and hard-heartedness melts away; sweet ambrosia soaks and wets the inner sky. Those who know the secret of this discipline will surely meet the primal Gurudeva. Beyond the Tenth Door is the abode of the inaccessible, the unfathomable Primal Being. Above the body, upon the body is an alcove. Within this alcove is His abode. Be vigilant; do not fall asleep. Attain that stage wherein the three qualities and the three worlds count for nothing. Place the seed-mantra within your heart. Turn back your mind and fix it upon Silence. Be vigilant; do not dwell in falsehood. Restrain and hold back the five senses. Place the guru's teaching in your thoughts, and lay your body and your soul as an offering to Krishna's love. Deem your hands and fingers as branches of a tree: do not lose your life as in a gambling match. Well up the spring that feeds the stream of evil deeds; drive the sun away from the west. Restrain what cannot be restrained, and let the spring gush forth: thus converse with Jaganath. A lamp with four wicks illumines the Tenth Door: countless petals surround the flower's cup. Therein dwells the Lord Himself, holding all His power: a ruby hidden by another precious ruby. In the brain is the lotus encircled by diamonds. Therein is Niranjan, the Holder of the three worlds. All the five types of instruments play sweetly on; the fan sways; the conch forever resounds. The guru's enlightenment tramples all demons underfoot: Beni begs for Your name. [2184.jpg] -- from Songs of the Saints from the Adi Granth, Translated by Nirmal Dass
~ Beni, Raga Ramkali
,#NFDB |
595:30. Storms Make You Stronger
A lot of the advice in this book is about how to cope when things don’t go well.
You see, life is unpredictable, and as sure as eggs is eggs, it won’t always swing your way. But when those storms come I have a clear and simple mantra:
The time to shine is when it is darkest.
In other words: when it is all going wrong, step up to the plate, give it your all, heave hardest on that rope, and show that you are bigger than the obstacle.
Nature has a way of rewarding that sort of attitude.
Sometimes life tests us a little. Things we had banked on coming in just don’t work out. People let you down, one disaster follows another. You know the phrase: it never rains but it pours.
When those times come we have a choice: do we cower and get beaten or do we stand tall and face it?
I liken it to the school bully. When you stand up to them, they often stand down. They are testing you to see what you are made of. Man or mouse?
So use those tough times as an opportunity to show the world and yourself what you are made of. Regardless of how you feel, how you see yourself, I have learnt one key lesson from mountains and the wild: that underneath it all, we humans are made strong.
We all behave and act a little differently, depending on how we have been brought up and what has been thrown at us in our lives - but the underlying truth is that the real core of each of us is strong.
I have seen incredible heroics from unlikely people on mountains. But it took exceptional circumstances for that bravery to emerge.
You see, we are all a bit like grapes: when you squeeze us, you see what we are made of. And I believe that most people are far stronger than they ever imagine. It is refined within us from thousands of years of having to survive as a species.
It might be dusty and hidden away, but it is there somewhere inside you: the heart of a survivor. Courage. Tenacity. Strength.
So don’t shy away from hard times, they are your chance to shine.
Write this on your bathroom mirror:
Struggle develops strength and storms make you stronger. ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB |
| 596:If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why? A single bottom line of profit motive no longer serves our interdependent world. We must move from a focus on shareholders to one on stakeholders, take a long-term view, and measure what matters, not just what we can count. That’s a lot easier to say than to do. So we created a manifesto at Acumen, a moral compass to guide our decisions and actions. It is an aspirational document, one I think about daily, though I don’t always live up to it. It is long for a billboard, but maybe if we put it in the right place and encouraged people to pause for just a moment, which in itself wouldn’t be so bad. Here it is: It starts by standing with the poor, listening to voices unheard, and recognizing potential where others see despair. It demands investing as a means, not an end, daring to go where markets have failed and aid has fallen short. It makes capital work for us, not control us. It thrives on moral imagination: the humility to see the world as it is, and the audacity to imagine the world as it could be. It’s having the ambition to learn at the edge, the wisdom to admit failure, and the courage to start again. It requires patience and kindness, resilience and grit: a hard-edged hope. It’s leadership that rejects complacency, breaks through bureaucracy, and challenges corruption. Doing what’s right, not what’s easy. It’s the radical idea of creating hope in a cynical world. Changing the way the world tackles poverty and building a world based on dignity. Or else, I might borrow Rilke’s gorgeous mantra to “Live the Questions,” which is a simple reminder to have the moral courage to live in the gray, sit with uncertainty but not in a passive way. Live the questions so that, one day, you will live yourself into the answers. . . . What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? Don’t worry all that much about your first job. Just start, and let the work teach you. With every step, you will discover more about who you want to be and what you want to do. If you wait for the perfect and keep all of your options open, you might end up with nothing but options. So start. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB |
597:In the Indian spiritual tradition, a heart's devotion to God, called Bhakti, is regarded as the easiest path to the Divine. What is Bhakti? Is it some extravagant religious sentimentalism? Is it inferior to the path of Knowledge? What is the nature of pure and complete spiritual devotion to God and how to realise it?
What Is Devotion?
...bhakti in its fullness is nothing but an entire self-giving. But then all meditation, all tapasya, all means of prayer or mantra must have that as its end... [SABCL, 23:799]
Devotion Is a State of the Heart and Soul
Bhakti is not an experience, it is a state of the heart and soul. It is a state which comes when the psychic being is awake and prominent. [SABCL, 23:776]
...Worship is only the first step on the path of devotion. Where external worship changes into the inner adoration, real Bhakti begins; that deepens into the intensity of divine love; that love leads to the joy of closeness in our relations with the Divine; the joy of closeness passes into the bliss of union. [SABCL, 21:525]
Devotion without Gratitude Is Incomplete
...there is another movement which should constantly accompany devotion. ... That kind of sense of gratitude that the Divine exists; that feeling of a marvelling thankfulness which truly fills you with a sublime joy at the fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that it is not just the monstrosity we see, that there is the Divine, the Divine exists. And each time that the least thing puts you either directly or indirectly in contactwith this sublime Reality of divine existence, the heart is filled with so intense, so marvellous a joy, such a gratitude as of all things has the most delightful taste.
There is nothing which gives you a joy equal to that of gratitude. One hears a bird sing, sees a lovely flower, looks at a little child, observes an act of generosity, reads a beautiful sentence, looks at the setting sun, no matter what, suddenly this comes upon you, this kind of emotion-indeed so deep, so intense-that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world which is the Divine.
So I find that devotion without gratitude is quite incomplete, gratitude must come with devotion. ~ The Mother,#NFDB |
| 598:the mantra of an innovative educator. I am an educator. I am an innovator. I am an innovative educator and I will continue to ask, “What is best for learners?” With this empathetic approach, I will create and design learning experiences. I believe that my abilities, intelligence, and talents can be developed, leading to the creation of new and better ideas. I recognize that there are obstacles in education, but, as an innovator, I will focus on what is possible today and where I can push to lead towards tomorrow. I will utilize the tools that are available to me today, and I will continue to search for new and better ways to grow, develop, and share my thinking, while creating and connecting my learning. I focus not only on where I can improve, but where I am already strong, and I look to develop those strengths in myself and in others. I build upon what I already know, but I do not limit myself. I’m open to and willing to embrace new learning, while continuously asking questions that help me move forward. I question thinking, challenge ideas, and do not accept, “This is the way we have always done it” as an acceptable answer for our students or myself. I model the learning and leadership I seek in others. I take risks, try new things to develop, and explore new opportunities. I ask others to take risks in their learning, and I openly model that I’m willing to do the same. I believe that isolation is the enemy of innovation, and I will learn from others to create better learning opportunities for others and myself. I connect with others both locally and globally to tap into ideas from all people and spaces. I will use those ideas, along with my professional judgment, to adapt the ideas to meet the needs of the learners in my community. I believe in my voice and experiences, as well as the voice and experiences of others, as they are important for moving education forward. I share because the learning I create and the experiences I have help others. I share to push my own thinking and to make an impact on learners, both young and old, all over the world. I listen and learn from different perspectives because I know we are much better together than we could ever be alone. I can learn from anyone and any situation. I actively reflect on my learning because I know looking back is crucial to moving forward. If we all embrace this mindset, imagine what education could become. ~ George Couros, #NFDB |
| 599:How important was mantra to Gandhi’s transformation? Extremely. When done systematically, mantra has a powerful effect on the brain. It gathers and focuses the energy of the mind. It teaches the mind to focus on one point, and it cultivates a steadiness that over time becomes an unshakable evenness of temper. The cultivation of this quality of “evenness” is a central principle of the Bhagavad Gita. It is called samatva in Sanskrit, and it is a central pillar of Krishna’s practice. When the mind develops steadiness, teaches Krishna, it is not shaken by fear or greed. So, in his early twenties, Gandhi had already begun to develop a still-point at the center of his consciousness—a still-point that could not be shaken. This little seed of inner stillness would grow into a mighty oak. Gandhi would become an immovable object. Rambha had given Gandhi an enchanting image to describe the power of mantra. She compared the practice of mantra to the training of an elephant. “As the elephant walks through the market,” taught Rambha, “he swings his trunk from side to side and creates havoc with it wherever he goes—knocking over fruit stands and scattering vendors, snatching bananas and coconuts wherever possible. His trunk is naturally restless, hungry, scattered, undisciplined. This is just like the mind—constantly causing trouble.” “But the wise elephant trainer,” said Rambha, “will give the elephant a stick of bamboo to hold in his trunk. The elephant likes this. He holds it fast. And as soon as the elephant wraps his trunk around the bamboo, the trunk begins to settle. Now the elephant strides through the market like a prince: calm, collected, focused, serene. Bananas and coconuts no longer distract.” So too with the mind. As soon as the mind grabs hold of the mantra, it begins to settle. The mind holds the mantra gently, and it becomes focused, calm, centered. Gradually this mind becomes extremely concentrated. This is the beginning stage of meditation. All meditation traditions prescribe some beginning practice of gathering, focusing, and concentration—and in the yoga tradition this is most often achieved precisely through mantra. The whole of Chapter Six in the Bhagavad Gita is devoted to Krishna’s teachings on this practice: “Whenever the mind wanders, restless and diffuse in its search for satisfaction without, lead it within; train it to rest in the Self,” instructs Krishna. “When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place. ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB |
600:There is also the consecration of the thoughts to the Divine. In its inception this is the attempt to fix the mind on the object of adoration, -for naturally the restless human mind is occupied with other objects and, even when it is directed upwards, constantly drawn away by the world, -- so that in the end it habitually thinks of him and all else is only secondary and thought of only in relation to him. This is done often with the aid of a physical image or, more intimately and characteristically, of a Mantra or a divine name through which the divine being is realised. There are supposed by those who systematise, to be three stages of the seeking through the devotion of the mind, first, the constant hearing of the divine name, qualities and all that has been attached to them, secondly, the constant thinking on them or on the divine being or personality, thirdly, the settling and fixing of the mind on the object; and by this comes the full realisation. And by these, too, there comes when the accompanying feeling or the concentration is very intense, the Samadhi, the ecstatic trance in which the consciousness passes away from outer objects. But all this is really incidental; the one thing essential is the intense devotion of the thought in the mind to the object of adoration. Although it seems akin to the contemplation of the way of knowledge, it differs from that in its spirit. It is in its real nature not a still, but an ecstatic contemplation; it seeks not to pass into the being of the Divine, but to bring the Divine into ourselves and to lose ourselves in the deep ecstasy of his presence or of his possession; and its bliss is not the peace of unity, but the ecstasy of union. Here, too, there may be the separative self-consecration, which ends in the giving up of all other thought of life for the possession of this ecstasy, eternal afterwards in planes beyond, or the comprehensive consecration in which all the thoughts are full of the Divine and even in the occupations of life every thought remembers him. As in the other Yogas, so in this, one comes to see the Divine everywhere and in all and to pour out the realisation of the Divine in all ones inner activities and outward actions. But all is supported here by the primary force of the emotional union: for it is by love that the entire self-consecration and the entire possession is accomplished, and thought and action become shapes and figures of the divine love which possesses the spirit and its members.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Devotion [T2],#NFDB |
| 601:Marturano recommended something radical: do only one thing at a time. When you’re on the phone, be on the phone. When you’re in a meeting, be there. Set aside an hour to check your email, and then shut off your computer monitor and focus on the task at hand. Another tip: take short mindfulness breaks throughout the day. She called them “purposeful pauses.” So, for example, instead of fidgeting or tapping your fingers while your computer boots up, try to watch your breath for a few minutes. When driving, turn off the radio and feel your hands on the wheel. Or when walking between meetings, leave your phone in your pocket and just notice the sensations of your legs moving. “If I’m a corporate samurai,” I said, “I’d be a little worried about taking all these pauses that you recommend because I’d be thinking, ‘Well, my rivals aren’t pausing. They’re working all the time.’ ” “Yeah, but that assumes that those pauses aren’t helping you. Those pauses are the ways to make you a more clear thinker and for you to be more focused on what’s important.” This was another attack on my work style. I had long assumed that ceaseless planning was the recipe for effectiveness, but Marturano’s point was that too much mental churning was counterproductive. When you lurch from one thing to the next, constantly scheming, or reacting to incoming fire, the mind gets exhausted. You get sloppy and make bad decisions. I could see how the counterintuitive act of stopping, even for a few seconds, could be a source of strength, not weakness. This was a practical complement to Joseph’s “is this useful?” mantra. It was the opposite of zoning out, it was zoning in. In fact, I looked into it and found there was science to suggest that pausing could be a key ingredient in creativity and innovation. Studies showed that the best way to engineer an epiphany was to work hard, focus, research, and think about a problem—and then let go. Do something else. That didn’t necessarily mean meditate, but do something that relaxes and distracts you; let your unconscious mind go to work, making connections from disparate parts of the brain. This, too, was massively counterintuitive for me. My impulse when presented with a thorny problem was to bulldoze my way through it, to swarm it with thought. But the best solutions often come when you allow yourself to get comfortable with ambiguity. This is why people have aha moments in the shower. It was why Kabat-Zinn had a vision while on retreat. It was why Don Draper from Mad Men, when asked how he comes up with his great slogans, said he spends all day thinking and then goes to the movies. Janice Marturano was on ~ Dan Harris, #NFDB |
602:You who absorb into sublime, immutable bliss all phenomena, moving and unmoving, infinite as space, O glorious Heruka and Varahi, your consort, I wear the jewel light of your feet as my crown. Great bliss, the union of method and wisdom, engaged in the play of the unmoving with movement, this young coral maiden with beautiful eyes, diamond queen, embrace me with your arts of love. Adorning the highest part of my body, my crown, with the jewel of your feet, I recite these words of aspiration and prayer with my palms folded at my heart. When shall I ever achieve this state: seeing all forms as mandala deities, all sounds as vajra songs of tantra, all thoughts as fuel to enflame the spontaneous wisdom of emptiness and bliss? When will I experience perfect purity? By purging in profound absorption all phenomena born of imaginative concepts, fully aware that they open the way to self-arisen rikpa. When will I run in a joyful step-dance, the play of supreme illusion, the bliss-void wisdom, in the dakin town, the emanation of pure realms -- where a hundred dharma doors are opened wide? Outer dakinis hover above the twenty-four mystic places; inner dakinis dwell in the sphere of radiant bliss. When will I immerse in the glory of sexual play through the secret act of conjoining space and vajra? When can I arise as the great magical net -- the union of body and mind, instantly burning all grossness of dualism with the great bliss fire flaming the expanse? When will I accomplish the natural feat of absorbing the imperfections of illusion into immutable bliss, this wheel of becoming, engaged in the blissful play of union? On the clear mirror of the luminous mind my guru, my deity, and my mind reflect as one; may I soon attain the good fortune of practicing night and day this perfect meditation. May my mind be always intoxicated by drinking insatiably the nectar -- the delicious taste of sexual play between the hero in his utter ecstasy and his lover, the lady emptiness. By entering deep into the sphere of voidness, may I be endowed with the power of cleansing this foul odor, grasping body, speech, and mind as ordinary, through the yoga of perceiving all as divine. May I come to see with naked eyes the form of the fully emergent mandala of perfect deities, the sport of the ever-present mind inside the courtyard of the heart's dharma chakra. O yoginis, heroines of the twenty-four places, and the hosts of mantra-born and field-born dakinis who possess powers swift as thought, assist me in friendship of every kind. [1585.jpg] -- from Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Buddhist Poems of Insight & Awakening, Translated by Thupten Jinpa / Translated by Jas Elsner
~ Chone Lama Lodro Gyatso, A Dance of Unwavering Devotion
,#NFDB |
603:Ekajaṭī or Ekajaṭā, (Sanskrit: "One Plait Woman"; Wylie: ral gcig ma: one who has one knot of hair),[1] also known as Māhacīnatārā,[2] is one of the 21 Taras. Ekajati is, along with Palden Lhamo deity, one of the most powerful and fierce goddesses of Vajrayana Buddhist mythology.[1][3] According to Tibetan legends, her right eye was pierced by the tantric master Padmasambhava so that she could much more effectively help him subjugate Tibetan demons.
Ekajati is also known as "Blue Tara", Vajra Tara or "Ugra Tara".[1][3] She is generally considered one of the three principal protectors of the Nyingma school along with Rāhula and Vajrasādhu (Wylie: rdo rje legs pa).
Often Ekajati appears as liberator in the mandala of the Green Tara. Along with that, her ascribed powers are removing the fear of enemies, spreading joy, and removing personal hindrances on the path to enlightenment.
Ekajati is the protector of secret mantras and "as the mother of the mothers of all the Buddhas" represents the ultimate unity. As such, her own mantra is also secret. She is the most important protector of the Vajrayana teachings, especially the Inner Tantras and termas. As the protector of mantra, she supports the practitioner in deciphering symbolic dakini codes and properly determines appropriate times and circumstances for revealing tantric teachings. Because she completely realizes the texts and mantras under her care, she reminds the practitioner of their preciousness and secrecy.[4] Düsum Khyenpa, 1st Karmapa Lama meditated upon her in early childhood.
According to Namkhai Norbu, Ekajati is the principal guardian of the Dzogchen teachings and is "a personification of the essentially non-dual nature of primordial energy."[5]
Dzogchen is the most closely guarded teaching in Tibetan Buddhism, of which Ekajati is a main guardian as mentioned above. It is said that Sri Singha (Sanskrit: Śrī Siṃha) himself entrusted the "Heart Essence" (Wylie: snying thig) teachings to her care. To the great master Longchenpa, who initiated the dissemination of certain Dzogchen teachings, Ekajati offered uncharacteristically personal guidance. In his thirty-second year, Ekajati appeared to Longchenpa, supervising every ritual detail of the Heart Essence of the Dakinis empowerment, insisting on the use of a peacock feather and removing unnecessary basin. When Longchenpa performed the ritual, she nodded her head in approval but corrected his pronunciation. When he recited the mantra, Ekajati admonished him, saying, "Imitate me," and sang it in a strange, harmonious melody in the dakini's language. Later she appeared at the gathering and joyously danced, proclaiming the approval of Padmasambhava and the dakinis.[6] ~ Wikipedia,#NFDB |
| 604:Failures as people: millions of Americans felt that this description fit them to a T. Seeking a solution, any solution, they eagerly forked over their cash to any huckster who promised release, the quicker and more effortlessly the better: therapies like “bioenergetics” (“The Revolutionary Therapy That Uses the Language of the Body to Heal the Problems of the Mind”); Primal Scream (which held that when patients shrieked in a therapist’s office, childhood trauma could be reexperienced, then released; John Lennon and James Earl Jones were fans); or Transcendental Meditation, which promised that deliverance could come if you merely closed your eyes and chanted a mantra (the “TM” organization sold personal mantras, each supposedly “unique,” to hundreds of thousands of devotees). Or “religions” like the Church Universal and Triumphant, or the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, or “Scientology”—this last one invented by a science fiction writer, reportedly on a bet. Devotees paid cash to be “audited” by practitioners who claimed the power—if, naturally, you paid for enough sessions—to remove “trauma patterns” accreted over the 75 million years that had passed since Xenu, tyrant of the Galactic Confederacy, deposited billions of people on earth next to volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs inside those volcanos, thus scattering harming “body thetans” to attach to the souls of the living, which once unlatched allowed practitioners to cross the “bridge to total freedom” and “unlimited creativity.” Another religion, the story had it, promised “perfect knowledge”—though its adherents’ public meeting was held up several hours because none of them knew how to run the movie projector. Gallup reported that six million Americans had tried TM, five million had twisted themselves into yoga poses, and two million had sampled some sort of Oriental religion. And hundreds of thousands of Americans in eleven cities had plunked down $250 for the privilege being screamed at as “assholes.” “est”—Erhard Seminars Training, named after the only-in-America hustler who invented it, Werner Erhard, originally Jack Rosenberg, a former used-car and encyclopedia salesman who had tried and failed to join the Marines (this was not incidental) at the age of seventeen, and experienced a spiritual rebirth one morning while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge (“I realized that I knew nothing. . . . In the next instant—after I realized that I knew nothing—I realized that I knew everything”)—promised “to transform one’s ability to experience living so that the situations one had been trying to change or had been putting up with, clear up just in the process of life itself,” all that in just sixty hours, courtesy of a for-profit corporation whose president had been general manager of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of California and a former member of the Harvard Business School faculty. A ~ Rick Perlstein, #NFDB |
605:Marcelina loved that miniscule, precise moment when the needle entered her face. It was silver; it was pure. It was the violence that healed, the violation that brought perfection. There was no pain, never any pain, only a sense of the most delicate of penetrations, like a mosquito exquisitely sipping blood, a precision piece of human technology slipping between the gross tissues and cells of her flesh. She could see the needle out of the corner of her eye; in the foreshortened reality of the ultra-close-up it was like the stem of a steel flower. The latex-gloved hand that held the syringe was as vast as the creating hand of God: Marcelina had watched it swim across her field of vision, seeking its spot, so close, so thrillingly, dangerously close to her naked eyeball. And then the gentle stab. Always she closed her eyes as the fingers applied pressure to the plunger. She wanted to feel the poison entering her flesh, imagine it whipping the bloated, slack, lazy cells into panic, the washes of immune response chemicals as they realized they were under toxic attack; the blessed inflammation, the swelling of the wrinkled, lined skin into smoothness, tightness, beauty, youth.
Marcelina Hoffman was well on her way to becoming a Botox junkie.
Such a simple treat; the beauty salon was on the same block as Canal Quatro. Marcelina had pioneered the lunch-hour face lift to such an extent that Lisandra had appropriated it as the premise for an entire series. Whore. But the joy began in the lobby with Luesa the receptionist in her high-collared white dress saying “Good afternoon, Senhora Hoffman,” and the smell of the beautiful chemicals and the scented candles, the lightness and smell of the beautiful chemicals and the scented candles, the lightness and brightness of the frosted glass panels and the bare wood floor and the cream-on-white cotton wall hangings, the New Age music that she scorned anywhere else (Tropicalismo hippy-shit) but here told her, “you’re wonderful, you’re special, you’re robed in light, the universe loves you, all you have to do is reach out your hand and take anything you desire.”
Eyes closed, lying flat on the reclining chair, she felt her work-weary crow’s-feet smoothed away, the young, energizing tautness of her skin. Two years before she had been to New York on the Real Sex in the City production and had been struck by how the ianqui women styled themselves out of personal empowerment and not, as a carioca would have done, because it was her duty before a scrutinizing, judgmental city. An alien creed: thousand-dollar shoes but no pedicure. But she had brought back one mantra among her shopping bags, an enlightenment she had stolen from a Jennifer Aniston cosmetics ad. She whispered it to herself now, in the warm, jasmine-and vetiver-scented sanctuary as the botulin toxins diffused through her skin.
Because I’m worth it. ~ Ian McDonald,#NFDB |
606:Sweet Mother, there's a flower you have named "The Creative Word".
Yes.
What does that mean?
It is the word which creates.
There are all kinds of old traditions, old Hindu traditions, old Chaldean traditions in which the Divine, in the form of the Creator, that is, in His aspect as Creator, pronounces a word which has the power to create. So it is this... And it is the origin of the mantra. The mantra is the spoken word which has a creative power. An invocation is made and there is an answer to the invocation; or one makes a prayer and the prayer is granted. This is the Word, the Word which, in its sound... it is not only the idea, it is in the sound that there's a power of creation. It is the origin, you see, of the mantra.
In Indian mythology the creator God is Brahma, and I think that it was precisely his power which has been symbolised by this flower, "The Creative Word". And when one is in contact with it, the words spoken have a power of evocation or creation or formation or transformation; the words... sound always has a power; it has much more power than men think. It may be a good power and it may be a bad power. It creates vibrations which have an undeniable effect. It is not so much the idea as the sound; the idea too has its own power, but in its own domain - whereas the sound has a power in the material world.
I think I have explained this to you once; I told you, for example, that words spoken casually, usually without any re- flection and without attaching any importance to them, can be used to do something very good. I think I spoke to you about "Bonjour", "Good Day", didn't I? When people meet and say "Bonjour", they do so mechanically and without thinking. But if you put a will into it, an aspiration to indeed wish someone a good day, well, there is a way of saying "Good Day" which is very effective, much more effective than if simply meeting someone you thought: "Ah! I hope he has a good day", without saying anything. If with this hope in your thought you say to him in a certain way, "Good Day", you make it more concrete and more effective.
It's the same thing, by the way, with curses, or when one gets angry and says bad things to people. This can do them as much harm - more harm sometimes - than if you were to give them a slap. With very sensitive people it can put their stomach out of order or give them palpitation, because you put into it an evil force which has a power of destruction.
It is not at all ineffective to speak. Naturally it depends a great deal on each one's inner power. People who have no strength and no consciousness can't do very much - unless they employ material means. But to the extent that you are strong, especially when you have a powerful vital, you must have a great control on what you say, otherwise you can do much harm. Without wanting to, without knowing it; through ignorance.
Anything? No? Nothing?
Another question?... Everything's over? ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 347-349,#NFDB |
607:There was another whole bunch of hopefuls. They would diminish down at a startling rate. We had seen it happen before.
This time, though, we were there as the “old hands.” And it helped.
We knew what to expect; the mystique had gone, and the prize was up for grabs.
That was empowering.
It was now wintertime, and winter Selection is always considered the tougher course, because of the mountain conditions. I tried not to think about this.
Instead of the blistering heat and midges, our enemies would be the freezing, driving sleet, the high winds, and the short daylight hours.
These made Trucker and me look back on the summer Selection days as quite balmy and pleasant! It is strange how accustomed you become to hardship, and how what once seemed horrific can soon become mundane.
The DS had often told us: “If it ain’t raining, it ain’t training.”
And it rains a lot in the Brecon Beacons. Trust me.
(I recently overheard our middle boy, Marmaduke, tell one of his friends this SAS mantra. The other child was complaining that he couldn’t go outside because it was raining. Marmaduke, age four, put him straight. Priceless.)
The first few weekends progressed, and we both shone.
We were fitter, stronger, and more confident than many of the other recruits, but the winter conditions were very real.
We had to contend with winds that, on one weekend exercise, were so strong on the high ridges that I saw one gust literally blow a whole line of soldiers off their feet--including the DS.
Our first night march saw one recruit go down with hypothermia. Like everyone else, he was wet and cold, but in the wind and whiteout he had lost that will to look after himself, and to take action early.
He had forgotten the golden rule of cold, which the DS had told us over and over: “Don’t let yourself get cold. Act early, while you still have your senses and mobility. Add a layer, make shelter, get moving faster--whatever your solution us, just do it.”
Instead, this recruit had just sat down in the middle of the boggy moon grass and stopped. He could hardly talk and couldn’t stand. We all gathered round him, forming what little shelter we could. We gave him some food and put an extra layer of clothing on him.
We then helped him stagger off the mountain to where he could be picked up by Land Rover and taken to base camp, where the medics could help him.
For him, that would be his last exercise with 21 SAS, and a harsh reminder that the struggles of Selection go beyond the demons in your head. You also have to be able to survive the mountains, and in winter that isn’t always easy.
One of the other big struggles of winter Selection was trying to get warm in the few hours between the marches.
In the summer it didn’t really matter if you were cold and wet--it was just unpleasant rather than life-threatening. But in winter, if you didn’t sort yourself out, you would quickly end up with hypothermia, and then one of two things would happen: you would either fail Selection, or you would die.
Both options were bad. ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB |
608:Cool, Fragrant Lotus Feet
Cool, fragrant lotus feet
with anklets tinkling sweet,
gold girdle, flower-soft garment
setting off the comely hips,
pot-belly and big, heavy tusk,
elephant-face with the bright red mark,
five hands, the goad, the noose,
blue body dwelling in the heart,
pendulous jaws, four mighty shoulders,
three eyes and the three required marks,
two ears, the gold crown gleaming,
the breast aglow with the triple thread,
O Being, bright and beautiful!
Wish-yielding elephant, born of the
Master of Mystery in Mount Kailasa,
mouse-rider, fond of the three famed fruits,
desiring to make me yours this instant,
you like a mother have appeared before me
and cut the delusion of unending births.
You have come and entered my heart,
imprinting clear the five prime letters,
set foot in the world in the form of a guru,
declared the final truth is this, gladly,
graciously shown the way of life unfading.
With that unfailing weapon, your glance,
you have put an end to my heinous sins,
poured in my ear uncloying precepts,
laid bare for me the clarity
of ever-fresh awareness,
sweetly given me your sweet grace
for firm control of the senses five,
taught how to still the organs of action;
snapped my two-fold karma and dispelled
my darkness, giving, out of grace,
a place for me in all four states;
dissolved the illusion of triple filth,
taught me how to shut the five
sense gates of the nine-door temple,
fixed me firm in the six yogic centers,
stilled my speech, taught me
the writ of ida and pingala,
shown me at last the head of sushumna.
To the tongue of the serpent that sinks and soars
you have brought the force sustaining the three
bright spheres of sun, moon and fire the mantra unspoken asleep in the snake and explicitly uttered it;
imparted the skill of raising by breath
the raging flame of muladhara;
explained the secret of immortality,
the sun's movement and the charm
of the moon; the water lily's friend,
the sixteen states of the prasada mantra;
revealed to me in thoughtful wisdom
the six-faced form and the meanings four;
disclosed to me the subtle body
and the eight separate modes of being;
the orifice of Brahman opened,
giving me miraculous powers,
by your sweet grace, and mukti, too;
revealed my Self to me and by your grace
swept away accumulated karma,
stilled my mind in tranquil calm
beyond speech and thought;
clarified my intellect, plunged me
in bliss which is the common ground
of light and darkness.
Boundless beatitude you have given me,
ended all affliction, shown the way of grace:
Siva eternal at the core of sound,
Sivalinga within the heart,
atom within atom, vast beyond all vastness,
sweetness hid in the hardened node.
You have steadied me clear in human form
all besmeared with holy ashes;
added me to the congregation
of your servants true and trusty;
made me experience in my heart
the inmost meaning of the five letters;
restored my real state to me;
and rule me now, O Master of Wisdom,
Vinayaka. Your feet alone,
O Master of Wisdom, Vinayaka, your feet alone, are my sole refuge.
~ Avvaiyar,#NFDB |
609:HOW CAN I READ SAVITRI?
An open reply by Dr Alok Pandey to a fellow devotee
A GIFT OF LOVE TO THE WORLD
Most of all enjoy Savitri. It is Sri Aurobindo's gift of Love to the world. Read it from the heart with love and gratitude as companions and drown in its fiery bliss. That is the true understanding rather than one that comes by a constant churning of words in the head.
WHEN
Best would be to fix a time that works for you. One can always take out some time for the reading, even if it be late at night when one is done with all the daily works. Of course, a certain receptivity is needed. If one is too tired or the reading becomes too mechanical as a ritual routine to be somehow finished it tends to be less effective, as with anything else. Hence the advice is to read in a quiet receptive state.
THE PACE
As to the pace of reading it is best to slowly build up and keep it steady. To read a page or a passage daily is better than reading many pages one day and then few lines or none for days. This brings a certain discipline in the consciousness which makes one receptive. What it means is that one should fix up that one would read a few passages or a page or two daily, and then if an odd day one is enjoying and spontaneously wants to read more then one can go by the flow.
COMPLETE OR SELECTIONS?
It is best to read at least once from cover to cover. But if one is not feeling inclined for that do read some of the beautiful cantos and passages whose reference one can find in various places. This helps us familiarise with the epic and the style of poetry. Later one can go for the cover to cover reading.
READING ALOUD, SILENTLY, OR WRITING DOWN?
One can read it silently. Loud reading is needed only if one is unable to focus with silent reading. A mantra is more potent when read subtly. I am aware that some people recommend reading it aloud which is fine if that helps one better. A certain flexibility in these things is always good and rigid rules either ways are not helpful.
One can also write some of the beautiful passages with which one feels suddenly connected. It is a help in the yoga since such a writing involves the pouring in of the consciousness of Savitri through the brain and nerves and the hand.
Reflecting upon some of these magnificent lines and passages while one is engaged in one\s daily activities helps to create a background state for our inner being to get absorbed in Savitri more and more.
HOW DO I UNDERSTAND THE MEANING? DO I NEED A DICTIONARY?
It is helpful if a brief background about the Canto is known. This helps the mind top focus and also to keep in sync with the overall scene and sense of what is being read.
But it is best not to keep referring to the dictionary while reading. Let the overall sense emerge. Specifics can be done during a detailed reading later and it may not be necessary at all. Besides the sense that Sri Aurobindo has given to many words may not be accurately conveyed by the standard dictionaries. A flexibility is required to understand the subtle suggestions hinted at by the Master-poet.
In this sense Savitri is in the line of Vedic poetry using images that are at once profound as well as commonplace. That is the beauty of mystic poetry. These are things actually experienced and seen by Sri Aurobindo, and ultimately it is Their Grace that alone can reveal the intrinsic sense of this supreme revelation of the Supreme. ~ Dr Alok Pandey,#NFDB |
| 610:Dans son rapport inaugural, le Forum, à propos de la mondialisation qu'il a symbolisée sous ses formes les plus conquérantes et sûres d'elles-mêmes, évoque avec un sens exquis de l'euphémisme "un risque de désillusion". Mais dans les conversations, c'est autre chose. Désillusion ? Crise ? Inégalités ? D'accord, si vous y tenez, mais enfin, comme nous le dit le très cordial et chaleureux PDG de la banque américaine Western Union, soyons clairs : si on ne paie pas les leaders comme ils le méritent, ils s'en iront voir ailleurs. Et puis, capitalisme, ça veut dire quoi ? Si vous avez 100 dollars d'économies et que vous les mettez à la banque en espérant en avoir bientôt 105, vous êtes un capitaliste, ni plus ni moins que moi. Et plus ces capitalistes comme vous et moi (il a réellement dit "comme vous et moi", et même si nous gagnons fort décemment notre vie, même si nous ne connaissons pas le salaire exact du PDG de la Western Union, pour ne rien dire de ses stock-options, ce "comme vous et moi" mérite à notre sens le pompon de la "brève de comptoir" version Davos), plus ces capitalistes comme vous et moi, donc, gagneront d'argent, plus ils en auront à donner, pardon à redistribuer, aux pauvres. L'idée ne semble pas effleurer cet homme enthousiaste, et à sa façon, généreux, que ce ne serait pas plus mal si les pauvres étaient en mesure d'en gagner eux-mêms et ne dépendaient pas des bonnes dispositions des riches. Faire le maximum d'argent, et ensuite le maximum de bien, ou pour les plus sophistiqués faire le maximum de bien en faisant le maximum d'argent, c'est le mantra du Forum, où on n'est pas grand-chose si on n'a pas sa fondation caritative, et c'est mieux que rien, sans doute "(vous voudriez quoi ? Le communisme ?"). Ce qui est moins bien que rien, en revanche, beaucoup moins bien, c'est l'effarante langue de bois dans laquelle ce mantra se décline. Ces mots dont tout le monde se gargarise : préoccupation sociétale, dimension humaine, conscience globale, changement de paradigme… De même que l'imagerie marxiste se représentait autrefois les capitalistes ventrus, en chapeau haut de forme et suçant avec volupté le sang du prolétariat, on a tendance à se représenter les super-riches et super-puissants réunis à Davos comme des cyniques, à l'image de ces traders de Chicago qui, en réponse à Occupy Wall Street, ont déployé au dernier étage de leur tour une banderole proclamant : "Nous sommes les 1%". Mais ces petits cyniques-là étaient des naïfs, alors que les grands fauves qu'on côtoie à Davos ne semblent, eux, pas cyniques du tout. Ils semblent sincèrement convaincus des bienfaits qu'ils apportent au monde, sincèrement convaincus que leur ingénierie financière et philanthropique (à les entendre, c'est pareil) est la seule façon de négocier en douceur le fameux changement de paradigme qui est l'autre nom de l'entrée dans l'âge d'or. Ça nous a étonnés dès le premier jour, le parfum de new age qui baigne ce jamboree de mâles dominants en costumes gris. Au second, il devient entêtant, et au troisième on n'en peut plus, on suffoque dans ce nuage de discours et de slogans tout droit sortis de manuels de développement personnel et de positive thinking. Alors, bien sûr, on n'avait pas besoin de venir jusqu'ici pour se douter que l'optimisme est d'une pratique plus aisée aux heureux du monde qu'à ses gueux, mais son inflation, sa déconnexion de toute expérience ordinaire sont ici tels que l'observateur le plus modéré se retrouve à osciller entre, sur le versant idéaliste, une indignation révolutionnaire, et, sur le versant misanthrope, le sarcasme le plus noir. (p. 439-441) ~ Emmanuel Carr re, #NFDB |
611:They include: The Power of Shakti, Womb Wisdom, Sacred Relationships (Inner Traditions), The Christ Blueprint, The Nine Eyes of Light: Ascension Keys from Egypt (NAB/Random House), Dimensions of Love (O Books). Since 1997 he has presented, lectured and taught in 20 countries worldwide.
Padma Aon Prakasha is a wisdom author, vibrational media creator, visionary pioneer and public speaker bringing together ancient wisdom and modern science. Padma’s books, music and multimedia are drawn from the traditions he has been initiated into.
They include: The Power of Shakti, Womb Wisdom, Sacred Relationships (Inner Traditions), The Christ Blueprint, The Nine Eyes of Light: Ascension Keys from Egypt (NAB/Random House), Dimensions of Love (O Books). Since 1997 he has presented, lectured and taught in 20 countries worldwide.
Padma is a master of vibrational medicine through sound, translating the art and science of vibration to create moving and alchemical immersions. A globally distributed music producer, Padma performs worldwide.
Please Subscribe to enjoy his content for free on YouTube, and enjoy diving deep with Padma.
Science of Sound 1 : The Next Level
quencies of hydrogen and oxygen, the water molecule of life, with the vibrational frequencies of deep violet, light violet and the Sun with 432Hz, the natural tone of geometric harmony and organic wellbeing. 40 different tones are spherically mixed on this Song to provide a vibrational frequency healing.
This song invites you to drop into your centre of gravity in the womb/hara, the primordial source presence within your body. If you relax and breathe here, you will feel layers softening and opening, revealing more of this depth presence within you through this healing meditation [music and healing] frequencies.
This song touches the deep subconscious awareness of the water element. It can stir dormant memories held in the womb space, stirring them to be felt and released, allowing more openness and fluidity within you.
This Song is from The Souls Birth Album ( see other video) and is available on This DNA video is made with Lynn Claire Dennis ofwith her 'Universal Sound Frequency'' embedded within it.
Science of Sound 2: The Ultimate Guide to Sound Healing, Vibrational Frequency, Energy Medicine
Everything is vibration. The world is sound. You are made of sounds in a vibrational universe. What are these sounds? How can we tap into them? Why is this not known? Is there a system behind vibrational frequency, vibrational sound therapy, sound healing vibrational healing and [Energy Medicine? YES!
In this Sound Healing Documentary series based on the awakened wisdom of the Indian Masters and the Kabbalah, we discover the Second Mode of Sound. This works through sound healing vibrational healing, healing music, healing meditations, healing frequencies, energy medicine, sacred geometry, the water in our bodies, energy meditation such as Reiki, advanced listening techniques, mantra, kirtan, symbols and shapes. All of these are sound vibrations, just in a different form to what we are used to, yet known to our ancestors.
This mode of sound is the bridge from the 3D to the higher dimensions, and a key to our multidimensional self. Virtual Reality, VR, vibratory art, holographic technologies and new forms of conscious entertainment all work with this form of sound vibration, which empowers us to become our fully creative self!
Sound is creation, and the world is sound.
Included are secret tips to working with sound, and a list of top sound healing techniques! ~ Padma Aon Prakasha,#NFDB |
612:His vulnerability allowed me to let my guard down, and gently and methodically, he tore apart my well-constructed dam. Waves of tender feelings were lapping over the top and slipping through the cracks. The feelings flooded through and spilled into me. It was frightening opening myself up to feel love for someone again. My heart pounded hard and thudded audibly in my chest. I was sure he could hear it.
Ren’s expression changed as he watched my face. His look of sadness was replaced by one of concern for me.
What was the next step? What should I do? What do I say? How do I share what I’m feeling?
I remembered watching romance movies with my mom, and our favorite saying was “shut up and kiss her already!” We’d both get frustrated when the hero or heroine wouldn’t do what was so obvious to the two of us, and as soon as a tense, romantic moment occurred, we’d both repeat our mantra. I could hear my mom’s humor-filled voice in my mind giving me the same advice: “Kells, shut up and kiss him already!”
So, I got a grip on myself, and before I changed my mind, I leaned over and kissed him.
He froze. He didn’t kiss me back. He didn’t push me away. He just stopped…moving. I pulled back, saw the shock on his face, and instantly regretted my boldness. I stood up and walked away, embarrassed. I wanted to put some distance between us as I frantically tried to rebuild the walls around my heart.
I heard him move. He slid his hand under my elbow and turned me around. I couldn’t look at him. I just stared at his bare feet. He put a finger under my chin and tried to nudge my head up, but I still refused to meet his gaze.
“Kelsey. Look at me.” Lifting my eyes, they traveled from his feet to a white button in the middle of his shirt. “Look at me.”
My eyes continued their journey. They drifted past the golden-bronze skin of his chest, his throat, and then settled on his beautiful face. His cobalt blue eyes searched mine, questioning. He took a step closer. My breath hitched in my throat. Reaching out a hand, he slid it around my waist slowly. His other hand cupped my chin. Still watching my face, he placed his palm lightly on my cheek and traced the arch of my cheekbone with his thumb.
The touch was sweet, hesitant, and careful, the way you might try to touch a frightened doe. His face was full of wonder and awareness. I quivered. He paused just a moment more, then smiled tenderly, dipped is head, and brushed his lips lightly against mine.
He kissed me softly, tentatively, just a mere whisper of a kiss. His other hand slid down to my waist too. I timidly touched his arms with my fingertips. He was warm, and his skin was smooth. He gently pulled me closer and pressed me lightly against his chest. I gripped his arms.
He sighed with pleasure, and deepened the kiss. I melted into him.
How was I breathing? His summery sandalwood scent surrounded me. Everywhere he touched me, I felt tingly and alive.
I clutched his arms fervently. His lips never leaving mine, Ren took both of my arms and wrapped them, one by one, around his neck. Then he trailed one of his hands down my bare arm to my waist while the other slid into my hair. Before I realized what he was planning to do, he picked me up with one arm and crushed me to his chest.
I have no idea how long we kissed. It felt like a mere second, and it also felt like forever. My bare feet were dangling several inches from the floor. He was holding all my body weight easily with one arm. I buried my fingers into his hair and felt a rumble in his chest. It was similar to the purring sound he made as a tiger. After that, all coherent thought fled and time stopped. ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB |
613:The true Mantra must come from within OR it must be given by a Guru
Nobody can give you the true mantra. It's not something that is given; it's something that wells up from within. It must spring from within all of a sudden, spontaneously, like a profound, intense need of your being - then it has power, because it's not something that comes from outside, it's your very own cry.
I saw, in my case, that my mantra has the power of immortality; whatever happens, if it is uttered, it's the Supreme that has the upper hand, it's no longer the lower law. And the words are irrelevant, they may not have any meaning - to someone else, my mantra is meaningless, but to me it's full, packed with meaning. And effective, because it's my cry, the intense aspiration of my whole being.
A mantra given by a guru is only the power to realize the experience of the discoverer of the mantra. The power is automatically there, because the sound contains the experience. I saw that once in Paris, at a time when I knew nothing of India, absolutely nothing, only the usual nonsense. I didn't even know what a mantra was. I had gone to a lecture given by some fellow who was supposed to have practiced "yoga" for a year in the Himalayas and recounted his experience (none too interesting, either). All at once, in the course of his lecture, he uttered the sound OM. And I saw the entire room suddenly fill with light, a golden, vibrating light.... I was probably the only one to notice it. I said to myself, "Well!" Then I didn't give it any more thought, I forgot about the story. But as it happened, the experience recurred in two or three different countries, with different people, and every time there was the sound OM, I would suddenly see the place fill with that same light. So I understood. That sound contains the vibration of thousands and thousands of years of spiritual aspiration - there is in it the entire aspiration of men towards the Supreme. And the power is automatically there, because the experience is there.
It's the same with my mantra. When I wanted to translate the end of my mantra, "Glory to You, O Lord," into Sanskrit, I asked for Nolini's help. He brought his Sanskrit translation, and when he read it to me, I immediately saw that the power was there - not because Nolini put his power into it (!), God knows he had no intention of "giving" me a mantra! But the power was there because my experience was there. We made a few adjustments and modifications, and that's the japa I do now - I do it all the time, while sleeping, while walking, while eating, while working, all the time.[[Mother later clarified: "'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't MY mantra, it's something I ADDED to it - my mantra is something else altogether, that's not it. When I say that my mantra has the power of immortality, I mean the other, the one I don't speak of! I have never given the words.... You see, at the end of my walk, a kind of enthusiasm rises, and with that enthusiasm, the 'Glory to You' came to me, but it's part of the prayer I had written in Prayers and Meditations: 'Glory to You, O Lord, all-triumphant Supreme' etc. (it's a long prayer). It came back suddenly, and as it came back spontaneously, I kept it. Moreover, when Sri Aurobindo read this prayer in Prayers and Meditations, he told me it was very strong. So I added this phrase as a kind of tail to my japa. But 'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't my spontaneous mantra - it came spontaneously, but it was something written very long ago. The two things are different."
And that's how a mantra has life: when it wells up all the time, spontaneously, like the cry of your being - there is no need of effort or concentration: it's your natural cry. Then it has full power, it is alive. It must well up from within.... No guru can give you that. ~ The Mother, Agenda, May 11 1963,#NFDB |
614:PRATYAHARA
PRATYAHARA is the first process in the mental part of our task. The previous practices, Asana, Pranayama, Yama, and Niyama, are all acts of the body, while mantra is connected with speech: Pratyahara is purely mental.
And what is Pratyahara? This word is used by different authors in different senses. The same word is employed to designate both the practice and the result. It means for our present purpose a process rather strategical than practical; it is introspection, a sort of general examination of the contents of the mind which we wish to control: Asana having been mastered, all immediate exciting causes have been removed, and we are free to think what we are thinking about.
A very similar experience to that of Asana is in store for us. At first we shall very likely flatter ourselves that our minds are pretty calm; this is a defect of observation. Just as the European standing for the first time on the edge of the desert will see nothing there, while his Arab can tell him the family history of each of the fifty persons in view, because he has learnt how to look, so with practice the thoughts will become more numerous and more insistent.
As soon as the body was accurately observed it was found to be terribly restless and painful; now that we observe the mind it is seen to be more restless and painful still. (See diagram opposite.)
A similar curve might be plotted for the real and apparent painfulness of Asana. Conscious of this fact, we begin to try to control it: "Not quite so many thoughts, please!" "Don't think quite so fast, please!" "No more of that kind of thought, please!" It is only then that we discover that what we thought was a school of playful porpoises is really the convolutions of the sea-serpent. The attempt to repress has the effect of exciting.
When the unsuspecting pupil first approaches his holy but wily Guru, and demands magical powers, that Wise One replies that he will confer them, points out with much caution and secrecy some particular spot on the pupil's body which has never previously attracted his attention, and says: "In order to obtain this magical power which you seek, all that is necessary is to wash seven times in the Ganges during seven days, being particularly careful to avoid thinking of that one spot." Of course the unhappy youth spends a disgusted week in thinking of little else.
It is positively amazing with what persistence a thought, even a whole train of thoughts, returns again and again to the charge. It becomes a positive nightmare. It is intensely annoying, too, to find that one does not become conscious that one has got on to the forbidden subject until one has gone right through with it. However, one continues day after day investigating thoughts and trying to check them; and sooner or later one proceeds to the next stage, Dharana, the attempt to restrain the mind to a single object.
Before we go on to this, however, we must consider what is meant by success in Pratyahara. This is a very extensive subject, and different authors take widely divergent views. One writer means an analysis so acute that every thought is resolved into a number of elements (see "The Psychology of Hashish," Section V, in Equinox II).
Others take the view that success in the practice is something like the experience which Sir Humphrey Davy had as a result of taking nitrous oxide, in which he exclaimed: "The universe is composed exclusively of ideas."
Others say that it gives Hamlet's feeling: "There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so," interpreted as literally as was done by Mrs. Eddy.
However, the main point is to acquire some sort of inhibitory power over the thoughts. Fortunately there is an unfailing method of acquiring this power. It is given in Liber III. If Sections 1 and 2 are practised (if necessary with the assistance of another person to aid your vigilance) you will soon be able to master the final section. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#NFDB |
615:Coded Language
Whereas, breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diasporic community to its drum woven past
Whereas the quantised drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to calculate the ever changing distance between rock and stardom.
Whereas the velocity of the spinning vinyl, cross-faded, spun backwards, and re-released at the same given moment of recorded history , yet at a different moment in time's continuum has allowed history to catch up with the present.
We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.
Statements, such as, "keep it real", especially when punctuating or anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or physically or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as retro-active and not representative of the individually determined is.
Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness of this state of being and the lessened distance between thought patterns and their secular manifestations, the role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased by a number no less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal aggressors.
Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize
We have found evidence that hip hops standard 85 rpm when increased by a number as least half the rate of it's standard or decreased at ¾ of it's speed may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.
Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.
Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season
Our cyclical relationship to phenomenon has encouraged scholars to erase the centers of periods, thus symbolizing the non-linear character of cause and effect
Reject mediocrity!
Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given for you to understand.
The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the diet of an infant.
The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and deformative symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce and crushed pears
Light years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness.
The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.
Thus, in the name of:
ROBESON, GOD'S SON, HURSTON, AHKENATON, HATHSHEPUT, BLACKFOOT, HELEN
LENNON, KHALO, KALI, THE THREE MARIAS, TARA, LILITH, LOURDE, WHITMAN
BALDWIN, GINSBERG, KAUFMAN, LUMUMBA, GHANDI, GIBRAN, SHABAZZ, SIDDHARTHA
MEDUSA, GUEVARA, GURDJIEFF, RAND, WRIGHT, BANNEKER, TUBMAN, HAMER, HOLIDAY
DAVIS, COLTRANE, MORRISON, JOPLIN, DUBOIS, CLARKE, SHAKESPEARE, RACHMANINOV
ELLINGTON, CARTER, GAYE, HATHAWAY, HENDRIX, KUTI, DICKINSON, RIPPERTON
MARY, ISIS, THERESA, HANSBURY, TESLA, PLATH, RUMI, FELLINI, MICHAUX, NOSTRADAMUS, NEFERTITI
LA ROCK, SHIVA, GANESHA, YEMAJA, OSHUN, OBATALA, OGUN, KENNEDY, KING, FOUR
LITTLE GIRLS, HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, KELLER, BIKO, PERÓN, MARLEY, MAGDALENE, COSBY
SHAKUR, THOSE WHO BURN, THOSE STILL AFLAME, AND THE COUNTLESS UNNAMED
We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter.
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone
Our music is our alchemy
We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down supply the percussion factor of forever.
If you must count to keep the beat then count.
Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious.
Curve you circles counterclockwise
Use your cipher to decipher, Coded Language, man made laws.
Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.
Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry, crafts, love, and love.
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference.
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
~ Saul Williams,#NFDB |
616:Pi-Dog
This is the time of day I like best,
and this the hour
when I can call this city my own;
when I like nothing better
than to lie down here, at the exact centre
of this traf?c island
(or trisland as I call it for short,
and also to suggest
a triangular island with rounded corners)
that doubles as a parking lot
on working days,
a corral for more than ?fty cars,
when it's deserted early in the morning,
and I'm the only sign
of intelligent life on the planet;
the concrete surface hard, ?at and cool
against my belly,
my lower jaw at rest on crossed forepaws;
just about where the equestrian statue
of what's-his-name
must've stood once, or so I imagine.
I look a bit like
a seventeenth-century map of Bombay
with its seven islands
not joined yet,
shown in solid black
on a body the colour of old parchment;
with Old Woman's Island
16
on my forehead,
Mahim on my croup,
and the others distributed
casually among
brisket, withers, saddle and loin
- with a pirate's
rather than a cartographer's regard
for accuracy.
I like to trace my descent
- no proof of course,
just a strong family tradition matrilineally,
to the only bitch that proved
tough enough to have survived,
?rst, the long voyage,
and then the wretched weather here
- a combination
that killed the rest of the pack
of thirty foxhounds,
imported all the way from England
by Sir Bartle Frere
in eighteen hundred and sixty-four,
with the crazy idea
of introducing fox-hunting to Bombay.
Just the sort of thing
he felt the city badly needed.
On my father's side
the line goes back to the dog that followed
Yudhishthira
on his last journey,
17
and stayed with him till the very end;
long after all the others
- Draupadi ?rst, then Sahadeva,
then Nakul, followed by Arjuna and,
last of all, Bhima had fallen by the wayside.
Dog in tow, Yudhishthira alone plodded on.
Until he too,
frostbitten and blinded with snow,
dizzy with hunger and gasping for air,
was about to collapse
in the icy wastes of the Himalayas;
when help came
in the shape of a ?ying chariot
to airlift him to heaven.
Yudhishthira, that noble prince, refused
to get on board unless dogs were allowed.
And my ancestor became the only dog
to have made it to heaven
in recorded history.
To ?nd a more moving instance
of man's devotion to dog,
we have to leave the realm of history,
skip a few thousand years
and pick up a work of science fantasy
- Harlan Ellison's A Boy and his Dog,
a cultbook among pi-dogs everywhere in which the ‘Boy' of the title
sacri?ces his love,
and serves up his girlfriend
as dogfood to save the life of his
18
starving canine master.
I answer to the name of Ugh.
No,
not the exclamation of disgust;
but the U pronounced as in Upanishad,
and gh not silent,
but as in ghost, ghoul or gherkin.
It's short for Ughekalikadu,
Siddharamayya's
famous dog that I was named after,
the guru of Kallidevayya's dog
who could recite
the four Vedas backwards.
My own knowledge of the scriptures
begins
and ends, I'm afraid,
with just one mantra, or verse;
the tenth,
from the sixty-second hymn
in the third mandala of the Rig
(and to think
that the Rig alone contains ten thousand
?ve hundred and ?fty-two verses).
It's composed in the Gayatri metre,
and it goes:
Om tat savitur varenyam
bhargo devasya dhimahi
dhiyo yonah prachodayat.
Twenty-four syllables, exactly,
if you count the initial Om.
Please don't ask me what it means, though.
19
All I know
is that it's addressed to the sun-god
- hence it's called Savitri and it seems appropriate enough
to recite it
as I sit here waiting for the sun
to rise.
May the sun-god amplify
the powers of my mind.
What I like about this time and place
- as I lie here hugging the ground,
my jaw at rest on crossed forepaws,
my eyes level with the welltempered
but gaptoothed keyboard
of the black-and-white concrete blocks
that form the border of this trisland
and give me my primary horizon is that I am left completely undisturbed
to work in peace on my magnum opus:
a triple sonata for a circumpiano
based on three distinct themes one suggested by a magpie robin,
another by the wail of an ambulance,
and the third by a rockdrill;
a piebald pianist, caressing and tickling
the concrete keys with his eyes,
undeterred by digital deprivation.
As I play,
the city slowly reconstructs itself,
stone by numbered stone.
20
Every stone
seeks out his brothers
and is joined by his neighbours.
Every single crack
returns to its ?agstone
and all is forgiven.
Trees arrive at themselves,
each one ready
to give an account of its leaves.
The mahogany drops
a casket bursting with winged seeds
by the wayside,
like an inexperienced thief
drops stolen jewels
at the sight of a cop.
St Andrew's church tiptoes back to its place,
shoes in hand,
like a husband after late-night revels.
The university,
you'll be glad to know,
can never get lost
because, although forgetful,
it always carries
its address in its pocket.
My nose quivers.
A many-coloured smell
of innocence and lavender,
mildly acidic perspiration
and nail polish,
rosewood and rosin
21
travels like a lighted fuse
up my nose
and explodes in my brain.
It's not the leggy young girl
taking a short cut
through this island as usual,
violin case in hand,
and late again for her music class
at the Max Mueller Bhavan,
so much as a warning to me
that my idyll
will soon be over,
that the time has come for me
to surrender the city
to its so-called masters.
~ Arun Kolatkar,#NFDB |
617:The Cooking Pot And The Sickle
I.
Who in the last season had sown
The Aryan1 seeds in this field with love?
When the hot sun of March burned
Rain - fire above, red embers below,
With his bullock waving its dewlap
Drawing the plough deep, unwearied;
Not with the sheen of oil glowed
His body, but with sweat;
Until the earth turned into fine dust,
Until Vishu2 decked the Konna3 with blossoms,
Koman had ploughed the field up and down;
Koman had sown the Aryan seeds.
When the clouds moved on leaving their print
On the filed where fresh seeds sprouted,
Were there more golden shoots in the field
Or on the breast of Koman in rapture?
He had no rest either day or night,
What care he took to keep the watch!
The weeds too came up and grew thick
And the breeze thus blew to make music.
In the blue expanse all along
Swam and danced the water-waves,
Till the women flowed in like swans
To pluck and pick the weeds.
II.
The field was infested with weeds this year,
How hard for the farmer it was!
Gone is what was kept as seed corn;
Gone too what was meant for food!
Gone again the price of the bullock, sold,
Unmindful of the work after harvest!
Aromal Chekavar4 won the joust,
Yet the weeds yielded not a span!
The bangles pleaded and flirted,
Yet the weeds yielded not a span!
Koman didn't pay his son's school fees,
Nor did he pay up his instalments,
11
And he didn't buy the prescription
For the fever his child caught from the new rains,
Gazing at her hands with the mylanchi5 mark
Made long before the new year's eve,
The weed-picker girl started to cry;
What a wild game of the season's mischief!
III.
At the heel of the burning summer came
The all-upsetting thundershowers,
And as the rice seedlings overcome by thirst
Opened their sheaths to drink the rain water,
Koman too took the same clean drink;
That's of course what a father does.
And as the field grew dark and dense
With the spread of vacant spots,
When the dark rain had its orgy
Never stopping either night or day,
Till the ears of corn were seen
That brought sheer joy to the eye.
Koman was seen on the dyke
Like an oracle dancing his role.
When the first few torrential rains
In the last month of the year had ended,
There were the red-lipped ears of corn,
All along the level fields
With a heart given to ecstasy
Koman embraced his whole family.
What excitement in that house now,
To husk the paddy, to get fresh rice!
Father was fondling his little daughter
IV.
Seated on his knees; he coaxed her;
'A new skirt for my kitten
For theOnam6 flower-festival.'
Mother looked at the elder daughter,
Who seemed to pull a long face.
And father said, 'If the yield is gold,
We'll spend it on a wedding locket.'
'I didn't mean anything like that,'
The girl wearing glass bangles blushed.
'Three months' fees remain to be paid',
12
A hum arose somewhere in the group.
To each according to his desire;
The master of the house apportioned it.
Mother too had her private need;
'We must have pot to cook the new rice,'
The soul of that family fluttered around
Like a dragonfly in that golden field;
And the ears grew heavy for a good harvest
Like a display of fireworks.
Are the dancers tired of the performance?
The rice plants lay down in full embrace.
As if to reap the moonlight of Onam
The golden sickle was rising.
People who passed by were heard to say;
'Koman has grown gold in this field.'
V.
Who was it that reaped this year
The golden grain that Koman grew?
Neither Koman nor his men - but
A court officer and his henchmen!
The morning they had fixed for the harvest
Gently opened her painted eyes.
The start of the celestial arbor
Tossed about by the wild storm
Were slowly blossoming to grace
In the cluster of tumpa flowers.
Koman came crossing the main dyke;
Behind him came his helpers.
Already the field was crowded;
The court officer got the harvest done.
Koman had just one glance of it;
All his desire was utterly lost;
As if he saw dogs barking
In the rice that was meant for a meal,
Koman had just one glance of it,
The power wielded by the court,
The revenge of the January crop
That withered for want of water from the sky,
This affront of attachment and harvest
For the rental arrears, the landlord's due?
VI.
13
The wrath of the reapers raised its hood
And began to blow and hiss.
Neeli, the Pulaya girl, fell on the ground
Beating her breast very hard.
'No one else shall reap this crop,'
Cheru Koman stepped down into the field.
Warming up to the fight and snarling
Like a leopard came forth Chathappan.
The hired harvesters cast away the sheaves
And quickly climbed the dykes.
Koman raged as if possessed,
Like an elephant chained to the post.
And that way came Koman's elder daughter,
A lovely little creeper,
Swinging and happy with the new pot
Bought to cook the new rice.
In her father's mind
Exploded a huge shell of fire,
She seemed like butter floating again
On the fire of his wrath.
In a few moments this treasure-land
Might turn into something strange.
On the dyke a voice arose to say
'Here are the orders; don't play with them!'
Waving a piece of paper
There stood the court officer
Laying the land all barren
Like a rising cactus head!
VII.
Let the man who sowed see it;
The feudal order reaped the crop,
Sticking to the shade of the power;
A handful of robbers have kept all for themselves.
The sickles lined up around the new pot
Which was no longer there,
The sickles useless for the harvest
Until sharpened against power. Pity!
The law leads the attack
On the land where the farmer grows the crop.
The results of that attack
Arise from the dyke,
14
The new pots and the sickles
Join and thunder on the dyke;
'First we must reap power;
And after that the Aryan crop!'
Their throats began to spread
This mantra in the heavens;
'First we must reap power;
And after that the Aryan crop!'
[Translated by the well-known poet
Dr. Ayyappa Panikkar.]
[Notes:1. Aryan is a variety of rice.
a celebration, usually on the
day the summer solstice starts.
3. Konna A tree with bunches of yellow flowers, blosson around March, April.
l Chekar was a hero of North Malabar in Kerala, whose adventurous duels were
sung in eulogy by farm workers in Malabar.
5. Mylanchi. A floral decoration applied to the palm using the crushed leaves of
Henna plant.
6. Onam. the harvest festival of Kerala lasting 10 days, when the courtyards are
decorated with flowers.]
~ Edasseri Govindan Nair,#NFDB |
618:How to Meditate
Deep meditation is a mental procedure that utilizes the nature of the mind to systematically bring the mind to rest. If the mind is given the opportunity, it will go to rest with no effort. That is how the mind works.
Indeed, effort is opposed to the natural process of deep meditation. The mind always seeks the path of least resistance to express itself. Most of the time this is by making more and more thoughts. But it is also possible to create a situation in the mind that turns the path of least resistance into one leading to fewer and fewer thoughts. And, very soon, no thoughts at all. This is done by using a particular thought in a particular way. The thought is called a mantra.
For our practice of deep meditation, we will use the thought - I AM. This will be our mantra.
It is for the sound that we will use I AM, not for the meaning of it.
The meaning has an obvious significance in English, and I AM has a religious meaning in the English Bible as well. But we will not use I AM for the meaning - only for the sound. We can also spell it AYAM. No meaning there, is there? Only the sound. That is what we want. If your first language is not English, you may spell the sound phonetically in your own language if you wish. No matter how we spell it, it will be the same sound. The power of the sound ...I AM... is great when thought inside. But only if we use a particular procedure. Knowing this procedure is the key to successful meditation. It is very simple. So simple that we will devote many pages here to discussing how to keep it simple, because we all have a tendency to make things more complicated. Maintaining simplicity is the key to right meditation.
Here is the procedure of deep meditation: While sitting comfortably with eyes closed, we'll just relax. We will notice thoughts, streams of thoughts. That is fine. We just let them go by without minding them. After about a minute, we gently introduce the mantra, ...I AM...
We think the mantra in a repetition very easily inside. The speed of repetition may vary, and we do not mind it. We do not intone the mantra out loud. We do not deliberately locate the mantra in any particular part of the body. Whenever we realize we are not thinking the mantra inside anymore, we come back to it easily. This may happen many times in a sitting, or only once or twice. It doesn't matter. We follow this procedure of easily coming back to the mantra when we realize we are off it for the predetermined time of our meditation session. That's it.
Very simple.
Typically, the way we will find ourselves off the mantra will be in a stream of other thoughts. This is normal. The mind is a thought machine, remember? Making thoughts is what it does. But, if we are meditating, as soon as we realize we are off into a stream of thoughts, no matter how mundane or profound, we just easily go back to the mantra.
Like that. We don't make a struggle of it. The idea is not that we have to be on the mantra all the time. That is not the objective. The objective is to easily go back to it when we realize we are off it. We just favor the mantra with our attention when we notice we are not thinking it. If we are back into a stream of other thoughts five seconds later, we don't try and force the thoughts out. Thoughts are a normal part of the deep meditation process. We just ease back to the mantra again. We favor it.
Deep meditation is a going toward, not a pushing away from. We do that every single time with the mantra when we realize we are off it - just easily favoring it. It is a gentle persuasion. No struggle. No fuss. No iron willpower or mental heroics are necessary for this practice. All such efforts are away from the simplicity of deep meditation and will reduce its effectiveness.
As we do this simple process of deep meditation, we will at some point notice a change in the character of our inner experience. The mantra may become very refined and fuzzy. This is normal. It is perfectly all right to think the mantra in a very refined and fuzzy way if this is the easiest. It should always be easy - never a struggle. Other times, we may lose track of where we are for a while, having no mantra, or stream of thoughts either. This is fine too. When we realize we have been off somewhere, we just ease back to the mantra again. If we have been very settled with the mantra being barely recognizable, we can go back to that fuzzy level of it, if it is the easiest. As the mantra refines, we are riding it inward with our attention to progressively deeper levels of inner silence in the mind. So it is normal for the mantra to become very faint and fuzzy. We cannot force this to happen. It will happen naturally as our nervous system goes through its many cycles ofinner purification stimulated by deep meditation. When the mantra refines, we just go with it. And when the mantra does not refine, we just be with it at whatever level is easy. No struggle. There is no objective to attain, except to continue the simple procedure we are describing here.
When and Where to Meditate
How long and how often do we meditate? For most people, twenty minutes is the best duration for a meditation session. It is done twice per day, once before the morning meal and day's activity, and then again before the evening meal and evening's activity.
Try to avoid meditating right after eating or right before bed.
Before meal and activity is the ideal time. It will be most effective and refreshing then. Deep meditation is a preparation for activity, and our results over time will be best if we are active between our meditation sessions. Also, meditation is not a substitute for sleep. The ideal situation is a good balance between meditation, daily activity and normal sleep at night. If we do this, our inner experience will grow naturally over time, and our outer life will become enriched by our growing inner silence.
A word on how to sit in meditation: The first priority is comfort. It is not desirable to sit in a way that distracts us from the easy procedure of meditation. So sitting in a comfortable chair with back support is a good way to meditate. Later on, or if we are already familiar, there can be an advantage to sitting with legs crossed, also with back support. But always with comfort and least distraction being the priority. If, for whatever reason, crossed legs are not feasible for us, we will do just fine meditating in our comfortable chair. There will be no loss of the benefits.
Due to commitments we may have, the ideal routine of meditation sessions will not always be possible. That is okay. Do the best you can and do not stress over it. Due to circumstances beyond our control, sometimes the only time we will have to meditate will be right after a meal, or even later in the evening near bedtime. If meditating at these times causes a little disruption in our system, we will know it soon enough and make the necessary adjustments. The main thing is that we do our best to do two meditations every day, even if it is only a short session between our commitments. Later on, we will look at the options we have to make adjustments to address varying outer circumstances, as well as inner experiences that can come up.
Before we go on, you should try a meditation. Find a comfortable place to sit where you are not likely to be interrupted and do a short meditation, say ten minutes, and see how it goes. It is a toe in the water.
Make sure to take a couple of minutes at the end sitting easily without doing the procedure of meditation. Then open your eyes slowly. Then read on here.
As you will see, the simple procedure of deep meditation and it's resulting experiences will raise some questions. We will cover many of them here.
So, now we will move into the practical aspects of deep meditation - your own experiences and initial symptoms of the growth of your own inner silence. ~ Yogani, Deep Meditation,#NFDB |
619:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#NFDB |
