TERMS STARTING WITH
recited: “Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me.”
recited ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Recite
reciter ::: n. --> One who recites; also, a book of extracts for recitation.
recite the 137th Psalm over the cup and conclude
recite ::: v. t. --> To repeat, as something already prepared, written down, committed to memory, or the like; to deliver from a written or printed document, or from recollection; to rehearse; as, to recite the words of an author, or of a deed or covenant.
To tell over; to go over in particulars; to relate; to narrate; as, to recite past events; to recite the particulars of a voyage.
To rehearse, as a lesson to an instructor.
TERMS ANYWHERE
2. The Shabbat on which this haftarah is recited.
abhidhammika. [alt. Abhidhammika]. In PAli, "specialist in the ABHIDHAMMA"; scholarly monks who specialized in study of the abhidhamma (S. ABHIDHARMA) section of the Buddhist canon. In the PAli tradition, particular importance has long been attached to the study of abhidharma. The AttHASALINĪ says that the first ABHIDHAMMIKA was the Buddha himself, and the abhidhammikas were presumed to be the most competent exponents of the teachings of the religion. Among the Buddha's immediate disciples, the premier abhidhammika was SAriputta (S. sARIPUTRA), who was renowned for his systematic grasp of the dharma. Monastic "families" of abhidhamma specialists were known as abhidhammikagana, and they passed down through the generations their own scholastic interpretations of Buddhist doctrine, interpretations that sometimes differed from those offered by specialists in the scriptures (P. sutta; S. SuTRA) or disciplinary rules (VINAYA) . In medieval Sri Lanka, the highest awards within the Buddhist order were granted to monks who specialized in this branch of study, rather than to experts in the scriptures or disciplinary rules. Special festivals were held in honor of the abhidhamma, which involved the recital of important texts and the granting of awards to participants. In contemporary Myanmar (Burma), where the study of abhidhamma continues to be highly esteemed, the seventh book of the PAli ABHIDHARMAPItAKA, the PAttHANA ("Conditions"), is regularly recited in festivals that the Burmese call pathan pwe. Pathan pwe are marathon recitations that go on for days, conducted by invited abhidhammikas who are particularly well versed in the PatthAna, the text that is the focus of the festival. The pathan pwe serves a function similar to that of PARITTA recitations, in that it is believed to ward off baleful influences, but its main designated purpose is to forestall the decline and disappearance of the Buddha's dispensation (P. sAsana; S. sASANA). The TheravAda tradition considers the PatthAna to be the Buddha's most profound exposition of ultimate truth (P. paramatthasacca; S. PARAMARTHASATYA), and according to the PAli commentaries, the PatthAna is the first constituent of the Buddha's dispensation that will disappear from the world as the religion faces its inevitable decline. The abhidhammikas' marathon recitations of the PatthAna, therefore, help to ward off the eventual demise of the Buddhist religion. This practice speaks of a THERAVADA orientation in favor of scholarship that goes back well over a thousand years. Since at least the time of BUDDHAGHOSA (c. fifth century CE), the life of scholarship (P. PARIYATTI), rather than that of meditation or contemplation (P. PAtIPATTI), has been the preferred vocational path within PAli Buddhist monasticism. Monks who devoted themselves exclusively to meditation were often portrayed as persons who lacked the capacity to master the intricacies of PAli scholarship. Even so, meditation was always recommended as the principal means by which one could bring scriptural knowledge to maturity, either through awakening or the realization (P. pativedha; S. PRATIVEDHA) of Buddhist truths. See also ABHIDHARMIKA.
AbhidharmamahAvibhAsA. (T. Chos mngon pa bye brag bshad pa chen po; C. Apidamo dapiposha lun; J. Abidatsuma daibibasharon; K. Abidalma taebibasa non 阿毘達磨大毘婆沙論). In Sanskrit, "Great Exegesis of ABHIDHARMA," also commonly known as MahAvibhAsA; a massive VAIBHAsIKA treatise on SARVASTIVADA abhidharma translated into Chinese by the scholar-pilgrim XUANZANG and his translation bureau between 656 and 659 at XIMINGSI in the Tang capital of Chang'an. Although no Sanskrit version of this text is extant, earlier Chinese translations by Buddhavarman and others survive, albeit only in (equally massive) fragments. The complete Sanskrit text of the recension that Xuanzang used was in 100,000 slokas; his translation was in 200 rolls, making it one of the largest single works in the Buddhist canon. According to the account in Xuanzang's DA TANG XIYU JI, four hundred years after the Buddha's PARINIRVAnA, King KANIsKA gathered five hundred ARHATs to recite the Buddhist canon (TRIPItAKA). The ABHIDHARMAPItAKA of this canon, which is associated with the SarvAstivAda school, is said to have been redacted during this council (see COUNCIL, FOURTH). The central abhidharma treatise of the SarvAstivAda school is KATYAYANĪPUTRA's JNANAPRASTHANA, and the AbhidharmamahAvibhAsA purports to offer a comprehensive overview of varying views on the meaning of that seminal text by the five hundred arhats who were in attendance at the convocation. The comments of four major ABHIDHARMIKAs (Ghosa, DHARMATRATA, VASUMITRA, and Buddhadeva) are interwoven into the MahAvibhAsA's contextual analysis of KAtyAyanīputra's material from the JNAnaprasthAna, making the text a veritable encyclopedia of contemporary Buddhist scholasticism. Since the MahAvibhAsA also purports to be a commentary on the central text of the SarvAstivAda school, it therefore offers a comprehensive picture of the development of SarvAstivAda thought after the compilation of the JNAnaprasthAna. The MahAvibhAsA is divided into eight sections (grantha) and several chapters (varga), which systematically follow the eight sections and forty-three chapters of the JNAnaprasthAna in presenting its explication. Coverage of each topic begins with an overview of varying interpretations found in different Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools, detailed coverage of the positions of the four major SarvAstivAda Abhidharmikas, and finally the definitive judgment of the compilers, the KAsmīri followers of KAtyAyanĪputra, who call themselves the VibhAsAsAstrins. The MahAvibhAsA was the major influence on the systematic scholastic elaboration of SarvAstivAda doctrine that appears (though with occasional intrusions from the positions of the SarvAstivAda's more-progressive SAUTRANTIKA offshoot) in VASUBANDHU's influential ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA, which itself elicited a spirited response from later SarvAstivAda-VaibhAsika scholars, such as SAMGHABHADRA in his *NYAYANUSARA. The MahAvibhAsa was not translated into Tibetan until the twentieth century, when a translation entitled Bye brag bshad mdzod chen mo was made at the Sino-Tibetan Institute by the Chinese monk FAZUN between 1946 and 1949. He presented a copy of the manuscript to the young fourteenth DALAI LAMA on the Dalai Lama's visit to Beijing in 1954, but it is not known whether it is still extant.
abovesaid ::: a. --> Mentioned or recited before.
Adhvaryu: A priest who recites the Yajur-veda in a sacrifice. (Yajur-veda is one of the four Vedas or source-scriptures of Hinduism. The others are Rig-veda, Sama-veda and Atharvana-veda.)
advised to recite versicles from Psalms 31, 42.
aforecited ::: a. --> Named or quoted before.
Airyema-ishyo (Avestan) Airyemā-ishyō. The much-desired brotherhood, or Yasna 54: “May brotherhood of man, for which we yearn, come down amongst us and rejoice the hearts of men and maidens of Zarathustra’s faith. Bringing fulfillment unto Vohu Man; when souls of men receive their precious mead, I pray too Asha in His Grace to grant these blessings for which human souls do long, which Mazda hath meant for all.” “This verse, though actually not included in the Gathas, follows immediately after the Fifth Gatha. Both the language and the metre are exactly the same, as those of the Fifth Gatha. . . . This verse is recited during the Zoroastrian marriage service as part of ‘the blessing’ ” (Taraporewala, The Religion of Zarathushtra 148).
Ajapa (Sanskrit) Ajapa [from a not + the verbal root jap to speak in a low voice] One who does not use orthodox prayers; a reciter of heterodox mantras or works. Ajapa is the form of mantra called hamsa, consisting of a series of inhalations and exhalations.
Akdamot ::: (Aramaic before I begin) A poem recited during the morning service on Shavuot.
AlikAli. (T. A li kA li). The letters of the Sanskrit alphabet (A being the first in the list of vowels and ka the first in the list of consonants), often recited or visualized in tantric practice. See also ARAPACANA; AJIKAN.
Amidah ::: (Heb. Standing). The main section of rabbinic Jewish prayers, recited in a standing posture; also known as tefillah or shemoneh esrei (eighteen benedictions).
Amidah (The &
ampersand "character" "&" {ASCII} character 38. Common names: {ITU-T}, {INTERCAL}: ampersand; amper; and. Rare: address (from {C}); reference (from C++); bitand; background (from {sh}); pretzel; amp. A common symbol for "and", used as the "address of" operator in {C}, the "reference" operator in {C++} and a {bitwise and} or {logical and} operator in several programming languages. {Visual BASIC} uses it as the {string concatenation} {operator} and to prefix {octal} and {hexadecimal} numbers. {UNIX} {shells} use the character to indicate that a task should be run in the {background} (single "&" suffix) or (following C's {lazy and}), in a {compound command} of the form "a && b" to indicate that the command b should only be run if command a terminates successfully. The ampersand is a ligature (combination) of the cursive letters "e" and "t", invented in 63 BC by Marcus Tirus [Tiro?] as shorthand for the Latin word for "and", "et". The word ampersand is a conflation (combination) of "and, per se and". Per se means "by itself", and so the phrase translates to "&, standing by itself, means 'and'". This was at the end of the alphabet as it was recited by children in old English schools. The words ran together and were associated with "&". The "ampersand" spelling dates from 1837. {Take our word for it (http://takeourword.com/Issue010.html)}. (2012-07-18)
Ananda (Sanskrit) Ānanda [from ā-nand to rejoice, be delighted] Bliss, joy, happiness; the favorite disciple of Gautama Buddha, who served his teacher with utmost devotion for twenty years and is credited with having recited, shortly after the Buddha’s parinibbana (great passing away), the entire buddhavachana (word of Buddha).
Ananda. (T. Kun dga' bo; C. Anan[tuo]; J. Anan[da]; K. Anan[da] 阿難[陀]). In Sanskrit and PAli, literally "Bliss," the name of the Buddha's cousin, longtime attendant, and one of his chief disciples. According to tradition, in his previous life, he was a god in the TUsITA heaven, who was born on the same day and into the same sAKYA clan as the BODHISATTVA and future buddha who was born as prince SIDDHARTHA. Ananda was born as the son of Amṛtodana, the brother of king sUDDHODANA. He was thus the Buddha's cousin and the brother of DEVADATTA. When the Buddha returned to his home town of KAPILAVASTU in the second year after his enlightenment, many of the sAkyan men, such as Ananda and Devadatta, wished to renounce the householder life and become the Buddha's disciples as monks. Not long after his ordination, Ananda became a SROTAAPANNA upon hearing a sermon by PuRnA. The Buddha did not have a personal attendant for the first twenty years after his enlightenment, with various monks occasionally offering various services to him. But after two decades of these ad hoc arrangements, the Buddha finally asked for someone to volunteer to be his personal attendant; all the monks volunteered except Ananda, who said that he did not do so because the Buddha would choose the correct person regardless of who volunteered. The Buddha selected Ananda, who accepted on the following conditions: the Buddha was never to give him any special food or robes that he had received as gifts; the Buddha was not to provide him with a special monk's cell; and the Buddha was not to include him in dining invitations he received from the laity. Ananda made these conditions in order to prevent anyone from claiming that he received special treatment because of serving as the Buddha's attendant. In addition, he asked to be allowed to accept invitations on behalf of the Buddha; he asked to be allowed to bring to the Buddha those who came from great distances to see him; he asked to be able to bring any questions he had to the Buddha; and he asked that the Buddha repeat to him any doctrine that had been taught in his absence. Ananda saw these latter conditions as the true advantages of serving the Buddha. For the next twenty-five years, Ananda served the Buddha with great devotion, bringing him water, sweeping his cell, washing his feet, rubbing his body, sewing his robes, and accompanying him wherever he went. He guarded the Buddha's cell at night, carrying a staff and a torch, in order to make sure that his sleep was not disturbed and to be ready should the Buddha need him. As the Buddha grew older and more infirm, Ananda provided devoted care, despite the fact that the two were exactly the same age. Because Ananda was constantly in the Buddha's presence, he played a key role in many famous events of the early dispensation. For example, it was Ananda who, on behalf of MAHAPRAJAPATI, requested that women be allowed to enter the SAMGHA as nuns, persisting in his request despite the Buddha's initial refusal. He is therefore remembered especially fondly by the order of BHIKsUnĪs, and it is said that he often preached to nuns. In a famous tale reproduced in various sources, the daughter of a woman named MAtangī attempted to seduce Ananda with the help of her mother's magical powers, only to come to realize her wrongdoing with the intervention of the Buddha. Toward the end of his life, the Buddha mentioned to Ananda that a buddha could live for a KALPA or until the end of the kalpa if he were asked to do so. (See CAPALACAITYA.) Ananda, distracted by MARA, failed to request the Buddha to do so, despite the Buddha mentioning this three times. Ananda was chastised for this blunder at the first council (see infra). Ananda figures prominently in the account of the Buddha's last days in the MAHAPARINIBBANASUTTA, weeping at the knowledge that the Buddha was about to die and being consoled by him. Ananda was known for his extraordinary powers of memory; he is said to have heard all 84,000 sermon topics (82,000 taught by the Buddha and 2,000 taught by other disciples) and was able to memorize 15,000 stanzas without omitting a syllable. He therefore played a key role in the recitation of the Buddha's teachings at the first council (SAMGĪTI; see COUNCIL, FIRST) held at RAJAGṚHA shortly after the Buddha's death. However, MAHAKAsYAPA, who convened the council, specified that all five hundred monks in attendance must be ARHATs, and Ananda was not. On the night before the opening of the council, Ananda achieved the enlightenment of an arhat as he was lying down to sleep, as his head fell to the pillow and his feet rose from the ground. He is therefore famous for achieving enlightenment in none of the four traditional postures (ĪRYAPATHA): walking, standing, sitting, or lying down. As an arhat, Ananda was welcomed to the council, where he recounted all the words of the Buddha (except those concerning the VINAYA, or monastic rules, which were recited by UPALI). For this reason, most SuTRAs open with the words, "Thus have I heard" (EVAM MAYA sRUTAM); the "I" is usually Ananda. (For this reason, Ananda is also known in China as Duowen Diyi, "First in Vast Hearing" or "He Who Heard the Most.") After the Buddha's death, the order of monks brought five charges against Ananda: (1) the Buddha had said that after his passing, the monks could disregard the minor precepts, but Ananda failed to ask him which those were; thus, all the precepts had to be followed; (2) Ananda had once stepped on the Buddha's robe when sewing it; (3) Ananda had allowed women to honor the Buddha's naked body after his death and their tears had fallen on his feet; (4) Ananda failed to ask the Buddha to live on for the rest of the kalpa; and (5) Ananda urged the Buddha to admit women to the order. Ananda replied that he saw no fault in any of these deeds but agreed to confess them. According to FAXIAN, when Ananda was 120 years old, he set out from MAGADHA to VAIsALĪ in order to die. Seeking his relics (sARĪRA), AJATAsATRU followed him to the Rohīni River, while a group from VaisAlī awaited him on the other bank. Not wishing to disappoint either group, Ananda levitated to the middle of the river in the meditative posture, preached the dharma, and then meditated on the TEJOKASInA, which prompted his body to burst into flames, with the relics dividing into two parts, one landing on each bank of the river. Ananda has long been one of the most beloved figures in the history of Buddhism, in part because he was not the wisest of the Buddha's disciples but showed unstinting devotion to the Buddha, always seeking to understand him correctly and to bring his teachings to as many people as possible.
and for the best results, it is advisable to recite a
Angirasas (Sanskrit) Aṅgirasa-s [from aṅg to go, move tortuously] The descendants of Angiras through his son, Agni; a name occurring in Vedic hymns addressed to luminous deities, and later extended to all phenomena connected with light. Specifically, the hymns of the Atharva-Veda are called Angirasa, as are those priests who recite them and perform the sacrifices according to the Atharva-vedic rules. “ ‘Angirases’ was one of the names of the Dhyanis, or Devas instructors (‘guru-deva’), of the late Third, the Fourth, and even of the Fifth Race Initiates” (SD 2:605n).
animation ::: n. --> The act of animating, or giving life or spirit; the state of being animate or alive.
The state of being lively, brisk, or full of spirit and vigor; vivacity; spiritedness; as, he recited the story with great animation.
anumodana. (T. rjes su yi rang; C. suixi; J. zuiki; K. suhŭi 隨喜). In Sanskrit and PAli, "admiration" or "gratification," also written anumodanA; the act of taking delight in the virtuous acts of others, which, in contrast to the unwholesome emotion of envy (ĪRsYA), enables one also to accumulate virtue for oneself. It is considered an effective means of gaining merit (PUnYA) and figures as a standard component in MAHAYANA liturgies, including the three-part MahAyAna liturgy (TRISKANDHAKA) and the sevenfold PuJA (SAPTAnGAVIDHI). AnumodanA is also used in mainstream Buddhism to refer to the "benedictions" (C. zhouyuan) that monks recite after receiving a meal or a gift, which express thanks or "gratification" to the donors for their offerings.
Ashrei (&
Avalokitesvara. (T. Spyan ras gzigs; C. Guanshiyin/Guanyin; J. Kanzeon/Kannon; K. Kwanseŭm/Kwanŭm 觀世音/觀音). In Sanskrit, "Lord who Looks Down [in Empathy]"; the BODHISATTVA of compassion, the most widely worshipped of the MAHAYANA bodhisattvas and one of the earliest to appear in Buddhist literature. According to legend, Avalokitesvara was produced from a beam of light that radiated from the forehead of AMITABHA while that buddha was deep in meditation. For this reason, Buddhist iconography often depicts AmitAbha as embedded in Avalokitesvara's crown. His name dates back to the beginning of the Common Era, when he replaced the Vedic god BRAHMA as the attendant to sAKYAMUNI Buddha, inheriting in turn BrahmA's attribute of the lotus (PADMA). Images of Avalokitesvara as PADMAPAnI LOKEsVARA ("Lord with a Lotus in his Hand"), an early name, are numerous. Avalokitesvara is the interlocutor or main figure in numerous important MahAyAna sutras, including the PRAJNAPARAMITAHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"). His cult was introduced to China in the first century CE, where his name was translated as Guanshiyin ("Perceiver of the Sounds of the World") or GUANYIN ("Perceiver of Sounds"); his cult entered Korea and Japan with the advent of Buddhism in those countries. Avalokitesvara was once worshipped widely in Southeast Asia as well, beginning at the end of the first millennium CE. Although the MahAyAna tradition eventually faded from the region, images of Avalokitesvara remain. Avalokitesvara is also the patron deity of Tibet, where he is said to have taken the form of a monkey and mated with TARA in the form of a local demoness to produce the Tibetan race. Tibetan political and religious leaders have been identified as incarnations of him, such as the seventh-century king SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO (although that attribution was most likely a later addition to the king's legacy) and, notably, the DALAI LAMAs. The PO TA LA Palace, the residence of the Dalai Lamas, in the Tibetan capital of LHA SA is named for Avalokitesvara's abode on Mount POTALAKA in India. In China, Avalokitesvara as Guanyin underwent a transformation in gender into a popular female bodhisattva, although the male iconographic form also persists throughout East Asia. PUTUOSHAN, located off the east coast of China south of Shanghai, is said to be Potalaka. Avalokitesvara is generally depicted in the full raiments of a bodhisattva, often with an image of AmitAbha in his crown. He appears in numerous forms, among them the two-armed PadmapAni who stands and holds a lotus flower; the four-armed seated Avalokitesvara, known either as Caturbhuja Avalokitesvara [CaturbhujAvalokitesvara] or CintAmani Avalokitesvara [CintAmanyavalokitesvara], who holds the wish-fulfilling jewel (CINTAMAnI) with his central hands in ANJALIMUDRA, and a lotus and crystal rosary in his left and right hands, respectively; the eleven-armed, eleven-faced EKADAsAMUKHA; and the thousand-armed and thousand-headed SAHASRABHUJASAHASRANETRAVALOKITEsVARA (q.v. MAHAKARUnIKA). Tradition holds that his head split into multiple skulls when he beheld the suffering of the world. Numerous other forms also exist in which the god has three or more heads, and any number of arms. In his wrathful form as AstabhayatrAnAvalokitesvara (T. Spyan ras gzigs 'jigs pa brgyad skyob), "Avalokitesvara who Protects against the Eight Fears," the bodhisattva stands in ARDHAPARYAnKA ("half cross-legged posture") and has one face and eight hands, each of which holds a symbol of one of the eight fears. This name is also given to eight separate forms of Avalokitesvara that are each dedicated to protecting from one of the eight fears, namely: AgnibhayatrAnAvalokitesvara ("Avalokitesvara Who Protects from Fear of Fire") and so on, replacing fire with Jala (water), SiMha (lion), Hasti (elephant), Danda (cudgel), NAga (snake), dAkinī (witch) [alt. PisAcī]; and Cora (thief). In addition to his common iconographic characteristic, the lotus flower, Avalokitesvara also frequently holds, among other accoutrements, a jeweled rosary (JAPAMALA) given to him by Aksamati (as related in chapter twenty-five of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA), or a vase. In East Asia, Avalokitesvara often appears in a triad: the buddha AmitAbha in the center, flanked to his left and right by his two bodhisattva attendants, Avalokitesvara and MAHASTHAMAPRAPTA, respectively. In Tibet, Avalokitesvara is part of a popular triad with VAJRAPAnI and MANJUsRĪ. As one of the AstAMAHOPAPUTRA, Avalokitesvara also appears with the other bodhisattvas in group representation. The tantric deity AMOGHAPAsA is also a form of Avalokitesvara. The famous mantra of Avalokitesvara, OM MAnI PADME HuM, is widely recited in the MahAyAna traditions and nearly universally in Tibetan Buddhism. In addition to the twenty-fifth chapter of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, the KARAndAVYuHA is also devoted to him. See also BAIYI GUANYIN; GUANYIN; MIAOSHAN; MAnI BKA' 'BUM.
Avinu Malkenuh ::: A prayer recited on fast Days and Rosh HaShannah penned by Rabbi Akiva.
bard: An ancient Celtic poet, singer and harpist who recited heroic poems by memory, or more generally, in modern usage, a synonym for any poet. When referred to as The Bard, this is a reference to Shakespeare.
Bardo (Tibetan) [from bar between + do two] Between two; generally a gap, interval, or intermediate state, especially the state between two births. The term has become known in the West through the Bar do thos sgrol (bar-do tho-dol), “Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo,” translated by W. Y. Evans-Wentz as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. According to the Bardo Thodol, there are six such “intervals”: the bardo of birth, the bardo of dreams, the bardo of samadhi (meditation), the bardo of the moment before death, the bardo of dharmata, and the bardo of becoming. The Bardo Thodol describes the last three of these, and is recited in the presence of the deceased believed to be experiencing these states, usually for a total period of 49 days. It is believed that the teaching contained in the text can enable the deceased to attain liberation while in the bardo states, or at least to attain the best possible rebirth.
bards ::: an ancient Celtic order of minstrel poets who composed and recited verses celebrating the legendary exploits of chieftains and heroes. 2. Poets, especially lyric poets.
Barechu ::: (Heb. Blessed is he) Opening (and sometimes closing) declaration traditionally recited during some prayer services.
Bhaddekarattasutta. In PAli, "The Ideal Lover of Solitude," the 131st sutra in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (there is no corresponding version in the Chinese translations of the AGAMAs); spoken at Jeta's Grove in SAvatthi (sRAVASTĪ); several related DHARMAGUPTAKA recensions appear in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA, although none with a corresponding title. The Buddha recites an enigmatic verse, in which he defines ideal solitude as letting go of everything involving the past or the future and dwelling solely in the present moment, discerning phenomena with wisdom as they appear. In his own exposition of the meaning of his verses, the Buddha explains that tracing back the past means not so much remembering the past but rather binding oneself to one's past aggregates (SKANDHA) through delighting in them; similarly, yearning for the future means the desire to have one's aggregates appear a certain way in the future. Instead, the religious should not identify with any of the five skandhas as being oneself; such a one is called an "ideal lover of solitude." The MajjhimanikAya collects subsequent expositions of these same verses by the Buddha's attendant ANANDA, MahAkaccAna (MAHAKATYAYANA), and Lomasakangiya. The term bhaddekaratta has given traditional PAli commentators difficulties and has sometimes been interpreted to mean "one who is happy [viz., auspicious?] for one night" (bhaddakassa ekarattassa) because he possesses insight, an interpretation that has its analogues in the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit title BHADRAKARATRĪ as shanye (a good night).
Bhadrakalpikasutra. (T. Bskal pa bzang po'i mdo/Mdo sde bskal bzang; C. Xianjie jing; J. Gengogyo; K. Hyon'gop kyong 賢劫經). In Sanskrit, "Auspicious Eon Scripture"; a MAHAYANA text in twenty-four chapters, written c. 200-250 CE and translated into Chinese by DHARMARAKsA in either 291 or 300 CE. In this scripture, the Buddha teaches a special concentration (SAMADHI) through the mastery of which bodhisattvas come to be equipped with 2,100 perfections (PARAMITA), 84,000 samAdhis and 84,000 codes (DHARAnĪ). He then lists the names of a thousand buddhas who will appear during the "auspicious eon" (BHADRAKALPA) due to the merit they obtained from practicing this samAdhi, as well as their residences, parents, disciples, spiritual powers, teachings, and so on. In the Tibetan BKA' 'GYUR the Bhadrakalpikasutra takes pride of place as the first in the sutra section (mdo sde); it is recited often, and it is not uncommon for the elaborate hagiographies (RNAM THAR) of important Tibetan religious figures or incarnations (SPRUL SKU) to identify their subject as an earlier rebirth of one of the thousand buddhas.
BhadrakArAtrī. (T. Mtshan mo bzang po; C. Shanye jing; J. Zen'yakyo; K. Sonya kyong 善夜經). In Sanskrit, "Scripture of One Fine Night," an apotropaic and soteriological text, in one roll, with close parallels to the PAli BHADDEKARATTASUTTA; translated into Chinese in 701 by YIJING (635-713), and into Tibetan by YE SHES SDE (fl. c. 800). The Sanskrit title, which is found in the colophon of the Tibetan translation of the sutra (three folios in length) is otherwise unattested in the literature. The title is interpreted in Chinese as meaning "a fine night" and is used as an analogy for the mind of a person who is freed from all kinds of suffering (DUḤKHA) and afflictions (KLEsA). The text seems to have its origins in an incantation that the Buddha had spoken previously. One day, a divinity (DEVA) visited a monk who was then staying with the Buddha in the Bamboo Grove (S. VEnUVANAVIHARA) in RAJAGṚHA, to ask about this verse. The monk, who did not know the verse, went to the Buddha, informed him of the divinity's request, and asked him to teach it. The Buddha then explained this scripture, which he said had the power to protect human beings from baleful spirits. One who follows the teachings of the scripture would also be relieved from all miseries and transgressions and could soon attain awakening. If one recites the scripture or one of its verses, or explains it to others, one would experience no misfortunes and would acquire knowledge of one's past and future lives. A recension of the text is also included in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA (no. 165), which partially corresponds to the PAli Bhaddekarattasutta spoken by MahAkaccAna (MAHAKATYAYANA), the 133rd sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA.
bhAnaka. In Sanskrit and PAli, "reciter," especially referring to monks in a monastic community whose vocation was to memorize, recite, and transmit to the next generation one of the various collections (NIKAYA, AGAMA) of the scriptural canon (SuTRAPItAKA). See DHARMABHAnAKA.
bīja. (T. sa bon; C. zhongzi; J. shuji; K. chongja 種子). In Sanskrit, "seed," a term used metaphorically in two important contexts: (1) in the theory of KARMAN, an action is said to plant a "seed" or "potentiality" in the mind, where it will reside until it fructifies as a future experience or is destroyed by wisdom; (2) in tantric literature, many deities are said to have a "seed syllable" or seed MANTRA that is visualized and recited in liturgy and meditation in order to invoke the deity. In the Chinese FAXIANG (YOGACARA) school, based on similar lists found in Indian Buddhist texts like the MAHAYANASAMGRAHA, a supplement to the YOGACARABHuMI, various lists of two different types of seeds are mentioned. (1) The primordial seeds (BENYOU ZHONGZI) and the continuously (lit. newly) acquired seeds (XINXUN ZHONGZI). The former are present in the eighth "storehouse consciousness" (ALAYAVIJNANA) since time immemorial, and are responsible for giving rise to a sentient being's basic faculties, such as the sensory organs (INDRIYA) and the aggregates (SKANDHA). The latter are acquired through the activities and sense impressions of the other seven consciousnesses (VIJNANA), and are stored within the eighth storehouse consciousness as pure, impure, or indeterminate seeds that may become activated again once the right conditions are in place for it to fructify. (2) Tainted seeds (youlou zhongzi) and untainted seeds (wulou zhongzi). The former are sowed whenever unenlightened activities of body, speech, and mind and the contaminants (ASRAVA) of mental defilements take place. The latter are associated with enlightened activities that do not generate such contaminants. In all cases, "full emergence" (SAMUDACARA, C. xiangxing) refers to the sprouting of those seeds as fully realized action. ¶ In tantric Buddhism the buddha field (BUDDHAKsETRA) is represented as a MAndALA with its inhabitant deities (DEVATA). The sonic source of the mandala and the deities that inhabit it is a "seed syllable" (bīja). In tantric practices (VIDHI; SADHANA) the meditator imagines the seed syllable emerging from the expanse of reality, usually on a lotus flower. The seed syllable is then visualized as transforming into the mandala and its divine inhabitants, each of which often has its own seed syllable. At the end of the ritual, the process is reversed and collapsed back into the seed syllable that then dissolves back into the nondual original expanse. Seed syllables in tantric Buddhism are connected with DHARAnĪ, mnemonic codes widespread in MahAyAna sutras that consist of strings of letters, often the first letter of profound terms or topics. These strings of letters in the dhAranĪ anticipate the MANTRAs found in tantric ritual practices. The tantric "seed syllable" is thought to contain the essence of the mantra, the letters of which are visualized as standing upright in a circle around the seed syllable from which the letters emerge and to which they return.
Birkat Hamazon ::: (Heb. Grace after meals) Prayer traditionally recited after meals.
Birkat Kohanim [also spelled Cohanim] (&
Bka' brgyud mgur mtsho. (Kagyü Gurtso). In Tibetan, "An Ocean of Songs of the Bka' brgyud"; a collection of spiritual songs and poetry composed by eminent masters of the BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism. It was compiled by the eighth KARMA PA MI BSKYOD RDO RJE in about 1542, originally intended as a liturgical text to be recited as an invocation of the entire Bka' brgyud lineage. The text is also part biographical recollection and doctrinal catalogue and is still much loved and widely read by adherents of the tradition. Its complete title is: Mchog gi dngos grub mngon du byed pa'i myur lam bka' brgyud bla ma rnams kyi rdo rje'i mgur dbyangs ye shes char 'bebs rang grol lhun grub bde chen rab 'bar nges don rgya mtsho'i snying po.
blackmass ::: Black Mass The Black Mass was a way of lampooning the Catholic Mass, practiced occasionally by wealthy opponents of the Church in the 'Dark Ages'. 'Black Masses' used to be performed by priests to curse enemies, but this practice was condemned by the church. During the witch trials of the Spanish Inquisition, witches were accused of this practice, but it is considered highly unlikely that it was practiced by commoners. So, contrary to popular belief, it is not a standard practice in ancient or modern witchcraft. Similarly, traditional (as opposed to secular) Satanists have been accused of conducting rituals which are specifically aimed at attacking Christian beliefs and practices (particularly the Roman Catholic Church), rituals in which they recite the Lord's Prayer backwards, or desecrate and use the host and wine stolen from a cathedral! This is pure fiction which can be traced back to the Inquisition and to books written during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance periods. Examples of traditional Satanism are extremely rare, and testimonies of 'alleged former Satanists' and Satanic Ritual abuse have long since been discredited. Cleromancy, when all the dominoes have been turned face-down and shuffled, the collection/set of randomised tiles is referred to as the "boneyard". The sitter draws tiles from the boneyard to form his/her spread.
BodhicaryAvatAra. (T. Byang chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa; C. Putixing jing; J. Bodaigyokyo; K. Porihaeng kyong 菩提行經). In Sanskrit, lit. "Introduction to the Practice of Enlightenment," a.k.a. BodhisattvacaryAvatAra, "Introduction to the Bodhisattva Practice"; a poem about the BODHISATTVA path, in ten chapters, written by the Indian poet sANTIDEVA (fl. c. 685-763). The verse is regarded as one of the masterpieces of late Indian MAHAYANA Buddhism, eliciting substantial commentary in both India and Tibet. The most influential of the Indian commentaries is the BodhicaryAvatArapaNjikA by PRAJNAKARAMATI. The text is especially important in Tibetan Buddhism, where it has long been memorized by monks and where stanzas from the text are often cited in both written and oral religious discourse. The poem is an extended reverie on the implications of the "aspiration for enlightenment" (BODHICITTA) that renders a person a bodhisattva, and on the deeds of the bodhisattva, the six perfections (PARAMITA). In the first chapter, sAntideva distinguishes between two forms of bodhicitta, the intentional (PRAnIDHICITTOTPADA) and the practical (PRASTHANACITTOTPADA), comparing them to the decision to undertake a journey and then actually setting out on that journey. In the fifth chapter he provides a famous argument for patience (KsANTI), stating that in order to walk uninjured across a surface of sharp stones, one can either cover the entire world with leather or one can cover the sole of one's foot with leather; in the same way, in order to survive the anger of enemies, one can either kill them all or practice patience. In the eighth chapter, he sets forth the technique for the equalizing and exhange of self and other, regarded in Tibet as one of the two chief means of cultivating bodhicitta. The lengthiest chapter is the ninth, devoted to wisdom (PRAJNA). Here sAntideva refutes a range of both non-Buddhist and Buddhist positions. On the basis of this chapter, sAntideva is counted as a PRASAnGIKA in the Tibetan doxographical system. According to legend, when sAntideva recited this chapter to the monks of NALANDA monastery, he began to rise into the air, leaving some questions as to precisely how the chapter ends. The final chapter is a prayer, often recited independently.
bodhisattvasaMvara. (T. byang chub sems dpa'i sdom pa; C. pusa jie; J. bosatsukai; K. posal kye 菩薩戒). In Sanskrit, lit. "restraints for the BODHISATTVA"; the "restraints," "precepts," or code of conduct (SAMVARA) for someone who has made the bodhisattva vow (BODHISATTVAPRAnIDHANA; PRAnIDHANA) to achieve buddhahood in order to liberate all beings from suffering. The mainstream moral codes for monastics that are recognized across all forms of Buddhism are listed in the PRATIMOKsA, which refers to rules of discipline that help adepts restrain themselves from all types of unwholesome conduct. With the rise of various groups that came to call themselves the MAHAYANA, different sets of moral codes developed. These are formulated, for example, in the BODHISATTVABHuMI and Candragomin's BodhisattvasaMvaraviMsaka, and in later Chinese apocrypha, such as the FANWANG JING. The mainstream prAtimoksa codes are set forth in the Bodhisattvabhumi as saMvarasīla, or "restraining precepts." These are the first of three types of bodhisattva morality, called the "three sets of restraints" (TRISAMVARA), which are systematized fully in Tibet in works like TSONG KHA PA's Byang chub gzhung lam. It seems that in the early MahAyAna, people publicly took the famous bodhisattva vow, promising to achieve buddhahood in order to liberate all beings. A more formal code of conduct developed later, derived from a number of sources, with categories of root infractions and secondary infractions. The bodhisattva precepts, however, could be taken equally by laypeople and monastics, men and women, and formal ceremonies for conferring the precepts are set forth in a number of MahAyAna treatises. In addition, there appear to have been ceremonies for the confession of infractions, modeled on the UPOsADHA rituals. Some of the precepts have to do with interpersonal relations, prescribing the kind of altruistic behavior that one might expect from a bodhisattva. Others are grander, such as the precept not to destroy cities, and appear to presuppose a code of conduct for kings or other important figures in society. There is also the suggestion that the bodhisattva precepts supersede the prAtimoksa precepts: one of the secondary infractions of the bodhisattva code is not to engage in killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, or senseless speech when in fact it would be beneficial to do so. The great weight given to the precept not to reject the MahAyAna as being the word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA) suggests that, throughout the history of the MahAyAna in India, there were concerns raised about the questionable origin of the MahAyAna sutras. With the rise of TANTRA, the "three restraints" (trisaMvara) of bodhisattva morality were refigured as the second of a new set of precepts, preceded by the prAtimoksa precepts and followed by the tantric vows. There was much discussion, especially in Tibetan SDOM GSUM (dom sum) literature, of the relationships among the three sets of restraints and of their compatibility with each other. ¶ Although there is much variation in the listings of bodhisattva precepts, according to one common list, the eighteen root infractions are: (1) to praise oneself and slander others out of attachment to profit or fame; (2) not to give one's wealth or the doctrine, out of miserliness, to those who suffer without protection; (3) to become enraged and condemn another, without listening to his or her apology; (4) to abandon the MahAyAna and teach a poor facsimile of its excellent doctrine; (5) to steal the wealth of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA); (6) to abandon the excellent doctrine; (7) to steal the saffron robes of a monk and beat, imprison, and or expel him from his life of renunciation, even if he has broken the moral code; (8) to commit the five deeds of immediate retribution (ANANTARYAKARMAN) i.e., patricide, matricide, killing an arhat, wounding a buddha, or causing dissent in the saMgha; (9) to hold wrong views; (10) to destroy cities and so forth; (11) to discuss emptiness (suNYATA) with sentient beings whose minds have not been trained; (12) to turn someone away from buddhahood and full enlightenment; (13) to cause someone to abandon completely the prAtimoksa precepts in order to practice the MahAyAna; (14) to believe that desire and so forth cannot be abandoned by the vehicle of the sRAVAKAs and to cause others to believe that view; (15) to claim falsely, "I have withstood the profound emptiness (sunyatA)"; (16) to impose fines on renunciates; to take donors and gifts away from the three jewels; (17) to cause meditators to give up the practice of sAMATHA; to take the resources of those on retreat and give them to reciters of texts; (18) to abandon the two types of BODHICITTA (the conventional and the ultimate). See also BODHISATTVAsĪLA.
Bon. In Tibetan, "reciter"; originally a term for a category of priest in the royal cult of pre-Buddhist Tibet. Traditional Tibetan histories present these priests as opponents of the introduction of Buddhism in Tibet during the seventh and eighth centuries. In the eleventh century, Bon emerged as fully elaborated sect of Tibetan religion, with its own buddha, its own pantheon, and its own path to liberation from rebirth. Bon should not be regarded as the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet, but rather as the leading non-Buddhist religion of Tibet, which has had a long history of mutual influence and interaction with the Buddhist sects.
recited: “Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me.”
recited ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Recite
reciter ::: n. --> One who recites; also, a book of extracts for recitation.
recite the 137th Psalm over the cup and conclude
recite ::: v. t. --> To repeat, as something already prepared, written down, committed to memory, or the like; to deliver from a written or printed document, or from recollection; to rehearse; as, to recite the words of an author, or of a deed or covenant.
To tell over; to go over in particulars; to relate; to narrate; as, to recite past events; to recite the particulars of a voyage.
To rehearse, as a lesson to an instructor.
cantillate ::: v. i. --> To chant; to recite with musical tones.
CariyApitaka. In PAli, "The Basket of Conduct"; fifteenth book of the KHUDDAKANIKAYA of the PAli SUTTAPItAKA. According to traditional accounts, the text was preached by Gotama (S. GAUTAMA) Buddha immediately after the BUDDHAVAMSA at the request of SAriputta (S. sARIPUTRA). Centuries later, the missionary MAHINDA is said to have converted thousands of Sri Lankans to Buddhism when he recited it in ANURADHAPURA. Divided into three chapters (vagga), the book contains thirty-five stories in verse of previous lives of the Buddha. These stories recount and extol the ten perfections (P. pAramī, S. PARAMITA) that Gotama developed while striving for enlightenment through many lives as a bodhisatta (S. BODHISATTVA). The stories in this collection are called cariyA ("conduct," or "act"), whence the name of the text, and in content they parallel corresponding prose narratives found in the JATAKA. The PAli tradition recognizes ten perfections as requisite for attaining buddhahood: generosity (DANA), morality (sīla, S. sĪLA), renunciation (nekkhamma, S. NAIsKRAMYA), wisdom (paNNA, S. PRAJNA), energy (viriya, S. VĪRYA), patience (khanti, S. KsANTI), truthfulness (sacca, S. SATYA), resolution (adhitthAna, S. ADHIstHANA), loving-kindness (mettA, S. MAITRĪ) and equanimity (upekkhA, S. UPEKsA). Of these ten, only seven are enumerated in this text. The first vagga is comprised of ten stories concerning the perfection of generosity. The second vagga has ten stories concerning morality. The third vagga contains fifteen stories, five of which are devoted to renunciation, six to truthfulness, two to loving-kindness, and one each to the perfections of resolution and equanimity. A commentary to the text, attributed to DHARMAPALA, is included in the PARAMATTHADĪPANĪ.
Chajang. (慈藏) (d.u.; fl. c. 590-658/alt. 608-686). Korean VINAYA master (yulsa) of the Silla dynasty. Born into the royal "true bone" (chin'gol) class of the Silla aristocracy, Chajang lost his parents at an early age and was ordained at the monastery of Wonnyongsa. Chajang traveled to China in 636 and during his sojourn on the mainland made a pilgrimage to WUTAISHAN, where he had a vision of the BODHISATTVA MANJUsRĪ. Returning to Silla Korea in 643, he is said to have brought back a set of the Buddhist canon and packed the boat on which he returned with Buddhist banners, streamers, and other ritual items. He is also claimed to have returned with treasures he had received directly from MaNjusrī, including sAKYAMUNI Buddha's own gold-studded monk's robe (K. kasa; KAsAYA) wrapped in purple silk gauze, as well as the Buddha's skull bone and finger joint. Back in Silla, Chajang began looking for the place where MaNjusrī had told him the relics should be enshrined. After a long search, he finally found the spot in 646, where he constructed a "Diamond Precept Platform" (Kŭmgang kyedan) and enshrined one portion of the Buddha's relics. This platform was the origin of the important Korean monastery of T'ONGDOSA, which became the center of vinaya practice in Korea. Chajang is also said to have established SINHŬNGSA, WoLCHoNGSA, and HWANGNYONGSA and supervised the construction of the famous nine-story wooden pagoda at Hwangnyongsa, which was completed in 645. He was also appointed the state overseer of the SAMGHA (taegukt'ong), the top ecclesiastical office in the Silla Buddhist institution. Chajang was in charge of regulations concerning the conduct of monks and nuns all over the country, as well as overseeing at a state level the repair and maintenance of temples, the correct attention to the details of Buddhist ceremonial ritual, and the proper display of Buddhist religious images. His concern to improve the discipline and decorum of Korean monks led to his emphasis on vinaya study and practice, and he did much to encourage the study and dissemination of the vinaya in Korea, including writing commentaries to the SARVASTIVADA and DHARMAGUPTAKA vinayas. Chajang also instituted the UPOsADHA rite of having monks recite the PRATIMOKsA once every fortnight on full- and new-moon days. For his efforts, Chajang was revered by later generations as a teacher of the Dharmaguptaka vinaya (known in East Asia as the "Four-Part Vinaya"; see SIFEN LÜ) and the founder of the Korean analogue to the Chinese NANSHAN LÜ ZONG of DAOXUAN. In 650, at Chajang's suggestion, the Silla court adopted the Tang Chinese calendrical system, an important step in the Sinicization of the Korean monarchy. Various works attributed to Chajang include the Amit'a kyong ŭigi ("Notes on the AMITABHASuTRA"), Sabun yul kalma sagi ("Personal Notes on the Karman Section of the Four-Part Vinaya"), and Kwanhaeng pop ("Contemplative Practice Techniques"); none of his writings are extant.
chant ::: v. t. --> To utter with a melodious voice; to sing.
To celebrate in song.
To sing or recite after the manner of a chant, or to a tune called a chant.
Song; melody.
A short and simple melody, divided into two parts by double bars, to which unmetrical psalms, etc., are sung or recited. It is the most ancient form of choral music.
Council, 1st. The term translated as "council" is SAMGĪTI, literally "recitation," the word used to describe the communal chanting of the Buddha's teaching. The term suggests that the purpose of the meeting was to recite the TRIPItAKA in order to codify the canon and remove any discrepancies concerning what was and was not to be included. The first Buddhist council is said to have been held in a cave at RAJAGṚHA shortly after the Buddha's passage into PARINIRVAnA, although its historicity has been questioned by modern scholars. There are numerous accounts of the first council and much scholarship has been devoted to their analysis. What follows draws on a number of sources to provide a general description. The accounts agree that, in the SAMGHA, there was an elderly monk named SUBHADRA, a former barber who had entered the order late in life. He always carried a certain animus against the Buddha because when Subhadra was a layman, the Buddha supposedly refused to accept a meal that he had prepared for him. After the Buddha's death, Subhadra told the distraught monks that they should instead rejoice because they could now do as they pleased, without the Buddha telling them what they could and could not do. MAHAKAsYAPA overheard this remark and was so alarmed by it that he thought it prudent to convene a meeting of five hundred ARHATs to codify and recite the rules of discipline (VINAYA) and the discourses (SuTRA) of the Buddha before they became corrupted. With the patronage of King AJATAsATRU, a meeting was called. At least one arhat, GAVAMPATI, declined to participate, deciding instead to pass into nirvAna before the council began. This led to an agreement that no one else would pass into nirvAna until after the conclusion of the council. At the time that the council was announced, ANANDA, the Buddha's personal attendant and therefore the person who had heard the most discourses of the Buddha, was not yet an arhat and would have been prevented from participating. However, on the night before the council, he fortuitously finished his practice and attained the status of arhat. At the council, MahAkAsyapa presided. He interrogated UPALI about the rules of discipline (PRATIMOKsA) of both BHIKsUs and BHIKsUnĪs. He then questioned Ananda about each of the discourses the Buddha had delivered over the course of his life, asking in each case where and on whose account the discourse had been given. In this way, the VINAYAPItAKA and the SuTRAPItAKA were established. (In many accounts, the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA is not mentioned, but in others it is said the abhidharmapitaka was recited by MahAkAsyapa or by Ananda.) Because of his extraordinary powers of memory, Ananda was said to be able to repeat sixty thousand words of the Buddha without omitting a syllable and recite fifteen thousand of his stanzas. It was at the time of his recitation that Ananda informed the council that prior to his passing the Buddha told him that after his death, the saMgha could disregard the minor rules of conduct. Since he had neglected to ask the Buddha what the minor rules were, however, it was decided that all the rules would be maintained. Ananda was then chastised for (1) not asking what the minor rules were, (2) stepping on the Buddha's robe while he was sewing it, (3) allowing the tears of women to fall on the Buddha's corpse, (4) not asking the Buddha to live for an eon (KALPA) or until the end of the eon although the Buddha strongly hinted that he could do so (see CAPALACAITYA), and (5) urging the Buddha to allow women to enter the order. (There are several versions of this list, with some including among the infractions that Ananda allowed women to see the Buddha's naked body.) The entire vinayapitaka and sutrapitaka was then recited, which is said to have required seven months. According to several accounts, after the recitation had concluded, a group of five hundred monks returned from the south, led by a monk named PurAna. When he was asked to approve of the dharma and vinaya that had been codified by the council, he declined, saying that he preferred to remember and retain what he had heard directly from the mouth of the Buddha rather than what had been chanted by the elders. PurAna also disputed eight points of the vinaya concerning the proper storage and consumption of food. This incident, whether or not it has any historical basis, suggests that disagreements about the contents of the Buddha's teaching began to arise shortly after his death.
Council, 2nd. The second council was held at VAIsALĪ, some one hundred years after the Buddha's death. It is said that the monk YAsAS was traveling in VaisAlī when he observed the monks from the city, identified as VṚJIPUTRAKAs, receiving alms in the form of gold and silver directly from the laity, in violation of the disciplinary prohibition against monks' handling gold and silver. He also found that the monks had identified ten points in the VINAYA that they considered were sufficiently minor to be ignored, despite the decision at the first council (see COUNCIL, FIRST) not to disregard any of the minor precepts. The ten violations in question were: (1) carrying salt in an animal horn; (2) eating when the shadow of the sundial is two fingerbreadths past noon; (3) after eating, traveling to another village on the same day to eat another meal; (4) holding several assemblies within the same boundary (SĪMA) during the same fortnight observance; (5) making a monastic decision with an incomplete assembly and subsequently receiving the approval of the absent monks; (6) citing precedent as a justification for violating monastic procedures; (7) drinking milk whey after mealtime; (8) drinking unfermented wine; (9) using mats with fringe; and (10) accepting gold and silver. Yasas informed the monks that these were indeed violations of the disciplinary code, at which point the monks are said to have offered him a share of the gold and silver they had collected; when he refused, they expelled him from the order. Yasas sought support of several respected monks in the west, including sAnAKAVASIN and REVATA, and together with other monks, they travelled together to VaisAlī. Once there, Revata went to SarvagAmin, the senior-most monk in the order, who was said to have been a disciple of ANANDA. However, when Revata questioned him about the ten points, the elder monk refused to discuss them in private. At Revata's suggestion, a jury of eight monks was appointed, with four representatives from each party. Revata was selected as one of four from the party declaring the ten practices to be violations, and it was Revata who publicly put the questions to SarvagAmin. In each case, he said that the practice in question was a violation of the vinaya. Seven hundred monks then gathered to recite the vinaya. Those who did not accept the decision of the council held their own convocation, which they called the MAHASAMGHIKA, or "Great Assembly." This event is sometimes referred to as "the great schism." The second council is generally accepted as a historical event. ¶ Some accounts make MAHADEVA a participant at the second council, which is said to have resulted in the schism of the SAMGHA into the conservative STHAVIRANIKAYA and the more liberal MahAsAMghika. However, the chief points of controversy that led to the convening of the council seem not to have been MahAdeva's five theses, but rather these ten relatively minor rules of monastic discipline. If MahAdeva was a historical figure, it is more likely that he was involved in a later schism that occurred within the MahAsAMghika, as a result of which the followers of MahAdeva formed the CAITYA sect. See also SAMGĪTI.
Council, 4th. Two different events are referred to as the fourth council. According to the account of the Chinese pilgrim XUANZANG, four hundred years after the Buddha's death, King KANIsKA called an assembly of five hundred ARHATs, either in GANDHARA or KASHMIR, to compile the canon once again. Under the direction of the monk VASUMITRA, the SARVASTIVADA monks compiled the VINAYA and composed the ABHIDHARMAMAHAVIBHAsA. This council is not now considered to have been a historical event and the MahAvibhAsA was likely composed long after the reign of Kaniska. The second event that is known as the fourth council took place in Sri Lanka under King VAttAGAMAnI ABHAYA in 25 BCE. Up until this time the canon (P. tipitaka, S. TRIPItAKA) had been maintained entirely orally, with different monastic families of monks responsible for its recitation (see DHARMABHAnAKA). Fearing that famine and social discord might lead to the death of those monks and hence the loss of the canon, the king convened a council at the MAHAVIHARA in the capital of ANURADHAPURA, where the canon was recited by five hundred monks and then inscribed onto palm leaves. According to tradition this was the first time that the canon was committed to writing. See also SAMGĪTI.
Council, 5th. What Burmese Buddhism regards as the fifth council was convened in 1868, when King MINDON MIN summoned 2,400 learned monks from throughout the kingdom to Mandalay to revise and recite the PAli tipitaka. The recitation of the canon lasted over a period of seven months. In 1871, the revised Burmese canon was inscribed in Burmese script on 729 stone slabs that were erected, each in its own shrine, in concentric rings around the massive Kuthodaw Pagoda (Pagoda of Great Merit). The entire complex occupies fourteen acres and is situated to the northeast of the fortified city at the base of Mandalay Hill. Nearby is the Sandamuni Pagoda, constructed along a similar plan; it enshrines 1,171 slabs on which are inscribed the PAli commentaries.
Council, 6th. What the THERAVADA school calls the sixth council was held in Rangoon from 1954 to 1956, commemorating the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's passage into PARINIRVAnA. The convocation was sponsored by the Burmese government under Prime Minister U Nu. A special cave was constructed for the purpose, since the first council was also said to have been held in a cave. At this event, attended by some two thousand five hundred monks from eight TheravAda countries, the PAli canon was edited and recited, with discrepancies among versions in the various Southeast Asian scripts noted and corrected. MAHASI SAYADAW was appointed to the dual position of pucchaka (questioner) and osana (editor). See also SAMGĪTI.
Cundī. (T. Skul byed ma; C. Zhunti; J. Juntei; K. Chunje 准提). In Sanskrit, the name Cundī (with many orthographic variations) probably connotes a prostitute or other woman of low caste but specifically denotes a prominent local ogress (YAKsInĪ), whose divinized form becomes the subject of an important Buddhist cult starting in the eighth century. Her worship began in the Bengal and Orissa regions of the Indian subcontinent, where she became the patron goddess of the PAla dynasty, and soon spread throughout India, and into Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and Tibet, eventually making its way to East Asia. Cundī was originally an independent focus of cultic worship, who only later (as in the Japanese SHINGONSHu) was incorporated into such broader cultic practices as those focused on the "womb MAndALA" (see TAIZoKAI). Several scriptures related to her cult were translated into Chinese starting in the early eighth century, and she lends her name to both a MUDRA as well as an influential DHARAnĪ: namaḥ saptAnAM samyaksaMbuddhakotīnAM tadyathA: oM cale cule cunde svAhA. The dhAranī attributed to Cundī is said to convey infinite power because it is in continuous recitation by myriads of buddhas; hence, an adept who participates in this ongoing recitation will accrue manifold benefits and purify himself from unwholesome actions. The efficacy of the dhAranī is said to be particularly pronounced when it is recited before an image of Cundī while the accompanying Cundī mudrA is also being performed. This dhAranī also gives Cundī her common epithet of "Goddess of the Seventy Million [Buddhas]," which is sometimes mistakenly interpreted (based on a misreading of the Chinese) as the "Mother of the Seventy Million Buddhas." The texts also provide elaborate directions on how to portray her and paint her image. In Cundī's most common depiction, she has eighteen arms (each holding specific implements) and is sitting atop a lotus flower (PADMA) while being worshipped by two ophidian deities.
Modeh Ani is the name of a thanksgiving prayer recited upon awakening each morning.
declaim ::: v. i. --> To speak rhetorically; to make a formal speech or oration; to harangue; specifically, to recite a speech, poem, etc., in public as a rhetorical exercise; to practice public speaking; as, the students declaim twice a week.
To speak for rhetorical display; to speak pompously, noisily, or theatrically; to make an empty speech; to rehearse trite arguments in debate; to rant.
dharmabhānaka. (P. dhammabhānaka; T. chos smra ba; C. shuofashi; J. sepposhi; K. solbopsa 法師). In Sanskrit, "reciter of the dharma"; a term used to describe a monastic vocation. Before the Buddhist canon was committed to writing, perhaps four hundred years after the Buddha's death, the canon was transmitted orally within monastic families of reciters. In the Pāli tradition, "reciters" were typically assigned to memorize one specific subcategory of the canon, i.e., Mahjjhimabhānaka ("reciters of the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA"), Jātakabhānaka ("reciters of the JĀTAKA"), etc. The term also occurs in the MAHĀYĀNA sutras to describe a teacher of the Mahāyāna; indeed, such teachers may have played an important role in the dissemination of the Mahāyāna sutras.
Dharmaksema. (C. Tanwuchen; J. Donmusen; K. Tammuch'am 曇無讖) (385-433 CE). Indian Buddhist monk who was an early translator of Buddhist materials into Chinese. A scion of a brāhmana family from India, Dharmaksema became at the age of six a disciple of Dharmayasas (C. Damoyeshe; J. Donmayasha) (d.u.), an ABHIDHARMA specialist who later traveled to China c. 397-401 and translated the sāriputrābhidharmasāstra. Possessed of both eloquence and intelligence, Dharmaksema was broadly learned in both monastic and secular affairs and was well versed in mainstream Buddhist texts. After he met a meditation monk named "White Head" and had a fiery debate with him, Dharmaksema recognized his superior expertise and ended up studying with him. The monk transmitted to him a text of the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA written on bark, which prompted Dharmaksema to embrace the MAHĀYĀNA. Once he reached the age of twenty, Dharmaksema was able to recite over two million words of Buddhist texts. He was also so skilled in casting spells that he earned the sobriquet "Great Divine Spell Master" (C. Dashenzhou shi). Carrying with him the first part of the Mahāparinirvānasutra that he received from "White Head," he left India and arrived in the KUCHA kingdom in Central Asia. As the people of Kucha mostly studied HĪNAYĀNA and did not accept the Mahāyāna teachings, Dharmaksema then moved to China and lived in the western outpost of DUNHUANG for several years. Juqu Mengxun, the non-Chinese ruler of the Northern Liang dynasty (397-439 CE), eventually brought Dharmaksema to his capital. After studying the Chinese language for three years and learning how to translate Sanskrit texts orally into Chinese, Dharmaksema engaged there in a series of translation projects under Juqu Mengxun's patronage. With the assistance of Chinese monks, such as Daolang and Huigao, Dharmaksema produced a number of influential Chinese translations, including the Dabanniepan jing (S. Mahāparinirvānasutra; in forty rolls), the longest recension of the sutra extant in any language; the Jinguangming jing ("Sutra of Golden Light"; S. SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA; in four rolls); and the Pusa dichi jing (S. BODHISATTVABHuMISuTRA; in ten rolls). He is also said to have made the first Chinese translation of the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA (C. Ru Lengqie jing), but his rendering had dropped out of circulation at least by 730 CE, when the Tang Buddhist cataloguer ZHISHENG (700-786 CE) compiled the KAIYUAN SHIJIAO LU. The Northern Wei ruler Tuoba Tao, a rival of Juqu Mengxun's, admired Dharmaksema's esoteric expertise and requested that the Northern Liang ruler send the Indian monk to his country. Fearing that his rival might seek to employ Dharmaksema's esoteric expertise against him, Juqu Mengxun had the monk assassinated at the age of forty-nine. Dharmaksema's translation of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese had a significant impact on Chinese Buddhism; in particular, the doctrine that all beings have the buddha-nature (FOXING), a teaching appearing in Dharmaksema's translation of the Mahāparinirvānasutra, exerted tremendous influence on the development of Chinese Buddhist thought.
dharmasarīra. (T. chos sku'i ring bsrel; C. fa[shen] sheli; J. hosshinshari/hoshari; K. pop[sin] sari 法[身]舍利). In Sanskrit, "relics of the dharma [body]"; the Buddha's incorporeal relics, viz., his scriptures, verses, and doctrines, or the immutable truth "embodied" therein. "Relics" (sARĪRA) literally means "body," but in Buddhist usage comes to refer most often to the sacred physical relics found in the cremated remains of the Buddha or of an eminent monk. In contrast to these physical relics remaining after cremation, "the relics of the dharma [body]" refers to the corpus of Buddhist literature and/or the DHARMAVINAYA embodied therein that were left behind by the Buddha as his incorporeal legacy; therefore they can be worshiped as sarīra. As the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), for example, notes, "Wherever this sutra is spoken, read, recited, written out, or stored, one should build a STuPA of the seven jewels (RATNA), making it high, broad, and adorned. It is not necessary to place sarīra in it. Why is this? Within it already is the complete body of the TATHĀGATA. To this stupa one should make offerings of all kinds of flowers, incenses, beads, silk canopies, banners, vocal and instrumental music, honoring and praising it."
Dīghanikāya. In Pāli, "Collection of Long Discourses"; the first division of the Pāli SUTTAPItAKA. It is comprised of thirty-four lengthy suttas (SuTRA) arranged rather arbitrarily into three major sections: "morality" (sīlakkhanda), comprising suttas 1-14; "great division" (mahāvagga), comprising suttas 14-23; and the "charlatan" (pātikavagga), comprising suttas 24-34. Among the suttas contained in the Dīghanikāya are such renowned and influential scriptures as the AGGANNASUTTA, MAHĀPARINIBBĀNASUTTA, SĀMANNAPHALASUTTA, and the SATIPAttHĀNASUTTA. The Pāli tradition asserts that the texts of the Dīghanikāya were first recited orally during the first Buddhist council (SAMGĪTI; see COUNCIL, FIRST) following the Buddha's death and were officially transcribed into written form in Sri Lanka during the reign of King VAttAGĀMAnI ABHAYA in the first century BCE. An analogous recension of the "Long Discourses" appears in the Sanskrit DĪRGHĀGAMA (all but three of its thirty sutras have their equivalents in Pāli). Fragments of the Sanskrit recension, which is associated with the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school or its MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA offshoot, were rediscovered in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Before that rediscovery, only a Chinese translation of the Dīrghāgama survived, which was attributed to the DHARMAGUPTAKA school; the translation was finished in 413 CE. Although all three recensions of this collection have a tripartite structure, only the first section of the Pāli, the sīlakkhanda, has a counterpart in the Sarvāstivāda and Dharmaguptaka recensions. The Dīghanikāya appears in the Pali Text Society's English translation series as Dialogues of the Buddha.
duskṛta. (P. dukkata; T. nyes byas; C. ezuo/tujiluo; J. akusa/tokira; K. akchak/tolgilla 惡作/突吉羅). In Sanskrit, "wrongdoing"; a general category for the least serious of ecclesiastical offenses; for this reason, the term is also rendered in Chinese as "minor misdeed" (xiaoguo) or "light fault" (qingguo). In some recensions of the VINAYA, such as the Pāli, wrongdoings are treated as a category supplementary to the eight general classifications of rules and regulations appearing in the monastic code of conduct (PRĀTIMOKsA). The eight are: (1) PĀRĀJIKA ("defeat," entailing expulsion from the order in some vinaya recensions); (2) SAMGHĀVAsEsA (requiring a formal meeting and temporary suspension from the order); (3) ANIYATA (undetermined or indefinite offenses); (4) NAIḤSARGIKAPĀYATTIKA (offenses entailing expiation and forfeiture); (5) PĀYATTIKA (offenses entailing confession and forfeiture); (6) PRATIDEsANĪYA (offenses that are to be publicly acknowledged); (7) sAIKsADHARMA (minor rules of training); and (8) ADHIKARAnA (rules for settling disputes). Other such supplementary categories include STHuLĀTYAYA (various grave, but unconsummated offenses), and DURBHĀsITA (mischievous talk). In such treatments, the duskṛta category typically is said to entail deliberate disobeying of any of the saiksadharma rules, which involve a whole range of possible transgressions of monastic decorum and public conduct, such as improperly wearing one's robes, misconduct during alms round (PIndAPĀTA), or incorrect toilet habits. In addition, failed attempts to break any of rules in the relatively minor categories of the pāyattika, or pratidesanīya are a duskṛta, while failed attempts to break the much more serious pārājika and saMghāvasesa rules are both a duskṛta and a sthulātyaya. Finally, various offenses that are not specifically treated in a formal rule in the prātimoksa may also be treated as a duskṛta, e.g., striking a layperson, which is not specifically enjoined in the prātimoksa, although striking a monk is. Other vinayas, however, such as the DHARMAGUPTAKA VINAYA (C. Sifen lü), list the duskṛta offenses as one of the five categories of precepts, along with pārājika, saMghāvasesa, pāyattika, and pratidesanīya; alternatively, the Dharmaguptaka vinaya also lists seven categories of precepts, which include the preceding five categories, plus stulātyaya and durbhāsita. In such categorizations, the duskṛta essentially replace the saiksadharma rules of other vinayas. These duskṛta offenses are typically said to be expiated through confession; more specifically, the Dharmaguptaka vinaya stipulates that a deliberate wrongdoing should be confessed to a single monk or nun, while an accidental case of wrongdoing may simply be repented in the mind of the offender. Similarly, the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA includes the 112 duskṛta in the 253 PRĀTIMOKsA rules recited during the UPOsADHA confession. In MAHĀYĀNA discussions of bodhisattva precepts (according to ASAnGA and others, these are a second set of precepts that supplement the prātimoksa rules but do not contradict them), all offenses except the eighteen involving defeat (pārājika) [alt. mulāpatti, T. rtsa ltung] are classified as "minor offenses" (C. qing gouzui; T. nyas byas), i.e., duskṛta. There are, for instance, forty-two types of duskṛta discussed in the BODHISATTVABHuMI (Pusa dichi jing), forty-eight in the FANWANG JING, and fifty in the Pusa shanjie jing. In tantric Buddhism, gross infractions (sthula) are any form of behavior that does not constitute defeat (mulāpatti), but are a weaker form of the infraction.
epilogue ::: n. --> A speech or short poem addressed to the spectators and recited by one of the actors, after the conclusion of the play.
The closing part of a discourse, in which the principal matters are recapitulated; a conclusion.
evaM mayā srutam. (P. evaM me sutaM; T. 'di skad bdag gis thos pa; C. rushi wowen; J. nyozegamon; K. yosi amun 如是我聞). In Sanskrit, "thus have I heard," the stock phrase that begins most SuTRAs, certifying that the teachings about to be recounted were heard from the mouth of the Buddha (or, in some cases, were spoken with his sanction by insightful disciples). The "I" in the phrase is generally assumed to refer to the Buddha's attendant ĀNANDA, who recited the SuTRAPItAKA at the first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST) following the Buddha's PARINIRVĀnA. In MAHĀYĀNA scholastic literature, however, where the argument is made that the Buddha taught many sutras that were not heard by Ānanda, it is sometimes advocated that the "I" instead refers to a particular BODHISATTVA who serves as the interlocutor for the scripture, such as MANJUsRĪ . There is also some debate within scholarly circles, following the commentarial interpretations of certain Buddhist traditions, whether this stock opening should also include the phrase "at one time" (ekasmin samaye) that usually follows, viz., "thus I have heard at one time" or "thus I once heard" (evaM mayā srutaM ekasmin samaye). See also ER XU; cf. GUHYASAMĀJATANTRA.
fangsheng hui. (J. hojoe; K. pangsaeng hoe 放生會). In Chinese, "ceremony for releasing living creatures," a Buddhist ceremony held throughout East Asian Buddhism, usually on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar or the third day of the third month. The practice of releasing animals is claimed to have been initially established as a formal ceremony by TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597), who followed the account presented in the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA (C. Jinguangming jing; "Sutra of Golden Light"), which describes the practice of releasing captured animals (FANGSHENG), especially fish. The Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra tells a story about Jalavāhana (sākyamuni Buddha in an earlier incarnation), who saved ten thousand fish by bringing water to a dried-up pond. He then recited for them the ten epithets of the buddha Ratnasikhin/Ratnabhava, since he had been told that any creatures who heard that buddha's name at the time their deaths would be reborn in the heavens; he continued on to teach them the doctrine of conditioned origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA). In 575, Zhiyi is said to have lamented the fact that local folk made their living by catching fish, so he built a "pond where creatures could be released" (fangsheng chi) and preached to the freed fish the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra. The fangsheng ceremony subsequently became one of the important rituals within the TIANTAI ZONG, even though there is no extant record of its performance until it was revived by Luoxi Yiji (919-987), the fifteenth head of the Tiantai school. Public ceremonies of releasing animals were also held at court, particularly on the Buddha's Birthday, and lay groups were organized at the local level to release animals. The Ming-dynasty monk YUNQI ZHUHONG's (1535-1615) Fangsheng yi ("Rite for Releasing Living Creatures") is considered one of the standard sources for the fangsheng ritual. This ritual entails bestowing the three refuges (TRIsARAnA) on the creatures to be released, reciting the ten epithets of the buddha Ratnasikhin/Ratnabhava, teaching the creatures the twelvefold chain of dependent origination (a difficult doctrine even for bipeds), and concluding with a repentance rite for the animals' transgressions.
fangsheng. (T. srog blu/tshe thar; J. hojo; K. pangsaeng 放生). In Chinese, "releasing living creatures," referring to the practice of buying captured animals, such as fish, turtles, or birds, and then setting them free; the focus of a ritual popular in East Asian Buddhism, the "ceremony of releasing living creatures" (FANGSHENG HUI). The Buddhist tradition asserts that merit (PUnYA) is produced by both actively pursuing wholesome actions (KUsALA-KARMAPATHA) as well as refraining from unwholesome actions (AKUsALA-KARMAPATHA); fangsheng is regarded as an enhancement of both types of action, by furthering the first lay precept (sĪLA) that forbids the unsalutary action of killing, as well as the MAHĀYĀNA precept that encourages the salutary act of vegetarianism. ¶ The two representative scriptures on fangsheng are the FANWANG JING ("Book of Brahmā's Net") and the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA (C. Jinguangming jing; "Sutra of Golden Light"), the former providing the doctrinal basis for the practice of fangsheng, the latter a protypical example of a fangsheng hui. The Fanwang jing says that because all sentient beings in the six destinies (sAdGATI; see also GATI) have at some time or other during the vastness of SAMSĀRA been one's parents, a person should always strive to rescue creatures from people who would kill them in order to save them from their torment. The Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra tells a story about Jalavāhana (sĀKYAMUNI Buddha in an earlier life), who saved ten thousand fish who were dying in a dried up pond by bringing water to refill it. He then recited for them the ten epithets of the buddha Ratnasikhin/Ratnabhava, since he had been told that any creatures who heard that Buddha's name at the time of their deaths would be reborn in the heavens. The fish were reborn as divinities in the TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven, who then rained jewels down on the earth.¶ In China, the Buddhist custom of vegetarianism had started to pervade the culture by the Qi (479-501) and Liang (502-556) dynasties, a custom that encouraged the freeing of animals. In 619, an imperial decree prohibited fishing, hunting, and the slaughter of animals during the first, fifth, and ninth months of the year. A decree of 759 established eighty-one ponds for the release and protection of fish. Fangsheng appears to have been practiced not only by individual laypeople and monks. There is a record of the Liang dynasty monk Huiji (456-515) who practiced mendicancy so he could buy and release captured animals. TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597), the founder of the TIANTAI ZONG, is known to have performed a formal ceremony for releasing animals in 575. Zhiyi lamented the fact that local folk made their living by catching fish, so he built a "pond where creatures could be released" (fangsheng chi) and preached to the freed fish the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra. Zhiyi thus established the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra as the scriptural authority for fangsheng. Following Zhiyi, the fangsheng ceremony subsequently became one of the important rituals used within the Tiantai school. Ciyun Zunshi (964-1032) and SIMING ZHILI (960-1028), both Tiantai monks during the Song dynasty, were ardent advocates of fangsheng, who established ponds for releasing creatures and performed the ceremony of releasing creatures, especially in conjunction with celebrations of the Buddha's birthday. In the CHAN school, YONGMING YANSHOU (904-975) and YUNQI ZHUHONG (1535-1615) were among the most enthusiastic proponents of fangsheng. Zhuhong wrote works regarding the practice of vegetarianism, including the Shirou ("On Meat-Eating") and the Shasheng feirensuowei ("Killing Is Not What Humans Are Supposed To Do"), and also composed tracts on the ritual practice of fangsheng, such as the Fangsheng yi ("Rite for Releasing Living Creatures") and the Jiesha fangsheng wen ("Text on Prohibiting Killing and Releasing Living Creatures"). His Fangsheng yi is still considered today one of the standard sources for the Fangsheng ritual. Eventually, almost every large monastery in China had a pool for releasing fish and pens for the care of livestock that had been rescued from the butcher. Because these animals had been given Buddhist precepts, they were encouraged to observe them, with males and females segregated and carnivorous fish kept separately. Birds, turtles, and fish were more popular for release than domesticated animals because they required no further assistance. The pious who delivered cows and pigs to the monastery, however, were required to contribute toward their sustenance. ¶ The practice was popular in other Buddhist countries. In medieval Japan the imperial government would order the capture of three times the number of fish needed to be released at a ceremony in order that the requisite number-often from one to three thousand-would still be alive by the time the ceremony took place. In such cases, the practice of releasing animals resulted in the unfortunate death of many before they could be liberated. Among Tibetan Buddhists, the killing of animals is normatively deplored, and protecting the life of even the tiniest insect (srog skyob) is a common practice; in the LHA SA region, a small Muslim community traditionally performed the task of killing and butchering animals; farmers and nomads butcher some of their animals each year. Vegetarianism (sha med) is admired, but not widespread in Tibet, except during the first two weeks of the fourth Tibetan month SA GA ZLA BA when, it is believed, the results of wholesome actions increase one hundred thousand times. Buying an animal destined for slaughter to protect one's own life, or more commonly to protect the life of an important religious figure, is also common; that practice is known as tshe thar, lit., "liberating life" in Tibetan.
fang yankou. (S. pretamukhāgnivālāyasarakāra; J. hoenko; K. pang yomgu 放焰口). In Chinese, "releasing the burning mouths," Chinese esoteric Buddhist ritual for those dead who have been reborn as hungry ghosts (PRETA). The "burning mouths" refers specifically to hungry ghosts, whose tiny mouths and narrow gullets leave them congenitally incapable of filling their distended bellies; even worse, as they try to feed themselves such tiny morsels, the tidbits turn into fire, ash, and burning iron in their mouths. The ritual is performed by monks during the ULLAMBANA festival for the dead or at the request of laypeople on behalf of their ancestors. The ritual typically takes five hours to complete and is always held in the evening when hungry ghosts can more easily travel from their realm of existence to attend. During the performance, the monks wear red or golden hats in the shape of a five-pointed crown, which symbolizes the five buddhas (S. PANCATATHĀGATA). At first, the five buddhas and other divinities are invited and offered "sweet dew" (C. ganlu; S. AMṚTA), viz., water consecrated through the recitation of a MANTRA. After summoning all the inhabitants of the six realms of existence (sAdGATI), the hungry ghosts are then released and feted; purged of their afflictions (KLEsA), they then pay homage to the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) and make a vow to become BODHISATTVAs. Finally, after being taught the Buddhist teachings, they are sent on their way to the PURE LAND. The ritual is accompanied by such features as ringing hand bells, chanting mantras, and performing MUDRĀ in order symbolically to open both the gates of the hells and the throats of the hungry ghosts and to remove their karmic obstructions (KARMĀVARAnA). The ritual is supposed to have been created in response to a nightmare of the Buddha's attendant ĀNANDA: after dreaming one night about the horrible plight of the hungry ghosts, Ānanda asked the Buddha to help beings avoid such a baleful rebirth and to rescue all the current residents of that bourne. The Buddha then recited DHĀRAnĪ on all their behalves. The Jiuba yankou egui tuoluoni jing (S. Pretamukhāgnivālāyasarakāradhāranī; T. Yi dwags kha la me 'bar ma la skyabs mdzad pa'i gzungs, "Dhāranī-Sutra for Liberating the Burning Mouth Hungry Ghosts"), translated by AMOGHAVAJRA during the eighth century, includes the earliest version of the ritual. The fangyan kou is still performed today within the Chinese Buddhist community, especially in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
forecited ::: a. --> Cited or quoted before or above.
forerecited ::: a. --> Named or recited before.
gaudy ::: superl. --> Ostentatiously fine; showy; gay, but tawdry or meretricious.
Gay; merry; festal. ::: n. --> One of the large beads in the rosary at which the paternoster is recited.
gayatri mantra. ::: a sacred Sanskrit mantra or hymn from the Rigveda invoking the solar powers of evolution and enlightenment, recited daily by hindus of the three upper castes for the unfoldment of the intellectual powers leading to enlightenment
gences, prayers, and paid masses. Jews have their Yiskor, which is a prayer for the repose of the dead and is recited
gestour ::: n. --> A reciter of gests or legendary tales; a story-teller.
ghantā. (T. dril bu; C. jianzhi; J. kenchi; K. konch'i 犍稚). In Sanskrit, "gong"; a resonant instrument used in Buddhist monasteries to announce the time of events, or to assemble the congregation. According to such texts as the MAHĪsĀSAKA VINAYA, ghantās are to be sounded when it is time to recite SuTRAs and to assemble SAMGHA members for meals and other activities, or to announce the time of the UPOsADHA observance. Ghanthās are also ritual bells used in tantric liturgy. When used in conjunction with the VAJRA, the ghantā is said to represent wisdom (PRAJNĀ), while the vajra represents method (UPĀYA).
gita dhyanam. :::nine verses that are recited before reading the Bhagavad Gita; these verses offer salutations to a variety of sacred scriptures, figures, and entities, characterise the relationship of the Bhagavad Gita to the
Gṛdhrakutaparvata. (P. Gijjhakutapabbata; T. Bya rgod phung po'i ri; C. Lingjiushan; J. Ryojusen; K. Yongch'uksan [alt. Yongch'wisan/Yongch'usan] 靈鷲山). In Sanskrit, "Vulture Peak," one of the five hills surrounding the city of RĀJAGṚHA, a favored site of GAUTAMA Buddha and several of his most important disciples in mainstream Buddhist materials and the site where the Buddha is said to have delivered many renowned sutras in the NIKĀYAs and ĀGAMAs; in the MAHĀYĀNA, Gṛdhrakuta is also the location where sĀKYAMUNI Buddha is purported to have preached such important Mahāyāna scriptures as the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") and the perfection of wisdom sutras (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ). The hill was so named either because it was shaped like a vulture's beak or a flock of vultures, or because vultures roosted there. In another legend, the peak is said to have received its name when, in an attempt to distract ĀNANDA from his meditation, the demon MĀRA turned himself into a frightening vulture; Ānanda, however, was unswayed by the provocation and eventually became enlightened. In one of the most famous episodes in the life of the Buddha, his evil cousin DEVADATTA, in attempting to kill the Buddha, instead wounded him when he hurled a boulder down on him from the hill, cutting his toe; for this and other "acts that bring immediate retribution" (ĀNANTARYAKARMAN), Devadatta fell into AVĪCI hell. Because many important Mahāyāna sermons are said to have been spoken on the peak, some schools-specifically the Japanese NICHIRENSHu-believe that the mountain itself is a PURE LAND. Other sources state that because of the sutras set forth there, the peak has become a STuPA, and like the Buddha's seat (VAJRĀSANA) in BODHGAYĀ, it will not be destroyed by fire at the end of the KALPA. Although beings in the intermediate state (ANTARĀBHAVA) are said to be able to pass through mountains, they are not able to pass through Vulture Peak. The first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST), in which a group of five hundred ARHATS met to recite the Buddha's teaching after his death, is said to have been held in a cave on Vulture Peak.
guidance for mankind as given to the Prophet Muhammad. From the Arabic root q-r-'meaning to read, recite; deliver, transmit, convey, proclaim. (in some texts as Koran or Qur'an)
Haftorah ::: (Heb. Parting) Selected section from the biblical books of the Prophets (Nevi'im) which is traditionally recited after the Torah reading on the Sabbath or on a festival. The Haftorah is read to a different tune than the Torah and is usually thematically related to the Torah reading.
Haneirot Halalu (&
Honcho kosoden. (本朝高僧伝). In Japanese, "Biographies of Eminent Clerics of Japan"; a late Japanese biographic collection, written by the RINZAISHu ZEN monk Mangen Shiban (1626-1710) in 1702, in a total of seventy-five rolls. The Honcho kosoden includes the biographies of 1,662 Japanese priests affiliated with a variety of Buddhist sects (except, prominently, the JoDO SHINSHu and NICHIRENSHu) from the sixth century onward. Unlike Shiban's 1678 ENPo DENToROKU, which contains over one thousand biographies of only Zen clerics and lay practitioners, the Honcho kosoden also discusses clerics from other schools of Japanese Buddhism. The biographies are divided into ten general categories: founders, exegetes, meditators, thaumaturges, VINAYA specialists, propagators, ascetics, pilgrims, scriptural reciters, and others. As the most comprehensive and voluminous Japanese collection of biographies of eminent clerics, the text is an indispensable work for research into the lineage histories of many of the most important schools of Japanese Buddhism. In 1867, the SHINGONSHu monk Hosokawa Dokai (1816-1876) compiled a supplement to this collection, titled the Zoku Nippon kosoden ("Supplement to the Eminent Clerics of Japan"), which including biographies of over two hundred clerics of the premodern period, in a total of eleven rolls.
honmon no daimoku. (本門の題目). In Japanese, lit. "DAIMOKU of the essential teaching"; term used specifically in the NICHIREN and associated schools of Japanese Buddhism to refer to the essential teaching epitomized in the title of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). The title of the sutra is presumed to summarize the gist of the entire scripture and it is recited in its Japanese pronunciation (see NAM MYoHoRENGEKYo) as a principal religious practice of the Nichiren and SoKA GAKKAI schools. Recitation of the title of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra was advocated as one of the "three great esoteric laws" (SANDAIHIHo) by the Japanese reformer NICHIREN (1222-1282) and was said to exemplify mastery of wisdom (PRAJNĀ) in the three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ).
Hota: The priest who recites the Rig-veda in a sacrifice.
Huineng. (J. Eno; K. Hyenŭng 慧能) (638-713). Chinese Chan master and reputed sixth patriarch (LIUZU) of the CHAN ZONG. While little is known of the historical figure, the legendary Huineng of the LIUZU TAN JING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch") is an ubiquitous figure in Chan literature. According to his hagiography, Huineng was born in Xinzhou (present-day Guangdong province). As a youth, he cared for his poor mother by gathering and selling firewood. One day at the market he heard someone reciting the famous VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra") and immediately decided to enter the monastery. Huineng subsequently visited HONGREN, the fifth Chan patriarch, on East Mountain in Qizhou (present-day Hubei province). After spending eight years in the threshing room, the illiterate Huineng heard a monk reciting a verse that had just been posted on a wall of the monastery, a verse written secretly by Hongren's senior disciple, SHENXIU: "The body is the BODHI TREE, / The mind is like a bright mirror's stand. / Be always diligent in polishing it, / Do not let any dust alight." Immediately recognizing that the writer's understanding was deficient, Huineng in response composed a verse reply, which he asked a colleague to write down for him: "BODHI fundamentally has no tree, / The bright mirror also has no stand. / Fundamentally there is not a single thing, / Where could any dust alight?" After reading the verse the next day, Hongren secretly called Huineng to his room in the middle of the night and recited a line from the "Diamond Sutra," which prompted in Huineng a great awakening. Hongren then secretly transmitted the robe and bowl of Chan's founder and first patriarch, BODHIDHARMA, to Huineng, making him the sixth (and ultimately last) patriarch of the Chan school; but he ordered his successor to go into hiding, lest he be harmed by followers of Shenxiu. Huineng then fled south. In 677, he received the full monastic precepts from the dharma master Yinzong (d.u.) at the monastery of Faxingsi in Nanhai (present-day Guangdong province). The next year, Huineng relocated to the monastery of Baolinsi on CAOXISHAN, the mountain that remains forever associated with him, where he attracted many students and followers. In 815, Emperor Xianzong (r. 805-820) bestowed upon him the posthumous title Chan master Dajian (Great Speculum). The monks QINGYUAN XINGSI, NANYUE HUAIRANG, HEZE SHENHUI, and YONGJIA XUANJUE are said to have been Huineng's preeminent disciples. Huineng is claimed to have been the founder of the so-called "Southern school" (NAN ZONG) of Chan, and to have instructed his students in the "sudden teachings" (DUNJIAO), the explication of which prompted much of the Chan school's subsequent soteriological developments and intrasectarian polemics. Although we have little historical evidence about either Huineng the person or his immediate disciples, all the various strands of the mature Chan tradition retrospectively trace their pedigrees back to him, making the legend of the sixth patriarch one of the most influential in the development of the Chan school.
improvise ::: v. t. --> To compose, recite, or sing extemporaneously, especially in verse; to extemporize; also, to play upon an instrument, or to act, extemporaneously.
To bring about, arrange, or make, on a sudden, or without previous preparation.
To invent, or provide, offhand, or on the spur of the moment; as, he improvised a hammer out of a stone.
improvvisatore ::: n. --> One who composes and sings or recites rhymes and short poems extemporaneously.
intones ::: speaks or recites in a singing voice, esp. in monotone; chants. intoning.
intone ::: v. t. --> To utter with a musical or prolonged note or tone; to chant; as, to intone the church service. ::: v. i. --> To utter a prolonged tone or a deep, protracted sound; to speak or recite in a measured, sonorous manner; to intonate.
invocant is advised to recite, at the time of the
invocant should recite a versicle from Deutero¬
is advised (for best results) to recite a versicle from
japamālā. (T. bzlas brjod kyi 'phreng ba; C. shuzhu/nianzhu; J. juzu/nenju; K. suju/yomju 數珠/念珠). In Sanskrit and Pāli, lit. "garland for recitation," thus "prayer beads" or "rosary"; a string of beads held usually in the right hand and fingered by adherents to keep count of the number of recitations made in the course of a worship service, MANTRA recitation, or meditation session. The beads are often made from sandalwood or seeds of the BODHI TREE (Ficus religiosa), the tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment, although rosaries made from a range of other materials are also common; in some tantric practices, a rosary with beads made from human bone is used. The number of beads on a rosary varies widely. The most common number is 108, the significance of which receives widely varying explanations. One common interpretation is that this number refers to a list of 108 afflictions (KLEsA); fingering all 108 beads in the course of a recitation would then be either a reminder to remain mindful of these afflictions or would constitute their symbolic purification. Alternatively, this 108 can refer to all of phenomenal existence, i.e., the eighteen elements (DHĀTU), viz., the six sense bases, six sense objects, and six sensory consciousnesses, in all of the six states of existence (GATI) (18 × 6 = 108). In Tibetan Buddhism, the number 111 is sometimes used, based on the assumption that for each ten mantras recited, one will be mistaken and need to be repeated, thus adding an additional ten beads for 110. An additional bead is then added to account for the mistaken recitation among the additional ten. Thus, although a mantra might be recited 111 times, only 100 are counted. The Chinese PURE LAND advocate DAOCHUO (562-645) is famous for having used small beans (xiaodou) to keep track of the number of times he had recited the buddha AMITĀBHA's name (see NIANFO); some believe his habit of using such counting beans is the origin of the East Asian japamālā. In many Buddhist traditions, carrying a rosary serves almost as a symbol of the faith. In East Asia, Buddhist monks and nuns, and even many lay adherents, will commonly wear the full-length rosary around their necks. Rosaries of abbreviated lengths, which are more typically worn around the wrist, are sometimes designated duanzhu (J. tanju; K. tanju), or "short rosary." These rosaries will be a maximum of fifty-four beads in length (half the usual length), which would require two repetitions to complete a full round of recitation, and a minimum of nine beads, which would take twelve repetitions. In Tibetan Buddhism, a short rosary is sometimes worn around the right hand while doing prostrations. The CHAN school often uses a short rosary with eighteen beads, requiring six repetitions. See also JAPA.
jieshe. (J. kessha; K. kyolsa 結社). In Chinese, "retreat society"; a generic designation for various religious reform movements that were especially popular during Song-dynasty China and Koryo-dynasty Korea. These fraternal societies had their antecedents in the AMITĀBHA society of LUSHAN HUIYUAN (334-416) during the Eastern Jin dynasty and were widespread by the ninth century. By the Song dynasty, such communities were pervasive throughout China, especially in the south. These societies were typically involved in TIANTAI, HUAYAN, and PURE LAND practice, though some were dedicated to the worship of a specific BODHISATTVA, such as SAMANTABHADRA. These societies were typically founded outside the ecclesiastical establishment and, by encouraging both lay and ordained adepts to train together, they fostered some measure of religious egalitarianism within East Asian Buddhism. The jieshe movement was especially influential in Koryo-dynasty Korea, where some fourteen separate kyolsa sites are mentioned in the Koryosa ("History of Koryo"), from Kangwon province in the north to South Cholla province in the south. The best known is the CHoNGHYE KYoLSA (Samādhi and PrajNā Society) initiated in 1180 by POJO CHINUL (1158-1210) and formally established in 1188, which was dedicated to SoN (Chan) cultivation. In 1197, the community had grown so large that it was relocated to Kilsangsa on Mt. Songgwang, the site of the major present-day monastery of SONGGWANGSA. The residents of the society are said to have gathered together to recite sutras, train in meditation, and engage in group work activity. Chinul's first composition, the Kwon su Chonghye kyolsa mun ("Encouragement to Practice: The Compact of the Samādhi and PrajNā Society"), written in 1290, provided the rationale behind the establishment of the community and critiqued pure land adepts who claim that buddhahood cannot be achieved in the present lifetime. Chinul was joined at his community by the Ch'ont'ae (TIANTAI) adept WoNMYO YOSE (1163-1240), who subsequently founded the Paengnyon kyolsa (White Lotus Society) in 1211 at Mandoksan in the far southwest of the peninsula, which was engaged in Ch'ont'ae practice.
jNapti. (P. Natti; T. gsol ba; C. bai; J. byaku; K. paek 白). In Sanskrit, lit. "understanding": in the context of the monastic code (VINAYA), a formal "motion" or "resolution" put before an assembly of the SAMGHA for the purpose of carrying out a SAMGHAKARMAN, an ecclesiastical act. Depending upon the requirements of the particular ecclesiastical act, the jNapti may or may not be followed by a KARMAVĀCANĀ, or "proceeding," which is a formalized recitation of a prescribed ritual text. There are three kinds, based on the number of times the motion must be stated in order to give all the monks present the opportunity to raise objections prior to the motion being carried. Some saMghakarman do not require the recitation of a karmavācanā. Others require that the jNapti and the karmavācanā be recited once (JNAPTIDVITĪYĀ KARMAVĀCANĀ). Yet others require that the jNapti and the karmavācanā be recited three times. There is no saMghakarman that require the recitation of a karmavācanā two times.
Jodoshu. (浄土宗). In Japanese, the "PURE LAND school"; referring to the followers of HoNEN (1133-1212), who formed the first indigenous school of Japanese Buddhism outside the aegis of the imperial court. The central scriptures of the school are the so-called three pure land SuTRAs (jodo sanbukyo; see JINGTU SANBUJING): the longer SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA, the shorter Sukhāvatīvyuhasutra (also known as the AMITĀBHASuTRA), and the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING; as well as the *Aparimitāyussutropadesa ("Exegesis of the Wuliangshou jing"), commonly known as the Jingtu lun (J. Jodoron) ("Treatise on the Pure Land") and attributed by tradition to VASUBANDHU (see WULIANGSHOU JING YOUPOTISHE YUANSHENG JI). Honen's teachings focused on the "easy path" to NIRVĀnA and the prospect of achieving enlightenment exclusively through recitation of the nenbutsu (C. NIANFO), which would lead to rebirth in the buddha AMITĀBHA's pure land. Honen's teachings quickly spread throughout Japan largely through the efforts of his disciples SHINRAN (1173-1262), Ryukan (1148-1228), Shokobo Bencho (1162-1238), Zen'ebo Shoku (1177-1247), Jokakubo Kosai (1163-1247), and Kakumyobo Chosai (1184-1366). While his disciples all agreed on the efficacy of the recitation of the nenbutsu as advocated by Honen, they developed different interpretations of this practice. These divisions eventually led to the formation of disparate factions within the school. Those who followed Bencho came to be known as the Chinzei branch; their spirit of tolerance for other practices allowed the Chinzei branch to thrive. Shoku's followers, now known as the Seizan branch, held the position that rebirth in the pure land is possible only through continuous repetition of the nenbutsu (TANENGI); indeed, Shoku himself was said to recite the nenbutsu as many as sixty thousand times a day. Kosai, and to a lesser extent Shinran, held the more radical position that a single invocation of the name of Amitābha (ICHINENGI) would suffice. In 1207, in an effort to suppress the spread of Honen's teaching of exclusive nenbutsu, Honen, Kosai, and Shinran, were exiled to different regions of the country. In 1227, the Jodo movement was further suppressed when Honen's grave was desecrated by HIEIZAN monks and Kosai was again sent into exile. In 1450, the Chinzei branch came to dominate the other branches when the Chinzei adherent Keijiku (1403-1459) assumed the position of abbot of the monastery CHION'IN (built at Honen's grave site) in Kyoto. The Chinzei branch firmly established itself as the leading branch with the support of the Tokugawa bakufu. The teachings of Bencho's disciple Ryochu (1199-1287), who advocated the active use of the nenbutsu for purifying bad KARMAN in order to attain rebirth in pure land, came to be the official position of the Chinzei branch and thus of the wider Jodoshu tradition. See also JoDO SHINSHu.
jongler ::: n. --> In the Middle Ages, a court attendant or other person who, for hire, recited or sang verses, usually of his own composition. See Troubadour.
A juggler; a conjuror. See Juggler.
Kabbalat Shabbat (&
Kaddish ::: A classical Jewish prayer (mostly in Aramaic) with eschatological focus extolling God's majesty and kingdom recited at the conclusion of each major section of each liturgical service; a long version (called rabbinic kaddish) follows an act of study; also a prayer by mourners during the first year of bereavement (see shiva, sheloshim) and on the anniversary of the death of next-of-kin.
Kaddish ::: prayer recited in the memory of a departed soul
Kārandavyuha. [alt. Karandavyuha; Avalokitesvaraguna-kārandavyuha] (T. Za ma tog bkod pa'i mdo; C. Dasheng zhuangyan baowang jing; J. Daijo shogon hoogyo; K. Taesŭng changom powang kyong 大乘莊嚴寶王經). In Sanskrit, "Description of the Casket [of AVALOKITEsVARA's Qualities]"; the earliest textual source for the BODHISATTVA Avalokitesvara's MANTRA "OM MAnI PADME HuM" (oM, O Jewel-Lotus); the extended version of the title is Avalokitesvaraguna-kārandavyuha. The earliest version of the Kārandavyuha is presumed to have been composed in Kashmir sometime around the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth centuries CE. There are Tibetan and Chinese translations, including a late Chinese rendering made by the Kashmiri translator TIAN XIZAI (d. 1000) in 983. The Kārandavyuha displays characteristics of both sutra and TANTRA literature in its emphasis on the doctrine of rebirth in AMITĀBHA Buddha's pure land (SUKHĀVATĪ), as well as such tantric elements as the mantra "oM mani padme huM" and the use of MAndALAs; it is thought to represent a transitional stage between the two categories of texts. The sutra is composed as a dialogue between sĀKYAMUNI Buddha and the bodhisattva SARVANĪVARAnAVIsKAMBHIN. While describing Avalokitesvara's supernal qualities and his vocation of saving sentient beings, sākyamuni Buddha tells his audience about the mantra "oM mani padme huM" and the merits that it enables its reciters to accrue. Avalokitesvara is said to be the embodiment of the SAMBHOGAKĀYA (enjoyment body), the body of the buddha that remains constantly present in the world for the edification of all beings, and the dharma that he makes manifest is expressed in this six-syllable mantra (sAdAKsArĪ), the recitation of which invokes the power of that bodhisattva's great compassion (MAHĀKARUnĀ). The sutra claims that the benefit of copying this mantra but once is equivalent to that of copying all the 84,000 teachings of the DHARMA; in addition, there are an infinite number of benefits that derive from a single recitation of it.
Karma chags med. (a.k.a. Rā ga a sya) (1613-1678). A KARMA BKA' BRGYUD teacher born near the RI BO CHE monastery in eastern Tibet, an unsuccessful candidate for the position of ninth KARMA PA and founder of the Gnas mdo branch of the Karma kaM tshang tradition, named after the monastery Gnas mdo that he established; at the same time, a founding figure in the lineage of the RNYING MA monastery DPAL YUL, one of the four great Rnying ma monasteries of Khams. A prolific author, he is known for his devotion to AMITĀBHA; his Rnam dag bde chen zhing gi smon lam ("Prayer to Be Reborn in SUKHĀVATI") is recited in all sects. As redactor of the GTER MA (treasure texts) revealed by his student and teacher Mi 'gyur rdo rje, he originated a fusion of BKA' BRGYUD and RNYING MA teachings that spread widely in Khams.
kathaka ::: rapsodist, reciter and exegete.
Kiddush: (&
Kurma Purana (Sanskrit) Kūrma Purāṇa [from kūrma tortoise] One of the 18 principal Hindu Puranas, so named because it deals with the avataric incarnation of Vishnu in the form of a tortoise. The scripture was recited by Janardana (Vishnu) in the regions under the earth to Indradyumna and the rishis in the proximity of Sakra. It tells about the Lakshmi Kalpa, and treats of the objects of life: duty, wealth, pleasure, and liberation.
Lecha Dodi (&
lesson ::: n. --> Anything read or recited to a teacher by a pupil or learner; something, as a portion of a book, assigned to a pupil to be studied or learned at one time.
That which is learned or taught by an express effort; instruction derived from precept, experience, observation, or deduction; a precept; a doctrine; as, to take or give a lesson in drawing.
A portion of Scripture read in divine service for
Mahāmaudgalyāyana. (P. Mahāmoggallāna; T. Mo'u 'gal gyi bu chen po; C. Mohemujianlian/Mulian; J. Makamokkenren/Mokuren; K. Mahamokkollyon/Mongnyon 摩訶目犍連/目連). An eminent ARHAT and one of the two chief disciples of the Buddha, often depicted together with his friend sĀRIPUTRA flanking the Buddha. Mahāmaudgalyāyana was considered supreme among the Buddha's disciples in supranormal powers (ṚDDHI). According to Pāli accounts, where he is called Moggallāna, he was older than the Buddha and born on the same day as sāriputra (P. Sāriputta). Both he and sāriputra were sons of wealthy families and were friends from childhood. Once, when witnessing a play, the two friends were overcome with a sense of the impermanence and the vanity of all things and decided to renounce the world as mendicants. They first became disciples of the agnostic SaNjaya Belatthiputta (SANJAYA VAIRĀtĪPUTRA), although later they took their leave and wandered the length and breadth of India in search of a teacher. Finding no one who satisfied them, they parted company, promising one another that if one should succeed he would inform the other. Later sāriputra met the Buddha's disciple, Assaji (S. AsVAJIT), who recited for him a précis of the Buddha's teachings, the so-called YE DHARMĀ verse, which immediately prompted sāriputra to attain the path of a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA). He repeated the stanza to Mahāmaudgalyāyana, who likewise immediately became a stream-enterer. The two friends thereupon resolved to take ordination as disciples of the Buddha and, together with five hundred disciples of their former teacher SaNjaya, proceeded to the Veluvana (S. VEnUVANAVIHĀRA) grove where the Buddha was residing. The Buddha ordained the entire group with the formula ehi bhikkhu pabbajjā ("Come forth, monks"; see EHIBHIKsUKĀ), whereupon all five hundred became arhats, except for sāriputra and Mahāmaudgalyāyana. Mahāmaudgalyāyana attained arhatship seven days after his ordination, while sāriputra reached the goal one week later. The Buddha declared sāriputra and Mahāmaudgalyāyana his chief disciples the day they were ordained, noting that they had both strenuously exerted themselves in countless previous lives for this distinction; they appear often as the bodhisattva's companions in the JĀTAKAs. sāriputra was chief among the Buddha's disciples in wisdom, while Mahāmaudgalyāyana was chief in mastery of supranormal powers. He could create doppelgängers of himself and transform himself into any shape he desired. He could perform intercelestial travel as easily as a person bends his arm, and the tradition is replete with the tales of his travels, such as flying to the Himālayas to find a medicinal plant to cure the ailing sāriputra. Mahāmaudgalyāyana said of himself that he could crush Mount SUMERU like a bean and roll up the world like a mat and twirl it like a potter's wheel. He is described as shaking the heavens of sAKRA and BRAHMĀ to dissuade them from their pride, and he often preached to the divinities in their abodes. Mahāmaudgalyāyana could see ghosts (PRETA) and other spirits without having to enter into meditative trance as did other meditation masters, and because of his exceptional powers the Buddha instructed him alone to subdue the dangerous NĀGA, Nandopananda, whose huge hood had darkened the world. Mahāmaudgalyāyana's powers were so immense that during a terrible famine, he offered to turn the earth's crust over to uncover the ambrosia beneath it; the Buddha wisely discouraged him, saying that such an act would confound creatures. Even so, Mahāmaudgalyāyana's supranormal powers, unsurpassed in the world, were insufficient to overcome the law of cause and effect and the power of his own former deeds, as the famous tale of his death demonstrates. A group of naked JAINA ascetics resented the fact that the people of the kingdom of MAGADHA had shifted their allegiance and patronage from them to the Buddha and his followers, and they blamed Mahāmaudgalyāyana, who had reported that, during his celestial and infernal travels, he had observed deceased followers of the Buddha in the heavens and the followers of other teachers in the hells. They hired a group of bandits to assassinate the monk. When he discerned that they were approaching, the eighty-four-year-old monk made his body very tiny and escaped through the keyhole. He eluded them in different ways for six days, hoping to spare them from committing a deed of immediate retribution (ĀNANTARYAKARMAN) by killing an arhat. On the seventh day, Mahāmaudgalyāyana temporarily lost his supranormal powers, the residual karmic effect of having beaten his blind parents to death in a distant previous lifetime, a crime for which he had previously been reborn in hell. The bandits ultimately beat him mercilessly, until his bones had been smashed to the size of grains of rice. Left for dead, Mahāmaudgalyāyana regained his powers and soared into the air and into the presence of the Buddha, where he paid his final respects and passed into NIRVĀnA at the Buddha's feet. ¶ Like many of the great arhats, Mahāmaudgalyāyana appears frequently in the MAHĀYĀNA sutras, sometimes merely listed as a member of the audience, sometimes playing a more significant role. In the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, he is one of the sRĀVAKA disciples who is reluctant to visit VIMALAKĪRTI. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, he is one of four arhats who understands the parable of the burning house and who rejoices in the teaching of the one vehicle (EKAYĀNA); later in the sutra, the Buddha prophesies his eventual attainment of buddhahood. Mahāmaudgalyāyana is additionally famous in East Asian Buddhism for his role in the apocryphal YULANBEN JING. The text describes his efforts to save his mother from the tortures of her rebirth as a ghost (preta). Mahāmaudgalyāyana (C. Mulian) is able to use his supranormal powers to visit his mother in the realm of ghosts, but the food that he offers her immediately bursts into flames. The Buddha explains that it is impossible for the living to make offerings directly to the dead; instead, one should make offerings to the SAMGHA in a bowl, and the power of their meditative practices will be able to save one's ancestors and loved ones from rebirths in the unfortunate realms (DURGATI).
Mahāmāyurī. (T. Rma bya chen mo; C. Kongque mingwang; J. Kujaku myoo; K. Kongjak myongwang 孔雀明王). In Sanskrit, "Great Peacock"; one of the five female protectors (RAKsĀ) of VAJRAYĀNA Buddhism, who frequently appear in MAndALAs and remain important in the Newar Buddhism of Nepal. She is green in color and is sometimes depicted holding a peacock feather, à propos her name. She is considered the female emanation of the buddha AMOGHASIDDHI. Mahāmāyurī has long been associated with curing snakebites. For example, in the MahāmāyurīvidyārājNidhāranī (T. Rma bya chen mo'i gzungs), an early Buddhist TANTRA, later classified as a KRIYĀTANTRA, a newly ordained monk named Svāti is bitten by a poisonous snake. ĀNANDA informs the Buddha, who imparts the DHĀRAnĪ of Mahāmāyurī which, when recited, cures snakebites.
Mahāmeghasutra. (T. Sprin chen po'i mdo; C. Dafangdeng wuxiang jing/Dayun jing; J. Daihodo musokyo/Daiungyo; K. Taebangdŭng musang kyong/Taeun kyong 大方等無想經/大雲經). In Sanskrit, the "Great Cloud Sutra"; it is also known in China as the Dafangdeng wuxiang jing. The Mahāmeghasutra contains the teachings given by the Buddha to the bodhisattva "Great Cloud Secret Storehouse" (C. Dayunmizang) on the inconceivable means of attaining liberation, SAMĀDHI, and the power of DHĀRAnĪs. The Buddha also declares that TATHĀGATAS remain forever present in the dharma and the SAMGHA despite having entered PARINIRVĀnA and that they are always endowed with the four qualities of NIRVĀnA mentioned in the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA, namely, permanence, bliss, purity, and selfhood (see GUnAPĀRAMITĀ). The Mahāparinirvānasutra's influence on the Mahāmeghasutra can also be witnessed in the story of the goddess "Pure Light" (C. Jingguang). Having heard the Mahāparinirvānasutra in her past life, the goddess is told by the Buddha that she will be reborn as a universal monarch (CAKRAVARTIN). The sutra is often cited for its prophecy of the advent of NĀGĀRJUNA, as well as for its injunctions against meat-eating. It was also recited in order to induce rain. In China, commentators on the Mahāmeghasutra identified the newly enthroned Empress WU ZETIAN as the reincarnation of the goddess, seeking thereby to legitimize her rule. As Emperor Gaozong (r. 649-683) of the Tang dynasty suffered from increasingly ill health, his ambitious and pious wife Empress Wu took over the imperial administration. After her husband's death she exiled the legitimate heir Zhongzong (r. 683-684, 705-710) and usurped the throne. One of the many measures she took to gain the support of the people was the publication and circulation of the Mahāmeghasutra. Two translations by ZHU FONIAN and DHARMAKsEMA were available at the time. Wu Zetian also ordered the establishment of monasteries called DAYUNSI ("Great Cloud Monastery") in every prefecture of the empire.
Mahārittha. The Pāli proper name of the nephew of the Sinhalese king DEVĀNAMPIYATISSA. Sent as an emissary to the court of King ASOKA, Mahārittha invited the arahant nun SAnGHAMITTĀ to Sri Lanka in order to establish the BHIKKHUNĪ SAMGHA on the island. Upon his return to the capital Anurādhapura, Mahārittha along with five hundred companions entered the BHIKKHU SAMGHA, whereupon all of them attained arahantship. So that the religion would be firmly established on the island, Mahinda convened a SAMGĪTI or rehearsal of scripture at the Thupārāma in which he requested Mahāritta to recite the VINAYA. In the fourteenth-century chronicle, SADDHAMMASAnGAHA, this recitation of vinaya by Mahārittha is deemed the fourth Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FOURTH).
Mahāsamayasuttanta. (C. Dahui jing; J. Daiekyo; K. Taehoe kyong 大會經). In Pāli, the "Great Discourse to an Assembly [of Divinities]"; the twentieth sutta contained in the DĪGHANIKĀYA (a separate DHARMAGUPTAKA recension appears as the nineteenth SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHĀGAMA). Once while the Buddha was dwelling in the Mahāvana grove with five hundred arahants, an assembly of DEVA and BRAHMĀ gods from ten thousand world systems (P. cakkavāla; S. CAKRAVĀdA) gathered in order to hear verses recited by the Buddha. The Buddha proceeds to recount in verse the names of numerous divinities and concludes with an admonition that MĀRA, the evil one, will shrink back from those who are free from lust and fear.
Mahāsthāmaprāpta. (T. Mthu chen thob; C. Dashizhi; J. Daiseishi; K. Taeseji 大勢至). In Sanskrit, "He who has Attained Great Power"; a BODHISATTVA best known as one of the two attendants (along with the far more popular AVALOKITEsVARA) of the buddha AMITĀBHA in his buddha-field (BUDDHAKsETRA) of SUKHĀVATĪ. Mahāsthāmaprāpta is said to represent Amitābha's wisdom, while Avalokitesvara represents his compassion. According to the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING, the light of wisdom emanating from Mahāsthāmaprāpta illuminates all sentient beings, enabling them to leave behind the three unfortunate destinies (APĀYA; DURGATI) and attain unexcelled power; thus, Mahāsthāmaprāpta is considered the bodhisattva of power or strength. There is also a method of contemplation of the bodhisattva, which is the eleventh of the sixteen contemplations described in the Guan jing. An adept who contemplates Mahāsthāmaprāpta comes to reside in the lands of all the buddhas, being relieved from innumerable eons of continued birth-and-death. In the suRAMGAMASuTRA, the bodhisattva advocates the practice of BUDDHĀNUSMṚTI. Mahāsthāmaprāpta also appears in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") as one of the bodhisattvas who assembled on Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) to hear the teachings of the buddha sĀKYAMUNI. Iconographically, the bodhisattva is rarely depicted alone; he almost always appears in a triad together with Amitābha and Avalokitesvara. Mahāsthāmaprāpta can often be recognized by a small jar on his jeweled crown, which is believed to contain pure water to cleanse sentient beings' afflictions (KLEsA). He is also often described as holding a lotus flower in his hand or joining his palms together in ANJALI. Mahāsthāmaprāpta is one of the twenty-five bodhisattvas who protects those who recite Amitābha's name and welcomes them on their deathbed to the Buddha's PURE LAND. Serving as one of the thirteen bodhisattvas of the Japanese SHINGONSHu of esoteric Buddhism, Mahāsthāmaprāpta is believed to preside over the special ceremony marking the first year anniversary of one's death. He is also depicted in the Cloister of the Lotus Division (Rengebu-in) in the TAIZoKAI MAndALA.
Mahāyāna. (T. theg pa chen po; C. dasheng; J. daijo; K. taesŭng 大乘). In Sanskrit, "great vehicle"; a term, originally of self-appellation, which is used historically to refer to a movement that began some four centuries after the Buddha's death, marked by the composition of texts that purported to be his words (BUDDHAVACANA). Although ranging widely in content, these texts generally set forth the bodhisattva path to buddhahood as the ideal to which all should aspire and described BODHISATTVAs and buddhas as objects of devotion. The key doctrines of the Mahāyāna include the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ), the skillful methods (UPĀYAKAUsALYA) of a buddha, the three bodies (TRIKĀYA) of a buddha, the inherency of buddha-nature (BUDDHADHĀTU; TATHĀGATAGARBHA), and PURE LANDs or buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA). The term Mahāyāna is also appended to two of the leading schools of Indian Buddhism, the YOGĀCĀRA and the MADHYAMAKA, because they accepted the Mahāyāna sutras as the word of the Buddha. However, the tenets of these schools were not restricted to expositions of the philosophy and practice of the bodhisattva but sought to set forth the nature of wisdom and the constituents of the path for the ARHAT as well. The term Mahāyāna often appears in contrast to HĪNAYĀNA, the "lesser vehicle," a pejorative term used to refer to those who do not accept the Mahāyāna sutras as the word of the Buddha. Mahāyāna became the dominant form of Buddhism in China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, and Mongolia, and therefore is sometimes referred to as "Northern Buddhism," especially in nineteenth-century sources. Because of the predominance of the Mahāyāna in East Asia and Tibet, it is sometimes assumed that the Mahāyāna displaced earlier forms of Buddhism (sometimes referred to by scholars as "Nikāya Buddhism" or "MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS") in India, but the testimony of Chinese pilgrims, such as XUANZANG and YIJING, suggests that the Mahāyāna remained a minority movement in India. These pilgrims report that Mahāyāna and "hīnayāna" monks lived together in the same monasteries and followed the same VINAYA. The supremacy of the Mahāyāna is also sometimes assumed because of the large corpus of Mahāyāna literature in India. However, scholars have begun to speculate that the size of this corpus may not be a sign of the Mahāyāna's dominance but rather of its secondary status, with more and more works composed but few gaining adherents. Scholars find it significant that the first mention of the term "Mahāyāna" in a stone inscription does not appear in India until some five centuries after the first Mahāyāna sutras were presumably composed, perhaps reflecting its minority, or even marginal, status on the Indian subcontinent. The origins of the Mahāyāna remain the subject of scholarly debate. Earlier theories that saw the Mahāyāna as largely a lay movement against entrenched conservative monastics have given way to views of the Mahāyāna as beginning as disconnected cults (of monastic and sometimes lay members) centered around an individual sutra, in some instances proclaimed by charismatic teachers called DHARMABHĀnAKA. The teachings contained in these sutras varied widely, with some extolling a particular buddha or bodhisattva above all others, some saying that the text itself functioned as a STuPA. Each of these sutras sought to represent itself as the authentic word of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha, which was more or less independent from other sutras; hence, the trope in so many Mahāyāna sutras in which the Buddha proclaims the supremacy of that particular text and describes the benefits that will accrue to those who recite, copy, and worship it. The late appearance of these texts had to be accounted for, and various arguments were set forth, most making some appeal to UPĀYA, the Buddha's skillful methods whereby he teaches what is most appropriate for a given person or audience. Thus, in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the Buddha famously proclaims that the three vehicles (TRIYĀNA) that he had previously set forth were in fact expedient stratagems to reach different audiences and that there is in fact only one vehicle (EKAYĀNA), revealed in the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, the BUDDHAYĀNA, which had been taught many times in the past by previous buddhas. These early Mahāyāna sutras seem to have been deemed complete unto themselves, each representing its own world. This relatively disconnected assemblage of various cults of the book would eventually become a self-conscious scholastic entity that thought of itself as the Mahāyāna; this exegetical endeavor devoted a good deal of energy to surveying what was by then a large corpus of such books and then attempting to craft the myriad doctrines contained therein into coherent philosophical and religious systems, such as Yogācāra and Madhyamaka. The authority of the Mahāyāna sutras as the word of the Buddha seems to have remained a sensitive issue throughout the history of the Mahāyāna in India, since many of the most important authors, from the second to the twelfth century, often offered a defense of these sutras' authenticity. Another influential strand of early Mahāyāna was that associated with the RĀstRAPĀLAPARIPṚCCHĀ, KĀsYAPAPARIVARTA, and UGRAPARIPṚCCHĀ, which viewed the large urban monasteries as being ill-suited to serious spiritual cultivation and instead advocated forest dwelling (see ARANNAVĀSI) away from the cities, following a rigorous asceticism (S. dhutaguna; P. DHUTAnGA) that was thought to characterize the early SAMGHA. This conscious estrangement from the monks of the city, where the great majority of monks would have resided, again suggests the Mahāyāna's minority status in India. Although one often reads in Western sources of the three vehicles of Buddhism-the hīnayāna, Mahāyāna, and VAJRAYĀNA-the distinction of the Mahāyāna from the vajrayāna is less clear, at least polemically speaking, than the distinction between the Mahāyāna and the hīnayāna, with followers of the vajrayāna considering themselves as following the path to buddhahood set forth in the Mahāyāna sutras, although via a shorter route. Thus, in some expositions, the Mahāyāna is said to subsume two vehicles, the PĀRAMITĀYĀNA, that is, the path to buddhahood by following the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) as set forth in the Mahāyāna sutras, and the MANTRAYĀNA or vajrayāna, that is, the path to buddhahood set forth in the tantras.
Mahinda. (S. Mahendra; T. Dbang chen; C. Moshentuo; J. Mashinda; K. Masinda 摩哂陀). Pāli proper name of the son of Asoka (S. AsOKA), who converted the Sinhalese king, DEVĀNAMPIYATISSA, to Buddhism in the third century BCE, thus inaugurating the Buddhist religion in Sri Lanka. The story of Mahinda is first recorded in the DĪPAVAMSA (c. fourth century CE) and is elaborated in the MAHĀVAMSA (c. fifth century CE) and BUDDHAGHOSA's VINAYA commentary, SAMANTAPĀSĀDIKĀ. In each of these works, Mahinda's story is preceded by a narrative that begins with the legend of Asoka's conversion to Buddhism, through the convention of the third Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, THIRD) under the direction of MOGGALIPUTTATISSA, to the dispatch of Buddhist missions to nine adjacent lands (paccantadesa). Mahinda was chosen to lead the mission sent to Sri Lanka. Mahinda, together with his sister SAnGHAMITTĀ, was ordained at the age of twenty at the request of his father, Asoka. He attained arahantship immediately upon his ordination. Mahinda was swift in learning the doctrine, and was placed in charge of Moggaliputtatissa's one thousand disciples when the latter retired to Ahoganga due to a dispute within the SAMGHA. Mahinda had been a monk for twelve years when the third Buddhist council was convened to celebrate the resolution of the dispute. Shortly thereafter, he was sent along with four other monks, a novice, and a layman to Sri Lanka for the purpose of converting its king. Mahinda preached the CulAHATTHIPADOPAMASUTTA to DevānaMpiyatissa, whereupon the king requested to be accepted as a lay disciple. The next day, he preached to the king's sister-in-law, Anulā, and five hundred women of the court, all of whom became stream-enterers. Preaching to them a second time, they became once-returners. When they asked be ordained, he said that monks could not ordain women, and suggested that his sister, the nun Sanghamittā, be invited, which was done. She came to Sri Lanka, bringing with her a branch of the BODHI TREE. The king offered to Mahinda the MAHĀMEGHAVANA, a royal pleasure garden that was to be the future site of the MAHĀTHuPA. In the garden, which was on the outskirts of the Sinhalese capital, ANURĀDHAPURA, Mahinda established the SĪMĀ boundary for the MAHĀVIHĀRA monastery, which thenceforth became the headquarters of the Theravāda fraternity on the island. At Mahinda's prompting, relics of the Buddha were received from Asoka and Sakka (S. sAKRA), king of the gods, which were interred in the Cetiyagiri and Thupārāma. Under Mahinda's direction, a council was held where MAHĀRIttHA, a native son of Sri Lanka, recited the vinaya. According to the Samantapāsādikā, this recital marked the firm establishment of the religion on the island. The Saddhammasangaha reckons the recitation of the vinaya by Mahārittha as the fourth Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FOURTH). Mahinda died at the age of sixty and was cremated and his ashes interred in a shrine near the Mahāthupa.
Maitreya. (P. Metteya; T. Byams pa; C. Mile; J. Miroku; K. Mirŭk 彌勒). In Sanskrit, "The Benevolent One"; the name of the next buddha, who now abides in TUsITA heaven as a BODHISATTVA, awaiting the proper time for him to take his final rebirth. Buddhists believed that their religion, like all conditioned things, was inevitably impermanent and would eventually vanish from the earth (cf. SADDHARMAVIPRALOPA; MOFA). According to one such calculation, the teachings of the current buddha sĀKYAMUNI would flourish for five hundred years after his death, after which would follow a one-thousand-year period of decline and a three-thousand-year period in which the dharma would be completely forgotten. At the conclusion of this long disappearance, Maitreya would then take his final birth in India (JAMBUDVĪPA) in order to reestablish the Buddhist dispensation anew. According to later calculations, Maitreya will not take rebirth for some time, far longer than the 4,500 years mentioned earlier. He will do so only after the human life span has decreased to ten years and then increased to eighty thousand years. (Stalwart scholiasts have calculated that his rebirth will occur 5.67 billion years after the death of sākyamuni.) Initially a minor figure in early Indian Buddhism, Maitreya (whose name derives from the Indic MAITRĪ, meaning "loving-kindness" or "benevolence") evolved during the early centuries of the Common Era into one of the most popular figures in Buddhism across Asia in both the mainstream and MAHĀYĀNA traditions. He is also known as AJITA, although there are indications that, at some point in history, the two were understood to be different deities. As the first bodhisattva to become a figure of worship, his imagery and cult set standards for the development of later bodhisattvas who became objects of cultic worship, such as AVALOKITEsVARA and MANJUsRĪ. Worship of Maitreya began early in Indian Buddhism and became especially popular in Central and East Asia during the fifth and sixth centuries. Such worship takes several forms, with disciples praying to either meet him when he is reborn on earth or in tusita heaven so that they may then take rebirth with him when he becomes a buddha, a destiny promised in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") to those who recite his name. Maitreya is also said to appear on earth, such as in a scene in the Chinese pilgrim XUANZANG's account of his seventh-century travels to India: attacked by pirates as he sailed on the Ganges River, Xuanzang prayed to and was rescued by the bodhisattva. Maitreya also famously appeared to the great Indian commentator ASAnGA in the form of a wounded dog as a means of teaching him the importance of compassion. Devotees across the Buddhist world also attempt to extend their life span in order to be alive when Maitreya comes, or to be reborn at the time of his presence in the world, a worldly paradise that will be known as ketumati. His earliest iconography depicts him standing or sitting, holding a vase (KUndIKĀ), symbolizing his imminent birth into the brāhmana caste, and displaying the ABHAYAMUDRĀ, both features that remain common attributes of his images. In addition, he frequently has a small STuPA in his headdress, believed to represent a prophecy regarding his descent to earth to receive the robes of his predecessor from MAHĀKĀsYAPA. Maitreya is also commonly depicted as a buddha, often shown sitting in "European pose" (BHADRĀSANA; see also MAITREYĀSANA), displaying the DHARMACAKRAMUDRĀ. He is said to sit in a chair in "pensive" posture in order to be able to quickly stand and descend to earth at the appropriate time. Once he is reborn, Maitreya will replicate the deeds of sākyamuni, with certain variations. For example, he will live the life of a householder for eight thousand years, but having seen the four sights (CATURNIMITTA) and renounced the world, he will practice asceticism for only one week before achieving buddhahood. As the Buddha, he will first travel to Mount KUKKUtAPĀDA near BODHGAYĀ where the great ARHAT Mahākāsyapa has been entombed in a state of deep SAMĀDHI, awaiting the advent of Maitreya. Mahākāsyapa has kept the robes of sākyamuni, which the previous buddha had entrusted to him to pass on to his successor. Upon his arrival, the mountain will break open, and Mahākāsyapa will come forth from a stupa and give Maitreya his robes. When Maitreya accepts the robes, it will only cover two fingers of his hands, causing people to comment at how diminutive the past buddha must have been. ¶ The cult of Maitreya entered East Asia with the initial propagation of Buddhism and reached widespread popularity starting in the fourth century CE, a result of the popularity of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra and several other early translations of Maitreya scriptures made in the fourth and fifth centuries. The Saddharmapundarīkasutra describes Maitreya's present abode in the tusita heaven, while other sutras discuss his future rebirth on earth and his present residence in heaven. Three important texts belonging to the latter category were translated into Chinese, starting in the fifth century, with two differing emphases: (1) the Guan Mile pusa shangsheng doushuo tian jing promised sentient beings the prospect of rebirth in tusita heaven together with Maitreya; and (2) the Guan Mile pusa xiasheng jing and (3) the Foshuo Mile da chengfo jing emphasized the rebirth of Maitreya in this world, where he will attain buddhahood under the Dragon Flower Tree (Nāgapuspa) and save numerous sentient beings. These three texts constituted the three principal scriptures of the Maitreya cult in East Asia. In China, Maitreya worship became popular from at least the fourth century: DAO'AN (312-385) and his followers were among the first to propagate the cult of Maitreya and the prospect of rebirth in tusita heaven. With the growing popularity of Maitreya, millenarian movements associated with his cult periodically developed in East Asia, which had both devotional and political dimensions. For example, when the Empress WU ZETIAN usurped the Tang-dynasty throne in 690, her followers attempted to justify the coup by referring to her as Maitreya being reborn on earth. In Korea, Maitreya worship was already popular by the sixth century. The Paekche king Mu (r. 600-641) identified his realm as the world in which Maitreya would be reborn. In Silla, the hwarang, an elite group of male youths, was often identified with Maitreya and such eminent Silla monks as WoNHYO (617-686), WoNCH'ŬK (613-696), and Kyonghŭng (fl. seventh century) composed commentaries on the Maitreya scriptures. Paekche monks transmitted Maitreya worship to Japan in the sixth century, where it became especially popular in the late eighth century. The worship of Maitreya in Japan regained popularity around the eleventh century, but gradually was replaced by devotions to AMITĀBHA and KsITIGARBHA. The worship of Maitreya has continued to exist to the present day in both Korea and Japan. The Maitreya cult was influential in the twentieth century, for example, in the establishment of the Korean new religions of Chŭngsan kyo and Yonghwa kyo. Maitreya also merged in China and Japan with a popular indigenous figure, BUDAI (d. 916)-a monk known for his fat belly-whence he acquired his now popular East Asian form of the "laughing Buddha." This Chinese holy man is said to have been an incarnation of the bodhisattva Maitreya (J. Miroku Bosatsu) and is included among the Japanese indigenous pantheon known as the "seven gods of good fortune"(SHICHIFUKUJIN). Hotei represents contentment and happiness and is often depicted holding a large cloth bag (Hotei literally means "hemp sack"). From this bag, which never empties, he feeds the poor and needy. In some places, he has also become the patron saint of restaurants and bars, since those who drink and eat well are said to be influenced by Hotei. Today, nearly all Chinese Buddhist monasteries (and many restaurants as well) will have an image of this Maitreya at the front entrance; folk belief has it that by rubbing his belly one can establish the potential for wealth.
makuragyo. (枕經). In Japanese, lit., "pillow scripture"; the deathbed recitation of Buddhist scriptures. In Japan, a monk is invited to offer prayers and recite scriptures for the recently deceased. Before the corpse is interred in the coffin, the makuragyo service is performed at the deceased's bedside or pillow, hence the service's name. Traditionally, the deathbed service was performed by a monk called the kaso, who chanted passages from the scriptures through the night.
Mangalasutta. In Pāli, "Discourse on the Auspicious"; one of the best-loved and most frequently recited texts in the Southeast Asian Buddhist world. The Mangalasutta appears in an early scriptural anthology, the SUTTANIPĀTA; a later collection, the KHUDDAKAPĀtHA; and in a postcanonical anthology of "protection texts," the PARITTA. The text itself is a mere twelve verses in length and is accompanied by a brief preface inquiring about what is true auspiciousness. The Buddha's response provides a straightforward recital of auspicious things, beginning with various social virtues and ending with the achievement of nibbāna (S. NIRVĀnA). The Mangalasutta's great renown derives from its inclusion in the Paritta, a late anthology of texts that are chanted as part of the protective rituals performed by Buddhist monks to ward off misfortunes; indeed, it is this apotropaic quality of the scripture that accounts for its enduring popularity. Paritta suttas refer to specific discourses delivered by the Buddha that are believed to offer protection to those who either recite the sutta or listen to its recitation. Other such auspicious apotropaic suttas are the RATANASUTTA ("Discourse on the Precious") and the METTĀSUTTA ("Discourse on Loving-Kindness"). These paritta texts are commonly believed in Southeast Asia to bring happiness and good fortune when chanted by the SAMGHA. The Mangalasutta has been the subject of many Pāli commentaries, one of the largest of which, the Mangalatthadīpanī, composed in northern Thailand in the sixteenth century, is over five hundred pages in length and continues to serve as the core of the monastic curriculum in contemporary Thailand. The Mangalasutta's twelve verses are: "Many divinities and humans, desiring well-being, have thought about auspiciousness; tell us what is the highest auspiciousness./ Not to associate with fools, to associate with the wise, to worship those worthy of worship-that is the highest auspiciousness./ To live in a suitable place and to have done good deeds before, having a proper goal for oneself-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Learning, craftsmanship, and being well-trained in discipline, being well-spoken-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Care for mother and father, supporting wife and children, and types of work that bring no conflict-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Generosity, morality, helping relatives and performing actions that are blameless-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Ceasing and refraining from evil, abstaining from intoxicants, diligence in morality-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Respect, humility, contentment, gratitude, listening to the dhamma at the proper time-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Patience, obedience, seeing ascetics and timely discussions of the dhamma-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Ascetic practice, the religious life, seeing the four noble truths, and the realization of nibbāna-that is the highest auspiciousness./ If someone's mind is sorrowless, stainless, secure, and does not shake when touched by the things of the world-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Having acted in this wise, unconquered everywhere they go to well-being everywhere-for them, this is the highest auspiciousness."
ma ni 'khor lo. In Tibetan, lit. "MAnI wheel," commonly rendered into English as a "prayer wheel"; a device for the repetition of a MANTRA, so-called because of its frequent use in conjunction with repetitions of the mantra OM MAnI PADME HuM. The device, commonly used in Tibetan Buddhism, is a hollow cylinder ranging in length from a few inches to a few feet, filled with a long scroll of paper on which a mantra has been printed thousands of times. The scroll is wrapped tightly around the central axis of the device and enclosed in the cylinder. Each turn of the wheel is considered the equivalent of one recitation of the mantra, multiplied by the number of times the mantra is printed on the scroll. Smaller prayer wheels are carried and spun in the left hand while a rosary (JAPAMĀLĀ) is counted in the right hand as the mantra is recited. Larger versions are often mounted in a series along walls; very large wheels may even fill a small temple, where they are turned by pushing handles at their base. There are also wheels that are turned by the wind, water, or convection.
MaNjusrīnāmasaMgīti. (T. 'Jam dpal gyi mtshan yang dag par brjod pa; C. Sheng miaojixiang zhenshi ming jing; J. Shomyokichijo shinjitsumyokyo; K. Song myogilsang chinsil myong kyong 聖妙吉祥眞實名經). In Sanskrit, "Litany of the Names of MANJUsRĪ"; one of the most popular liturgical works of late Indian Buddhism. The text dates from the late seventh or early eighth century CE and in its present form includes 167 verses and a lengthy prose section. It begins with a request to the Buddha from a disciple, in this case, the tantric deity VAJRADHARA, to set forth the names of MaNjusrī. The Buddha offers extensive praise to MaNjusrī in the form of multiple epithets and identifications, equating him with all that is auspicious, although special attention is paid to his identity with the myriad categories of Buddhist wisdom. In other verses, the Buddha provides syllables to be recited in order to visualize a variety of deities, all of whom are considered forms of MaNjusrī. MaNjusrī himself is identified with the letter A, the first letter of the Sanskrit alphabet, and hence the source of all other names and the deities they represent. The Buddha also describes the MAndALA of MaNjusrī. The prose section, like so many Mahāyāna sutras, extols the virtues of its own recitation. Here, the Buddha declares that those who recite the MaNjusrīnāmasaMgīti three times daily will gain all manner of attainment and will also be protected by the Hindu gods, such as Visnu (NĀRĀYAnA) and siva (Mahesvara).
MaNjusrī. (T. 'Jam dpal; C. Wenshushili; J. Monjushiri; K. Munsusari 文殊師利). In Sanskrit, "Gentle Glory," also known as MANJUGHOsA, "Gentle Voice"; one of the two most important BODHISATTVAs in MAHĀYĀNA Buddhism (along with AVALOKITEsVARA). MaNjusrī seems to derive from a celestial musician (GANDHARVA) named PaNcasikha (Five Peaks), who dwelled on a five-peaked mountain (see WUTAISHAN), whence his toponym. MaNjusrī is the bodhisattva of wisdom and sometimes is said to be the embodiment of all the wisdom of all the buddhas. MaNjusrī, Avalokitesvara, and VAJRAPĀnI are together known as the "protectors of the three families" (TRIKULANĀTHA), representing wisdom, compassion, and power, respectively. Among his many epithets, the most common is KUMĀRABHuTA, "Ever Youthful." Among MaNjusrī's many forms, the most famous shows him seated in the lotus posture (PADMĀSANA), dressed in the raiments of a prince, his right hand holding a flaming sword above his head, his left hand holding the stem of a lotus that blossoms over his left shoulder, a volume of the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ atop the lotus. MaNjusrī plays a major role in many of the most renowned Mahāyāna sutras. MaNjusrī first comes to prominence in the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, which probably dates no later than the first century CE, where only MaNjusrī has the courage to visit and debate with the wise layman VIMALAKĪRTI and eventually becomes the interlocutor for Vimalakīrti's exposition of the dharma. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, only MaNjusrī understands that the Buddha is about to preach the "Lotus Sutra." In the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, it is MaNjusrī who sends SUDHANA out on his pilgrimage. In the Ajātasatrukaukṛtyavinodana, it is revealed that MaNjusrī inspired sĀKYAMUNI to set out on the bodhisattva path many eons ago, and that he had played this same role for all the buddhas of the past; indeed, the text tells us that MaNjusrī, in his guise as an ever-youthful prince, is the father of all the buddhas. He is equally important in tantric texts, including those in which his name figures in the title, such as the MANJUsRĪMuLAKALPA and the MANJUsRĪNĀMASAMGĪTI. The bull-headed deity YAMĀNTAKA is said to be the wrathful form of MaNjusrī. Buddhabhadra's early fifth-century translation of the AvataMsakasutra is the first text that seemed to connect MaNjusrī with Wutaishan (Five-Terrace Mountain) in China's Shaanxi province. Wutaishan became an important place of pilgrimage in East Asia beginning at least by the Northern Wei dynasty (424-532), and eventually drew monks in search of a vision of MaNjusrī from across the Asian continent, including Korea, Japan, India, and Tibet. The Svayambhupurāna of Nepal recounts that MaNjusrī came from China to worship the STuPA located in the middle of a great lake. So that humans would be able worship the stupa, he took his sword and cut a great gorge at the southern edge of the lake, draining the water and creating the Kathmandu Valley. As the bodhisattva of wisdom, MaNjusrī is propiated by those who wish to increase their knowledge and learning. It is considered efficacious to recite his mantra "oM arapacana dhīḥ" (see ARAPACANA); Arapacana is an alternate name for MaNjusrī.
mantra. (T. sngags; C. zhenyan; J. shingon; K. chinon 眞言). In Sanskrit, "spell," "charm," or "magic formula"; a syllable or series of syllables that may or may not have semantic meaning, most often in a form of Sanskrit, the contemplation or recitation of which is thought to be efficacious. Indian exegetes creatively etymologized the term with the paronomastic gloss "mind protector," because a mantra serves to protect the mind from ordinary appearances. There are many famous mantras, ranging in length from one syllable to a hundred syllables or more. They are often recited to propitiate a deity, and their letters are commonly visualized in tantric meditations, sometimes within the body of the meditator. Although mantras are typically associated with tantric texts, they also appear in the SuTRAs, most famously in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"). Numerous tantric SĀDHANAs require the recitation of a particular mantra a specific number of times, with the recitations counted on a rosary (JAPAMĀLĀ). In Tibetan Buddhism, mantras are also repeated mechanically by turning "prayer wheels" (MA nI 'KHOR LO). Perhaps the most famous of all such spells is the six-syllable mantra of the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA, OM MAnI PADME HuM, which is recited throughout the Tibetan Buddhist world. The Japanese SHINGONSHu takes its name from the Sinitic translation of mantra as "true word" (C. zhenyan; J. shingon).
Mazu Daoyi. (J. Baso Doitsu; K. Majo Toil 馬祖道一) (709-788). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty and retrospective patriarch of the HONGZHOU ZONG of the broader Chan tradition. Mazu was a native of Hanzhou in present-day Sichuan province. At an early age, he became a student of the Chan master Chuji (alt. 648-734, 650-732, 669-736) of Zizhou (also in present-day Sichuan province) and received the full monastic precepts later from the VINAYA master Yuan (d.u.) at nearby Yuzhou. Mazu is said to have later visited the sixth patriarch HUINENG's disciple NANYUE HUAIRANG (677-744), under whom he attained awakening. According to the famous story, which is frequently recited in Chan literature, Mazu was awakened when his teacher Nanyue likened Mazu's sitting in meditation to the act of polishing of a roof tile: just as a roof tile cannot be polished to make a mirror, sitting meditation, says Nanyue, cannot lead to buddhahood. In his thirties, Mazu began teaching at various monasteries in the southern regions of Fujian and Jiangxi province. In 769, he began his residence at the monastery of Kaiyuansi (also known as Youqingsi) in Zhongling (in present-day Jiangsu province) and attracted many students. Emperor Xianzong (r. 805-820) later gave him the posthumous title Chan Master Daji (Great Serenity). His teachings are recorded in the Mazu Daoyi chanshi guanglu. Mazu developed the idea of "original enlightenment" (BENJUE) from the DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna") in a radical direction. He asserted that "everyday mind is the way" (pingchangxin shi dao) and that "mind itself is the Buddha" (zixin shi fo), arguing that sentient beings have never in fact been deluded but have always been awakened buddhas. Although Mazu did not intend to advocate maintaining a deluded state of mind but wanted instead to recognize the value of the ordinary life as the ground of enlightenment, his emphasis on the inseparable relationship of enlightenment and ignorance drew severe criticisms, especially from GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841), who believed that Mazu's teachings fostered antinomianism for suggesting that practice was not necessary in order to awaken.
Mettāsutta. (C. Ci jing; J. Jikyo; K. Cha kyong 慈經). In Pāli, the "Discourse on Loving-Kindness"; one of the best-loved and most frequently recited texts in the THERAVĀDA Buddhist world. According to the Mettāsutta's framing narrative, a group of monks went into the forest during the rainy season to meditate. The tree deities of the forest were disturbed by the presence of the monks and sought to drive them away by frightening them during the night. The monks went to the Buddha and requested his assistance in quelling the disturbance. The Mettāsutta was the discourse that the Buddha then delivered in response, instructing the monks to meditate on loving-kindness (P. mettā; S. MAITRĪ), thinking, "May all beings be happy and safe. May they have happy minds. Whatever living beings there may be-feeble or strong, long, stout, or of medium size, short, small, large, those seen or those unseen, those dwelling far or near, those who are born as well as those yet to be born-may all beings have happy minds." Having radiated these thoughts throughout the forest, the monks were no longer troubled by the spirits. The Mettāsutta appears in an early scriptural anthology, the SUTTANIPĀTA, a later collection, the KHUDDAKAPĀtHA, and in a postcanonical anthology of "protection texts," (PARITTA). (Separate recensions appear in the Chinese translations of the EKOTTARĀGAMA and the SAMYUKTĀGAMA, the latter affiliated with the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school.) The Mettāsutta's great renown derives from its inclusion among the paritta texts, which are chanted as part of the protective rituals performed by Buddhist monks to ward off misfortunes; indeed, it is this apotropaic quality of the scripture that accounts for its enduring popularity. Paritta suttas refer to specific discourses delivered by the buddha that are believed to offer protection to those who either recite the sutta or listen to its recitation. Other such auspicious apotropaic suttas are the MAnGALASUTTA ("Discourse on the Auspicious") and the RATANASUTTA ("Discourse on the Precious"). These paritta texts are commonly believed to bring happiness and good fortune when chanted by the SAMGHA. See also BRAHMAVIHĀRA.
Mi la'i mgur 'bum. (Mile Gurbum). In Tibetan, "The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa", containing the collected spiritual songs and versified instructions of the eleventh-century Tibetan yogin MI LA RAS PA. Together with their brief narrative framing tales, the songs in this collection document the later period of Mi la ras pa's career, his life as a wandering hermit, his solitary meditation, subjugation of demons, and training of disciples. The work catalogues his songs of realization: expressions of his experiences as an awakened master, his reflections on the nature of the mind and reality, and his instructions for practicing the Buddhist path. The songs are composed in a vernacular idiom, abandoning the highly ornamental formal structure of classical poetry in favor of a simple and direct style. They are much loved in Tibet for their clarity, playfulness, and poetic beauty, and continue to be taught, memorized, and recited within most sects of Tibetan Buddhism. Episodes from the Mi la'i mgur 'bum have become standard themes for traditional Tibetan Buddhist plastic arts and have been adapted into theatrical dance performances (CHAMS). The number 100,000 is not literal, but rather a metaphor for the work's comprehensiveness; it is likely that many of the songs were first recorded by Mi la ras pa's own close disciples, perhaps while the YOGIN was still alive. The most famous version of this collection was edited and arranged by GTSANG SMYON HERUKA during the final decades of the fifteenth century, together with an equally famous edition of the MI LA RAS PA'I RNAM THAR ("The Life of Milarepa").
minstrels ::: medieval entertainers who traveled from place to place, especially to sing and recite poetry.
misrecite ::: v. t. & i. --> To recite erroneously.
Mi Shebeirach ::: "The One who blessed"; prayer recited for those who have an aliyah and read the Torah.
misrender ::: v. t. --> To render wrongly; to translate or recite wrongly.
Mohammed dictated these suras to his immediate followers, who memorized them. But when some of these original reciters had lost their lives in the conflicts which occurred after the death of Mohammed, Omar suggested to Caliph ’Abu-Bekr (the successor of Mohammed) that they be reduced to writing. The commission to collect as many as possible of the narrations or parts of the revelations was given to Zaid, a native of Medina who had often acted as an amanuensis to Mohammed. This collection became the first Koran, which Azid wrote down in Arabic. Some years later a second redaction was made and all previous parts or manuscripts were burned: Zaid dictated the work to four scribes, and these four copies have come down to our own day.
Motzi ::: The blessing recited before eating bread.
Musaf (&
Myongnang. (明郎) (d.u.). Korean monk of the Silla dynasty and reputed founder of the sinin (divine seal), or esoteric Buddhist, tradition; also known as Kugyuk. His father was a high-ranking court official and his cousin was the VINAYA master CHAJANG. Myongnang traveled to China in 632 and returned four years later to propagate the new teachings of esoteric Buddhism. He established the monasteries of Kŭmgwangsa and Wonwonsa and made them centers of esoteric Buddhist activity in Korea. He also was one of the teachers of the influential Korean scholiast WoNHYO (617-686). The monastery Sach'onwangsa is known to have been built at the site where Myongnang prepared a MAndALA and recited MANTRAs that spawned the typhoon that defeated the Tang Chinese invasion force. His teachings continued to flourish until the Koryo dynasty, when he came to be viewed retrospectively as the founder of the sinin tradition.
Nachamu (&
namu Amidabutsu. (C. namo Amituo fo; K. namu Amit'a pul 南無阿彌陀佛). In Japanese, "I take refuge in the buddha AMITĀBHA." Chanting of the name of the buddha Amitābha as a form of "buddha-recollection" (J. nenbutsu; see C. NIANFO) is often associated with the PURE LAND traditions. In Japan, nenbutsu practice was spread throughout the country largely through the efforts of itinerant holy men (HIJIRI), such as KuYA and IPPEN. With the publication of GENSHIN's oJo YoSHu, the practice of nenbutsu and the prospect of rebirth in Amitābha's pure land came to play an integral role as well in the TENDAI tradition. HoNEN, a learned monk of the Tendai sect, inspired in part by reading the writings of the Chinese exegete SHANDAO, became convinced that the nenbutsu was the most appropriate form of Buddhist practice for people in the degenerate age of the dharma (J. mappo; C. MOFA). Honen set forth his views in a work called Senchaku hongan nenbutsushu ("On the Nenbutsu Selected in the Primal Vow," see SENCHAKUSHu). The title refers to the vow made eons ago by the bodhisattva DHARMĀKARA that he would become the buddha Amitābha, create the pure land of bliss (SUKHĀVATĪ), and deliver to that realm anyone who called his name. To illustrate the power of the practice of nenbutsu, Honen contrasted "right practice" and the "practice of sundry good acts." "Right practice" refers to all forms of worship of Amitābha, the most important of which is the recitation of his name. "Practice of sundry good acts" refers to ordinary virtuous deeds performed by Buddhists, which are meritorious but lack the power of "right practice" that derives from the grace of Amitābha. Indeed, the power of Amitābha's vow is so great that those who sincerely recite his name, Honen suggests, do not necessarily need to dedicate their merit toward rebirth in the land of bliss because recitation will naturally result in rebirth there. Honen goes on to explain that each bodhisattva makes specific vows about the particular practice that will result in rebirth in their buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA). Some buddha-fields are for those who practice charity (DĀNA), others for those who construct STuPAs, and others for those who honor their teachers. While Amitābha was still the bodhisattva Dharmākara, he compassionately selected a very simple practice that would lead to rebirth in his pure land of bliss: the mere recitation of his name. Honen recognized how controversial these teachings would be if they were widely espoused, so he instructed that the Senchakushu not be published until after his death and allowed only his closest disciples to read and copy it. His teachings gained popularity in a number of influential circles but were considered anathema by the existing sects of Buddhism in Japan because of his promotion of the sole practice of reciting the name. His critics charged him with denigrating sĀKYAMUNI Buddha, with neglecting virtuous deeds other than the recitation of the name, and with abandoning the meditation and visualization practices that should accompany the chanting of the name. Some years after Honen's death, the printing xylographs of the Senchakushu were confiscated and burned as works harmful to the dharma. However, by that time, the teachings of Honen had gained a wide following among both aristocrats and the common people. Honen's disciple SHINRAN came to hold even more radical views. Like Honen, he believed that any attempt to rely on one's own powers (JIRIKI) to achieve freedom from SAMSĀRA was futile; the only viable course of action was to rely on the power of Amitābha. But for Shinran, this power was pervasive. Even to make the effort to repeat silently "namu Amidabutsu" was a futile act of hubris. The very presence of the sounds of Amitābha's name in one's heart was due to Amitābha's compassionate grace. It was therefore redundant to repeat the name more than once in one's life. Instead, a single utterance (ICHINENGI) would assure rebirth in the pure land; all subsequent recitation should be regarded as a form of thanksgiving. This utterance need be neither audible nor even voluntary; instead, it is heard in the heart as a consequence of the "single thought-moment" of faith (shinjin, see XINXIN), received through Amitābha's grace. Shinran not only rejected the value of multiple recitations of the phrase namu Amidabutsu; he also regarded the deathbed practices advocated by Genshin to bring about rebirth in the pure land as inferior self-power (jiriki). Despite harsh persecution by rival Buddhist traditions and the government, the followers of Honen and Shinran came to form the largest Buddhist community in Japan, known as the JoDOSHu and JoDO SHINSHu.
narrate ::: v. t. --> To tell, rehearse, or recite, as a story; to relate the particulars of; to go through with in detail, as an incident or transaction; to give an account of.
narration ::: n. --> The act of telling or relating the particulars of an event; rehearsal; recital.
That which is related; the relation in words or writing of the particulars of any transaction or event, or of any series of transactions or events; story; history.
That part of a discourse which recites the time, manner, or consequences of an action, or simply states the facts connected with the subject.
navadharma. In Sanskrit, the "nine dharmas," also known as the NAVAGRANTHA ("nine books"); nine MAHĀYĀNA SuTRAs that are the object of particular devotion in the Newar Buddhist tradition of Nepal. The notion of a collection of nine books seems to have originated in the Newar community, although the nine sutras are all of Indian origin. The nine are the AstASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ, SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, LALITAVISTARA, LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA, SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA, GAndAVYuHA, Tathāgataguhyasutra, SAMĀDHIRĀJASuTRA, and DAsABHuMIKASuTRA. Of these nine, the AstasāhasrikāprajNāpāramitā is granted the highest esteem, having its own cult and its own deity, the goddess PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ. These texts serve an important ritual function in Newar Buddhism, where they are said to represent the entire Mahāyāna corpus of SuTRA, sĀSTRA, and TANTRA. These texts are often recited during the religious services of monasteries, and a recitation of all nine texts is considered to be particularly auspicious. Some Newar Buddhist rituals (vrata) include offerings to the three jewels (RATNATRAYA), in which a priest will make a MAndALA for the GURU, the Buddha, the DHARMA, and the SAMGHA. These sutras of the nine dharmas are used in the creation of the dharmamandala, a powerful ritual symbol in Newar Buddhism. In this MAndALA, the center space is occupied by the AstasāhasrikāprajNāpāramitā. The fact that there are nine of these texts may derive from the need to have nine elements in the mandala. Different renditions of the dharmamandala indicate that the texts included in the navadharma may have changed over time; this particular set of nine sutras seems to date from the fifteenth century. Although these texts are held in particularly high regard, they are not the only authoritative texts in Newar Buddhism.
Neilah (&
Nirgrantha-JNātīputra. (P. Nigantha-Nātaputta; T. Gcer bu pa gnyen gyi bu; C. Nijiantuo Ruotizi; J. Nikenda'nyakudaishi; K. Nigonda Yajeja 尼揵陀若提子) (599-527 BCE). The name commonly used in Buddhist texts to refer to the leader of the JAINA group of non-Buddhists (TĪRTHIKA), also known by his title MAHĀVĪRA (Great Victor). In Pāli sources, Nātaputta (as he is usually called) is portrayed as the Buddha's senior contemporary. He teaches a practice called the fourfold restraint, enjoining his followers to be restrained regarding water, to be restrained regarding evil, to wash away evil, and to live in the realization that evil was held at bay; a person who could perfect the fourfold restraint was called free from bonds (P. nigantha; S. NIRGRANTHA). Like the Buddha and the leaders of many other renunciant (P. sāmana, S. sRAMAnA) sects, Nātaputta claimed omniscience. According to Buddhist accounts, he taught that the consequences of past deeds could be eradicated only through severe penance. He also taught that the accrual of future consequences could be prevented only through the suspension of action. The cessation of action would lead to the cessation of suffering and feeling, and with this the individual would be freed from the cycle of rebirth. In Pāli materials, Nātaputta is portrayed in a most unfavorable light and his teachings are severely ridiculed, suggesting that in the early years of the Buddhist community the Jainas were formidable opponents and competitors of the Buddhists. Nātaputta is described as often declaring the postmortem fate of his deceased disciples, although he did not in fact know it. He is said to have been irritable and resentful, and unable to answer difficult questions. His disciple CITTA abandoned him for this reason and became a follower of the Buddha. In fact, Nātaputta is described as losing many followers to the Buddha, the most famous of whom was the householder UPĀLI. Nātaputta was convinced that Upāli could resist the Buddha's charisma and defeat him in argument. When he discovered that Upāli, too, had lost the debate and accepted the Buddha as his teacher, he vomited blood in rage and died soon thereafter. Buddhist sources claim that, on his deathbed, Nātaputta realized the futility of his own teachings and hoped that his followers would accept the Buddha as their teacher. In order to sow the discord that would result in their conversion, Nātaputta taught contradictory doctrines at the end of his life, teaching one disciple that his view was a form of annihilationism and another that his view was a form of eternalism. As a result, the Nigantha sect fell into discord and fragmented soon after his death. (This account, predictably, does not appear in Jaina sources.) News of Nātaputta's death prompted Sāriputta (S. sĀRIPUTRA) to recite a synopsis of the Buddha's teachings to the assembled SAMGHA in a discourse titled SAnGĪTISUTTA. Nātaputta is often listed in Buddhist texts as one of six non-Buddhist (tīrthika) teachers. See NIRGRANTHA; JAINA.
nones ::: n. pl. --> The fifth day of the months January, February, April, June, August, September, November, and December, and the seventh day of March, May, July, and October. The nones were nine days before the ides, reckoning inclusively, according to the Roman method.
The canonical office, being a part of the Breviary, recited at noon (formerly at the ninth hour, 3 P. M.) in the Roman Catholic Church.
The hour of dinner; the noonday meal.
Norito: Japanese prayers recited by Shinto priests in religious ceremonies, and high state officials in state ceremonies. These stately, dignified prayers, standardized in form, give thanks to Shinto deities, invoke their blessings, and are believed to have magical effect.
Nyayis (Persian) Nyāyis, Nyayishn (Pahlavi) Nyāyishn. To worship, serve; the five prayers in the Avesta, addressed to the sun, Mithra, moon, waters, and fire. The Nyayises of the sun and of Mithra are recited three times a day by the followers of Zoroaster; that to the moon, three times a month — when the moon is new, full, and on the wan; that to water and fire are recited every day when one is in the proximity of these elements.
oM mani padme huM. (T. oM mani padme huM; C. an mani bami hong; J. on mani padomei un; K. om mani panme hum 唵嘛呢叭彌吽). In Sanskrit, "homage to the Jewel-Lotus One"; the most famous of all Buddhist MANTRAs and important especially in Tibetan Buddhism, where it is the mantra most commonly recited and most often placed in prayer wheels; indeed, the Tibetan term rendered in English as "prayer wheel" is MA nI 'KHOR LO, or "MAnI wheel." This phrase is the renowned mantra of the bodhisattva of compassion, AVALOKITEsVARA. The mantra seems to appear first in the KĀRAndAVYuHA, a MAHĀYĀNA SuTRA presumed to have been composed in KASHMIR sometime around the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century CE. The sutra exalts Avalokitesvara and praises the mantra at length, referring to it as the "six-syllable spell" (sAdAKsARĪVIDYĀ). Contrary to the widespread view, the mantra does not refer to "the jewel in the lotus." Instead, it is a call (in the vocative case in Sanskrit) to Avalokitesvara, using one of his epithets, Manipadma, "Jewel-Lotus One." The mantra receives extensive commentary in Tibetan Buddhism. For example, according to the MAnI BKA' 'BUM, the six syllables correspond to the six rebirth destinies (sAdGATI) of divinities, demigods, humans, animals, ghosts, and hell denizens, so that by reciting the mantra, one is closing the door for all sentient beings to any possibility of further rebirth. See also QIANSHOU JING.
Orpheus (Greek) An early religious teacher and reformer in Greece about whom clustered so many legends that in course of time his historic existence came to be disputed. He was, however, an actual historic character, probably born in Thrace about the 13th century BC, lived and taught at Pimpleia on Mount Olympus, revived the ancient wisdom-religion, reformed the then degraded popular religion, and was killed — according to the story — because of it. He gathered pupils or disciples about him, and founded a famous Mystery school from which in time emanated a vast literature, now perished with the exception of the Orphic Hymns, the Lithica (a poem on the nature of precious stones), the Argonautica (which recites the connection of Orpheus with the Argonautic expedition), and some other fugitive fragments — and in our time these are supposed to be apocryphal or of a far later date than Orpheus himself, although certainly containing Orphic elements.
Padmasambhava. (T. Padma 'byung gnas) (fl. eighth century). Indian Buddhist master and tantric adept widely revered in Tibet under the appellation Guru rin po che, "Precious Guru"; considered to be the "second buddha" by members of the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who view him as a founder of their tradition. In Tibetan, he is also known as Padma 'byung gnas (Pemajungne), "the Lotus Born," which translates his Sanskrit name. It is difficult to assess the many legends surrounding his life and deeds, although the scholarly consensus is that he was a historical figure and did visit Tibet. The earliest reference to him is in the SBA BZHED (a work that purports to be from the eighth century, but is likely later), where he is mentioned as a water diviner and magician, suggesting that he may have been an expert in irrigation, which would have required the ability to subdue local spirits. Two texts in the Tibetan canon are attributed to him. The first is the Man ngag lta ba'i phreng ba, which is a commentary on the thirteenth chapter of the GUHYAGARBHATANTRA. The second is a commentary on the Upāyapāsapadmamālā, a MAHĀYOGA TANTRA. Regardless of his historical status and the duration of his stay in Tibet, the figure of Padmasambhava has played a key role in the narrative of Buddhism's arrival in Tibet, its establishment in Tibet, and its subsequent transmission to later generations. He is also venerated throughout the Himalayan regions of India, Bhutan, and Nepal and by the Newar Buddhists of the Kathmandu Valley. According to many of his traditional biographies, Padmasambhava was miraculously born in the center of a lotus blossom (PADMA) on Lake Danakosa in the land of OddIYĀNA, a region some scholars associate with the Swat Valley of modern Pakistan. Discovered and raised by King Indrabodhi, he abandoned his royal life to pursue various forms of Buddhist study and practice, culminating in his training as a tantric adept. He journeyed throughout the Himalayan regions of India and Nepal, meeting his first consort MANDĀRAVĀ at Mtsho padma in Himachal Pradesh, and later remaining in prolonged retreat in various locations around the Kathmandu Valley including MĀRATIKA, YANG LE SHOD and the ASURA CAVE. His reputation as an exorcist led to his invitation, at the behest of the Indian scholar sĀNTARAKsITA, to travel to Tibet in order to assist with the construction of BSAM YAS monastery. According to traditional accounts, Padmasambhava subdued and converted the indigenous deities inimical to the spread of Buddhism and, together with sāntaraksita and the Tibetan king KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN, established the first Buddhist lineage and monastic center of Tibet. He remained in Tibet as a court priest, and, together with his Tibetan consort YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL, recorded and then concealed numerous teachings as hidden treasure texts (GTER MA), to be revealed by a later succession of masters spiritually linked to Padmasambhava. The Rnying ma sect preserves the corpus of instructions stemming from the master in two classes of materials: those revealed after his passing as treasure texts and those belonging to an unbroken oral tradition (BKA' MA). It is believed that Padmasambhava departed Tibet for his paradise known as the Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain (ZANGS MDOG DPAL RI), where he continues to reside. From the time of the later dissemination of the doctrine (PHYI DAR) in the eleventh century onwards, numerous biographies of the Indian master have been revealed as treasure texts, including the PADMA BKA' THANG YIG, BKA' THANG GSER 'PHRENG, and the BKA' THANG ZANGS GLING MA. Padmasambhava is the focus of many kinds of ritual activities, including the widely recited "Seven Line Prayer to Padmasambhava" (Tshig 'dun gsol 'debs). The tenth day of each lunar month is dedicated to Padmasambhava, a time when many monasteries, especially those in Bhutan, perform religious dances reverencing the Indian master in his eight manifestations. In iconography, Padmasambhava is depicted in eight forms, known as the guru mtshan brgyad, who represent his eight great deeds. They are Padma rgyal po, Nyi ma 'od zer, Blo ldan mchog sred, Padmasambhava, Shākya seng ge, Padmakara (also known as Sororuhavajra, T. Mtsho skyes rdo rje), Seng ge sgra sgrogs, and RDO RJE GRO LOD.
Paegyangsa. (白羊寺). In Korean, "White Ram Monastery"; the eighteenth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Paegam (White Cliff) Mountain in South Cholla province. The monastery was founded in 632 by the Paekche monk Yohwan (d.u.) and was originally called Paegamsa; it was renamed Chongt'osa after a reconstruction project during the Koryo dynasty in 1034. Its current name of Paegyangsa comes from a Koryo-era legend. Sometime during the reign of King Sonjo of the Choson dynasty (r. 1567-1607), a teacher now known as Hwanyang (d.u., lit. "Goat Caller") was said to have been leading a recitation assembly on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), when a white ram came down out of the mountains to listen to the monks recite the SuTRA. Once the event was over, the ram appeared to Hwanyang in a dream and explained that he had been reborn as a ram for transgressions he had committed in heaven; after hearing the master's sermon, however, he was redeemed and was able to take rebirth once again as a divinity (DEVA). The next day the body of the ram was found on the monastery grounds, and Paegyangsa received the name by which it has been known ever since. Paegyangsa is guarded by the Gate of the Four Heavenly Kings (Sach'onwang mun). The main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN) is unusually located to the right of the gate, rather than centered in the compound, and an eight-story stone STuPA is located behind the main hall, rather than in front of it. The oldest extant building on the campus is the Kŭngnak pojon, or SUKHĀVATĪ hall, the construction of which was sponsored by the queen-consort of the Choson king Chungjong (r. 1506-1544). The main shrine hall, reconstructed in 1917 by the prominent Buddhist reformer MANAM CHONGHoN (1876-1957), is dedicated to sĀKYAMUNI Buddha, and enshrines an image of sākyamuni flanked by the bodhisattvas MANJUsRĪ and SAMANTABHADRA. Much of the monastery burned in 1950 during the Korean War, and reconstruction extended into the 1990s. In 1996, Paegyangsa was elevated to the status of an ecumenical monastery (CH'ONGNIM), and is one of the five such centers in the contemporary Chogye order, which are expected to provide training in the full range of practices that exemplify the major strands of the Korean Buddhist tradition; the monastery is thus also known as the Kobul Ch'ongnim.
Pāli. [alt. Pāli]. The term used to designate a dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan, which serves as the canonical language of the THERAVĀDA school of mainstream Buddhism. The term pāli does not, however, appear with this denotation in the Theravāda canon, where instead it refers to a canonical text or passage, in distinction to a commentary (AttHAKATHĀ) on such a passage. By extension, then, in modern usage in both Southeast Asian nations and the West, Pāli has come to designate the language in which those passages and their commentaries are written. According to the tradition, the Buddha spoke Māgadhī, the dialect of the Indian state of MAGADHA. Although no specimens of Māgadhī survive from the period before AsOKA, linguists have determined that it differed from Pāli. It appears that the Buddha did not teach in Sanskrit but instead spoke in the local dialects of the regions of northern India in which he preached, one dialect of which may have been Māgadhī. It is assumed that, after his death, his various teachings were gathered and then regularized into an ecclesiastical language that could be comprehended and recited by monastic groups across a wide region. It appears that, after the reign of King Asoka, some Buddhist schools translated the Buddha's teachings into Sanskrit while others used Pāli, but later scholastic Pāli was also influenced by Sanskrit. According to Theravāda tradition, the Buddha's teachings were first recorded in writing in Pāli, in Sri Lanka rather than India, at the end the first century BCE. Although these texts do not survive, scholars speculate that the Pāli used in those recensions was generally equivalent to what is used in the canon as it is preserved today. Later Pāli incorporates variant vocabulary that derives in part from the local language-thus, for example, Pāli texts composed in Thailand often show the influence of Thai vernacular. There is no single script for Pāli, with the local script, including, for example, Old Mon, Khmer, Sinhalese, Burmese, Thai, and now Romanization, being employed to write the language.
paritta. [alt. parittā] (BHS. parītta, T. yongs su skyob pa; C. minghu/minghu jing; J. myogo/myogokyo; K. myongho/myongho kyong 明護/明護經). In Pāli, "protection" (classical S. paritrāna); referring to both the practice of reciting a short passage from a SuTRA in order to draw on the text's apotropaic powers, as well as to the passages themselves. The use of paritta are said to have been sanctioned by the Buddha: after a monk had died of a snake bite, the Buddha recited a text (the Khandhaparitta, or "Protection of the Aggregates") for the monks to repeat as protection, which states that loving-kindness (P. mettā; S. MAITRĪ) and the infinite power of the Buddha, DHARMA, and SAMGHA would guard the monks from the finite power of snakes, scorpions, and other dangerous creatures. There were many specific instances that subsequently led the Buddha to deliver different paritta verses, including protection from evil spirits, the assurance of good fortune, exorcism, curing serious illness, and even safe childbirth. The power of these verses often is thought to derive from an asseveration of truth (S. SATYAVACANA; P. saccavacana, saccakiriyā), as in the famous paritta associated with AnGULIMĀLA, who offered this statement to help ease a woman's labor pains: "Since I was born of āryan birth, O sister, I am not aware of having intentionally deprived any living being of its life. By this asseveration of truth, may you be well and may your unborn child be well." (There is intentional irony in this statement, since Angulimāla was well known to have been a murderous highwayman before he became a monk; his "āryan birth" here refers to his ordination into the SAMGHA.) ¶ Collections of paritta are particularly common in Southeast Asian Buddhism, and the texts included in these collections are among the most widely known of Buddhist scriptures among the laity. One of the most popular such Pāli anthologies is the Catubhanavara ("The Text of the Four Recitals"), which contains twenty-nine (or in some recensions twenty-four) Pāli suttas whose protective powers are thought to be particularly efficacious. (This text is widely used in Sri Lanka, where it is known as the Pirit Potha.) Scriptures commonly presumed to have apotropaic powers in Pāli Buddhism include the METTĀSUTTA ("Discourse on Loving-Kindness"), the MAnGALASUTTA ("Discourse on the Auspicious"), the RATANASUTTA ("Discourse on the Precious"), and the ĀTĀNĀTIYASUTTA ("Discourse on the Ātānātiya Protective Spell"). The recitation of these texts accompanies all sorts of Buddhist ceremonies, from weddings to funerals to house blessings. In Southeast Asia, the monks performing a parittarecitation ritual are sometimes connected to the congregation with a ritual string, through which blessings and protection are transferred to the participants. See also RAKsĀ.
pariyatti. (S. paryavāpti; C. tong; J. tsu; K. t'ong 通). In Pāli, lit. "mastery" or "comprehension" (of a body of scriptural literature), or (in later Pāli commentarial usage) the "scriptures" themselves as transmitted through an oral tradition; one of the two principal monastic vocations noted in the Pāli commentarial literature, along with PAtIPATTI (meditative practice). The pariyatti monk serves an important role within the Buddhist tradition by continuing the transmission of a corpus of scriptural literature down to the next generation. Pariyatti monks thus performed the function of a bhānaka (reciter) or DHARMABHĀnAKA (reciter of the dharma), who were typically assigned to memorize one specific subcategory of the canon, i.e., Mahjjhimabhānaka ("reciters of the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA"), Jātakabhānaka ("reciters of the JĀTAKA"), etc. Monks in the contemporary Southeast Asian traditions who study Pāli literature are now also referred to as pariyatti monks; thus the term has come to mean a "study monk." ¶ Pariyatti is also the first of three progressive kinds of religious mastery. In this context, pariyatti is understood as a thorough comprehension of the theories, terms, and texts that ground Buddhist doctrine and that are enumerated in the literature of the TRIPItAKA (the canon). The second is patipatti, or "practice" of the prescriptions encountered in one's study of pariyatti. The final stage is pativedha (S. PRATIVEDHA), direct "penetration" to truth. See also GANTHADHURA.
Patthāna. [alt. Patthānappakarana]. In Pāli, lit. "Relations," or "Foundational Conditions"; the sixth of the seven books of the Pāli ABHIDHAMMAPItAKA (but also sometimes considered the last book of that canon). This highly abstract work concerns the twenty-four conditions (P. paccaya; S. PRATYAYA) that govern the interaction of factors (P. dhamma; S. DHARMA) in the causal matrix of dependent origination (P. paticcasamuppāda; S. PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA). According to the Pāli ABHIDHAMMA, these relations, when applied to all possible combinations of phenomena, describe the entire range of conscious experience. The Patthāna is organized into four main divisions based on four distinct methods of conditionality, which it calls the positive, or "forward," method (anuloma); the negative, or "reverse," method (paccanīya); the positive-negative method (anuloma-paccanīya); and the negative-positive method (paccanīya-anuloma). Each of these four is further divided into six possible combinations of phenomena, e.g., in triplets (tika) and pairs (duka): for example, each condition is analyzed in terms of the triplet set of wholesome (P. kusala; S. KUsALA), unwholesome (P. akusala; S. AKUsALA), and neutral (P. avyākata; S. AVYĀKṚTA). The four main sections are each further subdivided into six sections, giving a total of twenty-four divisions, one for each possible mode of conditionality. The twenty-four modes are as follows: root condition (hetupaccaya), object condition (ārammanapaccaya), predominance condition (adhipatipaccaya), continuity condition (anantarapaccaya), immediate continuity condition (samanantarapaccaya), co-nascence condition (sahajātapaccaya), mutuality condition (aññamaññapaccaya), dependence condition (nissayapaccaya), reliance condition (upanissayapaccaya), antecedence condition (purejātapaccaya), consequence condition (pacchājātapaccaya), repetition condition (āsevanapaccaya), volitional action condition (kammapaccaya), fruition condition (vipākapaccaya), nutriment condition (āhārapaccaya), governing faculty condition (indriyapaccaya), absorption condition (jhānapaccaya), path condition (maggapaccaya), association condition (sampayuttapaccaya), disassociation condition (vippayuttapaccaya), presence condition (atthipaccaya), absence condition (natthipaccaya), disappearance condition (vigatapaccaya), and continuation condition (avigatapaccaya). The Patthāna is also known as the "Great Composition" (Mahāpakarana) because of its massive size: the Pāli edition in Burmese script is 2,500 pages in length, while the Thai edition spans 6,000 pages. An abbreviated translation of the Patthāna appears in the Pali Text Society's English translation series as Conditional Relations. ¶ In contemporary Myanmar (Burma), where the study of abhidhamma continues to be highly esteemed, the Patthāna is regularly recited in festivals that the Burmese call pathan pwe. Pathan pwe are marathon recitations that go on for days, conducted by invited ABHIDHAMMIKA monks who are particularly well versed in the Patthāna. The pathan pwe serves a similar function to PARITTA recitations, in that it is believed to ward off baleful influences, but its main designated purpose is to forestall the decline and disappearance of the Buddha's dispensation (P. sāsana; S. sĀSANA). The Theravāda tradition considers the Patthāna to be the Buddha's most profound exposition of ultimate truth (P. paramatthasacca; S. PARAMĀRTHASATYA) and, according to the Pāli commentaries, the Patthāna is the first constituent of the Buddha's sāsana that will disappear from the world as the religion faces its inevitable decline. The abhidhammikas' marathon recitations of the Patthāna, therefore, help to ward off the eventual demise of the Buddhist religion. See also ANULOMAPRATILOMA.
Phra Malai. (P. Māleyya). A legendary arahant (S. ARHAT) and one of the most beloved figures in Thai Buddhist literature. According to legend, Phra Malai lived on the island of Sri Lanka and was known for his great compassion and supramundane abilities, including the power to fly to various realms of the Buddhist universe. On one of his visits to the hells, he alleviated the suffering of hell beings and then returned to the human realm to advise their relatives to make merit on their behalf. One day as he was on his alms round, he encountered a poor man who presented him with eight lotus blossoms. Phra Malai accepted the offering and then took the flowers to tāvatimsa (S. TRĀYASTRIMsA) heaven to present them at the Culāmani cetiya (S. caitya), where the hair relic of the Buddha is enshrined. Phra Malai then met the king of the gods, INDRA, and asked him various questions: why he had built the caitya, when the future buddha Metteya (S. MAITREYA) would come to pay respects to it, and how the other deities coming to worship had made sufficient merit to be reborn at such a high level. The conversation proceeded as one divinity after another arrived, with Indra's explanation of the importance of making merit by practicing DĀNA (generosity), observing the precepts and having faith. Eventually Metteya himself arrived and, after paying reverence to the chedi, asked Phra Malai about the people in the human realm. Phra Malai responded that there is great diversity in their living conditions, health, happiness, and spiritual faculties, but that they all hoped to meet Metteya in the future and hear him preach. Metteya in response told Phra Malai to tell those who wished to meet him to listen to the recitation of the entire VESSANTARA-JĀTAKA over the course of one day and one night, and to bring to the monastery offerings totaling a thousand flowers, candles, incense sticks, balls of rice, and other gifts. In the northern and northeastern parts of Thailand, this legend is recited in the local dialects (Lānnā Thai and Lao, respectively) as a preface to the performance or recitation of the Vessantara-Jātaka at an annual festival. In central and south Thailand, a variant of the legend emphasizing the suffering of the hell denizens was customarily recited at funeral wakes, a practice that is becoming less common in the twenty-first century.
Popchusa. (法住寺). In Korean, "Monastery Where the Dharma Abides"; the fifth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located at the base of Songni (Leaving Behind the Mundane) Mountain in North Ch'ungch'ong province. Popchusa was founded in 553, during the reign of the Silla King Chinhŭng (r. 540-576), by the monk Ŭisin (d.u.) who, according to legend, returned from the "western regions" (viz. Central Asia and India) with scriptures and resided at the monastery; hence the monastery's name. In 1101, during the Koryo dynasty, ŬICH'oN (1055-1101) held an assembly to recite the RENWANG JING ("Scripture for Humane Kings") here for the protection of the state (see HUGUO FOJIAO), which is said to have been attended by thirty thousand monks. On entering the monastery, to the back and left of the front gate there are two granite pillars that date from the eleventh century, which were used to support the hanging paintings (KWAEBUL) that were unfurled on such important ceremonial occasions as the Buddha's birthday. A pavilion on the right houses a huge iron pot dated to 720 CE, which was purportedly once used to prepare meals for monks and pilgrims; off to the side is a water tank made of stone that would have held about 2,200 gallons (ten cubic meters) of water. There is also a lotus-shaped basin dating from the eighth century and a lion-supported stone lantern sponsored by the Silla monarch Songdok (r. 702-737) in 720. The main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN) houses images of VAIROCANA, sĀKYAMUNI, and Rocana buddhas. Behind these three statues are three paintings of the same buddhas, accompanied by BODHISATTVAs, a young ĀNANDA, and the elderly MAHĀKĀsYAPA. In the paintings sākyamuni and Rocana are surrounded by rainbows and Vairocana by a white halo. Popchusa is especially renowned for its five-story high wooden pagoda, which dates from the foundation of the monastery in 553; it may have been the model for the similar pagoda at HoRYuJI in Nara, Japan. The current pagoda was reconstructed in 1624 and is the oldest extant wooden pagoda in Korea. The pagoda is painted with pictures of the eight stereotypical episodes in the life of the Buddha (see BAXIANG). Inside are four images of sākyamuni: the east-facing statue is in the gesture of fearlessness (ABHAYAMUDRĀ); the west, in the teaching pose (DHARMACAKRAMUDRĀ); the south, in the touching-the-earth gesture (BHuMISPARsAMUDRĀ); and the north, in a reclining buddha posture, a rare Korean depiction of the Buddha's PARINIRVĀnA. Around the four buddha images sit 340 smaller white buddhas, representing the myriad buddhas of other world systems. The ceiling inside is three stories high, and the beams, walls, and ceiling are painted with various images, including bodhisattvas and lotus flowers. Outside the pagoda is Popchusa's most striking image, the thirty-three-meter (108-foot), 160-ton bronze statue of the bodhisattva MAITREYA. The original image is said to have been constructed by the Silla VINAYA master CHINP'YO (fl. eighth century), but was removed by the Taewon'gun in 1872 and melted down to be used in the reconstruction of Kyongbok Palace in Seoul. A replacement image was begun in 1939 but was never completed; another temporary statue was crafted from cement and installed in 1964. The current bronze image was finally erected in 1989. Near the base is a statue of a woman with a bowl of food, representing the laywoman SUJĀTĀ, who offered GAUTAMA a meal of milk porridge before his enlightenment.
PrajNāpāramitāhṛdayasutra. (T. Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i snying po'i mdo; C. Bore boluomiduo xin jing; J. Hannya haramitta shingyo; K. Panya paramilta sim kyong 般若波羅蜜多心經). In English, the "Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra" (or, in other interpretations, the "DHĀRAnĪ-Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom"); a work known in English simply as the "Heart Sutra"; one of only a handful of Buddhist SuTRAs (including the "Lotus Sutra" and the "Diamond Sutra") to be widely known by an English title. The "Heart Sutra" is perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most widely recited, of all Buddhist sutras across all Mahāyāna traditions. It is also one of the most commented upon, eliciting more Indian commentaries than any Mahāyāna sutra (eight), including works by such luminaries as KAMALAsĪLA, VIMALAMITRA, and ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA, as well as such important East Asian figures as FAZANG, KuKAI, and HAKUIN EKAKU. As its title suggests, the scripture purports to be the quintessence or heart (hṛdaya) of the "perfection of wisdom" (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ), in its denotations as both supreme wisdom and the eponymous genre of scriptures. The sutra exists in long and short versions-with the longer version better known in India and the short version better known in East Asia-but even the long version is remarkably brief, requiring only a single page in translation. The short version, which is probably the earlier of the two recensions, is best known through its Chinese translation by XUANZANG made c. 649 CE. There has been speculation that the Chinese version may be a redaction of sections of the Chinese recension of the MAHĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA (also translated by Xuanzang) as a mnemonic encoding (dhāranī) of the massive perfection of wisdom literature, which was then subsequently translated back into Sanskrit, perhaps by Xuanzang himself. Although there is as yet no scholarly consensus on the provenance of the text, if this argument is correct, this would make the "Heart Sutra" by far the most influential of all indigenous Chinese scriptures (see APOCRYPHA). The long version of the text, set on Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) outside RĀJAGṚHA, begins with the Buddha entering SAMĀDHI. At that point, the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA (who rarely appears as an interlocutor in the prajNāpāramitā sutras) contemplates the perfection of wisdom and sees that the five aggregates (SKANDHA) are empty of intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA). The monk sĀRIPUTRA, considered the wisest of the Buddha's sRĀVAKA disciples, is inspired by the Buddha to ask Avalokitesvara how one should train in the perfection of wisdom. Avalokitesvara's answer constitutes the remainder of the sutra (apart from a brief epilogue in the longer version of the text). That answer, which consists essentially of a litany of negations of the major categories of Buddhist thought-including such seminal lists as the five aggregates (skandha), twelve sense-fields (ĀYATANA), twelve links of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA), and FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS-contains two celebrated statements. The first, made in reference to the first of the five aggregates, is "form (RuPA) is emptiness (suNYATĀ); emptiness is form" (RuPAM suNYATĀ sUNYATAIVA RuPAM). This is one of the most widely quoted and commented upon statements in the entire corpus of Mahāyāna sutras and thus is not easily amenable to succinct explication. In brief, however, the line suggests that emptiness, as the nature of ultimate reality, is not located in some rarified realm, but rather is found in the ordinary objects of everyday experience. The other celebrated statement is the spell (MANTRA) that concludes Avalokitesvara's discourse-GATE GATE PĀRAGATE PĀRASAMGATE BODHI SVĀHĀ-which, unlike many mantras, is amenable to translation: "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, enlightenment, svāha." This mantra has also been widely commented upon. The presence of the mantra in the sutra has led to its classification as a TANTRA rather than a sutra in some Tibetan catalogues; it also forms the basis of Indian tantric SĀDHANAs. The brevity of the text has given it a talismanic quality, being recited on all manner of occasions (it is commonly used as an exorcistic text in Tibet) and inscribed on all manner of objects, including fans, teacups, and neckties in modern Japan.
prātimoksa. (P. pātimokkha; T. so sor thar pa; C. boluotimucha; J. haradaimokusha; K. parajemokch'a 波羅提木叉). In Sanskrit, "code" or "rules," referring to a disciplinary code of conduct (of which there are several versions) for fully ordained monks (BHIKsU) and nuns (BHIKsUnĪ), or a text that sets forth that code, which probably constitutes the oldest part of the various Buddhist VINAYAs. The pre-Buddhist denotation of prātimoksa is uncertain, and may perhaps mean a promise that is to be redeemed; the Buddhist etymologies seem to indicate a "binding obligation" and, by extension, a monastic regulation. Indian Buddhist schools tended to define themselves in terms of the particular monastic code to which they adhered, and differences in the interpretation of the rules of conduct resulted in the convening of councils (SAMGĪTI) to adjudicate such differences and, ultimately, in the schisms that produced the various mainstream Buddhist schools. Several different recensions of the prātimoksa are extant, but there are three main lineages followed within the Buddhist tradition today: the THERAVĀDA pātimokkha followed in Sri Lankan and Southeast Asian Buddhism; the DHARMAGUPTAKA prātimoksa followed in Chinese and Korean Buddhism; and the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA prātimoksa followed in Tibetan Buddhism. Despite divergences in the numbers of rules listed in these codes (the Theravāda, for example, has 227 rules for bhiksus, the Dharmaguptaka 250, and the Mulasarvāstivāda 253, and all have considerably more rules for bhiksunī), there is substantial agreement among the prātimoksa of the various mainstream Buddhist schools. They are all similarly structured, with separate codes for monks and nuns, enumerating a set of categories of transgressions: (1) PĀRĀJIKA transgressions of ethical expectations that were so serious as to bring "defeat" and in some vinaya traditions to require expulsion from the order, e.g., engaging in sexual intercourse and murder; (2) SAMGHĀVAsEsA, transgressions entailing temporary suspension from the order, such as masturbation, acting as a go-between for sexual liaisons, or attempting to cause schism in the order (SAMGHABHEDA); (3) ANIYATA, undetermined cases exclusive to monks who are found with women, which require investigation by the saMgha; (4) NAIḤSARGIKAPĀYATTIKA, transgressions requiring confession and forfeiture of a prohibited object, such as hoarding excessive numbers of robes (CĪVARA), begging bowls (PĀTRA), and medicine, or keeping gold and silver; (5) PĀYATTIKA, transgressions that can be expiated through confession alone, such as lying; (6) PRATIDEsANĪYA, minor transgressions to be acknowledged, related to receiving and eating food, which were to be confessed; (7) sAIKsA, minor training rules governing monastic etiquette and deportment, such as not wearing robes sloppily or eating noisily, violations of which were called DUsKṚTA, lit. "bad actions." Both the bhiksu and bhiksunī prātimoksa also include (8) ADHIKARAnAsAMATHA, seven methods of resolving ecclesiastical disputes. Regardless of the school, the prātimoksa was recited separately during the fortnightly UPOsADHA ceremony by chapters of monks and nuns who gather inside a purified SĪMĀ boundary. All monks and nuns were expected to have confessed (see PĀPADEsANĀ) to any transgressions of the rules during the last fortnight prior to the recitation of the code, thus expiating them of that transgression. At the conclusion of the recitation of each category of transgression, the reciter questions the congregation as to whether the congregation is pure; silence indicates assent.
pravrajita. (P. pabbajjā; T. rab tu byung ba; C. chujia; J. shukke; K. ch'ulga 出家). In Sanskrit, lit. "going forth," to leave behind the household life of a layperson in order to enter the monastic community as a religious mendicant; also pravrajyā and other variations. The term is often seen translated into English as "gone forth into homelessness" (the Chinese translation literally means "leaving home"). Pravrajita/pravrajyā is a technical term that refers to the lower ordination of a person as a sRĀMAnERA or sRĀMAnERIKĀ, that is, as a male or female novice. Admission of a novice into the SAMGHA is performed with a simple ceremony. According to the Pāli tradition, the candidate shaves his hair and beard and, attiring himself in a monk's robe (CĪVARA) received from a donor, he presents himself before an assembly of monks, or a single monk of ten years' standing or more. Squatting on his haunches and folding his hands, the candidate recites the refuge formula three times (TRIsARAnA), whereupon he is made a novice. In most VINAYA traditions, a novice must observe ten precepts (sIKsĀPADA, sRĀMAnERASAMVARA): abstaining from (1) killing, (2) stealing, (3) sexual intercourse, (4) lying, (5) intoxicants, (6) eating after midday, (7) dancing, singing, music, and other unseemly forms of entertainment, (8) using garlands, perfumes, and unguents to adorn the body, (9) using high and luxurious beds and couches, and (10) accepting gold and silver. The MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA (which is followed in Tibet) expands these ten precepts to thirty-six. After receiving the lower ordination, the novice is required to live under the guidance (NIsRAYA) of a teacher until he or she receives higher ordination (UPASAMPADĀ) as a fully ordained monk (BHIKsU) or nun (BHIKsUnĪ). The novice may not attend the reading of the PRĀTIMOKsA during the bimonthly UPOsADHA (P. uposatha) ceremony, or participate in any formal acts of the order (SAMGHAKARMAN), such as giving ordination, and so on. At the beginning of his dispensation, the Buddha did not confer the lower ordination of a novice separately from the higher ordination, or upasaMpadā, of a fully ordained monk. In all cases, candidates simply took the going forth as a fully ordained monk by taking the refuge formula. Later, "going forth" and higher ordination (upasaMpadā) were made into separate ceremonies to initiate candidates into two hierarchically ranked institutions: the novitiate and full monkhood. The following types of persons may not be ordained as novices: branded thieves, fugitives from the law, registered thieves, those punished by flogging or branding, patricides, matricides, murderers of ARHATs, those who have shed the blood of a buddha, eunuchs, false monks, seducers of nuns, hermaphrodites, persons who are maimed, disabled, or deformed in various ways, and those afflicted with various communicable diseases.
Priestly Blessing :::The three verses blessing Israel (Numbers 6:24-26) recited daily by the Priests in the Temple as part of the morning liturgy.
pronounce ::: v. t. --> To utter articulately; to speak out or distinctly; to utter, as words or syllables; to speak with the proper sound and accent as, adults rarely learn to pronounce a foreign language correctly.
To utter officially or solemnly; to deliver, as a decree or sentence; as, to pronounce sentence of death.
To speak or utter rhetorically; to deliver; to recite; as, to pronounce an oration.
To declare or affirm; as, he pronounced the book to
Qianshou jing. (S. Nīlakanthakasutra; T. Mgrin pa sngon po can [gyi mdo]; J. Senjukyo; K. Ch'onsu kyong 千手經). In Chinese, "Thousand Hands Sutra"; in Sanskrit, "Blue-Throated [Avalokitesvara] Sutra"; an abbreviated title commonly used for the text that provides the scriptural foundation for the popular cult of Thousand-Armed and Thousand-Eyed AVALOKITEsVARA (SĀHASRABHUJASĀHASRANETRĀVALOKITEsVARA). There are several Chinese translations of the scripture, including Bhagavaddharma's (fl. c. seventh century) Qianshou Qianyan Guanshiyin pusa guangda yuanman wu'ai dabeixin tuoluoni jing ("Dhāranī-Sutra of Thousand-Eyed and Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Who Regards the World's Sounds and Feels Vast, Complete, Unimpeded Great Compassion"), translated between 650 and 661, and Zhitong's (fl. c. seventh century) Qianyan Qianbi Guanshiyin pusa tuoluoni shenzhou jing ("Dhāranī-Sutra of Thousand-Eyed and Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Who Regards the World's Sounds"), translated between 627 and 649. (There are additional translations by BODHIRUCI, made in 709; VAJRABODHI, made between 731 and 736; and AMOGHAVAJRA, made during the eighth century.) Each version differs in its content and structure, but most include a spell dedicated to Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara (C. GUANYIN), which is commonly called the Qianshou (Thousand-Handed/Armed) or Dabei (Great Compassion) DHĀRAnĪ. There are at least eight different Chinese transcriptions of this dhāranī and two Tibetan transcriptions, suggesting that different Sanskrit recensions of the spell were in circulation. Bhagavaddharma's translation of the sutra has been the most popular in the East Asia and the title Qianshou jing typically refers to his recension. According to Bhagavaddharma's translation of the text, innumerable eons ago, Avalokitesvara received this dhāranī from a buddha named Qianguang Wangjing Zhu Rulai (Tathāgata Tranquil Abode who is King of the Thousandfold Radiance), and, after making ten vows to benefit all sentient beings, the bodhisattva came to be endowed with a thousand arms and a thousand eyes. The sutra then explains the various benefits of keeping and reciting the dhāranī. Keeping the dhāranī ensures, for example, fifteen kinds of salutary rebirths, such as being born in a good country, living during a peaceful time, meeting good friends, having sufficient money and food, and being protected by the divinities; it also ensures that the adept will avoid fifteen kinds of painful deaths, such as from hunger, madness, drowning, conflagration, poison, and suicide. These various sets of benefits are only included in Bhagavadharma's version, which may partly account for the greater popularity of his translation. His version also forgoes the complex instructions on ritual matters found in Zhitong's version, such as the detailed rules of creating an image of Guanyin, which were probably intended for ritual specialists. Bhagavaddharma's text introduced the dhāranī and the names of forty gestures (MUDRĀ) and their particular benefits; Amoghavajra's (705-774) later recension includes illustrations of these mudrā. Due to the great popularity of Bhagavaddharma's early translation, Thousand-Armed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokitesvara became identified specifically with Avalokitesvara's manifestation as Great Compassion (C. Dabei; S. MAHĀKARUnIKA). Based on the same version, the Song TIANTAI master SIMING ZHILI (960-1028) composed a manual for a repentance ritual using this scripture: the Qianshou Qianyan Dabeixinzhou xingfa ("Rules for Performing the Great Compassion Heart Dhāranī of the Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed One"). A late-ninth-century abridgment of Bhagavaddharma's translation, the Dabei qiqing ("Great Compassion Invocation"), was also created, probably for use as a ritual manual. Bhagavaddharma's translation of the sutra also became popular in Japan and Korea as well. In Korea, where the text is known as the Ch'onsu kyong, another abridgment was made that included only the Thousand-Hands dhāranī and Avalokitesvara's vows; it was probably intended as a type of ritual procedure. This version also cites materials that derive from a variety of different traditions, including HWAoM (C. HUAYAN), SoN (C. CHAN), CH'oNT'AE (C. TIANTAI), and PURE LAND. Starting in the eighteenth century, several manuals were written with procedures for the ritual dedicated to Thousand-Armed Kwanŭm (Guanyin), all based on the dhāranī and vows. The current form of the rite is recited in the daily ritual of many Chinese and Korean monasteries. See also OM MAnI PADME HuM.
Ratanasutta. In Pāli, "Discourse on the Precious," one of the best loved and most widely-recited Buddhist texts in the THERAVĀDA Buddhist world (there is no analogous recension in the Chinese translations of the ĀGAMAs). The Ratanasutta appears in an early scriptural anthology, the SUTTANIPĀTA, a later collection, the KHUDDAKAPĀtHA, and in a postcanonical anthology of PARITTA ("protection texts"). The Pāli commentaries say that the discourse was first delivered to the Buddha's attendant ĀNANDA, who then went around the city of the Licchavis reciting the text and sprinkling holy water from the Buddha's own begging bowl (PĀTRA). Through this performance, the baleful spirits harassing the city were vanquished and all the people's illnesses were cured. The text itself consists of a mere seventeen verses, twelve of which recount the virtues of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) of the Buddha, DHARMA, and SAMGHA. The Ratanasutta's great renown derives from its inclusion in the Paritta anthology, texts that are chanted as part of the protective rituals performed by Buddhist monks to ward off misfortunes; indeed, it is this apotropaic quality of the text that accounts for its enduring popularity. Paritta suttas refer to specific discourses delivered by the Buddha that are believed to offer protection to those who either recite the sutta or listen to its recitation. Other such auspicious apotropaic suttas are the MAnGALASUTTA and the METTĀSUTTA. In Southeast Asia, these paritta texts are commonly believed to bring happiness and good fortune when chanted by the saMgha. See also RAKsĀ.
recital ::: n. --> The act of reciting; the repetition of the words of another, or of a document; rehearsal; as, the recital of testimony.
A telling in detail and due order of the particulars of anything, as of a law, an adventure, or a series of events; narration.
That which is recited; a story; a narration.
A vocal or instrumental performance by one person; -- distinguished from concert; as, a song recital; an organ, piano, or violin recital.
reciting ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Recite
record ::: v. t. --> To recall to mind; to recollect; to remember; to meditate.
To repeat; to recite; to sing or play.
To preserve the memory of, by committing to writing, to printing, to inscription, or the like; to make note of; to write or enter in a book or on parchment, for the purpose of preserving authentic evidence of; to register; to enroll; as, to record the proceedings of a court; to record historical events.
rehearse ::: v. t. --> To repeat, as what has been already said; to tell over again; to recite.
To narrate; to relate; to tell.
To recite or repeat in private for experiment and improvement, before a public representation; as, to rehearse a tragedy.
To cause to rehearse; to instruct by rehearsal. ::: v. i.
religion of CHI /ki:/ [Case Western Reserve University] Yet another hackish parody religion (see also {Church of the SubGenius}, {Discordianism}). In the mid-70s, the canonical "Introduction to Programming" courses at CWRU were taught in {ALGOL}, and student exercises were punched on cards and run on a Univac 1108 system using a homebrew operating system named CHI. The religion had no doctrines and but one ritual: whenever the worshipper noted that a digital clock read 11:08, he or she would recite the phrase "It is 11:08; ABS, ALPHABETIC, ARCSIN, ARCCOS, ARCTAN." The last five words were the first five functions in the appropriate chapter of the ALGOL manual; note the special pronunciations /obz/ and /ark'sin/ rather than the more common /ahbz/ and /ark'si:n/. Using an alarm clock to warn of 11:08's arrival was {considered harmful}. [{Jargon File}]
repeat ::: v. t. --> To go over again; to attempt, do, make, or utter again; to iterate; to recite; as, to repeat an effort, an order, or a poem.
To make trial of again; to undergo or encounter again.
To repay or refund (an excess received). ::: n. --> The act of repeating; repetition.
Revata. (T. Nam gru; C. Lipoduo; J. Ribata; K. Ibada 離婆多). Sanskrit and Pāli proper name of an important ARHAT who was foremost among the Buddha's monk disciples in mastery of meditative absorption (DHYĀNA; P. JHĀNA). He is typically known as "doubting Revata" (KĀnKsĀ-REVATA; P. Kankhā-Revata), to distinguish him from several other Revatas who appear in the literature, because prior to his enlightenment he is said to have been troubled by doubt concerning what was permissible and what was not. According to the Pāli account, Revata was born into a wealthy family in the city of Sāvitthi (S. sRĀVASTĪ). One day he heard the Buddha preach in Kapilavatthu (S. KAPILAVASTU) and resolved to renounce the world and enter the order. He attained arhatship by relying on dhyāna, and his exceptional skill in these meditative states won him distinction. Revata had resolved to attain this distinction in a previous life as a brāhmana when, during the time of the buddha Padmottara, he heard the Buddha describe one of his disciples as preeminent in his attainment of dhyāna. In another famous story, the mother of Uttara had been reborn as a hungry ghost (S. PRETA, P. peta) and after fifty-five years of wandering, encountered Revata and begged him for relief. He relieved her suffering by making various offerings to the SAMGHA in her name. ¶ There was a later monk named Revata who played a major role at the second Buddhist council (SAMGĪTI; see COUNCIL, SECOND) held at VAIsĀLĪ. Some one hundred years after the death of the Buddha, the monk YAsAS was traveling in Vaisālī when he observed the monks there receiving alms in the form of gold and silver directly from the laity, in violation of the prohibition against monks' touching gold and silver. He also found that the monks had identified ten points in the VINAYA that were classified as violations but that they had determined were sufficiently minor to be ignored. Yasas challenged the monks on these practices, but when he refused to accept their bribes to keep quiet, they expelled him from the order. Yasas sought support of several respected monks in the west, including sĀnAKAVĀSĪN and Revata, and together they traveled to Vaisālī. Once there, Revata went to Sarvagāmin, the eldest monk of his era, who is said to have been a disciple of ĀNANDA, to question him about these ten points. At Revata's suggestion, a jury of eight monks was appointed to adjudicate, with four representatives selected from each party. Revata was selected as one of four from the party declaring the ten practices to be violations, and it was Revata who publically put the questions to Sarvagāmin. In each case, the senior monk said that the practice in question was a violation of the vinaya. Seven hundred monks then gathered to recite the vinaya. Those who did not accept the decision of the council held their own convocation, which they called the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA, or "Great Assembly." This event is sometimes said to have led to the first "great schism" within the mainstream Buddhist tradition, between the STHAVIRANIKĀYA, or Fraternity of the Elders, and the MahāsāMghika.
rhapsodist ::: n. --> Anciently, one who recited or composed a rhapsody; especially, one whose profession was to recite the verses of Hormer and other epic poets.
Hence, one who recites or sings poems for a livelihood; one who makes and repeats verses extempore.
One who writes or speaks disconnectedly and with great excitement or affectation of feeling.
rhapsodist ::: One who recited epic and other poetry, especially professionally, in ancient Greece. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)
rhapsodist ::: one who recited epic and other poetry, especially professionally, in ancient Greece. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)
rhapsody ::: n. --> A recitation or song of a rhapsodist; a portion of an epic poem adapted for recitation, or usually recited, at one time; hence, a division of the Iliad or the Odyssey; -- called also a book.
A disconnected series of sentences or statements composed under excitement, and without dependence or natural connection; rambling composition.
A composition irregular in form, like an improvisation; as, Liszt&
rosary ::: n. --> A bed of roses, or place where roses grow.
A series of prayers (see Note below) arranged to be recited in order, on beads; also, a string of beads by which the prayers are counted.
A chapelet; a garland; a series or collection, as of beautiful thoughts or of literary selections.
A coin bearing the figure of a rose, fraudulently circulated in Ireland in the 13th century for a penny.
Sadāparibhuta. (T. Rtag tu mi brnyas pa; C. Changbuqing pusa; J. Jofukyo bosatsu; K. Sangbulgyong posal 常不輕菩薩). In Sanskrit, "Never Disparaging," the name of a BODHISATTVA described in the eponymous nineteenth or twentieth chapter (depending on the version) of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). The Buddha explains that long ago there was a bodhisattva named Sadāparibhuta who did not study or recite the sutras. Whenever he saw a monk (BHIKsU), nun (BHIKsUnĪ), male lay disciple (UPĀSAKA), or female lay disciple (UPĀSIKĀ), he would say, "I dare not belittle you because you will all become buddhas." Arrogant monks, nuns, and male and female lay disciples began to sarcastically refer to him as "Never Disparaging." When the bodhisattva was about to die, he heard millions of verses of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra in the sky and as a result his life span was increased by many eons, during which he taught the sutra. Those who had mocked him were reborn in AVĪCI hell, but were eventually reborn as his disciples and later became the five hundred bodhisattvas in the assembly of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. The Buddha reveals that he had been the bodhisattva Sadāparibhuta in a previous life. The bodhisattva's famous statement, "I dare not belittle you because you will all become buddhas," came to be known as the "twenty-four character 'Lotus Sutra'" because in KUMĀRAJĪVA's translation, the line is twenty-four Sinographs long. The chapter was especially important to the Japanese reformer NICHIREN, who noted the importance of developing even a negative relationship with the true teaching, as evidenced by the fact that those who slandered Sadāparibhuta eventually became bodhisattvas themselves.
Saddharmapundarīkasutra. (T. Dam pa'i chos padma dkar po'i mdo; C. Miaofa lianhua jing/Fahua jing; J. Myohorengekyo/Hokekyo; K. Myobop yonhwa kyong/Pophwa kyong 妙法蓮華經/法華經). In Sanskrit, "Sutra of the White Lotus of the True Dharma," and known in English simply as the "Lotus Sutra"; perhaps the most influential of all MAHĀYĀNA sutras. The earliest portions of the text were probably composed as early as the first or second centuries of the Common Era; the text gained sufficient renown in India that a number of chapters were later interpolated into it. The sutra was translated into Chinese six times and three of those translations are extant. The earliest of those is that made by DHARMARAKsA, completed in 286. The most popular is that of KUMĀRAJĪVA in twenty-eight chapters, completed in 406. The sutra was translated into Tibetan in the early ninth century. Its first translation into a European language was that of EUGÈNE BURNOUF into French in 1852. The Saddharmapundarīkasutra is perhaps most famous for its parables, which present, in various versions, two of the sutra's most significant doctrines: skill-in-means (UPĀYA) and the immortality of the Buddha. In the parable of the burning house, a father lures his children from a conflagration by promising them three different carts, but when they emerge they find instead a single, magnificent cart. The three carts symbolize the sRĀVAKA vehicle, the PRATYEKABUDDHA vehicle, and the BODHISATTVA vehicle, while the one cart is the "one vehicle" (EKAYĀNA), the buddha vehicle (BUDDHAYĀNA). This parable indicates that the Buddha's previous teaching of three vehicles (TRIYĀNA) was a case of upāya, an "expedient device" or "skillful method" designed to attract persons of differing capacities to the dharma. In fact, there is only one vehicle, the vehicle whereby all beings proceed to buddhahood. In the parable of the conjured city, a group of weary travelers take rest in a magnificent city, only to be told later that it is a magical creation. This conjured city symbolizes the NIRVĀnA of the ARHAT; there is in fact no such nirvāna as a final goal in Buddhism, since all will eventually follow the bodhisattva's path to buddhahood. The apparently universalistic doctrine articulated by the sutra must be understood within the context of the sectarian polemics in which the sutra seems to have been written. The doctrine of upāya is intended in part to explain the apparent contradiction between the teachings that appear in earlier sutras and those of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. The former are relegated to the category of mere expedients, with those who fail to accept the consummate teaching of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra as the authentic word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA) repeatedly excoriated by the text itself. In a device common in Mahāyāna sutras, the sutra itself describes both the myriad benefits that accrue to those who recite, copy, and revere the sutra, as well as the misfortune that will befall those who fail to do so. The immortality of the Buddha is portrayed in the parable of the physician, in which a father feigns death in order to induce his sons to commit to memory an antidote to poison. The apparent death of the father is compared to the Buddha's entry into nirvāna, something which he only pretended to do in order to inspire his followers. Elsewhere in the sutra, the Buddha reveals that he did not achieve enlightenment as the prince Siddhārtha who left his palace, but in fact had achieved enlightenment eons before; the well-known version of his departure from the palace and successful quest for enlightenment were merely a display meant to inspire the world. The immortality of the Buddha (and other buddhas) is also demonstrated when a great STuPA emerges from the earth. When the door to the funerary reliquary is opened, ashes and bones are not found, as would be expected, but instead the living buddha PRABHuTARATNA, who appears in his stupa whenever the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is taught. sĀKYAMUNI joins him on his seat, demonstrating another central Mahāyāna doctrine, the simultaneous existence of multiple buddhas. Other famous events described in the sutra include the miraculous transformation of a NĀGA princess into a buddha after she presents a gem to sākyamuni and the tale of a bodhisattva who immolates himself in tribute to a previous buddha. The sutra contains several chapters that function as self-contained texts; the most popular of these is the chapter devoted to the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA, which details his ability to rescue the faithful from various dangers. The Saddharmapundarīkasutra was highly influential in East Asia, inspiring both a range of devotional practices as well as the creation of new Buddhist schools that had no Indian analogues. The devotional practices include those extolled by the sutra itself: receiving and keeping the sutra, reading it, memorizing and reciting it, copying it, and explicating it. In East Asia, there are numerous tales of the miraculous benefits of each of these practices. The practice of copying the sutra (or having it copied) was a particularly popular form of merit-making either for oneself or for departed family members. Also important, especially in China, was the practice of burning either a finger or one's entire body as an offering to the Buddha, emulating the self-immolation of the bodhisattva BHAIsAJYARĀJA in the twenty-third chapter (see SHESHEN). In the domain of doctrinal developments, the Saddharmapundarīkasutra was highly influential across East Asia, its doctrine of upāya providing the rationale for the systems of doctrinal taxonomies (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) that are pervasive in East Asian Buddhist schools. In China, the sutra was the central text of the TIANTAI ZONG, where it received detailed exegesis by a number of important figures. The school's founder, TIANTAI ZHIYI, divided the sutra into two equal parts. In the first fourteen chapters, which he called the "trace teaching" (C. jimen, J. SHAKUMON), sākyamuni appears as the historical buddha. In the remaining fourteen chapters, which Zhiyi called the "origin teaching" (C. benmen, J. HONMON), sākyamuni reveals his true nature as the primordial buddha who achieved enlightenment many eons ago. Zhiyi also drew on the Saddharmapundarīkasutra in elucidating two of his most famous doctrines: the three truths (SANDI, viz., emptiness, the provisional, and the mean) and the notion of YINIAN SANQIAN, or "the trichiliocosm in an instant of thought." In the TENDAISHu, the Japanese form of Tiantai, the sutra remained supremely important, providing the scriptural basis for the central doctrine of original enlightenment (HONGAKU) and the doctrine of "achieving buddhahood in this very body" (SOKUSHIN JoBUTSU); in TAIMITSU, the tantric form of Tendai, sākyamuni Buddha was identified with MAHĀVAIROCANA. For the NICHIREN schools (and their offshoots, including SoKA GAKKAI), the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is not only its central text but is also considered to be the only valid Buddhist sutra for the degenerate age (J. mappo; see C. MOFA); the recitation of the sutra's title is the central practice in Nichiren (see NAMU MYoHoRENGEKYo). See also SADĀPARIBHuTA.
Samanyas (Sanskrit) Sāmanya-s Brahmins conversant with the Sama-Veda and trained to chant and recite the sacred hymns.
saMgha. (P. sangha; T. dge 'dun; C. sengqie; J. sogya; K. sŭngga 僧伽). A BUDDHIST HYBRID SANSKRIT term, generally translated as "community" or "order," it is the term most commonly used to refer to the order of Buddhist monks and nuns. (The classical Sanskrit and Pāli of this term is sangha, a form often seen in Western writings on Buddhism; this dictionary uses saMgha as the generic and nonsectarian Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit form.) The term literally means "that which is struck together well," suggesting something that is solid and not easily broken apart. In ancient India, the term originally meant a "guild," and the different offices in the saMgha were guild terms: e.g., ĀCĀRYA, which originally meant a "guild master," was adopted in Buddhism to refer to a teacher or preceptor of neophytes to the monastic community. The Buddhist saMgha began with the ordination of the first monks, the "group of five" (PANCAVARGIKA) to whom the Buddha delivered his first sermon, when he turned the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) at SĀRNĀTH. At that time, there was no formal ordination ceremony; the Buddha simply used the EHIBHIKsUKĀ formula, lit. "Come, monk," to welcome someone who had joined the order. The order grew as rival teachers were converted, bringing their disciples with them. Eventually, a more formal ritual of ordination (UPASAMPADĀ) was developed. In addition, as circumstances warranted, the Buddha slowly began making rules to organize the daily life of the community as a whole and its individual members (see VINAYA). Although it seems that in the early years, the Buddha and his followers wandered without fixed dwellings, donors eventually provided places for them to spend the rainy season (see VARsĀ) and the shelters there evolved into monasteries (VIHĀRA). A saMgha came to be defined as a group of monks who lived within a particular geographical boundary (SĪMĀ) and who gathered fortnightly (see UPOsADHA) to recite the monastic code (PRĀTIMOKsA). That group had to consist of at least ten monks in a central region and five monks in more remote regions. In the centuries after the passing of the Buddha, variations developed over what constituted this code, leading to the formation of "fraternities" or NIKĀYAs; the tradition typically recognizes eighteen such groups as belonging to the MAINSTEAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS, but there were clearly more. ¶ There is much discussion in Buddhist literature on the question of what constitutes the saMgha, especially the saMgha that is the third of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA), to which Buddhists go for refuge (sARAnA). One of the oldest categories is the eightfold saMgha, composed only of those who have reached a certain level of spiritual attainment. The eight are four groups of two, in each case one who is approaching and one who has attained one of the four ranks of stream-enterer, or SROTAĀPANNA; once-returner, or SAKṚDĀGĀMIN; nonreturner, or ANĀGĀMIN; and worthy one, or ARHAT. This is the saMgha of the saMgha jewel, and is sometimes referred to as the ĀRYASAMGHA, or "noble saMgha." A later and more elaborate category expanded this group of eight to a group of twenty, called the VIMsATIPRABHEDASAMGHA, or "twenty-member saMgha," based on their different faculties (INDRIYA) and the ways in which they reach NIRVĀnA; this subdivision appears especially in MAHĀYĀNA works, particularly in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ literature. Whether eight or twenty, it is this group of noble persons (ĀRYAPUDGALA) who are described as worthy of gifts (daksinīyapudgala). Those noble persons who are also ordained are sometimes referred to as the "ultimate saMgha" (PARAMĀRTHASAMGHA) as distinguished from the "conventional saMgha" (SAMVṚTISAMGHA), which is composed of the ordained monks and nuns who are still ordinary persons (PṚTHAGJANA). In a still broader sense, the term is sometimes used for a fourfold group, composed of monks (BHIKsU), nuns (BHIKsUnĪ), lay male disciples (UPĀSAKA), and lay female disciples (UPĀSIKĀ). However, this fourfold group is more commonly called PARIsAD ("followers" or "congregation"), suggesting that the term saMgha is more properly used to refer to the ordained community. In common parlance, however, especially in the West, saMgha has come to connote any community of Buddhists, whether monastic or lay, or a combination of the two. In the long history of Buddhism, however, the presence or absence of the Buddhist dispensation (sĀSANA) has traditionally been measured by the presence or absence of ordained monks who virtuously maintain their precepts. In the history of many Buddhist lands, the establishment of Buddhism is marked by the founding of the first monastery and the ordination of the first monks into the saMgha. See also SAMGHABHEDA; SAMMUTISAnGHA; ĀRYAPUDGALA; SŬNGT'ONG; SAnGHARĀJA.
saMgītikāra. [alt. saMgītikāraka] (T. bka' sdud pa po; C. jiejizhe; J. ketsujusha; K. kyolchipcha 結集者). In Sanskrit, "rapporteur," the person who recites a discourse that they have heard spoken by the Buddha, e.g., the "I" in "thus have I heard" (EVAM MAYĀ sRUTAM). This person is typically identified as ĀNANDA (for the SuTRAPItAKA) or UPĀLI (for the VINAYAPItAKA), but the identity of the saMgītikāra became a topic of discussion in the MAHĀYĀNA, which asserted that the Buddha also delivered discourses outside the physical presence or mental comprehension of Ānanda. In those cases, the saMgītikāra was usually a BODHISATTVA, such as MANJUsRĪ.
sāntideva. (T. Zhi ba lha). Eighth-century Indian monk of NĀLANDĀ monastery, renowned as the author of two influential MAHĀYĀNA texts: the BODHICARYĀVATĀRA (a long poem on the practice of the bodhisattva path) and the sIKsĀSAMUCCAYA (a compendium of passages from Mahāyāna sutras corroborating the explanations given in the Bodhicaryāvatāra). Nothing is known of his life apart from legends. According to these tales, he was of royal birth but renounced the world before his investiture as king. At Nālandā monastery, he was known as an indolent monk. In order to humiliate him, his fellow monks challenged him to recite sutras before the assembly. He asked whether they wished to hear something old or something new. When they requested something new, he recited the Bodhicaryāvatāra. When he reached the ninth chapter, on wisdom (PRAJNĀ), he began to rise into the air and disappeared, never to return. For this reason, there is some controversy as to how the ninth chapter ends, and indeed, there are different recensions of the text, one longer and one shorter. Based on the contents of the Bodhicaryāvatāra's ninth chapter, Tibetan doxographers count sāntideva as a proponent of the *PRĀSAnGIKA-MADHYAMAKA. The Bodhicaryāvatāra was very influential in Tibet; particularly noteworthy is the BKA' GDAMS tradition of dge bshes Po to ba, who lists it and the siksāsamuccaya, along with the BODHISATTVABHuMI, MAHĀYĀNASuTRĀLAMKĀRA, Āryasura's JĀTAKAMĀLĀ, and the UDĀNAVARGA, as the six fundamental treatises of the Bka' gdams tradition.
Sengmeng. (J. Somo; K. Sŭngmaeng 僧猛) (418-489). A Buddhist nun (BHIKsUnĪ) from Yanguan County in southeastern China during the Qi dynasty (479-502). As was common in the biographies collected in the BIQIUNI ZHUAN, she left secular life at a young age. Despite her family's long fealty to Daoism, Sengmeng alone rejected Daoism in favor of Buddhism, strictly adhering to the monastic precepts. Sengmeng demonstrated a penetrating grasp of scripture and was extremely diligent in her study. In addition, she could recite from memory extraordinary amounts of text, often after only a single reading. Sengmeng demonstrated her Buddhist compassion in many ways, including dramatic moments when she used her own body as a barricade to protects animals from predators, enduring pecks and bites as a result. Her exemplary deeds were cited as ideal models for Buddhist monastics and laity alike.
Sgam po pa'i chos bzhi. (Gampope choshi). In Tibetan, "the four dharmas of Sgam po pa," a series of brief instructions encompassing the entirety of the Buddhist path composed by the BKA' BRGYUD founder SGAM PO PA BSOD NAMS RIN CHEN. The instructions are often recited in the form of a prayer: Grant your blessings that my mind may turn toward the dharma. / Grant your blessings that the dharma may follow the path. / Grant your blessings that the path may clarify confusion. / Grant your blessings that confusion may arise as wisdom.
Shema ::: (Heb. hear) Title of the fundamental, monotheistic statement of Judaism, found in Deut. 6:4 (“Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is One”; shema Yisrael YHWH elohenu YHWH ehad). This statement avers the unity of God, and is recited daily in the liturgy (along with Deut. 6:5-9, 11.13-21; Num. 15.37- 41 and other passages), and customarily before sleep at night. This proclamation also climaxes special liturgies (like Yom Kippur), and is central to the confession before death and the ritual of martyrdom. The Shema is inscribed on the mezuzah and the tefillin. In public services, it is recited in unison.
Shema Yisrael (&
Shemoneh Esreh ::: (Heb.eighteen) The main section of Jewish prayers recited in a standing position (see amida) and containing 19 (yes!) "benedictions": praise to (1) God of the fathers/patriarchs, (2) God's power and (3) holiness; prayers for (4) knowledge, (5) repentance, (6) forgiveness, (7) redemption, (8) healing sick persons, (9) agricultural prosperity, (10) ingathering the diaspora, (11) righteous judgment, (12) punishment of the wicked and heretics (birkat haminim, (13) reward of the pious, (14) rebuilding Jerusalem, (15) restoration of the royal house of David, (16) acceptance of prayers, (17) thanks to God, (18) restoration of Temple worship, and (19) peace.
Sheva Brochos(t) ::: Seven blessings recited at a wedding.
Shin Arahan. An eleventh-century Mon monk credited with bringing THERAVĀDA Buddhism to Burma (Myanmar). According to legend, Shin Arahan (in Pāli, Dhammadassi) was the reincarnation of a NAT, born to a brāhmana virgin wife in the Thaton region in the south of Burma. He attained the state of ARHAT shortly after his ordination. He learned that the dharma was being practiced impurely in the "western regions" (viz., PAGAN [Bagan]) and proceeded there. In Pagan, monks called ari had polluted the dharma, proclaiming that murder was permissible if the proper spells (MANTRA) are recited. They also required that all virgins have intercourse with them before marriage. The newly ordained king ANAWRAHTA (Anuruddha, r. 1044-1077) recognized that these monks were corrupt but was unable to remove them from the order. When Shin Arahan arrived in Pagan, he was discovered by a hunter who had never seen a monk before. Mistaking him for a spirit, he took him to the king. Shin Arahan preached a sermon that impressed the king, who asked him where the Buddha was, how much of the dharma remained, and if there were other disciples of the Buddha. Shin Arahan recounted the history of the Buddha and his relics and described the Pāli canon and the monastic order. The king then adopted Theravāda as the practice of his kingdom and defrocked the ari monks. He asked the Mon king to send a copy of the tipitaka (S. TRIPItAKA) and some relics of the Buddha. When the Mon king refused, Anawrahta invaded Thaton in 1057, taking the Mon king and his family captive. He also took monks and skilled craftsmen, as well as Pāli scriptures, back with him to Pagan.
Shinran. (親鸞) (1173-1262). Japanese priest who is considered the founder of the JoDO SHINSHu, or "True PURE LAND School." After the loss of his parents, Shinran was ordained at age nine by the TENDAISHu monk Jien (1155-1225) and began his studies at HIEIZAN. There, he regularly practiced "perpetual nenbutsu" (J. nenbutsu; C. NIANFO), ninety-day retreats in which one circumambulated a statue of the buddha AMITĀBHA while reciting the nenbutsu. In 1201, he left Mt. Hiei and became the disciple of HoNEN, an influential monk who emphasized nenbutsu recitation. Shinran was allowed to copy Honen's most influential (and at that time still unpublished) work, the SENCHAKUSHu. When Honen was exiled to Tosa in 1207, Shinran was defrocked by the government and exiled to Echigo, receiving a pardon four years later. He did not see Honen again. Shinran would become a popular teacher of nenbutsu practice among the common people, marrying (his wife Eshinni would later write important letters on pure land practice) and raising a family (the lineage of the True Pure Land sect is traced through his descendants), although he famously declared that he was "neither a monk nor a layman" (hiso hizoku). While claiming simply to be transmitting Honen's teachings, Shinran made important revisions and elaborations of the pure land doctrine that he had learned from Honen. In 1214, he moved to the Kanto region, where he took a vow to recite the three pure land sutras (J. Jodo sanbukyo; C. JINGTU SANBU JING) one thousand times. However, he soon stopped the practice, declaring it to be futile. It is said that from this experience he developed his notion of shinjin. Although literally translated as "the mind of faith," as Shinran uses the term shinjin might best be glossed as the buddha-mind realized in the entrusting of oneself to Amitābha's name and vow. Shinran often would contrast self-power (JIRIKI) and other-power (TARIKI), with the former referring to the always futile attempts to secure one's own welfare through traditional practices such as mastering the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) of the bodhisattva path to buddhahood, and the latter referring to the sole source of salvation, the power of Amitābha's name and his vow. Thus, Shinran regarded the Mahāyāna practice of dedicating merit to the welfare of others to be self-power; the only dedication of merit that was important was that made by the bodhisattva DHARMĀKARA, who vowed to become the buddha Amitābha and establish his pure land of SUKHĀVATĪ for those who called his name. He regarded the deathbed practices meant to bring about birth in the pure land to be self-power; he regarded multiple recitations of NAMU AMIDABUTSU to be self-power. Shinran refers often to the single utterance that assures rebirth in the pure land. This utterance need not be audible, indeed not even voluntary, but is instead heard in the heart as a consequence of the "single thought-moment" of shinjin, received through Amitābha's grace. This salvation has nothing to do with whether one is a monk or layperson, man or woman, saint or sinner, learned or ignorant. He said that if even a good man can be reborn in the pure land, then how much more easily can an evil man; this is because the good man remains attached to the illusion that his virtuous deeds will somehow bring about his salvation, while the evil man has abandoned this conceit. Whereas Honen sought to identify the benefits of the nenbutsu in contrast to other teachings of the day, Shinran sought to reinterpret Buddhist doctrine and practice in light of Amitābha's vow. For example, the important Mahāyāna doctrine of the EKAYĀNA, or "one vehicle," the buddha vehicle whereby all sentient beings will be enabled to follow the bodhisattva path to buddhahood, is interpreted by Shinran to be nothing other than Amitābha's vow. Indeed, the sole purpose of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha's appearance in the world was to proclaim the existence of Amitābha's vow. These doctrines are set forth in Shinran's magnum opus, an anthology of passages from Buddhist scriptures, intermixed with his own comments and arranged topically, entitled KYoGYo SHINSHo ("Teaching, Practice, and Realization of the Pure Land Way"), a work that he began in 1224 and continued to expand and revise over the next three decades. Shinran did not consider himself to be a master and did not establish a formal school, leading to problems of authority among his followers when he was absent. After he left Kanto for Kyoto, for example, problems arose among his followers in Kanto, leading Shinran to write a series of letters, later collected as TANNISHo ("Lamenting the Deviations").
Siddham. (C. Xitan; J. Shittan; K. Siltam 悉曇). In Sanskrit, "Accomplished" or "Perfected"; a North Indian written script descended from BRAHMĪ and an ancestor of Devanāgarī, the script in which Sanskrit and Hindi are written today. The use of Siddham is preserved only in East Asian Buddhism, the script having been introduced to China in the eighth century in order to transcribe DHĀRAnĪ and MANTRA. KuKAI is said to have introduced the Siddham script to Japan from China in 806 CE. The script is closely associated with the esoteric Buddhist traditions of East Asia (J. MIKKYo), in which the writing system itself became an object of visualization and veneration, as a written representation of the sounds enunciated in mantra and dhāranī. Siddham is also said to have influenced the development of the indigenous Japanese kana writing system, which is associated with Kukai. Often in traditional sources, when an East Asian monk is said to know "Sanskrit" (Fanwen), what is really meant is that he is able to read Siddham and to recite correctly passages written in that script.
Sifen lü. (J. Shibunritsu; K. Sabun yul 四分律). In Chinese, "Four-Part VINAYA"; the Chinese translation of the DHARMAGUPTAKA vinaya, the most influential of the different vinaya translations in East Asia, so-named because of the four main divisions into which the text was divided: (1) bhiksuvibhanga, (2) bhiksunīvibhanga, (3) SKANDHAKA, which includes a life of the Buddha and the twenty skandhaka, and (4) two Appendices, of saMyuktavarga and vinayaikottara. The collection probably derives from some time in the first century BCE. With the support of the ruler Yao Xing (r. 394-416), the Kashmiri monk BUDDHAYAsAS (d.u.; fl. c. early fifth century) recited the text from memory and translated it into Chinese with the help of the Chinese monk ZHU FONIAN (d.u.). Their work was carried out in the Chinese capital of Chang'an between 408 and 413 and was completed in sixty rolls. The Chinese translation is especially important because the Sanskrit recension is no longer extant and the text was never translated into Tibetan. The "Four-Part Vinaya" first circulated in the Chinese metropolitan centers of Chang'an and Luoyang, eventually replacing the other vinayas then circulating in China to became the definitive monastic code in East Asia. Exegetical schools such as DAOXUAN's NANSHAN LÜ ZONG (South Mountain vinaya school) and HUAISU's DONGTA LÜ ZONG (East Pagoda vinaya school), as well as the Korean YUL CHONG and the Japanese RITSUSHu, all focused on the explication of the "Four-Part Vinaya." Among the numerous commentaries on the "Four-Part Vinaya," DAOXUAN's Sifen lü shanfan buque xingshi chao came to be regarded as most authoritative.
si hongshiyuan. (J. shiguzeigan/shikuseigan; K. sa hongsowon 四弘誓願). In Chinese, the "four capacious vows," commonly known in English as the "four great vows"; a specific set of vows (S. PRAnIDHĀNA) an adept takes that mark his initiation into the BODHISATTVA path and outline his continuing aspiration to seek buddhahood. There are two different formulations. By far the most common is the following list: (1) However innumerable sentient beings may be, I vow to save them all; (2) However inexhaustible the afflictions (KLEsA) may be, I vow to eradicate them all; (3) However immeasurable the teachings may be, I vow to study them all; (4) However unsurpassed the path to buddhahood may be, I vow to attain it. This version of the bodhisattva vows is generally presumed to have first been formulated by TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597) in his MOHE ZHIGUAN. These four great bodhisattva vows are frequently recited at the conclusion of MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist rituals in East Asia targeting both ordained and lay adherents. There is also an alternate list, known in India and Tibet, which runs as follows: (1) Those who are yet to be saved, I will save; (2) Those who are frightened, I will soothe; (3) Those who are unenlightened, I will awaken; (4) Those who are not yet in NIRVĀnA, I will bring to nirvāna.
sīmā. (T. mtshams; C. jiejie; J. kekkai; K. kyolgye 結界). In Sanskrit and Pāli, lit. "boundary"; the line that marks the geographical area within which monks and nuns gather fortnightly to recite the PRĀTIMOKsA and perform other required acts and duties, called collectively ecclesiastical acts (SAMGHAKARMAN). The term is used by extension to refer to the area itself and the congregation that resides within it. The area encompassed by a sīmā boundary may vary in size and include more than one VIHĀRA or monastic residence within its perimeter. In order to establish a sīmā, the SAMGHA enacts a JNAPTIDVITĪYĀ KARMAVĀCANĀ, an ecclesiastical act comprised of a resolution and a proclamation, whereby the boundaries of the sīmā are marked. A marker (nimitta) may be a natural object or be man-made; possible markers include a mountain, a large stone, a grove, a tree, a road, an ant hill, a river, or an expanse of water. In some cases, sīmās are not demarcated with physical objects and do not require a resolution and proclamation to establish them. For example, when monks live near a village, the natural boundary of the village itself may be taken as the sīmā. When dwelling in a forest, an area encompassed by seven specific units of length could comprise the sīmā. When monks were on a boat in a river, lake, or the sea, the sīmā could be established by the distance a person of average strength could throw water in a perimeter around the boat. In tantric Buddhism, sīmā is used to describe the boundaries practitioners draw for themselves when they enter into a retreat (T. mtshams). The boundaries can be drawn (T. mtshams tho) narrowly when there are others to bring food and other requisites, or more widely as circumstances require.
sojae toryang. (消災道場). In Korean, "calamities-solving ritual"; one of the four most important annual rituals performed at court during the Koryo dynasty (918-1392), second only to the YoNDŬNGHOE (lantern ritual). The sojae toryang is a representative of the esoteric Buddhist rituals that became popular in Korea during the Koryo dynasty. The first record of the ritual's performance dates from 1046, the last from 1399, a short time after the demise of the dynasty. This ritual to prevent natural calamities probably derives originally not from Buddhist cosmology but from the theory of heavenly retribution that was foundational in traditional East Asian thought. Koryo's ritual system, modeled after that of Tang China, presumed that cosmological influences dominated human life and activities. Since droughts, floods, and epidemics were considered "calamities from Heaven" (Ch'onjae), and indicated Heaven's dissatisfaction with the quality of terrestrial governance, the sojae toryang sought to draw on various religious and astral powers in order to ward off these threats and to enhance the longevity of its royal sponsors. Koryo kings lavished riches on the monasteries whose monks performed these rituals, particularly when Koryo was threatened by foreign invasion or occupation. This concern explains why the majority of the recorded performances of the sojae toryang occurred during the reigns of kings Kojong (1231-1259), Wonjong (1259-1274), and Ch'ungnyol (1274-1308), who all ruled during the period of Mongol domination in Korea. During King Wonjong's thirteen-year reign, for example, the sojae toryang was performed twenty-three times, or about three times every two years. Historical sources provide little information on how the ritual was actually performed, but its conduct can be inferred from esoteric Buddhist sources. These sources require the monks to establish a purified ritual venue, install a buddha image there, and then make offerings of incense, flowers, and lanterns; once the site is prepared, they are then to recite various codes or spells (DHĀRAnĪ) in order to invoke the power of the BODHISATTVAs, the seven stars of the Big Dipper (see BEIDOU QIXING), the gods of the zodiacal mansions and the constellations, the sun and moon, etc., to overcome calamities and transform disasters into blessings. In the case of the Koryo dynasty, the ritual was always held at court, and the king himself was both participant and presider at the ritual, indicating the close association between court and the religion during this period in Korean history.
Soka Gakkai. (創價學會/創価学会). In Japanese, "Value-Creating Society," a Japanese Buddhist lay organization associated with the NICHIRENSHu, founded by MAKIGUCHI TSUNESABURO (1871-1944) and his disciple Toda Josei (1900-1958). Formerly a teacher, Makiguchi became a follower of Nichiren's teachings, finding that they supported his own ideas about engendering social and religious values, and converted to NICHIREN SHoSHu in 1928. In 1930, he established a lay organization under the umbrella of the Nichiren Shoshu, which initially called itself the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Creating Educational Values Society), and led its first general meeting. After its inauguration, the society began to take on a decidedly religious character, focusing on missionary work for Nichiren Shoshu. As the Pacific War expanded, Makiguchi and his followers refused to cooperate with state-enforced SHINTo practices, leading to a rift between them and TAISEKIJI, the head monastery of Nichiren Shoshu. In 1943, the society almost disintegrated with the imprisonment of Makiguchi and Toda, along with twenty other leaders charged with lèse-majesté and violations of the Public Order Act, which required each family to enshrine a Shinto talisman in its home. Makiguchi died in 1944 in prison, but Toda survived and was released on parole in July 1945. After his release, Toda took charge of the organization, renaming it Soka Gakkai in 1946. He successfully led a massive proselytization campaign that gained Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Shoshu vast numbers of new converts and by the late 1950s, upwards of 750,000 families had become adherents. After Toda died in 1958, IKEDA DAISAKU (b. 1928) became its third president and the society grew even more rapidly in Japan during the 1960s and the 1970s. In 1975, Ikeda also founded Soka Gakkai International (SGI), which disseminated the society's values around the world. Soka Gakkai publishes numerous books and periodicals, as well as a daily newspaper in Japan. During this period, Soka Gakkai also became involved in Japanese domestic politics, establishing its own political party, the Komeito (Clean Government Party) in 1964, which became completely separate and independent from the Soka Gakkai in 1970. The society also supported Taisekiji with massive donations, including raising the funds for a new main shrine hall for the monastery. Soka Gakkai, like other groups in the Nichiren lineage, focuses on worship of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") and its adherents are expected to chant daily the title (DAIMOKU) of the sutra, NAM MYoHoRENGEKYo, as well as recite the most important sections of the sutra and study Nichiren's writings. Soka Gakkai believes that all beings possess the capacity to attain buddhahood and emphasizes the ability of each person's buddha-nature to overcome obstacles and achieve happiness. Soka Gakkai followers can accomplish these goals through a "human revolution" (the title of one of Ikeda's books) that creates a sense of oneness between the individual and the environment, thus demonstrating how each individual can positively affect the surrounding world. As tensions grew between the Nichiren Shoshu and its increasingly powerful lay subsidiary, Nikken (b. 1922), the sixty-seventh chief priest of Nichiren Shoshu, tried to bring its membership directly under his control. His efforts were ultimately unsuccessful and he excommunicated the Soka Gakkai in 1991, forbidding Soka Gakkai followers from having access to the holiest shrines associated with Nichiren. Sokka Gakkai remains at the center of controversy because of its strong emphasis on recruitment and proselytization, its demonization of enemies, and a mentorship structure within the organization that some claim creates a cult of personality centered on Ikeda. Soka Gakkai remains among the largest Buddhist organizations in the Western world.
Sonmun pojang nok. (禪門寶藏). In Korean, "Record of the Treasure Trove of the Son Tradition"; an anthology, in three rolls, of stories excerpted from various Chinese CHAN and Korean SoN texts. Although the preface of the Sonmun pojangnok was written in 1293 by the Koryo CH'oNTAE (Ch. TIANTAI) monk CH'oNCH'AEK (1206-?) to whom it is attributed, the exact authorship of the anthology is still a matter of some debate. The epilogue to the text was written in 1294 by the Koryo lay Buddhist literatus Yi Hon (1252-1312). The first roll, "The Gate That Compares Son and Kyo" (Son'gyo taebyon mun) advocates that Son is distinct from, and surpasses, KYO (Doctrinal Teachings) because, unlike Kyo, Son directly reveals Buddhist truth without relying on verbal explanation. The second roll, "The Gate through which all Kyo Lecturers Return and Yield" (Chegang kwibok mun) illustrates this superiority of Son over Kyo by citing several examples in which Kyo monks were embarrassed, or guided to an authentic awakening, by Chan or Son monks. The third roll, "The Gate Revered and Trusted by Kings and Vassals" (Kunsin sungsin mun) includes stories of kings and government officials respecting and honoring Chan and Son monks. One of the most interesting stories collected in the Sonmun pojang nok relates to the otherwise-unknown Patriarch Chin'gwi (Chin'gwi chosa). The story is recited twice in the first roll and once in the third, excerpted respectively from the Talma millok ("Secret Record of Bodhidharma"), the Haedong ch'iltae nok ("Record of the Seven Generations of the Patriarchs of Haedong [Korea]"), and the Wimyongje somun chegyong p'yon ("Section on the Emperor Ming of Wei Inquires about the Sutras"), none of which are extant. The story is extremely controversial, because it states that because sĀKYAMUNI Buddha's awakening under the BODHI TREE was still imperfect, he continued to wander looking for guidance, until he met a Chan patriarch in the Snowy Mountains (Himālaya) who was finally able to lead him to true awakening. Later, the renowned Choson monk SoNSAN HYUJoNG also included the same story in his Son'gyo sok ("Exposition of Son and Kyo"), but cited it instead from the Pomil kuksa chip ("Collected Works of the State Preceptor Pomil"), which is also not extant. However, since neither the story itself nor even the titles of any of the three texts cited in the Sonmun pojang nok are found in any Chinese Buddhist sources, it is presumed that the story itself was fabricated in Korea sometime between the times of PoMIL (810-889) and Ch'onch'aek. The Sonmun pojang nok is now embedded in the SoNMUN CH'WARYO and is also published in volume six of the Han'guk Pulgyo chonso ("Collected Works of Korean Buddhism").
spout ::: v. t. --> To throw out forcibly and abudantly, as liquids through an office or a pipe; to eject in a jet; as, an elephant spouts water from his trunk.
To utter magniloquently; to recite in an oratorical or pompous manner.
To pawn; to pledge; as, spout a watch.
That through which anything spouts; a discharging lip, pipe, or orifice; a tube, pipe, or conductor of any kind through which
srāmanera. (P. sāmanera; T. dge tshul; C. shami; J. shami; K. sami 沙彌). In Sanskrit "[male] novice"; a preliminary stage a man must pass through before he can be ordained as a fully ordained monk (BHIKsU). The admission into the order (S. pravrajyā, P. pabbajjā; see PARIVRĀJAKA) of a novice is performed with a simple ceremony. The candidate shaves his hair and beard, attires himself in a monk's robe received from a donor, and presents himself before an assembly of monks, or a single monk of ten years' standing or more. Squatting on his haunches and folding his hands, he recites the three refuges (TRIsARAnA) formula three times, whereupon he is made a novice. According to the Pāli VINAYA, a novice must observe ten precepts (DAsAsĪLA) or "rules of training" (sIKsĀPADA), viz., abstaining from: (1) killing, (2) stealing, (3) sexual misconduct, (4) false speech, (5) intoxicants, (6) eating after midday, (7) dancing, singing, music, and other unseemly forms of entertainment, (8), using garlands, perfumes, and cosmetics to adorn the body, (9) using high and luxurious beds and couches, and (10) accepting gold and silver. The MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA expands these ten precepts to thirty-six. After receiving the lower ordination, the novice is required to live under the guidance (NIsRAYA) of a teacher until he receives higher ordination (UPASAMPADĀ) as a bhiksu. The novice may not attend the reading of the PRĀTIMOKsA during the bimonthly UPOsADHA (P. uposatha) ceremony, or participate in any formal ecclesiastical acts (SAMGHAKARMAN) such as giving ordination and so on. There are a variety of lists of persons who are not permitted to be ordained as novices: one list names branded thieves, fugitives from the law, registered thieves, those punished by flogging or branding, patricides, matricides, murderers of ARHATs, those who have shed the blood of a buddha, eunuchs, false monks, seducers of nuns, hermaphrodites, persons who are maimed, disabled, or deformed in various ways, and those afflicted with various communicable diseases.
Sukhāvatīvyuhasutra. (T. Bde ba can gyi bkod pa'i mdo; C. Wuliangshou jing; J. Muryojukyo; K. Muryangsu kyong 無量壽經). Literally, the "Sutra Displaying [the Land of] Bliss," the title of the two most important Mahāyāna sutras of the "PURE LAND" tradition. The two sutras differ in length, and thus are often referred to in English as the "larger" and "smaller" (or "longer" and "shorter") Sukhāvatīvyuhasutras; the shorter one is commonly called the AMITĀBHASuTRA. Both sutras are believed to date from the third century CE. The longer and shorter sutras, together with the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING (*Amitāyurdhyānasutra), constitute the three main texts associated with the pure land tradition of East Asia (see JINGTU SANBUJING). There are multiple Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan versions of both the longer and shorter sutras, with significant differences among them. ¶ The longer Sukhāvatīvyuhasutra begins with ĀNANDA noticing that the Buddha is looking especially serene one day, and so asks him the reason. The Buddha responds that he was thinking back many millions of eons in the past to the time of the buddha LOKEsVARARĀJA. The Buddha then tells a story in the form of a flashback. In the audience of this buddha was a monk named DHARMĀKARA, who approached Lokesvararāja and proclaimed his aspiration to become a buddha. Dharmākara then requested the Buddha to describe all of the qualities of the buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA). Lokesvararāja provided a discourse that lasted one million years, describing each of the qualities of the lands of trillions of buddhas. Dharmākara then retired to meditate for five eons, seeking to concentrate all of the marvelous qualities of the millions of buddha-fields that had been described to him into a single pure buddha-field. When he completed his meditation, he returned to describe this imagined land to Lokesvararāja, promising to create a place of birth for fortunate beings and vowing that he would follow the bodhisattva path and become the buddha of this new buddha-field. He described the land he would create in a series of vows, stating that if this or that marvel was not present in his pure land, may he not become a buddha: e.g., "If in my pure land there are animals, ghosts, or hell denizens, may I not become a buddha." He made forty-eight such vows. These included the vow that all the beings in his pure land will be the color of gold; that beings in his pure land will have no conception of private property; that no bodhisattva will have to wash, dry, or sew his own robes; that bodhisattvas in his pure land will be able to hear the dharma in whatever form they wish to hear it and whenever they wish to hear it; that any woman who hears his name, creates the aspiration to enlightenment (BODHICITTA), and feels disgust at the female form, will not be reborn as a woman again. Two of these vows would become the focus of particular attention. In the eighteenth vow (seventeenth in the East Asian versions), Dharmākara vows that when he has become a buddha, he will appear at the moment of death to anyone who creates the aspiration to enlightenment, hears his name, and remembers him with faith. In the nineteenth vow (eighteenth in the East Asian versions), he promises that anyone who hears his name, wishes to be reborn in his pure land, and dedicates their merit to that end, will be reborn there, even if they make such a resolution as few as ten times during the course of their life. Only those who have committed one of the five inexpiable transgressions bringing immediate retribution (ĀNANTARYAKARMAN, viz., patricide, matricide, killing an ARHAT, wounding a buddha, or causing schism in the SAMGHA) are excluded. The scene then returns to the present. Ānanda asks the Buddha whether Dharmākara was successful, whether he did in fact traverse the long path of the bodhisattva to become a buddha. The Buddha replies that he did indeed succeed and that he became the buddha Amitābha (Infinite Light). The pure land that he created is called sukhāvatī. Because Dharmākara became a buddha, all of the things that he promised to create in his pure land have come true, and the Buddha proceeds to describe sukhāvatī in great detail. It is carpeted with lotuses made of seven precious substances, some of which reach ten leagues (YOJANA) in diameter. Each lotus emits millions of rays of light and from each ray of light there emerge millions of buddhas who travel to world systems in all directions to teach the dharma. The pure land is level, like the palm of one's hand, without mountains or oceans. It has great rivers, the waters of which rise as high or sink as low as one pleases, from the shoulders to the ankles, and vary in temperature as one pleases. The sound of the river takes the form of whatever auspicious words one wishes to hear, such as "buddha," "emptiness," "cessation," and "great compassion." The words "hindrance," "misfortune," and "pain" are never heard, nor are the words "day" and "night" used, except as metaphors. The beings in the pure land do not need to consume food. When they are hungry, they simply visualize whatever food they wish and their hunger is satisfied without needing to eat. They dwell in bejeweled palaces of their own design. Some of the inhabitants sit cross-legged on lotus blossoms while others are enclosed within the calyx of a lotus. The latter do not feel imprisoned, because the calyx of the lotus is quite large, containing within it a palace similar to that inhabited by the gods. Those who dedicate their merit toward rebirth in the pure land yet who harbor doubts are reborn inside lotuses where they must remain for five hundred years, enjoying visions of the pure land but deprived of the opportunity to hear the dharma. Those who are free from doubt are reborn immediately on open lotuses, with unlimited access to the dharma. Such rebirth would become a common goal of Buddhist practice, for monks and laity alike, in India, Tibet, and throughout East Asia. ¶ The "shorter" Sukhāvatīvyuhasutra was translated into Chinese by such famous figures as KUMĀRAJĪVA and XUANZANG. It is devoted largely to describing this buddha's land and its many wonders, including the fact that even the names for the realms of animals and the realms of hell-denizens are not known; all of the beings born there will achieve enlightenment in their next lifetime. In order to be reborn there, one should dedicate one's merit to that goal and bear in mind the name of the buddha here known as AMITĀYUS (Infinite Life). Those who are successful in doing so will see Amitāyus and a host of bodhisattvas before them at the moment of death, ready to escort them to sukhāvatī, the land of bliss. In order to demonstrate the efficacy of this practice, the Buddha goes on to list the names of many other buddhas abiding in the four cardinal directions, the nadir, and the zenith, who also praise the buddha-field of Amitāyus. Furthermore, those who hear the names of the buddhas that he has just recited will be embraced by those buddhas. Perhaps to indicate how his own buddha-field (that is, our world) differs from that of Amitāyus, sākyamuni Buddha concludes by conceding that it has been difficult to teach the dharma in a world as degenerate as ours.
sutra. (P. sutta; T. mdo; C. jing; J. kyo; K. kyong 經). In Sanskrit, lit. "aphorism," but in a Buddhist context translated as "discourse," "sermon," or "scripture"; a sermon said to be delivered by the Buddha or delivered with his sanction. A term probably used originally to refer to sayings of the Buddha that were preserved orally by his followers (and hence called "aphorisms"), the sutra developed into its own genre of Buddhist literature, with a fairly standard set of literary conventions. The most famous of these conventions was the phrase used to begin a sutra, "Thus have I heard" (EVAM MAYĀ sRUTAM), intended to certify that what was to follow was the first-person report of the Buddha's attendant ĀNANDA (see SAMGĪTIKĀRA) who was most often in the Buddha's presence and was renowned for his prodigious memory. Also standard was the NIDĀNA, which describes the setting of the sutra, noting where the Buddha was residing at the time, who was in the audience, who was the interlocutor, etc. According to tradition, the sutras were first codified when Ānanda recited them at the first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST), shortly after the Buddha's death. This conceit of orality was maintained even for sutras that were literary compositions, written long after the Buddha, most notably, the hundreds of MAHĀYĀNA sutras that began to appear in India starting some four hundred years after the Buddha's NIRVĀnA. An important theme in these sutras and their commentaries is the claim that they are indeed the word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA). In the standard threefold division of the Buddha's teachings, sutra indicates the contents of the SuTRAPItAKA, a grouping of texts that together with the VINAYA and ABHIDHARMA together constitute the TRIPItAKA, or "three baskets." In tantric literature, sutra is used to refer to the exoteric teachings of the Buddha, in contrast to the tantras, his esoteric teachings. It is also one of the nine (NAVAnGA[PĀVACANA]) (Pāli) or twelve (DVĀDAsĀnGA[PRAVACANA]) (Sanskrit) categories (AnGA) of Buddhist scripture, according to structure or literary style.
SvalpāksaraprajNāpāramitā. (T. Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa yi ge nyung ngu; C. Shengfomu xiaozi bore boluomiduo jing; J. Shobutsumo shoji hannya haramittakyo; K. Songbulmo soja panya p'aramilta kyong 聖佛母小字般若波羅蜜多經). In Sanskrit, "Perfection of Wisdom in a Few Words"; also known as the AlpāksaraprajNāpāramitā. Sometimes referred to in Western scholarship as the "Tantric Heart Sutra," this brief PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutra that takes the form of a dialogue between the Buddha and AVALOKITEsVARA, in which the buddha enjoins the bodhisattva to recite the "heart of the perfection of wisdom." The sutra is directed to those beings of little merit and of limited intellectual capacity. The Buddha enters the SAMĀDHI called "liberation from all suffering" (sarvaduḥkhapramocana) and provides a MANTRA and DHĀRAnĪ to his audience. The mantra is connected with an earlier buddha called Mahāsākyamuni. By reciting the mantra and the dhāranī, hindrances from past actions are extinguished and beings turn toward enlightenment.
tantra. (T. rgyud; C. tanteluo; J. dantokura; K. tant'ŭngna 檀特羅). In Sanskrit, lit. "continuum"; a term derived from the Sanskrit root √tan ("to stretch out," "to weave"), having the sense of an arrangement or a pattern (deployed not only in a ritual, but in military and political contexts as well). The term is thus used to name a manual or handbook that sets forth such arrangements, and is not limited to Buddhism or to Indian religions more broadly. Beyond this, the term is notoriously difficult to define. It can be said, however, that tantra does not carry the connotation of all things esoteric and erotic that it has acquired in the modern West. In Buddhism, the term tantra generally refers to a text that contains esoteric teachings, often ascribed to sĀKYAMUNI or another buddha. Even this, however, is problematic: there are esoteric texts that do not carry the term tantra in their title (such as the VAJRAsEKHARASuTRA), and there are nonesoteric texts in whose title the term tantra appears (such as the UTTARATANTRA). Scholars therefore tend to define tantra (in the textual sense) based on specific sets of elements contained in the texts. These include MANTRA, MAndALA, MUDRĀ, initiations (ABHIsEKA), fire sacrifices (HOMA), and feasts (GAnACAKRA), all set forth with the aim of gaining powers (SIDDHI), both mundane and supramundane. The mundane powers are traditionally enumerated as involving four activities: pacification of difficulties (sĀNTIKA), increase of wealth (PAUstIKA), control of negative forces (VAsĪKARAnA), and destruction of enemies (ABHICĀRA). The supramundane power is enlightenment (BODHI). The texts called tantras began to appear in India in the late seventh and early eighth centuries CE, often written in a nonstandard (some would say "corrupt") Sanskrit that included colloquial elements and regional terms. These anonymous texts (including such famous works as the GUHYASAMĀJATANTRA, the CAKRASAMVARATANTRA, and the HEVAJRATANTRA), typically provided mantras and instructions for drawing mandalas, among a variety of other elements, but their presentation and organization were usually not systematic; these texts came to serve as the "root tantra" for a cycle of related texts. The more systematic of these were the SĀDHANA (lit. "means of achievement"), a ritual manual by a named author, which set forth the specific practices necessary for the attainment of siddhi. The standard form was to create a mandala into which one invited a deity. The meditator would either visualize himself or herself as the deity or visualize the deity as appearing before the meditator. Various offerings would be made, mantras would be recited, and siddhis would be requested. Although scholars continue to explore the relation between the tantras and the MAHĀYĀNA sutras, tantric exegetes viewed the tantras, like the Mahāyāna sutras, as being the word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA) and as setting forth forms of practice consistent with the bodhisattva vow and the quest for buddhahood, albeit more quickly than by the conventional path, via what came to be referred to as the VAJRA vehicle (VAJRAYĀNA). Thus, it was said that the Mahāyāna was divided into the pāramitānaya, the "mode of the perfections" set forth in the Mahāyāna sutras, and the mantranaya, the "mode of the mantras" set forth in the tantras. These two are also, although less commonly, known as the sutrayāna and the TANTRAYĀNA. In this context, then, the term "tantra" is often used by tantric exegetes in contrast to "sutra," which is taken to mean the corpus of exoteric teachings of the Buddha. For those who accept the tantras as the word of the Buddha, the term "sutras and tantras" would thus refer to the entirety of the Buddha's teachings. The corpus of tantras was eventually classified by late Indian Buddhist exegetes into a number of schemata, the most famous of which is the fourfold division into KRIYĀTANTRA, CARYĀTANTRA, YOGATANTRA, and ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA.
Tārā. (T. Sgrol ma; C. Duoluo; J. Tara; K. Tara 多羅). In Sanskrit, lit. "Savioress"; a female bodhisattva who has the miraculous power to be able to deliver her devotees from all forms of physical danger. Tārā is said to have arisen from either a ray of blue light from the eye of the buddha AMITĀBHA, or from a tear from the eye of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA as he surveyed the suffering universe. The tear fell into a valley and formed a lake, out of which grew the lotus from which Tārā appeared. She is thus said to be the physical manifestation of the compassion of Avalokitesvara, who is himself the quintessence of the compassion of the buddhas. Because buddhas are produced from wisdom and compassion, Tārā, like the goddess PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ ("Perfection of Wisdom"), is hailed as "the mother of all buddhas," despite the fact that she is most commonly represented as a beautiful sixteen-year-old maiden. She is often depicted together with BHṚKUTĪ (one of her forms) as one of two female bodhisattvas flanking Avalokitesvara. Tārā is the subject of much devotion in her own right, serving as the subject of many stories, prayers, and tantric SĀDHANAs. She can appear in peaceful or wrathful forms, depending on the circumstances, her powers extending beyond the subjugation of these worldly frights, into the heavens and into the hells. She has two major peaceful forms, however. The first is SITATĀRĀ, or White Tārā. Her right hand is in VARADAMUDRĀ, her left is at her chest in VITARKAMUDRĀ and holds a lotus and she sits in DHYĀNĀSANA. The other is sYĀMATĀRĀ, or Green Tārā. Her right hand is in varadamudrā, her left is at her chest in vitarkamudrā and holds an utpala, and she sits in LALITĀSANA. Her wrathful forms include KURUKULLĀ, a dancing naked YOGINĪ, red in color, who brandishes a bow and arrow in her four arms. In tantric MAndALAs, she appears as the consort of AMOGHASIDDHI, the buddha of the northern quarter; together they are lord and lady of the KARMAKULA. But she is herself also the sole deity in many tantric SĀDHANAs, in which the meditator, whether male or female, visualizes himself or herself in Tārā's feminine form. Tārā is best-known for her salvific powers, appearing the instant her devotee recites her MANTRA, oM tāre tuttāre ture svāhā. She is especially renowned as Astabhayatrānatārā, "Tārā Who Protects from the Eight Fears," because of her ability to deliver those who call upon her when facing the eight great fears (mahābhaya) of lions, elephants, fire, snakes, thieves, water, imprisonment, and demons. Many tales are told recounting her miraculous interventions. Apart from the recitation of her mantra, a particular prayer is the most common medium of invoking Tārā in Tibet. It is a prayer to twenty-one Tārās, derived from an Indian TANTRA devoted to Tārā, the Sarvatathāgatamātṛtārāvisvakarmabhavatantra ("Source of All Rites to Tārā, the Mother of All the Tathāgatas"). According to some commentarial traditions on the prayer, each of the verses refers to a different form of Tārā, totaling twenty-one. According to others, the forms of Tārā are iconographically almost indistinguishable. Tārā entered the Buddhist pantheon relatively late, around the sixth century, in northern India and Nepal, and her worship in Java is attested in inscriptions dating to the end of the eighth century. Like Avalokitesvara, she has played a crucial role in Tibet's history, in both divine and human forms. One version of the creation myth that has the Tibetan race originating from a dalliance between a monkey and an ogress says the monkey was a form of Avalokitesvara and the ogress a form of Tārā. Worship of Tārā in Tibet began in earnest with the second propagation and the arrival of ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA in the eleventh century; she appears repeatedly in accounts of his life and in his teachings. He had visions of the goddess at crucial points in his life, and she advised him to make his fateful journey to Tibet, despite the fact that his life span would be shortened as a result. His sādhanas for the propitiation of Sitatārā and syāmatārā played a key role in promoting the worship of Tārā in Tibet. He further was responsible for the translation of several important Indic texts relating to the goddess, including three by Vāgīsvarakīrti that make up the 'chi blu, or "cheating death" cycle, the foundation of all lineages of the worship of Sitatārā in Tibet. The famous Tārā chapel at Atisa's temple at SNYE THANG contains nearly identical statues of the twenty-one Tārās. The translator Darmadra brought to Tibet the important ANUYOGA tantra devoted to the worship of Tārā, entitled Bcom ldan 'das ma sgrol ma yang dag par rdzogs pa'i sangs rgyas bstod pa gsungs pa. Tārā is said to have taken human form earlier in Tibetan history as the Chinese princess WENCHENG and Nepalese princess Bhṛkutī, who married King SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO, bringing with them buddha images that would become the most revered in Tibet. Which Tārā they were remains unsettled; however, some sources identify Wencheng with syāmatārā and Bhṛkutī with the goddess of the same name, herself said to be a form of Tārā. Others argue that the Nepalese princess was Sitatārā, and Wencheng was syāmatārā. These identifications, however, like that of Srong btsan sgam po with Avalokitesvara, date only to the fourteenth century, when the cult of Tārā in Tibet was flourishing. In the next generation, Tārā appeared as the wife of King KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN and the consort of PADMASAMBHAVA, YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL, who in addition to becoming a great tantric master herself, served as scribe when Padmasambhava dictated the treasure texts (GTER MA). Later, Tārā is said to have appeared as the great practitioner of the GCOD tradition, MA GCIG LAP SGRON (1055-1149). Indeed, when Tārā first vowed eons ago to achieve buddhahood in order to free all beings from SAMSĀRA, she swore she would always appear in female form.
tell ::: v. t. --> To mention one by one, or piece by piece; to recount; to enumerate; to reckon; to number; to count; as, to tell money.
To utter or recite in detail; to give an account of; to narrate.
To make known; to publish; to disclose; to divulge.
To give instruction to; to make report to; to acquaint; to teach; to inform.
To order; to request; to command.
the best results, recite a versicle from Deuteronomy
Theragāthā. In Pāli, "Verses of the [Male] Elders"; the eighth book of the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA of the Pāli SUTTAPItAKA, a collection of 1,279 verses ascribed to 264 elder monks (P. thera, S. STHAVIRA), organized by the number of verses in each poem. The Theragāthā contains verses said to have been composed by enlightened elder monks during the lifetime of the Buddha or shortly thereafter. In some instances, the verses recount the life stories of the elders, in others they record their spontaneous utterances of ecstasy at the moment of their enlightenments. Not all verses are said to have been recited by the monk in question; sometimes they are addressed to a particular monk or describe that monk. The dates of the verses are difficult to determine; according to tradition, the collection was recited at the first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST), but some of its verses are said to have been recited at the second or third Buddhist councils (SAMGĪTI), suggesting that the verses were composed over the course of several centuries. A large number of the verses describe the path to and attainment of enlightenment, while others take the form of religious instruction. The pervasive sense of ecstasy appearing in these verses belies the common Western scholarly portrayal of the ARHAT as apathetic, cool, and aloof.
Therīgāthā. In Pāli, "Verses of the [Female] Elders"; the ninth book of the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA of the Pāli SUTTAPItAKA. It contains 522 verses in seventy-three poems, organized according to the number of verses in each poem, composed by approximately one hundred female elders (although one poem is said to have been uttered by thirty therīs, another by five hundred). It said to have been composed by enlightened therīs, or elder nuns, during the lifetime of the Buddha, including many of his most famous female disciples, such as his stepmother MAHĀPRAJĀPATĪ. According to tradition, the collection was recited at the first Buddhist council (SAMGĪTI; see COUNCIL, FIRST) held shortly after the death of the Buddha, although some verses are clearly added later. In any case, it represents one of, if not the earliest record of women's religious experience. It corresponds to the THERAGĀTHĀ in content. The precise date and authorship of the verses is difficult to determine, although many of the poems are written from the women's points of view, describing the sufferings of childbirth, marriage, and the loss of a child, a husband, and physical beauty, experiences that lead the author to enter the SAMGHA. The spontaneous ecstatic utterances that are said to have accompanied these women's experiences of enlightenment belie the common Western scholarly portrayal of the ARHAT as apathetic, cool, and aloof.
This allegory describes the descent of the manasaputras during the third root-race: a high intelligence able to wing its way in the celestial realms entering man’s constitution and awakening the faculty enabling him to understand and to recite “the Law” as imbodied in the highest divinities to and for the human species.
Trisvabhāvanirdesa. (T. Rang bzhin gsum nges par bstan pa). In Sanskrit, "Exposition of the Three Natures"; a work by the YOGĀCĀRA philosopher VASUBANDHU (fourth or fifth century CE). Possibly a late work of the author, it is less famous than several of his other works, in part because it lacks either an autocommentary or commentaries by subsequent figures in Indian Yogācāra. The work, extant in the original Sanskrit, consists of thirty-eight verses, dealing (as the title suggests) with the central Yogācāra doctrine of the three natures (TRISVABHĀVA): the PARIKALPITA or imaginary nature, the PARATANTRA or dependent nature, and the PARINIsPANNA or consummate nature. According to this doctrine, briefly stated, objects do not exist apart from the perceiving consciousness. External objects are thus illusory and constitute the imaginary nature, the appearance of objects that arises in dependence on consciousness is the dependent nature, and the absence of duality between subject and object is the consummate nature. Among the most famous passages in the text is the metaphor of the magician's illusion, in which a magician recites a MANTRA over a piece of wood that causes the members of the audience to see an elephant in place of the wood. In explaining the metaphor, Vasubandhu says that the elephant seen by the audience is the imaginary nature, the appearance of the elephant through the conjuring trick is the dependent nature, and the actual nonexistence of the elephant is the consummate nature. He also likens the mantra to the foundational consciousness (MuLAVIJNĀNA, viz., ĀLAYAVIJNĀNA) from which all appearances arise, and the wood to reality, or suchness (TATHATĀ).
Udgatri: The priest who recites Sama Veda.
hirā' ::: literally 'cave of inquiry'. The name of the mountain cave northeast of Mecca where the angel Gabriel first began to recite the Qur'ān to Muhammad. From ghār meaning cave, cavern, den; and hirā'meaning seeking, inquiry, investigation. (in some texts as Gar-i Hira)
Ullambana (Mongolian) [from Sanskrit ud up, completion + the verbal root labh to reach, attain] Attainment or recovery of spiritual status; the festival of all souls, “held in China on the seventh moon annually, when both ‘Buddhist and Tauist priests read masses, to release the souls of those who died on land or sea from purgatory, scatter rice to feed Pretas [thirty-six classes of demons ever hungry and thirsty], consecrate domestic ancestral shrines, . . . recite Tantras . . . accompanied by magic finger-play (mudra) to comfort the ancestral spirits of seven generations in Naraka’ (a kind of purgatory or Kama Loka)” (TG 351).
Upāli. (T. Nye bar 'khor; C. Youboli; J. Upari; K. Ubari 優波離). Sanskrit and Pāli proper name of an ARHAT who was foremost among the Buddha's disciples in his knowledge of the monastic code of discipline (VINAYA). According to Pāli accounts, Upāli was a barber from the city of Kapilavatthu (S. KAPILAVASTU) and was in the service of the Sākiya (S. sĀKYA) princes who ruled there. Upāli accompanied Anuruddha (S. ANIRUDDHA) and his cousins when they decided to renounce the world and take ordination from the Buddha in Anupiyā grove. They handed him all their clothes and ornaments in preparation, but Upāli refused the gift, asking instead to be allowed to take ordination with them. Anuruddha and the others requested the Buddha to confer ordination on Upāli first so that their barber would always be senior to them and thus quell their pride in their noble birth. The Buddha refused Upāli's request to be allowed to retire to the forest to practice meditation in solitude, realizing that, while Upāli had the qualities to attain arhatship through that course, he would as a consequence neglect the study of dharma. Following the Buddha's advice, Upāli practiced insight (P. VIPASSANĀ; S. VIPAsYANĀ) and became an arhat without retiring to the forest, thus allowing the Buddha to teach him the entire VINAYAPItAKA. Upāli was frequently sought out to render decisions on matters of discipline, and he is frequently shown discussing with the Buddha the legal details of cases brought before him. Even during the Buddha's lifetime, monks frequently sought training in monastic discipline under Upāli; he was also regarded as a sympathetic guardian to monks facing difficulties. After the Buddha's demise, MAHĀKĀsYAPA chose Upāli to recite the vinaya at the first Buddhist council (SAMGĪTI; see COUNCIL, FIRST); ĀNANDA was chosen to recite the Buddha's sermons (SuTRA). A succession of vinaya masters descended from Upāli, including MOGGALIPUTTATISSA, leader of the third Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, THIRD). Upāli's low status as a barber is often raised as evidence that the Buddha accepted disciples from all classes and castes in society and that all were capable of becoming arhats.
uposadha. [alt. posadha; upavasatha] (P. uposatha; T. gso sbyong; C. busa; J. fusatsu; K. p'osal 布薩). In Sanskrit, the fortnightly retreat (the term is generally left untranslated into English). It is the semimonthly ceremony (observed on the new moon and the full moon) in which monks and nuns are to assemble within a specified boundary (SĪMĀ) to recite the monastic rules of conduct set forth in the PRĀTIMOKsA. The observance involves the confession of faults, following which the prātimoksa is recited. The bhiksuprātimoksa is recited by fully ordained monks, the bhiksunīprātimoksa by fully ordained nuns; novices and laypeople are prohibited from participating in either observance. The purpose of the ceremony is for the SAMGHA to purify itself of misdeeds through confession and to renew its commitment to moral conduct, thus helping to ensure harmony within the monastic community and between the clergy and the laity. Laypeople will often maintain eight precepts (AstĀnGASAMANVĀGATAM UPAVĀSAM) on this day, which essentially turn them into monks or nuns for a day: not to kill, steal, engage in sexual activity, lie, use intoxicants, eat after noon, adorn their bodies, or sleep on high beds. The term uposadha means to abide in a state of fasting or abstinence, a practice that was pre-Buddhist in origin; in Vedic times, it specifically referred to the day prior to a soma sacrifice. The practice seems to have been adopted from other religious sects in India during the Buddha's lifetime. There are several types of uposadha ceremony, the most common and important of which is the saMgha uposadha, which is attended by four or more monks who recite the prātimoksa and is held on the new- and full-moon days of the month. When three or fewer monks are present, the ceremony is held but the prātimoksa is not recited. According to the Pāli vinaya, there are twenty-one types of persons in whose presence a monk's uposadha ceremony may not be held, viz., nuns, women in training to become nuns, male and female novices, persons who have seceded from the order, persons guilty of a PĀRĀJIKA offense, monks who refuse to acknowledge their own wrongdoing (of three kinds), eunuchs, ersatz monks who wear monastic attire without having been ordained, monks who have joined other religions, nonhumans, patricides, matricides, murderers of ARHATs, seducers of nuns, schismatics, hermaphrodites, laypersons, and those who have shed the blood of a buddha.
up, the invocant must recite the 4th verse of
Vajrapāni. (P. Vajirapāni; T. Phyag na rdo rje; C. Jingangshou pusa; J. Kongoshu bosatsu; K. Kŭmgangsu posal 金剛手菩薩). In Sanskrit, "Holder of the VAJRA"; an important bodhisattva in the MAHĀYĀNA and VAJRAYĀNA traditions, who appears in both peaceful and wrathful forms. In the Pāli suttas, he is a YAKsA (P. yakkha) guardian of the Buddha. It is said that whoever refuses three times to respond to a reasonable question from the Buddha would have his head split into pieces on the spot; carrying out this punishment was Vajrapāni's duty. In such circumstances, Vajrapāni, holding his cudgel, would be visible only to the Buddha and to the person who was refusing to answer the question; given the frightening vision, the person would inevitably then respond. Vajrapāni is sometimes said to be the wrathful form of sAKRA, who promised to offer the Buddha protection if the Buddha would teach the dharma; he thus accompanies the Buddha as a kind of bodyguard on his journeys to distant lands. Vajrapāni is commonly depicted in GANDHĀRA sculpture, flanking the Buddha and holding a cudgel. In the early Mahāyāna sutras, Vajrapāni is referred to as a yaksa servant of the bodhisattvas, as in the AstASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ. In the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA, he is called the "general of the yaksas" (yaksasenādhipati), and is praised as a protector of followers of the Buddha. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, AVALOKITEsVARA explains that one of the forms that he assumes to convert sentient beings is as Vajrapāni. In later Mahāyāna and early tantric Buddhism, Vajrapāni becomes a primary speaker in important sutras and tantras, as well as a principal protagonist in them, and comes to be listed as one of the "eight close sons" (*UPAPUTRA), the principal bodhisattvas. In the MANJUsRĪMuLAKALPA, as leader of the vajra family (VAJRAKULA), he flanks sĀKYAMUNI in the MAndALA. In the SARVATATHĀGATATATTVASAMGRAHA, his transition from "general of the yaksas" to "the supreme lord of all tathāgatas" is played out through his subjugation of Mahesvara (siva). At the command of the buddha VAIROCANA, Vajrapāni suppresses all of the worldly divinities of the universe and brings them to the summit of Mount SUMERU, where they seek refuge in the three jewels (RATNATRAYA). Only Mahesvara refuses to submit to the uddha. Through Vajarpāni's recitation of a MANTRA, Mahesvara loses his life, only to be reincarnated in another world system, where he eventually achieves buddhahood. Vajrapāni's yaksa origins continue in his wrathful aspects, most common in Tibet, such as the three-eyed Canda Vajrapāni. It is in this form that he is part of a popular triad with Avalokitesvara and MANJUsRĪ known as the "protectors of the three families" (T. RIGS GSUM MGON PO). These three bodhisattvas are said to be the physical manifestation of the wisdom (MaNjusrī), compassion (Avalokitesvara), and power (Vajrapāni) of all the buddhas. Vajrapāni is also said to be the bodhisattva emanation of the buddha AKsOBHYA and the chief bodhisattva of the vajra family. He himself has numerous forms and emanations, including Mahābāla (who may have developed from his early attendant Vajrapurusa), Vajrasattva, Vajradhara, VajrahuMkāra, Ucchusma, Bhutadāmara, and Trailokyavijaya. Vajrapāni is closely related especially to VAJRADHARA, and indeed Vajradhara and Vajrapāni may have originally been two names for the same deity (the Chinese translations of the two deities' names are the same). Vajrapāni's MANTRA is oM vajrapāni huM phat. He is also known as Guhyakādhipati, or "Lord of the Secret." The secret (guhyaka) originally referred to a class of yaksas that he commanded, but expanded in meaning to include secret knowledge and mantras. Vajrapāni is the protector of mantras and those who recite them, and is sometimes identified as the bodhisattva responsible for the collection, recitation, and protection of the VIDYĀDHARAPItAKA.
Vakkali. (S. *Vālkali?; C. Pojiali; J. Bakari; K. Pagari 婆迦梨). Pāli proper name of an eminent ARHAT declared by the Buddha to be foremost among his monk disciples who who aspire through faith (sRADDHĀDHIMUKTA, P. saddhādhimutta). According to the Pāli account, he was a learned brāhmana from Sāvatthi (S. sRĀVASTĪ) who became a devoted follower of the Buddha from the very moment he saw him. Because of his extraordinary faith-cum-affection, Vakkali was so enraptured by the Buddha that he used to follow him around. He took ordination so that he could always remain close to the Buddha; when he was not in the Buddha's presence, he spent his time thinking about him. The Buddha admonished him not to be infatuated with the corruptible body of the Buddha, stating that he who sees the dharma, sees the Buddha. Vakkali could not be dissuaded, however, and finally the Buddha ordered him out of his presence, in an attempt to shock (saMvega) Vakkali into awakening. Accounts differ as to what happened next. According to one story, Vakkali was greatly saddened and resolved to hurl himself from the top of Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutA). Knowing this, the Buddha appeared to him and recited a stanza. Filled with joy, Vakkali rose into the air and attained arhatship. In another account, Vakkali retired to Vulture Peak to practice meditation but fell ill from his arduous, but ultimately unsuccessful, efforts. The Buddha visited him to encourage him, and Vakkali finally attained arhatship. The best-known account states that Vakkali fell ill on his way to visit the Buddha. The Buddha told Vakkali that he was assured of liberation and that there was therefore nothing for him to regret. The Buddha departed and proceeded to Vulture Peak, while Vakkali made his way to Kālasīla. At Vulture Peak, the divinities informed the Buddha that Vakkali was about to pass away. The Buddha sent a message telling him not to fear. Vakkali responded that he had no desire for the body or the aggregates, and committed suicide with a knife. When the Buddha saw his body, he declared that Vakkali had attained NIRVĀnA and had escaped MĀRA's grasp. The commentary to the last account remarks that, at the moment of his suicide, Vakkali was in fact deluded in thinking he was already an ARHAT, hence his evil intention of killing himself. Even so, the pain of the blade so shocked his mind that in the moments just before his death he put forth the effort necessary to attain arhatship. See also sRADDHĀ.
Vedas, dating from between 1400-1000 BC, consisting of formulas &
Vessantara. (S. Visvantara/VisvaMtara; T. Thams cad sgrol; C. Xudana; J. Shudainu/Shudaina; K. Sudaena 須大拏). Pāli name of a prince who is the subject of the most famous of all JĀTAKA tales; he was the BODHISATTVA's final existence before he took rebirth in TUsITA heaven, where he awaited the moment when he would descend into Queen MĀYĀ's womb to be born as Prince SIDDHĀRTHA and eventually become GAUTAMA Buddha. During his lifetime as Prince Vessantara, the bodhisattva (P. bodhisatta) fulfilled the perfection (P. pāramī; S. PĀRAMITĀ) of generosity (DĀNA; see also DĀNAPĀRAMITĀ). The story is found in Sanskrit in Āryasura's JĀTAKAMĀLĀ and Ksemendra's Avadānakalpalatā, with the same main features as in the Pāli version. The story enjoys its greatest popularity in Southeast Asia, so the Pāli version is described here. ¶ The bodhisattva was born as the crown prince of Sivirattha, the son of King SaNjaya and Queen Phusatī of the kingdom of Jetuttara. On the day of his birth, a white elephant named Paccaya was also born, who had the power to make rain. When Vessantara was sixteen, he married a maiden named Maddī, with whom he had a son and a daughter, Jāli and Kanhajinā. Once, when Kalinga was suffering a severe drought, brāhmanas from that kingdom requested that Vessantara give them his white elephant to alleviate their plight. Vessantara complied, handing over to them his elephant along with its accessories. The citizens of Jetuttara were outraged that he should deprive his own kingdom of such a treasure and demanded his banishment to the distant mountain of Vankagiri. His father, King SaNjaya, consented and ordered Vessantara to leave via the road frequented by highwaymen. Before his departure, Vessantara held a great almsgiving, in which he distributed seven hundred of every type of thing. Maddī insisted that she and her children accompany the prince, and they were transported out of the city on a grand carriage pulled by four horses. Four brāhmanas begged for his horses, which he gave. Gods then pulled his carriage until a brāhmana begged for his carriage. Thereafter, they traveled on foot. Along the way crowds gathered, some even offering their kingdoms for him to rule, so famous was he for his generosity. At Vankagiri, they lived in two hermitages, one for Vessantara and the other for his wife and children. These had been constructed for them by Vissakamma, architect of the gods. There, they passed four months until one day an old brāhmana named Jujaka arrived and asked for Jāli and Kanhajinā as slaves. Vessantara expected this to occur, so he sent his wife on an errand so that she would not be distressed at the sight of him giving their children away. Jujaka was cruel, and the children ran away to their father, only to be returned so that Vessantara's generosity could be perfected. When Maddī returned, she fainted at the news. Then, Sakka (sAKRA), king of the gods, assumed the form of a brāhmana and asked for Maddī; Vessantara gave his wife to the brāhmana. The earth quaked at the gift. Sakka immediately revealed his identity and returned Maddī, granting Vessantara eight boons. In the meantime, Jujaka, the cruel brāhmana, traveled to Jetuttara, where King SaNjaya bought the children for a great amount of treasure, including a seven-storied palace. Jujaka, however, died of overeating and left no heirs, so the treasure was returned to the king. Meanwhile, the white elephant was returned because the kingdom of Kalinga could not maintain him. A grand entourage was sent to Vankagiri to fetch Vessantara and Maddī, and when they returned amid great celebration they were crowned king and queen of Sivirattha. In order that Vessantara would be able to satisfy all who came for gifts, Sakka rained down jewels waist deep on the palace. When Vessantara died, he was born as a god in tusita heaven, where he awaited his last rebirth as Siddhattha Gotama, when he would become a buddha. ¶ As a depiction of the virtue of dāna, the story of Vessantara is one of the most important Buddhist tales in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia and is depicted on murals throughout the region. Thai retellings of the Vessantara-Jātaka, known also as the Mahāchat, or "Great Jātaka," are found in the many Thai dialects and consist of thirteen chapters. The story is popular in Thailand's north and especially in the northeast, where virtually every monastery (excluding forest monasteries) holds a festival known as the Bun Phra Wet, usually in February or March, at which the entire story is recited in one day and one night. Laypeople assist in decorating their local monastery with trunks and branches of banana trees to represent the forest to which Vessantara was banished after giving away his kingdom's auspicious elephant. They also present offerings of flowers, hanging decorations, balls of glutinous rice, and money. The festival includes, among other things, a procession to the monastery that includes local women carrying long horizontal cloth banners on which the Vessantara story is painted. The merit earned by participating in the festival is linked to two beliefs: (1) that the participant will be reborn at the time of the future buddha, MAITREYA, known in Thai as Phra Si Ariya Mettrai (P. Ariya Metteyya), and (2) that the community, which remains primarily agricultural, will be blessed with sufficient rainfall.
vinayapitaka. (T. 'dul ba'i sde snod; C. lüzang; J. ritsuzo; K. yulchang 律藏). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "basket of discipline" or the "collection of discipline"; one of the three "baskets" (TRIPItAKA), or divisions of Buddhist scripture, together with the SuTRAPItAKA and the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA. Although typically presumed to include just the rules and regulations of monastic conduct, the vinayapitaka is actually one of the richest sources for understanding Buddhist practice and institutions in India. It is said that the Buddha instituted a new rule only after the commission of some form of misconduct that he sought to prevent in the future, so the vinayas are careful to recount in great detail the circumstances leading up to the Buddha's promulgation of the rule. The vinayapitaka is therefore composed largely of narratives, some of considerable length; one of the earliest biographies of the Buddha appears in the vinaya of the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA school (see MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA). According to tradition, the redaction of the vinayapitaka occurred at the first Buddhist council (SAMGĪTI; see COUNCIL, FIRST), shortly after the Buddha's death, when a group of ARHATs assembled to recite the Buddha's teachings. There, the monk UPĀLI, considered an expert in the monastic code, was called upon to recite the vinaya. However, assuming that such a recitation occurred, disputes soon arose over what was allowable conduct according to the rules and regulations included in the vinayapitaka. At the time of his death, the Buddha told ĀNANDA that, after his death, the minor rules could be disregarded. At the first council, he was asked what those minor rules were, and Ānanda admitted that he had failed to ask. All rules were therefore retained, and his failure to ask was one of his errors requiring a confession of wrongdoing. The eventual division into the traditional eighteen MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS often centered on questions of vinaya practice and conduct. There is, therefore, no single vinayapitaka, but a number of vinayapitakas, with the precise content determined by the specific Indian school. To give one example, the Pāli vinayapitaka, which was perhaps redacted around the first century CE, is composed of the following three major divisions: (1) SUTTAVIBHAnGA (S. sutravibhanga; cf. VINAYAVIBHAnGA), which includes the pātimokkha (S. PRĀTIMOKsA) code with explanations and commentary, including the mahāvibhanga with the rules for monks and the bhikkhunīvibhanga with the rules for nuns; (2) KHANDHAKA (S. skandhaka; cf. VINAYAVASTU), which is subdivided between the MAHĀVAGGA, which includes chapters on such topics as the procedure for the ordination of monks, the fortnightly observances (P. uposatha; S. UPOsADHA), the rains retreat, the use of clothing, food, medicine, and so forth, and the CulAVAGGA, which includes a variety of judicial rules, procedures for the ordination of nuns, and accounts of the first and second Buddhist councils; and (3) PARIVĀRA, an appendix that provides a summary and classification of the rules of monastic conduct. ¶ Numerous vinaya texts were translated into Chinese, including complete (or near-complete) vinayapitakas associated with five of the mainstream schools of Indian Buddhism. In the order of their translation dates, these five are (1) "Ten-Recitations Vinaya" (C. Shisong lü; C. *Dasabhānavāravinaya; *Dasādhyāyavinaya) of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school, perhaps composed sometime between the first and third centuries CE and translated into Chinese between 404 and 409 CE; (2) DHARMAGUPTAKA vinaya, the renowned "Four-Part Vinaya" (SIFEN LÜ), translated between 410 and 412 CE, which becomes the definitive recension of the vinaya in the East Asian traditions and the focus of scholarship in the different East Asian vinaya schools (see NANSHAN LÜ ZONG, DONGTA LÜ ZONG, RISSHu); (3) MAHĀSĀMGHIKA vinaya (Mohesengji lü), composed between 100 and 200 CE and translated between 416 and 418; (4) MAHĪMsĀSAKA vinaya, or the "Five-Part Vinaya" (Wufen lü), perhaps composed in the first century BCE and translated between 422 and 423; and (5) the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA vinaya, perhaps composed in the fourth or fifth century CE and translated into Chinese between 703 and 713. (The complete Tibetan translation of this vinaya becomes definitive for Tibetan Buddhism). ¶ It is important to note that the texts contained in the vinayapitaka of any school have served as just one source of the monastic code. In China, no complete recension of any Indian vinaya was translated until the beginning of the fifth century. (Indeed, none of the surviving recensions of the vinayas of any Buddhist school can be dated prior to the fifth century CE.) When the Indian vinayas were translated into Chinese, for example, their regulations were viewed as being so closely tied to the customs and climate of India that they were sometimes found either incomprehensible or irrelevant to the Chinese. This led to the composition of indigenous Chinese monastic codes, called guishi ("regulations") or QINGGUI ("rules of purity"), which promulgated rules of conduct for monks and nuns that accorded more closely with the realities of life in East Asian monasteries. In Tibet, the VINAYASuTRA by GUnAPRABHA, a medieval Indian summary of the much larger Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya, was the primary source for the monastic code, but each monastery also had its own regulations (BCA' YIG) that governed life there. See also PRĀTIMOKsASuTRA.
vinaya. (T. 'dul ba; C. lü; J. ritsu; K. yul 律). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "discipline"; the corpus of monastic regulations, especially that directed at fully ordained monks (BHIKsU) and nuns (BHIKsUnĪ). The term is used by extension for those texts in which these codes are set forth, which form the "basket of the discipline" (VINAYAPItAKA) in the Buddhist canon (TRIPItAKA). According to an account in the Sifen lü kaizongji, by the Chinese vinaya master DAOXUAN (596-667), UPAGUPTA, the fifth successor in the Buddha's lineage about a century following his death, had five major disciples, who were said to have established their own schools based on their differing views regarding doctrine; these five also redacted separate recensions of the VINAYA, which the Chinese refer to as "five recensions of the vinaya" (Wubu lü). These five vinayas are (1) the "Four-Part Vinaya" (C. SIFEN LÜ; S. *Cāturvargīyavinaya) of the DHARMAGUPTAKA school; (2) the "Ten-Recitations Vinaya" (C. Shisong lü; S. *Dasādhyāyavinaya; [alt. *Dasabhānavāravinaya]) of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school; (3) the "Five-Part Vinaya" (C. Wufen lü; S. *PaNcavargikavinaya) of the MAHĪsĀSAKA school and the *Prātimoksavinaya of the KĀsYAPĪYA school; (4) the *MAHĀSĀMGHIKA VINAYA of the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA school; and (5) the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA. All five of these recensions are extant in Chinese translation, but the Sifen lü ("Four-Part Vinaya") of the Dharmaguptakas came to dominate the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs in East Asian Buddhism. The only vinaya to survive intact in an Indian language is the Pāli vinaya used in the STHAVIRANIKĀYA tradition; this vinaya compilation was unknown to the Chinese Tradition. The largest vinaya of them all, the Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya, is a massive collection that is some four times longer than any of the other recensions. The entire collection is available in its Tibetan translation; portions of this vinaya were also translated in Chinese, and substantial fragments of its original Sanskrit version have survived. ¶ The vinayas are a rich source of Buddhist history because they describe the occasion surrounding the formulation of each of the myriads of rules of conduct and deportment promulgated by the Buddha. It is said that the Buddha made a new rule only after the commission of an infraction that would need to be prevented in the future, so the vinayas are careful to recount, in sometimes embarrassing detail, the specific events leading up to the Buddha's formulation of the rule. These accounts therefore provide important insights into issues facing the monastic institutions of India. The principal rules of monastic life are contained in the PRĀTIMOKsA, which presents rosters of offenses of varying gravity, with penalties ranging from expulsion from the order for the most serious to mere confession for the more minor ones. The most serious offenses, called PĀRĀJIKA, or "defeat," and requiring expulsion according to some vinaya traditions, were four for monks: sexual misconduct (defined in the case of a monk as the penetration of an orifice to the depth of a mustard seed), theft, the killing of a living being, and lying about spiritual attainments. (Even for such serious misdeeds, however, some vinayas prescribe procedures for possible reinstatement; see sIKsĀDATTAKA.) In the Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya, there were 253 total rules to be followed by monks, 364 for nuns. The majority of these rules were matters of etiquette and decorum meant to ensure harmonious relations within the monastic institution and with lay patrons. The prātimoksa was recited fortnightly in the UPOsADHA ceremony. A second major part of the vinaya is the VIBHAnGA, or explanation of each rule, explaining the circumstances of its formulation and the conditions under which a violation does and does occur. A third part was called the VINAYAVASTU or KHANDAKA, separate sections (ranging between seventeen and twenty in number) on various topics such as ordination, the rains retreats, bedding, robes, and the use of medicine. Although sometimes regarded simply as a collection of regulations, the various vinaya texts are an essential part of Buddhist literature. Many of the vinayas, but especially the Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya, also include enormous numbers of narrative tales and ancillary materials, including texts that in other traditions would have been collected in the SuTRAPItAKA.
Virupa. (Bi ru pa). Sanskrit proper name of one of the eighty-four MAHĀSIDDHAs, particularly revered in the SA SKYA sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Very little can be said with certainty about his life (whether he was a historical figure is open to question), but he may have lived at the end of the tenth century CE. He is said to have been a monk and a distinguished scholar of NĀLANDĀ monastery (in some sources, SOMAPURA), who was originally named Dharmapāla, devoting himself to scholastic study during the day and tantric practice at night. He recited the MANTRA of CAKRASAMVARA for years, but, unable to make any progress in his practice, he threw his rosary into the latrine. That night, the goddess NAIRĀTMYĀ, appeared to him in a dream, instructing him to retrieve his rosary. Over the course of six nights, she conferred initiations and instructions that allowed him to attain the sixth bodhisattva BHuMI. She also gave him a text, which is otherwise unknown in Sanskrit, whose Sanskrit title might be reconstructed as *Mārgaphalamulasāstra, the "Root Treatise on the Path and Its Fruition." Dharmapāla subsequently began to engage openly in tantric practices and was expelled from the monastery and branded "deformed" or "ugly" (virupa), whence he derived his name. Among the many stories told about him, perhaps the most famous tells of his stopping in a tavern to drink. When the tavern keeper demanded payment, he offered her the sun instead, using his ritual dagger to stop the sun in its course. The sun did not move for three days, during which time Virupa consumed huge amounts of drink. In order to set the sun on its course, the king agreed to pay his bill. Virupa eventually encountered two YOGINs who became his disciples: dombiheruka and Kṛsnacārin. In the eleventh century, the Tibetan scholar SA CHEN KUN DGA' SNYING PO of the 'Khon clan is said to have had a vision of Virupa in which he received transmission of the *Mārgaphalamulasāstra. This became the foundation for the LAM 'BRAS teachings of the Sa skya sect, where Virupa is regarded as a buddha, equal in importance to Nāropa for the BKA' RGYUD sect. His most famous work is his RDO RJE TSHIG RKANG ("Vajra Verses").
Wazifa (pl. Wazaif) Sufi word for mantra(m), a holy word that is recited several times as a contemplation. One of the 99 holy names of Allah (asma al husna) are mainly used for wazifa. See 2.3.
Xiangmo Zang. (T. Bdud 'dul snying po; J. Goma Zo; K. Hangma Chang 降魔藏) (d.u.). In Chinese, "Demon-Subduer Zang." Chinese monk and leading disciple of the CHAN master SHENXIU, in the Northern school (BEI ZONG). At an early age, Xiangmo Zang acquired the nickname "demon-subduer" (xiangmo) by dwelling in deserted houses and open fields. Later, he learned to recite the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and studied the VINAYA after he became a monk. He is said to have had an awakening experience after listening to a lecture on the "theories of the Southern school" (NAN ZONG lun) and, abandoning his scriptural studies, became a student of Shenxiu. As Shenxiu's disciple, Xiangmo Zang became the target of HEZE SHENHUI's polemical attack on the Northern school of Chan. Xiangmo Zang also appears in the BSAM GTAN MIG SGRON by GNUBS CHEN SANGS RGYAS YE SHES along with a certain Wolun (d.u.) and MOHEYAN and others of the Northern school, whose teachings may have exerted some influence on MAHĀYOGA in Tibet.
Xinxin ming. (J. Shinjinmei; K. Sinsim myong 信心銘). In Chinese, "Inscription on the Mind of Faith" (or "Faith in Mind"); attributed to the dubious third patriarch of the CHAN tradition, the otherwise-unknown SENGCAN. The Xinxin ming is a relatively short poem that praises nonduality and the method for attaining that experience. The last stanza, for instance, states that "faith and mind" (xinxin) are not two, and nonduality (lit. "not two") is the "perfected mind" (xinxin). According to the Xinxin ming, the method of attaining nonduality largely involves the cultivation of detachment, especially from words and thoughts. Along with the ZHENGDAO GE, CANTONG QI, and BAOJING SANMEI, the Xinxin ming has been regarded as one of the seminal statements of the Chan understanding of the dharma. Numerous commentaries on the poem were composed in East Asia. The Xinxin ming is still recited aloud in some Chan and ZEN monasteries.
Xuanzang. (J. Genjo; K. Hyonjang 玄奘) (600/602-664). Chinese monk, pilgrim, and patriarch of the Chinese YOGĀCĀRA tradition (FAXIANG ZONG) and one of the two most influential and prolific translators of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese, along with KUMĀRAJĪVA (344-413); in English sources, his name is seen transcribed in a variety of ways (now all outmoded), including Hsüan-tsang, Hiuen Tsiang, Yuan Chwang, etc. Xuanzang was born into a literati family in Henan province in either 600 or 602 (although a consensus is building around the latter date). In 612, during a state-supported ordination ceremony, Xuanzang entered the monastery of Jingtusi in Luoyang where his older brother was residing as a monk. There, Xuanzang and his brother studied the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA and various MAHĀYĀNA texts. When the Sui dynasty collapsed in 618, they both fled the capital for the safety of the countryside. In 622, Xuanzang was given the complete monastic precepts and was fully ordained as a monk (BHIKsU). By this time Xuanzang had also studied earlier translations of the MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA, JNĀNAPRASTHĀNA, and *TATTVASIDDHI under various teachers but came to doubt the accuracy of those translations and the veracity of their teachings. In order to resolve his doubts, Xuanzang embarked on an epic journey to India in 627, in flagrant disregard of the Taizong emperor's (r. 626-629) edict against traveling abroad. His trek across the SILK ROAD and India is well known, thanks to his travel record, the DA TANG XIYU JI, his official biography, and the famous Ming-dynasty comic novel based on Xuangzang's travels, XIYU JI ("Journey to the West"). (See "Routes of Chinese Pilgrims" map.) According to these sources, Xuanzang visited the various Buddhist pilgrimage sites of the subcontinent (see MAHĀSTHĀNA) and spent years at NĀLANDĀ monastery mastering Sanskrit, including fifteen months studying the texts of the Indian Yogācāra tradition under the tutelage of the 106-year-old sĪLABHADRA. In 645, Xuanzang returned to the Tang capital of Chang'an with over six hundred Sanskrit manuscripts that he had acquired in India, along with images, relics, and other artifacts. (These materials were stored in a five-story stone pagoda, named the DAYAN TA, or Great Wild Goose Pagoda, that Xuanzang later built on the grounds of the monastery of DA CI'ENSI; the pagoda is still a major tourist attraction in Xi'an.) The Taizong and Gaozong emperors (r. 649-683) honored Xuanzang with the title TREPItAKA (C. sanzang fashi; "master of the Buddhist canon") and established a translation bureau (yijing yuan) in the capital for the master, where Xuanzang supervised a legion of monks in charge of transcribing the texts, "rectifying" (viz., clarifying) their meaning, compiling the translations, polishing the renderings, and certifying both their meaning and syntax. Xuanzang and his team developed an etymologically precise set of Chinese equivalencies for Buddhist technical terminology, and his translations are known for their rigorous philological accuracy (although sometimes at the expense of their readability). While residing at such sites as HONGFUSI, Da ci'ensi, and the palace over an eighteen-year period, Xuanzang oversaw the translation of seventy-six sutras and sāstras in a total of 1,347 rolls, nearly four times the number of texts translated by Kumārajīva, probably the most influential of translators into Chinese. (Scholars have estimated that Xuanzang and his team completed one roll of translation every five days over those eighteen years of work.) Xuanzang's influence was so immense that he is often recognized as initiating the "new translation" period in the history of the Chinese translation of Buddhist texts, in distinction to the "old translation" period where Kumārajīva's renderings hold pride of place. Among the more important translations made by Xuanzang and his translation team are the foundational texts of the Yogācāra school, such as the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimātratāsiddhi), ASAnGA's MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA, and the YOGĀCĀRABHuMIsĀSTRA, and many of the major works associated with the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school of ABHIDHARMA, including definitive translations of the JNānaprasthāna and the encyclopedic ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, as well as complete translations of VASUBANDHU's ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA and SAMGHABHADRA's *NYĀYĀNUSĀRA. He translated (and retranslated) many major Mahāyāna sutras and sāstras, including the massive MAHĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, in six hundred rolls; this translation is given a place of honor as the first scripture in the East Asian Buddhist canons (see DAZANGJING; KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG). Also attributed to Xuanzang is the Chinese translation of the famed PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA, or "Heart Sutra," probably the most widely read and recited text in East Asian Buddhism. Because Xuanzang himself experienced a palpable sense of the Buddha's absence while he was sojourning in India, he also translated the Nandimitrāvadāna (Da aluohan Nantimiduo luo suoshuo fazhu ji, abbr. Fazhu ji, "Record of the Duration of the Dharma Spoken by the Great Arhat NANDIMITRA"), the definitive text on the sixteen ARHAT protectors (see sOdAsASTHAVIRA) of Buddhism, which became the basis for the LOUHAN cult in East Asia.
Yahrzeit ::: (Yiddish, year-time) Anniversary of a death; a 24-hour candle lit to commemorate the death anniversary of a close relative, also lit on holy days when Yizkor (prayer of remembrance) is recited.
Yajus (Sanskrit) Yajus A sacrificial prayer or formula, also particular mantras muttered in a special manner at a sacrifice, distinguished from the rich and saman verses also recited at sacrifices.
yantra. ::: objects for ritualistic worship; geometrical designs of the energy patterns made by mantras when they are recited or which, when concentrated on produce the effects of the corresponding mantras
Yasas. (P. Yasa; T. Grags pa; C. Yeshe; J. Yasha; K. Yasa 耶舍). An early ARHAT disciple of the Buddha. The son of a wealthy merchant of Vārānasī, Yasas was brought up in luxury. He had three mansions, one for the winter, one for the rainy season, and one for the summer, and was attended by a troupe of female musicians. Once, he happened to awake in the middle of the night and witnessed his attendants sleeping in an indecorous manner. Greatly disturbed, he put on a pair of golden sandals and wandered in the direction of the Deer Park (MṚGADĀVA) where the Buddha was dwelling, exclaiming, "Alas, what distress, what danger." The Buddha saw him approach and, knowing what he was experiencing, called out to him, "Yasas, come. Here there is neither distress nor danger." Yasas approached the Buddha, took off his golden sandals, and sat down beside him. The Buddha preached a graduated discourse (ANUPUBBIKATHĀ) to him, at the conclusion of which Yasas became a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA). He thus became the Buddha's sixth disciple and the first who had not known him prior to his achievement of enlightenment (as had his first five disciples, the bhadravargīya or PANCAVARGIKA). Yasas was also the first person to become an enlightened lay disciple (UPĀSAKA), although he ordained a few minutes later. Later, Yasas's father, who had come searching for his son, arrived at the Buddha's residence. The Buddha used his magical powers to make Yasas invisible and, inviting his father to sit, preached a discourse to him. Yasas's father also became a stream-enterer, while Yasas, who overheard the sermon from his invisible state, became an arhat. When the Buddha made Yasas visible to his father, he informed him that, since his son was now an arhat, it would be impossible for him to return home to a householder's life and he would have to become a monk. Yasas thus became the sixth member of the Buddha's monastic order. Yasas accompanied the Buddha to his father's house the next day to receive the morning meal. After the meal, the Buddha preached a sermon. Yasas's mother, SUJĀTĀ, and other members of the household became stream-enterers, his mother thus becoming the first female disciple (UPĀSIKĀ) of the Buddha and the first woman to become a stream-enterer. At that time, fifty-four of Yasas's friends also were converted and entered the order of monks, swelling its ranks to sixty members. It was at this time that the Buddha directed his disciples to go forth separately and preach the dharma they had realized for the welfare and benefit of the world. ¶ There was a later monk, also named Yasas, whose protest led to the second Buddhist council (COUNCIL, SECOND), held at VAIsĀLĪ. Some one hundred years after the Buddha's death, Yasas was traveling in Vaisālī when he observed the monks there receiving gold and silver as alms directly from the laity, in violation of the VINAYA prohibition against monks touching gold and silver. He also found that the monks had identified ten points in the vinaya that were identified as violations but that they felt were sufficiently minor to be ignored. The ten violations in question were: (1) carrying salt in an animal horn; (2) eating when the shadow of the sundial was two fingerbreadths past noon; (3) after eating, traveling to another village to eat another meal on the same day; (4) holding several assemblies within the same boundary (SĪMĀ) during the same fortnight; (5) making a monastic decision with an incomplete assembly and subsequently receiving the approval of the absent monks; (6) citing precedent as a justification to violate monastic procedures; (7) drinking milk whey after mealtime; (8) drinking unfermented wine; (9) using mats with a fringe; and (10) accepting gold and silver. Yasas told the monks that these were indeed violations, at which point the monks are said to have offered him a share of the gold and silver they had collected. When he refused the bribe, they expelled him from the order. Yasas sought the support of several respected monks in the west, including Sambhuta, sĀnAKAVĀSIN, and REVATA. Together with other monks, they went to Vaisālī, where they convened a council (SAMGĪTI) at which Revata submitted questions about each of the disputed points to Sarvagāmin, the eldest monk of the day, who is said to have been a disciple of ĀNANDA. In each case, he said that the practice in question was a violation of the vinaya. Seven hundred monks then gathered to recite the vinaya. Those who did not accept the decision of the council held their own convocation, which they called the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA or "Great Assembly," the rival group coming to be called the STHAVIRANIKĀYA, or "School of the Elders." This event is sometimes referred to as "the great schism," since it marks the first permanent schism in the order (SAMGHABHEDA).
yi ge brgya pa. (yi ge gyapa). In Tibetan, "hundred-syllable MANTRA"; term used to describe a number of lengthy MANTRAs, most commonly that of VAJRASATTVA, recited as part of a Tibetan tantric confession and purification practice. This is one of the preliminary practices (SNGON 'GRO) of the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism, involving one hundred thousand repetitions of the Vajrasattva mantra.
yiji. (J. yuige; K. yuge 遺偈). In Chinese, "bequeathed verse" or "death verse"; a verse (C. ji; lit. S. GĀTHĀ) left by eminent monks and nuns, especially in the CHAN school, just before the moment of death, as a final expression of their enlightenment experience; also called a "taking leave of the world hymn" (cishi song) or, especially in the Korean tradition, a "moment of death gāthā" (imjongge). The verse may be either recited or written and is left as the master's last bequeathed teaching immediately before he passes away, often delivered as part of a final sermon. The final instructions of a buddha or a monk for the edification of his disciples are referred to as a "bequeathed teaching" (yijiao; see also YIJIAO JING), and the tradition of specifically bequeathing a verse as part of this final instruction is thought to have originated in the Tang-dynasty Chan tradition. Such bequeathed verses usually consisted of four lines of four, five, or seven Sinographs per line and thus are similar in format to other types of verses found within the Chan tradition, such as an "enlightenment hymn" (C. wudao song), the verse recited by a student upon achieving enlightenment, and "dharma-transmission gāthā" (C. chuanfa ji), the verse bestowed on a dharma successor as an authorization to teach. As an example of such a bequeathed verse, HONGZHI ZHENGJUE (1091-1157), a well-known teacher in the CAODONG ZONG, is said to have written the following gāthā just before his death: "An illusory fantasy and a flower in the sky (KHAPUsPA),/ Are these sixty-seven years,/ A white bird fades into the mist,/ The autumnal waters merge with the sky." Not all renowned Chan masters left yiji and others derided the practice. The yiji of DAHUI ZONGGAO (1089-1163), the influential LINJI ZONG master and a contemporary of Hongzhi, expressed ironically his indifference to yiji: "Birth is thus,/ Death is thus,/ Verse or no verse,/ What's the fuss?" In Japan, handwritten death verses were treasured as precious calligraphic art and a virtual relic of the deceased master. They were thus often hung in the abbot's quarters (J. hojo, C. FANGZHANG) or in the retirement cloisters.
Zikar (Zikr, Dhikr, Dzikr) (A) Sufi practice. Zikar is Arabic for ‘reference’, ‘remembrance’. During the practice the soul tries to remember its true origin and identity; the true Self. During the practice the phrase: La ilaha illa ‘llahu, is recited, literally meaning: no deity, except God. As instatic (as opposed to extatic) meditation this practice is performed sitting down, combined with certain rotating movements of the torso.
KEYS (10k)
2 Gyatrul Rinpoche
2 Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
1 Swami Vijnanananda
1 Sri Ramakrishna?
1 Our Lady of Akita
1 Joseph Campbell
1 Emerson
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 Aleister Crowley
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
9 Anonymous
8 Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 Terry Pratchett
4 V E Schwab
4 Lord Byron
4 Lionel Shriver
4 Israelmore Ayivor
3 Suzanne Collins
3 Stephen King
3 Robin S Sharma
3 Rick Riordan
3 Pope John Paul II
3 Plato
3 Mark Manson
3 Louise Penny
3 Libba Bray
3 K M Shea
3 J K Rowling
3 Glenn Greenwald
3 Bob Dylan
1:You will advance in whatever way you may meditate upon God or recite His holy names. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
2:Recite Quran until it prohibits you to do evil deeds. If it does not prohibit you, it will not be considered recitation. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
3:Recite the Lord's name with all your heart, throughout the day and night, whether you are in the midst of work or not. While outwardly you are engaged in work, repeat His name inwardly. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
4:The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms which will remain for you will be The Rosary and The Sign Left by My Son. Each day recite the Prayers of the Rosary." ~ Our Lady of Akita, #KEYS
5:Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Works, #KEYS
6:If a man but once tastes the joy of God, his desire to argue takes wing. The bee, realizing the joy of sipping honey, doesn't buzz about any more. What will vou achieve by quoting from books? The pundits recite verses and do nothing else.
What will you gain by merely repeating 'siddhi'? You will not be intoxicated even by gargling with a solution of siddhi. It must go into your stomach; not until then will you be intoxicated. One cannot comprehend what I am saying unless one prays to God in solitude, all by oneself, with a longing heart. ~ Sri Ramakrishna?,#KEYS
7:The Particular Necessity for Practice
The second part discusses "the particular necessity for practice."
Through the power of the yoga of speech, the stains that obscure the mind are removed. Once this happens, speech reaches its full potential. It is like discovering the true nature of your speech for the very first time.
To activate the yoga of speech, summon the primordial wisdom deities by calling their names. Just as calling someone's name naturally causes that person to draw closer to you, in the same way calling the wisdom deities by name brings them nearer to you.
They come to see what you want.
This does not mean the wisdom deities will not come if you do not call them. They could come even if you did not call their names.
You call their names-which is what you are doing when you recite mantras-because their names express their actual nature. A quote from the Dorje Kur (rDo rje gur) scripture reads: "To directly perceive the buddhas, bodhisattvas, dakinis and your own consort, get their attention by calling their names and invite them to come." Reciting the deity's name over and over purifies obscurations of speech and establishes the cause of vajra speech.
This cause produces the condition that averts adverse conditions.
The speech of the wisdom deities and your own speech will become the same-vajra speech. ~ Gyatrul Rinpoche, Generating the Deity,#KEYS
8: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
9:There is a story I would like to tell you about a woman who practices the invocation of the Buddha Amitabha's name. She is very tough, and she practices the invocation three times daily, using a wooden drum and a bell, reciting, "Namo Amitabha Buddha" for one hour each time. When she arrives at one thousand times, she invites the bell to sound. (In Vietnamese, we don't say "strike" or "hit" a bell.) Although she has been doing this for ten years, her personality has not changed. She is still quite mean, shouting at people all the time.
A friend wanted to teach her a lesson, so one afternoon when she had just lit the incense, invited the bell to sound three times, and was beginning to recite "Namo Amitabha Buddha," he came to her door, and said, "Mrs. Nguyen, Mrs. Nguyen!" She found it very annoying because this was her time of practice, but he just stood at the front gate shouting her name. She said to herself, "I have to struggle against my anger, so I will ignore that," and she went on, "Namo Amitabha Buddha, Namo Amitabha Buddha."
The gentleman continued to shout her name, and her anger became more and more oppressive. She struggled against it, wondering, "Should I stop my recitation and go and give him a piece of my mind?" But she continued chanting, and she struggled very hard. Fire mounted in her, but she still tried to chant "Namo Amitabha Buddha." The gentleman knew it, and he continued to shout, "Mrs. Nguyen! Mrs. Nguyen!"
She could not bear it any longer. She threw away the bell and the drum. She slammed the door, went out to the gate and said, "Why, why do you behave like that? Why do you call my name hundreds of times like that?" The gentleman smiled at her and said, "I just called your name for ten minutes, and you are so angry. You have been calling the Buddha's name for ten years. Think how angry he must be! ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,#KEYS
10:Who could have thought that this tanned young man with gentle, dreamy eyes, long wavy hair parted in the middle and falling to the neck, clad in a common coarse Ahmedabad dhoti, a close-fitting Indian jacket, and old-fashioned slippers with upturned toes, and whose face was slightly marked with smallpox, was no other than Mister Aurobindo Ghose, living treasure of French, Latin and Greek?" Actually, Sri Aurobindo was not yet through with books; the Western momentum was still there; he devoured books ordered from Bombay and Calcutta by the case. "Aurobindo would sit at his desk," his Bengali teacher continues, "and read by the light of an oil lamp till one in the morning, oblivious of the intolerable mosquito bites. I would see him seated there in the same posture for hours on end, his eyes fixed on his book, like a yogi lost in the contemplation of the Divine, unaware of all that went on around him. Even if the house had caught fire, it would not have broken this concentration." He read English, Russian, German, and French novels, but also, in ever larger numbers, the sacred books of India, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, although he had never been in a temple except as an observer. "Once, having returned from the College," one of his friends recalls, "Sri Aurobindo sat down, picked up a book at random and started to read, while Z and some friends began a noisy game of chess. After half an hour, he put the book down and took a cup of tea. We had already seen him do this many times and were waiting eagerly for a chance to verify whether he read the books from cover to cover or only scanned a few pages here and there. Soon the test began. Z opened the book, read a line aloud and asked Sri Aurobindo to recite what followed. Sri Aurobindo concentrated for a moment, and then repeated the entire page without a single mistake. If he could read a hundred pages in half an hour, no wonder he could go through a case of books in such an incredibly short time." But Sri Aurobindo did not stop at the translations of the sacred texts; he began to study Sanskrit, which, typically, he learned by himself. When a subject was known to be difficult or impossible, he would refuse to take anyone's word for it, whether he were a grammarian, pandit, or clergyman, and would insist upon trying it himself. The method seemed to have some merit, for not only did he learn Sanskrit, but a few years later he discovered the lost meaning of the Veda. ~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo Or The Adventure of Consciousness, #KEYS
11:Death & Fame
When I die
I don't care what happens to my body throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But I want a big funeral St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister-in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters their grandchildren, companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--
Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche, there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting America, Satchitananda Swami Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche, Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau Roshis, Lama Tarchen --
Then, most important, lovers over half-century Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousandday retreat --"
"I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he loved me"
"I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone"
"We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly arms round each other"
"I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my skivvies would be on the floor"
"Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master"
"We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then sleep in his captain's bed."
"He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy"
"I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my stomach shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- "
"All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth & fingers along my waist"
"He gave great head"
So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin-gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997 and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!"
"I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me."
"I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head, my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick, tickled with his tongue my behind"
"I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a pillow --"
Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear
"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his walk-up flat, seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him again never wanted to... "
"He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made sure I came first"
This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--
Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con-ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum-peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto-harp pennywhistles & kazoos
Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India, Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massa-chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American provinces
Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio-philes, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex
"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved him anyway, true artist"
"Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me from suicide hospitals"
"Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my studio guest a week in Budapest"
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures
Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo-graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural historians come to witness the historic funeral Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph-hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers
Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive
February 22, 1997
~ Allen Ginsberg,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:A cat's meow and cow's moo, I can recite them all. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 2:Victims recite problems, leaders provide solutions. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 3:I bet any Sunday could be made as popular at church as Easter is if you made 'em fashion shows too. The audience is so busy looking at each other that the preacher just as well recite Gunga Din. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 4:Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don't know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 5:Some of the old folk singers used to phrase things in an interesting way, and then, I got my style from seeing a lot of outdoor-type poets, who would recite their poetry. When you don't have a guitar, you recite things differently, and there used to be quite a few poets in the jazz clubs, who would recite with a different type of attitude. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 6:When people say, "I've told you fifty times," They mean to scold, and very often do; When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," They make you dread that they'll recite them too; In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; At fifty love for love is rare, & *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:recite Oṃ Āḥ Hūṃ three times. ~ Thupten Jinpa, #NFDB
2:I can recite poetry, but I cannot write it. ~ Irrfan Khan, #NFDB
3:Before you taste anything, recite a blessing. ~ Rabbi Akiva, #NFDB
4:A cat's meow and cow's moo, I can recite them all. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
5:Victims recite problems, leaders provide solutions. ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
6:Victims recite problems. Leaders present solutions. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
7:Victims recite problems, leaders provide solutions. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
8:No really sensible person ever remembers enough poetry to recite it. ~ E W Howe, #NFDB
9:People recite lines to me all the time, anywhere I get recognized. ~ Steven Bauer, #NFDB
10:a series of mantras that they would recite morning, noon and night. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
11:Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
12:Lads learn nothing nowadays, but how to recite poetry and play the fiddle. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
13:Or recite this mantra: om mani padme hum (pronounced “om mani padmay hum”). ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
14:The success of my rule does not rely on my ability to recite obscure Latin verse. ~ Sherry Thomas, #NFDB
15:I haven't seen someone so overmatched since Mike Tyson tried to recite the alphabet. ~ Dennis Miller, #NFDB
16:Sydney! Stop. Think of something else. Conjugate Latin verbs. Recite the periodic table. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
17:Recite your Rosary with faith, with humility, with confidence, and with perseverance. ~ Louis de Montfort, #NFDB
18:When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
19:To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate the face of Christ with Mary. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
20:Love Our Lady and make her loved; always recite the Rosary and recite it as often as possible. ~ Pio of Pietrelcina, #NFDB
21:If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a blessing over them before and after. ~ Shmuel Yosef Agnon, #NFDB
22:I am still able to recite long portions of Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman” at the slightest provocation. ~ Sue Grafton, #NFDB
23:We must be careful not to recite ugliness in our hearts because it will eventually find its way out. ~ Alisa Hope Wagner, #NFDB
24:No truly happy person feels the need to stand in front of a mirror and recite that she's happy. She just is. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
25:The LORD then said to Moses, “Write this down on a scroll as a reminder and recite it to Joshua. ”Exodus 17:14 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
26:There’s a Heartrender at the Little Palace who can recite epic poetry for hours. Then you’d wish you had died. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
27:When I hear Khmer poets, when they recite their poems, I know what they're talking about, I get it right away. ~ Chath Piersath, #NFDB
28:And one of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
29:How many of us had died leaving no one behind to light the yahrzeit candles and recite the Kaddish prayer? ~ Mary Robinette Kowal, #NFDB
30:And the dangerous thing about excuses is that if we recite them enough times, we actually come to believe they are true. ~ Robin S, #NFDB
31:The Rosary is my favorite prayer. A prayer so simple and so rich; from deepest heart, I exhort all to recite it. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
32:After all, no truly happy person feels the need to stand in front of a mirror and recite that she’s happy. She just is. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
33:I grew up in the church and began to recite set pieces at the age of four and five, like many of the other kids. ~ Michael Eric Dyson, #NFDB
34:The first time I got onstage was when I was about 5 years old. It was at a church social, and I had a poem to recite. ~ Willie Nelson, #NFDB
35:Apollo was god of poetry as well as archery, and I'd heard him recite in person. I'd almost rather get shot by an arrow ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
36:I watched 'A Chorus Line' over and over when I was growing up, to the point that I was able to recite the entire movie. ~ Sharni Vinson, #NFDB
37:I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite. ~ Carol Ann Duffy, #NFDB
38:The man who came to his friend to ask for bread did not recite some formula request; he pleaded for what he needed. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
39:Recite Quran until it prohibits you to do evil deeds. If it does not prohibit you, it will not be considered recitation. ~ Imām Al-Ghazālī, #NFDB
40:Do I have to recite any further risks you have taken? How much you have not conformed? How much internal bravery this implies? ~ Ellen Ullman, #NFDB
41:Since you are my eye and tongue, I do not see two, I do not recite two, I acknowledge none but the one darling that is you. - ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #NFDB
42:Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear. And I beg them not to imitate me, because I'm not a good actor. ~ Sergio Leone, #NFDB
43:Though a man recite a hundred Gathas made up of senseless words, one word of the law is better, which if a man hears, he becomes quiet. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
44:Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator. ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
45:Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator. ~ Lemony Snicket, #NFDB
46:Learning to be silent is far more difficult and far more important than learning to recite prayers. ~ Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, #NFDB
47:how can you talk about the commands of God so continually with your children while walking along the road if you can’t recite their content? ~ Andrew M Davis, #NFDB
48:Sometimes I marveled at how grown-up we’d all become, and then Dick would recite a sixteen-stanza penis-based epic poem, and I’d take it back. ~ Molly Harper, #NFDB
49:Forcing school children to recite a national pledge doesn’t sound very American to me,” said James. “No,” agreed Holmes. “It sounds German. Very German. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
50:There is no higher or purer pleasure than to sit with closed eyes and hear a naturally expressive voice recite... a play of Shakespeare's. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
51:Floribert could neither sing nor recite these poems because they were without words, but he dreamed and felt them sometimes, especially in the evenings. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
52:Fluid intelligence doesn't look much like the capacity to memorise and recite facts, the skills that people have traditionally associated with brainpower. ~ Jamais Cascio, #NFDB
53:I remembered a tapa my grandmother used to recite: 'No Pashtun leaves his land of his own sweet will, Either he leaves from poverty or he leaves for love ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
54:Piss on the beards of all those self- righteous monkeys. They do nothing but thumb their rosaries and recite a book written in a tongue they don't understand. ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
55:Jews have deep respect for the Queen and the royal family. We say a prayer for them every Sabbath in synagogue. We recite a special blessing on seeing the Queen. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
56:My son Darrel could recite 'Straight Outta Compton' at two years old. He loved it! You can expose your kids to anything as long as you sit there and explain it to them. ~ Ice Cube, #NFDB
57:I don't want to do the type of writing where I recite biography, parentage and education. I want to rise up from the words on the page and do something, hurt someone. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
58:If a man but once tastes the joy of God, his desire to argue takes wing. What will you achieve by quoting from books? The pundits recite verses and do nothing else. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
59:I work with intuition. With interpreters. I have my own method. I know exactly what I want from actors. Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear. ~ Sergio Leone, #NFDB
60:Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
61:Though you recite much scripture,
If you are unaware and do not act according
You are like a cowherd counting others' cattle,
Not a sharer in the wanderer's life. ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
62:You have faith stories, too. No matter how small, remember them, recite them, count them, and celebrate them. They build your faith for what is coming next in your life. ~ Reinhard Bonnke, #NFDB
63:Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And one of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
64:When he spoke of love, it was in the manner of someone who can recite a phrase in a foreign language but has no idea what it means. He only knows that it sounds pretty. ~ Roy L Pickering Jr, #NFDB
65:No matter how you were taught by your teacher about how to recite a poem, it is impossible to wear your teacher's smiling face to the stage. You got to put on that smile. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
66:There were grade-schoolers in Texas who could recite the Castle Doctrine, the state’s “stand your ground” law, as easily as the pledge of allegiance. Mack’s was a textbook case. ~ Attica Locke, #NFDB
67:The thoughtless man, even if he can recite a large portion (of the law), but is not a doer of it, has no share in the priesthood, but is like a cowherd counting the cows of others. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
68:Vanity, wounded pride, rejection, self-delusion. I could recite a litany of little pinpricks that finally produce a gaping wound. That's how marriages and friendships come apart. ~ Helen Van Slyke, #NFDB
69:No matter how many romantic poems you recite, no matter how many glorious tales of love you read, how can you really understand the condition if you've never found yourself in it? ~ Sherry D Ficklin, #NFDB
70:So now books were her only friends. She'd read Lord of the Rings so often she could recite whole scenes by memory.
It was not a skill that aided one in becoming popular. ~ Kristin Hannah,#NFDB
71:I take pride in never being rude to anyone on this earth, which contains a great number of unbearable villains who set upon you to recount their sufferings and even recite their poems. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
72:When people say, 'I've told you fifty times',
They mean to scold, and very often do;
When poets say, 'I've written fifty rhymes',
They make you dread that they'll recite them too ~ Lord Byron,#NFDB
73:I have always been a HUGE Star Wars fan since I was like 5 years old. Most of us in the writers room at Family Guy were big nerds growing up and could recite almost any scene from Star Wars. ~ Alex Borstein, #NFDB
74:Here is a book so dull that a whirling dervish could read himself to sleep with it. If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead. ~ Clive James, #NFDB
75:He wants you to smile and smell sweet and be his lady love. He wants to hear you recite all your pretty little words the way the septa taught you. He wants you to love him... and fear him. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
76:Hillary Clinton asks her supporters to recite a three-word loyalty pledge. It reads: "I'm with her." I choose to recite a different pledge. My pledge reads: "I'm with you, the American people." ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
77:He was your usual man when it came to romance, which is to say he couldn’t recite Baa Baa Black Sheep when sober, whereas when drunk, sixteen cantos of Byron’s Don Juan was par for the course. ~ Tyne O Connell, #NFDB
78:I'd told the condensed version of my life story so many times over the years that I could recite it without emotion. When I said the words out loud, they felt like they belonged to someone else. ~ Laura McHugh, #NFDB
79:The quickest way to master that Shakespearean sonnet, in other words, is to spend the first third of your time memorizing it and the remaining two-thirds of the time trying to recite it from memory. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
80:No matter how you are taught by your teacher about how to recite a poem, it is impossible to wear your teacher's smiling face to the stage. You got to change your own face into a smiling one! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
81:To know if someone can speak offensively or politely, don’t give him poem to recite; don’t give him a song to sing. Just engage him in an argument and you will know it for yourself who he is. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
82:When I meet thousands of fans of the comic - when I realize every one of them can recite the Lantern Corps oath ('In Brightest Day, in blackest night...') - I know how important this is to people. ~ Ryan Reynolds, #NFDB
83:Stop blaming people for not helping you. No matter how your teacher teaches you to recite a poem, you can’t wear her smiling face to the platform. You’ve got to put that smile on your own face. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
84:And when the war's over, some day, some
year, the books can be written again, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know and we'll set it up in type until another Dark age. ~ Ray Bradbury,#NFDB
85:Being that I am of a high intellect, I find cursing distasteful and ill mannered. If that were not the case, however, I would compose a creative, innovative ballad of cursing and recite it at this moment, ~ K M Shea, #NFDB
86:Being that I am of a high intellect, I find cursing distasteful and ill-mannered. If that were not the case, however, I would compose a creative, innovative ballad of cursing and recite it at this moment, ~ K M Shea, #NFDB
87:I could not get my fill of looking. There should be a song for women to sing at this moment or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name that moment. ~ Anita Diament, #NFDB
88:I think being self-referential is really narcissistic. Who's to say anybody's even thinking of you that much? But some of these movies that I've done, people still recite lines to me, even 20 years later. ~ John Cusack, #NFDB
89:The boys learn the Quran by heart, rocking back and forth as they recite. They learn that there is no such thing as science or literature, that dinosaurs never existed and man never went to the moon. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
90:The human body can play music, kill germs, make a baby, recite poetry, and monitor the movement of stars all at the same time, because the field of infinite correlation is part of its information field. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
91:One noteworthy thing about South Carolina is the quality of school-bus drivers in the state. To qualify for a bus license one must have reached puberty and be able to recite the alphabet without stuttering. ~ Pat Conroy, #NFDB
92:Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don't know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
93:I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shaksepeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
94:When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
95:Mother loved the wind. When I was growing up, she would recite this poem to me. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I, But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. So it is with God. ~ Alice Steinbach, #NFDB
96:Oh, you knew exactly what I meant. Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And one of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
97:Nathan said, “Not a chance. I’ve heard him recite it in class. He knows dozens of Poe’s poems by heart. ‘The Raven,’ ‘Lenore,’ ‘The Lake,’ ‘To Annie’…dozens of them. Sometimes I think he fucking channels Poe. ~ Randall Silvis, #NFDB
98:Didn’t they teach you how to go about research in that school of yours?” “No. But I can recite ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ while making martinis.” “I weep for the future.” “There’s where the martinis come in. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
99:I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important.” “You ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
100:Mandy swears that barely a day goes by that he isn’t asked by someone, somewhere, to recite Inigo Montoya’s most famous words, in which he vows vengeance on behalf of his father. “And I never let them down,” he says. ~ Cary Elwes, #NFDB
101:Become aware of God, in whose presence you are while you pray . . . Then take a formula of prayer and recite it with perfect attention both to the words you are saying and to the Person to whom you are saying them. ~ John Climacus, #NFDB
102:The Rosary is the most beautiful and the most rich in graces of all prayers; it is the prayer that touches most the Heart of the Mother of God...and if you wish peace to reign in your homes, recite the family Rosary. ~ Pope Pius X, #NFDB
103:When I behold a rich landscape, it is
less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of
the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a
tranquil sense of unity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
104:My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge. ~ Bernie Taupin, #NFDB
105:Oh God," Coyote said, and rolled onto his side, propping his head up on one hand. "It's hard to remember something that long ago. It's almost like an epic poem I memorized once, and can barely recite anymore. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
106:Being that I am of a high intellect, I find cursing distasteful and ill mannered. If that were not the case, however, I would compose a creative, innovative ballad of cursing and recite it at this moment,” Elle announced, ~ K M Shea, #NFDB
107:..but it's one of the reflections of our times. Young minds today are dulled by television and other visual sensations. When reading was one of the few pleasures available, we could recite whole passages to eachother. ~ Gloria Naylor, #NFDB
108:There were only more ravens. A whole unkindness of them. He smirked at the thought. Evie had once told him about the various names used to describe groupings of birds. It had taken her nearly an hour to recite them all. ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
109:In the next moment, Danvers began to recite the Lord's prayer, which was rather sacrilegious to her mind considering that she suspected he'd burst into flames if he dared enter a church, but she wasn't going to complain. ~ Lynsay Sands, #NFDB
110:He's probably their battle poet, too." "You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?" "No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy....When a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy's ears explode. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
111:Recite to yourself some of the traditional attributes of the word 'spiritual': mythic, magical, ethereal, incorporeal, intangible, nonmaterial, disembodied, ideal, platonic. Is that not a definition of the electronic-digital? ~ Timothy Leary, #NFDB
112:He tried not to love that she could recite scenes from Ghostbusters, that she liked kung fu movies and could name all of the original X-Men— because those seemed like reasons a guy would fall for a girl in a Kevin Smith movie. ~ Rainbow Rowell, #NFDB
113:I gotta say"—Apollo broke the silence—"these kids did okay." He cleared his throat and began to recite: "Heroes win laurels—"
Um, yes, first class," Hermes interrupted, like he was anxious to avoid Apollo's poetry. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
114:When you feel life’s great cost, Discouraged and thinking all is lost. Recite a verse and Angels will descend, To guide you through your journey’s end. Recite another and your soul will soar, Keeping your demons behind God’s door. ~ Mingo Kane, #NFDB
115:Say it again,” he says.
“That whole drawn-out speech?” I remember something about a solar system, but I’m too light-headed to recite the entire thing all over again.
He steps closer. “No. The part about you fallin’ for me. ~ Simone Elkeles,#NFDB
116:Well, we all know how satisfying it is to recite the shortcomings and hollowness of others - especially those who have money and recognition where we have none. It is certainly more pleasurable than inspecting our own shortcomings. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
117:He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity. ~ Amy Tan, #NFDB
118:I am feeling fine. I remember these words and recite them. These are the things you say when asked how you are. After all, it would be odd to say: I'm not feeling. Or, more to the point: I'm not, I have ceased to be. Where am I? ~ Marya Hornbacher, #NFDB
119:He's probably their battle poet, too."
"You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?"
"No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy....When a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy's ears explode. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
120:Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
121:You can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man,'Laina said,...
'You know that song?'
'Of course. People used to recite it in the war. I didn't know it was a song. For the longest time I thought it was from the Qur'an. ~ Anthony Marra,#NFDB
122:Do not recite words just to prove to yourself and others that you know and love God; for he already put his breath and light inside you. Instead, put truth in your every word and action, and always let your conscience steer and guide you. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
123:My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I'm reading one book fifty times. I only stop when at the bottom of page 20, say, I realise I can recite pages 21 and 22 from memory. Then I put the book away for a few years. ~ Helene Hanff, #NFDB
124:in order to fall asleep i have to imagine your body crooked behind mine spoon ladled into spoon till i can hear your breath i have to recite your name till you answer and we have a conversation only then can my mind drift off to sleep -pretend ~ Rupi Kaur, #NFDB
125:the American-affiliated students were incomparably better informed than the locals—incomparably more intelligent all round, to put it bluntly—but the one thing the Americans could not do to save their lives was recite the verse in front of them. ~ Clive James, #NFDB
126:You didn’t mind me being sweet a few hours ago,” he reminds me. I roll my eyes as I pull my hand back. “That’s because you were giving me my third orgasm. I would’ve let you recite sonnets as long as you kept doing that thing with your tongue. ~ Corinne Michaels, #NFDB
127:Men still think the same things about us they have always thought, Ruth - I'm sure of it. A lot of them have learned to say the right things at the right times, but as my mother used to say, 'Even a cannibal can learn to recite the Apostles' Creed'. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
128:We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.
The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king. ~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
129:Chocolate thickens the saliva, which isn't good news if you've gotta recite Shakespeare or sing Iron Man. Having said that, you're not supposed to drink tea either but I still do before gigs. It's not very rock and roll, but it's like a magic potion to me. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
130:long. Now, do your new verse. Read Ephesians 3:7 out loud ten times, looking at each word as if photographing it with your eyes. Be sure to include the verse number. Then cover the page and recite it ten times. You’re done for the day. Weeding the Garden As ~ Andrew M Davis, #NFDB
131:When we recite our relationship vows, perhaps we should say, “I take you as my pain in the rear, with all your history and baggage, and I take responsibility for all prior injustices you endured at the hands of those I never knew, because you now are in my care. ~ Stan Tatkin, #NFDB
132:When you recite you're giving a performance, in the way that an actor or a singer performs, and some poets are not interested in doing that, maybe because they're writing for a readership as opposed to an audience, or because they see poetry as a very private art. ~ James Arthur, #NFDB
133:The home is the place where worship of the true God starts: the place where we remember and recite God’s Word, and where we learn to respond to God with our heart, soul, strength, and—as Jesus added when he called this the greatest commandment—with our mind as well. ~ Andy Crouch, #NFDB
134:Literature, the study of literature in English in the 19th century, did not belong to literary studies, which had to do with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, but instead with elocution and public speaking. So when people read literature, it was to memorize and to recite it. ~ Robert Hass, #NFDB
135:Physically, everything about him whispered an implication of the erotic—he looked like the kind of man who could recite Yeats to you in one breath and tie you to the bedpost in the next. But, he drove like my grandfather and had the musical tastes of a prepubescent girl. I ~ Jen Blood, #NFDB
136:I don't think I've ever quite grown out of it, actually. There was a point where I could recite some of those Elvish verses - which I've mercifully forgotten. But I can still, if really pushed, recite the text of the inside of the ruling ring in the language of Mordor. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
137:To her mind the Senate was a place where people went to recite speeches, and she naively assumed that the speeches were useful and had a purpose, but as they did not interest her she never went again. This is a very common conception of Congress; many Congressmen share it. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
138:Have you not often met poor old women who are most faithful to the pious recitation of the Rosary? You also must do all that you can to recite it with fervour. Get right down, at the feet of Jesus: it is a good thing to make oneself small in the presence of so great a God. ~ Columba Marmion, #NFDB
139:Pardon me, but my father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything. You have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not even chickens. He asks, 'What kind of life is that?' He says, 'No wonder you don't sing or dance or recite poetry very often. ~ Robert Fulghum, #NFDB
140:Luckily, Dixie, Ernie, and the two girls, Sissy and Mary Ann, all loved his money. Money was power, no question about it. Sanders remembered how his father used to recite the Golden Rule—he who has the gold makes the rules. And Sanders had the gold. The power. The control. And ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
141:The extent to which dharma practice has been institutionalized as a religion can be gauged by the number of consolatory elements that have crept in: for example, assurances of a better afterlife if you perform virtuous deeds or recite mantras or chant the name of a Buddha. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
142:God’s reality is displayed to us in His Word or His world and we do not then feel in our heart any grief or longing or hope or fear or awe or joy or gratitude or confidence, then we may dutifully sing and pray and recite and gesture as much as we like, but it will not be real worship. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
143:If the style of the restaurant was old-fashioned, the parenting that went on there was distinctly modern. Moms and dads would patiently recite every item on the menu to their squirming five-year-olds, as if the many flavors of ice cream represented all the unique ways they were loved. ~ Amy Poehler, #NFDB
144:But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
145:We think scientific literacy flows out of how many science facts can you recite rather than how was your brain wired for thinking. And it's the brain wiring that I'm more interested in rather than the facts that come out of the curriculum or the lesson plan that's been proposed. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
146:Dear old al-Maarri was a great skeptic poet. He wrote a parody of the Koran, and his friends would tease him and say, "al-Maarri, but no one says your Koran." And he said, "Yes, but give me time. Give me time. If people recite it for twenty years it will become as popular as the other one." ~ Tariq Ali, #NFDB
147:There are freaky talking mannequins in the Salem Witch Museum that recite the Lord's Prayer and while they do resemble shrunken apples they nevertheless help the visitor understand how hard it must have been for the condemned to say the line about forgiving those who trespass against us. ~ Sarah Vowell, #NFDB
148:Isaac Watts’s hymn is reminiscent of three daily prayers that male Orthodox and Conservative (but not Reform) Jews are taught to recite: shall in a ‘Blessed are You for not making me a Gentile. Blessed are You for not making me a woman. Blessed are You for not making me a slave.’ Religion ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
149:Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
150:Knowing only one word of Dharma and putting that into practice brings profound and special results; whereas those who can recite from memory 100,000 texts but don’t practise the Dharma won’t experience all that much benefit. Therefore, special mention is made of the purpose of practice at this time. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
151:A Hopi Indian named Sun Chief said:
I had learned many English words and could recite part of the Ten Commandments. I knew how to sleep on a bad, pray to Jesus, comb my hair, eat with a knife and fork, and use a toilet. . . . I had also learned that a person thinks with his head instead of his heart. ~ Howard Zinn,#NFDB
152:have you heard about the young Hindu virgin from Kutch, who kept two tame snakes in her crutch, she said when they wriggle, it’s a bit of a giggle, but my boyfriends don’t like my crutch much. Ha ha ha!’ ‘Really, captain!’ said Mother, outraged, ‘I do wish you wouldn’t recite poetry in front of Gerry. ~ Gerald Durrell, #NFDB
153:I try to keep in mind” I recite dryly as I run the front sight of my pistol over his face, “that my life is only as significant, as I am to the lives of others.”
He’s sobbing and won’t look up from the floor so I lean close to his ear and ask softly, “Would you say that I’m significant to your life? ~ Dennis Sharpe,#NFDB
154:question to ask them. I asked half the students to write down whether, hypothetically, they would be willing to pay me $10 for a 10-minute poetry recitation. I asked the other half to write down whether, hypothetically, they would be willing to listen to me recite poetry for ten minutes if I paid them $10. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
155:I said I was only going to recite them once, and he could do with them as he wished.” Armand Gamache lowered his fork to his plate and listened. “I don’t know. I was wrong. I’m sorry.” Lacoste recited them slowly, lifting a finger to count them off. “I need help,” the Chief said, completing the statements. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
156:So you’re saying you do want to sleep
with me?”
“Given the fact that I just took my millionth
cold shower since I’ve moved in here and
I have to constantly recite the Gettysburg
Address and The Bill of Rights in my head
when I’m around you? Yeah, I’d say so.
Why, you want me, too? ~ Chelsea M Cameron,#NFDB
157:None of this information deterred Joseph Kennedy. He engaged Freeman and Watts to perform a lobotomy on Rosemary. She was kept awake for the procedure as they asked her to recite the lyrics to simple songs like “God Bless America” and the months of the year. They kept cutting until she became incoherent. ~ Jennifer Wright, #NFDB
158:I shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person. ~ Mary McCarthy, #NFDB
159:The Rosary is a powerful weapon to put the demons to flight and to keep oneself from sin…If you desire peace in your hearts, in your homes, and in your country, assemble each evening to recite the Rosary. Let not even one day pass without saying it, no matter how burdened you may be with many cares and labors. ~ Pope Pius XI, #NFDB
160:Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks. ~ Jane Yolen, #NFDB
161:I'll come to thee by moonlight," Connor said, quoting her favorite poem. "Though hell should bar the way." He kissed her quickly. "And don't fall out," he added.
"Don't die," she replied sleepily.
"Dude," Quinn grinned. "Did you just recite poetry?"
"Shut it," Connor shot back amiably. ~ Alyxandra Harvey,#NFDB
162:Innsmouth women might deck themselves in gold for a man's pleasure, recite passages of lore to show off their learning, or cultivate an interest in stories about fishing expeditions. But my mother had never taught me how to efface myself to bolster male self-importance—nor had my father taught any need for it. ~ Ruthanna Emrys, #NFDB
163:When Milo challenged his protesters to argue with him countless times on his tour, he knew that they not only wouldn’t, but also that they couldn’t. They come from an utterly intellectually shut-down world of Tumblr and trigger warnings, and the purging of dissent in which they have only learned to recite jargon. ~ Angela Nagle, #NFDB
164:Teach me to sing and recite,
To whistle and jingle and strum.
Teach me to color and paint,
To sculpt and weave and create.
Teach me to sway and dance,
To tap and leap and twirl.
Teach me to laugh and giggle,
To tickle and play and pretend.
Teach me that life is beautiful. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,#NFDB
165:Who are the scholars who get ‘rattled’ in the recitation room?” asked William James. “Those who think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance of the act. Who are those who do recite well? Often those who are most indifferent. Their ideas reel themselves out of their memories of their own accord. ~ Maxwell Maltz, #NFDB
166:And I have some poetry that I would like to recite to you in honor of the recent, um, transformations in your life.” Tootie put a hand on her chest. “This is Rilke,” she said. “‘You, sent out beyond your recall, / go to the limits of your longing. / Embody me. / Flare up like flame / and make big shadows I can move in. ~ Kate DiCamillo, #NFDB
167:Ironically, this fixation on the positive—on what’s better, what’s superior—only serves to remind us over and over again of what we are not, of what we lack, of what we should have been but failed to be. After all, no truly happy person feels the need to stand in front of a mirror and recite that she’s happy. She just is. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
168:Well, yeah! Now they're considered golden oldies, which is awesome. I was watching Little Women recently, and I didn't want to get up for fear of missing something. And Heathers is like my own Rocky Horror Picture Show; I recite the lines when it's on. It may seem odd, but I think it's because they're really good movies. ~ Winona Ryder, #NFDB
169:Remember what I said about finding a meaningful life? I wrote it down, but now I can recite it: Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. "You notice" he added, grinning, "there's nothing in there about a salary. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
170:When we are placed in a set of circumstances where we have to take initiative and be creative, some of us find it hard to transition. Those people have been trained not to think but to obey orders. They are slaves to the training, unconsciously pledging allegiance to the average. Mentally they recite from the manual of mediocrity. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
171:Radu had practiced the poem so often he could recite it in his sleep. He had stolen shiny bits from famous Arabic poems, gathering them like a raven to line his own nest. The language was dense and flowery, hyperbolic in the extreme. Murad listened, enraptured, as his reign was likened to the ocean and his posterity a mighty river. ~ Kiersten White, #NFDB
172:Maharajji invited a famous pundit to come to Kainchi and recite the Shrimad Bhagavatam. This man was used to reciting before large and very receptive crowds, and he complained to Maharajji that on this occasion he had to recite to only a few illiterate villagers. Maharajji gently rebuked him and said, “Don’t worry. Hanumanji is listening. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
173:The headache’s coming on and my thoughts begin to tangle. I shut my eyes and start to recite silently. My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is alive. He is a traitor but alive. I have to keep him alive. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
174:Some of the old folk singers used to phrase things in an interesting way, and then, I got my style from seeing a lot of outdoor-type poets, who would recite their poetry. When you don't have a guitar, you recite things differently, and there used to be quite a few poets in the jazz clubs, who would recite with a different type of attitude. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
175:My own view, and I've said this many times, is as long as I can do the work full steam, I will stay on the Court. But when I feel myself slipping, when I slow down in my ability to write opinions with fair dispatch, when I forget the names of cases that I once could recite at the drop of a hat, I will know it is time for me to go. ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, #NFDB
176:Maybe he would have to recite poetry to her to kindle her interest. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten most of the stuff he’d memorized for his tutors in his youth. All he recalled were a few limericks that had been popular with the soldiers during the war. The fewer retellings of the one featuring a plucky private named Doracio, the better. ~ Lindsay Buroker, #NFDB
177:Ms. Wormwood: Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did?
Calvin: No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm's Thermonuclear League of Liberty.
Ms. Wormwood: See me after class, Calvin.
Calvin: [retrospectively] I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information. ~ Bill Watterson,#NFDB
178:Recite the Periodic Table of Teatime, in correct order, with Elemental Symbols, please.'
A-Through-L sat back on his handsome black haunches, shut his eyes, and said: 'Hot Tea (H), Herbal Tea (He), Lingonberry Scones (Li), Berry Jam (Be), Butter (B), Cream (C), Napoleons (N), Orange Marmalade (O), Frosting (F), Nettle Tea (Ne)... ~ Catherynne M Valente,#NFDB
179:I do not have a specific prayer I wish to recite to Mortain. It has always been my custom to simply open my heart to Him so He may see and know all that I am feeling - the good along with the bad, my grand thoughts as well as my small ones. I do that now, and peace washes through me, clearing me of my doubts and renewing my sense of purpose. ~ Robin LaFevers, #NFDB
180:My sister compares her body to a junkyard and I find bits of scrap metal beneath her bed from boys who bury promises in her belly. Maybe love ruins you a little bit. Maybe we don’t care. We are so young to hate everything so much. Can recite the periodic table from memory but still can’t quite believe it when they say that they love us, too. ~ Kristina Haynes, #NFDB
181:Personally, I don’t mind a good cry. In fact, if I cry while chopping onions, I’ll run to the bathroom mirror and recite one of my favorite lines from Poltergeist: “Don’t you touch my babies!!!” It’s the part where the kids are being sucked into the bedroom closet for the second time and JoBeth Williams is at HER WIT’S END! It’s very dramatic. ~ Clinton Kelly, #NFDB
182:That's why he was here, to surrender himself to longing, to listen to his host recite the anecdotal texts, all the passed-down stories of bonehead plays and swirling brawls, the pitching duels that carried into twilight, stories that Marvin had been collecting for half a century--the deep eros of memory that separates baseball from other sports. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
183:Hollis " I said "you're messing with me right now aren't you You're in Paris or somewhere and just-" "What " he replied. "No This is the real deal. Here I'll prove it." There was a muffled noise followed by some static. Then I heard my mother recite at a distance in her most droll flat tone "Yes. It is true. Your brother is in love and in my kitchen. ~ Sarah Dessen, #NFDB
184:You have the right to remain silent, but I doubt you will. You have the right to an attorney, which I imagine Quen will be calling soon. If you can’t afford one, hell has frozen over and I’m the princess of Oz, but in that case, one will be appointed to you. You understand your rights that the entire congregation of Cincy’s finest has heard me recite? ~ Kim Harrison, #NFDB
185:Lupe began to recite a list of reasons. “One: love of dogs,” she started. “Two: to be stars—in a circus, we might be famous. Three: because the parrot man will come visit us, and our future—” She stopped for a second. “His future, anyway,” Lupe said, pointing to her brother. “His future is in the parrot man’s hands—I just know it is, circus or no circus. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
186:On popular education: To make students recite by rote what they do not understand is like training parrots. Teach children to be curious so they learn to obey their own minds rather than obeying authorities the way the narrow-minded do, or obeying custom the way the stupid do. He who knows nothing, anyone can fool. He who has nothing, anyone can buy. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
187:When people say, "I've told you fifty times," They mean to scold, and very often do; When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," They make you dread that they'll recite them too; In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; At fifty love for love is rare, 't is true, but then, no doubt, it equally as true is, a good deal may be bought for fifty Louis. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
188:Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Works, #NFDB
189:The people of the Qur’an (those who recite and those who memorize the Qur’an) will be in the highest level (in Heaven) from amongst all of the people with the exception of the Prophets and Messengers. Thus, do not seek to degrade the people of the Qur’an, nor take away their rights, for surely they have been given a high rank by Allah. ~ Muhammad Thawabul A’mal, Page 224, #NFDB
190:I do not know many people who think they have succeeded as parents. Those who do tend to cite the markers that indicate (their own) status in the world: the Stanford degree....Those of us less inclined to compliment ourselves on our parenting skills, in other words most of us, recite rosaries of our failures, our neglects, our derelictions and delinquencies. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
191:– Recite, Taru, da li ste sposobni da žrtvujete život za ljubav?
– Ne znam, ali mi se čini da nisam, sada.
– Eto. A sposobni ste da umrete za ideju, to se vidi na prvi pogled. A ja sam, vidite, sit ljudi koji umiru za ideju. Ne verujem u herojstvo, znam da je ono laka stvar i naučio sam da je ubilačko. Mene zanima da čovek živi i umre za ono što voli. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
192:She (my mother) could still recite them (the poems) in full when she was lying helpless and nearly blind, in her bed, an old lady. Reciting, her voice took on resonance and firmness, it rang with the old fervor, with ferocity even. She was teaching me one more, almost her last, lesson: emotions do not grow old. I knew that I would feel as she did, and I do. ~ Eudora Welty, #NFDB
193:Hollis " I said "you're messing with me right now aren't you You're in Paris or somewhere and just-"
"What " he replied. "No This is the real deal. Here I'll prove it."
There was a muffled noise followed by some static. Then I heard my mother recite at a distance in her most droll flat tone "Yes. It is true. Your brother is in love and in my kitchen. ~ Sarah Dessen,#NFDB
194:If you desire it," promised the Tin Woodman, leaning back in his tin throne and crossing his tin legs. "I haven't related my history in a long while, because everyone here knows it nearly as well as I do. But you, being a stranger, are no doubt curious to learn how I became so beautiful and prosperous, so I will recite for your benefit my strange adventures. ~ L Frank Baum, #NFDB
195:Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an angry phantom. She didn't understand the words, most of them at any rate, but 'created equal' was not lost on her. The white men who wrote it didn't understand it either, if 'all men' did not truly mean all men. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
196:When people say, "I've told you fifty times," / They mean to scold, and very often do; / When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," / They make you dread that they 'II recite them too;
In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; / At fifty love for love is rare, 't is true, / But then, no doubt, it equally as true is, / A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis. ~ Lord Byron,#NFDB
197:Personally, I think that my father's ministry does have some effect on one. I perhaps thought I wasn't listening that well, but I could almost recite his sermons. He had the old-fashioned preaching style of chanting. He would explain a point and then there would be this pitch to excite the audience because people would eventually shout and respond to what he was saying. ~ David C Driskell, #NFDB
198:Love's the only thing I've thought of or read about since I was knee-high. That's what I always dreamed of, of meeting somebody and falling in love. And when that remarkable thing happened, I was going to recite poetry to her for hours about how her heart's an angel's wing and her hair the strings of a heavenly harp. Instead I got drunk and hollered at her and called her a harpy. ~ Ben Hecht, #NFDB
199:To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, and Community) ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
200:Turning to Trent, I said, “You have the right to remain silent, but I doubt you will. You have the right to an attorney, which I imagine Quen will be calling soon. If you can’t afford one, hell has frozen over and I’m the princess of Oz, but in that case, one will be appointed to you. You understand your rights that the entire congregation of Cincy’s finest has heard me recite? ~ Kim Harrison, #NFDB
201:Joe asks how long they've been there one of them says fuck off another says a week a third calls him a drunk homeless fuck and tells him to go away. Joe asks how long they will wait the singular answer is as long as it takes and somewhere inside the house five-day-old children sleep under siege because their mother has a nice smile and beautiful hair and can recite lines on camera. ~ James Frey, #NFDB
202:One of my big milestones came when I turned forty and promised myself to stop worrying about all the things I thought I might do but never really would. I was very relieved when I realized that you can actually complete a project by dropping it. That's how I "completed" learning to cook and learning German, becoming a good skier, and a list of other things too long to recite! ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
203:How do I pray? Not in any organized form, really; I go to temples sometimes with my family, but they leave me cold. I think of prayer as something intensely personal, a way of reaching my hands out towards my maker. I recite some mantras my parents taught me as a child; there is something reassuring about those ancient words, hallowed by use and repetition over thousands of years. ~ Shashi Tharoor, #NFDB
204:There is a hideous invention called the Dewey Decimal System. And you have to look up your topic in books and newspapers. Pages upon pages upon pages…” Uncle Will frowned. “Didn’t they teach you how to go about research in that school of yours?” “No. But I can recite ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ while making martinis.” “I weep for the future.” “There’s where the martinis come in. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
205:Their lifelong love of learning, their remarkable wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, was fostered primarily by their father. He read aloud to them at night, eliciting their responses to works of history and literature. He organized amateur plays for them, encourage pursuit of special interests, prompted them to write essays on their readings, and urge them to recite poetry. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
206:Everybody has their own way of hearing songs. My fans are usually pretty on point. Sometimes they go all the way to the bottom of it. It's fascinating to me how far an idea can go. I wrote most of my first album in my mom's kitchen, and now I can go around the world and hear people recite those lyrics, and understand the story, even though they're not from the same area I grew up in. ~ Kendrick Lamar, #NFDB
207:For S, the first piece of information in a list was always, and without fail, inextricably linked to the second piece of information, which could only be followed by the third. It didn’t matter whether he was memorizing Dante’s Divine Comedy or mathematical equations; his memories were always stored in linear chains. Which is why he could recite poems just as easily backward as forward. ~ Joshua Foer, #NFDB
208:Von Neumann at six joked with his father in classical Greek and had a truly photographic memory: he could recite entire chapters of books he had read.392 Edward Teller, like Einstein before him, was exceptionally late in learning—or choosing—to talk.393 His grandfather warned his parents that he might be retarded, but when Teller finally spoke, at three, he spoke in complete sentences. ~ Richard Rhodes, #NFDB
209:Pomislite samo na onih milijun vrsta kukaca koje spominje priručnik iz entomologije, zamislite, ako to uopće možete, koliko pripadnika mora imati svaka pojedina vrsta i recite mi ne mislite li da ima više tih bića na zemlji nego zvijezda na nebu, ili na nebeskom svodu, ako vam je draže pjesničko ime za potresnu stvarnost svemira u kojem nismo ništa drugo do komadić govna na rubu raspadanja. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
210:So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Dante’s Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen. ~ Philip Sidney, #NFDB
211:When people say, 'I've told you fifty times,' They mean to scold, and very often do; When poets say, 'I've written fifty rhymes,' They make you dread that they 'll recite them too; In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; At fifty love for love is rare, 't is true, But then, no doubt, it equally as true is, A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
212:Casabianca
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite `The boy stood on
the burning deck.' Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.
Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.
~ Elizabeth Bishop,#NFDB
213:I called him into the office and told him that there were four statements that lead to wisdom. I said I was only going to recite them once, and he could do with them as he wished.” Armand Gamache lowered his fork to his plate and listened. “I don’t know. I was wrong. I’m sorry.” Lacoste recited them slowly, lifting a finger to count them off. “I need help,” the Chief said, completing the statements. The ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
214:Greg ceased stomping around the room turned toward the open door, as though just noticing we had company. Both Dara and Hivan’s eyes widened and, in unison, the couple took a step back. Greg charged toward them, chasing them out of the room while continuing to shout-recite, “Oh, that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace. Shame. Shame on thee!” And with that, he slammed the door in both their faces. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
215:The headache’s coming on and my thoughts begin to tangle. I shut my eyes and start to recite silently. My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is alive. He is a traitor but alive. I have to keep him alive. . . . The list. It still seems too small. I should try to think bigger, ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
216:Alternatively, you can recite the following when no one is around: “May the sufferings of all sentient beings and those sufferings’ causes ripen upon me, and may my own self be subdued and annihilated. May my virtues ripen on all sentient beings, and may they become endowed with happiness.” From the depth of your bones, cultivate the thought “O my dear mother, my dear brother [and sister] sentient beings! ~ Thupten Jinpa, #NFDB
217:I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them. But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don’t. Pascal’s Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he’d see through the deception. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
218:Simon remembered a rhyme his mother used to recite to him, about magpies. You were supposed to count them and say: one for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret that's never been told. "Right," simon said. He had already lost count of the numbers of birds there were. Seven, he guessed. A secret that's never been told. Whatever that was. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
219:There is a hideous invention called the Dewey Decimal System. And you have to look up your topic in books and newspapers. Pages upon pages upon pages…”
Uncle Will frowned. “Didn’t they teach you how to go about research in that school of yours?”
“No. But I can recite ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ while making martinis.”
“I weep for the future.”
“There’s where the martinis come in. ~ Libba Bray,#NFDB
220:Can I aske forgiveness for someone else, someone whose already dead?
Yes, you can. Of course you can. And you can give charity in their name and you can recite the Qur'an for their sake. All these things will reach them, your prayers will ease the hardship and loneliness of their grave or it will reach them in bright, beautiful gifts. Gifts to unwrap and enjoy and they will know that this gift is from you. ~ Leila Aboulela,#NFDB
221:We still have our television and our books, our imagination. Children grow up in their houses, without the forest and the river. They can only look at them. These are completely different children. And I go to them and recite Pushkin, who I thought was eternal. And then I have this terrible thought: what if our entire culture is just an old trunk with a bunch of stale manuscripts? Everything I love . . . He: ~ Svetlana Alexievich, #NFDB
222:With the tower, we knew none of these things. We could not intuit its full outline. We had no sense of its purpose. And now that we had begun to descend into it, the tower still failed to reveal any hint of these things. The psychologist might recite the measurements of the "top" of the tower, but those numbers meant nothing, had no wider context. Without context, clinging to those numbers was a form of madness. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
223:Simon remembered a rhyme his mother used to recite to him, about magpies. You were supposed to count them and say: one for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret that's never been told.
"Right," simon said. He had already lost count of the numbers of birds there were. Seven, he guessed. A secret that's never been told. Whatever that was. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
224:These Reform Schools, or Schools for Practical Life, as they were known were, in their turn, passionately opposed by those who supported a classical education and declared that newts could only come to approach the lofty cultural level of human beings on the basis of Latin, and that there was no point in teaching them to speak if they weren't also taught to recite poetry and perform oratory with the eloquence of Cicero. ~ Karel apek, #NFDB
225:Your hearing is fine. That’s for sure. What’s the longest word in the Gettysburg Address?” “Which symptom is that?” “Thinking.” He thought. “There are three. All with eleven letters. Proposition, battlefield, and consecrated.” “Now recite the first sentence. Like you were an actor on a stage.” “Lincoln was coming down with smallpox at the time. Did you know that?” “That’s not it.” “I know. That was for extra credit on memory. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
226:I only wish the NRA and its jellyfish, well-paid supporters in legislatures both State and Federal would be careful to recite the whole of it, and then tell us how a heavily armed man, woman, or child, recruited by no official, led by no official, given no goals by any official, motivated or restrained only by his or her personality and perceptions of what is going on, can be considered a member of a well-regulated militia. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
227:Fire Drill
Bells sound them from sleep, and their imaginations
rise, recite all they have been told: the curtains
of fire, the beds, nightgowns, their hair, their hair.
They've practiced this escape before
and know to close the windows last, descend
the darkened flights of stairs in practiced wordlessness
to line up, barefoot, on the dew-wet lawn,
face the building, pretend to watch it burn.
~ Claudia Emerson,#NFDB
228:He shook his head slowly. “So young. Such a wonderful man. He was the youngest professor ever to get tenure there. I recall one of his colleagues said at his funeral that he was the only man he knew who could recite Paradise Lost beginning to end.” Jade shuddered. “A dubious distinction.” He was testing Thomas, but even this jab didn’t draw an angry response—only a disapproving stare. Very level man, very controlled, he thought. ~ Gregg Hurwitz, #NFDB
229:And when the war's over, someday, some year, the books can be written again, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know and we'll set it up in type until another Dark Age, when we might have to do the whole damn thing over again. But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth doing. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
230:ladies & gentlemen," the Professor began, "the Other Professor is so kind as to recite a Poem. The title of it is 'The Pig-Tale.' He never recited it before!" (General cheering among the guests.) "He will never recite it again!" (Frantic excitement, & wild cheering all down the hall, the Professor himself mounting the table in hot haste, to lead the cheering, & waving his spectacles in one hand & a spoon in the other.) ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
231:And do you know what happened? I became so accustomed to the Prayer that if for a short while I stopped reciting it I felt as if I were missing something, as though I had lost something. When I would begin reciting the Prayer again, I would immediately feel great joy and delight. If I happened to meet someone then, I did not feel like talking. My only desire was to be alone and to recite the Prayer. I had become so accustomed to it in a week. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
232:People who excel at book learning tend to call up from memory what they have learned in order to follow stored instructions. Others who are better at internalized learning use the thoughts that flow from their subconscious. The experienced skier doesn't recite instructions on how to ski and then execute them; rather, he does it well "without thinking," in the same way he breathes without thinking. Understanding these differences is essential. ~ Ray Dalio, #NFDB
233:Our sages of blessed memory have said that we must not enjoy any pleasure in this world without reciting a blessing. If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a blessing over them before and after. If we breathe the scent of goodly grass, the fragrance of spices, the aroma of good fruits, we pronounce a blessing over the pleasure. The same applies to pleasures of the sight. And the same applies to pleasures of the ear. ~ Shmuel Yosef Agnon, #NFDB
234:You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. ~ Moses, Deuteronomy 6:5-9 NRSV, #NFDB
235:People nowadays talk about the world's problems like they're reading lines off a teleprompter. They recite what they're told and echo it without thinking. It has become easier to divide people than to unify them, and to blind them than to give them vision. We are no longer unified like a bowl of Cheerios. Instead, we have become as segregated as a box of Lucky Charms. Every day we see the same leprechauns on TV acting like they're the experts of everything. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
236:How to escape? I recite the name Ram. Lord, if you are sandalwood, I am water; with the fragrance in all parts of my body. Lord, if you are a cloud, I am a peacock; looking for you like a chakora for the moon. Lord, if you are a lamp, I am the wick (bAti); with the light burning day and night. Lord, if you are a pearl, I am the thread; together like gold and suhaga. Lord, you are the master and I servant; thus is the devotion of Raidas.
~ Ravidas, How to Escape?
,#NFDB
237:It's interesting that my neighbor Irv, who saw dogs so differently, knew all the kids and people on the block and could recite the family history of each house until about a decade ago. Now few of our neighbors can name more than a handful of people who live on the street. They have little to do with local government, and vote sporadically, at best. In the evenings and on weekends, they go their own ways. Their kids are repeatedly warned about talking to people they don't know. ~ Jon Katz, #NFDB
238:A Lutheran church in Nebraska is typically a place where any mad passion for Christ is politely concealed. Men and women recite the various creeds in hypnotic monotone; the hymns, pumped from wheezy organ pipes, are sung with no lilt or musicality. The members of the choirs not only don't dance, they don't sway. That's not to say no one is ever smacked hard with God's love or filled up to the eyeballs with the Holy Spirit, but when you are, you keep it to yourself." (48) ~ Timothy Schaffert, #NFDB
239:I could cut silhouettes almost as soon as I could manage to hold a pair of scissors. I could paint, too, and read, and recite; but these things did not surprise anyone very much. But everybody was astonished about the scissor cuts, which seemed a more unusual accomplishment. The silhouettes were very much praised, and I cut out silhouettes for all the birthdays in the family. Did anyone warn me as to where this path would lead? Not in the least; I was encouraged to continue. ~ Lotte Reiniger, #NFDB
240:The story I always recite - and have had to recite so many times over the years to different lawyers and different people within Universal - is that the business end of Mo'Wax was basically, like, 'Give us the big ones samples first, and we'll see how we get on.' And I gave them the six or seven that were, to me, the ones that were the scariest, and the biggest use. It wasn't about the big names, necessarily - although that played into it a bit, with people like Bjork and Metallica. ~ DJ Shadow, #NFDB
241:We believe in a God who is engaged in our lives, who is not silent, nor absent, nor, as Elijah said of the god of the priests of Baal, is He "[on] a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be [awakened]" (1 Kings 18:27). In this Church, even our young Primary children recite, "We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." (Articles of Faith 1:9) ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
242:Suddenly the Professor started as if he had been electrified. "Why, I had nearly forgotten the most important part of the entertainment! The Other Professor is to recite a Tale of a Pig I mean a Pig-Tale," he corrected himself. "It has Introductory Verses at the beginning, and at the end."
It can’t have Introductory Verses at the end, can it?" said Sylvie.
Wait till you hear it," said the Professor: "then you will see. I’m not sure it hasn’t some in the middle, as well. ~ Lewis Carroll,#NFDB
243:Alongside my mispronunciation of hello, good-bye and sorry in seventeen languages, and my ability to recite the Greek alphabet forward and backward (I who have never learned a word of Greek in my life), the phonetic alphabet was one of those secret, random wells of useless knowledge left over from my bookish childhood. I learned it only to amuse myself; its purpose in those days was merely private, so as the years passed I made no particular effort to practice it. ~ Diane Setterfield, #NFDB
244:Through the power of your intentions you can reorganize your energy in an instant. Remember that your intentions create your reality. Power lies in knowing how your positive presence expands your outer life. With this newfound awareness, you can easily see when you’re in alignment with your power and when you’re not. When you’re disconnected, you can recite your prayer and get back into the flow. I witness that I’m out of alignment with my power. I choose to see peace instead of this. ~ Gabrielle Bernstein, #NFDB
245:Here are the words of Moses (in italics) that explain how the Shema was to be practiced: Memorize them: Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Teach them: Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise [evening and morning]. Make it physical: Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead. Publish them: [W]rite them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. ~ Scot McKnight, #NFDB
246:The Women in Black are Israeli Jews who meet wall in Jerusalem. They meet every Friday, the Sabbath evening, and pray. They begin by singing Kaddish for all the Israelis killed in the fighting in Israel that week. When they are finished, they pause and read all the names. Then, they turn again to face the wall and sing Kaddish again, this time for all of Palestinians killed in the fighting that week, and they turn when they are finished and once again recite the litany of the names of those killed. ~ Megan McKenna, #NFDB
247:Arin dropped his face into his hands. He began to swear, to recite every insult against the Valorian’s the Herrani had invented, to curse them by every god.
“Really, Arin.”
His hands fell away. “You, too. What a stupid thing for you to do. Why did you do that? Why would you do such a stupid thing?”
She thought of his claim that Enai could never have loved her, or if she had, it was a forced love.
“You might not think of me as your friend,” Kestrel told Arin, “but I think of you as mine. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
248:You can be very religious and invoke the name of God and be able to quote lots of verses and be well versed in complicated theological systems and yet not be a person who sees. It’s one thing to sing about God and recite quotes about God and invoke God’s name; it’s another be aware of the presence in every taste, touch, sound, and embrace. With Jesus, what we see again and again is that it’s never just a person, or just a meal, or just an event, because there’s always more going on just below the surface. ~ Rob Bell, #NFDB
249:I bow to the Captain—I think a curtsy would be a bit out of place here—and recite, in French, the little speech I had made up for these occasions to try to tone down my growing reputation as a bloodthirsty pirate. “I am Jacky La Faber. Perhaps you have heard of me. I am a privateer who takes ships and their cargoes, but I neither harm nor rob the crews or the passengers of the ships I seize, no matter what you may have heard. You and your men will be put in one of your lifeboats and allowed to return to France. ~ L A Meyer, #NFDB
250:When that happens [the demise of golf], old men will furtively beckon to their sons and, like fugitives from the guillotine recalling the elegant orgies at the court of Louis XV, will recite the glories of Portmarnock and Merion, of the Road Hole at St. Andrews, the sixth at Seminole, the eighteenth at Pebble Beach. They will take out this volume from its secret hiding place and they will say: "There is no question, son, that these were unholy places in an evil age. Unfortunately, I had a whale of a time." ~ Alistair Cooke, #NFDB
251:My hand lowers to the small of her back, and I leave her with one last kiss to the forehead that feels more genuine than all the others. “You’ve bewitched me, body and soul.” She glares. “And you ruined it with a quote from Pride and Prejudice.” I grin. “What? I thought we were purposefully being cliché.” “Maybe next time, quote the book and not the film.” My eyebrow arches and I recite theatrically, “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” I shake my head. “Doesn’t have the same ring to it, darling. ~ Krista Ritchie, #NFDB
252:Have you ever heard a five-year-old recite the Pledge of Allegiance, Arthur? It's creepy as hell. Their enunciation is perfect, but they have no idea what kind of promise they're making, of what's being called for. No one tells you until later that breaking your words amounts to treason. No one tells you until later that you can't take it back. I was having my own treasonous thoughts as I drove. They were half formed, but went a little like this: asking something like that from a person ought not to be allowed. ~ Alyson Foster, #NFDB
253:Knowing has two poles, and they are always poles apart: carnal knowing, the laying on of hands, the hanging of the fact by head or heels, the measurement of mass and motion, the calibration of brutal blows, the counting of supplies; and spiritual knowing, invisibly felt by the inside self, who is but a fought-over field of distraction, a stage where we recite the monotonous monologue that is our life, a knowing governed by internal tides, by intimations, motives, resolutions, by temptations, secrecy, shame, and pride. ~ William H Gass, #NFDB
254:One should not be deceived by philosophical works that pretend to be mathematical, but are merely dubious and murky metaphysics. Just because a philosopher can recite the words lemma, theorem and corollary doesn't mean that his work has the certainty of mathematics. That certainty does not derive from big words, or even from the method used by geometers, but rather from the utter simplicity of the objects considered by mathematics. ~ Pierre Louis Maupertuis, Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)., #NFDB
255:Why, my man is created from the outside, that is, he is inauthentic in essence- he is always not-himself, because he is determined by form, which is born between people. His "I", therefore, is marked for him in that "interhumanity." An eternal actor, but a natural one, because his artificiality is inborn, it makes up a feature of his humanity-to be a man means to be an actor-to be a man means to pretend to be a man-to be a man means to "act like" a man while not being one deep inside-to be a man is to recite humanity. ~ Witold Gombrowicz, #NFDB
256:The Great Commandment.* 4d Hear, O Israel!* The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! 5Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.e 6f Take to heart these words which I command you today.g 7Keep repeating them to your children. Recite them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.h 8Bind them on your arm as a sign* and let them be as a pendant on your forehead.i 9Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.j ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
257:Everyone in the club is thirteen and in the eighth grade, except for our junior officers, Mallory Pike and Jessica Ramsey. Mal and Jessi are best friends. They are eleven years old and in the sixth grade. Both have pierced ears, and both adore horses — and any movie, book, or video game that has a horse in it. I don’t know how many times they’ve read Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague, but I do know they’ve seen The Black Stallion at least twenty times. They recite the lines along with the actors. (I don’t recommend watching it with them.) ~ Ann M Martin, #NFDB
258:He wished he didn’t have to recite his personal details while standing in a public hall. He tried to be stoic, but it wasn’t long before he was mumbling and stuttering his answers. He felt the blood come to his face. He was an only child; his parents were deceased; he was well educated and gainfully employed; he was married; he had no children. Confessing himself so succinctly embarrassed him in a manner he could hardly express. In short form, he seemed so unremarkable, so unaccomplished. Perhaps he was unremarkable. But he didn’t feel that way. ~ Josiah Bancroft, #NFDB
259:2:40AM - 2:41AM (erotic performance.exe): The curtain opened to reveal a Gateway 2000 computer and monitor running a Fenestra 98 operating system. The display booted up and opened a program on its desktop. The computer then began to rapidly recite a multitude of differential equations as well as their respective 3D graphical representations for 20 seconds. At the end of the program, the monitor displayed the word "INSERT" in the form of a screensaver. D-6744 and D-3432 both inserted $5 into its floppy drive. The curtain then closed at the end of the show. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
260:I said, have you seen your butt?"
"Is that a rhetorical question?" I craned my neck to take a gander at my backside.
Chloe clarified, "She means you have 'boy toy' written across the back of your jeans."
"Oh." I nodded. "They're Josh's."
"You say that as if it explains everything." She cocked her head to one side and considered me while buttoning her cardigan. "My stepbrothers dont write 'boy toy' across the back of their jeans.They only say the entire alphabet while burping."
"That's nothing.Josh can recite the Gettysburg Address. ~ Jennifer Echols,#NFDB
261:Pogledajte šta se sada radi! Rasulo. Bezvlašće. Divlji kapitalizam... Ali... Prošlosti je izrečena presuda... Čitavom našem životu... Ostao je samo Staljin... Arhipelag GULAG... A kakvi su onda bili filmovi! Kako su pesme bile srećne! Recite: zašto? Odgovorite mi... Razmislite i odgovorite... Zašto sada nema takvih filmova? Nema takvih pesama? Čoveka treba podići, nadahnuti ga. Potrebni su ideali... Tada će biti jaka država. Kobasica ne može da bude ideal, pun frižider nije ideal. Ni mercedes nije ideal. Potrebni su svetli ideali! A mi smo ih imali. ~ Svetlana Alexievich, #NFDB
262:Do you like manga?" she asked after a minute. "Anime?" "Anime's cool. I'm not really into it, but 1 like Japanese movies, animated or not." "Well, I'm into it. I watch the shows, read the books, chat on the boards, and all that. But this girl I know, she's completely into it. She spends most of her allowance on the books and DVDs. She can recite dialogue from them." She caught my gaze. "So would you say she belongs here?" "No. Most kids are that way about something, right? With me, it's movies. Like knowing who directed a sci-fi movie made before I was born. ~ Kelley Armstrong, #NFDB
263:Minutes later the waitress brought back a cup the size of a soup bowl filled with steaming chocolate-flavored coffee and topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Tianna realized she hadn't eaten anything since the bite of muffin early in the morning.
She sipped the brew, enjoying the rich, sweet taste, and listened to Serena recite a poem about her demon lover. It made Tianna think more than ever that Serena was some kind of witch or worse. How could she know so much about temptation and choosing between good and evil? The words sent chills through Tianna. ~ Lynne Ewing,#NFDB
264:After you are here, I will try not to become one of those parents who brag incessantly about their children, who force them to recite the alphabet backward or sing the Lord's Prayer in German to horrified dinner guests. One of those parents who tell people who aren't interested and haven't askd what their progeny's grade-point average is, what school they go to, how handsome and brilliant and psychic they are.
If something goes awry and I do become one of those parents, you have my permission to sneak into my bedroom while I am sleeping and pinch my nostrils shut. ~ Suzanne Finnamore,#NFDB
265:Crazy rumors swirled about Barack: that he’d been schooled in a radical Muslim madrassa and sworn into the Senate on a Koran. That he refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. That he wouldn’t put his hand over his heart during the national anthem. That he had a close friend who was a domestic terrorist from the 1970s. The falsehoods were routinely debunked by reputable news sources but still blazed through anonymous email chains, forwarded not just by basement conspiracy theorists but also by uncles and colleagues and neighbors who couldn’t separate fact from fiction online. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
266:Do you like manga?" she asked after a minute. "Anime?"
"Anime's cool. I'm not really into it, but 1 like Japanese movies,
animated or not."
"Well, I'm into it. I watch the shows, read the books, chat on the boards, and all that. But this girl I know, she's
completely into it. She spends most of her allowance on the books and DVDs. She can recite dialogue from
them." She caught my gaze. "So would you say she belongs here?"
"No. Most kids are that way about something, right? With me, it's
movies. Like knowing who directed a sci-fi movie made before I was born. ~ Kelley Armstrong,#NFDB
267:Once more unto the breach," Wellington grumbled in the stillness of the carriage.
Eliza looked up from the address Douglas had given her. "Sorry, Welly, what was that?"
"Shakespeare. I always recite it just before placing my career in harm's way, or have you not noticed that when we began casually stepping out of Ministry protocol?"
"And here I thought you were whispering sweet nothings in my ear when you were spontaneously breaking out into passages from Romeo and Juliet yesterday."
"You failed to notice I was reciting the scene at Juliet's tomb. ~ Philippa Ballantine,#NFDB
268:How long will you be staying?" asked the desk clerk, a middle-aged man with sea-green hair growing out of both ears and all three nostrils.
"Two, three days."
"Want a woman?"
"No, thank you."
"A man?"
"We're here for the Moral Majority convention," Timmy said, "so watch your tongue, mister."
"I can get you a nice religious boy who likes to be hit with a palm frond."
I said, "What about a pair of secular humanist twins who'll recite Rousseau in our ears while they bang it at home? Can you get us that?"
"I'd have to make some calls. ~ Richard Stevenson,#NFDB
269:A spiritual path based on unverifiable ideas is stripped of any real accountability to the world we live in. If our spiritual path is not held accountable to the evidence of direct experience in the world, we have no real measuring stick for how our journey is progressing. At the extreme end of this spectrum, we might pay no attention to climate change because we are convinced the Rapture is coming soon. A more subtle instance of an unscientific spirituality might involve thinking that the number of compassion mantras we recite is more important than how well we treat our romantic partner. ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
270:Sure...the boy was precocious. But having been precocious himself, Lowell was never wowed by teenagers who could recite the periodic table of elements or whatever. He was on to them. Precocious was not the same as smart, much less the same as wise, and the perfect opposite of informed - since the more you prided yourself on knowing the less you listened and the less you learned. Worse, with application less glibly gifted peers often caught up with or overtook prodigies by early adulthood, and meanwhile the kid to whom everything came so effortlessly never mastered the grind of sheer hard work. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
271:Yesterday, where someone had dumped a cat-scratched leather recliner in the weedy empty lot around the corner, an elderly man was found sitting in the chair, quietly disoriented. The recliner looked like a seat on an Amtrak train, in Coach. The man did not seem to know where he was, or how he got there, but he was not fearful, just quiet. He was able to recite his son’s email address and list the son’s many accomplishments to the police whom someone called to help. They were kind when they contacted the man’s son in another state. But this won’t go well, I thought, and chose not to follow the story. ~ Amy Hempel, #NFDB
272:Don't be fool enough to think you can know a person's character after a few moments of observation. You can't. You have no idea where his life began or how his saga has unfolded thus far. Only his present state can you witness. To judge him at a glance is like reading one page in an open book, believing it's enough to confidently recite the story from beginning to end. True, one page may tell you much, but not nearly enough to accurately critique a book or evaluate a life. So, either become his friend and learn his entire story, or refrain from commenting on a tale you know nothing about. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
273:ALI He was butterfly and bee. In the ring, he floated and stung. In 1967, Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, refused to put on a uniform. “Got nothing against no Viet Cong,” he said. “Ain’t no Vietnamese ever called me nigger.” They called him a traitor. They sentenced him to a five-year jail term, and barred him from boxing. They stripped him of his title as champion of the world. The punishment became his trophy. By taking away his crown, they anointed him king. Years later, a few college students asked him to recite something. And for them he improvised the shortest poem in world literature: “Me, we. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
274:All sens of purpose, of responsibility, indeed of any imaginable future, were removed from her by the deaths of her husband and child. It was they who used to make her life a story, they who seemed to be giving it a beginning, a middle and an end. Nowadays, her life is more like a newspaper: aimless, up-to-date, full of meaningless events for Colonel Leek to recite when no one's paying attention. For all the use she is to Society, beyond intercepting the odd squirt of sperm that would otherwise have troubled a respectable wife, she might as well be dead. Yet, she exists, and, against the odds, she is happy. ~ Michel Faber, #NFDB
275:There is something distinctly odd about the argument, however. Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them. But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don't. Pascal's Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he'd see through the deception. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
276:45 When you recite the Quran, We place an invisible barrier between you and those who do not believe in the Hereafter. 46 We put veils over their hearts to prevent them from comprehending it, and We afflict their ears with deafness. When you mention your one and only Lord in your recitation of the Quran, they turn their backs in aversion. 47 We are fully aware of what they wish to hear when they listen to you; and what they say when they converse in private; and when the wrongdoers say, ‘You are only following a man who is bewitched!’ 48 See to what they liken you! But they are lost and cannot find the right path. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
277:Arrogant worship is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Yet we see it throughout Scripture. The gospel was given to Adam and Eve. As redemptive history unfolded, the people of Israel continued to recite the promise and to demonstrate it with their liturgy, their signs, their sacraments, and their cultic worship. But the judgment of the prophets that came upon the house of Israel was this: “Your worship has become idololatria. You are not putting your faith in God; you are putting it in Baal, in the temple, in the rituals you are doing, in your heritage, in your biology. You are trusting in everything else but God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
278:The word that allows yes, the word that makes no possible.
The word that puts the free in freedom and takes the obligation out of love.
The word that throws a window open after the final door is closed.
The word upon which all adventure, all exhilaration, all meaning, all honor depends.
The word that fires evolution's motor of mud.
The word that the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar.
The word that molecules recite before bonding.
The word that separates that which is dead from that which is living.
The word no mirror can turn around.
In the beginning was the word and that word was
CHOICE ~ Tom Robbins,#NFDB
279:This world is simply ablaze with bad ideas. There are still places where people are put to death for imaginary crimes - like blasphemy - and where the totality of a child's education consists of his learning to recite from an ancient book of religious fiction. There are countries where women are denied almost every human liberty, except the liberty to breed. And yet, these same societies are quickly acquiring terrifying arsenals of advanced weaponry. If we cannot inspire the developing world, and the Muslim world in particular, to pursue ends that are compatible with a global civilization, then a dark future awaits all of us. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
280:If I speak in the tongues of Reformers and of professional theologians, and I have not personal faith in Christ, my theology is nothing but the noisy beating of a snare drum. And if I have analytic powers and the gift of creating coherent conceptual systems of theology, so as to remove liberal objections, and have not personal hope in God, I am nothing. And if I give myself to resolving the debate between supra and infralapsarianism, and to defending inerrancy, and to learning the Westminster Catechism, yea, even the larger one, so as to recite it by heart backwards and forwards, and have not love, I have gained nothing. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer, #NFDB
281:The Akitu New Year Festival was a twelve-day celebration. The first day would involve the final arrival of the people into the temple district and city streets. The second day brought elaborate purification rituals and washings for both priests and temple. On the third day, statues of the gods were carved out of cedar and tamarisk wood. The fourth day was considered the true starting point, because it was the actual first day of the year. After recitations, prayers and rituals, the priests would recite their creation epic to the people. The story would connect their past with their future and reinforce the kingdom of the gods. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
282:Jury trials are really nothing more than poorly written stage plays. You’ve got two authors writing opposing narratives and a director who is paid not to care about either outcome. Hired actors sit on either end of the stage, while unwitting audience members strive to remain quiet. No applause should be rendered, no gasps of glory. Witnesses sit agape with fury as they stumble across their rehearsed lines. If only they had practiced just once more. If only they had more time or a dress rehearsal, then they would recite their packaged words with such eloquent delivery that the critics in the jury box would believe only them. ~ Elizabeth L Silver, #NFDB
283:Describing to the emperor Trajan what he has learned of Christian practice, Pliny writes that “on an appointed day they had been accustomed to meet before daybreak, and to recite a hymn antiphonally to Christ, as a god.”[4] Later accounts testify that hymn singing was well established in Christian worship by the second century. As it developed, believers used models from the New Testament like the following lyric passage from Colossians. In it the early Christian community declares the centrality of Jesus in creation and in the church, looking back to Christ’s death and resurrection and forward to the restoration of all things in him: ~ Mark A Noll, #NFDB
284:Note From Echo
Narcissus, I no longer haunt the canyons
and the crypts. I thrive and multiply;
uncounted daughters are my new companions.
We are the voicemail's ponderous reply
to the computers making random calls.
We are the Muzak in the empty malls,
the laughtrack on the reruns late at night,
the distant siren's chilling lullaby,
the steady chirp of things that simplify
their scheduled lives. You know I could recite
more, but you never cared for my recitals.
I do not miss you, do not need you here—
I can repeat the words of your disciples
telling lovers what they need to hear.
~ AM Juster,#NFDB
285:Instruction in world history in the so-called high schools is even today in a very sorry condition. Few teachers understand that the study of history can never be to learn historical dates and events by heart and recite them by rote; that what matters is not whether the child knows exactly when this battle or that was fought, when a general was born, or even when a monarch (usually a very insignificant one) came into the crown of his forefathers. No, by the living God, this is very unimportant. To 'learn' history means to seek and find the forces which are the causes leading to those effects which we subsequently perceive as historical events. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
286: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
287:Most codependents were obsessed with other people. With great precision and detail, they could recite long lists of the addict’s deeds and misdeeds: what he or she thought, felt, did, and said; and what he or she didn’t think, feel, do, and say. The codependents knew what the alcoholic or addict should and shouldn’t do. And they wondered extensively why he or she did or didn’t do it. Yet these codependents who had such great insight into others couldn’t see themselves. They didn’t know what they were feeling. They weren’t sure what they thought. And they didn’t know what, if anything, they could do to solve their problems—if, indeed, they had any problems other than the alcoholics. ~ Melody Beattie, #NFDB
288:Echoes
Late-born and woman-souled I dare not hope,
The freshness of the elder lays, the might
Of manly, modern passion shall alight
Upon my Muse's lips, nor may I cope
(Who veiled and screened by womanhood must grope)
With the world's strong-armed warriors and recite
The dangers, wounds, and triumphs of the fight;
Twanging the full-stringed lyre through all its scope.
But if thou ever in some lake-floored cave
O'erbrowed by rocks, a wild voice wooed and heard,
Answering at once from heaven and earth and wave,
Lending elf-music to thy harshest word,
Misprize thou not these echoes that belong
To one in love with solitude and song.
~ Emma Lazarus,#NFDB
289:Land sakes, I can’t make a speech,” she said. “Tell you what: I’ll recite a poem I composed while in jail.” And she began. “Although in jail in Centerboro, I do not fret or stew or worro. And confidently I confront The judge, because I’m innosunt. Tho I’m a cow, I am no coward I have not flinched when thunder rowered. When lightning flashed I’ve merely giggled Like one whose funnybone is tiggled. And I shall never give up hoping That soon the jail front door will oping And I’ll once more enjoy my freedom On Bean’s green fields. When last I seed ’em They were a fair and lovely vision And so for my return I’m wishun. I hope that Bismuth will get his’n And spend a good long time in prison. ~ Walter R Brooks, #NFDB
290:It was rare for Richard to have hands clear of broken blisters or his body unbruised. When he was weak of will, as his brother was weak, when he wanted to gorge his starving frame or drink himself to oblivion, or simply to allow all his bruises to heal to spare himself from pain, he would recite the words a Benedictine monk had taught him for such times:
'Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro Satana.'
'The dragon is not my master. Get the behind me, Satan.' The words had become a talisman and saying them brought him back to calm. Richard lived in pain and his flesh was in opposition to his will. Yet he would prevail, because all flesh failed, whereas the will was a sea deep enough to drown ~ Conn Iggulden,#NFDB
291:Jon burst out laughing. Spy. Jesus. Nancie Stendahl said, “You always laugh at yourself?” “If you heard the crap in my head, you’d laugh, too.” Stendahl was leaning against Pike’s Jeep, which had been released along with everything else. The parking lot was near empty, though he saw the big white ATF van on the far side. Stone was pleased to see her. He sympathized with her personal involvement, and respected the all-in effort she was making to find her kid. Jon was big on all-in effort. He hoped she wouldn’t ruin the moment by lecturing him about the rule of law. If she started with that crap, he was going to recite Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in the original Russian to freak her out. She ~ Robert Crais, #NFDB
292:I’m a lifelong environmentalist. My voice piped at age ten: “I give my pledge as an American to save and faithfully to defend from waste the natural resources of my country—its air, soil, and minerals, its forests, waters, and wildlife.” I got infected by that Conservation Pledge through the magazine Outdoor Life and proceeded to paste it on everything and everyone around me. Since the concept of pledge has long been rendered meaningless by the surreal Pledge of Allegiance that American schoolchildren have to recite, what I meant in 1948—and mean now—is: “I declare my intent to save and defend from waste the world’s natural resources—its air, soil, and minerals, its forests, waters, and wildlife. ~ Stewart Brand, #NFDB
293:Malthus's school was in the centre of the town of Adrianople, and was not one of those monkish schools where education is miserably limited to the bread and water of the Holy Scriptures. Bread is good and water is good, but the bodily malnutrition that may be observed in prisoners or poor peasants who are reduced to this diet has its counterpart in the spiritual malnutrition of certain clerics. These can recite the genealogy of King David of the Jews as far back as Deucalion's Flood, and behind the Flood to Adam, without a mistake, or can repeat whole chapters of the Epistles of Saint Paul as fluently as if they were poems written in metre; but in all other respects are as ignorant as fish or birds. ~ Robert Graves, #NFDB
294:one might call this state ["youth" (but that seems inaccurate)] "remembering" but memory is quite eerie like caging a dream, and when I recite the rote details the real event slithers further from me because the telling of it reshapes it, every touch alters it, until it is unrecognizable except as a story [a doppelganger (immediately not myself) a writhing poltergeist summoned to snap at me from the darkness~or benign but vague, like a whisper making it better to remain silent, but I can't~the past is a narrative (that writes us) immanent in the present [proving there is cause and effect in the immaterial (the mythic becomes carnal by leaving marks on the body)] symbol by symbol, building up invisible scars ~ David David Katzman, #NFDB
295:Give up on me " he begged her. "I don't like people dropping in to see me without warning, I have forgotten the rules of seven tiles and kabaddi, I can't recite my prayers, I don't know what should happen at a nikah ceremony, and in this city where I grew up I get lost if I'm on my own. This isn't home. It makes me giddy because it feels like home and is not. It makes my heart tremble and my head spin."
"You're a stupid, " she shouted at him. "A stupid. Change back! Damn fool! Of course you can." She was a vortex, a siren, tempting him back to his old self. But it was a dead self, a shadow, a ghost and he would not become a phantom. There was a return ticket to London in his wallet, and he was going to use it. ~ Salman Rushdie,#NFDB
296:I therefore used the last ten minutes of our classes to recite with them words from the Bible and verses from hymns, so that they would know them and the words would stay with them throughout their lives. The aim of my teaching was to bring to their hearts and thoughts the great truths of the Gospels so religion would have meaning in their lives and give them the strength to resist the irreligious forces that might assail them. I also tried to awaken in them a love for the Church, and a desire for that hour of spiritual peace to be found in the Sunday service. I taught them to respect traditional doctrines, but at the same time to hold fast to the saying of Paul that where the spirit of Christ is, there is freedom. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
297:Contradictin' Joe
Heard of Contradictin' Joe?
Most contrary man I know.
Always sayin', 'That's not so.'
Nothing's ever said, but he
Steps right up to disagreeQuarrelsome as he can be.
If you start in to recite
All the details of a fight,
He'll butt in to set you right.
Start a story that is true,
He'll begin correctin' youMake you out a liar, too!
Mention time o' year or day,
Makes no difference what you say,
Nothing happened just that way.
Bet you, when his soul takes flight,
An' the angels talk at night,
He'll butt in to set 'em right.
There where none should have complaints
He will be with 'no's' and 'ain'ts'
Contradictin' all the saints.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
298:David detested the goddesses. Though they were popular throughout Israel, he didn’t like it when Michal prayed to them and sought their help. He seemed quite mean-spirited about it to her. He would call them both “Ashtoreth,” which was an insulting compilation of the word for “shame,” bosheth, with the name Astarte. He would recite the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is one.” Then he would say that the Ten Words, written by Yahweh’s own finger, forbid the worship of any gods before him. That was fine with Michal; she would not put the goddess before Yahweh, but after him. Asherah was only his consort. She even had an image that she kept hidden from David with the inscription, “For Yahweh of Gibeah and his Asherah. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
299: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
300:one might call this state ["youth" (but that seems inaccurate)] "remembering" but memory is quite eerie like caging a dream, and when I recite the rote details the real event slithers further from me because the telling of it reshapes it, every touch alters it, until it is unrecognizable except as a story [a doppelganger (immediately not myself) a writhing poltergeist summoned to snap at me from the darkness~ David David Katzmanor benign but vague, like a whisper making it better to remain silent, but I can't~ David David Katzmanthe past is a narrative (that writes us) immanent in the present [proving there is cause and effect in the immaterial (the mythic becomes carnal by leaving marks on the body)] symbol by symbol, building up invisible scars ~ David David Katzman, #NFDB
301:Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an angry phantom. She didn’t understand the words, most of them at any rate, but created equal was not lost on her. The white men who wrote it didn’t understand it either, if all men did not truly mean all men. Not if they snatched away what belonged to other people, whether it was something you could hold in your hand, like dirt, or something you could not, like freedom. The land she tilled and worked had been Indian land. She knew the white men bragged about the efficiency of the massacres, where they killed women and babies, and strangled their futures in the crib.
Stolen bodies working stolen land. ~ Colson Whitehead,#NFDB
302:Zenas Witt
I was sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,
And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.
And I couldn't remember the books I read,
Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page.
And my back was weak, and I worried and worried,
And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons,
And when I stood up to recite I'd forget
Everything that I had studied.
Well, I saw Dr. Weese's advertisement,
And there I read everything in print,
Just as if he had known me;
And about the dreams which I couldn't help.
So I knew I was marked for an early grave.
And I worried until I had a cough,
And then the dreams stopped.
And then I slept the sleep without dreams
Here on the hill by the river.
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB
303:This is the sixty-nine,” I told him,
presenting the magazine in front of him. I put my fingers—two of them
—on the action, so that he would not overlook it. “Why is it dubbed
sixty-nine?” he asked, because he is a person hot on fire with curiosity.
“It was invented in 1969. My friend Gregory knows a friend of the
nephew of the inventor.” “What did people do before 1969?” “Merely
blowjobs and masticating box, but never in chorus.” He will be made a
VIP if I have a thing to do with it.
This is where the story begins.
But first I am burdened to recite my good appearance. I am unequivocally
tall. I do not know any women who are taller than me. The
women I know who are taller than me are lesbians, for whom 1969 was a
very momentous year. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer,#NFDB
304:And recite to them the news of Abraham
When he said to his father and his people: What do you worship?
They said, "We worship idols and remain to them devoted.
He said, "Do they hear you when you supplicate?
Or do they benefit you, or do they harm?
They said, "But we found our fathers doing thus.
He said, "Then do you see what you have been worshipping,
You and your ancient forefathers?
Indeed, they are enemies to me, except the Lord of the worlds,
Who created me, and He [it is who] guides me.
And it is He who feeds me and gives me drink.
And when I am ill, it is He who cures me
And who will cause me to die and then bring me to life
And who I aspire that He will forgive me my sin on the Day of Recompense.
(A Translation of Quran , 69-82) ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
305:Mack stared at him, aghast. “So I’m just supposed to stand there and do nothing?”
“That’s not what I said, son. I said you can’t use your fists. Besides, for every Scripture you could recite on defending the fatherless, I could respond with a verse on pursuing peace.”
“Peace,” Mack scoffed. “While he’s beating defenseless children?”
“I’m just saying, when you attack Sloop it appears you are the problem, not him.”
“So just what do you suggest I do?”
Vaughan’s expression gentled. “Recognize that the problem is much deeper and bigger than you or even Sloop. And give God a little credit. He doesn’t need your fists to bring Sloop down. He needs your cooperation. So intercede with prayer and petition, trust in the Lord, and keep your eyes open and your hands behind your back. ~ Deeanne Gist,#NFDB
306:Denying the poor access to knowledge goes back a long way. The ancient Smriti political and legal system drew up vicious punishments for sudras seeking learning. (In those days, that meant learning the Vedas.) If a sudra listens to the Vedas, said one of these laws, ‘his ears are to be filled with molten tin or lac. If he dares to recite the Vedic texts, his body is to be split’. That was the fate of the ‘base-born’. The ancients restricted learning on the basis of birth. In a modern polity, where the base-born have votes, the elite act differently. Say all the right things. But deny access. Sometimes, mass pressures force concessions. Bend a little. After a while, it’s back to business as usual. As one writer has put it: When the poor get literate and educated, the rich lose their palanquin bearers. ~ P Sainath, #NFDB
307:The promotional material for Fourth Island is far more lavish and not at all defensive. From the Permanent Living Reenactment of the Flag Raising on Iwo Jima to the Rockets’ Red Glare Four-Hour Fireworks Display every night, from the United We Stand Steak House by way of the statue-lined Avenue of the Presidents to the Under God Indivisible Prayer Chapel, it is all on a grand scale, and every last piece of it is red, white, blue, striped, and starred. The Great Joy Corporation is evidently expecting or receiving patriotic visitors in great numbers. Interactive displays of the Museum of Our Heroes, the Gun Show, and the All-American Victory Gardens (salvia, lobelia, candytuft) feature large on the Web site, where one can also at all times recite the Pledge of Allegiance interactively with a chorus ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
308:Bruffee begins with the teacher, whose responsibility is to transfer knowledge into the minds of the students. He does this by creating an authoritative relationship with each student. That is, he calls on individuals and asks each to recite or provide an answer to a directed question. Each student is expected to perform strictly for the teacher, by recitation or by written exam. The relationship is always top-down and one-to-one. Students are discouraged from interacting with each other, whether by posing questions to one another, or assisting each other. Such behavior would breach the authority of the teacher and create an alternative pattern of authority that would be lateral and interactive. Thinking together would be considered cheating. Each student, in turn, is individually evaluated and graded. ~ Jeremy Rifkin, #NFDB
309:There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers. Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
310:The vice of “verbalism” can be defined as the bad habit of using words without regard for the thoughts they should convey and without awareness of the experiences to which they should refer. It is playing with words. As the two tests we have suggested indicate, “verbalism” is the besetting sin of those who fail to read analytically. Such readers never get beyond the words. They possess what they read as a verbal memory that they can recite emptily. One of the charges made by certain modern educators against the liberal arts is that they tend to verbalism, but just the opposite seems to be the case. The failure in reading—the omnipresent verbalism—of those who have not been trained in the arts of grammar and logic shows how lack of such discipline results in slavery to words rather than mastery of them. ~ Mortimer J Adler, #NFDB
311:But nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it...
The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the Freeman had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others. Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an angry phantom. She didn't understand the words, most of them at any rate, but created equal was not lost on her. The white men who wrote it didn't understand it either, if all men did not truly mean all men. Not if they snatched away what belonged to other people, whether it was something you could hold in your hand, like dirt, or something you could not, like freedom. ~ Colson Whitehead,#NFDB
312:Random House, in the catbird seat, since it gets to recite last, declares in 1966, “The use of like in place of as is universally condemned by teachers and editors, notwithstanding its wide currency, especially in advertising slogans. Do as I say, not as I do does not admit of like instead of as. In an occasional idiomatic phrase, it is somewhat less offensive when substituted for as if (He raced down the street like crazy), but this example is clearly colloquial and not likely to be found in any but the most informal written contexts.” I find this excellent. It even tells who will hurt you if you make a mistake, and it withholds aid and comfort from those friends of cancer and money, those greedy enemies of the language who teach our children to say after school, “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
313:This cup of tea in my two hands, mindfulness is held perfectly. My mind and body dwell in the very here and now. Wherever you are drinking your tea, whether at work or in a café or at home, it is wonderful to allow enough time to appreciate it. If the weather is cold, you can feel the warmth of the cup in your hands. Breathe in and recite the first line; breathe out and recite the second. The next inhalation is for the third line, and the next exhalation is for the fourth line. Breathing mindfully in this way, we recuperate ourselves and the cup of tea reclaims its highest place. If we’re not mindful, it’s not tea that we’re drinking but our own illusions and afflictions. If the tea becomes real, we become real. When we are able to truly meet the tea, at that very moment we are truly alive. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
314:Imam Mawlūd outlines three signs of ostentation. The first two are laziness and lack of action for the sake of God when one is alone and out of view of others. When alone, such a person becomes lethargic, unable (or unwilling) to perform acts of devotion, such as reading the Qur’an at home; but in the mosque, in the presence of others, he finds the drive to recite. This is not to suggest that one should not respond to the inspiration one receives when in the company of people who are doing good deeds; the point here is guarding the motivation behind one’s acts, especially devotional ones, ensuring that they be for God alone and not for anyone else. Another sign of ostentation is increasing one’s actions when praised and decreasing them in the absence of such praise. In Islamic sacred law, encouragement is not censured. ~ Hamza Yusuf, #NFDB
315:Instead, the Buddha replied, “I am going to send you back to the same forest, but I will provide you with the only protection you will need.” This was the first teaching of metta meditation. The Buddha encouraged the monks not only to recite the metta phrases but to actually practice them. As these stories all seem to end so happily, so did this one—it is said that the monks went back and practiced metta, so that the tree spirits became quite moved by the beauty of the loving energy filling the forest, and resolved to care for and serve the monks in all ways. The inner meaning of the story is that a mind filled with fear can still be penetrated by the quality of lovingkindness. Moreover, a mind that is saturated by lovingkindness cannot be overcome by fear; even if fear should arise, it will not overpower such a mind. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
316:Christmas Party At The South Danbury Church
December twenty-first
we gather at the white Church festooned
red and green, the tree flashing
green-red lights beside the altar.
After the children of Sunday School
recite Scripture, sing songs,
and scrape out solos,
they retire to dress for the finale,
to perform the pageant
again: Mary and Joseph kneeling
cradleside, Three Kings,
shepherds and shepherdesses. Their garments
are bathrobes with mothholes,
cut down from the Church's ancestors.
Standing short and long,
they stare in all directions for mothers,
sisters and brothers,
giggling and waving in recognition,
and at the South Danbury
Church, a moment before Santa
arrives with her ho-hos
and bags of popcorn, in the half-dark
of whole silence, God
enters the world as a newborn again.
~ Donald Hall,#NFDB
317:In Rome, I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library. By reading and re-reading them, I discovered that one hundred and fifty books, carefully chosen, give you, if not a complete summary of human knowledge, at least everything that it is useful for a man to know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and re-reading these hundred and fifty volumes, so that when I was arrested I knew them more or less by heart. In prison, with a slight effort of memory, I recalled them entirely. So I can recite to you Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Strada, Jornadès, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare,
Spinoza, Machiavelli and Bossuet; I mention only the most important …’
I have to admit that my historical work is my favourite occupation. When I go back to the past, I forget the present. I walk free and independently through history, and forget that I am a prisoner. ~ Alexandre Dumas,#NFDB
318:Between Roseville and Sacramento the land flattens and is crowded and we have reached, or returned to, cluttered America living close enough to each other to hear and recite the neighbors’ quarrels and exclamations of joy and grief, the only spaces those cleared of trees and reserved for sport: softball diamonds and golf courses. I am saddened by what we make: the buildings where they might as well hang a sign: THIS UGLY PLACE IS WHERE YOU WORK, the playing fields and parks, and the house to contain you. While somehow there is a trick at work and you have been removed not only from the land itself, but from its spirit; or, as Sharon says, the heart. After the open country and mountains, the earth looks punished, and it is hard to believe that its people have not been punished as well, for nothing more than the desire to love and to prove oneself worthy of that by going to work. West ~ Andre Dubus, #NFDB
319:Listen, she said, "cherubim have come to my planet before."
"I know that. Where do you think I got my information?"
"What do you know about us?"
"I have heard that your host planet is shadowed, that it is troubled."
"It is beautiful," Meg said defensively.
She felt a rippling of his wings. "In the middle of your cities?"
"Well-no-but I don't live in a city."
"And is your planet peaceful?"
"Well-no-it isn't very peaceful."
"I had the idea," Proginoskes moved reluctantly within her mind, "that there are wars on your planet. People fighting and killing each other."
"Yes, that's so, but-"
"And children go hungry."
"Yes."
"And people don't understand each other."
"Not always."
"And there's-there's hate?"
"Yes."
She felt Proginoskes pulling away. "All I want to do," he was murmuring to himself, "is go some place quiet and recite the names of the stars... ~ Madeleine L Engle,#NFDB
320:I wish that in order to secure his party’s nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickenson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael’s “Two Sleepy People”, Johnny Cash’s “Five Feet High and Rising”, and “You Got the Silver” by the Rolling Stones...What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes. ~ Sarah Vowell, #NFDB
321:I am clumsy, drop glasses and get drunk on Monday afternoons. I read Seneca and can recite Shakespeare by heart, but I mess up the laundry, don’t answer my phone and blame the world when something goes wrong. I think I have a dream, but most of the days I’m still sleeping. The grass is cut. It smells like strawberries. Today I finished four books and cleaned my drawers.
Do you believe in a God? Can I tell you about Icarus? How he flew too close to the sun?
I want to make coming home your favourite part of the day. I want to leave tiny little words lingering in your mind, on nights when you’re far away and can’t sleep. I want to make everything around us beautiful; make small things mean a little more. Make you feel a little more. A little better, a little lighter. The coffee is warm, this cup is yours. I want to be someone you can’t live without.
I want to be someone you can’t live without. ~ Charlotte Eriksson,#NFDB
322:For praying is no small task, as those who have no experience think. Those who do have experience in spiritual matters have said that no task can be compared to the task of praying. For praying does not mean to recite a number of psalms or to bellow in the churches, as the monks are accustomed to do; it is a serious meditation, in which the heart makes a comparison between the person praying and the Person hearing, and reaches the firm conviction that even though we are wretched sinners, God will nevertheless be gracious, will alleviate our punishments, and will hear our prayers. But even though our hearts, strengthened by the Spirit and the Word of God, believe this, it is nevertheless certainly true that no one has so bold a heart that he dares ask for what God has determined to give. Thus we are hampered on both sides; the grandeur of Him who bestows and the unworthiness of him who prays hamper our prayer, so that we actually do not understand what we are praying for. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
323:His conversion (tawbat) was begun by Ḥasan of Baṣra. Ạt first he was a usurer and committed all sorts of wickedness, but God gave him a sincere repentance, and he learned from Ḥasan something of the theory and practice of religion. His native tongue was Persian (‘ajamí), and he could not speak Arabic correctly. One evening Ḥasan of Baṣra passed by the door of his cell. Ḥabíb had uttered the call to prayer and was standing, engaged in devotion. Ḥasan came in, but would not pray under his leadership, because Ḥabíb was unable to speak Arabic fluently or recite the Koran correctly. The same night, Ḥasan dreamed that he saw God and said to Him: “O Lord, wherein does Thy good pleasure consist?” and that God answered: “O Ḥasan, you found My good pleasure, but did not know its value: if yesternight you had said your prayers after Ḥabíb, and if the rightness of his intention had restrained you from taking offence at his pronunciation, I should have been well pleased with you. ~ Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, #NFDB
324:Ako više ne želite stvarati bol sebi i drugima, ako više ne želite
povećavati ostatke bolova iz prošlosti koji još žive u vama, tada više
ne stvarajte vrijeme ili ga barem ne stvarajte više nego što je potrebno
dok se bavite praktičnim vidovima vlastita života. Kako prestati
stvarati vrijeme? Duboko u sebi shvatite kako uvijek imate samo
sadašnji trenutak. Neka Sada postane prvobitna žarišna točka vašega
života. Dok ste prije boravili u vremenu i tek nakratko posjećivali
Sadašnji trenutak, sada prebivajte u njemu, a tek nakratko posjećujte
prošlost i budućnost kad se morate pozabaviti praktičnim vidovima
svoje životne situacije. Sadašnjem trenutku uvijek recite: »Da«. Što bi
moglo biti jalovije i lude nego stvarati unutarnji otpor nečemu što
već postoji! Sto bi moglo biti lude nego se suprotstavljati samom životu,
koji jest sada i uvijek samo sada? Predajte se onome što jest. Recite
»da« životu - i vidjet ćete kako život iznenada počinje raditi za
vas, umjesto da vam se suprotstavlja. ~ Eckhart Tolle,#NFDB
325:The first said, “I built Mom a big house.” The second said, “Well, I got her the best Mercedes they make along with her own driver.” “I’ve got you both beat,” said the third. “You know how Mom enjoys the Bible, and you know she can’t see very well. I sent her a brown parrot that can recite the entire Bible. It took twenty monks in a monastery twelve years to teach him. I had to contribute $100,000 to the order every year for ten years for them to train him, but it was worth it. Mom just has to name the chapter and verse, and the parrot will recite it.” Soon thereafter, each of the sons received a note from their mother. To the first son she wrote,“Milton, the house you built is so huge. I live in only one room, but I have to clean the whole house.” To the second son she wrote,“Marty, I am too old to go anywhere. I stay home all the time, so I never use the Mercedes. Besides, the driver is so rude!” To the third son, her message was softer: “Dearest Melvin, you are the only son to have the good sense to know what your mother likes. The chicken was delicious ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
326:During the Society's early years, no member personified the organization's eccentricities or audacious mission more than Sir Francis Galton. A cousin of Charles Darwin's, he had been a child prodigy who, by the age of four, could read and recite Latin. He went on to concoct myriad inventions. They included a ventilating top hat; a machine called a Gumption-Reviver, which periodically wet his head to keep him awake during endless study; underwater goggles; and a rotating-vane steam engine. Suffering from periodic nervous breakdowns––"sprained brain," as he called it––he had a compulsion to measure and count virtually everything. He quantified the sensitivity of animal hearing, using a walking stick that could make an inconspicuous whistle; the efficacy of prayer; the average age of death in each profession (lawyers: 66.51; doctors: 67.04); the exact amount of rope needed to break a criminal's neck while avoiding decapitation; and levels of boredom (at meetings of the Royal Geographical Society he would count the rate of fidgets among each member of the audience). ~ David Grann, #NFDB
327:Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is. Once language has said all it has to say and falls silent, I wonder how we will go on living. Problems already begin to appear, perhaps they are not problems as yet, rather different layers of meaning, displaced sediments, new questioning formulations, take for example the phrase, 'Over the great nakedness of truth, the diaphanous cloak of imagination.' It seems clear, compact, and conclusive, a child would be able to understand and repeat it in an examination without making any mistakes, but the same child might recite with equal conviction a different phrase, 'Over the great nakedness of imagination, the diaphanous cloak of truth,' which certainly gives one more to ponder, more to visualize with pleasure, the imagination solid and naked, the truth a gauzy covering. If our maxims are reversed and become laws, what world will be created by them. It is a miracle that men do not lose their sanity each time they open their mouths to speak. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
328:Much to my surprise, church has become a spiritual, even a theological struggle for me. I have found it increasingly difficult to sing hymns that celebrate a hierarchical heavenly realm, to recite creeds that feel disconnected from life, to pray liturgies that emphasize salvation through blood, to listen to sermons that preach an exclusive way to God, to participate in sacraments that exclude others, and to find myself confined to a hard pew in a building with no windows to the world outside. This has not happened because I am angry at the church or God. Rather, it has happened because I was moving around in the world and began to realize how beautifully God was everywhere: in nature and in my neighborhood, in considering the stars and by seeking my roots. It took me five decades to figure it out, but I finally understood. The church is not the only sacred space; the world is profoundly sacred as well. And thus I fell into a gap - the theological ravine between a church still proclaiming conventional theism with its three-tiered universe and the spiritual revolution of God-with-us. ~ Diana Butler Bass, #NFDB
329:The halls had long since expelled the energetic swarm of youthful humanity, and the din of lockers and laughter had long since settled into stillness. It was his least favorite time of the day. He could lose himself in their conversations, lurk behind them as they ran, as they danced, as they embraced one another. He could sit in on many a lecture, solve the most challenging equations, recite the first chapter of a Tale of Two Cities word for word, and as long as life filled the halls, he could pretend he lived among them. But when they were gone he was utterly and completely alone. Alone as he had been day after day, year after year, decade after decade. There was a time he had descended into madness - but time had brought him out again. What good is being crazy if there is no one who can deem you insane? Or for that matter - care whether you are normal? Insanity was exhausting and futile. So was pain. For a time, the despair was so great that he begged for oblivion. But time had taken even that from him. Now he simply wished to feel anything at all. And so he continued on, waiting for redemption. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
330:So it was you!” Eragon exclaimed. “All my life I’ve heard it said that Galbatorix once lost half his men in the Spine, but no one could tell me how or why.”
“More than half his men, Firesword.” Garzhvog rolled his shoulders and made a guttural noise in the back of his throat. “And now I see we must work to spread word of it if any are to know of our victory. We will track down your chanters, your bards, and we will teach them the songs concerning Nar Tulkhqa, and we will make sure that they remember to recite them often and loudly.” He nodded once, as if his mind was made up--an impressive gesture considering the ponderous size of his head--then said, “Farewell, Firesword. Farewell, Uluthrek.” Then he and his warriors lumbered off into the darkness.
Angela chuckled, startling Eragon.
“What?” he asked, turning to her.
She smiled. “I’m imagining the expression some poor lute player is going to have in a few minutes when he looks out his tent and sees twelve Urgals, four of them Kull, standing outside, eager to give him an education in Urgal culture. I’ll be impressed if we don’t hear him scream. ~ Christopher Paolini,#NFDB
331:At first she thought the writing would be easy. She was extremely confident in her ability to dream, to imagine, and she supposed that expressing her dreams in words, in writing, would be entirely natural, like drawing breath. She had read widely from the time she was a child, and she knew how to recognize something that was well written. She admired certain lines and passages so much that she had taken complete possession of them and committed them to memory. She could recite “The Gettysburg Address” and “The Twenty-Third Psalm.” She could recite “Jabberwocky” and Emily Dickinson’s “Further in summer that the birds” and Wallace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning.” She knew by heart the final paragraph of Joyce’s “The Dead,” and if challenged she could say in whole the parts of both Romeo and Juliet. And she knew many Kiowa stories and many long prayers in Navajo. These were not feats of memory in the ordinary sense; it was simply that she attended to these things so closely that they became a part of her most personal experience. She had assumed them, appropriated them to her being.
But to write! She discovered that was something else again. ~ N Scott Momaday,#NFDB
332:Nothing she says or does would surprise me.” Gideon faced the helm once more, putting his back to Barnaby. He wasn’t about to go anywhere near Sara again, not the way he was feeling now. Let Barnaby deal with her today.
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean it’s nothing to worry about. You’ve got more schooling than I have, but isn’t Lysistrata the play where the women refuse to have relations with their husbands until the men agree to stop going to war?”
With a groan, Gideon clenched the wheel. Lysistrata was among the many words of literature his father had forced down his throat once he was old enough to read. “Yes. But don’t try to tell me she’s teaching them that. It’s Greek, for god’s sake. They wouldn’t understand a word, even if she knew it well enough to recite it.”
“She knows it well enough to give them a free translation, I assure you. When I left her she was telling them the story with great enthusiasm.”
Barnaby reached for the helm when Gideon swung away from it with an oath. “I should never have taken her aboard,” he grumbled as he strode for the ladder. “I should have sent her back to England gagged and bound! ~ Sabrina Jeffries,#NFDB
333:Thousands on the roads, the abandoned railtracks, tonight, bums on the outside, libraries inside. It wasn't planned, at first. Each man had a book he wanted to remember, and did. Then, over a period of twenty years or so, we met each other, traveling, and got the loose network together and set out a plan. [...] We' re nothing more than dust jackets for books, of no significance otherwise. Some of us live in small towns. Chapter One of Thoreau's Walden in Green River, Chapter Two in Willow Farm, Maine. Why, there's one town in Maryland, only twenty-seven people, no bomb'll ever touch that town, is the complete essays of a man named Bertrand Russell. Pick up that town, almost, and flip the pages, so many pages to a person. And when the war's over, some day, some year, the books can be written again, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know and we'll set it up in type until another Dark Age, when we might have to do the whole damn thing over again. But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
334:I’ve become obsessed. I carry her notebook with me everywhere I go, spending all my free moments trying to decipher the words she’s scribbled in the margins, developing stories to go along with the numbers she’s written down.
I’ve also noticed that the last page is missing. Ripped out.
I can’t help but wonder why. I’ve searched through the book a hundred times, looking for other sections where pages might be gone, but I’ve found none. And somehow I feel cheated, knowing there’s a piece I might’ve missed. It’s not even my journal; it’s none of my business at all, but I’ve read her words so many times now that they feel like my own. I can practically recite them from memory.
It’s strange being in her head without being able to see her. I feel like she’s here, right in front of me. I feel like I now know her so intimately, so privately. I’m safe in the company of her thoughts; I feel welcome, somehow. Understood. So much so that some days I manage to forget that she’s the one who put this bullet hole in my arm.
I almost forget that she still hates me, despite how hard I’ve fallen for her.
And I’ve fallen.
So hard.
I’ve hit the ground. Gone right through it. ~ Tahereh Mafi,#NFDB
335:Clearing her throat, Natale picked it up to show it to Zarya. “When Darling was little, his father would take it off and place it on his tiny finger before he made Darling recite his rules of conduct. I always waited for Darling to protest having to do it, but he was such a little man about it. All he wanted was to please his father and make him proud. He would clench his hand.” Natale demonstrated it with her own fist. “And stand tall, then repeat all twenty flawlessly. When he was done, he’d take the ring off and stare at it in awe. And every time he gave it back to his father, he’d promise that one day he would be the best governor Caron ever had.” Her eyes filled with agony, Natale covered her mouth with her hand. “Unlike Drake and Lise, he actually remembers his father. The two of them were so close. Darling worshiped the ground he stood on.” She swallowed and lowered her hand. “He’s just like his father, you know? It’s so hard to look at him sometimes when all I see is everything I’ve lost. He has Drux’s voice and his bearing and mannerisms.” She almost broke down into tears again, but somehow she caught herself. “Anyway, I should go now and leave you to him.” Zarya ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
336:. . . Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you're Count Dracula.
Here's an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don't do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don't tell anybody what you're doing. Don't show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals [sic]. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what's inside you, and you have made your soul grow. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
337:So when a little girl asks her father where the moon came from, he might tell her that the moon circles around the earth and reflects light from the sun. He might tell her that the moon likes to play hide-and-seek with the sun, so sometimes the moon looks like it’s peeking out from behind a black curtain; sometimes all you can see is the top of its head, and sometimes you can’t even see it at all! He might tell her about how the moon has invisible arms that can pull the oceans back and forth, making tides rise and fall. He might tell her that astronauts have walked on the moon and played golf on the moon and collected rocks from the moon. He might tell her that the moon has dimples and craters and basins that we can see only with a telescope and that there’s a special place on the moon called the Sea of Tranquility that isn’t really a sea. Then the father might take the little girl outside, hoist her up onto his shoulders, and let her stare at the moon for a while. He might recite a poem about a cow jumping over the moon or sing a song about a dreamy-eyed kid slow-dancing with it. Soon the little girl will become so lost in her father’s beautiful stories that she will forget she ever had a question to begin with. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
338:At The Museum Of Natural History
The lessons we learned here
(fumbling with our lunchbags,
handkerchiefs
& secret cheeks of bubblegum)
were graver than any
in the schoolroom:
the dangers of a life
frozen into poses.
Trilobites in their
petrified ghettos,
lumbering dinosaurs
who'd outsized themselves
told how nature was
an endless morality play
in which the cockroach
(& all such beadyeyed
exemplars of adjustment)
might well recite the epilogue.
No one was safe
but stagnation was
the surest suicide.
To mankind's Hamlet,
what six-legged creature would play
Fortinbras? It made you scratch
your head & think
for about two minutes.
Going out, I remember
how we stopped to look at
Teddy Roosevelt,
(Soldier, Statesman, Naturalist,
Hunter, Historian,
et cetera, et cetera).
16
His bronze bulk (four times life size)
bestrode Central Park West
like a colossus.
His monumental horse
snorted towards the park.
Oh, we were full of Evolution & its lessons
When (the girls giggling madly,
the boys blushing) we peeked
between those huge legs to see
those awe-inspiring
Brobdingnagian balls.
~ Erica Jong,#NFDB
339:Her departure left no traces but were speedily repaired by the coming of spring. The sun growing warmer, and the close season putting an end to the Marquess's hunting, it was now Odo's chief pleasure to carry his books to the walled garden between the castle and the southern face of the cliff. This small enclosure, probably a survival of medieval horticulture, had along the upper ledge of its wall a grass walk commanding the flow of the stream, and an angle turret that turned one slit to the valley, the other to the garden lying below like a tranquil well of scent and brightness: its box trees clipped to the shape of peacocks and lions, its clove pinks and simples set in a border of thrift, and a pear tree basking on its sunny wall. These pleasant spaces, which Odo had to himself save when the canonesses walked there to recite their rosary, he peopled with the knights and ladies of the novelle, and the fantastic beings of Pulci's epic: there walked the Fay Morgana, Regulus the loyal knight, the giant Morgante, Trajan the just Emperor and the proud figure of King Conrad; so that, escaping thither from the after-dinner dullness of the tapestry parlour, the boy seemed to pass from the most oppressive solitude to a world of warmth and fellowship. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
340:Her parents noticed, when Dominika turned five, that the little girl had a prodigious memory. She could recite lines from Pushkin, identify the concertos of Tchaikovsky. And when music was played, Dominika would dance barefoot around the Oriental carpet in the living room, perfectly in time with the notes, twirling and jumping, perfectly in balance, her eyes gleaming, her hands flashing. Vassily and Nina looked at each other, and her mother asked Dominika how she had learned all this. “I follow the colors,” said the little girl.
“What do you mean, ‘the colors’?” asked her mother. Dominika gravely explained that when the music played, or when her father read aloud to her, colors would fill the room. Different colors, some bright, some dark, sometimes they “jumped in the air” and all Dominika had to do was follow them. It was how she could remember so much. When she danced, she leapt over bars of bright blue, followed shimmering spots of red on the floor. The parents looked at each other again.
“I like red and blue and purple,” said Dominika. “When Batushka reads, or when Mamulya plays, they are beautiful.”
“And when Mama is cross with you?” asked Vassily.
“Yellow, I don’t like the yellow,” said the little girl, turning the pages of a book. “And the black cloud. I do not like that. ~ Jason Matthews,#NFDB
341:Wait!” I yell. I take a deep breath. This is it. I’m going to spill my guts. “I don’t know why or when I started falling for you, Alex. But I did. Ever since I almost ran over your motorcycle that first day of school I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what it would be like if you and I got together. And that kiss…God, I swear I never experienced anything like that in my life. It did mean something. If the solar system didn’t tilt then, it never will. I know it’s crazy because we’re so different. And if anything happens between us I don’t want people at school to know. Not that you’ll agree to have a secret relationship with me, but I at least have to find out if it’s possible. I broke up with Colin, who I had a very public relationship with and I’m ready for something private. Private and real. I know I’m babbling like an idiot, but if you don’t say something soon or give me a hint of what you’re thinking then I’ll--”
“Say it again,” he says.
“That whole drawn-out speech?” I remember something about a solar system, but I’m too light-headed to recite the entire thing all over again.
He steps closer. “No. The part about you fallin’ for me.”
My eyes cling to his. “I think about you all the time, Alex. And I really, really want to kiss you again.”
The sides of his mouth turn up. ~ Simone Elkeles,#NFDB
342:I wish it were different. I wish that we privileged knowledge in politicians, that the ones who know things didn't have to hide it behind brown pants, and that the know-not-enoughs were laughed all the way to the Maine border on their first New Hampshire meet and greet. I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's "Two Sleepy People," Johnny Cash's "Five Feet High and Rising," and "You Got the Silver" by the Rolling Stones. After all, the United States is the greatest country on earth dealing with the most complicated problems in the history of the world--poverty, pollution, justice, Jerusalem. What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes. ~ Sarah Vowell, #NFDB
343:It's not the concept of marriage I have a problem with. I'd like to get married too. A couple times. It's the actual wedding that pisses me off.
The problem is that everyone who gets married seems to think that they are the first person in the entire universe to do it, and that the year leading up to the event revolves entirely around them. You have to throw them showers, bachelorette weekends, buy a bridesmaid dress, and then buy a ticket to some godforsaken town wherever they decide to drag you. If you're really unlucky, they'll ask you to recite a poem at their wedding. That's just what I want to do- monitor my drinking until I'm done with my public service announcement. And what do we get out of it, you ask? A dry piece of chicken and a roll in the hay with their hillbilly cousin. I could get that at home, thanks.
Then they have the audacity to go shopping and pick out their own gifts. I want to know who the first person was who said this was okay. After spending all that money on a bachelorette weekend, a shower, and often a flight across the country, they expect you to go to Williams Sonoma or Pottery Barn and do research? Then they send you a thank-you note applauding you for such a thoughtful gift. They're the one who picked it out! I always want to remind the person that absolutely no thought went into typing in a name and having a salad bowl come up. ~ Chelsea Handler,#NFDB
344:The Particular Necessity for Practice
The second part discusses "the particular necessity for practice."
Through the power of the yoga of speech, the stains that obscure the mind are removed. Once this happens, speech reaches its full potential. It is like discovering the true nature of your speech for the very first time.
To activate the yoga of speech, summon the primordial wisdom deities by calling their names. Just as calling someone's name naturally causes that person to draw closer to you, in the same way calling the wisdom deities by name brings them nearer to you.
They come to see what you want.
This does not mean the wisdom deities will not come if you do not call them. They could come even if you did not call their names.
You call their names-which is what you are doing when you recite mantras-because their names express their actual nature. A quote from the Dorje Kur (rDo rje gur) scripture reads: "To directly perceive the buddhas, bodhisattvas, dakinis and your own consort, get their attention by calling their names and invite them to come." Reciting the deity's name over and over purifies obscurations of speech and establishes the cause of vajra speech.
This cause produces the condition that averts adverse conditions.
The speech of the wisdom deities and your own speech will become the same-vajra speech. ~ Gyatrul Rinpoche, Generating the Deity,#NFDB
345:What packages we were allowed to receive from our families often contained handkerchiefs, scarves, and other clothing items. For some time, Mike had been taking little scraps of red and white cloth, and with a needle he had fashioned from a piece of bamboo he laboriously sewed an American flag onto the inside of his blue prisoner's shirt. Every afternoon, before we ate our soup, we would hang Mike's flag on the wall of our cell and together recite the Pledge of Allegiance. No other event of the day had as much meaning to us.
"The guards discovered Mike's flag one afternoon during a routine inspection and confiscated it. They returned that evening and took Mike outside. For our benefit as much as Mike's they beat him severely, just outside our cell, puncturing his eardrum and breaking several of his ribs. When they had finished, they dragged him bleeding and nearly senseless back into our cell, and we helped him crawl to his place on the sleeping platform. After things quieted down, we all lay down to go to sleep. Before drifting off, I happened to look toward a corner of the room, where one of the four naked lightbulbs that were always illuminated in our cell cast a dim light on Mike Christian. He had crawled there quietly when he thought the rest of us were sleeping. With his eyes nearly swollen shut from the beating, he had quietly picked up his needle and begun sewing a new flag. ~ John McCain,#NFDB
346:I don't know why or when I started falling for you, Alex. But I did. Ever since I almost ran over your motorcycle that first day of school I haven't been able to stop thinking about what it would be like if you and I got together. And that kiss ... God, I swear I never experienced anything like that in my life. It did mean something. If the solar system didn't tilt then, it never will. I know it's crazy because we're so different. And if anything happens between us I don't want people at school to know. Not that you'll agree to have a secret relationship with me, but I at least have to find out if it's possible. I broke up with Colin, who I had a very public relationship with and I'm ready for something private. Private and real. I know I'm babbling like an idiot, but if you don't say something soon or give me a hint of what you're thinking then I'll--"
"Say it again," he says.
"That whole drawn-out speech?" I remember something about a solar system, but I'm too light-headed to recite the entire thing all over again.
He steps closer. "No. The part about you fallin' for me."
My eyes cling to his. "I think about you all the time, Alex. And I really, really want to kiss you again."
The sides of his mouth turn up.
Unable to face him, I look at the ground. "Don't make fun of me." I can take anything but that right about now.
"Don't turn away from me, mamacita. I'd never make fun of you. ~ Simone Elkeles,#NFDB
347: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
348:Forgetful Pa
My Pa says that he used to be
A bright boy in geography;
An' when he went to school he knew
The rivers an' the mountains, too,
An' all the capitals of states
An' bound'ry lines an' all the dates
They joined the union. But last night
When I was studyin' to recite
I asked him if he would explain
The leading industries of Maine—
He thought an' thought an' thought a lot,
An' said, 'I knew, but I've forgot.'
My Pa says when he was in school
He got a hundred as a rule;
An' grammar was a thing he knew
Becoz he paid attention to
His teacher, an' he learned the way
To write good English, an' to say
The proper things, an' I should be
As good a boy in school as he.
But once I asked him could he give
Me help with the infinitive—
He scratched his head and said: 'Great Scott!
I used to know, but I've forgot.
My Pa says when he was a boy
Arithmetic was just a toy;
He learned his tables mighty fast
An' every term he always passed,
An' had good marks, an' teachers said:
'That youngster surely has a head.'
But just the same I notice now
Most every time I ask him how
To find the common multiple,
He says, 'That's most unusual!
Once I'd have told you on the spot,
But somehow, sonny, I've forgot.'
I'm tellin' you just what is what,
My Pa's forgot an awful lot!
276
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
349:Peter climbs out of his car and raises his eyebrows at me. “Look who’s here. My adoring girlfriend.”
I stand up and wave at him. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
He slings his backpack over his shoulder and takes his time sauntering over. He sits down on the front step like a prince on his throne, and I stand in front of him, my helmet in one hand and my phone in the other. “So what’s up?” he drawls. “Let me guess. You’re here to back out on me, am I right?”
He’s so smug, so sure of himself. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right.
“I just wanted to go over our game plan with you,” I say, sitting down. “Get our story straight before people start asking questions.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Oh. Okay. Makes sense. So how did we get together?”
I clasp my hands in my lap and recite, “When I got in that car accident last week, you happened to be driving by, and you waited for Triple A with me and then you drove me home. You were really nervous the whole time, because you’ve actually had kind of a thing for me since middle school. I was your first kiss. So this was your big chance--”
“You were my first kiss?” he interrupts. “How about I was your first kiss. That’s a lot more believable.”
I ignore him and continue on. “This was your big chance. So you took it. You asked me out that very day and we’ve been hanging out ever since and now we’re basically a couple. ~ Jenny Han,#NFDB
350:An 'Exhibit'
Goldenson hanged! Well, Heaven forbid
That I should smile above him:
Though truth to tell, I never did
Exactly love him.
It can't be wrong, though, to rejoice
That his unpleasing capers
Are ended. Silent is his voice
In all the papers.
No longer he's a show: no more,
Bear-like, his den he's walking.
No longer can he hold the floor
When I'd be talking.
The laws that govern jails are bad
If such displays are lawful.
The fate of the assassin's sad,
But ours is awful!
What! shall a wretch condemned to die
In shame upon the gibbet
Be set before the public eye
As an 'exhibit'?
His looks, his actions noted down,
His words if light or solemn,
And all this hawked about the town
So much a column?
The press, of course, will publish news
However it may get it;
But blast the sheriff who'll abuse
His powers to let it!
Nay, this is not ingratitude;
I'm no reporter, truly,
Nor yet an editor. I'm rude
Because unruly
156
Because I burn with shame and rage
Beyond my power of telling
To see assassins in a cage
And keepers yelling.
'Walk up! Walk up!' the showman cries:
'Observe the lion's poses,
His stormy mane, his glooming eyes.
His-hold your noses!'
How long, O Lord, shall Law and Right
Be mocked for gain or glory,
And angels weep as they recite
The shameful story?
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
351:You both love Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Hawthorne and Melville, Flaubert and Stendahl, but at that stage of your life you cannot stomach Henry James, while Gwyn argues that he is the giant of giants, the colossus who makes all other novelists look like pygmies. You are in complete harmony about the greatness of Kafka and Beckett, but when you tell her that Celine belongs in their company, she laughs at you and calls him a fascist maniac. Wallace Stevens yes, but next in line for you is William Carlos Williams, not T.S. Eliot, whose work Gwyn can recite from memory. You defend Keaton, she defends Chaplin, and while you both howl at the sight of the Marx Brothers, your much-adored W.C. Fields cannot coax a single smile from her. Truffaut at his best touches you both, but Gwyn finds Godard pretentious and you don't, and while she lauds Bergman and Antonioni as twin masters of the universe, you reluctantly tell her that you are bored by their films. No conflicts about classical music, with J.S. Bach at the top of the list, but you are becoming increasingly interested in jazz, while Gwyn still clings to the frenzy of rock and roll, which has stopped saying much of anything to you. She likes to dance, and you don't. She laughs more than you do and smokes less. She is a freer, happier person than you are, and whenever you are with her, the world seems brighter and more welcoming, a place where your sullen, introverted self can almost begin to feel at home. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
352:173 Or (lest) you should say: Only our fathers ascribed partners (to Allah) before (us), and we were (their) descendants after them. Wilt Thou destroy us for what liars did?a 173a. The Arabic word is mubtil, which means one who says a thing in which is no truth or reality (R-LL). 174 And thus do We make the messages clear, and that haply they may return. 175 And recite to them the news of him to whom We give Our messages, but he withdraws himself from them, so the devil follows him up, and he is of those who perish.a 175a. Balaam, Umayyah ibn Abi Salt, Abu ‘Amir, and all the hypocrites, have been respectively indicated as the persons referred to here, but the best explanation is supplied by Qatadah, who says: It speaks generally of everyone to whom guidance is brought but he turns aside from it. This view is corroborated by what is stated at the conclusion of the parable in v. 176, such is the parable of the people who reject Our messages. 176 And if We had pleased, We would have exalted him thereby; but he clings to the eartha and follows his low desire. His parable is as the parable of the dog — if thou drive him away, he lolls out his tongue, and if thou leave him alone, he lolls out his tongue. Such is the parable of the people who reject Our messages. So relate the narrative that they may reflect. 176a. Earth here stands for all that is earthly, for things material. The people spoken of here are those who do not care for the higher values of life. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
353:A low-context culture is a place where little is left to assumption so things are spelled out explicitly. In contrast, high-context cultures are places where people have significant history together and so a great deal of understanding can be assumed. Things operate in high-context cultures as if everyone there is an insider and knows how to behave. Written instructions and explicit directions are minimal because most people know what to do and how to think. Our families are probably the most tangible examples we have of high-context environments. After years of being together, we know what the unspoken rules are of what to eat, how to celebrate holidays, and how to communicate with each other. Many of our workplaces are the same. We know when to submit check requests, how to publicize an event, and how to dress on “casual” Fridays. New employees joining these kinds of organizations can really feel lost without adequate orientation. And many religious services are also very high context. People routinely stand, bow, or recite creeds that appear very foreign and confusing to someone just joining a religious community for the first time. Discerning whether a culture provides direct and explicit communication versus one that assumes a high degree of shared understanding is a strategic point of knowledge. And leaders need to bear in mind the areas of their own organizational and national culture that are high context and how that affects outsiders when they enter. Table ~ David Livermore, #NFDB
354:Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, and in his lyric Simonides incorporated verses in praise of Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins. Scopas was sulky, and said he would pay only half the fee: ‘As for the rest, get it from the Twins.’ A little later, a servant came into the hall. He whispered to Simonides; there were two young men outside, asking for him by name. He rose and left the banqueting hall. He looked around for the two young men, but he could see no one. As he turned back, to go and finish his dinner, he heard a terrible noise, of stone splitting and crumbling. He heard the cries of the dying, as the roof of the hall collapsed. Of all the diners, he was the only one left alive. The bodies were so broken and disfigured that the relatives of the dead could not identify them. But Simonides was a remarkable man. Whatever he saw was imprinted on his mind. He led each of the relatives through the ruins; and pointing to the crushed remains, he said, there is your man. In linking the dead to their names, he worked from the seating plan in his head.
It is Cicero who tells us this story. He tells us how, on that day, Simonides invented the art of memory. He remembered the names, the faces, some sour and bloated, some blithe, some bored. He remembered exactly where everyone was sitting, at the moment the roof fell in. ~ Hilary Mantel,#NFDB
355:The Cure For Weariness
Seemed like I couldn't stand it any more,
The factory whistles blowin' day by day,
An' men an' children hurryin' by the door,
An' street cars clangin' on their busy way.
The faces of the people seemed to be
Washed pale by tears o' grief an' strife an' care,
Till everywhere I turned to I could see
The same old gloomy pictures of despair.
The windows of the shops all looked the same,
Decked out with stuff their owners wished to sell;
When visitors across our doorway came
I could recite the tales they'd have to tell.
All things had lost their old-time power to please;
Dog-tired I was an' irritable, too,
An' so I traded chimney tops for trees,
An' shingled roof for open skies of blue.
I dropped my tools an' took my rod an' line
An' tackle box an' left the busy town;
I found a favorite restin' spot of mine
Where no one seeks for fortune or renown.
I whistled to the birds that flew about,
An' built a lot of castles in my dreams;
I washed away the stains of care an' doubt
An' thanked the Lord for woods an' running streams.
I've cooked my meals before an open fire,
I've had the joy of green smoke in my face,
I've followed for a time my heart's desire
An' now the path of duty I retrace.
I've had my little fishin' trip, an' go
Once more contented to the haunts of men;
I'm ready now to hear the whistles blow
An' see the roofs an' chimney tops again.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
356:When children are old enough to begin grasping the concepts of faith, they should make a habit of bringing home verses of Scripture from church. They should recite these verses to their parents at mealtime. Then they should write the verses down and put them in little pouches or pockets, just as they put pennies and other coins in a purse. Let the pouch of faith be a golden one. Verses about coming to faith, such as Psalm 51:5; John 1:29; Romans 4:25; and Romans 5:12, are like gold coins for that little pouch. Let the pouch of love be a silver one. The verses about doing good, such as Matthew 5:11; Matthew 25:40; Galatians 5:13; and Hebrews 12:6, are like silver coins for this pouch. No one should think they are too smart for this game and look down on this kind of child’s play. Christ had to become a man in order to train us. If we want to train children, then we must become children with them. I wish this kind of child’s play was more widespread. In a short time, we would see an abundance of Christian people rich in Scripture and in the knowledge of God. They would make more of these pouches, and by using them, they would learn all of Scripture. As it is now, people go to hear a sermon and leave again unchanged. They act like a sermon is only worth the time it takes to hear it. No one thinks about learning anything from it or remembering it. Some people listen to sermons for three or four years and still don’t learn enough to respond to a single question about faith. More than enough has been written in books, but not nearly enough has been driven into our hearts. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
357:The entire virtue of religious practices can be conceived from the Buddhist tradition concerning the recitation of the name of the Lord. It is said that the Buddha made a vow to raise up to himself all those who recite his name with the desire to be saved by him, into the Land of Purity; and that because of this vow the recitation of the name of the Lord really has the virtue of transforming the soul. Religion is nothing else but this promise of God. Every religious practice, every rite, every liturgy is a form of the recitation of the name of the Lord, and must in principle really have virtue, the virtue of saving anyone devoted to it with desire. Every religion pronounces the name of the Lord in its own language. Most often, it is better for people to name God in their own native language rather than in a foreign language. Apart from exceptions, the soul is incapable of completely abandoning itself in the moment if it must impose on itself even a minor effort in searching for words in a strange language, even when they know it well . . . A change of the religion is for the soul like a change of language for the writer. Not every religion, it is true, is equally apt for the correct recitation of the name of the Lord. Certain ones, without a doubt, are very imperfect intermediaries. The religion of Israel, for example, must have truly been a very imperfect intermediary for having crucified Christ. The Roman religion scarcely even deserves the name of religion. But in a general, the hierarchy of religions is a very difficult thing to discern, nearly impossible, perhaps completely impossible. For a religion is known from the inside. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
358:Were I A Poet, I Would Dwell
`Were I a Poet, I would dwell,
Not upon lonely height,
Nor cloistered in disdainful cell
From human sound and sight.
I would live nestled near my kind,
Deep in a garden garth,
That they who loved my verse might find
A pathway to my hearth.
`I would not sing of sceptred Kings,
The Tyrant and his thrall,
But everyday pathetic things,
That happen to us all:
The love that lasts through joy, through grief,
The faith that never wanes,
And every wilding bird and leaf
That gladdens English lanes.
`Nor would I shape for Fame my lay,
But only for the sake
Of singing, and to charm away
My own or other's ache;
To close the wound, to soothe the smart,
To heal the feud of years,
And move the misbelieving heart
To tenderness and tears.
`And when to me should come the night,
And I could sing no more,
And faithful lips could but recite
What I had sung before,
I would not have a pompous strain
Resound about my shroud,
Nor sepulchre in sumptuous fane,
Near to the great and proud.
`But only they who loved me best
Should bear me and my lyre,
And lay us, with my kin, at rest
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Under the hamlet spire,
Where everything around still breathes
Of prayer that soothes and saves,
And widowed hands bear cottage wreaths
To unforgotten graves.
`And they might raise another cross
Within that hallowed ground,
And tend the flowers and trim the moss
About my grassy mound;
But, honouring me, would carve above
No impious boast of Fame,
And, not for Glory, but for Love,
Would keep alive my name.'
~ Alfred Austin,#NFDB
359: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
360:Ironically both of them were on the pavement that night to escape their past and all that had circumscribed their lives so far. And yet, in order to arm themselves for battle, they retreated right back into what they sought to escape, into what they were used to, into what they really were. He, a revolutionary trapped in an accountant’s mind. She, a woman trapped in a man’s body. He, raging at a world in which the balance sheets did not tally. She, raging at her glands, her organs, her skin, the texture of her hair, the width of her shoulders, the timbre of her voice. He, fighting for a way to impose fiscal integrity on a decaying system. She, wanting to pluck the very stars from the sky and grind them into a potion that would give her proper breasts and hips and a long, thick plait of hair that would swing from side to side as she walked, and yes, the thing she longed for most of all, that most well stocked of Delhi’s vast stock of invectives, that insult of all insults, a Maa ki Choot, a mother’s cunt. He, who had spent his days tracking tax dodges, pay-offs and sweetheart deals. She, who had lived for years like a tree in an old graveyard, where, on lazy mornings and late at night, the spirits of the old poets whom she loved, Ghalib, Mir and Zauq, came to recite their verse, drink, argue and gamble. He, who filled in forms and ticked boxes. She, who never knew which box to tick, which queue to stand in, which public toilet to enter (Kings or Queens? Lords or Ladies? Sirs or Hers?). He, who believed he was always right. She, who knew she was all wrong, always wrong. He, reduced by his certainties. She, augmented by her ambiguity. He, who wanted a law. She, who wanted a baby. A circle formed around ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
361:Five months after Zoran's disappearance, his wife gave birth to a girl. The mother was unable to nurse the child. The city was being shelled continuously. There were severe food shortages. Infants, like the infirm and the elderly, were dying in droves. The family gave the baby tea for five days, but she began to fade.
"She was dying," Rosa Sorak said. "It was breaking our hearts."
Fejzić, meanwhile, was keeping his cow in a field on the eastern edge of Goražde, milking it at night to avoid being hit by Serbian snipers.
"On the fifth day, just before dawn, we heard someone at the door," said Rosa Sorak. "It was Fadil Fejzić in his black rubber boots. He handed up half a liter of milk he came the next morning, and the morning after that, and after that. Other families on the street began to insult him. They told him to give his milk to Muslims, to let the Chetnik children die. He never said a word. He refused our money. He came 442 days, until my daughter-in-law and granddaughter left Goražde for Serbia."
The Soraks eventually left and took over a house that once belonged to a Muslim family in the Serbian-held town of Kopaci. Two miles to the east. They could no longer communicate with Fejzić.
The couple said they grieved daily for their sons. They missed their home. They said they could never forgive those who took Zoran from them. But they also said that despite their anger and loss, they could not listen to other Sebs talking about Muslims, or even recite their own sufferings, without telling of Fejzić and his cow. Here was the power of love. What this illiterate farmer did would color the life of another human being, who might never meet him, long after he was gone. In his act lay an ocean of hope. ~ Chris Hedges,#NFDB
362:Five months after Zoran's disappearance, his wife gave birth to a girl. The mother was unable to nurse the child. The city was being shelled continuously. There were severe food shortages. Infants, like the infirm and the elderly, were dying in droves. The family gave the baby tea for five days, but she began to fade.
"She was dying," Rosa Sorak said. "It was breaking our hearts."
Fejzić, meanwhile, was keeping his cow in a field on the eastern edge of Goražde, milking it at night to avoid being hit by Serbian snipers.
"On the fifth day, just before dawn, we heard someone at the door," said Rosa Sorak. "It was Fadil Fejzić in his black rubber boots. He handed up half a liter of milk he came the next morning, and the morning after that, and after that. Other families on the street began to insult him. They told him to give his milk to Muslims, to let the Chetnik children die. He never said a word. He refused our money. He came 442 days, until my daughter-in-law and granddaughter left Goražde for Serbia."
The Soraks eventually left and took over a house that once belonged to a Muslim family in the Serbian-held town of Kopaci. Two miles to the east. They could no longer communicate with Fejzić.
The couple said they grieved daily for their sons. They missed their home. They said they could never forgive those who took Zoran from them. But they also said that despite their anger and loss, they could not listen to other Sebs talking about Muslims, or even recite their own sufferings, without telling of Fejzić and his cow. Here was the power of love. What this illiterate farmer did would color the life of another human being, who might never meet him, long after he was gone, in his act lay an ocean of hope. ~ Chris Hedges,#NFDB
363:Elvis starts to sing “Viva Las Vegas” as Sam and I walk side by side down the aisle. I cover my mouth and laugh. “I want you to repeat after me, Sam,” Elvis says. He lifts one corner of his lip in that classic snarl. “I, Sam, promise you, Peck, never to step on your blue suede shoes. I promise never to leave you at Heartbreak Hotel. I promise to be your hunka-hunka burning love, forever and ever, amen.” “Wait,” Sam says. “That’s Randy Travis. Not Elvis.” “Close enough,” Elvis says. Sam rolls his hips like Elvis did when he repeats the words. I can’t stop laughing. I laugh so hard that I have to wipe tears from my eyes. But I don’t feel bad, because Emily is doing the same thing. And the rest of the brothers and their wives are laughing it up too. “Now you, Peck,” Elvis says. He swivels his hips and someone does a rim shot on a set of drums. “I, Peck, solemnly swear to love you tender for the rest of my life, and never leave you with a suspicious mind.” I repeat the words. I barely stutter, and it warms my heart when I realize that. Suddenly, Elvis gets serious. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…” Sam’s eyes meet mine, and he takes my hands. I pass my flowers to one of my sisters and look up at him. We recite the official vows, and I have to blink hard to get through them, particularly when I look at the TV screen and see Marta crying into her handkerchief. “Who gives this woman to be married?” Elvis asks. Emilio’s voice rings out. “Her mother and I.” This time, a hot tear tracks down my cheek and Sam very gently wipes it away. “You okay?” he whispers. “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Elvis declares. “Now let’s have a little less conversation and a really big kiss.” He swivels his hips again and I laugh through my tears. Sam ~ Tammy Falkner, #NFDB
364:The fourth cure for heedlessness is the recitation of the Qur’an. Reciting it with tadabbur (reflection) awakens the heart. However, plain recitation is beneficial as well. Learned Muslims have recommended that a person recite one–thirtieth of the Qur’an (juz) every day. If this is difficult, then reciting Sura Yāsīn (36) after the dawn prayer, Sura al-Wāqiʿah (56) after the sunset prayer, and Sura al-Mulk (68) after the evening prayer greatly benefit the soul. (New Muslims should strive with their utmost to learn how to read the original Arabic text of the Qur’an. Meanwhile, one is advised to listen to the well-known Qur’an reciters on audio devices or read a good English translation until one is able to read the Arabic. It is important for one to be regularly engaged with the Book of God.) The actual sounds of the language of the Qur’an—the breathtaking rhythms and words—are a medicine. From the perspective of energy dynamics, every substance has a resonance at a specific wavelength. A medicine resonates in order to cure the disease. So, too, do the sounds of recitation of the Qur’an: “O humankind, there has come to you from your Lord counsel and healing for what is in the breasts, and a guidance and a mercy to the believers” (QUR’AN , 10:57). When one recites the Qur’an, one moves his or her tongue pronouncing revealed words of the Lord of the heavens and the earth. And these words have a powerful and unique sound. People are often amazed at the sound of the Qur’an when they hear it for the first time. The beauty of the Qur’an is in its meanings as well as the sound of its recitation. These are the four cures that Imam Mawlūd offers for heedlessness. God warns the Prophet from conforming to those whose hearts are in the state of heedlessness (QUR’AN , 18:28). God increases the heedlessness of people who turn away from the truth. ~ Hamza Yusuf, #NFDB
365:I need to tell about my people in their grief. I don’t think grief is something they get over or get away from. In a little community like this it is around us and in us all the time, and we know it. We know that every night, war or no war, there are people lying awake grieving, and every morning there are people waking up to absences that never will be filled. But we shut our mouths and go ahead. How we are is “Fine.” There are always a few who will recite their complaints, but the proper answer to “How are you?” is “Fine.” The thing you have most dreaded has happened at last. The worst thing you might have expected has happened, and you didn’t expect it. You have grown old and ill, and most of those you have loved are dead or gone away. Even so: “How’re you?” “Fine. How’re you?” “Fine.” There is always some shame and fear in this, I think, shame for the terrible selfishness and loneliness of grief, and fear of the difference between your grief and anybody else’s. But this is a kind of courtesy too and a kind of honesty, an unwillingness to act as if loss and grief and suffering are extraordinary. And there is something else: an honoring of the solitude in which the grief you have to bear will have to be borne. Should you fall on your neighbor’s shoulder and weep in the midst of work? Should you go to the store with tears on your face? No. You are fine. And yet the comfort somehow gets passed around: a few words that are never forgotten, a note in the mail, a look, a touch, a pat, a hug, a kind of waiting with, a kind of standing by, to the end. Once in a while we hear it sung out in a hymn, when every throat seems suddenly widened with love and a common longing: In the sweet by and by, We shall meet on that beautiful shore. We all know what that beautiful shore is. It is Port William with all its loved ones come home alive. My life ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
366:There is a story I would like to tell you about a woman who practices the invocation of the Buddha Amitabha's name. She is very tough, and she practices the invocation three times daily, using a wooden drum and a bell, reciting, "Namo Amitabha Buddha" for one hour each time. When she arrives at one thousand times, she invites the bell to sound. (In Vietnamese, we don't say "strike" or "hit" a bell.) Although she has been doing this for ten years, her personality has not changed. She is still quite mean, shouting at people all the time.
A friend wanted to teach her a lesson, so one afternoon when she had just lit the incense, invited the bell to sound three times, and was beginning to recite "Namo Amitabha Buddha," he came to her door, and said, "Mrs. Nguyen, Mrs. Nguyen!" She found it very annoying because this was her time of practice, but he just stood at the front gate shouting her name. She said to herself, "I have to struggle against my anger, so I will ignore that," and she went on, "Namo Amitabha Buddha, Namo Amitabha Buddha."
The gentleman continued to shout her name, and her anger became more and more oppressive. She struggled against it, wondering, "Should I stop my recitation and go and give him a piece of my mind?" But she continued chanting, and she struggled very hard. Fire mounted in her, but she still tried to chant "Namo Amitabha Buddha." The gentleman knew it, and he continued to shout, "Mrs. Nguyen! Mrs. Nguyen!"
She could not bear it any longer. She threw away the bell and the drum. She slammed the door, went out to the gate and said, "Why, why do you behave like that? Why do you call my name hundreds of times like that?" The gentleman smiled at her and said, "I just called your name for ten minutes, and you are so angry. You have been calling the Buddha's name for ten years. Think how angry he must be! ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,#NFDB
367:There is a story I would like to tell you about a woman who practices the invocation of the Buddha Amitabha's name. She is very tough, and she practices the invocation three times daily, using a wooden drum and a bell, reciting, "Namo Amitabha Buddha" for one hour each time. When she arrives at one thousand times, she invites the bell to sound. (In Vietnamese, we don't say "strike" or "hit" a bell.) Although she has been doing this for ten years, her personality has not changed. She is still quite mean, shouting at people all the time.
A friend wanted to teach her a lesson, so one afternoon when she had just lit the incense, invited the bell to sound three times, and was beginning to recite "Namo Amitabha Buddha," he came to her door, and said, "Mrs. Nguyen, Mrs. Nguyen!" She found it very annoying because this was her time of practice, but he just stood at the front gate shouting her name. She said to herself, "I have to struggle against my anger, so I will ignore that," and she went on, "Namo Amitabha Buddha, Namo Amitabha Buddha."
The gentleman continued to shout her name, and her anger became more and more oppressive. She struggled against it, wondering, "Should I stop my recitation and go and give him a piece of my mind?" But she continued chanting, and she struggled very hard. Fire mounted in her, but she still tried to chant "Namo Amitabha Buddha." The gentleman knew it, and he continued to shout, "Mrs. Nguyen! Mrs. Nguyen!"
She could not bear it any longer. She threw away the bell and the drum. She slammed the door, went out to the gate and said, "Why, why do you behave like that? Why do you call my name hundreds of times like that?" The gentleman smiled at her and said, "I just called your name for ten minutes, and you are so angry. You have been calling the Buddha's name for ten years. Think how angry he must be! ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,#NFDB
368:As they left the library, Arin said, “Kestrel--”
“Not a word. Don’t speak until we are in the carriage.”
They walked swiftly down the halls--Arin’s halls--and when Kestrel stole sidelong looks at him he still seemed stunned and dizzy. Kestrel had been seasick before, at the beginning of her sailing lessons, and she wondered if this was how Arin felt, surrounded by his home--like when the eyes can pinpoint the horizon but the stomach cannot.
Their silence broke when the carriage door closed them in.
“You are mad.” Arin’s voice was furious, desperate. “It was my book. My doing. You had no right to interfere. Did you think I couldn’t bear the punishment for being caught?”
“Arin.” Fear trembled through her as she finally realized what she had done. She strove to sound calm. “A duel is simply a ritual.”
“It’s not yours to fight.”
“You know you cannot. Irex would never accept, and if you drew a blade on him, every Valorian in the vicinity would cut you down. Irex won’t kill me.”
He gave her a cynical look. “Do you deny that he is the superior fighter?”
“So he will draw first blood. He will be satisfied, and we will both walk away with honor.”
“He said something about a death-price.”
That was the law’s penalty for a duel to the death. The victor paid a high sum to the dead duelist’s family. Kestrel dismissed this. “It will cost Irex more than gold to kill General Trajan’s daughter.”
Arin dropped his face into his hands. He began to swear, to recite every insult against the Valorian’s the Herrani had invented, to curse them by every god.
“Really, Arin.”
His hands fell away. “You, too. What a stupid thing for you to do. Why did you do that? Why would you do such a stupid thing?”
She thought of his claim that Enai could never have loved her, or if she had, it was a forced love.
“You might not think of me as your friend,” Kestrel told Arin, “but I think of you as mine. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
369:...He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively is he must.
He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional.
He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march.
He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity. He is self-sufficient.
...He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cool his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts.
...He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low.
He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands.
He can save your life- or take it, because that is his job. He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay, and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed.
He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to "square-away" those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking.
...Just as did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over two hundred years.
He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding.
Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood.
And now we even have women over there in danger, doing their part in this tradition of going to war when our nation calls us to do so.
As you go to bed tonight, remember this. A short lull, a little shade, and a picture of loved ones in their helmets. ~ Sarah Palin,#NFDB
370:Where Is It Clean
when your mother can rise from her place
on the pew during the early service,
early enough that the sun barely fills the sky
with its weak straw, but row after row
in the auditorium is flush with folks who want
to be home before the football game gets underway
or hate the slower pace the later service takes
but still got to get their god on
before starting a new week: when she can rise
and tip down the aisle, three-inch heels
pointing a warning at hell through the plush
mauve carpet, smile and nod at preacher,
who is sitting on the pulpit's little throne
with his bible beneath his palm, a man thick-chested
and stout-bellied with moral authority, whose face
gleams with crushing benevolent power:
when she can give him a pleasant nod,
and circle around behind the microphone standing
like a thin silver trophy between the heavenly
floral arrangements, give a firm tug
to the hem of her suit jacket, and lean over
the dimpled nob, the ribbons encircling the crown
of her broad-brimmed hat quivering with each
breath, the crisp white paper in her hands
held out at arm's length from her customary squint,
her eyes scooting back and forth,
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between this document and the village of worshipers
fanning themselves and waiting on her voice:
when she can stand there and coo, good morning,
praise the lord and introduce her reading
as a poem by my daughter, a quick look
at your beaming father, then take your words
between her lightly pinked lips and raise each one
to the light, before god and these witnesses,
enunciating like she learned to recite from the fourthgrade primer in her schoolhouse's single room,
sending sound through the vowels
like a bell: when she can do this, can rise and walk,
and smile and read and have the church say amen then you can safely declare: it is clean.
~ Evie Shockley,#NFDB
371:Make a ritual ablution before each prayer, beginning every action with "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." First wash your hands, intending to pull them away from the affairs of this world. Then wash your mouth, remember and reciting God's name, purifying it in order to utter His Name. Wash your nose wishing to inhale the perfumes of the Divine. Wash your face feeling shame, and intending to wipe from it arrogance and hypocrisy. Wash your forearms trusting God to make you do what is good. Wet the top of your head feeling humility and wash your ears (in preparation) to hear the address of your Lord. Wash from your feet the dirt of the world so that you don't stain the sands of Paradise. Then thank and praise the Lord, and send prayers of peace and blessing upon our Master, who brought the canons of Islam and taught them to us.
After you leave the place of your ablution without turning your back to it, perform two cycles of prayer out of hope and thankfulness for His making you clean.
Next, stand in the place where you are going to make your prayers as if between the two hands of your Lord. Imagine, without forms and lines, that you are facing the Ka'bah, and that there is no one else on the face of this earth but you. Bring yourself to express your servanthood physically. Choose the verses you are going to recite, understanding their meanings within you. With the verses that start with "Say..." feel that you are talking to your Lord as He wishes you to do: let every word contain praise. Allow time between the sentences, contemplating what our Master, the Messenger of God, gave us, trying to keep it in your heart. Believing that your destiny is written on your forehead, place it humbly on the floor in prostration. When you finish and give salutations to your right and to your left, keep your eyes on yourself and your connection with your Lord, for you are saluting the One under whose power you are and who is within you... ~ Ibn Arabi,#NFDB
372:The Family Party
I SING the family party that once we used to know,
The old time family parties we gave so long ago,
When every near-relation and distant cousins, too,
The married ones with children, Aunt Mary and Aunt Sue,
The grandpas and the grandmas, yes, everyone of kin,
The nephews and the neices and some who married in,
Came trooping to the old home with laughter and with smile,
And had their fun together in the good old-fashioned style.
The games we played have vanished and gone beyond recall,
But I still can see the donkey that hung upon the wall,
And Uncle Ben blindfolded, his arm out like a flail,
Trying to find the proper place on which to pin the tail,
And I can hear the laughter that rose up like a roar,
When Uncle Ben had pinned it upon the parlor door;
And I can see the women folks sit on a crock and try
To pass a piece of linen thread right through a needle's eye.
The old time family parties, when Cousin Will would play
The square piano for us in a real heart-gripping way;
And Lil and Tom and Annie would take their turn and sing
Those songs which took your fancy and had the proper swing;
And when they tired of singing somebody would recite
A scene or two from Shakespeare and do the thing up right.
Then we 'd all sit down to supper, and I tell you, if
you please, It wasn't any dinky lunch you juggle on your knees.
But a real bang up collation, that's what mother used to say,
Of tongue and ham and cold roast beef — it took her 'most a day
To prepare that supper for us — there were jellies red and fine,
And layer cakes and pound cakes and some cakes of quaint design;
Oh, there 's nothing now can beat them though we've put on style and airs,
And adopted all the customs that obtain with millionaires,
We don't have the fun we used to, nor the joy we used to know,
At the old time family parlies in the days of long ago.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
373:People In Church
Penned between oaken pews,
in corners of the church which their breath stinkingly warms,
all their eyes on the chancel dripping with gold,
and the choir with its twenty pairs of jaws bawling pious hymns;
Sniffing the odour of wax if it were the odour of bread,
happy, ad humbled like beaten dogs,
the Poor offer up to God, the Lord and Master,
their ridiculous stubborn oremuses.
For the women it is very pleasant to wear the benches smooth;
after the six black days on which God has made them suffer.
They nurse, swaddled in strange-looking shawls,
creatures like children who weep as if they would die.
Their unwashed breasts hanging out, these eaters of soup,
with a prayer in their eyes, but never praying,
watch a group of hoydens wickedly
showing off with hats all out of shape.
Outside is the cold, and hunger - and a man on the booze.
All right. There's another hour to go; afterwards, nameless ills! Meanwhile all around an assortment of old
dewlapped women whimpers, snuffles, and whispers:
These are distracted persons and the epileptics from whom,
yesterday, you turned away at street crossings;
there too are the blind who are led by a dog into courtyards,
poring their noses into old-fashioned missals. And all of them, dribbling a stupid groveling faith,
recite their unending complaint to Jesus who is dreaming up there,
yellow from the livid stained glass window,
far above thin rascals and wicked potbellies,
far from the smell of meat and mouldy fabric,
and the exhausted somber farce of repulsive gestures and as the prayer flowers in choice expressions,
and the mysteries take on more emphatic tones, from the aisles,
where the sun is dying, trite folds of silk and green smiles,
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the ladies of the better quarters of the town - oh Jesus! the sufferers from complaints of the liver,
make their long yellow fingers kiss the holy water in the stoups.
~ Arthur Rimbaud,#NFDB
374:Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [quoting 1 Tim 1:7]. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
375:...Not yet dry behind the ears, not old enough to buy a beer, but old enough to die for his country.
He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must.
He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional.
He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march.
He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity. He is self-sufficient.
...He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts.
If you're thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if you are hungry, food. He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low.
He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands.
He can save your life-or take it, because that is his job. He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay, and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed.
He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to "square-away" those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking.
...Just as did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over two hundred years.
He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding.
Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood.
And now we have women over there in danger, doing their part in this tradition of going to war when our nation calls us to do so.
As you go to bed tonight, remember this. A short lull, a little shade, and a picture of loved ones in their helmets. ~ Sarah Palin,#NFDB
376:The Shame Of Return
To catch the last train I reached the station running.
I noticed the signal of blue light on.
The train, like Despair, suddenly left the station
playing on its cruel whistle.
They, with whom I was promised to go to city, got
anxious
and started staring at me through the windows.
They only consoled me by shaking their hands.
While coming from home, I was goaded by my
father
into hurrying off lest I should miss the train.
Mother said, 'Don't sleep tonight. Pass time
by reading books as you often do .'
But I fell asleep.
In a dreamless sleep I remained dead
on my bed.
But Jahanara never misses her train .
Forhad always reaches station
half an hour ago. Laily sends her servant
with all her luggage to book ticket.
Nahar never touches rice in excitement
before going anywhere.
But I'm one of their brothers, having walked seven
miles at a stretch,
trembling into fog at a dirty station at the late
night.
I have to go back home penetrating the white
curtain of fog.
My trouser will get wet with dews.
And suddenly the red sun,diminishing the winterdrops
gathered on my eyelids, will rise in the sky.
The sunrays will descend on my face and I, like a
defeated man,
will notice my ever known river in front of mine.
I will notice the scattered houses of my village.
The flock of cranes will fly away towards the bog.
45
Finally, like a horror, our old utchala will float
into my view ,
will float the small plantain garden .
Long leaves of the trees
will tremble saying, 'Come not! Come not!'
My father, having noticed me, will set his eyes at
the holy Quran
and will recite-- Fabi Aiyee Ala-ee-Rabbikuma Tukazziban.
Seeing me at the yard ,my mother will smile happily
having unwashed plates in hands .
She will say, 'It's fine you have come back.
In your absence the whole house seems very lonely.
Go to the pond and wash your face.
Your breakfast ready.'
I will then, embracing my mother, wipe off
the shame of my return, rubbing again and again,
from my whole face.
[Translated by Sayeed Abubakar]
~ Al Mahmud,#NFDB
377:When Philosophies Sleep
'Everything is fate'
That was father's faith;
He had nothing to do but wait.
'History alone is real
Its developments, all'
The son had his credo;
The hope of the house, the daughter
Remained single, withering,
A plantain one ceased to water,
Daddy had her horoscope read
That's it!
She must wait to wed,
What has been ordained one cannot amend
Even by a dot, try till the days do end.
To substantiate his stand
He could quote Ramayana
From A to Z.
To this axiom of belief
The son put an axe
He can recite Marx
Like nursery rhymes.
The decadent bourgeois order,
Entitled joint-family
To hell, let it go!
A girl is no commodity
To be peddled in market place.
If domestic felicity
Be historic necessity
She can come to agreement
Regarding such arrangements.
She heard them all
But understood none.
When her clothes were torn
21
The daughter darned the lot.
She got up one day,
That is, before
The third quarter of night
And lit the little oil lamp.
She spread the mat, and placed a bowl of water
Her father needs them every morn for his prayer,
A cup of tea she kept
Near her brother's bed
He must have it to be himself.
To the hall she came
And touched the door
A flash of lightning reached her core
Through the doors that gently came apart
The wide world saluted her resolute heart;
Stretching its cool soft hand;
It placed a wreath of thrill
Upon her head.
Once, she turned to big a silent farewell
To her home, its presiding deity
To her brother and sire,
To the loose end of her dhoti
A coil she tied A token offering to the
Lord of Guruvayur.
With a fluttering heart, with steps faltering
She paced down to the yard,
She paused a while.
Years back, her mother, then a bride,
Walked in through the same
Sand-strewn yard
Facing an auspicious lamp.
In darkness the daughter
Crossed the very yard
Her eyes in floods, toes striking stones.
[Translated from the original Malayalam
'Thathwasastrangal Urangumbol'
22
by Madhavan Ayyappath.]
~ Edasseri Govindan Nair,#NFDB
378:Dibdin's Ghost
Dear wife, last midnight, whilst I read
The tomes you so despise,
A spectre rose beside the bed,
And spake in this true wise:
'From Canaan's beatific coast
I 've come to visit thee,
For I am Frognall Dibdin's ghost,'
Says Dibdin's ghost to me.
I bade him welcome, and we twain
Discussed with buoyant hearts
The various things that appertain
To bibliomaniac arts.
'Since you are fresh from t' other side,
Pray tell me of that host
That treasured books before they died,'
Says I to Dibdin's ghost.
'They 've entered into perfect rest;
For in the life they 've won
There are no auctions to molest,
No creditors to dun.
Their heavenly rapture has no bounds
Beside that jasper sea;
It is a joy unknown to Lowndes,'
Says Dibdin's ghost to me.
Much I rejoiced to hear him speak
Of biblio-bliss above,
For I am one of those who seek
What bibliomaniacs love.
'But tell me, for I long to hear
What doth concern me most,
Are wives admitted to that sphere?'
Says I to Dibdin's ghost.
'The women folk are few up there;
For 't were not fair, you know,
That they our heavenly joy should share
113
Who vex us here below.
The few are those who have been kind
To husbands such as we;
They knew our fads, and did n't mind,'
Says Dibdin's ghost to me.
'But what of those who scold at us
When we would read in bed?
Or, wanting victuals, make a fuss
If we buy books instead?
And what of those who 've dusted not
Our motley pride and boast,
Shall they profane that sacred spot?'
Says I to Dibdin's ghost.
'Oh, no! they tread that other path,
Which leads where torments roll,
And worms, yes, bookworms, vent their wrath
Upon the guilty soul.
Untouched of bibliomaniac grace,
That saveth such as we,
They wallow in that dreadful place,'
Says Dibdin's ghost to me.
'To my dear wife will I recite
What things I 've heard you say;
She 'll let me read the books by night
She 's let me buy by day.
For we together by and by
Would join that heavenly host;
She 's earned a rest as well as I,'
Says I to Dibdin's ghost.
~ Eugene Field,#NFDB
379:While most of us go through life feeling that we are the thinker of our thoughts and the experiencer of our experience, from the perspective of science we know that this is a distorted view. There is no discrete self or ego lurking like a minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. There is no region of cortex or pathway of neural processing that occupies a privileged position with respect to our personhood. There is no unchanging “center of narrative gravity” (to use Daniel Dennett’s phrase). In subjective terms, however, there seems to be one — to most of us, most of the time.
Our contemplative traditions (Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc.) also suggest, to varying degrees and with greater or lesser precision, that we live in the grip of a cognitive illusion. But the alternative to our captivity is almost always viewed through the lens of religious dogma. A Christian will recite the Lord’s Prayer continuously over a weekend, experience a profound sense of clarity and peace, and judge this mental state to be fully corroborative of the doctrine of Christianity; A Hindu will spend an evening singing devotional songs to Krishna, feel suddenly free of his conventional sense of self, and conclude that his chosen deity has showered him with grace; a Sufi will spend hours whirling in circles, pierce the veil of thought for a time, and believe that he has established a direct connection to Allah.
The universality of these phenomena refutes the sectarian claims of any one religion. And, given that contemplatives generally present their experiences of self-transcendence as inseparable from their associated theology, mythology, and metaphysics, it is no surprise that scientists and nonbelievers tend to view their reports as the product of disordered minds, or as exaggerated accounts of far more common mental states — like scientific awe, aesthetic enjoyment, artistic inspiration, etc.
Our religions are clearly false, even if certain classically religious experiences are worth having. If we want to actually understand the mind, and overcome some of the most dangerous and enduring sources of conflict in our world, we must begin thinking about the full spectrum of human experience in the context of science.
But we must first realize that we are lost in thought. ~ Sam Harris,#NFDB
380:1 Each one shall sit at table with his own cup and spoon, and with his own repentance. Each one's own business shall be his most important affair, and provide his own remedies. They have neglected bowl and plate. Have you a wooden fork? Yes, each monk has a wooden fork as well as a potato. 2 Each one shall wipe away tears with his own saint, when three bells hold in store a hot afternoon. Each one is supposed to mind his own heart, with its conscience, night and morning. Another turn on the wheel: ho hum! And observe the Abbot! Time to go to bed in a straw blanket. 3 Plenty of bread for everyone between prayers and the psalter: will you recite another? Merci, and Miserere. Always mind both the clock and the Abbot until eternity. Miserere. 4 Details of the Rule are all liquid and solid. What canon was the first to announce regimentation before us? Mind the step on the way down! Yes, I dare say you are right, Father. I believe you; I believe you. I believe it is easier when they have ice water and even a lemon. Each one can sit at table with his own lemon, and mind his own conscience. 5 Can we agree that the part about the lemon is regular? In any case, it is better to have sheep than peacocks, and cows rather than a chained leopard says Modest, in one of his proverbs. The monastery, being owner of a communal rowboat, is the antechamber of heaven. Surely that ought to be enough. 6 Each one can have some rain after Vespers on a hot afternoon, but ne quid nimis, or the purpose of the Order will be forgotten. We shall send you hyacinths and a sweet millennium. Everything the monastery provides is very pleasant to see and to sell for nothing. What is baked smells fine. There is a sign of God on every leaf that nobody sees in the garden. The fruit trees are there on purpose, even when no one is looking. Just put the apples in the basket. In Kentucky there is also room for a little cheese. Each one shall fold his own napkin, and neglect the others. 7 Rain is always very silent in the night, under such gentle cathedrals. Yes, I have taken care of the lamp, Miserere. Have you a patron saint, and an angel? Thank you. Even though the nights are never dangerous, I have one of everything. [1499.jpg] -- from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton
~ Thomas Merton, A Practical Program for Monks
,#NFDB
381:But here’s the dilemma: Why is “how-to” so alluring when, truthfully, we already know “how to” yet we’re still standing in the same place longing for more joy, connection, and meaning? Most everyone reading this book knows how to eat healthy. I can tell you the Weight Watcher points for every food in the grocery store. I can recite the South Beach Phase I grocery shopping list and the glycemic index like they’re the Pledge of Allegiance. We know how to eat healthy. We also know how to make good choices with our money. We know how to take care of our emotional needs. We know all of this, yet … We are the most obese, medicated, addicted, and in-debt Americans EVER. Why? We have more access to information, more books, and more good science—why are we struggling like never before? Because we don’t talk about the things that get in the way of doing what we know is best for us, our children, our families, our organizations, and our communities. I can know everything there is to know about eating healthy, but if it’s one of those days when Ellen is struggling with a school project and Charlie’s home sick from school and I’m trying to make a writing deadline and Homeland Security increased the threat level and our grass is dying and my jeans don’t fit and the economy is tanking and the Internet is down and we’re out of poop bags for the dog—forget it! All I want to do is snuff out the sizzling anxiety with a pumpkin muffin, a bag of chips, and chocolate. We don’t talk about what keeps us eating until we’re sick, busy beyond human scale, desperate to numb and take the edge off, and full of so much anxiety and self-doubt that we can’t act on what we know is best for us. We don’t talk about the hustle for worthiness that’s become such a part of our lives that we don’t even realize that we’re dancing. When I’m having one of those days that I just described, some of the anxiety is just a part of living, but there are days when most of my anxiety grows out of the expectations I put on myself. I want Ellen’s project to be amazing. I want to take care of Charlie without worrying about my own deadlines. I want to show the world how great I am at balancing my family and career. I want our yard to look beautiful. I want people to see us picking up our dog’s poop in biodegradable bags and think, My God! They are such outstanding citizens. There are days when I can fight the urge to be everything to everyone, and there are days when it gets the best of me. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
382:My ideal was contained within the word beauty, so difficult to define despite all the evidence of our senses. I felt responsible for sustaining and increasing the beauty of the world. I wanted the cities to be splendid, spacious and airy, their streets sprayed with clean water, their inhabitants all human beings whose bodies were neither degraded by marks of misery and servitude nor bloated by vulgar riches; I desired that the schoolboys should recite correctly some useful lessons; that the women presiding in their households should move with maternal dignity, expressing both vigor and calm; that the gymnasiums should be used by youths not unversed in arts and in sports; that the orchards should bear the finest fruits and the fields the richest harvests. I desired that the might and majesty of the Roman Peace should extend to all, insensibly present like the music of the revolving skies; that the most humble traveller might wander from one country, or one continent, to another without vexatious formalities, and without danger, assured everywhere of a minimum of legal protection and culture; that our soldiers should continue their eternal pyrrhic dance on the frontiers; that everything should go smoothly, whether workshops or temples; that the sea should be furrowed by brave ships, and the roads resounding to frequent carriages; that, in a world well ordered, the philosophers should have their place, and the dancers also. This ideal, modest on the whole, would be often enough approached if men would devote to it one part of the energy which they expend on stupid or cruel activities; great good fortune has allowed me a partial realization of my aims during the last quarter of a century. Arrian of Nicomedia, one of the best minds of our time, likes to recall to me the beautiful lines of ancient Terpander, defining in three words the Spartan ideal (that perfect mode of life to which Lacedaemon aspired without ever attaining it): Strength, Justice, the Muses. Strength was the basis, discipline without which there is no beauty, and firmness without which there is no justice. Justice was the balance of the parts, that whole so harmoniously composed which no excess should be permitted to endanger. Strength and justice together were but one instrument, well tuned, in the hands of the Muses. All forms of dire poverty and brutality were things to forbid as insults to the fair body of mankind, every injustice a false note to avoid in the harmony of the spheres. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar, #NFDB
383:Who could have thought that this tanned young man with gentle, dreamy eyes, long wavy hair parted in the middle and falling to the neck, clad in a common coarse Ahmedabad dhoti, a close-fitting Indian jacket, and old-fashioned slippers with upturned toes, and whose face was slightly marked with smallpox, was no other than Mister Aurobindo Ghose, living treasure of French, Latin and Greek?" Actually, Sri Aurobindo was not yet through with books; the Western momentum was still there; he devoured books ordered from Bombay and Calcutta by the case. "Aurobindo would sit at his desk," his Bengali teacher continues, "and read by the light of an oil lamp till one in the morning, oblivious of the intolerable mosquito bites. I would see him seated there in the same posture for hours on end, his eyes fixed on his book, like a yogi lost in the contemplation of the Divine, unaware of all that went on around him. Even if the house had caught fire, it would not have broken this concentration." He read English, Russian, German, and French novels, but also, in ever larger numbers, the sacred books of India, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, although he had never been in a temple except as an observer. "Once, having returned from the College," one of his friends recalls, "Sri Aurobindo sat down, picked up a book at random and started to read, while Z and some friends began a noisy game of chess. After half an hour, he put the book down and took a cup of tea. We had already seen him do this many times and were waiting eagerly for a chance to verify whether he read the books from cover to cover or only scanned a few pages here and there. Soon the test began. Z opened the book, read a line aloud and asked Sri Aurobindo to recite what followed. Sri Aurobindo concentrated for a moment, and then repeated the entire page without a single mistake. If he could read a hundred pages in half an hour, no wonder he could go through a case of books in such an incredibly short time." But Sri Aurobindo did not stop at the translations of the sacred texts; he began to study Sanskrit, which, typically, he learned by himself. When a subject was known to be difficult or impossible, he would refuse to take anyone's word for it, whether he were a grammarian, pandit, or clergyman, and would insist upon trying it himself. The method seemed to have some merit, for not only did he learn Sanskrit, but a few years later he discovered the lost meaning of the Veda. ~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo Or The Adventure of Consciousness, #NFDB
384:You ditched school to see if I was okay?”
I nod because my tongue won’t work.
Alex steps back. “Well, then. Now that you’ve seen I’m okay, go back to school. I gotta, you know, get back to work. My bike was impounded last night and I need to make money to get it back.”
“Wait!” I yell. I take a deep breath. This is it. I’m going to spill my guts. “I don’t know why or when I started falling for you, Alex. But I did. Ever since I almost ran over your motorcycle that first day of school I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what it would be like if you and I got together. And that kiss…God, I swear I never experienced anything like that in my life. It did mean something. If the solar system didn’t tilt then, it never will. I know it’s crazy because we’re so different. And if anything happens between us I don’t want people at school to know. Not that you’ll agree to have a secret relationship with me, but I at least have to find out if it’s possible. I broke up with Colin, who I had a very public relationship with and I’m ready for something private. Private and real. I know I’m babbling like an idiot, but if you don’t say something soon or give me a hint of what you’re thinking then I’ll--”
“Say it again,” he says.
“That whole drawn-out speech?” I remember something about a solar system, but I’m too light-headed to recite the entire thing all over again.
He steps closer. “No. The part about you fallin’ for me.”
My eyes cling to his. “I think about you all the time, Alex. And I really, really want to kiss you again.”
The sides of his mouth turn up.
Unable to face him, I look at the ground. “Don’t make fun of me.” I can take anything but that right about now.
“Don’t turn away from me, mamacita. I’d never make fun of you.”
“I didn’t want to like you,” I admit, looking back up at him.
“I know.”
“This probably won’t work,” I tell him.
“Probably not.”
“My home life’s not so perfect.”
“That makes two of us,” he says.
“I’m willing to find out what this thing is going on between us. Are you?”
“If we weren’t outside,” he says, “I’d show you--”
I cut him off by grabbing the thick hair at the base of his neck and pulling that gorgeous head of his down. If we can’t exactly have privacy right now, I’ll settle for being real. Besides, everyone who we need to keep this a secret is in school.
Alex keeps his hands at his side, but when I part my lips, he groans against my mouth and his wrench drops to the ground with a loud clink. ~ Simone Elkeles,#NFDB
385:Scholars are the barrier that stands between the people and the manipulation of their minds by various impostors. When they become scarce, those who wish to destroy Islam from within, pretending to speak in its name and to represent it, will spread their errors unopposed, and so will those who advocate the indiscriminate adoption of western immorality and materialism. The Prophet ﷺ warned us that true scholars will eventually become scarce and matters will be taken over by ignorant pretenders who will cause much harm.
He ﷺ said, 'There shall come a time for my community when those who have learned will be plenty, but those who have understood few, when knowledge will be seized, and chaos rife.' 'What is chaos?' They (the Companions) asked, to which he replied, 'Killing each other.' Then he ﷺ continued, 'Then there will come a time when certain men will recite the Qur'an, but it will go no deeper than their collar bones, then there will come a time when hypocritical idolater will use against the believer the latter's own arguments.'
[Al-Hakim, Mustadrak, 8544; Tabarani, Kabir, 631; Awsat, 3405]
*
Those who acquire religious knowledge without understanding, the literalists, those who are incapable of penetrating to the wisdom within, and those who do not practice what they know and teach are but pseudo-scholars whose harm is much greater than their benefit. It seems that the mentality of the End of Time become gradually more superficial and material, those scholars who are affected by it lose both the will to practice what they know and the knowledge of the principles that constitute wisdom.
Another kind of misguided people will be those who will abandon their Islam, whether for communism, modernism, or any other ideology that happens to be in vogue at that time; who will then argue with the Muslims, across both the satellite channels and internet, and being insiders will be able to use arguments derived from Islamic texts, but used in bad faith in a deceitful manner.
There will also be the extremist literalists whose understanding of the wisdom of the faith goes no further than their vocal chords, but who nevertheless, because of the conceit and arrogance in their hearts, think and act as if they were leaders of the nation.
As for real scholars, their numbers will diminish gradually. They will be repressed and prevented from playing their role and many will withdraw from interaction with society at large and isolate themselves in the privacy of their homes.
(p.60-62) ~ Mostafa al Badawi,#NFDB
386:A challenge.” He tsked. “I’ll let you take it back. Just this one.”
“I cannot take it back.”
At that, Irex drew his dagger and imitated Kestrel’s gesture. They stood still, then sheathed their blades.
“I’ll even let you choose the weapons,” Irex said.
“Needles. Now it is to you to choose the time and place.”
“My grounds. Tomorrow, two hours from sunset. That will give me time to gather the death-price.”
This gave Kestrel pause. But she nodded, and finally turned to Arin.
He looked nauseated. He sagged in the senators’ grip. It seemed they weren’t restraining him, but holding him up.
“You can let go,” Kestrel told the senators, and when they did, she ordered Arin to follow her. As they left the library, Arin said, “Kestrel--”
“Not a word. Don’t speak until we are in the carriage.”
They walked swiftly down the halls--Arin’s halls--and when Kestrel stole sidelong looks at him he still seemed stunned and dizzy. Kestrel had been seasick before, at the beginning of her sailing lessons, and she wondered if this was how Arin felt, surrounded by his home--like when the eyes can pinpoint the horizon but the stomach cannot.
Their silence broke when the carriage door closed them in.
“You are mad.” Arin’s voice was furious, desperate. “It was my book. My doing. You had no right to interfere. Did you think I couldn’t bear the punishment for being caught?”
“Arin.” Fear trembled through her as she finally realized what she had done. She strove to sound calm. “A duel is simply a ritual.”
“It’s not yours to fight.”
“You know you cannot. Irex would never accept, and if you drew a blade on him, every Valorian in the vicinity would cut you down. Irex won’t kill me.”
He gave her a cynical look. “Do you deny that he is the superior fighter?”
“So he will draw first blood. He will be satisfied, and we will both walk away with honor.”
“He said something about a death-price.”
That was the law’s penalty for a duel to the death. The victor paid a high sum to the dead duelist’s family. Kestrel dismissed this. “It will cost Irex more than gold to kill General Trajan’s daughter.”
Arin dropped his face into his hands. He began to swear, to recite every insult against the Valorian’s the Herrani had invented, to curse them by every god.
“Really, Arin.”
His hands fell away. “You, too. What a stupid thing for you to do. Why did you do that? Why would you do such a stupid thing?”
She thought of his claim that Enai could never have loved her, or if she had, it was a forced love.
“You might not think of me as your friend,” Kestrel told Arin, “but I think of you as mine. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
387:You have always embodied the worst of my father,” Lillian said. “The coldness, the ambition, the self-centeredness. Except you’re worse because you’re able to disguise it far more adeptly than he does. You’re what my father would have been if he’d been blessed with good looks and a little sophistication. I think that in winning you Daisy must somehow feel she has finally succeeded with Father.” Her brows came together as she continued. “My sister has always compelled to love unlovable creatures…the strays, the misfits. Once she loves someone, no matter how many times they betray or disappoint her, she will take them back with open arms. But you won’t appreciate that any more than Father does. You’ll take what you want, and give her very little in return. And when you inevitably hurt her, I will be the first in a line of people waiting to slaughter you. By the time I finish with you, there won’t be enough left for the others to pick over.”
“So much for impartiality,” Matthew said. He respected her brutal honesty even though he was smarting from it. “May I respond with the same frankness you’ve just shown me?”
“I hope you will.”
“My lady, you don’t know me well enough to assess how much like your father I may or may not be. It’s no crime to be ambitious, particularly when you’ve started with nothing. And I’m not cold, I’m from Boston. Which means I’m not prone to displaying my emotions for all and sundry to see. As far as being self-centered, you have no way of knowing how much I’ve done, if anything, for other people. But I’ll be damned if I recite a list of my past good deeds in hopes of winning your approval.” He leveled a cool stare at her. “Regardless of your opinions, the marriage is going to happen, because both Daisy and I want it. So I have no reason to lie to you. I could say I don’t give a damn about Daisy, and I would still get what I want. But the fact is, I’m in love with her. I have been for a long time.”
“You’ve been secretly in love with my sister for years?” Lillian asked with blistering skepticism. “How convenient.”
“I didn’t define it as ‘in love.’ All I knew was that I had a persistent, all-consuming…preference for her.”
“Preference?” Lillian looked momentarily outraged, and then she surprised him by laughing. “My God, you really are from Boston.” “Believe it or not,” Matthew muttered, “I wouldn’t have chosen to feel this way about Daisy. It would have been far more convenient to find someone else. The devil knows I should be given some credit for being willing to take on the Bowmans as in-laws.” “Touché.” Lillian continued to smile, leaning her chin on her hand as she stared at him. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
388:The same lesson can be learned from one of the most widely read books in history: the Bible. What is the Bible “about”? Different people will of course answer that question differently. But we could all agree the Bible contains perhaps the most influential set of rules in human history: the Ten Commandments. They became the foundation of not only the Judeo-Christian tradition but of many societies at large. So surely most of us can recite the Ten Commandments front to back, back to front, and every way in between, right? All right then, go ahead and name the Ten Commandments. We’ll give you a minute to jog your memory . . . . . . . . . . . . Okay, here they are: 1. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. 2. You shall have no other gods before Me. 3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. 4. Remember the Sabbath day, to make it holy. 5. Honor your father and your mother. 6. You shall not murder. 7. You shall not commit adultery. 8. You shall not steal. 9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, nor your neighbor’s wife . . . nor any thing that is your neighbor’s. How did you do? Probably not so well. But don’t worry—most people don’t. A recent survey found that only 14 percent of U.S. adults could recall all Ten Commandments; only 71 percent could name even one commandment. (The three best-remembered commandments were numbers 6, 8, and 10—murder, stealing, and coveting—while number 2, forbidding false gods, was in last place.) Maybe, you’re thinking, this says less about biblical rules than how bad our memories are. But consider this: in the same survey, 25 percent of the respondents could name the seven principal ingredients of a Big Mac, while 35 percent could name all six kids from The Brady Bunch. If we have such a hard time recalling the most famous set of rules from perhaps the most famous book in history, what do we remember from the Bible? The stories. We remember that Eve fed Adam a forbidden apple and that one of their sons, Cain, murdered the other, Abel. We remember that Moses parted the Red Sea in order to lead the Israelites out of slavery. We remember that Abraham was instructed to sacrifice his own son on a mountain—and we even remember that King Solomon settled a maternity dispute by threatening to slice a baby in half. These are the stories we tell again and again and again, even those of us who aren’t remotely “religious.” Why? Because they stick with us; they move us; they persuade us to consider the constancy and frailties of the human experience in a way that mere rules cannot. ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
389: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
390:What do you learn at school, then?"
"We learn about the Prophet and his three hundred authenticated miracles,and about Abraham and Isaac and Jonah and Omar and Ali and Hind and Fatima and the saints, and sometimes the big battles of Saladin against the barbarians. And we recite the Holy Koran because we have to learn al-Fatihah by heart."
"What's that?"
"It's the beginning."
"What's it like?"
Karatavuk closed his eyes and recited:'Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim...' When he's finished he opened his eyes, and mopped his forehead. "It's difficult" he observed.
"I didn't understand any of it" complained Mehmetcik. " It sounds nice though. was it language?"
"Of course it was language, stupid. It's Arabic."
"What's that then?"
"It's what Arabs speak. And it's what God speaks, and that's why we have to learn to recite it. It's something about being merciful and the Day of Judgement and showing us the right path, and if anything is going wrong, or you're worried, or someone's sick, you just have to say al-Fatihah and everything will probably be all right."
"I didn't know that God spoke language." observed Mehmetcik. Father Kristoforos speaks to him in Greek, but we don't understand that either."
"What do you learn, then."
"We learn more than you," answered Mehmetcik self-importantly. "We learn about Jesus Son of Mary and his miracles and St Nicholas and St Dmitri and St Menas and the saints and Abraham and Isaac and Jonah and Emperor Constantine and Alexander the Great and the Marble Emperor, and the great battles against barbarians, and the War of Independence, and we learn reading and writing and adding up and taking away and multiplication and division."
"Don't you learn al-Fatihah,then?"
"When things go wrong we say 'Kyrie elesion'. and we've got a proper prayer as well."
"What's that like?"
Mehmetcik screwed up his eyes in unconcious imitation of his friend, and recited: 'Pater imon, o en tois ouranis, agiasthito to onoma sou, eltheto i vasileia sou..'
When Mehmetcik has finished, Karatavuk asked, "What's that about, then? is that some kind of language?"
"It's Greek. It's what we speak to God.I don't know exactly what it means, it's something about our father who is in heaven and forgive us our daily bread, and led us not into temptation, but it doesn't matter if we don't understand it, because God does"
"Maybe," pondered Karatavuk, " Greek and Arabic are actually the same language, and that's how God understands us, like sometimes I'm Abdul and sometimes I'm Karatavuk, and sometimes you're Nico and sometimes you're Mehmetcik, but it's two names and there's only one me and there's only one you, so it might be all one language that's called Greek sometimes and Arabic sometimes. ~ Louis de Berni res,#NFDB
391:The Critick And The Writer Of Fables
Weary, at last, of the Pindarick way,
Thro' which advent'rously the Muse wou'd stray;
To Fable I descend with soft Delight,
Pleas'd to Translate, or easily Endite:
Whilst aery Fictions hastily repair
To fill my Page, and rid my Thoughts of Care,
As they to Birds and Beasts new Gifts impart,
And Teach, as Poets shou'd, whilst they Divert.
But here, the Critick bids me check this Vein.
Fable, he crys, tho' grown th' affected Strain,
But dies, as it was born, without Regard or Pain.
Whilst of his Aim the lazy Trifler fails,
Who seeks to purchase Fame by childish Tales.
Then, let my Verse, once more attempt the Skies,
The easily persuaded Poet cries,
Since meaner Works you Men of Taste despise.
The Walls of Troy shall be our loftier Stage,
Our mighty Theme the fierce Achilles Rage.
The Strength of Hector, and Ulysses Arts
Shall boast such Language, to adorn their Parts,
As neither Hobbes, nor Chapman cou'd bestow,
Or did from Congreve, or from Dryden flow.
Amidst her Towers, the dedicated Horse
Shall be receiv'd, big with destructive Force;
Till Men shall say, when Flames have brought her down.
" Troy is no more, and Ilium was a Town.
Is this the way to please the Men of Taste,
The Interrupter cries, this old Bombast?
I'm sick of Troy, and in as great a Fright,
When some dull Pedant wou'd her Wars recite,
As was soft Paris, when compell'd to Fight.
To Shades and Springs shall we awhile repair,
The Muse demands, and in that milder Air
Describe some gentle Swain's unhappy Smart
133
Whose folded Arms still press upon his Heart,
And deeper drive the too far enter'd Dart?
Whilst Phillis with a careless pleasure reigns
The Joy, the Grief, the Envy of the Plains;
Heightens the Beauty of the verdant Woods,
And softens all the Murmurs of the Floods.
Oh! stun me not with these insipid Dreams,
Th' Eternal Hush, the Lullaby of Streams.
Which still, he cries, their even Measures keep,
Till both the Writers, and the Readers sleep.
But urge thy Pen, if thou wouldst move our Thoughts,
To shew us private, or the publick Faults.
Display the Times, High-Church or Low provoke;
We'll praise the Weapon, as we like the Stroke,
And warmly sympathizing with the Spite
Apply to Thousands, what of One you write.
Then, must that single Stream the Town supply,
The harmless Fable-writer do's reply,
And all the Rest of Helicon be dry ?
And when so many choice Productions swarm,
Must only Satire keep your Fancies warm?
Whilst even there, you praise with such Reserve,
As if you'd in the midst of Plenty starve,
Tho' ne'er so liberally we Authors carve.
Happy the Men, whom we divert with Ease,
Whom Opera's and Panegyricks please.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,#NFDB
392:About a block away from them there lived another Lithuanian family, consisting of an elderly widow and one grown son; their name was Majauszkis, and our friends struck up an acquaintance with them before long. One evening they came over for a visit, and naturally the first subject upon which the conversation turned was the neighborhood and its history; and then Grandmother Majauszkiene, as the old lady was called, proceeded to recite to them a string of horrors that fairly froze their blood. She was a wrinkled-up and wizened personage--she must have been eighty--and as she mumbled the grim story through her toothless gums, she seemed a very old witch to them. Grandmother Majauszkiene had lived in the midst of misfortune so long that it had come to be her element, and she talked about starvation, sickness, and death as other people might about weddings and holidays. The thing came gradually. In the first place as to the house they had bought, it was not new at all, as they had supposed; it was about fifteen years old, and there was nothing new upon it but the paint, which was so bad that it needed to be put on new every year or two. The house was one of a whole row that was built by a company which existed to make money by swindling poor people. The family had paid fifteen hundred dollars for it, and it had not cost the builders five hundred, when it was new. Grandmother Majauszkiene knew that because her son belonged to a political organization with a contractor who put up exactly such houses. They used the very flimsiest and cheapest material; they built the houses a dozen at a time, and they cared about nothing at all except the outside shine. The family could take her word as to the trouble they would have, for she had been through it all--she and her son had bought their house in exactly the same way. They had fooled the company, however, for her son was a skilled man, who made as high as a hundred dollars a month, and as he had had sense enough not to marry, they had been able to pay for the house. Grandmother Majauszkiene saw that her friends were puzzled at this remark; they did not quite see how paying for the house was "fooling the company." Evidently they were very inexperienced. Cheap as the houses were, they were sold with the idea that the people who bought them would not be able to pay for them. When they failed--if it were only by a single month--they would lose the house and all that they had paid on it, and then the company would sell it over again. And did they often get a chance to do that? Dieve! (Grandmother Majauszkiene raised her hands.) They did it--how often no one could say, but certainly more than half of the time. They might ask any one who knew anything at all about Packingtown as to that; she had been living here ever since this house was built, and she could tell them all about it. And had it ever been sold before? Susimilkie! Why, since it had been built, no less than four families that their informant could name had tried to buy it and failed. ~ Upton Sinclair, #NFDB
393:I’ve never ditched school before. Of course a boy I kissed has never been arrested before, either.
This is about me being real. To myself. And now I’m going to be real to Alex, like he’s always wanted. It’s scary, and I’m not convinced I’m doing the right thing. But I can’t ignore this magnetic pull that Alex has over me.
I plug in the address on my GPS. It leads me to the south side, to a place called Enrique’s Auto Body. A guy is standing in front. His mouth drops open the minute he sees me.
“I’m looking for Alex Fuentes.”
The guy doesn’t answer.
“Is he here?” I ask, feeling awkward. Maybe he doesn’t speak English.
“What do you want with Alejandro?” the guy finally asks.
My heart is pumping so hard I can see my shirt move with each beat. “I need to talk to him.”
“He’ll be better off if you leave him alone,” the guy says.
“Está bien, Enrique,” a familiar voice booms. I turn to Alex, leaning against the auto body’s front door with a shop towel hanging out of his pocket and a wrench in his hand. The hair peeking out of his bandana is mussed and he looks more masculine than any guy I’ve ever seen.
I want to hold him. I need him to tell me it’s okay, that he’s not going to jail ever again.
Alex keeps his eyes fixed on mine.
“I guess I’ll leave you two alone,” I think I hear Enrique say, but I’m too focused on Alex to hear clearly.
My feet are glued to the same spot so it’s a good thing he saunters toward me.
“Um,” I start. Please let me get through this. “I, uh, heard you got arrested. I had to see if you’re okay.”
“You ditched school to see if I was okay?”
I nod because my tongue won’t work.
Alex steps back. “Well, then. Now that you’ve seen I’m okay, go back to school. I gotta, you know, get back to work. My bike was impounded last night and I need to make money to get it back.”
“Wait!” I yell. I take a deep breath. This is it. I’m going to spill my guts. “I don’t know why or when I started falling for you, Alex. But I did. Ever since I almost ran over your motorcycle that first day of school I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what it would be like if you and I got together. And that kiss…God, I swear I never experienced anything like that in my life. It did mean something. If the solar system didn’t tilt then, it never will. I know it’s crazy because we’re so different. And if anything happens between us I don’t want people at school to know. Not that you’ll agree to have a secret relationship with me, but I at least have to find out if it’s possible. I broke up with Colin, who I had a very public relationship with and I’m ready for something private. Private and real. I know I’m babbling like an idiot, but if you don’t say something soon or give me a hint of what you’re thinking then I’ll--”
“Say it again,” he says.
“That whole drawn-out speech?” I remember something about a solar system, but I’m too light-headed to recite the entire thing all over again.
He steps closer. “No. The part about you fallin’ for me.”
My eyes cling to his. “I think about you all the time, Alex. And I really, really want to kiss you again.”
The sides of his mouth turn up. ~ Simone Elkeles,#NFDB
394:You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes. ~ Rosemarie Urquico,#NFDB
395:As Lucetta continued going on and on about what he should do, in that rather bossy manner he’d never imagined she possessed, he found himself having a bit of a difficult time concentrating on what she was saying. Her lips were moving rapidly, and while he was certain she was probably giving him sound advice, he found himself more concerned with the idea that it seemed to him as if she’d done something to her lips—something that made them seem quite spinster-looking, as if their very plumpness had been squeezed right out of them. The lips he was looking at now truly did seem to belong to a woman who’d sport a wart on her face, but . . . how had she managed to make them appear so unattractive, so . . . Taking a step closer to her, he leaned forward, trying to puzzle out the mystery behind her lips. They looked thin, which was very peculiar, although . . . perhaps it was the wart she’d so cleverly put right above the upper lip that was . . . “Why are you staring at me like that? Has the wart moved?” Dragging his attention away from the wart in question, he looked up and caught her eye through the smudged lenses that he had no idea how she could see out of. Instead of answering her, though, his hand rose, almost of its own accord it seemed, and the next thing he knew, he’d plucked the phony wart straight off her face. “What has gotten into you?” she demanded. “I need that wart, and . . . did you just throw that over your shoulder?” “It was disgusting,” he said, dusting his hands together, pleased with himself over taking control of the wart even though Lucetta looked about ready to strangle him. “It was meant to be disgusting.” “Well, now it’s gone.” Lucetta let out a grunt before she tried to scoot around him, seemingly intent on looking for the wart he’d just tossed aside. Before she could pass him, though, he reached out, took hold of her shoulders and felt her tense. “What are you doing?” Instead of answering her, he drew her closer, smiling just a touch when he heard her take a swift intake of breath. “Bram . . . really . . . what are you doing?” “Trying to figure something out,” he said as he moved one of his hands from her shoulder and used a single finger to take a poke at her lip. “It’s still full,” he said, more to himself than to her. He poked it again before he pulled at her lower lip, exposing her teeth in the process. “You no longer appear to be missing your teeth.” “Stop that.” She smacked his hand away. “I knew I shouldn’t have snuck that second cookie backstage. It must have knocked the gum off.” “You used gum?” Lucetta nodded. “I did, Black Jack gum, created by Mr. Thomas Adams, who opened the first gum factory with his sons in 1870, although I suppose now is not actually the time to recite history when faced with such a concerning situation.” She blew out a breath. “I’m normally very careful when I use gum to make it appear as if I’m missing teeth, but I must have swallowed it when I ate that cookie.” “Do you think that’ll hurt you?” Bram asked slowly. “Hard to know at this point.” She closed her eyes and shook her head a mere moment later. “No, I haven’t read anything regarding a medical condition one can expect after swallowing gum.” Bram frowned as Lucetta opened her eyes. “You know it’s really not a normal occurrence for people to be able to summon up random tidbits like that at will, don’t you?” A ghost of a smile played around Lucetta’s mouth. “I’ve never claimed to be normal, Bram.” That smile struck him straight through his heart. It was a genuine smile, with a bit of a self-deprecating edge to it, and . . . Without allowing himself a second to reconsider, he leaned toward her as his hand moved from her shoulder to her waist, and pulling her ever so slowly against him, he lowered his lips to hers. ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB
396:Forest Of Europe
The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.
The inlaid copper laurel of an oak
shines though the brown-bricked glass above your head
as bright as whisky, while the wintry breath
of lines from Mandelstam, which you recite,
uncoils as visibly as cigarette smoke.
'The rustling of ruble notes by the lemon Neva.'
Under your exile's tongue, crisp under heel,
the gutturals crackle like decaying leaves,
the phrase from Mandelstam circles with light
in a brown room, in barren Oklahoma.
There is a Gulag Archipelago
under this ice, where the salt, mineral spring
of the long Trail of Tears runnels these plains
as hard and open as a herdsman's face
sun-cracked and stubbled with unshaven snow.
Growing in whispers from the Writers' Congress,
the snow circles like cossacks round the corpse
of a tired Choctaw till it is a blizzard
of treaties and white papers as we lose
sight of the single human through the cause.
So every spring these branches load their shelves,
like libraries with newly published leaves,
till waste recycles them—paper to snow—
but, at zero of suffering, one mind
lasts like this oak with a few brazen leaves.
As the train passed the forest's tortured icons,
ths floes clanging like freight yards, then the spires
of frozen tears, the stations screeching steam,
19
he drew them in a single winters' breath
whose freezing consonants turned into stone.
He saw the poetry in forlorn stations
under clouds vast as Asia, through districts
that could gulp Oklahoma like a grape,
not these tree-shaded prairie halts but space
so desolate it mocked destinations.
Who is that dark child on the parapets
of Europe, watching the evening river mint
its sovereigns stamped with power, not with poets,
the Thames and the Neva rustling like banknotes,
then, black on gold, the Hudson's silhouettes?
>From frozen Neva to the Hudson pours,
under the airport domes, the echoing stations,
the tributary of emigrants whom exile
has made as classless as the common cold,
citizens of a language that is now yours,
and every February, every 'last autumn',
you write far from the threshing harvesters
folding wheat like a girl plaiting her hair,
far from Russia's canals quivering with sunstroke,
a man living with English in one room.
The tourist archipelagoes of my South
are prisons too, corruptible, and though
there is no harder prison than writing verse,
what's poetry, if it is worth its salt,
but a phrase men can pass from hand to mouth?
>From hand to mouth, across the centuries,
the bread that lasts when systems have decayed,
when, in his forest of barbed-wire branches,
a prisoner circles, chewing the one phrase
whose music will last longer than the leaves,
whose condensation is the marble sweat
of angels' foreheads, which will never dry
till Borealis shuts the peacock lights
20
of its slow fan from L.A. to Archangel,
and memory needs nothing to repeat.
Frightened and starved, with divine fever
Osip Mandelstam shook, and every
metaphor shuddered him with ague,
each vowel heavier than a boundary stone,
'to the rustling of ruble notes by the lemon Neva,'
but now that fever is a fire whose glow
warms our hands, Joseph, as we grunt like primates
exchanging gutturals in this wintry cave
of a brown cottage, while in drifts outside
mastodons force their systems through the snow.
~ Derek Walcott,#NFDB
397:The Four Ages Of Man: 03 - Youth
My goodly clothing and beauteous skin
Declare some greater riches are within,
But what is best I'll first present to view,
And then the worst, in a more ugly hue,
For thus to do we on this Stage assemble,
Then let not him, which hath most craft dissemble.
Mine education, and my learning's such,
As might my self, and others, profit much:
With nurture trained up in virtue's Schools;
Of Science, Arts, and Tongues, I know the rules;
The manners of the Court, I likewise know,
Nor ignorant what they in Country do.
The brave attempts of valiant Knights I prize
That dare climb Battlements, rear'd to the skies.
The snorting Horse, the Trumpet, Drum I like,
The glist'ring Sword, and well advanced Pike.
I cannot lie in trench before a Town,
Nor wait til good advice our hopes do crown.
I scorn the heavy Corslet, Musket-proof;
I fly to catch the Bullet that's aloof.
Though thus in field, at home, to all most kind,
So affable that I do suit each mind,
I can insinuate into the breast
And by my mirth can raise the heart deprest.
Sweet Music rapteth my harmonious Soul,
And elevates my thoughts above the Pole.
My wit, my bounty, and my courtesy
Makes all to place their future hopes on me.
This is my best, but youth (is known) alas,
To be as wild as is the snuffing Ass,
As vain as froth, as vanity can be,
That who would see vain man may look on me:
My gifts abus'd, my education lost,
My woful Parents' longing hopes all crost;
My wit evaporates in merriment;
My valour in some beastly quarrel's spent;
Martial deeds I love not, ‘cause they're virtuous,
But doing so, might seem magnanimous.
My Lust doth hurry me to all that's ill,
91
I know no Law, nor reason, but my will;
Sometimes lay wait to take a wealthy purse
Or stab the man in's own defence, that's worse.
Sometimes I cheat (unkind) a female Heir
Of all at once, who not so wise, as fair,
Trusteth my loving looks and glozing tongue
Until her friends, treasure, and honour's gone.
Sometimes I sit carousing others' health
Until mine own be gone, my wit, and wealth.
From pipe to pot, from pot to words and blows,
For he that loveth Wine wanteth no woes.
Days, nights, with Ruffins, Roarers, Fiddlers spend,
To all obscenity my ears I bend,
All counsel hate which tends to make me wise,
And dearest friends count for mine enemies.
If any care I take, 'tis to be fine,
For sure my suit more than my virtues shine.
If any time from company I spare,
'Tis spent in curling, frisling up my hair,
Some young Adonais I do strive to be.
Sardana Pallas now survives in me.
Cards, Dice, and Oaths, concomitant, I love;
To Masques, to Plays, to Taverns still I move;
And in a word, if what I am you'd hear,
Seek out a British, bruitish Cavalier.
Such wretch, such monster am I; but yet more
I want a heart all this for to deplore.
Thus, thus alas! I have mispent my time,
My youth, my best, my strength, my bud, and prime,
Remembring not the dreadful day of Doom,
Nor yet the heavy reckoning for to come,
Though dangers do attend me every hour
And ghastly death oft threats me with her power:
Sometimes by wounds in idle combats taken,
Sometimes by Agues all my body shaken;
Sometimes by Fevers, all my moisture drinking,
My heart lies frying, and my eyes are sinking.
Sometimes the Cough, Stitch, painful Pleurisy,
With sad affrights of death, do menace me.
Sometimes the loathsome Pox my face be-mars
With ugly marks of his eternal scars.
Sometimes the Frenzy strangely mads my Brain
92
That oft for it in Bedlam I remain.
Too many's my Diseases to recite,
That wonder 'tis I yet behold the light,
That yet my bed in darkness is not made,
And I in black oblivion's den long laid.
Of Marrow full my bones, of Milk my breasts,
Ceas'd by the gripes of Serjeant Death's Arrests:
Thus I have said, and what I've said you see,
Childhood and youth is vain, yea vanity.
~ Anne Bradstreet,#NFDB
398:Saltbush Bill
Now is the law of the Overland that all in the West obey -A man must cover with travelling sheep a six-mile stage a day;
But this is the law which the drovers make, right easily understood,
They travel their stage where the grass is bad, but they camp where the grass is
good;
They camp, and they ravage the squatter's grass till never a blade remains.
Then they drift away as the white clouds drift on the edge of the saltbush plains:
From camp to camp and from run to run they battle it hand to hand
For a blade of grass and the right to pass on the track of the Overland.
For this is the law of the Great Stock Routes, 'tis written in white and black -The man that goes with a travelling mob must keep to a half-mile track;
And the drovers keep to a half-mile track on the runs where the grass is dead,
But they spread their sheep on a well-grassed run till they go with a two-mile
spread.
So the squatters hurry the drovers on from dawn till the fall of night,
And the squatters' dogs and the drovers' dogs get mixed in a deadly fight.
Yet the squatters' men, thought they haunt the mob, are willing the peace to
keep,
For the drovers learn how to use their hands when they go with the travelling
sheep;
But this is the tale of a Jackaroo that came from a foreign strand,
And the fight that he fought with Saltbush Bill, the King of the Overland.
Now Saltbush Bill was a drover tough as ever the country knew,
He had fought his way on the Great Stock Routes from the sea to the big Barcoo;
He could tell when he came to a friendly run that gave him a chance to spread,
And he knew where the hungry owners were that hurried his sheep ahead;
He was drifting down in the Eighty drought with a mob that could scarcely creep
(When the kangaroos by the thousand starve, it is rough on the travelling
sheep),
And he camped one night at the crossing-place on the edge of the Wilga run;
"We must manage a feed for them here," he said, "or half of the mob are done!"
So he spread them out when they left the camp wherever they liked to go,
Till he grew aware of a Jackaroo with a station-hand in tow.
They set to work on the straggling sheep, and with many a stockwhip crack
The forced them in where the grass was dead in the space of the half-mile track;
And William prayed that the hand of Fate might suddenly strike him blue
But he'd get some grass for his starving sheep in the teeth of that Jackaroo.
So he turned and cursed the Jackaroo; he cursed him, alive or dead,
240
From the soles of his great unwieldly feet to the crown of his ugly head,
With an extra curse on the moke he rode and the cur at his heels that ran,
Till the Jackaroo from his horse got down and went for the drover-man;
With the station-hand for his picker-up, though the sheep ran loose the while,
They battled it out on the well-grassed plain in the regular prize-ring style.
Now, the new chum fought for his honour's sake and the pride of the English
race,
But the drover fought for his daily bread with a smile on his bearded face;
So he shifted ground, and he sparred for wind, and he made it a lengthy mill,
And from time to time as his scouts came in they whispered to Saltbush Bill -"We have spread the sheep with a two-mile spread, and the grass it is something
grand;
You must stick to him, Bill, for another round for the pride of the Overland."
The new chum made it a rushing fight, though never a blow got home,
Till the sun rode high in the cloudless sky and glared on the brick-red loam,
Till the sheep drew in to the shelter-trees and settled them down to rest;
Then the drover said he would fight no more, and gave his opponent best.
So the new chum rode to the homestead straight, and told them a story grand
Of the desperate fight that he fought that day with the King of the Overland;
And the tale went home to the Public Schools of the pluck of the English swell -How the drover fought for his very life, but blood in the end must tell.
But the travelling sheep and the Wilga sheep were boxed on the Old Man Plain;
'Twas a full week's work ere they drafted out and hunted them off again;
A week's good grass in their wretched hides, with a curse and a stockwhip crack
They hunted them off on the road once more to starve on the half-mile track.
And Saltbush Bill, on the Overland, will many a time recite
How the best day's work that he ever did was the day that he lost the fight.
~ Banjo Paterson,#NFDB
399:Death & Fame
When I die
I don't care what happens to my body throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But I want a big funeral St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister-in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters their grandchildren, companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--
Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche, there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting America, Satchitananda Swami Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche, Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau Roshis, Lama Tarchen --
Then, most important, lovers over half-century Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousandday retreat --"
"I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he loved me"
"I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone"
"We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly arms round each other"
"I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my skivvies would be on the floor"
"Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master"
"We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then sleep in his captain's bed."
"He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy"
"I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my stomach shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- "
"All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth & fingers along my waist"
"He gave great head"
So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin-gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997 and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!"
"I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me."
"I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head, my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick, tickled with his tongue my behind"
"I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a pillow --"
Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear
"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his walk-up flat, seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him again never wanted to... "
"He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made sure I came first"
This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--
Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con-ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum-peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto-harp pennywhistles & kazoos
Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India, Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massa-chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American provinces
Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio-philes, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex
"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved him anyway, true artist"
"Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me from suicide hospitals"
"Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my studio guest a week in Budapest"
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures
Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo-graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural historians come to witness the historic funeral Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph-hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers
Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive
February 22, 1997
~ Allen Ginsberg,#NFDB
400:Death &Amp; Fame
When I die
I don't care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But l want a big funeral
St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in
Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother
96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sisterin-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters
their grandchildren,
companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan-Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche,
there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting
America, Satchitananda Swami
Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche,
Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms
Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau
Roshis, Lama Tarchen -Then, most important, lovers over half-century
Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich
young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each
other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousand
day retreat --"
"I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he
loved me"
"I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone"
"We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly
arms round each other"
"I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my
skivvies would be on the floor"
"Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master"
"We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then
sleep in his captain's bed."
"He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy"
"I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my
stomach
21
shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- "
"All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth
& fingers along my waist"
"He gave great head"
So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commingling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997
and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!"
"I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me."
"I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender
and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head,
my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick,
tickled with his tongue my behind"
"I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged
chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a
pillow --"
Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear
"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his
walk-up flat,
seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him
again never wanted to... "
"He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made
sure I came first"
This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor-Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock
star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical conductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trumpeters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger
fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin autoharp pennywhistles & kazoos
Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India,
Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massachusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty
sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American
provinces
Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate bibliophiles, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex
"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved
him anyway, true artist"
"Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me
from suicide hospitals"
"Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my
studio guest a week in Budapest"
22
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas
City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized
others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures
Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photography aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural
historians come to witness the historic funeral
Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autographhunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers
Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased
who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive
February 22, 1997
~ Allen Ginsberg,#NFDB
401: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
402:Passage To America
I.
On the day of the feast
death had its celebration
the teevees and the movies
told us the same story
death in the morning death in the evening
death in the cellar death in the alley
death on the highway the boy returning from the rally
death in the cornfield the girl going to the grocer's
death in the valley and high on the mountain
death from pollution and great disillusion
death in the mind in the womb in the cradle
death from belief and its comic relief
the winds from the north and the winds from the south
sowed the seeds of death and waited for the harvest
death was riding nightmares
on the streets of civilization
someone had coughed in the women's room
and kleenex caught her vaginal sneeze
while history knocked at the door
and waited in the winter outside
the computer counted the errors
and discounted others
a woman had died but it was a mistake
someone wanted to undo it
learned it was too late
and walked to the seashore
and watched the tidal waves
death was riding the receding waves
death was roaring in the generation gap
and lying in history's lap
was sucking on its sap
on the day of the feast
death had its celebration
knocked out of sleep by the casualty list
someone was still groping in daylight
but it's christmas and new year
time to stop worrying over those that are dead
time to start thinking of living yet
24
while the sun is still hot and the day not done
perhaps a mistake to suppose it so
it's easy enough to suppose it so
and it's easy enough to die in these circumstances
but think of the horror and the glory of having to live
II.
My sitar
my guitar
from east or west
i do not care
whatever i dare
is for the best
fingers of the left
tripping on nipples
fingers of the right
strumming the ripples
around the lotus bud
as we set on the bed
each petal quakes
as the raga awakes
raises in dizzy spirals
towers and gyres
steeples and spires
domes and minarets
pagodas pyramids
fabled hoofs
trot on gabled roofs
as the tala quickens
we rocket to the heavens
to gather the starlust
and then we fall
falter and fall
like flakes of feathered snow
sprinkled with stardust
o my guitar
o my sitar
III.
Having learnt
in a short lifetime
that chalk doesn't write on chalk
25
he turned
to look
for sunflowers
in beds
of roses
IV.
Twice-punctured silver belle
suspended in the cerulean
her sea of tranquility
disturbed by hymen penetration
her darkness filmed and douched
unable to recover her cherry nights
fears yet longs for
the next assault
in sweet dread of periodic stress
her bashful beams dreaming downward
for a metallic man-thrust
V.
The poet chews the afternoon like his moustache
he drones on about a new civilization
his mystic beard points to the seed of time
his tongue trips on the syllables of a sutra
my girl she sleeps
and slides on to my shoulder
her breasts rise and fall
where the words of the poet rebound
her dark green shirt exudes the smell of sweat
her golden hair the sinuous oily flesh of hair
curves creeps and curls into my veins
words wary sliders reveal their mystery
my girl she stirs turns around
her bellybutton shows a foetus face
a snake tongue smacks her swollen lips
the soft hairs on her upper lip
now moist and alive
a dog walks in and lies down at my feet
he listens to the poet
reading chanting enchanting
like a dream called off in the middle
the poet pauses poised for breath between the mantras
the tangled thighs of minutes
26
the dog gets up stretches himself walks away
wagging his tail in total agreement
soft nervous fingers touch me from the side
they keep me from the poet
a dog is dignified by his tail
i wish i had one
VI.
Time to say farewell
Pale faces
after a nightlong wake
do not need to kiss
Before another nightfall
sometime during the day
we have to say farewell
How shall we part then
Write an autograph
and put a period after it
Take a long walk
and sigh in the wind
Recite a few verses
and smile at the end
Perhaps a last smutty story
to leave a scratch on the memory
Look how the spring sun
Struggles with the rain!
VII.
It's as if i suddenly meet you on the way
when i go for my usual walk in the evening
the earth that begins at your feet
seems to end at mine
the air you breathe out
enters into my lungs
and the light that escapes from your eyes
focuses on mine
america
i see your map
like the palm of a hand stretched out on my lap
mississippi traces your lifeline to the south
while the great lakes draw circles
along the st lawrence headline
27
but where is your heartline
on the mount of jupiter
new england cocks its eyes at europe
your venus is still in heat
in the far south of florida
and the mount of moon
shimmers on the california beach
but america
where has vanished your heartline
has some test explosion
sucked it underground
i remember river phalgun
that goes dry in summer defying our prayers
where once the buddha got enlightenment
and learned to take the earth for a begging bowl
but here the fission and the fusion
your scientists envision
offer your palmist nothing but confusion
sailing back from mescalin to marijuana
someone said
there never was such a line
in this ancient newborn land
where we grow corn and PL 480
and make cover tv sets in plenty
till our chests are nearly empty
and brains spout tons of TNT
it's christmas again
the shape of a heart neatly pinned to a cross
that stands on a hill we have set up with skill
(Translated by the author, with the help of J.O. Perry, Dakshinamoorthy, K.
Satchidanandan, and Esther Y. Smith.)
~ Ayyappa Paniker,#NFDB
403: Butler, fetch the ruby wine,
Which with sudden greatness fills us;
Pour for me who in my spirit
Fail in courage and performance;
Bring the philosophic stone,
Karun's treasure, Noah's life;
Haste, that by thy means I open
All the doors of luck and life.
Bring me, boy, the fire-water
Zoroaster sought in dust.
To Hafiz revelling 'tis allowed
To pray to Matter and to Fire.
Bring the wine of Jamschid's glass
That shone, ere time was, in the Nant.
Give it me, that through its virtue
I, as Jamschid, see through worlds.
Wisely said the Kaiser Jamschid,
This world's not worth a barleycorn.
Bring me, boy, the nectar cup,
Since it leads to Paradise.
Flute and lyre lordly speak,
Lees of wine outvalue crowns.
Hither bring the veiled beauty
Who in ill-famed houses sits:
Lead her forth: my honest name
Freely barter I for wine.
Bring me, boy, the fire-water,
Drinks the lionthe woods burn.
Give it me, that I storm heaven,
Tear the net from the arch-wolf.
Wine, wherewith the Houris teach
Angels the ways of Paradise.
On the glowing coals I'll set it,
And therewith my brain perfume.
Bring me wine, through whose effulgence
Jam and Chosroes yielded light:
Wine, that to the flute I sing
Where is Jam, and where is Kauss.
Bring the blessing of old times;
Bless the old departed Shahs;
Bring it me, the Shah of hearts.
Bring me wine to wash me clean,
Of the weather-stains of care,
See the countenance of luck.
While I dwell in spirit-gardens,
Wherefore sit I shackled here?
Lo, this mirror shows me all.
Drunk, I speak of purity,
Beggar, I of lordship speak.
When Hafiz in his revel sings,
Shouteth Sohra in her sphere.
Fear the changes of a day:
Bring wine which increases life,
Since the world is all untrue,
Let the trumpets thee remind
How the crown of Kobad vanished.
Be not certain of the world;
'Twill not spare to shed thy blood.
Desperate of the world's affair,
Came I running to the wine-house.
Give me wine which maketh glad,
That I may my steed bestride,
Through the course career with Rustem,
Gallop to my heart's content.
Give me, boy, the ruby cup
Which unlocks the heart with wine,
That I reason quite renounce,
And plant banners on the worlds.
Let us make our glasses kiss,
Let us quench the sorrow-cinders:
To-day let us drink together.
Whoso has a banquet dressed,
Is with glad mind satisfied,
'Scaping from the snares of Dews.
Alas for youth! 'tis gone in wind,
Happy he who spent it well.
Give me wine, that I o'erleap
Both worlds at a single spring,
Stole at dawn from glowing spheres
Call of Houris to mine ear;
"O happy bird! delicious soul!
Spread thy pinion, break the cage;
Sit on the roof of the seven domes,
Where the spirit takes repose."
In the time of Bisurdschimihr,
Menutscheher's beauty shined,
On the beaker of Nushirvan,
Wrote they once in eider times,
"Hear the Counsel, learn from us
Sample of the course of things;
Earth, it is a place of sorrow,
Scanty joys are here below,
Who has nothing, has no sorrow."
Where is Jam, and where his cup?
Solomon, and his mirror where?
Which of the wise masters knows
What time Kauss and Jam existed?
When those heroes left this world,
Left they nothing but their names.
Bind thy heart not to the earth,
When thou goest, come not back.
Fools squander on the world their hearts.
League with it, is feud with heaven;
Never gives it what thou wishest.
A cup of wine imparts the sight
Of the five heaven-domes with nine steps:
Whoso can himself renounce,
Without support shall walk thereon.
Who discreet is, is not wise.
Give me, boy, the Kaiser cup,
Which rejoices heart and soul;
Under type of wine and cup
Signify we purest love.
Youth like lightning disappears,
Life goes by us as the wind:
Leave the dwelling with six doors,
And the serpent with nine heads;
Life and silver spend thou freely,
If thou honorest the soul.
Haste into the other life;
All is nought save God alone.
Give me, boy, this toy of dmons.
When the cup of Jam was lost,
Him availed the world no more.
Fetch the wine-glass made of ice,
Wake the torpid heart with wine.
Every clod of loam below us
Is a skull of Alexander;
Oceans are the blood of princes;
Desert sands the dust of beauties.
More than one Darius was there
Who the whole world overcame;
But since these gave up the ghost,
Thinkest thou they never were?
Boy, go from me to the Shah,
Say to him: Shah crowned as Jam,
Win thou first the poor man's heart,
Then the glass; so know the world.
Empty sorrows from the earth
Canst thou drive away with wine.
Now in thy throne's recent beauty,
In the flowing tide of power,
Moon of fortune, mighty king,
Whose tiara sheddeth lustre,
Peace secure to fish and fowl,
Heart and eye-sparkle to saints;
Shoreless is the sea of praise,
I content me with a prayer.
From Nisami's poet-works,
Highest ornament of speech,
Here a verse will I recite,
Verse as beautiful as pearls.
"More kingdoms wait thy diadem,
Than are known to thee by name;
May the sovran destiny
Grant a victory every morn!"
(Note in original:
[The Poems of Hafiz are held by the Persians to be mystical and allegorical. The following ode, notwithstanding its anacreontic style, is regarded by his German editor, Von Hammer, as one of those which earned for Hafiz among his countrymen the title of "Tongue of the Secret." ] by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, From the Persian of Hafiz I
,#NFDB
404:Brother Benedict
Brother Benedict rose and left his cell
With the last slow swing of the evening bell.
In his hand he carried his only book,
And he followed the path to the Abbey brook,
And, crossing the stepping-stones, paused midway,
For the journeying water seemed to say,
Benedicite.
But when he stood on the other bank,
The flags rose tall, and the grass grew rank,
And the sorrel red and the white meadow-sweet
Shook their dust on his sandalled feet,
And, lifting their heads where his girdle hung,
Would surely have said had they found a tongue,
Benedicite.
Onward and upward he clomb and wound,
Bruising the thyme on the nibbled ground
Here and there, in the untrimmed brake,
The dog-rose bloomed for its own sweet sake;
The woodbine clambered up out of reach,
But the scent of them all breathed as plain as speech,
Benedicite.
Shortly he came to a leafy nook,
Where wind never entered nor branch ever shook.
Itself was the only thing in sight,
And the rest of the world was shut out quite.
'Twas as self-contained as the holy place
Where the children quire with upturned face,
Benedicite.
A dell so curtained with trunks and boughs,
That in hours when the ringdove coos to his spouse,
The sun to its heart scarce a way could win.
But the trees now had drawn all their shadows in;
There was nothing but scent in the dewy air,
And the silence seemed saying in mental prayer,
Benedicite.
197
'Gainst the trunk of a beech, round, smooth, and gray,
Brother Benedict leaned, with intent to pray,
And opened his book: with vellum bound;
Within, red letters on faded ground;
Pater, and Ave, and saving Creed:But look where you would, you seemed to read,
Benedicite.
He scarce had a verse of his office said,
Ere a bird in the branches overhead
Began to warble so sweet a strain,
That, strive as he would, still he strove in vain
To close his ears; so he closed his book,
While the unseen throat to the air outshook
Benedicite.
'Twas a song that rippled, and revelled, and ran
Ever back to the note whence it began;
Rising, and falling, and never did stay,
Like a fountain that feeds on itself all day,
Wanting no answer, answering none,
But beginning again as each verse was done,
Benedicite.
It brought an ecstasy into his face,
It weaned his senses from time and space,
It carried him off to worlds unseen,
And showed him what is not and ne'er has been,
Transporting his soul to those realms of calm,
More blessëd and blessing than even the psalm,
Benedicite.
Then, carolling still, it drew him thence
Slowly back to the spheres of sense,
But held him awhile where self expires,
And vague recollections and vague desires
Banish the burden of things that are,
And angels seem canticling, faint and far,
Benedicite.
Then across him there flitted the days that are dead,
198
And those that will follow when these are fled;
Generations of sorrow, wave after wave,
With their samesome journey from womb to grave;
Men's love of the fleshly sweets that sting,
And the comfort that comes when we kneel and sing,
Benedicite.
He suddenly started and gazed around,
For silence can waken as well as sound,
And the bird had ceased singing. The dewy air
Still was immersed in mental prayer.
Time seemed to have stopped. So he quickened pace,
But forgot not to say ere he left the lone place,
Benedicite.
Downward he wended, and under his feet,
As on mounting, the bruised thyme answered sweet;
As before, in the brake the dog-rose bloomed,
And the woodbine with fragrance the hedge perfumed;
And the white meadow-sweet and the sorrel red,
Had they found a tongue, would still surely have said,
Benedicite.
But where were the flags and the tall rank grass,
And the stepping-stones smooth for his feet to pass?
Were they swept away? Did he wake or dream?
A bridge that he knew not spanned the stream;
Though under its archway he still could hear
The journeying water purling clear,
Benedicite.
Where had he wandered? This never could
Be the spot where the Abbey orchard stood?
Where the filberts once mellowed, lay tumbled blocks,
And cherry stumps peered through tares and docks;
A rough plot stretched where in times gone by
The plump apples dropped to the joyous cry,
Benedicite.
The gateway had vanished, the portal flown,
The walls of the Abbey were ivy-grown;
The arches were shattered, the roof was gone,
199
The mullions were mouldering one by one;
Wrecked was the oriel's tracery light
That the sun streamed through when they met to recite
Benedicite.
Chancel and choir and nave and aisle
Were but one ruinous vacant pile.
So utter the havoc, you could not tell
Which was corridor, cloister, cell.
Cow-grass, and foxglove, and waving weed,
Covered the scrolls where you used to read,
Benedicite.
High up where of old the belfry towered,
An elder had rooted and whitely flowered:
Surviving ruin and rain and wind,
Below it a lichened gurgoyle grinned.
Though birds were chirping and flitting about,
They paused not to treble the anthem devout,
Benedicite.
Then he went where the Abbot was wont to lay
His children to rest till the Judgment Day,
And at length in the grass the name he found
Of a friar he fancied alive and sound.
The slab was hoary, the carving blurred,
And he rather guessed than could read the word,
Benedicite.
He sate him down on a fretted stone,
Where rains had beaten and winds had blown,
And opened his office-book, and read
The prayers that we read for our loved ones dead,
While nightfall crept on the twilight air,
And darkened the page of the final prayer,
Benedicite.
But to murkiest gloom when the gloaming did wane,
In the air there still floated a shadowy strain.
'Twas distilled with the dew, it was showered from the star,
It was murmuring near, it was tingling afar;
In silence it sounded, in darkness it shone,
200
And in sleep that is deepest it wakeful dreamed on,
Benedicite.
Do you ask what had witched Brother Benedict's ears?
The bird had been singing a thousand years:
Sweetly confounding in its sweet lay
To-day, to-morrow, and yesterday.
Time? What is Time but a fiction vain,
To him that o'erhears the Eternal strain,
Benedicite?
~ Alfred Austin,#NFDB
405:Fleckno, An English Priest At Rome
Oblig'd by frequent visits of this man,
Whom as Priest, Poet, and Musician,
I for some branch of Melchizedeck took,
(Though he derives himself from my Lord Brooke)
I sought his Lodging; which is at the Sign
Of the sad Pelican; Subject divine
For Poetry: There three Stair Cases high,
Which signifies his triple property,
I found at last a Chamber, as 'twas said,
But seem'd a Coffin set on the Stairs head.
Not higher then Seav'n, nor larger then three feet;
Only there was nor Seeling, nor a Sheet,
Save that th' ingenious Door did as you come
Turn in, and shew to Wainscot half the Room.
Yet of his State no man could have complain'd;
There being no Bed where he entertain'd:
And though within one Cell so narrow pent,
He'd Stanza's for a whole Appartement.
Straight without further information,
In hideous verse, he, and a dismal tone,
Begins to exercise; as if I were
Possest; and sure the Devil brought me there.
But I, who now imagin'd my selfbrought
To my last Tryal, in a serious thought
Calm'd the disorders of my youthful Breast,
And to my Martyrdom prepared Rest.
Only this frail Ambition did remain,
The last distemper of the sober Brain,
That there had been some present to assure
The future Ages how I did indure:
And how I, silent, turn'd my burning Ear
Towards the Verse; and when that could n
Held him the other; and unchanged yet,
Ask'd still for more, and pray'd him to repeat:
Till the Tyrant, weary to persecute,
Left off, and try'd t'allure me with his Lute.
Now as two Instruments, to the same key
Being tun'd by Art, if the one touched be
The other opposite as soon replies,
68
Mov'd by the Air and hidden Sympathies;
So while he with his gouty Fingers craules
Over the Lute, his murmuring Belly calls,
Whose hungry Guts to the same streightness twin'd
In Echo to the trembling Strings repin'd.
I, that perceiv'd now what his Musick ment,
Ask'd civilly if he had eat this Lent.
He answered yes; with such, and such an one.
For he has this of gen'rous, that alone
He never feeds; save only when he tryes
With gristly Tongue to dart the passing Flyes.
I ask'd if he eat flesh. And he, that was
So hungry that though ready to say Mass
Would break his fast before, said he was Sick,
And th' Ordinance was only Politick.
Nor was I longer to invite him: Scant
Happy at once to make him Protestant,
And Silent. Nothing now Dinner stay'd
But till he had himself a Body made.
I mean till he were drest: for else so thin
He stands, as if he only fed had been
With consecrated Wafers: and the Host
Hath sure more flesh and blood then he can boast.
This Basso Relievo of a Man,
Who as a Camel tall, yet easly can
The Needles Eye thread without any stich,
(His only impossible is to be rich)
Lest his too suttle Body, growing rare,
Should leave his Soul to wander in the Air,
He therefore circumscribes himself in rimes;
And swaddled in's own papers seaven times,
Wears a close Jacket of poetick Buff,
With which he doth his third Dimension Stuff.
Thus armed underneath, he over all
Does make a primitive Sotana fall;
And above that yet casts an antick Cloak,
Worn at the first Counsel of Antioch;
Which by the Jews long hid, and Disesteem'd,
He heard of by Tradition, and redeem'd.
But were he not in this black habit deck't,
This half transparent Man would soon reflect
Each colour that he past by; and be seen,
69
As the Chamelion, yellow, blew, or green.
He drest, and ready to disfurnish now
His Chamber, whose compactness did allow
No empty place for complementing doubt,
But who came last is forc'd first to go out;
I meet one on the Stairs who made me stand,
Stopping the passage, and did him demand:
I answer'd he is here Sir; but you see
You cannot pass to him but thorow me.
He thought himself affronted; and reply'd,
I whom the Pallace never has deny'd
Will make the way here; I said Sir you'l do
Me a great favour, for I seek to go.
He gathring fury still made sign to draw;
But himself there clos'd in a Scabbard saw
As narrow as his Sword's; and I, that was
Delightful, said there can no Body pass
Except by penetration hither, where
Two make a crowd, nor can three Persons here
Consist but in one substance. Then, to fit
Our peace, the Priest said I too had some wit:
To prov't, I said, the place doth us invite
But its own narrowness, Sir, to unite.
He ask'd me pardon; and to make me way
Went down, as I him follow'd to obey.
But the propitiatory Priest had straight
Oblig'd us, when below, to celebrate
Together our attonement: so increas'd
Betwixt us two the Dinner to a Feast.
Let it suffice that we could eat in peace;
And that both Poems did and Quarrels cease
During the Table; though my new made Friend
Did, as he threatned, ere 'twere long intend
To be both witty and valiant: I loth,
Said 'twas too late, he was already both.
But now, Alas, my first Tormentor came,
Who satisfy'd with eating, but not tame
Turns to recite; though Judges most severe
After th'Assizes dinner mild appear,
And on full stomach do condemn but few:
Yet he more strict my sentence doth renew;
And draws out of the black box of his Breast
70
Ten quire of paper in which he was drest.
Yet that which was a greater cruelty
Then Nero's Poem he calls charity:
And so the Pelican at his door hung
Picks out the tender bosome to its young.
Of all his Poems there he stands ungirt
Save only two foul copies for his shirt:
Yet these he promises as soon as clean.
But how I loath'd to see my Neighbour glean
Those papers, which he pilled from within
Like white fleaks rising from a Leaper's skin!
More odious then those raggs which the French youth
At ordinaries after dinner show'th,
When they compare their Chancres and Poulains.
Yet he first kist them, and after takes pains
To read; and then, because he understood good.
Not one Word, thought and swore that they were
But all his praises could not now appease
The provok't Author, whom it did displease
To hear his Verses, by so just a curse,
That were ill made condemn'd to be read worse:
And how (impossible) he made yet more
Absurdityes in them then were before.
For he his untun'd voice did fall or raise
As a deaf Man upon a Viol playes,
Making the half points and the periods run
Confus'der then the atomes in the Sun.
Thereat the Poet swell'd, with anger full,
And roar'd out, like Perillus in's own Bull;
Sir you read false. That any one but you
Should know the contrary. Whereat, I, now
Made Mediator, in my room, said, Why?
To say that you read false Sir is no Lye.
Thereat the waxen Youth relented straight;
But saw with sad dispair that was too late.
For the disdainful Poet was retir'd
Home, his most furious Satyr to have fir'd
Against the Rebel; who, at this struck dead
Wept bitterly as disinherited.
Who should commend his Mistress now? Or who
Praise him? both difficult indeed to do
With truth. I counsell'd him to go in time,
71
Ere the fierce Poets anger turn'd to rime.
He hasted; and I, finding my self free,
Did, as he threatned, ere 'twere long intend
As one scap't strangely from Captivity,
Have made the Chance be painted; and go now
To hang it in Saint Peter's for a Vow.
~ Andrew Marvell,#NFDB
406:Less profitable
than writing on the waters
of a flowing stream
such is the futility
of unrequited passion.
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The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VI
He washed out his marred hair and cleaned up his equipment(?),
shaking out his locks down over his back,
throwing off his dirty clothes and putting on clean ones.
He wrapped himself in regal garments and fastened the sash.
When Gilgamesh placed his crown on his head,
a princess Ishtar raised her eyes to the beauty of Gilgamesh.
"Come along, Gilgamesh, be you my husband,
to me grant your lusciousness.'
Be you my husband, and I will be your wife.
I will have harnessed for you a chariot of lapis lazuli and gold,
with wheels of gold and 'horns' of electrum(?).
It will he harnessed with great storming mountain mules!
Come into our house, with the fragrance of cedar.
And when you come into our house the doorpost(?) and throne dais(?)'will kiss your feet.
Bowed down beneath you will be kings, lords, and princes.
The Lullubu people' will bring you the produce of the mountains and countryside as tribute.
Your she-goats will bear triplets, your ewes twins,
your donkey under burden will overtake the mule,
your steed at the chariot will be bristling to gallop,
your ax at the yoke will have no match."
Gilgamesh addressed Princess Ishtar saying:
"What would I have to give you if I married you!
Do you need oil or garments for your body! Do you lack anything for food or drink!
I would gladly feed you food fit far a god,
I would gladly give you wine fit for a king,
may the street(?) be your home(?), may you be clothed in a garment,
and may any lusting man (?) marry you!
an oven who ice,
a half-door that keeps out neither breeze nor blast,
a palace that crushes down valiant warriors,
an elephant who devours its own covering,
pitch that blackens the hands of its bearer,
a waterskin that soaks its bearer through,
limestone that buckles out the stone wall,
a battering ram that attracts the enemy land,
a shoe that bites its owner's feet!
Where are your bridegrooms that you keep forever'
Where is your 'Little Shepherd' bird that went up over you!
See here now, I will recite the list of your lovers.
Of the shoulder (?) his hand,
Tammuz, the lover of your earliest youth,
for him you have ordained lamentations year upon year!
You loved the colorful 'Little Shepherd' bird
and then hit him, breaking his wing, so
now he stands in the forest crying 'My Wing'!
You loved the supremely mighty lion,
yet you dug for him seven and again seven pits.
You loved the stallion, famed in battle,
yet you ordained for him the whip, the goad, and the lash,
ordained for him to gallop for seven and seven hours,
ordained for him drinking from muddled waters,'
you ordained far his mother Silili to wail continually.
You loved the Shepherd, the Master Herder,
who continually presented you with bread baked in embers,
and who daily slaughtered for you a kid.
Yet you struck him, and turned him into a wolf,
so his own shepherds now chase him
and his own dogs snap at his shins.
You loved Ishullanu, your father's date gardener,
who continually brought you baskets of dates,
and brightened your table daily.
You raised your eyes to him, and you went to him:
'Oh my Ishullanu, let us taste of your strength,
stretch out your hand to me, and touch our vulva.
Ishullanu said to you:
'Me! What is it you want from me!
Has my mother not baked, and have I not eaten
that I should now eat food under contempt and curses
and that alfalfa grass should be my only cover against
the cold?
As you listened to these his words
you struck him, turning him into a dwarf(?),
and made him live in the middle of his (garden of) labors,
where the mihhu do not go up, nor the bucket of dates (?) down.
And now me! It is me you love, and you will ordain for me as
for them!"
When Ishtar heard this, in a fury she went up to the heavens,
going to Anu, her father, and crying,
going to Anrum, her mother, and weeping:
"Father, Gilgamesh has insulted me over and over,
Gilgamesh has recounted despicable deeds about me,
despicable deeds and curses!"
Anu addressed Princess Ishtar, saying: "What is the matter?
Was it not you who provoked King Gilgamesh?
So Gilgamesh recounted despicable deeds about you,
despicable deeds and curses!"
Ishtar spoke to her father, Anu, saying:
"Father, give me the Bull of Heaven,
so he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.
If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!"
Anu addressed princess Ishtar, saying:
"If you demand the Bull of Heaven from me,
there will be seven years of empty husks for the land of Uruk.
Have you collected grain for the people!
Have you made grasses grow for the animals?"
Ishtar addressed Anu, her father, saying:
"I have heaped grain in the granaries for the people,
I made grasses grow for the animals,
in order that they might eat in the seven years of empty husks.
I have collected grain for the people,
I have made grasses grow for the animals."
When Anu heard her words, he placed the noserope of the Bull of Heaven in her hand.
Ishtar led the Bull of Heaven down to the earth.
When it reached Uruk It climbed down to the Euphrates
At the snort of the Bull of Heaven a huge pit opened up,
and 100 Young Men of Uruk fell in.
At his second snort a huge pit opened up,
and 200 Young Men of Uruk fell in.
At his third snort a huge pit opened up,
and Enkidu fell in up to his waist.
Then Enkidu jumped out and seized the Bull of Heaven by its horns.
the Bull spewed his spittle in front of him,
with his thick tail he flung his dung behind him (?).
Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, we can be bold(?)
How shall we respond
My friend, I saw
And my strength
I will rip out
I and you, we must share (?)
I shall grasp the Bull
I will fill my hands (?) ..
In front
between the nape, the horns, and thrust your sword."
Enkidu stalked and hunted down the Bull of Heaven.
He grasped it by the thick of its tail
and held onto it with both his hands (?),
while Gilgamesh, like an expert butcher,
boldly and surely approached the Bull of Heaven.
Between the nape, the horns, and he thrust his sword.
After they had killed the Bull of Heaven,
they ripped out its heart and presented it to Shamash.
They withdrew bowing down humbly to Shamash.
Then the brothers sat down together.
Ishtar went up onto the top of the Wall of Uruk-Haven,
cast herself into the pose of mourning, and hurled her woeful curse:
"Woe unto Gilgamesh who slandered me and killed the Bull of
Heaven!"
When Enkidu heard this pronouncement of Ishtar,
he wrenched off the Bull's hindquarter and flung it in her face:
"If I could only get at you I would do the same to you!
I would drape his innards over your arms!"
Ishtar assembled the (cultic women) of lovely-locks, joy-girls, and harlots,
and set them to mourning over the hindquarter of the Bull.
Gilgamesh summoned all the artisans and craftsmen.
(All) the artisans admired the thickness of its horns,
each fashioned from 30 minas of lapis lazuli!
Two fingers thick is their casing(?).
Six vats of oil the contents of the two
he gave as ointment to his (personal) god Lugalbanda.
He brought the horns in and hung them in the bedroom of the family
head (Lugalbanda?).
They washed their hands in the Euphrates,
and proceeded hand in hand,
striding through the streets of Uruk.
The men of Uruk gathered together, staring at them.
Gilgamesh said to the palace retainers:
"Who is the bravest of the men)
Who is the boldest of the males!
Gilgamesh is the bravest of the men,
the boldest of the males!
She at whom we flung the hindquarter of the Bull of Heaven in
anger,
Ishtar has no one that pleases her in the street (?)
Gilgamesh held a celebration in his palace.
The Young Men dozed off, sleeping on the couches of the night.
Enkidu was sleeping, and had a dream.
He woke up and revealed his dream to his friend.
~ Anonymous, Less profitable
,#NFDB
407:St. George And The Dragon
Of Hector's deeds did Homer sing,
And of the sack of stately Troy,
What griefs fair Helena did bring,
Which was Sir Paris' only joy:
And by my pen I will recite
St. George's deeds, and English knight.
Against the Sarazens so rude
Fought he full long and many a day,
Where many gyants he subdu'd,
In honour of the Christian way;
And after many adventures past,
To Egypt land he came at last.
Now, as the story plain doth tell,
Within that countrey there did rest
A dreadful dragon fierce and fell,
Whereby they were full sore opprest:
Who by his poisonous breath each day
Did many of the city slay.
The grief whereof did grow so great
Throughout the limits of the land,
That they their wise-men did intreat
To shew their cunning out of hand;
What way they might this fiend destroy,
That did the countrey thus annoy.
The wise-men all before the king,
This answer fram'd incontinent:
The dragon none to death might bring
By any means they could invent;
His skin more hard than brass was found,
That sword nor spear could pierce nor wound.
When this the people understood,
They cryed out most piteouslye,
The dragon's breath infects their blood,
That every day in heaps they dye;
642
Among them such a plague it bred,
The living scarce could bury the dead.
No means there were, as they could hear,
For to appease the dragon's rage,
But to present some virgin clear,
Whose blood his fury might asswage;
Each day he would a maiden eat,
For to allay his hunger great.
This thing by art the wise-men found,
Which truly must observed be;
Wherefore, throughout the city round,
A virgin pure of good degree
Was, by the king's commission, still
Taken up to serve the dragon's will.
Thus did the dragon every day
Untimely crop some virgin flowr,
Till all the maids were worn away,
And none were left him to devour;
Saving the king's fair daughter bright,
Her father's only heart's delight.
Then came the officers to the king,
That heavy message to declare,
Which did his heart with sorrow sting;
'She is,' quoth he, 'my kingdom's heir:
O let us all be poisoned here,
Ere she should die, that is my dear.'
Then rose the poeple presently,
And to the king in rage they went;
They said his daughter dear should dye,
The dragon's fury to prevent:
'Our daughters all are dead,' quoth they,
'And have been made the dragon's prey;
And by their blood we rescued were,
And thou hast sav'd thy life thereby;
And now in sooth it is but faire,
For us thy daughter so should die.'
'O save my daughter,' said the king,
643
'And let ME feel the dragon's sting.'
Then fell fair Sabra on her knee,
And to her father dear did say,
'O father, strive not thus for me,
But let me be the dragon's prey;
It may be, for my sake alone
This plague upon the land was thrown.
'Tis better I should dye,' she said,
'Than all your subjects perish quite;
Perhaps the dragon here was laid,
For my offence to work his spite,
And after he hath suckt my gore,
Your land shall feel the grief no more.'
'What hast thou done, my daughter dear,
For to deserve this heavy scourge?
It is my fault, as may appear,
Which makes the gods our state to purge;
Then ought I die, to stint the strife,
And to preserve thy happy life.'
Like mad-men, all the people cried,
'Thy death to us can do no good;
Our safety only doth abide
In making her the dragon's food.'
'Lo! here I am, I come,' quoth she,
'Therefore do what you will with me.'
'Nay stay, dear daughter,' quoth the queen,
'And as thou art a virgin bright,
That hast for vertue famous been,
So let me cloath thee all in white;
And crown thy head with flowers sweet,
An ornament for virgins meet.'
And when she was attired so,
According to her mother's mind,
Unto the stake then did she go,
To which her tender limbs they bind;
And being bound to stake a thrall
644
She bade farewell unto them all.
'Farewell, my father dear,' quoth she,
'And my sweet mother meek and mild;
Take you no thought nor weep for me,
For you may have another child;
Since for ry's good I dye,
Death I receive most willinglye.'
The king and queen and all their train
With weeping eyes went then. their way,
And let their daughter there remain,
To be the hungry dragon's prey:
But as she did there weeping lye,
Behold St. George came riding by.
And seeing there a lady bright
So rudely tyed unto a stake,
As well became a valiant knight,
He straight to her his way did take:
'Tell me, sweet maiden,' then quoth he,
'What caitif thus abuseth thee?
'And, lo! by Christ his cross I vow,
Which here is figured on my breast,
I will revenge it on his brow,
And break my lance upon his chest:'
And speaking thus whereas he stood,
The dragon issued from the wood.
The lady, that did first espy
The dreadful dragon coming so,
Unto St. George aloud did cry,
And willed him away to go;
'Here comes that cursed fiend,' quoth she,
'That soon will make an end of me.'
St. George then looking round about,
The fiery dragon soon espy'd,
And like a knight of courage stout,
Against him did most furiously ride;
And with such blows he did him greet,
645
He fell beneath his horse's feet.
For with his launce that was so strong,
As he came gaping in his face,
In at his mouth he thrust along;
For he could pierce no other place:
And thus within the lady's view
This mighty dragon straight he slew.
The savour of his poisoned breath
Could do this holy knight no harm;
Thus he the lady sav'd from death,
And home he led her by the arm;
Which when King Ptolemy did see,
There was great mirth and melody.
When as that valiant champion there
Had slain the dragon in the field,
To court he brought the lady fair,
Which to their hearts much joy did yield.
He in the court of Egypt staid
Till he most falsely was betray'd.
That lady dearly lov'd the knight,
He counted her his only joy;
But when their love was brought to light,
It turn'd unto their great annoy:
Th' Morocco king was in the court,
Who to the orchard did resort,
Dayly to take the pleasant air,
For pleasure sake he us'd to walk;
Under a wall he oft did hear
St. George with lady Sabra talk;
Their love he shew'd unto the king,
Which to St. George great woe did bring.
Those kings together did devise
To make the Christian knight away:
With letters him in curteous wise
They straightway sent to Persia,
But wrote to the sophy him to kill,
646
And treacherously his blood to spill.
Thus they for good did him reward
With evil, and most subtilly,
By much vile meanes they had regard
To work his death most cruelly;
Who, as through Persia land he rode,
With zeal destroy'd each idol god.
For which offence he straight was thrown
Into a dungeon dark and deep;
Where, when he thought his wrongs upon,
He bitterly did wail and weep:
Yet like a knight of courage stout,
At length his way he digged out.
Three grooms of the King of Persia
By night this valiant champion slew,
Though he had fasted many a day,
And then away from thence he flew
On the best steed the sophy had;
Which when he knew he was full mad.
Towards Christendom he made his flight,
But met a gyant by the way,
With whom in combat he did fight
Most valiantly a summer's day:
Who yet, for all his bats of steel,
Was forc'd the sting of death to feel.
Back o'er the seas with many bands
Of warlike souldiers soon he past,
Vowing upon those heathen lands
To work revenge; which at the last,
Ere thrice three years were gone and spent,
He wrought unto his heart's content.
Save onely Egypt land he spar'd,
For Sabra bright her only sake,
And, ere for her he had regard,
He meant a tryal kind to make:
Mean while the king, o'ercome in field,
647
Unto Saint George did quickly yield.
Then straight Morocco's king he slew,
And took fair Sabra to his wife,
But meant to try if she were true,
Ere with her he would lead his life;
And, tho' he had her in his train,
She did a virgin pure remain.
Toward England then that lovely dame
The brave St. George conducted strait,
An eunuch also with them came,
Who did upon the lady wait.
These three from Egypt went alone:
Now mark St. George's valour shown.
When as they in a forest were,
The lady did desire to rest:
Mean while St. George to kill a deer
For their repast did think it best:
Leaving her with the eunuch there,
Whilst he did go to kill the deer.
But lo! all in his absence came
Two hungry lyons, fierce and fell,
And tore the eunuch on the same
In pieces small, the truth to tell;
Down by the lady then they laid,
Whereby they shew'd she was a maid.
But when he came from hunting back,
And did behold this heavy chance,
Then for his lovely virgin's sake
His courage strait he did advance,
And came into the lions' sight,
Who ran at him with all their might.
Their rage did him no whit dismay,
Who, like a stout and valiant knight,
Did both the hungry lyons slay
Within the lady Sabra's sight:
Who all this while, sad and demure,
648
There stood most like a virgin pure.
Now when St. George did surely know
This lady was a virgin true,
His heart was glad, that erst was woe,
And all his love did soon renew:
He set her on a palfrey steed,
And towards England came with speed.
Where being in short space arriv'd
Unto his native dwelling place,
Therein with his dear love he livd,
And fortune did his nuptials grace:
They many years of joy did see,
And led their lives at Coventry.
~ Anonymous Olde English,#NFDB
408:A Pastoral Dialogue - Ii
Melibæus, Alcippe, Asteria, Licida, Alcimedon, and Amira.
Melibæus. Welcome fair Nymphs, most welcome to this shade,
Distemp'ring Heats do now the Plains invade:
But you may sit, from Sun securely here,
If you an old mans company not fear.
Alcippe. Most Reverend Swaine, far from us ever be
The imputation of such Vanity.
From Hill to Holt w'ave thee unweary'd sought,
And bless the Chance that us hath hither brought.
Asteria. Fam'd Melibæus for thy Virtuous Lays,
If thou dost not disdain our Female Praise,
We come to sue thou would'st to us recite
One of thy Songs, which gives such high delight
To ev'ry Eare, wherein thou dost dispense
Sage Precepts cloath'd in flowing Eloquence.
Licida. Fresh Garlands we will make for thee each morne,
Thy reverend Head to shade, and to adorne;
To cooling Springs thy fainting Flock we'll guide,
All thou command'st, to do shall be our Pride.
Meli. Cease, gentle Nymphs, the Willing to entreat,
To have your Wish, each needs but take a Seat.
With joy I shall my ancient Art revive,
With which, when Young, I did for Glory strive.
Nor for my Verse will I accept a Hire,
Your bare Attentions all I shall require.
Alci. Lo, from the Plain I see draw near a Pair
That I could wish in our Converse might share.
Amira 'tis and young Alcimedon.
Lici. Serious Discourse industriously they shun.
Alci.
It being yet their luck to come this way,
The Fond Ones to our Lecture we'll betray:
And though they only sought a private shade,
Perhaps they may depart more Vertuous made.
I will accost them. Gentle Nymph and Swaine,
Good Melibæus us doth entertain
With Lays Divine: if you'll his Hearers be,
Take streight your Seats without Apology.
Alci. Paying short thanks, at fair Amiras feet,
I'le lay me down: let her choose where 'tis meet.
Al. Shepherd, behold, we all attentive sit.
Meli.
What shall I sing? what shall my Muse reherse?
Love is a Theme well sutes a Past'ral Verse,
That gen'ral Error, Universal Ill,
That Darling of our Weakness and our Will;
By which though many fall, few hold it shame;
Smile at the Fault, which they would seem to blame.
What wonder then, if those with Mischief play,
It to destruction them doth oft betray?
But by experience it is daily found,
That Love the softer Sex does sorest wound;
In Mind, as well as Body, far more weak
Than Men: therefore to them my Song shall speak,
Advising well, however it succeed:
But unto All I say, Of Love take heed.
So hazardous, because so hard to know
On whom they are we do our Hearts bestow;
How they will use them, or with what regard
Our Faith and high Esteem they will reward:
For few are found, that truly acted be
By Principles of Generosity.
That when they know a Virgins Heart they've gain'd,
(And though by many Vows and Arts obtain'd)
Will think themselves oblig'd their Faith to hold
Tempted by Friends, by Interest, or by Gold.
Expect it not most, Love their Pastime make,
Lightly they Like, and lightly they forsake;
10
Their Roving Humour wants but a pretence
With Oaths and what's most Sacred to dispence.
When unto such a Maid has given her Heart,
And said, Alone my Happiness thou art,
In thee and in thy Truth I place my Rest.
Her sad Surprize how can it be exprest,
When all on which she built her Joy she finds,
Vanish, like Clouds, disperst before the Winds;
Her self, who th' adored Idol wont to be,
A poor despis'd Idolater to see?
Regardless Tears she may profusely spend,
Unpitty'd sighs her tender Breast may rend:
But the false Image she will ne're erace,
Though far unworthy still to hold its place:
So hard it is, even Wiser grown, to take
Th' Impression out, which Fancy once did make.
Believe me Nymphs, believe my hoary hairs,
Truth and Experience waits on many years.
Before the Eldest of you Light beheld,
A Nymph we had, in Beauty all excell'd,
Rodanthe call'd, in whom each Grace did shine,
Could make a Mortal Maid appear Divine.
And none could say, where most her Charms did lye,
In her inchanting Tongue, or conquering Eye.
Her Vertue yet her Beauties so out-shon,
As Beauty did the Garments she put on!
Among the Swains, which here their Flocks then fed,
Alcander with the highest held his head;
The most Accomplish't was esteem'd to be,
Of comely Forme, well-grac't Activity;
The Muses too, like him, did none inspire,
None so did stop the Pipe, or touch the Lyre;
Sweet was his Voice, and Eloquent his Tongue;
Alike admired when he Spoke, or Sung!
But these so much Excelling parts the Swain,
With Imperfections no less Great, did stain:
For proud he was, of an Ungovern'd Will,
11
With Love Familiar, but a Stranger still
To Faith and Constancy; and did his Heart,
Retaining none, expose to ev'ry Dart.
Hapless Rodanthe, the Fond Rover, caught,
To whom, for Love, with usual Arts he sought;
Which she, ah too unwary, did bestow:
'Cause True her self, believ'd that he was so.
But he, alas, more wav'ring than the Wind,
Streight broke the Chain, she thought so fast did bind;
For he no sooner saw her Heart was gain'd,
But he as soon the Victory disdain'd;
Mad Love else-where, as if 'twere like Renown,
Hearts to subdue, as to take in a Town:
But in the One as Manhood does prevail,
Both Truth and Manhood in the other fail.
And now the Nymph (of late so gay and bright,
The Glory of the Plains and the Delight,
Who still in Wit and Mirth all Pastimes led)
Hung like a wither'd Flow'r her drooping Head.
I need not tell the Grief Rodanthe found,
How all that should asswage, enrag'd her Wound;
Her Form, her Fame, her Vertue, Riches, Wit,
Like Deaths sad Weights upon her Soul did sit:
Or else like Furies stood before her Face,
Still urging and Upbraiding her Disgrace,
In that the World could yield her no Content,
But what alone the False Alcander sent.
'Twas said, through just Disdain, at last she broke
The Disingenious and Unworthy Yoke:
But this I know, her Passion held long time,
Constancy, though Unhappy, is no Crime.
Remember when you Love, from that same hour
Your Peace you put into your Lovers Power:
From that same hour from him you Laws receive,
And as he shall ordain, you Joy, or Grieve,
Hope, Fear, Laugh, Weep; Reason aloof does stand,
Disabl'd both to Act, and to Command.
Oh Cruel Fetters! rather wish to feel,
On your soft Limbs, the Gauling Weight of Steel;
12
Rather to bloudy Wounds oppose your Breast
No Ill, by which the Body can be prest;
You will so sensible a Torment find,
As Shackles on your captivated Mind.
The Mind from Heaven its high Descent did draw,
And brooks uneasily any other Law,
Than what from Reason dictated shall be,
Reason, a kind of In-mate Deity.
Which only can adapt to ev'ry Soul
A Yoke so fit and light, that the Controle
All Liberty excels; so sweet a Sway,
The same 'tis to be Happy, and Obey;
Commands so Wise and with Rewards so drest
That the according Soul replys, I'm Blest.
This teaches rightly how to Love and Hate,
To fear and hope by Measure and just Weight;
What Tears in Grief ought from our Eyes to flow,
What Transport in Felicity to show;
In ev'ry Passion how to steer the Will,
Tho rude the Shock, to keep it steady still.
Oh happy Mind! what words, can speak thy Bliss,
When in a Harmony thou mov'st like this?
Your Hearts fair Virgins keep smooth as your Brow,
Not the least Am'rous Passion there allow;
Hold not a Parly with what may betray
Your inward Freedom to a Forraign Sway;
And while thus ore your selves you Queens remain,
Unenvy'd, ore the World, let others reign:
The highest Joy which from Dominion flows,
Is short of what a Mind well-govern'd knows.
Whither my Muse, would'st uncontrouled run?
Contend in Motion with the restless Sun?
Immortal thou, but I a mortal Sire
Exhaust my strength, and Hearers also tire.
Al. O Heaven-taught Bard! to Ages couldst prolong
Thy Soul-instructing, Health-infusing Song,
I with unweary'd Appetite could hear,
13
And wish my Senses were turn'd all to Ear.
Alcim. Old Man, thy frosty Precepts well betray
Thy Blood is cold, and that thy Head is grey:
Who past the Pleasure Love and Youth can give,
To spoyl't in others, now dost only live.
Wouldst thou, indeed, if so thou couldst perswade,
The Fair, whose Charms have many Lovers made,
Should feel Compassion for no one they wound,
But be to all Inexorable found?
Me. Young man, if my advice thou well hadst weigh'd,
Thou would'st have found, for either Sex 'twas made;
And would from Womens Beauty thee no less
Preserve, than them secure from thy Address.
But let thy Youth thy rash Reproach excuse.
Alci. Fairest Amira let him not abuse
Thy gentle Heart, by his imprinting there
His doting Maxims—But I will not fear:
For when 'gainst Love he fiercest did inveigh,
Methoughts I saw thee turn with Scorn away.
Ami. Alcimedon according to his Will
Does all my Words and Looks interpret still:
But I shall learn at length how to Disdain,
Or at the least more cunningly to feign.
Alci. No wonder thou Alcimedon art rude,
When with no Gen'rous Quality endu'd:
But hop'st by railing Words Vice to defend,
Which Foulers made, by having such a Friend.
Amira, thou art warn'd, wisely beware,
Leap not with Open-Eyes into the Snare:
The Faith that's given to thee, was given before
To Nais, Amoret, and many more:
The Perjur'd did the Gods to Witness call,
That unto each he was the only Thrall.
Aste. Y'ave made his Cheeks with Conscious blushes glow.
14
Alci. 'Tis the best Colour a False Heart can show;
And well it is with Guilt some shame remains.
Meli. Hast, Shepherd, hast to cleanse away thy stains,
Let not thy Youth, of Time the goodly spring,
Neglected pass, that nothing forth it bring
But noxious Weeds: which cultivated might
Produce such Crops, as now would thee delight,
And give thee after Fame For Vertues Fruit
Believe it, not alone with Age does sute,
Nought adorns Youth like to a Noble Mind,
In thee this Union let Amira find.
Lici. O fear her not! she'l serve him in his kind.
Meli. See how Discourse upon the Time does prey,
Those hours pass swiftest, that we talk away.
Declining Sol forsaken hath the Fields,
And Mountains highest Summits only gildes:
Which warns us home-wards with our Flocks to make.
Alci. Along with thee our Thanks and Praises take.
Aste. In which our Hearts do all in One unite,
Lici. Our Wishes too, That on thy Head may light,
What e're the Gods as their Best Gifts bestow.
Meli. Kind Nymphs on you may Equal Blessings flow.
~ Anne Killigrew,#NFDB
409:I
WHEN the pine tosses its cones
To the song of its waterfall tones,
Who speeds to the woodland walks?
To birds and trees who talks?
Csar of his leafy Rome,
There the poet is at home.
He goes to the river-side,
Not hook nor line hath he;
He stands in the meadows wide,
Nor gun nor scythe to see.
Sure some god his eye enchants:
What he knows nobody wants.
In the wood he travels glad,
Without better fortune had,
Melancholy without bad.
Knowledge this man prizes best
Seems fantastic to the rest:
Pondering shadows, colors, clouds,
Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds,
Boughs on which the wild bees settle,
Tints that spot the violet's petal,
Why Nature loves the number five,
And why the star-form she repeats:
Lover of all things alive,
Wonderer at all he meets,
Wonderer chiefly at himself,
Who can tell him what he is?
Or how meet in human elf
Coming and past eternities?
2
And such I knew, a forest seer,
A minstrel of the natural year,
Foreteller of the vernal ides,
Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,
A lover true, who knew by heart
Each joy the mountain dales impart;
It seemed that Nature could not raise
A plant in any secret place,
In quaking bog, on snowy hill,
Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
Under the snow, between the rocks,
In damp fields known to bird and fox.
But he would come in the very hour
It opened in its virgin bower,
As if a sunbeam showed the place,
And tell its long-descended race.
It seemed as if the breezes brought him,
It seemed as if the sparrows taught him;
As if by secret sight he knew
Where, in far fields, the orchis grew.
Many haps fall in the field
Seldom seen by wishful eyes,
But all her shows did Nature yield,
To please and win this pilgrim wise.
He saw the partridge drum in the woods;
He heard the woodcock's evening hymn;
He found the tawny thrushes' broods;
And the shy hawk did wait for him;
What others did at distance hear,
And guessed within the thicket's gloom,
Was shown to this philosopher,
And at his bidding seemed to come.
3
In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang
Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang;
He trod the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linna hang its twin-born heads,
And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame'through the northern bowers.
He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,
With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls,
One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,
Declares the close of its green century.
Low lies the plant to whose creation went
Sweet influence from every element;
Whose living towers the years conspired to build,
Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.
Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,
He roamed, content alike with man and beast.
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,
So long he roved at will the boundless shade.
The timid it concerns to ask their way,
And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray,
To make no step until the event is known,
And ills to come as evils past bemoan.
Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps
To spy what danger on his pathway creeps;
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth,his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed.
4
'T was one of the charmd days
When the genius of God doth flow;
The wind may alter twenty ways,
A tempest cannot blow;
It may blow north, it still is warm;
Or south, it still is clear;
Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;
Or west, no thunder fear.
The musing peasant, lowly great,
Beside the forest water sate;
The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grown
Composed the network of his throne;
The wide lake, edged with sand and grass,
Was burnished to a floor of glass,
Painted with shadows green and proud
Of the tree and of the cloud.
He was the heart of all the scene;
On him the sun looked more serene;
To hill and cloud his face was known,
It seemed the likeness of their own;
They knew by secret sympathy
The public child of earth and sky.
'You ask,' he said,'what guide
Me through trackless thickets led,
Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide.
I found the water's bed.
The watercourses were my guide;
I travelled grateful by their side,
Or through their channel dry;
They led me through the thicket damp,
Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp,
Through beds of granite cut my road,
And their resistless friendship showed.
The falling waters led me,
The foodful waters fed me,
And brought me to the lowest land
Unerring to the ocean sand.
The moss upon the forest bark
Was pole-star when the night was dark;
The purple berries in the wood
Supplied me necessary food;
For Nature ever faithful is
To such as trust her faithfulness.
When the forest shall mislead me,
When the night and morning lie,
When sea and land refuse to feed me,
'T will be time enough to die;
Then will yet my mother yield
A pillow in her greenest field,
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
The clay of their departed lover.'
II
As sunbeams stream through liberal space
And nothing jostle or displace,
So waved the pine-tree through my thought
And fanned the dreams it never brought.
'Whether is better, the gift or the donor?
Come to me,'
Quoth the pine-tree,
'I am the giver of honor.
My garden is the cloven rock,
And my manure the snow;
And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock,
In summer's scorching glow.
He is great who can live by me:
The rough and bearded forester
Is better than the lord;
God fills the scrip and canister,
Sin piles the loaded board.
The lord is the peasant that was,
The peasant the lord that shall be;
The lord is hay, the peasant grass,
One dry, and one the living tree.
Who liveth by the ragged pine
Foundeth a heroic line;
Who liveth in the palace hall
Waneth fast and spendeth all.
He goes to my savage haunts,
With his chariot and his care;
My twilight realm he disenchants,
And finds his prison there.
'What prizes the town and the tower?
Only what the pine-tree yields;
Sinew that subdued the fields;
The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods
Chants his hymn to hills and floods,
Whom the city's poisoning spleen
Made not pale, or fat, or lean;
Whom the rain and the wind purgeth,
Whom the dawn and the day-star urgeth,
In whose cheek the rose-leaf blusheth,
In whose feet the lion rusheth,
Iron arms, and iron mould,
That know not fear, fatigue, or cold.
I give my rafters to his boat,
My billets to his boiler's throat,
And I will swim the ancient sea
To float my child to victory,
And grant to dwellers with the pine
Dominion o'er the palm and vine.
Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,
Unnerves his strength, invites his end.
Cut a bough from my parent stem,
And dip it in thy porcelain vase;
A little while each russet gem
Will swell and rise with wonted grace;
But when it seeks enlarged supplies,
The orphan of the forest dies.
Whoso walks in solitude
And inhabiteth the wood,
Choosing light, wave, rock and bird,
Before the money-loving herd,
Into that forester shall pass,
From these companions, power and grace.
Clean shall he be, without, within,
From the old adhering sin,
All ill dissolving in the light
Of his triumphant piercing sight:
Not vain, sour, nor frivolous;
Not mad, athirst, nor garrulous;
Grave, chaste, contented, though retired,
And of all other men desired.
On him the light of star and moon
Shall fall with purer radiance down;
All constellations of the sky
Shed their virtue through his eye.
Him Nature giveth for defence
His formidable innocence;
The mounting sap, the shells, the sea,
All spheres, all stones, his helpers be;
He shall meet the speeding year,
Without wailing, without fear;
He shall be happy in his love,
Like to like shall joyful prove;
He shall be happy whilst he wooes,
Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse.
But if with gold she bind her hair,
And deck her breast with diamond,
Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear,
Though thou lie alone on the ground.
' Heed the old oracles,
Ponder my spells;
Song wakes in my pinnacles
When the wind swells.
Soundeth the prophetic wind,
The shadows shake on the rock behind,
And the countless leaves of the pine are strings
Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings.
Hearken! Hearken!
If thou wouldst know the mystic song
Chanted when the sphere was young.
Aloft, abroad, the pan swells;
O wise man! hear'st thou half it tells?
O wise man! hear'st thou the least part?
'T is the chronicle of art.
To the open ear it sings
Sweet the genesis of things,
Of tendency through endless ages,
Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages,
Of rounded worlds, of space and time,
Of the old flood's subsiding slime,
Of chemic matter, force and form,
Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm:
The rushing metamorphosis
Dissolving all that fixture is,
Melts things that be to things that seem,
And solid nature to a dream.
O, listen to the undersong,
The ever old, the ever young;
And, far within those cadent pauses,
The chorus of the ancient Causes!
Delights the dreadful Destiny
To fling his voice into the tree,
And shock thy weak ear with a note
Breathed from the everlasting throat.
In music he repeats the pang
Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang.
O mortal! thy ears are stones;
These echoes are laden with tones
Which only the pure can hear;
Thou canst not catch what they recite
Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right,
Of man to come, of human life,
Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife.'
Once again the pine-tree sung:
' Speak not thy speech my boughs among:
Put off thy years, wash in the breeze;
My hours are peaceful centuries.
Talk no more with feeble tongue;
No more the fool of space and time,
Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme.
Only thy Americans
Can read thy line, can meet thy glance,
But the runes that I rehearse
Understands the universe;
The least breath my boughs which tossed
Brings again the Pentecost;
To every soul resounding clear
In a voice of solemn cheer,
"Am I not thine? Are not these thine?"
And they reply, "Forever mine!"
My branches speak Italian,
English, German, Basque, Castilian,
Mountain speech to Highlanders,
Ocean tongues to islanders,
To Fin and Lap and swart Malay,
To each his bosom-secret say.
'Come learn with me the fatal song
Which knits the world in music strong,
Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes,
Of things with things, of times with times,
Primal chimes of sun and shade,
Of sound and echo, man and maid,
The land reflected in the flood,
Body with shadow still pursued.
For Nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.
The wood is wiser far than thou;
The wood and wave each other know
Not unrelated, unaffied,
But to each thought and thing allied,
Is perfect Nature's every part,
Rooted in the mighty Heart.
But thou, poor child! unbound, unrhymed,
Whence camest thou, misplaced, mistimed,
Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded?
Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded?
Who thee divorced, deceived and left?
Thee of thy faith who hath bereft,
And torn the ensigns from thy brow,
And sunk the immortal eye so low?
Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender,
Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender
For royal man;they thee confess
An exile from the wilderness,
The hills where health with health agrees,
And the wise soul expels disease.
Hark! in thy ear I will tell the sign
By which thy hurt thou may'st divine.
'When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff,
Or see the wide shore from thy skiff,
To thee the horizon shall express
But emptiness on emptiness;
There lives no man of Nature's worth
In the circle of the earth;
And to thine eye the vast skies fall,
Dire and satirical,
On clucking hens and prating fools,
On thieves, on drudges and on dolls.
And thou shalt say to the Most High,
"Godhead! all this astronomy,
And fate and practice and invention,
Strong art and beautiful pretension,
This radiant pomp of sun and star,
Throes that were, and worlds that are,
Behold! were in vain and in vain;
It cannot be,I will look again.
Surely now will the curtain rise,
And earth's fit tenant me surprise;
But the curtain doth not rise,
And Nature has miscarried wholly
Into failure, into folly."
'Alas! thine is the bankruptcy,
Blessed Nature so to see.
Come, lay thee in my soothing shade,
And heal the hurts which sin has made.
I see thee in the crowd alone;
I will be thy companion.
Quit thy friends as the dead in doom,
And build to them a final tomb;
Let the starred shade that nightly falls
Still celebrate their funerals,
And the bell of beetle and of bee
Knell their melodious memory.
Behind thee leave thy merchandise,
Thy churches and thy charities;
And leave thy peacock wit behind;
Enough for thee the primal mind
That flows in streams, that breathes in wind:
Leave all thy pedant lore apart;
God hid the whole world in thy heart.
Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns,
Gives all to them who all renounce.
The rain comes when the wind calls;
The river knows the way to the sea;
Without a pilot it runs and falls,
Blessing all lands with its charity;
The sea tosses and foams to find
Its way up to the cloud and wind;
The shadow sits close to the flying ball;
The date fails not on the palm-tree tall;
And thou,go burn thy wormy pages,
Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages.
Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain
To find what bird had piped the strain:
Seek not, and the little eremite
Flies gayly forth and sings in sight.
'Hearken once more!
I will tell thee the mundane lore.
Older am I than thy numbers wot,
Change I may, but I pass not.
Hitherto all things fast abide,
And anchored in the tempest ride.
Trenchant time behoves to hurry
All to yean and all to bury:
All the forms are fugitive,
But the substances survive.
Ever fresh the broad creation,
A divine improvisation,
From the heart of God proceeds,
A single will, a million deeds.
Once slept the world an egg of stone,
And pulse, and sound, and light was none;
And God said, "Throb!" and there was motion
And the vast mass became vast ocean.
Onward and on, the eternal Pan,
Who layeth the world's incessant plan,
Halteth never in one shape,
But forever doth escape,
Like wave or flame, into new forms
Of gem, and air, of plants, and worms.
I, that to-day am a pine,
Yesterday was a bundle of grass.
He is free and libertine,
Pouring of his power the wine
To every age, to every race;.
Unto every race and age
He emptieth the beverage;
Unto each, and unto all,
Maker and original.
The world is the ring of his spells,
And the play of his miracles.
As he giveth to all to drink,
Thus or thus they are and think.
With one drop sheds form and feature;
With the next a special nature;
The third adds heat's indulgent spark;
The fourth gives light which eats the dark;
Into the fifth himself he flings,
And conscious Law is King of kings.
As the bee through the garden ranges,
From world to world the godhead changes;
As the sheep go feeding in the waste,
From form to form He maketh haste;
This vault which glows immense with light
Is the inn where he lodges for a night.
What reeks such Traveller if the bowers
Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers
A bunch of fragrant lilies be,
Or the stars of eternity?
Alike to him the better, the worse,
The glowing angel, the outcast corse.
Thou metest him by centuries,
And lo! he passes like the breeze;
Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy,
He hides in pure transparency;
Thou askest in fountains and in fires,
He is the essence that inquires.
He is the axis of the star;
He is the sparkle of the spar;
He is the heart of every creature;
He is the meaning of each feature;
And his mind is the sky.
Than all it holds more deep, more high.'
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Woodnotes
,#NFDB
410:Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in God's handiwork
(This man's-flesh he hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
To coop up and keep down on earth a space
That puff of vapour from his mouth, man's soul)
To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,
Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,
Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks
Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain,
Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip
Back and rejoin its source before the term,
And aptest in contrivance (under God)
To baffle it by deftly stopping such:
The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home
Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)
Three samples of true snakestonerarer still,
One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,
(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)
And writeth now the twenty-second time.
My journeyings were brought to Jericho;
Thus I resume. Who studious in our art
Shall count a little labour unrepaid?
I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone
On many a flinty furlong of this land.
Also, the country-side is all on fire
With rumours of a marching hitherward:
Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son.
A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;
Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:
I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.
Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,
And once a town declared me for a spy;
But at the end, I reach Jerusalem,
Since this poor covert where I pass the night,
This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence
A man with plague-sores at the third degree
Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!
'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,
To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip
And share with thee whatever Jewry yields
A viscid choler is observable
In tertians, I was nearly bold to say;
And falling-sickness hath a happier cure
Than our school wots of: there's a spider here
Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,
Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-grey back;
Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind,
The Syrian runagate I trust this to?
His service payeth me a sublimate
Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.
Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn,
There set in order my experiences,
Gather what most deserves, and give thee all
Or I might add, Judea's gum-tragacanth
Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,
Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry,
In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease
Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy
Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar
But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.
Yet stay: my Syrian blinketh gratefully,
Protesteth his devotion is my price
Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?
I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,
What set me off a-writing first of all.
An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!
For, be it this town's barrennessor else
The Man had something in the look of him
His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth.
So, pardon if(lest presently I lose
In the great press of novelty at hand
The care and pains this somehow stole from me)
I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,
Almost in sightfor, wilt thou have the truth?
The very man is gone from me but now,
Whose ailment is the subject of discourse.
Thus then, and let thy better wit help all!
'Tis but a case of maniasubinduced
By epilepsy, at the turning-point
Of trance prolonged unduly some three days:
When, by the exhibition of some drug
Or spell, exorcization, stroke of art
Unknown to me and which 'twere well to know,
The evil thing out-breaking all at once
Left the man whole and sound of body indeed,
But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide,
Making a clear house of it too suddenly,
The first conceit that entered might inscribe
Whatever it was minded on the wall
So plainly at that vantage, as it were,
(First come, first served) that nothing subsequent
Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls
The just-returned and new-established soul
Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart
That henceforth she will read or these or none.
And firstthe man's own firm conviction rests
That he was dead (in fact they buried him)
That he was dead and then restored to life
By a Nazarene physician of his tribe:
'Sayeth, the same bade "Rise," and he did rise.
"Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry.
Not so this figment!not, that such a fume,
Instead of giving way to time and health,
Should eat itself into the life of life,
As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!
For see, how he takes up the after-life.
The manit is one Lazarus a Jew,
Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,
The body's habit wholly laudable,
As much, indeed, beyond the common health
As he were made and put aside to show.
Think, could we penetrate by any drug
And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,
And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep!
Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?
This grown man eyes the world now like a child.
Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,
Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,
To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,
Now sharply, now with sorrow,told the case,
He listened not except I spoke to him,
But folded his two hands and let them talk,
Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.
And that's a sample how his years must go.
Look, if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,
Should find a treasure,can he use the same
With straitened habits and with tastes starved small,
And take at once to his impoverished brain
The sudden element that changes things,
That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand
And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?
Is he not such an one as moves to mirth
Warily parsimonious, when no need,
Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?
All prudent counsel as to what befits
The golden mean, is lost on such an one
The man's fantastic will is the man's law.
So herewe call the treasure knowledge, say,
Increased beyond the fleshly faculty
Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,
Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven:
The man is witless of the size, the sum,
The value in proportion of all things,
Or whether it be little or be much.
Discourse to him of prodigious armaments
Assembled to besiege his city now,
And of the passing of a mule with gourds
'Tis one! Then take it on the other side,
Speak of some trifling facthe will gaze rapt
With stupor at its very littleness,
(Far as I see) as if in that indeed
He caught prodigious import, whole results;
And so will turn to us the bystanders
In ever the same stupor (note this point)
That we too see not with his opened eyes.
Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,
Preposterously, at cross purposes.
Should his child sicken unto death,why, look
For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,
Or pretermission of the daily craft!
While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child
At play or in the school or laid asleep,
Will startle him to an agony of fear,
Exasperation, just as like. Demand
The reason why" `tis but a word," object
"A gesture"he regards thee as our lord
Who lived there in the pyramid alone
Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,
We both would unadvisedly recite
Some charm's beginning, from that book of his,
Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst
All into stars, as suns grown old are wont.
Thou and the child have each a veil alike
Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both
Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match
Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know!
He holds on firmly to some thread of life
(It is the life to lead perforcedly)
Which runs across some vast distracting orb
Of glory on either side that meagre thread,
Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet
The spiritual life around the earthly life:
The law of that is known to him as this,
His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.
So is the man perplext with impulses
Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,
Proclaiming what is right and wrong across,
And not along, this black thread through the blaze
"It should be" baulked by "here it cannot be."
And oft the man's soul springs into his face
As if he saw again and heard again
His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise.
Something, a word, a tick of the blood within
Admonishes: then back he sinks at once
To ashes, who was very fire before,
In sedulous recurrence to his trade
Whereby he earneth him the daily bread;
And studiously the humbler for that pride,
Professedly the faultier that he knows
God's secret, while he holds the thread of life.
Indeed the especial marking of the man
Is prone submission to the heavenly will
Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.
'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last
For that same death which must restore his being
To equilibrium, body loosening soul
Divorced even now by premature full growth:
He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live
So long as God please, and just how God please.
He even seeketh not to please God more
(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.
Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach
The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be,
Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do:
How can he give his neighbour the real ground,
His own conviction? Ardent as he is
Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old
"Be it as God please" reassureth him.
I probed the sore as thy disciple should:
"How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessness
Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march
To stamp out like a little spark thy town,
Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?"
He merely looked with his large eyes on me.
The man is apathetic, you deduce?
Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,
Able and weak, affects the very brutes
And birdshow say I? flowers of the field
As a wise workman recognizes tools
In a master's workshop, loving what they make.
Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:
Only impatient, let him do his best,
At ignorance and carelessness and sin
An indignation which is promptly curbed:
As when in certain travels I have feigned
To be an ignoramus in our art
According to some preconceived design,
And happed to hear the land's practitioners,
Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,
Prattle fantastically on disease,
Its cause and cureand I must hold my peace!
Thou wilt objectwhy have I not ere this
Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,
Conferring with the frankness that befits?
Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech
Perished in a tumult many years ago,
Accused,our learning's fate,of wizardry,
Rebellion, to the setting up a rule
And creed prodigious as described to me.
His death, which happened when the earthquake fell
(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss
To occult learning in our lord the sage
Who lived there in the pyramid alone)
Was wrought by the mad peoplethat's their wont!
On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,
To his tried virtue, for miraculous help
How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way!
The other imputations must be lies:
But take one, though I loathe to give it thee,
In mere respect for any good man's fame.
(And after all, our patient Lazarus
Is stark mad; should we count on what he says?
Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech
'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.)
This man so cured regards the curer, then
AsGod forgive me! who but God himself,
Creator and sustainer of the world,
That came and dwelt in flesh on 't awhile!
'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived,
Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,
Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,
And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat,
And must have so avouched himself, in fact,
In hearing of this very Lazarus
Who saithbut why all this of what he saith?
Why write of trivial matters, things of price
Calling at every moment for remark?
I noticed on the margin of a pool
Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,
Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!
Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!
Nor I myself discern in what is writ
Good cause for the peculiar interest
And awe indeed this man has touched me with.
Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness
Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus:
I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills
Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came
A moon made like a face with certain spots
Multiform, manifold, and menacing:
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met
In this old sleepy town at unaware,
The man and I. I send thee what is writ.
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked
To this ambiguous Syrianhe may lose,
Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.
Jerusalem's repose shall make amends
For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;
Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!
The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
The madman saith He said so: it is strange.
NOTES
Form:
unrhyming
1.
Karshish, the Arab physician, and his friend
Abib are the creatures of the poet's imagination\; the time
is some forty years after the raising of Lazarus (see note
on line 28 below). For the story of Lazarus, see John 11: 1--44.
The meaning of Karshish's name in Arabic is paraphrased
in "picker-up of learning's crumbs."
20-1.
Karshish numbers his regular letters to Abib to provide
a check on their arrival. This letter is the twenty-second\; in the
twenty-first he had brought the account of his journeyings up
to his arrival at Jericho.
28.
It was Titus who besieged and captured Jernsalem in
A.D. 70\; he was emperor, 79-81\; Vespasian, his father, was
emperor, 70-79 A.D.
36.
Bethany: "Bethany, the town of Mary and his sister Martha"
(John 11: 1).
42.
choler: in its original sense, bile. Browning has Karshish
think in terms of the old physiology of "humours." Karshish
hopes that he may have found a way of diagnosing fever from
the consistency of the blood when he phlebotomises the patient.
43.
tertians: fevers which recur every other day\; i.e. on every third
day in the inclusive Roman way of counting.
50.
sublimate: in old-fashioned chemistry, the name for compounds
made by heating bodies to a vapour and then allowing this to condense.
55.
gum-tragacanth: a gum produced by certain thorny shrubs in
Asia Minor and Persia.
57.
Porphyry: a sort of stone used for the manufacture of vases, etc.\;
here used by metonymy for the mortar made out of it.
58.
scalp-disease: undoubtedly alopicia (from which Chaucer's
Pardoner suffered), which has a connection with leprosy.
82.
Exhibition is the old term for "administration" of a remedy.
89.
conceit: here used in the early sense of "idea, concept, fancy."
96.
The whole passage from line 79 is Karshish's attempt to find an
explanation in terms of a mechanist psychology for the fixed idea in Lazarus' mind.
100.
Nazarene: Christ: see Matthew 2: 23.
103.
fume: used here as a derogatory term for Lazarus' idea that he has
been restored to life.
106.
saffron: a drug derived from a plant of the same name (Crocus
sativus), formerly much used both as a medicine and as a dye.
109.
sanguine: again part of the terminology of humours. The "sanguine"
type was not, like the "melancholic," given to delusions and attacks of
fancy--this makes Lazarus' case still more strange.
110.
laudable: another technical medical term here, suggesting perfect health.
146-47.
See lines 26-28 above and note.
177.
Greek fire: an explosive compound, the nearest approach to
gunpowder known to the ancients.
184.
To Lazarus, who now sees with a knowledge far beyond the human,
the spiritual or moral law is as clear and certain as the physical.
Compare A Death in the Desert, 251-298.
228.
affects: in the sense of "shows affection for."
251.
Karshish uses "prodigious" here in a derogatory sense.
252.
when the earthquake fell. "And behold the veil of the temple was
rent in twain from the top to the bottom\; and the earth did quake, and
the rocks were rent" (Matthew 27: 51).
265.
leech: old-fashioned word for physician.
304-11.
Compare the passage in Saul, 300-12.
~ Robert Browning, An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar
,#NFDB
411:Imitations Of Horace: The First Epistle Of The Second
Book
Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere
(Horace, Epistles II.i.267)
While you, great patron of mankind, sustain
The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
How shall the Muse, from such a monarch steal
An hour, and not defraud the public weal?
Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,
And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,
After a life of gen'rous toils endur'd,
The Gaul subdu'd, or property secur'd,
Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd,
Or laws establish'd, and the world reform'd;
Clos'd their long glories with a sigh, to find
Th' unwilling gratitude of base mankind!
All human virtue, to its latest breath
Finds envy never conquer'd, but by death.
The great Alcides, ev'ry labour past,
Had still this monster to subdue at last.
Sure fate of all, beneath whose rising ray
Each star of meaner merit fades away!
Oppress'd we feel the beam directly beat,
Those suns of glory please not till they set.
To thee the world its present homage pays,
The harvest early, but mature the praise:
Great friend of liberty! in kings a name
Above all Greek, above all Roman fame:
Whose word is truth, as sacred and rever'd,
As Heav'n's own oracles from altars heard.
Wonder of kings! like whom, to mortal eyes
None e'er has risen, and none e'er shall rise.
Just in one instance, be it yet confest
Your people, Sir, are partial in the rest:
Foes to all living worth except your own,
105
And advocates for folly dead and gone.
Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;
It is the rust we value, not the gold.
Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote,
And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote:
One likes no language but the Faery Queen ;
A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green:
And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,
He swears the Muses met him at the Devil.
Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,
Why should not we be wiser than our sires?
In ev'ry public virtue we excel:
We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well,
And learned Athens to our art must stoop,
Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.
If time improve our wit as well as wine,
Say at what age a poet grows divine?
Shall we, or shall we not, account him so,
Who died, perhaps, an hundred years ago?
End all dispute; and fix the year precise
When British bards begin t'immortalize?
"Who lasts a century can have no flaw,
I hold that wit a classic, good in law."
Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?
And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound,
Or damn to all eternity at once,
At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?
"We shall not quarrel for a year or two;
By courtesy of England, he may do."
Then by the rule that made the horsetail bare,
I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,
And melt down ancients like a heap of snow:
While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe,
And estimating authors by the year,
Bestow a garland only on a bier.
106
Shakespeare (whom you and ev'ry playhouse bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despite.
Ben, old and poor, as little seem'd to heed
The life to come, in ev'ry poet's creed.
Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art,
But still I love the language of his heart.
"Yet surely, surely, these were famous men!
What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben?
In all debates where critics bear a part,
Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art,
Of Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit;
How Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher writ;
How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;
But, for the passions, Southerne sure and Rowe.
These, only these, support the crowded stage,
From eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age."
All this may be; the people's voice is odd,
It is, and it is not, the voice of God.
To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,
And yet deny the Careless Husband praise,
Or say our fathers never broke a rule;
Why then, I say, the public is a fool.
But let them own, that greater faults than we
They had, and greater virtues, I'll agree.
Spenser himself affects the obsolete,
And Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet:
Milton's strong pinion now not Heav'n can bound,
Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground,
In quibbles, angel and archangel join,
And God the Father turns a school divine.
Not that I'd lop the beauties from his book,
Like slashing Bentley with his desp'rate hook,
Or damn all Shakespeare, like th' affected fool
At court, who hates whate'er he read at school.
107
But for the wits of either Charles's days,
The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;
Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more,
(Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o'er)
One simile, that solitary shines
In the dry desert of a thousand lines,
Or lengthen'd thought that gleams through many a page,
Has sanctified whole poems for an age.
I lose my patience, and I own it too,
When works are censur'd, not as bad, but new;
While if our elders break all reason's laws,
These fools demand not pardon, but applause.
On Avon's bank, where flow'rs eternal blow,
If I but ask if any weed can grow?
One tragic sentence if I dare deride,
Which Betterton's grave action dignified,
Or well-mouth'd Booth with emphasis proclaims
(Though but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names)
How will our fathers rise up in a rage,
And swear, all shame is lost in George's age!
You'd think no fools disgrac'd the former reign,
Did not some grave examples yet remain,
Who scorn a lad should teach his father skill,
And, having once been wrong, will be so still.
He, who to seem more deep than you or I,
Extols old bards, or Merlin's Prophecy,
Mistake him not; he envies, not admires,
And to debase the sons, exalts the sires.
Had ancient times conspir'd to disallow
What then was new, what had been ancient now?
Or what remain'd, so worthy to be read
By learned critics, of the mighty dead?
In days of ease, when now the weary sword
Was sheath'd, and luxury with Charles restor'd;
In ev'ry taste of foreign courts improv'd,
"All, by the King's example, liv'd and lov'd."
108
Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t'excel,
Newmarket's glory rose, as Britain's fell;
The soldier breath'd the gallantries of France,
And ev'ry flow'ry courtier writ romance.
Then marble, soften'd into life, grew warm,
And yielding metal flow'd to human form:
Lely on animated canvas stole
The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.
No wonder then, when all was love and sport,
The willing Muses were debauch'd at court:
On each enervate string they taught the note
To pant or tremble through an eunuch's throat.
But Britain, changeful as a child at play,
Now calls in princes, and now turns away:
Now Whig, now Tory, what we lov'd we hate;
Now all for pleasure, now for Church and state;
Now for prerogative, and now for laws;
Effects unhappy! from a noble cause.
Time was, a sober Englishman would knock
His servants up, and rise by five o'clock,
Instruct his family in ev'ry rule,
And send his wife to church, his son to school.
To worship like his fathers was his care;
To teach their frugal virtues to his heir;
To prove that luxury could never hold,
And place, on good security, his gold.
Now times are chang'd, and one poetic itch
Has seiz'd the court and city, poor and rich:
Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays,
Our wives read Milton, and our daughters plays,
To theatres, and to rehearsals throng,
And all our grace at table is a song.
I, who so oft renounce the Muses, lie,
Not {-}{-}{-}{-}{-}'s self e'er tells more fibs than I;
When sick of Muse, our follies we deplore,
And promise our best friends to rhyme no more;
We wake next morning in a raging fit,
And call for pen and ink to show our wit.
109
He serv'd a 'prenticeship who sets up shop;
Ward tried on puppies and the poor, his drop;
Ev'n Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France,
Nor dare to practise till they've learn'd to dance.
Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile?
(Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile)
But those who cannot write, and those who can,
All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.
Yet, Sir, reflect, the mischief is not great;
These madmen never hurt the Church or state:
Sometimes the folly benefits mankind;
And rarely av'rice taints the tuneful mind.
Allow him but his plaything of a pen,
He ne'er rebels, or plots, like other men:
Flight of cashiers, or mobs, he'll never mind;
And knows no losses while the Muse is kind.
To cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter;
The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre,
Enjoys his garden and his book in quiet;
And then--a perfect hermit in his diet.
Of little use the man you may suppose,
Who says in verse what others say in prose:
Yet let me show, a poet's of some weight,
And (though no soldier) useful to the state.
What will a child learn sooner than a song?
What better teach a foreigner the tongue?
What's long or short, each accent where to place,
And speak in public with some sort of grace.
I scarce can think him such a worthless thing,
Unless he praise some monster of a king;
Or virtue or religion turn to sport,
To please a lewd, or unbelieving court.
Unhappy Dryden!--In all Charles's days,
Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays;
And in our own (excuse some courtly stains)
No whiter page than Addison remains.
He, from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,
And sets the passions on the side of truth,
Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,
And pours each human virtue in the heart.
110
Let Ireland tell, how wit upheld her cause,
Her trade supported, and supplied her laws;
And leave on Swift this grateful verse engrav'd,
"The rights a court attack'd, a poet sav'd."
Behold the hand that wrought a nation's cure,
Stretch'd to relieve the idiot and the poor,
Proud vice to brand, or injur'd worth adorn,
And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn.
Not but there are, who merit other palms;
Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms:
The boys and girls whom charity maintains,
Implore your help in these pathetic strains:
How could devotion touch the country pews,
Unless the gods bestow'd a proper Muse?
Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work,
Verse prays for peace, or sings down Pope and Turk.
The silenc'd preacher yields to potent strain,
And feels that grace his pray'r besought in vain;
The blessing thrills through all the lab'ring throng,
And Heav'n is won by violence of song.
Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulg'd the day that hous'd their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain:
The joy their wives, their sons, and servants share,
Ease of their toil, and part'ners of their care:
The laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl,
Smooth'd ev'ry brow, and open'd ev'ry soul:
With growing years the pleasing licence grew,
And taunts alternate innocently flew.
But times corrupt, and nature, ill-inclin'd,
Produc'd the point that left a sting behind;
Till friend with friend, and families at strife,
Triumphant malice rag'd through private life.
Who felt the wrong, or fear'd it, took th' alarm,
Appeal'd to law, and justice lent her arm.
At length, by wholesome dread of statutes bound,
The poets learn'd to please, and not to wound:
Most warp'd to flatt'ry's side; but some, more nice,
Preserv'd the freedom, and forbore the vice.
111
Hence satire rose, that just the medium hit,
And heals with morals what it hurts with wit.
We conquer'd France, but felt our captive's charms;
Her arts victorious triumph'd o'er our arms;
Britain to soft refinements less a foe,
Wit grew polite, and numbers learn'd to flow.
Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
Though still some traces of our rustic vein
And splayfoot verse remain'd, and will remain.
Late, very late, correctness grew our care,
When the tir'd nation breath'd from civil war.
Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire
Show'd us that France had something to admire.
Not but the tragic spirit was our own,
And full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone:
But Otway fail'd to polish or refine,
And fluent Shakespeare scarce effac'd a line.
Ev'n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,
The last and greatest art, the art to blot.
Some doubt, if equal pains, or equal fire
The humbler Muse of comedy require.
But in known images of life, I guess
The labour greater, as th' indulgence less.
Observe how seldom ev'n the best succeed:
Tell me if Congreve's fools are fools indeed?
What pert, low dialogue has Farqu'ar writ!
How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit!
The stage how loosely does Astr{ae}ea tread,
Who fairly puts all characters to bed!
And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws,
To make poor Pinky eat with vast applause!
But fill their purse, our poet's work is done,
Alike to them, by pathos or by pun.
O you! whom vanity's light bark conveys
112
On fame's mad voyage by the wind of praise,
With what a shifting gale your course you ply,
For ever sunk too low, or borne too high!
Who pants for glory finds but short repose,
A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows.
Farewell the stage! if just as thrives the play,
The silly bard grows fat, or falls away.
There still remains, to mortify a wit,
The many-headed monster of the pit:
A senseless, worthless, and unhonour'd crowd;
Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud,
Clatt'ring their sticks before ten lines are spoke,
Call for the farce, the bear, or the black-joke.
What dear delight to Britons farce affords!
Farce once the taste of mobs, but now of lords;
(For taste, eternal wanderer, now flies
From heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes.)
The play stands still; damn action and discourse,
Back fly the scenes, and enter foot and horse;
Pageants on pageants, in long order drawn,
Peers, heralds, bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn;
The champion too! and, to complete the jest,
Old Edward's armour beams on Cibber's breast.
With laughter sure Democritus had died,
Had he beheld an audience gape so wide.
Let bear or elephant be e'er so white,
The people, sure, the people are the sight!
Ah luckless poet! stretch thy lungs and roar,
That bear or elephant shall heed thee more;
While all its throats the gallery extends,
And all the thunder of the pit ascends!
Loud as the wolves on Orcas' stormy steep,
Howl to the roarings of the Northern deep.
Such is the shout, the long-applauding note,
At Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat,
Or when from Court a birthday suit bestow'd
Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load.
Booth enters--hark! the universal peal!
"But has he spoken?" Not a syllable.
"What shook the stage, and made the people stare?"
113
Cato's long wig, flow'r'd gown, and lacquer'd chair.
Yet lest you think I rally more than teach,
Or praise malignly arts I cannot reach,
Let me for once presume t'instruct the times,
To know the poet from the man of rhymes:
'Tis he, who gives my breast a thousand pains,
Can make me feel each passion that he feigns;
Enrage, compose, with more than magic art,
With pity and with terror tear my heart;
And snatch me o'er the earth or thro' the air,
To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where.
But not this part of the poetic state
Alone, deserves the favour of the great:
Think of those authors, Sir, who would rely
More on a reader's sense, than gazer's eye.
Or who shall wander where the Muses sing?
Who climb their mountain, or who taste their spring?
How shall we fill a library with wit,
When Merlin's Cave is half unfurnish'd yet?
My Liege! why writers little claim your thought,
I guess: and, with their leave, will tell the fault:
We poets are (upon a poet's word)
Of all mankind, the creatures most absurd:
The season, when to come, and when to go,
To sing, or cease to sing, we never know;
And if we will recite nine hours in ten,
You lose your patience, just like other men.
Then too we hurt ourselves, when to defend
A single verse, we quarrel with a friend;
Repeat unask'd; lament, the wit's too fine
For vulgar eyes, and point out ev'ry line.
But most, when straining with too weak a wing,
We needs will write epistles to the king;
And from the moment we oblige the town,
Expect a place, or pension from the Crown;
Or dubb'd historians by express command,
114
T'enroll your triumphs o'er the seas and land,
Be call'd to court to plan some work divine,
As once for Louis, Boileau and Racine.
Yet think, great Sir! (so many virtues shown)
Ah think, what poet best may make them known?
Or choose at least some minister of grace,
Fit to bestow the laureate's weighty place.
Charles, to late times to be transmitted fair,
Assign'd his figure to Bernini's care;
And great Nassau to Kneller's hand decreed
To fix him graceful on the bounding steed;
So well in paint and stone they judg'd of merit:
But kings in wit may want discerning spirit.
The hero William, and the martyr Charles,
One knighted Blackmore, and one pension'd Quarles;
Which made old Ben, and surly Dennis swear,
"No Lord's anointed, but a Russian bear."
Not with such majesty, such bold relief,
The forms august, of king, or conqu'ring chief,
E'er swell'd on marble; as in verse have shin'd
(In polish'd verse) the manners and the mind.
Oh! could I mount on the M{ae}onian wing,
Your arms, your actions, your repose to sing!
What seas you travers'd! and what fields you fought!
Your country's peace, how oft, how dearly bought!
How barb'rous rage subsided at your word,
And nations wonder'd while they dropp'd the sword!
How, when you nodded, o'er the land and deep,
Peace stole her wing, and wrapp'd the world in sleep;
Till earth's extremes your mediation own,
And Asia's tyrants tremble at your throne-But verse, alas! your Majesty disdains;
And I'm not us'd to panegyric strains:
The zeal of fools offends at any time,
But most of all, the zeal of fools in rhyme,
Besides, a fate attends on all I write,
115
That when I aim at praise, they say I bite.
A vile encomium doubly ridicules:
There's nothing blackens like the ink of fools;
If true, a woeful likeness; and if lies,
"Praise undeserv'd is scandal in disguise."
Well may he blush, who gives it, or receives;
And when I flatter, let my dirty leaves
(Like journals, odes, and such forgotten things
As Eusden, Philips, Settle, writ of kings)
Clothe spice, line trunks, or flutt'ring in a row,
Befringe the rails of Bedlam and Soho.
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
412:Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot
Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu'd, I said,
Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.
The dog-star rages! nay 'tis past a doubt,
All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.
What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide?
They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide;
By land, by water, they renew the charge;
They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.
No place is sacred, not the church is free;
Ev'n Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me:
Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme,
Happy! to catch me just at dinner-time.
Is there a parson, much bemus'd in beer,
A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,
A clerk, foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,
Who pens a stanza, when he should engross?
Is there, who, lock'd from ink and paper, scrawls
With desp'rate charcoal round his darken'd walls?
All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strain
Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain.
Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,
Imputes to me and my damn'd works the cause:
Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope,
And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope.
Friend to my life! (which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song)
What drop or nostrum can this plague remove?
Or which must end me, a fool's wrath or love?
A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped,
If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead.
Seiz'd and tied down to judge, how wretched I!
Who can't be silent, and who will not lie;
To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace,
And to be grave, exceeds all pow'r of face.
73
I sit with sad civility, I read
With honest anguish, and an aching head;
And drop at last, but in unwilling ears,
This saving counsel, 'Keep your piece nine years.'
'Nine years! ' cries he, who high in Drury-lane
Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane,
Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends,
Oblig'd by hunger, and request of friends:
'The piece, you think, is incorrect: why, take it,
I'm all submission, what you'd have it, make it.'
Three things another's modest wishes bound,
My friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound.
Pitholeon sends to me: 'You know his Grace,
I want a patron; ask him for a place.'
Pitholeon libell'd me- 'but here's a letter
Informs you, sir, 'twas when he knew no better.
Dare you refuse him? Curll invites to dine,
He'll write a Journal, or he'll turn Divine.'
Bless me! a packet- ''Tis a stranger sues,
A virgin tragedy, an orphan muse.'
If I dislike it, 'Furies, death and rage! '
If I approve, 'Commend it to the stage.'
There (thank my stars) my whole commission ends,
The play'rs and I are, luckily, no friends.
Fir'd that the house reject him, ''Sdeath I'll print it,
And shame the fools- your int'rest, sir, with Lintot! '
'Lintot, dull rogue! will think your price too much.'
'Not, sir, if you revise it, and retouch.'
All my demurs but double his attacks;
At last he whispers, 'Do; and we go snacks.'
Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door,
'Sir, let me see your works and you no more.'
'Tis sung, when Midas' ears began to spring,
(Midas, a sacred person and a king)
His very minister who spied them first,
(Some say his queen) was forc'd to speak, or burst.
And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case,
74
When ev'ry coxcomb perks them in my face?
'Good friend, forbear! you deal in dang'rous things.
I'd never name queens, ministers, or kings;
Keep close to ears, and those let asses prick;
'Tis nothing'- Nothing? if they bite and kick?
Out with it, Dunciad! let the secret pass,
That secret to each fool, that he's an ass:
The truth once told (and wherefore should we lie?)
The queen of Midas slept, and so may I.
You think this cruel? take it for a rule,
No creature smarts so little as a fool.
Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break,
Thou unconcern'd canst hear the mighty crack:
Pit, box, and gall'ry in convulsions hurl'd,
Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world.
Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through,
He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew;
Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain,
The creature's at his dirty work again;
Thron'd in the centre of his thin designs;
Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines!
Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer,
Lost the arch'd eye-brow, or Parnassian sneer?
And has not Colley still his lord, and whore?
His butchers Henley, his Free-masons Moore?
Does not one table Bavius still admit?
Still to one bishop Philips seem a wit?
Still Sappho- 'Hold! for God-sake- you'll offend:
No names! - be calm! - learn prudence of a friend!
I too could write, and I am twice as tall;
But foes like these! ' One flatt'rer's worse than all.
Of all mad creatures, if the learn'd are right,
It is the slaver kills, and not the bite.
A fool quite angry is quite innocent;
Alas! 'tis ten times worse when they repent.
One dedicates in high heroic prose,
And ridicules beyond a hundred foes;
One from all Grub Street will my fame defend,
And, more abusive, calls himself my friend.
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This prints my Letters, that expects a bribe,
And others roar aloud, 'Subscribe, subscribe.'
There are, who to my person pay their court:
I cough like Horace, and, though lean, am short,
Ammon's great son one shoulder had too high,
Such Ovid's nose, and 'Sir! you have an eye'Go on, obliging creatures, make me see
All that disgrac'd my betters, met in me:
Say for my comfort, languishing in bed,
'Just so immortal Maro held his head:'
And when I die, be sure you let me know
Great Homer died three thousand years ago.
Why did I write? what sin to me unknown
Dipp'd me in ink, my parents', or my own?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.
I left no calling for this idle trade,
No duty broke, no father disobey'd.
The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife,
To help me through this long disease, my life,
To second, Arbuthnot! thy art and care,
And teach the being you preserv'd, to bear.
But why then publish? Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;
Well-natur'd Garth inflamed with early praise,
And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd my lays;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read,
Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head,
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friends before)
With open arms receiv'd one poet more.
Happy my studies, when by these approv'd!
Happier their author, when by these belov'd!
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.
Soft were my numbers; who could take offence,
While pure description held the place of sense?
Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme,
A painted mistress, or a purling stream.
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Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;
I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still.
Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;
I never answer'd, I was not in debt.
If want provok'd, or madness made them print,
I wag'd no war with Bedlam or the Mint.
Did some more sober critic come abroad?
If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.
Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence,
And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.
Commas and points they set exactly right,
And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.
Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel grac'd these ribalds,
From slashing Bentley down to pidling Tibbalds.
Each wight who reads not, and but scans and spells,
Each word-catcher that lives on syllables,
Ev'n such small critics some regard may claim,
Preserv'd in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name.
Pretty! in amber to observe the forms
Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms;
The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there?
Were others angry? I excus'd them too;
Well might they rage; I gave them but their due.
A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find,
But each man's secret standard in his mind,
That casting weight pride adds to emptiness,
This, who can gratify? for who can guess?
The bard whom pilfer'd pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown,
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year:
He, who still wanting, though he lives on theft,
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:
And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:
And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad:
All these, my modest satire bade translate,
And own'd, that nine such poets made a Tate.
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How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe?
And swear, not Addison himself was safe.
Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires,
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caus'd himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieg'd,
And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While wits and templars ev'ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise.
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?
What though my name stood rubric on the walls,
Or plaister'd posts, with claps, in capitals?
Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load,
On wings of winds came flying all abroad?
I sought no homage from the race that write;
I kept, like Asian monarchs, from their sight:
Poems I heeded (now berhym'd so long)
No more than thou, great George! a birthday song.
I ne'er with wits or witlings pass'd my days,
To spread about the itch of verse and praise;
Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town,
To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;
Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cried,
With handkerchief and orange at my side;
But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,
To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.
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Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,
Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by every quill;
Fed with soft dedication all day long,
Horace and he went hand in hand in song.
His library (where busts of poets dead
And a true Pindar stood without a head,)
Receiv'd of wits an undistinguish'd race,
Who first his judgment ask'd, and then a place:
Much they extoll'd his pictures, much his seat,
And flatter'd ev'ry day, and some days eat:
Till grown more frugal in his riper days,
He paid some bards with port, and some with praise,
To some a dry rehearsal was assign'd,
And others (harder still) he paid in kind.
Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh,
Dryden alone escap'd this judging eye:
But still the great have kindness in reserve,
He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve.
May some choice patron bless each grey goose quill!
May ev'ry Bavius have his Bufo still!
So, when a statesman wants a day's defence,
Or envy holds a whole week's war with sense,
Or simple pride for flatt'ry makes demands,
May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!
Blest be the great! for those they take away,
And those they left me- for they left me Gay;
Left me to see neglected genius bloom,
Neglected die! and tell it on his tomb;
Of all thy blameless life the sole return
My verse, and Queensb'ry weeping o'er thy urn!
Oh let me live my own! and die so too!
('To live and die is all I have to do:')
Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,
And see what friends, and read what books I please.
Above a patron, though I condescend
Sometimes to call a minister my friend:
I was not born for courts or great affairs;
I pay my debts, believe, and say my pray'rs;
Can sleep without a poem in my head,
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Nor know, if Dennis be alive or dead.
Why am I ask'd what next shall see the light?
Heav'ns! was I born for nothing but to write?
Has life no joys for me? or (to be grave)
Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?
'I found him close with Swift'- 'Indeed? no doubt',
(Cries prating Balbus) 'something will come out'.
'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.
'No, such a genius never can lie still,'
And then for mine obligingly mistakes
The first lampoon Sir Will. or Bubo makes.
Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile,
When ev'ry coxcomb knows me by my style?
Curs'd be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,
Or from the soft-ey'd virgin steal a tear!
But he, who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,
Insults fall'n worth, or beauty in distress,
Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about,
Who writes a libel, or who copies out:
That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,
Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame;
Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend;
Who tells what'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lie not, must at least betray:
Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear,
And sees at Cannons what was never there;
Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie.
A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.
Let Sporus tremble- 'What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? '
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Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'r enjoys,
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.
His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now Master up, now Miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have express'd,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Not fortune's worshipper, nor fashion's fool,
Not lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool,
Not proud, nor servile, be one poet's praise,
That, if he pleas'd, he pleas'd by manly ways;
That flatt'ry, even to kings, he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same:
That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long,
But stoop'd to truth, and moraliz'd his song:
That not for fame, but virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
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The tale reviv'd, the lie so oft o'erthrown;
Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own;
The morals blacken'd when the writings 'scape;
The libell'd person, and the pictur'd shape;
Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,
A friend in exile, or a father, dead;
The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps, yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear:Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past:
For thee, fair Virtue! welcome ev'n the last!
'But why insult the poor? affront the great? '
A knave's a knave, to me, in ev'ry state:
Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,
Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail,
A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,
Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;
If on a pillory, or near a throne,
He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own.
Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit:
This dreaded sat'rist Dennis will confess
Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress:
So humble, he has knock'd at Tibbald's door,
Has drunk with Cibber, nay, has rhym'd for Moore.
Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply?
Three thousand suns went down on Welsted's lie.
To please a mistress one aspers'd his life;
He lash'd him not, but let her be his wife.
Let Budgell charge low Grub Street on his quill,
And write whate'er he pleas'd, except his will;
Let the two Curlls of town and court, abuse
His father, mother, body, soul, and muse.
Yet why? that father held it for a rule,
It was a sin to call our neighbour fool:
That harmless mother thought no wife a whore,Hear this! and spare his family, James Moore!
Unspotted names! and memorable long,
If there be force in virtue, or in song.
Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause,
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While yet in Britain honour had applause)
Each parent sprung- 'What fortune, pray? '- Their own,
And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.
Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,
Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,
Stranger to civil and religious rage,
The good man walk'd innoxious through his age.
No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dar'd an oath, nor hazarded a lie:
Un-learn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language, but the language of the heart.
By nature honest, by experience wise,
Healthy by temp'rance and by exercise;
His life, though long, to sickness past unknown;
His death was instant, and without a groan.
O grant me, thus to live, and thus to die!
Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.
O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!
Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:
Me, let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age,
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make langour smile, and smooth the bed of death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep a while one parent from the sky!
On cares like these if length of days attend,
May Heav'n, to bless those days, preserve my friend,
Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,
And just as rich as when he serv'd a queen.
Whether that blessing be denied or giv'n,
Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heav'n.
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
413:Windsor Forest
Thy forests, Windsor! and thy green retreats,
At once the Monarch's and the Muse's seats,
Invite my lays. Be present, sylvan maids!
Unlock your springs, and open all your shades.
Granville commands; your aid O Muses bring!
What Muse for Granville can refuse to sing?
The groves of Eden, vanish'd now so long,
Live in description, and look green in song:
These, were my breast inspir'd with equal flame,
Like them in beauty, should be like in fame.
Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water, seem to strive again;
Not Chaos like together crush'd and bruis'd,
But as the world, harmoniously confus'd:
Where order in variety we see,
And where, tho' all things differ, all agree.
Here waving groves a checquer'd scene display,
And part admit, and part exclude the day;
As some coy nymph her lover's warm address
Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress.
There, interspers'd in lawns and opening glades,
Thin trees arise that shun each other's shades.
Here in full light the russet plains extend;
There wrapt in clouds the blueish hills ascend.
Ev'n the wild heath displays her purple dyes,
And 'midst the desart fruitful fields arise,
That crown'd with tufted trees and springing corn,
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.
Let India boast her plants, nor envy we
The weeping amber or the balmy tree,
While by our oaks the precious loads are born,
And realms commanded which those trees adorn.
Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,
Tho' Gods assembled grace his tow'ring height,
Than what more humble mountains offer here,
Where, in their blessings, all those Gods appear.
See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crown'd,
Here blushing Flora paints th' enamel'd ground,
Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
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And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand;
Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
And peace and plenty tell, a Stuart reigns.
Not thus the land appear'd in ages past,
A dreary desart and a gloomy waste,
To savage beasts and savage laws a prey,
And kings more furious and severe than they;
Who claim'd the skies, dispeopled air and floods,
The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods:
Cities laid waste, they storm'd the dens and caves,
(For wiser brutes were backward to be slaves):
What could be free, when lawless beasts obey'd,
And ev'n the elements a Tyrant sway'd?
In vain kind seasons swell'd the teeming grain,
Soft show'rs distill'd, and suns grew warm in vain;
The swain with tears his frustrate labour yields,
And famish'd dies amidst his ripen'd fields.
What wonder then, a beast or subject slain
Were equal crimes in a despotick reign?
Both doom'd alike, for sportive Tyrants bled,
But that the subject starv'd, the beast was fed.
Proud Nimrod first the bloody chace began,
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man:
Our haughty Norman boasts that barb'rous name,
And makes his trembling slaves the royal game.
The fields are ravish'd from th' industrious swains,
From men their cities, and from Gods their fanes:
The levell'd towns with weeds lie cover'd o'er;
The hollow winds thro' naked temples roar;
Round broken columns clasping ivy twin'd;
O'er heaps of ruin stalk'd the stately hind;
The fox obscene to gaping tombs retires,
And savage howlings fill the sacred quires.
Aw'd by his Nobles, by his Commons curst,
Th' Oppressor rul'd tyrannic where he durst,
Stretch'd o'er the Poor and Church his iron rod,
And serv'd alike his Vassals and his God.
Whom ev'n the Saxon spar'd, and bloody Dane,
The wanton victims of his sport remain.
But see, the man who spacious regions gave
A waste for beasts, himself deny'd a grave!
Stretch'd on the lawn, his second hope survey,
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At once the chaser, and at once the prey:
Lo Rufus, tugging at the deadly dart,
Bleeds in the forest, like a wounded hart.
Succeeding Monarchs heard the subjects cries,
Nor saw displeas'd the peaceful cottage rise.
Then gath'ring flocks on unknown mountains fed,
O'er sandy wilds were yellow harvests spread,
The forests wonder'd at th' unusual grain,
And secret transport touch'd the conscious swain.
Fair Liberty, Britannia's Goddess, rears
Her chearful head, and leads the golden years.
Ye vig'rous swains! while youth ferments your blood,
And purer spirits swell the sprightly flood,
Now range the hills, the thickest woods beset,
Wind the shrill horn, or spread the waving net.
When milder autumn summer's heat succeeds,
And in the new-shorn field the partridge feeds,
Before his lord the ready spaniel bounds,
Panting with hope, he tries the furrow'd grounds;
But when the tainted gales the game betray,
Couch'd close he lies, and meditates the prey:
Secure they trust th' unfaithful field, beset,
Till hov'ring o'er 'em sweeps the swelling net.
Thus (if small things we may with great compare)
When Albion sends her eager sons to war,
Some thoughtless Town, with ease and plenty blest,
Near, and more near, the closing lines invest;
Sudden they seize th' amaz'd, defenceless prize,
And high in air Britannia's standard flies.
See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs,
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings:
Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound,
Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground.
Ah! what avail his glossy, varying dyes,
His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes,
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold?
Nor yet, when moist Arcturus clouds the sky,
The woods and fields their pleasing toils deny.
To plains with well-breath'd beagles we repair,
And trace the mazes of the circling hare:
(Beasts, urg'd by us, their fellow-beasts pursue,
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And learn of man each other to undo.)
With slaught'ring guns th' unweary'd fowler roves,
When frosts have whiten'd all the naked groves;
Where doves in flocks the leafless trees o'ershade,
And lonely woodcocks haunt the wat'ry glade.
He lifts the tube, and levels with his eye;
Strait a short thunder breaks the frozen sky:
Oft', as in airy rings they skim the heath,
The clam'rous plovers feel the leaden death:
Oft', as the mounting larks their notes prepare,
They fall, and leave their little lives in air.
In genial spring, beneath the quiv'ring shade,
Where cooling vapours breathe along the mead,
The patient fisher takes his silent stand,
Intent, his angle trembling in his hand;
With looks unmov'd, he hopes the scaly breed,
And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed.
Our plenteous streams a various race supply,
The bright-ey'd perch with fins of Tyrian dye,
The silver eel, in shining volumes roll'd,
The yellow carp, in scales bedrop'd with gold,
Swift trouts, diversify'd with crimson stains,
And pykes, the tyrants of the watry plains.
Now Cancer glows with Phoebus' fiery car;
The youth rush eager to the sylvan war,
Swarm o'er the lawns, the forest walks surround,
Rouze the fleet hart, and chear the opening hound.
Th' impatient courser pants in ev'ry vein,
And pawing, seems to beat the distant plain;
Hills, vales, and floods appear already cross'd,
And e'er he starts, a thousand steps are lost.
See! the bold youth strain up the threat'ning steep,
Rush thro' the thickets, down the valleys sweep,
Hang o'er their coursers heads with eager speed,
And earth rolls back beneath the flying steed.
Let old Arcadia boast her ample plain,
Th' immortal huntress, and her virgin-train;
Nor envy, Windsor! since thy shades have seen
As bright a Goddess, and as chaste a Queen;
Whose care, like hers, protects the sylvan reign,
The Earth's fair light, and Empress of the main.
Here, as old bards have sung, Diana stray'd,
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Bath'd in the springs, or sought the cooling shade;
Here arm'd with silver bows, in early dawn,
Her buskin'd Virgins trac'd the dewy lawn.
Above the rest a rural nymph was fam'd,
Thy offspring, Thames! the fair Lodona nam'd;
(Lodona's fate, in long oblivion cast,
The Muse shall sing, and what she sings shall last.)
Scarce could the Goddess from her nymph be known,
But by the crescent and the golden zone.
She scorn'd the praise of beauty, and the care,
A belt her waist, a fillet binds her hair,
A painted quiver on her shoulder sounds,
And with her dart the flying deer she wounds.
It chanc'd, as eager of the chace, the maid
Beyond the forest's verdant limits stray'd,
Pan saw and lov'd, and burning with desire
Pursu'd her flight, her flight increas'd his fire.
Not half so swift the trembling doves can fly,
When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky;
Not half so swiftly the fierce eagle moves,
When thro' the clouds he drives the trembling doves;
As from the God she flew with furious pace,
Or as the God, more furious, urg'd the chace.
Now fainting, sinking, pale, the nymph appears;
Now close behind, his sounding steps she hears;
And now his shadow reach'd her as she run,
His shadow lengthen'd by the setting sun;
And now his shorter breath, with sultry air,
Pants on her neck, and fans her parting hair.
In vain on father Thames she call'd for aid,
Nor could Diana help her injur'd maid.
Faint, breathless, thus she pray'd, nor pray'd in vain;
'Ah Cynthia! ah tho' banish'd from thy train,
'Let me, O let me, to the shades repair,
'My native shades there weep, and murmur there.
She said, and melting as in tears she lay,
In a soft, silver stream dissolv'd away.
The silver stream her virgin coldness keeps,
For ever murmurs, and for ever weeps;
Still bears the name the hapless virgin bore,
And bathes the forest where she rang'd before.
In her chaste current oft' the Goddess laves,
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And with celestial tears augments the waves.
Oft' in her glass the musing shepherd spies
The headlong mountains and the downward skies,
The watry landskip of the pendant woods,
And absent trees that tremble in the floods;
In the clear azure gleam the flocks are seen,
And floating forests paint the waves with green.
Thro' the fair scene rowl slow the ling'ring streams,
Then foaming pour along, and rush into the Thames.
Thou too, great father of the British floods!
With joyful pride survey'st our lofty woods;
Where tow'ring oaks their spreading honours rear,
And future navies on thy shores appear.
Not Neptune's self from all his streams receives
A wealthier tribute, than to thine he gives.
No seas so rich, so gay no banks appear,
No lake so gentle, and no spring so clear.
Not fabled Po more swells the poet's lays,
While thro' the skies his shining current strays,
Than thine, which visits Windsor's fam'd abodes,
To grace the mansion of our earthly Gods:
Nor all his stars a brighter lustre show,
Than the fair nymphs that grace thy side below:
Here Jove himself, subdu'd by beauty still,
Might change Olympus for a nobler hill.
Happy the man whom this bright Court approves,
His Sov'reign favours, and his Country loves:
Happy next him, who to these shades retires,
Whom Nature charms, and whom the Muse inspires;
Whom humbler joys of home-felt quiet please,
Successive study, exercise, and ease.
He gathers health from herbs the forest yields,
And of their fragrant physic spoils the fields:
With chymic art exalts the min'ral pow'rs,
And draws the aromatic souls of flow'rs:
Now marks the course of rolling orbs on high;
O'er figur'd worlds now travels with his eye:
Of ancient writ unlocks the learned store,
Consults the dead, and lives past ages o'er:
Or wand'ring thoughtful in the silent wood,
Attends the duties of the wise and good,
T'observe a mean, be to himself a friend,
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To follow nature, and regard his end;
Or looks on heav'n with more than mortal eyes,
Bids his free soul expatiate in the skies,
Amid her kindred stars familiar roam,
Survey the region, and confess her home!
Such was the life great Scipio once admir'd,
Thus Atticus, and Trumbal thus retir'd.
Ye sacred Nine! that all my soul possess,
Whose raptures fire me, and whose visions bless,
Bear me, oh bear me to sequester'd scenes,
The bow'ry mazes, and surrounding greens;
To Thames's banks which fragrant breezes fill,
Or where ye Muses sport on Cooper's hill.
(On Cooper's hill eternal wreaths shall grow,
While lasts the mountain, or while Thames shall flow)
I seem thro' consecrated walks to rove,
I hear soft music die along the grove;
Led by the sound, I roam from shade to shade,
By god-like Poets venerable made:
Here his first lays majestic Denham sung;
There the last numbers flow'd from Cowley's tongue.
O early lost! what tears the river shed,
When the sad pomp along his banks was led?
His drooping swans on ev'ry note expire,
And on his willows hung each Muse's lyre.
Since fate relentless stop'd their heav'nly voice,
No more the forests ring, or groves rejoice;
Who now shall charm the shades, where Cowley strung
His living harp, and lofty Denham sung?
But hark! the groves rejoice, the forest rings!
Are these reviv'd? or is it Granville sings?
'Tis yours, my Lord, to bless our soft retreats,
And call the Muses to their ancient seats;
To paint anew the flow'ry sylvan scenes,
To crown the forests with immortal greens,
Make Windsor-hills in lofty numbers rise,
And lift her turrets nearer to the skies;
To sing those honours you deserve to wear,
And add new lustre to her silver star.
Here noble Surrey felt the sacred rage,
Surrey, the Granville of a former age:
Matchless his pen, victorious was his lance,
281
Bold in the lists, and graceful in the dance:
In the same shades the Cupids tun'd his lyre,
To the same notes, of love, and soft desire:
Fair Geraldine, bright object of his vow,
Then fill'd the groves, as heav'nly Myra now.
Oh would'st thou sing what Heroes Windsor bore,
What Kings first breath'd upon her winding shore,
Or raise old warriours, whose ador'd remains
In weeping vaults her hallow'd earth contains!
With Edward's acts adorn the shining page,
Stretch his long triumphs down thro' ev'ry age,
Draw Monarchs chain'd, and Cressi's glorious field,
The lillies blazing on the regal shield:
Then, from her roofs when Verrio's colours fall,
And leave inanimate the naked wall,
Still in thy song should vanquish'd France appear,
And bleed for ever under Britain's spear.
Let softer strains ill-fated Henry mourn,
And palms eternal flourish round his urn,
Here o'er the martyr-King the marble weeps,
And fast beside him, once-fear'd Edward sleeps:
Whom not th' extended Albion could contain,
From old Belerium to the northern main,
The grave unites; where ev'n the Great find rest,
And blended lie th' oppressor and th' opprest!
Make sacred Charles's tomb for ever known,
(Obscure the place, and un-inscrib'd the stone)
Oh fact accurst! what tears has Albion shed,
Heav'ns, what new wounds! and how her old have bled?
She saw her sons with purple deaths expire,
Her sacred domes involv'd in rolling fire,
A dreadful series of intestine wars,
Inglorious triumphs, and dishonest scars.
At length great Anna said 'Let Discord cease!'
She said, the World obey'd, and all was Peace!
In that blest moment, from his oozy bed
Old father Thames advanc'd his rev'rend head.
His tresses drop'd with dews, and o'er the stream
His shining horns diffus'd a golden gleam:
Grav'd on his urn, appear'd the Moon that guides
His swelling waters, and alternate tydes;
The figur'd streams in waves of silver roll'd,
282
And on their banks Augusta rose in gold.
Around his throne the sea-born brothers stood,
Who swell with tributary urns his flood:
First the fam'd authors of his ancient name,
The winding Isis and the fruitful Tame:
The Kennet swift, for silver eels renown'd;
The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crown'd;
Cole, whose clear streams his flow'ry islands lave;
And chalky Wey, that rolls a milky wave:
The blue, transparent Vandalis appears;
The gulphy Lee his sedgy tresses rears;
And sullen Mole, that hides his diving flood;
And silent Darent, stain'd with Danish blood.
High in the midst, upon his urn reclin'd,
(His sea-green mantle waving with the wind)
The God appear'd: he turn'd his azure eyes
Where Windsor-domes and pompous turrets rise;
Then bow'd and spoke; the winds forget to roar,
And the hush'd waves glide softly to the shore.
Hail, sacred Peace! hail long-expected days,
That Thames's glory to the stars shall raise!
Tho' Tyber's streams immortal Rome behold,
Tho' foaming Hermus swells with tydes of gold,
From heav'n itself tho' sev'n-fold Nilus flows,
And harvests on a hundred realms bestows;
These now no more shall be the Muse's themes,
Lost in my fame, as in the sea their streams.
Let Volga's banks with iron squadrons shine,
And groves of lances glitter on the Rhine,
Let barb'rous Ganges arm a servile train;
Be mine the blessings of a peaceful reign.
No more my sons shall dye with British blood
Red Iber's sands, or Ister's foaming flood;
Safe on my shore each unmolested swain
Shall tend the flocks, or reap the bearded grain;
The shady empire shall retain no trace
Of war or blood, but in the sylvan chace;
The trumpet sleep, while chearful horns are blown,
And arms employ'd on birds and beasts alone.
Behold! th' ascending Villa's on my side,
Project long shadows o'er the crystal tyde.
Behold! Augusta's glitt'ring spires increase,
283
And temples rise, the beauteous works of Peace.
I see, I see where two fair cities bend
Their ample bow, a new White-ball ascend!
There mighty nations shall enquire their doom,
The world's great Oracle in times to come;
There Kings shall sue, and suppliant States be seen
Once more to bend before a British Queen.
Thy trees, fair Windsor! now shall leave their woods,
And half thy forests rush into my floods,
Bear Britain's thunder, and her Cross display,
To the bright regions of the rising day;
Tempt icy seas, where scarce the waters roll,
Where clearer flames glow round the frozen Pole;
Or under southern skies exalt their sails,
Led by new stars, and borne by spicy gales!
For me the balm shall bleed, and amber flow,
The coral redden, and the ruby glow,
The pearly shell its lucid globe infold,
And Phoebus warm the ripening ore to gold.
The time shall come, when free as seas or wind
Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind,
Whole nations enter with each swelling tyde,
And seas but join the regions they divide;
Earth's distant ends our glory shall behold,
And the new world launch forth to seek the old.
Then ships of uncouth form shall stem the tyde,
And feather'd people croud my wealthy side,
And naked youths and painted chiefs admire
Our speech, our colour, and our strange attire!
Oh stretch thy reign, fair Peace! from shore to shore,
'Till Conquest cease, and slav'ry be no more;
'Till the freed Indians in their native groves
Reap their own fruits, and woo their sable loves,
Peru once more a race of Kings behold,
And other Mexico's be roof'd with gold.
Exil'd by thee from earth to deepest hell,
In brazen bonds shall barb'rous Discord dwell:
Gigantic Pride, pale Terror, gloomy Care,
And mad Ambition, shall attend her there:
There purple Vengeance bath'd in gore retires,
Her weapons blunted, and extinct her fires:
There hateful Envy her own snakes shall feel,
284
And Persecution mourn her broken wheel:
There Faction roar, Rebellion bite her chain,
And gasping Furies thirst for blood in vain.
Here cease thy flight, nor with unhallow'd lays
Touch the fair fame of Albion's golden days:
The thoughts of Gods let Granville's verse recite,
And bring the scenes of opening fate to light.
My humble Muse, in unambitious strains,
Paints the green forests and the flow'ry plains,
Where Peace descending bids her olives spring,
And scatters blessings from her dove-like wing.
Ev'n I more sweetly pass my careless days,
Pleas'd in the silent shade with empty praise;
Enough for me, that to the list'ning swains
First in these fields I sung the sylvan strains.
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
414:DRAMATIS PERSONAE
King Charles I.
Queen Henrietta.
Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.
Lord Cottington.
Lord Weston.
Lord Coventry.
Williams, Bishop of Lincoln.
Secretary Lyttelton.
Juxon.
St. John.
Archy, the Court Fool.
Hampden.
Pym.
Cromwell.
Cromwell's Daughter.
Sir Harry Vane the younger.
Leighton.
Bastwick.
Prynne.
Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, Citizens, Pursuivants, Marshalsmen, Law Students, Judges, Clerk.
Scene I.
---The Masque of the Inns of Court.
A Pursuivant.
Place, for the Marshal of the Masque!
First Citizen.
What thinkest thou of this quaint masque which turns,
Like morning from the shadow of the night,
The night to day, and London to a place
Of peace and joy?
Second Citizen.
And Hell to Heaven.
Eight years are gone,
And they seem hours, since in this populous street
I trod on grass made green by summer's rain,
For the red plague kept state within that palace
Where now that vanity reigns. In nine years more
The roots will be refreshed with civil blood;
And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven
That sin and wrongs wound, as an orphan's cry,
The patience of the great Avenger's ear.
A Youth.
Yet, father, 'tis a happy sight to see,
Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden
By God or man;'tis like the bright procession
Of skiey visions in a solemn dream
From which men wake as from a Paradise,
And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life.
If God be good, wherefore should this be evil?
And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw
Unseasonable poison from the flowers
Which bloom so rarely in this barren world?
Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present
Dark as the future!. . .
When Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant Fear,
And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping
As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle thoughts
Waken to worship Him who giveth joys
With His own gift.
Second Citizen.
How young art thou in this old age of time!
How green in this gray world? Canst thou discern
The signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint
Of change in that stage-scene in which thou art
Not a spectator but an actor? or
Art thou a puppet moved by [enginery]?
The day that dawns in fire will die in storms,
Even though the noon be calm. My travel's done,
Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found
My inn of lasting rest; but thou must still
Be journeying on in this inclement air.
Wrap thy old cloak about thy back;
Nor leave the broad and plain and beaten road,
Although no flowers smile on the trodden dust,
For the violet paths of pleasure. This Charles the First
Rose like the equinoctial sun, . . .
By vapours, through whose threatening ominous veil
Darting his altered influence he has gained
This height of noonfrom which he must decline
Amid the darkness of conflicting storms,
To dank extinction and to latest night . . .
There goes
The apostate Strafford; he whose titles
whispered aphorisms
From Machiavel and Bacon: and, if Judas
Had been as brazen and as bold as he
First Citizen.
That
Is the Archbishop.
Second Citizen.
Rather say the Pope:
London will be soon his Rome: he walks
As if he trod upon the heads of men:
He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold;
Beside him moves the Babylonian woman
Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow,
Mitred adulterer! he is joined in sin,
Which turns Heaven's milk of mercy to revenge.
Third Citizen
(lifting up his eyes).
Good Lord! rain it down upon him! . . .
Amid her ladies walks the papist queen,
As if her nice feet scorned our English earth.
The Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be
A dog if I might tear her with my teeth!
There's old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke,
Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry,
And others who make base their English breed
By vile participation of their honours
With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates.
When lawyers masque 'tis time for honest men
To strip the vizor from their purposes.
A seasonable time for masquers this!
When Englishmen and Protestants should sit
. . . dust on their dishonoured heads,
To avert the wrath of Him whose scourge is felt
For the great sins which have drawn down from Heaven
. . . and foreign overthrow.
The remnant of the martyred saints in Rochefort
Have been abandoned by their faithless allies
To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer
Lewis of France,the Palatinate is lost Enter Leighton (who has been branded in the face) and Bastwick.
Canst thou be -- art thou? --
Leighton.
I was Leighton: what
I am thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes,
And with thy memory look on thy friend's mind,
Which is unchanged, and where is written deep
The sentence of my judge.
Third Citizen.
Are these the marks with which
Laud thinks to improve the image of his Maker
Stamped on the face of man? Curses upon him,
The impious tyrant!
Second Citizen.
It is said besides
That lewd and papist drunkards may profane
The Sabbath with their...
And has permitted that most heathenish custom
Of dancing round a pole dressed up with wreaths
On May-day.
A man who thus twice crucifies his God
May well...his brother.In my mind, friend,
The root of all this ill is prelacy.
I would cut up the root.
Third Citizen.
And by what means?
Second Citizen.
Smiting each Bishop under the fifth rib.
Third Citizen.
You seem to know the vulnerable place
Of these same crocodiles.
Second Citizen.
I learnt it in
Egyptian bondage, sir. Your worm of Nile
Betrays not with its flattering tears like they;
For, when they cannot kill, they whine and weep.
Nor is it half so greedy of men's bodies
As they of soul and all; nor does it wallow
In slime as they in simony and lies
And close lusts of the flesh.
A Marshalsman.
Give place, give place!
You torch-bearers, advance to the great gate,
And then attend the Marshal of the Masque
Into the Royal presence.
A Law Student.
What thinkest thou
Of this quaint show of ours, my agd friend?
Even now we see the redness of the torches
Inflame the night to the eastward, and the clarions
[Gasp?] to us on the wind's wave. It comes!
And their sounds, floating hither round the pageant,
Rouse up the astonished air.
First Citizen.
I will not think but that our country's wounds
May yet be healed. The king is just and gracious,
Though wicked counsels now pervert his will:
These once cast off
Second Citizen.
As adders cast their skins
And keep their venom, so kings often change;
Councils and counsellors hang on one another,
Hiding the loathsome
Like the base patchwork of a leper's rags.
The Youth.
Oh, still those dissonant thoughts!List how the music
Grows on the enchanted air! And see, the torches
Restlessly flashing, and the crowd divided
Like waves before an admiral's prow!
A Marshalsman.
Give place
To the Marshal of the Masque!
A Pursuivant.
Room for the King!
The Youth.
How glorious! See those thronging chariots
Rolling, like painted clouds before the wind,
Behind their solemn steeds: how some are shaped
Like curved sea-shells dyed by the azure depths
Of Indian seas; some like the new-born moon;
And some like cars in which the Romans climbed
(Canopied by Victory's eagle-wings outspread)
The CapitolianSee how gloriously
The mettled horses in the torchlight stir
Their gallant riders, while they check their pride,
Like shapes of some diviner element
Than English air, and beings nobler than
The envious and admiring multitude.
Second Citizen.
Ay, there they are
Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees,
Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm,
On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows,
Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan,
Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart.
These are the lilies glorious as Solomon,
Who toil not, neither do they spin,unless
It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal.
Here is the surfeit which to them who earn
The ****rd wages of the earth, scarce leaves
The tithe that will support them till they crawl
Back to her cold hard bosom. Here is health
Followed by grim disease, glory by shame,
Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want,
And England's sin by England's punishment.
And, as the effect pursues the cause foregone,
Lo, giving substance to my words, behold
At once the sign and the thing signified
A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts,
Horsed upon stumbling jades, carted with dung,
Dragged for a day from cellars and low cabins
And rotten hiding-holes, to point the moral
Of this presentment, and bring up the rear
Of painted pomp with misery!
The Youth.
'Tis but
The anti-masque, and serves as discords do
In sweetest music. Who would love May flowers
If they succeeded not to Winter's flaw;
Or day unchanged by night; or joy itself
Without the touch of sorrow?
Second Citizen.
I and thou
A Marshalsman.
Place, give place!
Scene II.
A Chamber in Whitehall. Enter the King, Queen, Laud, Lord Strafford, Lord Cottington, and other Lords;Archy ; also St. John, with some Gentlemen of the Inns of Court.
King.
Thanks, gentlemen. I heartily accept
This token of your service: your gay masque
Was performed gallantly. And it shows well
When subjects twine such flowers of [observance?]
With the sharp thorns that deck the English crown.
A gentle heart enjoys what it confers,
Even as it suffers that which it inflicts,
Though Justice guides the stroke.
Accept my hearty thanks.
Queen.
And gentlemen,
Call your poor Queen your debtor. Your quaint pageant
Rose on me like the figures of past years,
Treading their still path back to infancy,
More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer
The quiet cradle. I could have almost wept
To think I was in Paris, where these shows
Are well devisedsuch as I was ere yet
My young heart shared a portion of the burthen,
The careful weight, of this great monarchy.
There, gentlemen, between the sovereign's pleasure
And that which it regards, no clamour lifts
Its proud interposition.
In Paris ribald censurers dare not move
Their poisonous tongues against these sinless sports;
And his smile
Warms those who bask in it, as ours would do
If...Take my heart's thanks: add them, gentlemen,
To those good words which, were he King of France,
My royal lord would turn to golden deeds.
St. John.
Madam, the love of Englishmen can make
The lightest favour of their lawful king
Outweigh a despot's.We humbly take our leaves,
Enriched by smiles which France can never buy.
[Exeunt St. John and the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court.
King.
My Lord Archbishop,
Mark you what spirit sits in St. John's eyes?
Methinks it is too saucy for this presence.
Archy.
Yes, pray your Grace look: for, like an unsophisticated [eye] sees everything upside down, you who are wise will discern the shadow of an idiot in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting springes to catch woodcocks in haymaking time. Poor Archy, whose owl-eyes are tempered to the error of his age, and because he is a fool, and by special ordinance of God forbidden ever to see himself as he is, sees now in that deep eye a blindfold devil sitting on the ball, and weighing words out between king and subjects. One scale is full of promises, and the other full of protestations: and then another devil creeps behind the first out of the dark windings [of a] pregnant lawyer's brain, and takes the bandage from the other's eyes, and throws a sword into the left-hand scale, for all the world like my Lord Essex's there.
Strafford.
A rod in pickle for the Fool's back!
Archy.
Ay, and some are now smiling whose tears will make the brine; for the Fool sees--
Strafford.
Insolent! You shall have your coat turned and be whipped out of the palace for this.
Archy.
When all the fools are whipped, and all the Protestant writers, while the knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch a thief. If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy would be disgraced in good company. Let the knaves whip the fools, and all the fools laugh at it. [Let the] wise and godly slit each other's noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their craft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to Bedlam, to entreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic contemplations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest men who lie [pinched?] up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody of the pursuivants of the High-Commission Court, marshal them.
Enter Secretary Lyttelton, with papers.
King
(looking over the papers).
These stiff Scots
His Grace of Canterbury must take order
To force under the Church's yoke.You, Wentworth,
Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add
Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy,
To what in me were wanting.My Lord Weston,
Look that those merchants draw not without loss
Their bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment
Of shipmoney, take fullest compensation
For violation of our royal forests,
Whose limits, from neglect, have been o'ergrown
With cottages and cornfields. The uttermost
Farthing exact from those who claim exemption
From knighthood: that which once was a reward
Shall thus be made a punishment, that subjects
May know how majesty can wear at will
The rugged mood.My Lord of Coventry,
Lay my command upon the Courts below
That bail be not accepted for the prisoners
Under the warrant of the Star Chamber.
The people shall not find the stubbornness
Of Parliament a cheap or easy method
Of dealing with their rightful sovereign:
And doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry,
We will find time and place for fit rebuke.
My Lord of Canterbury.
Archy.
The fool is here.
Laud.
I crave permission of your Majesty
To order that this insolent fellow be
Chastised: he mocks the sacred character,
Scoffs at the state, and--
King.
What, my Archy?
He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears,
Yet with a quaint and graceful licencePrithee
For this once do not as Prynne would, were he
Primate of England. With your Grace's leave,
He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot
Hung in his gilded prison from the window
Of a queen's bower over the public way,
Blasphemes with a bird's mind:his words, like arrows
Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit,
Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy.
(To Archy.)
Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence
Ten minutes in the rain; be it your penance
To bring news how the world goes there.
[Exit Archy.
Poor Archy!
He weaves about himself a world of mirth
Out of the wreck of ours.
Laud.
I take with patience, as my Master did,
All scoffs permitted from above.
King.
My lord,
Pray overlook these papers. Archy's words
Had wings, but these have talons.
Queen.
And the lion
That wears them must be tamed. My dearest lord,
I see the new-born courage in your eye
Armed to strike dead the Spirit of the Time,
Which spurs to rage the many-headed beast.
Do thou persist: for, faint but in resolve,
And it were better thou hadst still remained
The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs
The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer;
And Opportunity, that empty wolf,
Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions
Even to the disposition of thy purpose,
And be that tempered as the Ebro's steel;
And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak,
Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace,
And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss,
As when she keeps the company of rebels,
Who think that she is Fear. This do, lest we
Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle
In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream
Out of our worshipped state.
King.
Belovd friend,
God is my witness that this weight of power,
Which He sets me my earthly task to wield.
Under His law, is my delight and pride
Only because thou lovest that and me.
For a king bears the office of a God
To all the under world; and to his God
Alone he must deliver up his trust,
Unshorn of its permitted attributes.
[It seems] now as the baser elements
Had mutinied against the golden sun
That kindles them to harmony and quells
Their self-destroying rapine. The wild million
Strike at the eye that guides them; like as humours
Of the distempered body that conspire
Against the spirit of life throned in the heart,
And thus become the prey of one another,
And last of death
Strafford.
That which would be ambition in a subject
Is duty in a sovereign; for on him,
As on a keystone, hangs the arch of life,
Whose safety is its strength. Degree and form,
And all that makes the age of reasoning man
More memorable than a beast's, depend on this--
That Right should fence itself inviolably
With Power; in which respect the state of England
From usurpation by the insolent commons
Cries for reform.
Get treason, and spare treasure. Fee with coin
The loudest murmurers; feed with jealousies
Opposing factions,-- be thyself of none;
And borrow gold of many, for those who lend
Will serve thee till thou payest them; and thus
Keep the fierce spirit of the hour at bay,
Till time, and its coming generations
Of nights and days unborn, bring some one chance,...
Or war or pestilence or Nature's self,--
By some distemperature or terrible sign,
Be as an arbiter betwixt themselves.
...Nor let your Majesty
Doubt here the peril of the unseen event.
How did your brother Kings, coheritors
In your high interest in the subject earth,
Rise past such troubles to that height of power
Where now they sit, and awfully serene
Smile on the trembling world? Such popular storms
Philip the Second of Spain, this Lewis of France,
And late the German head of many bodies,
And every petty lord of Italy,
Quelled or by arts or arms. Is England poorer
Or feebler? or art thou who wield'st her power
Tamer than they? or shall this island be--
[Girdled] by its inviolable waters
To the world present and the world to come
Sole pattern of extinguished monarchy?
Not if thou dost as I would have thee do.
King.
Your words shall be my deeds:
You speak the image of my thought. My friend
(If Kings can have a friend, I call thee so),
Beyond the large commission which [belongs]
Under the great seal of the realm, take this:
And, for some obvious reasons, let there be
No seal on it, except my kingly word
And honour as I am a gentleman.
Be -- as thou art within my heart and mind--
Another self, here and in Ireland:
Do what thou judgest well, take amplest licence,
And stick not even at questionable means.
Hear me, Wentworth. My word is as a wall
Between thee and this world thine enemy
That hates thee, for thou lovest me.
Strafford.
I own
No friend but thee, no enemies but thine:
Thy lightest thought is my eternal law.
How weak, how short, is life to pay
King.
Peace, peace.
Thou ow'st me nothing yet.
(To Laud.)
My lord, what say
Those papers?
Laud.
Your Majesty has ever interposed,
In lenity towards your native soil,
Between the heavy vengeance of the Church
And Scotland. Mark the consequence of warming
This brood of northern vipers in your bosom.
The rabble, instructed no doubt
By Loudon, Lindsay, Hume, and false Argyll
(For the waves never menace heaven until
Scourged by the wind's invisible tyranny),
Have in the very temple of the Lord
Done outrage to His chosen ministers.
They scorn the liturgy of the Holy Church,
Refuse to obey her canons, and deny
The apostolic power with which the Spirit
Has filled its elect vessels, even from him
Who held the keys with power to loose and bind,
To him who now pleads in this royal presence.
Let ample powers and new instructions be
Sent to the High Commissioners in Scotland.
To death, imprisonment, and confiscation,
Add torture, add the ruin of the kindred
Of the offender, add the brand of infamy,
Add mutilation: and if this suffice not,
Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst
They may lick up that scum of schismatics.
I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring
What we possess, still prate of Christian peace,
As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers
Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong,
Should be let loose against the innocent sleep
Of templed cities and the smiling fields,
For some poor argument of policy
Which touches our own profit or our pride
(Where it indeed were Christian charity
To turn the cheek even to the smiter's hand):
And, when our great Redeemer, when our God,
When He who gave, accepted, and retained
Himself in propitiation of our sins,
Is scorned in His immediate ministry,
With hazard of the inestimable loss
Of all the truth and discipline which is
Salvation to the extremest generation
Of men innumerable, they talk of peace!
Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now:
For, by that Christ who came to bring a sword,
Not peace, upon the earth, and gave command
To His disciples at the Passover
That each should sell his robe and buy a sword,
Once strip that minister of naked wrath,
And it shall never sleep in peace again
Till Scotland bend or break.
King.
My Lord Archbishop,
Do what thou wilt and what thou canst in this.
Thy earthly even as thy heavenly King
Gives thee large power in his unquiet realm.
But we want money, and my mind misgives me
That for so great an enterprise, as yet,
We are unfurnished.
Strafford.
Yet it may not long
Rest on our wills.
Cottington.
The expenses
Of gathering shipmoney, and of distraining
For every petty rate (for we encounter
A desperate opposition inch by inch
In every warehouse and on every farm),
Have swallowed up the gross sum of the imposts;
So that, though felt as a most grievous scourge
Upon the land, they stand us in small stead
As touches the receipt.
Strafford.
'Tis a conclusion
Most arithmetical: and thence you infer
Perhaps the assembling of a parliament.
Now, if a man should call his dearest enemies
To sit in licensed judgement on his life,
His Majesty might wisely take that course. [Aside to Cottington.
It is enough to expect from these lean imposts
That they perform the office of a scourge,
Without more profit. (Aloud.)
Fines and confiscations,
And a forced loan from the refractory city,
Will fill our coffers: and the golden love
Of loyal gentlemen and noble friends
For the worshipped father of our common country,
With contributions from the catholics,
Will make Rebellion pale in our excess.
Be these the expedients until time and wisdom
Shall frame a settled state of government.
Laud.
And weak expedients they! Have we not drained
All, till the...which seemed
A mine exhaustless?
Strafford.
And the love which is,
If loyal hearts could turn their blood to gold.
Laud.
Both now grow barren: and I speak it not
As loving parliaments, which, as they have been
In the right hand of bold bad mighty kings
The scourges of the bleeding Church, I hate.
Methinks they scarcely can deserve our fear.
Strafford.
Oh! my dear liege, take back the wealth thou gavest:
With that, take all I held, but as in trust
For thee, of mine inheritance: leave me but
This unprovided body for thy service,
And a mind dedicated to no care
Except thy safety:-- but assemble not
A parliament. Hundreds will bring, like me,
Their fortunes, as they would their blood, before--
King.
No! thou who judgest them art but one. Alas!
We should be too much out of love with Heaven,
Did this vile world show many such as thee,
Thou perfect, just, and honourable man!
Never shall it be said that Charles of England
Stripped those he loved for fear of those he scorns;
Nor will he so much misbecome his throne
As to impoverish those who most adorn
And best defend it. That you urge, dear Strafford,
Inclines me rather--
Queen.
To a parliament?
Is this thy firmness? and thou wilt preside
Over a knot of . . . censurers,
To the unswearing of thy best resolves,
And choose the worst, when the worst comes too soon?
Plight not the worst before the worst must come.
Oh, wilt thou smile whilst our ribald foes,
Dressed in their own usurped authority,
Sharpen their tongues on Henrietta's fame?
It is enough! Thou lovest me no more!
[Weeps.
King.
Oh, Henrietta!
[They talk apart.
Cottington
(to Laud).
Money we have none:
And all the expedients of my Lord of Strafford
Will scarcely meet the arrears.
Laud.
Without delay
An army must be sent into the north;
Followed by a Commission of the Church,
With amplest power to quench in fire and blood,
And tears and terror, and the pity of hell,
The intenser wrath of Heresy. God will give
Victory; and victory over Scotland give
The lion England tamed into our hands.
That will lend power, and power bring gold.
Cottington.
Meanwhile
We must begin first where your Grace leaves off.
Gold must give power, or
Laud.
I am not averse
From the assembling of a parliament.
Strong actions and smooth words might teach them soon
The lesson to obey. And are they not
A bubble fashioned by the monarch's mouth,
The birth of one light breath? If they serve no purpose,
A word dissolves them.
Strafford.
The engine of parliaments
Might be deferred until I can bring over
The Irish regiments: they will serve to assure
The issue of the war against the Scots.
And, this game won -- which if lost, all is lost--
Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels,
And call them, if you will, a parliament.
King.
Oh, be our feet still tardy to shed blood,
Guilty though it may be! I would still spare
The stubborn country of my birth, and ward
From countenances which I loved in youth
The wrathful Church's lacerating hand.
(To Laud.)
Have you o'erlooked the other articles?
[Re-enter Archy.
Laud.
Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane,
Cromwell, and other rebels of less note,
Intend to sail with the next favouring wind
For the Plantations.
Archy.
Where they think to found
A commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the play,
Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic.
King.
What's that, sirrah?
Archy.
New devil's politics.
Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths:
Lucifer was the first republican.
Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three [posts?]
'In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full,
Shall sail round the world, and come back again:
Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull,
And come back again when the moon is at full:'
When, in spite of the Church,
They will hear homilies of whatever length
Or form they please.
[Cottington?]
So please your Majesty to sign this order
For their detention.
Archy.
If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout, rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc., and you found these diseases had secretly entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, should you think it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant to dispeople your unquiet kingdom of man?
King.
If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely; But in this case --(writing.)
Here, my lord, take the warrant, And see it duly executed forthwith.--
That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished.
[Exeunt all but King, Queen, and Archy.
Archy.
Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud who would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were impregnable by compositionall impannelled against poor Archy for presenting them bitter physic the last day of the holidays.
Queen.
Is the rain over, sirrah?
King.
When it rains
And the sun shines, 'twill rain again to-morrow:
And therefore never smile till you've done crying.
Archy.
But 'tis all over now: like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky has wept itself serene.
Queen.
What news abroad? how looks the world this morning?
Archy.
Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There's a rainbow in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for
'A rainbow in the morning
Is the shepherd's warning;'
and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the breath of May pierces like a January blast.
King.
The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and the shepherd, the wolves for their watchdogs.
Queen.
But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the deluge are gone, and can return no more.
Archy.
Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies.-- The rainbow hung over the city with all its shops,...and churches, from north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the masonry of heaven like a balance in which the angel that distributes the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the meanest feet.
Queen.
Who taught you this trash, sirrah?
Archy.
A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt.--
But for the rainbow.
It moved as the sun moved, and...until the top of the
Tower...of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and
Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock before the other.
Methought I saw a crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre on the other.
So, as I had heard treasures were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set off, and at the Tower --
But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.
King.
Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience.
Archy.
Then conscience is a fool.I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.
Queen.
Archy is shrewd and bitter.
Archy.
Like the season, So blow the winds.But at the other end of the rainbow, where the gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what think you that I found instead of a mitre?
King.
Vane's wits perhaps.
Archy.
Something as vain. I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch over the carcass of a dead ****, some rotten rags, and broken dishesthe wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of this ****.
Queen.
Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane
She place my lute, together with the music
Mari received last week from Italy,
In my boudoir, and
[Exit Archy.
King.
I'll go in.
Queen.
My beloved lord,
Have you not noted that the Fool of late
Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words
Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?
What can it mean? I should be loth to think
Some factious slave had tutored him.
King.
Oh, no!
He is but Occasion's pupil. Partly 'tis
That our minds piece the vacant intervals
Of his wild words with their own fashioning,
As in the imagery of summer clouds,
Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find
The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:
And partly, that the terrors of the time
Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;
And in the lightest and the least, may best
Be seen the current of the coming wind.
Queen.
Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.
Come, I will sing to you; let us go try
These airs from Italy; and, as we pass
The gallery, we'll decide where that Correggio
Shall hangthe Virgin Mother
With her child, born the King of heaven and earth,
Whose reign is men's salvation. And you shall see
A cradled miniature of yourself asleep,
Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;
Liker than any Vandyke ever made,
A pattern to the unborn age of thee,
Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy
A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow,
Did I not think that after we were dead
Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that
The cares we waste upon our heavy crown
Would make it light and glorious as a wreath
Of Heaven's beams for his dear innocent brow.
King.
Dear Henrietta!
Scene III.
The Star Chamber. Laud, Juxon, Strafford, and others, as Judges. Prynne as a Prisoner, and thenBastwick.
Laud.
Bring forth the prisoner Bastwick: let the clerk
Recite his sentence.
Clerk.
'That he pay five thousand
Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded
With red-hot iron on the cheek and forehead,
And be imprisoned within Lancaster Castle
During the pleasure of the Court.'
Laud.
Prisoner,
If you have aught to say wherefore this sentence
Should not be put into effect, now speak.
Juxon.
If you have aught to plead in mitigation,
Speak.
Bastwick.
Thus, my lords. If, like the prelates, I
Were an invader of the royal power,
A public scorner of the word of God,
Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious,
Impious in heart and in tyrannic act,
Void of wit, honesty, and temperance;
If Satan were my lord, as theirs,our God
Pattern of all I should avoid to do;
Were I an enemy of my God and King
And of good men, as ye are;I should merit
Your fearful state and gilt prosperity,
Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn
To cowls and robes of everlasting fire.
But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not
The only earthly favour ye can yield,
Or I think worth acceptance at your hands,
Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment.
. . . even as my Master did,
Until Heaven's kingdom shall descend on earth,
Or earth be like a shadow in the light
Of Heaven absorbedsome few tumultuous years
Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes
His will whose will is power.
Laud.
Officer, take the prisoner from the bar,
And be his tongue slit for his insolence.
Bastwick.
While this hand holds a pen
Laud.
Be his hands--
Juxon.
Stop!
Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak
No terror, would interpret, being dumb,
Heaven's thunder to our harm;...
And hands, which now write only their own shame,
With bleeding stumps might sign our blood away.
Laud.
Much more such 'mercy' among men would be,
Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge
Flinch thus from earthly retribution. I
Could suffer what I would inflict.
[Exit Bastwick guarded.
Bring up
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln.
(To Strafford.)
Know you not
That, in distraining for ten thousand pounds
Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln,
Were found these scandalous and seditious letters
Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled?
I speak it not as touching this poor person;
But of the office which should make it holy,
Were it as vile as it was ever spotless.
Mark too, my lord, that this expression strikes
His Majesty, if I misinterpret not.
Enter Bishop Williams guarded.
Strafford.
'Twere politic and just that Williams taste
The bitter fruit of his connection with
The schismatics. But you, my Lord Archbishop,
Who owed your first promotion to his favour,
Who grew beneath his smile
Laud.
Would therefore beg
The office of his judge from this High Court,
That it shall seem, even as it is, that I,
In my assumption of this sacred robe,
Have put aside all worldly preference,
All sense of all distinction of all persons,
All thoughts but of the service of the Church.
Bishop of Lincoln!
Williams.
Peace, proud hierarch!
I know my sentence, and I own it just.
Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve,
In stretching to the utmost. . .
Scene IV.
--Hampden, Pym, Cromwell, his Daughter, and young Sir Harry Vane.
Hampden.
England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle,
Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave!
I held what I inherited in thee
As pawn for that inheritance of freedom
Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile:
How can I call thee England, or my country?
Does the wind hold?
Vane.
The vanes sit steady
Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings
Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke,
Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air.
Mark too that flock of fleecy-wingd clouds
Sailing athwart St. Margaret's.
Hampden.
Hail, fleet herald
Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide
Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,
Beyond the shot of tyranny,
Beyond the webs of that swoln spider . . .
Beyond the curses, calumnies, and [lies?]
Of atheist priests! . . . And thou
Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,
Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm,
Bright as the path to a belovd home,
Oh, light us to the isles of the evening land!
Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years
Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions,
Where Power's poor dupes and victims yet have never
Propitiated the savage fear of kings
With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew
Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake
To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns;
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo
Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites
Wrest man's free worship, from the God who loves,
To the poor worm who envies us His love!
Receive, thou young....of Paradise,
These exiles from the old and sinful world!....
This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through their veil
Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall.
The boundless universe
Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul
That owns no master; while the loathliest ward
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest
Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,
To which the eagle spirits of the free,
Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm
Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,
Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die
And cannot be repelled.
Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time,
They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop
Through palaces and temples thunderproof.
SCENE V
Archy.
I'll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the tears shed on its old [roots?] as the [wind?] plays the song of
'A widow bird sate mourning
Upon a wintry bough.'
[Sings]
Heigho! the lark and the owl!
One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:--
Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
Sings like the fool through darkness and light.
'A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
'There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound.'
Charles the First was designed in 1818, begun towards the close of 1819, resumed in January, and finally laid aside by June, 1822. It was published in part in the Posthumous Poems, 1824, and printed, in its present form (with the addition of some 530 lines), by Mr. William Michael Rossetti, 1870.
1.
Archy, the court fool of Charles I, is
both an unacknowledged prophet and, as King Charles claims, a weaver of "a world of mirth out of the wreck of ours."
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles The First
,#NFDB
415:A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast,
They alway must be with us, or we die.
Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being, and each pleasant scene
Is growing fresh before me as the green
Of our own vallies: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city's din;
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end.
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.
Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread
A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed
So plenteously all weed-hidden roots
Into o'er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits.
And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep,
Where no man went; and if from shepherd's keep
A lamb strayed far a-down those inmost glens,
Never again saw he the happy pens
Whither his brethren, bleating with content,
Over the hills at every nightfall went.
Among the shepherds, 'twas believed ever,
That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever
From the white flock, but pass'd unworried
By angry wolf, or pard with prying head,
Until it came to some unfooted plains
Where fed the herds of Pan: ay great his gains
Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many,
Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,
And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly
To a wide lawn, whence one could only see
Stems thronging all around between the swell
Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell
The freshness of the space of heaven above,
Edg'd round with dark tree tops? through which a dove
Would often beat its wings, and often too
A little cloud would move across the blue.
Full in the middle of this pleasantness
There stood a marble altar, with a tress
Of flowers budded newly; and the dew
Had taken fairy phantasies to strew
Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve,
And so the dawned light in pomp receive.
For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
Of brightness so unsullied, that therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold,
To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.
Now while the silent workings of the dawn
Were busiest, into that self-same lawn
All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped
A troop of little children garlanded;
Who gathering round the altar, seemed to pry
Earnestly round as wishing to espy
Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited
For many moments, ere their ears were sated
With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then
Fill'd out its voice, and died away again.
Within a little space again it gave
Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,
To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking
Through copse-clad vallies,ere their death, oer-taking
The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea.
And now, as deep into the wood as we
Might mark a lynx's eye, there glimmered light
Fair faces and a rush of garments white,
Plainer and plainer shewing, till at last
Into the widest alley they all past,
Making directly for the woodland altar.
O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter
In telling of this goodly company,
Of their old piety, and of their glee:
But let a portion of ethereal dew
Fall on my head, and presently unmew
My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring,
To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing.
Leading the way, young damsels danced along,
Bearing the burden of a shepherd song;
Each having a white wicker over brimm'd
With April's tender younglings: next, well trimm'd,
A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books;
Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe,
When the great deity, for earth too ripe,
Let his divinity o'er-flowing die
In music, through the vales of Thessaly:
Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground,
And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound
With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these,
Now coming from beneath the forest trees,
A venerable priest full soberly,
Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye
Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept,
And after him his sacred vestments swept.
From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white,
Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light;
And in his left he held a basket full
Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull:
Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still
Than Leda's love, and cresses from the rill.
His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath,
Seem'd like a poll of ivy in the teeth
Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd
Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud
Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd,
Up-followed by a multitude that rear'd
Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car,
Easily rolling so as scarce to mar
The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown:
Who stood therein did seem of great renown
Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,
Shewing like Ganymede to manhood grown;
And, for those simple times, his garments were
A chieftain king's: beneath his breast, half bare,
Was hung a silver bugle, and between
His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen.
A smile was on his countenance; he seem'd,
To common lookers on, like one who dream'd
Of idleness in groves Elysian:
But there were some who feelingly could scan
A lurking trouble in his nether lip,
And see that oftentimes the reins would slip
Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh,
And think of yellow leaves, of owlets cry,
Of logs piled solemnly.Ah, well-a-day,
Why should our young Endymion pine away!
Soon the assembly, in a circle rang'd,
Stood silent round the shrine: each look was chang'd
To sudden veneration: women meek
Beckon'd their sons to silence; while each cheek
Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear.
Endymion too, without a forest peer,
Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face,
Among his brothers of the mountain chase.
In midst of all, the venerable priest
Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least,
And, after lifting up his aged hands,
Thus spake he: "Men of Latmos! shepherd bands!
Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks:
Whether descended from beneath the rocks
That overtop your mountains; whether come
From vallies where the pipe is never dumb;
Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs
Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze
Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge
Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge,
Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn
By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn:
Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare
The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air;
And all ye gentle girls who foster up
Udderless lambs, and in a little cup
Will put choice honey for a favoured youth:
Yea, every one attend! for in good truth
Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan.
Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than
Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains
Speckled with countless fleeces? Have not rains
Green'd over April's lap? No howling sad
Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had
Great bounty from Endymion our lord.
The earth is glad: the merry lark has pour'd
His early song against yon breezy sky,
That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity."
Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire
Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;
Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod
With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god.
Now while the earth was drinking it, and while
Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,
And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright
'Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light
Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang:
"O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang
From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;
Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress
Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;
And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken
The dreary melody of bedded reeds
In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;
Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinxdo thou now,
By thy love's milky brow!
By all the trembling mazes that she ran,
Hear us, great Pan!
"O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles
Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles,
What time thou wanderest at eventide
Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side
Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom
Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom
Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow girted bees
Their golden honeycombs; our village leas
Their fairest-blossom'd beans and poppied corn;
The chuckling linnet its five young unborn,
To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries
Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies
Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year
All its completionsbe quickly near,
By every wind that nods the mountain pine,
O forester divine!
"Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies
For willing service; whether to surprise
The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit;
Or upward ragged precipices flit
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;
Or by mysterious enticement draw
Bewildered shepherds to their path again;
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,
And gather up all fancifullest shells
For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells,
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;
Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,
The while they pelt each other on the crown
With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown
By all the echoes that about thee ring,
Hear us, O satyr king!
"O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears,
While ever and anon to his shorn peers
A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn,
When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn
Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms,
To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,
That come a swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors:
Dread opener of the mysterious doors
Leading to universal knowledgesee,
Great son of Dryope,
The many that are come to pay their vows
With leaves about their brows!
Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
Gives it a touch ethereala new birth:
Be still a symbol of immensity;
A firmament reflected in a sea;
An element filling the space between;
An unknownbut no more: we humbly screen
With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,
And giving out a shout most heaven rending,
Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean,
Upon thy Mount Lycean!
Even while they brought the burden to a close,
A shout from the whole multitude arose,
That lingered in the air like dying rolls
Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals
Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine.
Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine,
Young companies nimbly began dancing
To the swift treble pipe, and humming string.
Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly
To tunes forgottenout of memory:
Fair creatures! whose young children's children bred
Thermopyl its heroesnot yet dead,
But in old marbles ever beautiful.
High genitors, unconscious did they cull
Time's sweet first-fruitsthey danc'd to weariness,
And then in quiet circles did they press
The hillock turf, and caught the latter end
Of some strange history, potent to send
A young mind from its bodily tenement.
Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side; pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him,Zephyr penitent,
Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.
The archers too, upon a wider plain,
Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft,
And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft
Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top,
Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope
Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee
And frantic gape of lonely Niobe,
Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young
Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue
Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip,
And very, very deadliness did nip
Her motherly cheeks. Arous'd from this sad mood
By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd,
Uplifting his strong bow into the air,
Many might after brighter visions stare:
After the Argonauts, in blind amaze
Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways,
Until, from the horizon's vaulted side,
There shot a golden splendour far and wide,
Spangling those million poutings of the brine
With quivering ore: 'twas even an awful shine
From the exaltation of Apollo's bow;
A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe.
Who thus were ripe for high contemplating,
Might turn their steps towards the sober ring
Where sat Endymion and the aged priest
'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increas'd
The silvery setting of their mortal star.
There they discours'd upon the fragile bar
That keeps us from our homes ethereal;
And what our duties there: to nightly call
Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather;
To summon all the downiest clouds together
For the sun's purple couch; to emulate
In ministring the potent rule of fate
With speed of fire-tailed exhalations;
To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons
Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,
A world of other unguess'd offices.
Anon they wander'd, by divine converse,
Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse
Each one his own anticipated bliss.
One felt heart-certain that he could not miss
His quick gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs,
Where every zephyr-sigh pouts and endows
Her lips with music for the welcoming.
Another wish'd, mid that eternal spring,
To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails,
Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales:
Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind,
And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind;
And, ever after, through those regions be
His messenger, his little Mercury.
Some were athirst in soul to see again
Their fellow huntsmen o'er the wide champaign
In times long past; to sit with them, and talk
Of all the chances in their earthly walk;
Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores
Of happiness, to when upon the moors,
Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,
And shar'd their famish'd scrips. Thus all out-told
Their fond imaginations,saving him
Whose eyelids curtain'd up their jewels dim,
Endymion: yet hourly had he striven
To hide the cankering venom, that had riven
His fainting recollections. Now indeed
His senses had swoon'd off: he did not heed
The sudden silence, or the whispers low,
Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe,
Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms,
Or maiden's sigh, that grief itself embalms:
But in the self-same fixed trance he kept,
Like one who on the earth had never stept.
Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man,
Frozen in that old tale Arabian.
Who whispers him so pantingly and close?
Peona, his sweet sister: of all those,
His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made,
And breath'd a sister's sorrow to persuade
A yielding up, a cradling on her care.
Her eloquence did breathe away the curse:
She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse
Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,
Along a path between two little streams,
Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,
From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow
From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;
Until they came to where these streamlets fall,
With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush,
Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush
With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.
A little shallop, floating there hard by,
Pointed its beak over the fringed bank;
And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank,
And dipt again, with the young couple's weight,
Peona guiding, through the water straight,
Towards a bowery island opposite;
Which gaining presently, she steered light
Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove,
Where nested was an arbour, overwove
By many a summer's silent fingering;
To whose cool bosom she was used to bring
Her playmates, with their needle broidery,
And minstrel memories of times gone by.
So she was gently glad to see him laid
Under her favourite bower's quiet shade,
On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,
Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves
When last the sun his autumn tresses shook,
And the tann'd harvesters rich armfuls took.
Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest:
But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest
Peona's busy hand against his lips,
And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips
In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps
A patient watch over the stream that creeps
Windingly by it, so the quiet maid
Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade
Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling
Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling
Among seer leaves and twigs, might all be heard.
O magic sleep! O comfortable bird,
That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind
Till it is hush'd and smooth! O unconfin'd
Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key
To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,
Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,
Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves
And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world
Of silvery enchantment!who, upfurl'd
Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour,
But renovates and lives?Thus, in the bower,
Endymion was calm'd to life again.
Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain,
He said: "I feel this thine endearing love
All through my bosom: thou art as a dove
Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings
About me; and the pearliest dew not brings
Such morning incense from the fields of May,
As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray
From those kind eyes,the very home and haunt
Of sisterly affection. Can I want
Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such tears?
Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears
That, any longer, I will pass my days
Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise
My voice upon the mountain-heights; once more
Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar:
Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll
Around the breathed boar: again I'll poll
The fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow:
And, when the pleasant sun is getting low,
Again I'll linger in a sloping mead
To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed
Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered sweet,
And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat
My soul to keep in its resolved course."
Hereat Peona, in their silver source,
Shut her pure sorrow drops with glad exclaim,
And took a lute, from which there pulsing came
A lively prelude, fashioning the way
In which her voice should wander. 'Twas a lay
More subtle cadenced, more forest wild
Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child;
And nothing since has floated in the air
So mournful strange. Surely some influence rare
Went, spiritual, through the damsel's hand;
For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann'd
The quick invisible strings, even though she saw
Endymion's spirit melt away and thaw
Before the deep intoxication.
But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon
Her self-possessionswung the lute aside,
And earnestly said: "Brother, 'tis vain to hide
That thou dost know of things mysterious,
Immortal, starry; such alone could thus
Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn'd in aught
Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught
A Paphian dove upon a message sent?
Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent,
Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen
Her naked limbs among the alders green;
And that, alas! is death. No, I can trace
Something more high perplexing in thy face!"
Endymion look'd at her, and press'd her hand,
And said, "Art thou so pale, who wast so bland
And merry in our meadows? How is this?
Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss!
Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change
Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange?
Or more complete to overwhelm surmise?
Ambition is no sluggard: 'tis no prize,
That toiling years would put within my grasp,
That I have sigh'd for: with so deadly gasp
No man e'er panted for a mortal love.
So all have set my heavier grief above
These things which happen. Rightly have they done:
I, who still saw the horizontal sun
Heave his broad shoulder o'er the edge of the world,
Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl'd
My spear aloft, as signal for the chace
I, who, for very sport of heart, would race
With my own steed from Araby; pluck down
A vulture from his towery perching; frown
A lion into growling, loth retire
To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire,
And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast
Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest.
"This river does not see the naked sky,
Till it begins to progress silverly
Around the western border of the wood,
Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood
Seems at the distance like a crescent moon:
And in that nook, the very pride of June,
Had I been used to pass my weary eves;
The rather for the sun unwilling leaves
So dear a picture of his sovereign power,
And I could witness his most kingly hour,
When he doth lighten up the golden reins,
And paces leisurely down amber plains
His snorting four. Now when his chariot last
Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast,
There blossom'd suddenly a magic bed
Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red:
At which I wondered greatly, knowing well
That but one night had wrought this flowery spell;
And, sitting down close by, began to muse
What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus,
In passing here, his owlet pinions shook;
Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook
Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth,
Had dipt his rod in it: such garland wealth
Came not by common growth. Thus on I thought,
Until my head was dizzy and distraught.
Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole
A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul;
And shaping visions all about my sight
Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light;
The which became more strange, and strange, and dim,
And then were gulph'd in a tumultuous swim:
And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell
The enchantment that afterwards befel?
Yet it was but a dream: yet such a dream
That never tongue, although it overteem
With mellow utterance, like a cavern spring,
Could figure out and to conception bring
All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay
Watching the zenith, where the milky way
Among the stars in virgin splendour pours;
And travelling my eye, until the doors
Of heaven appear'd to open for my flight,
I became loth and fearful to alight
From such high soaring by a downward glance:
So kept me stedfast in that airy trance,
Spreading imaginary pinions wide.
When, presently, the stars began to glide,
And faint away, before my eager view:
At which I sigh'd that I could not pursue,
And dropt my vision to the horizon's verge;
And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge
The loveliest moon, that ever silver'd o'er
A shell for Neptune's goblet: she did soar
So passionately bright, my dazzled soul
Commingling with her argent spheres did roll
Through clear and cloudy, even when she went
At last into a dark and vapoury tent
Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train
Of planets all were in the blue again.
To commune with those orbs, once more I rais'd
My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed
By a bright something, sailing down apace,
Making me quickly veil my eyes and face:
Again I look'd, and, O ye deities,
Who from Olympus watch our destinies!
Whence that completed form of all completeness?
Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness?
Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O Where
Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair?
Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun;
Notthy soft hand, fair sister! let me shun
Such follying before theeyet she had,
Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad;
And they were simply gordian'd up and braided,
Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded,
Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow;
The which were blended in, I know not how,
With such a paradise of lips and eyes,
Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs,
That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings
And plays about its fancy, till the stings
Of human neighbourhood envenom all.
Unto what awful power shall I call?
To what high fane?Ah! see her hovering feet,
More bluely vein'd, more soft, more whitely sweet
Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose
From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows
Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion;
'Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million
Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed,
Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed,
Handfuls of daisies.""Endymion, how strange!
Dream within dream!""She took an airy range,
And then, towards me, like a very maid,
Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid,
And press'd me by the hand: Ah! 'twas too much;
Methought I fainted at the charmed touch,
Yet held my recollection, even as one
Who dives three fathoms where the waters run
Gurgling in beds of coral: for anon,
I felt upmounted in that region
Where falling stars dart their artillery forth,
And eagles struggle with the buffeting north
That balances the heavy meteor-stone;
Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone,
But lapp'd and lull'd along the dangerous sky.
Soon, as it seem'd, we left our journeying high,
And straightway into frightful eddies swoop'd;
Such as ay muster where grey time has scoop'd
Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side:
There hollow sounds arous'd me, and I sigh'd
To faint once more by looking on my bliss
I was distracted; madly did I kiss
The wooing arms which held me, and did give
My eyes at once to death: but 'twas to live,
To take in draughts of life from the gold fount
Of kind and passionate looks; to count, and count
The moments, by some greedy help that seem'd
A second self, that each might be redeem'd
And plunder'd of its load of blessedness.
Ah, desperate mortal! I ev'n dar'd to press
Her very cheek against my crowned lip,
And, at that moment, felt my body dip
Into a warmer air: a moment more,
Our feet were soft in flowers. There was store
Of newest joys upon that alp. Sometimes
A scent of violets, and blossoming limes,
Loiter'd around us; then of honey cells,
Made delicate from all white-flower bells;
And once, above the edges of our nest,
An arch face peep'd,an Oread as I guess'd.
"Why did I dream that sleep o'er-power'd me
In midst of all this heaven? Why not see,
Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark,
And stare them from me? But no, like a spark
That needs must die, although its little beam
Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream
Fell into nothinginto stupid sleep.
And so it was, until a gentle creep,
A careful moving caught my waking ears,
And up I started: Ah! my sighs, my tears,
My clenched hands;for lo! the poppies hung
Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung
A heavy ditty, and the sullen day
Had chidden herald Hesperus away,
With leaden looks: the solitary breeze
Bluster'd, and slept, and its wild self did teaze
With wayward melancholy; and r thought,
Mark me, Peona! that sometimes it brought
Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus!
Away I wander'dall the pleasant hues
Of heaven and earth had faded: deepest shades
Were deepest dungeons; heaths and sunny glades
Were full of pestilent light; our taintless rills
Seem'd sooty, and o'er-spread with upturn'd gills
Of dying fish; the vermeil rose had blown
In frightful scarlet, and its thorns out-grown
Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird
Before my heedless footsteps stirr'd, and stirr'd
In little journeys, I beheld in it
A disguis'd demon, missioned to knit
My soul with under darkness; to entice
My stumblings down some monstrous precipice:
Therefore I eager followed, and did curse
The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse,
Rock'd me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven!
These things, with all their comfortings, are given
To my down-sunken hours, and with thee,
Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea
Of weary life."
Thus ended he, and both
Sat silent: for the maid was very loth
To answer; feeling well that breathed words
Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords
Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps
Of grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps,
And wonders; struggles to devise some blame;
To put on such a look as would say, Shame
On this poor weakness! but, for all her strife,
She could as soon have crush'd away the life
From a sick dove. At length, to break the pause,
She said with trembling chance: "Is this the cause?
This all? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas!
That one who through this middle earth should pass
Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave
His name upon the harp-string, should achieve
No higher bard than simple maidenhood,
Singing alone, and fearfully,how the blood
Left his young cheek; and how he used to stray
He knew not where; and how he would say, nay,
If any said 'twas love: and yet 'twas love;
What could it be but love? How a ring-dove
Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path;
And how he died: and then, that love doth scathe,
The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses;
And then the ballad of his sad life closes
With sighs, and an alas!Endymion!
Be rather in the trumpet's mouth,anon
Among the winds at largethat all may hearken!
Although, before the crystal heavens darken,
I watch and dote upon the silver lakes
Pictur'd in western cloudiness, that takes
The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands,
Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands
With horses prancing o'er them, palaces
And towers of amethyst,would I so tease
My pleasant days, because I could not mount
Into those regions? The Morphean fount
Of that fine element that visions, dreams,
And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams
Into its airy channels with so subtle,
So thin a breathing, not the spider's shuttle,
Circled a million times within the space
Of a swallow's nest-door, could delay a trace,
A tinting of its quality: how light
Must dreams themselves be; seeing they're more slight
Than the mere nothing that engenders them!
Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem
Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick?
Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick
For nothing but a dream?" Hereat the youth
Look'd up: a conflicting of shame and ruth
Was in his plaited brow: yet his eyelids
Widened a little, as when Zephyr bids
A little breeze to creep between the fans
Of careless butterflies: amid his pains
He seem'd to taste a drop of manna-dew,
Full palatable; and a colour grew
Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake.
"Peona! ever have I long'd to slake
My thirst for the world's praises: nothing base,
No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace
The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepar'd
Though now 'tis tatter'd; leaving my bark bar'd
And sullenly drifting: yet my higher hope
Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope,
To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks.
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Full alchemiz'd, and free of space. Behold
The clear religion of heaven! Fold
A rose leaf round thy finger's taperness,
And soothe thy lips: hist, when the airy stress
Of music's kiss impregnates the free winds,
And with a sympathetic touch unbinds
Eolian magic from their lucid wombs:
Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs;
Old ditties sigh above their father's grave;
Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave
Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot;
Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,
Where long ago a giant battle was;
And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass
In every place where infant Orpheus slept.
Feel we these things?that moment have we stept
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
Is like a floating spirit's. But there are
Richer entanglements, enthralments far
More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
To the chief intensity: the crown of these
Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
Upon the forehead of humanity.
All its more ponderous and bulky worth
Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth
A steady splendour; but at the tip-top,
There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop
Of light, and that is love: its influence,
Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense,
At which we start and fret; till in the end,
Melting into its radiance, we blend,
Mingle, and so become a part of it,
Nor with aught else can our souls interknit
So wingedly: when we combine therewith,
Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith,
And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.
Aye, so delicious is the unsating food,
That men, who might have tower'd in the van
Of all the congregated world, to fan
And winnow from the coming step of time
All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime
Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,
Have been content to let occasion die,
Whilst they did sleep in love's elysium.
And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb,
Than speak against this ardent listlessness:
For I have ever thought that it might bless
The world with benefits unknowingly;
As does the nightingale, upperched high,
And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves
She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives
How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood.
Just so may love, although 'tis understood
The mere commingling of passionate breath,
Produce more than our searching witnesseth:
What I know not: but who, of men, can tell
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell
To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,
If human souls did never kiss and greet?
"Now, if this earthly love has power to make
Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake
Ambition from their memories, and brim
Their measure of content; what merest whim,
Seems all this poor endeavour after fame,
To one, who keeps within his stedfast aim
A love immortal, an immortal too.
Look not so wilder'd; for these things are true,
And never can be born of atomies
That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies,
Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I'm sure,
My restless spirit never could endure
To brood so long upon one luxury,
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
My sayings will the less obscured seem,
When I have told thee how my waking sight
Has made me scruple whether that same night
Was pass'd in dreaming. Hearken, sweet Peona!
Beyond the matron-temple of Latona,
Which we should see but for these darkening boughs,
Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows
Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart,
And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught,
And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide
Past them, but he must brush on every side.
Some moulder'd steps lead into this cool cell,
Far as the slabbed margin of a well,
Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye
Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky.
Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set
Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet
Edges them round, and they have golden pits:
'Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits
In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat,
When all above was faint with mid-day heat.
And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed,
I'd bubble up the water through a reed;
So reaching back to boy-hood: make me ships
Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips,
With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be
Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily,
When love-lorn hours had left me less a child,
I sat contemplating the figures wild
Of o'er-head clouds melting the mirror through.
Upon a day, while thus I watch'd, by flew
A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver;
So plainly character'd, no breeze would shiver
The happy chance: so happy, I was fain
To follow it upon the open plain,
And, therefore, was just going; when, behold!
A wonder, fair as any I have told
The same bright face I tasted in my sleep,
Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap
Through the cool depth.It moved as if to flee
I started up, when lo! refreshfully,
There came upon my face, in plenteous showers,
Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers,
Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight,
Bathing my spirit in a new delight.
Aye, such a breathless honey-feel of bliss
Alone preserved me from the drear abyss
Of death, for the fair form had gone again.
Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain
Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth
On the deer's tender haunches: late, and loth,
'Tis scar'd away by slow returning pleasure.
How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure
Of weary days, made deeper exquisite,
By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night!
Like sorrow came upon me, heavier still,
Than when I wander'd from the poppy hill:
And a whole age of lingering moments crept
Sluggishly by, ere more contentment swept
Away at once the deadly yellow spleen.
Yes, thrice have I this fair enchantment seen;
Once more been tortured with renewed life.
When last the wintry gusts gave over strife
With the conquering sun of spring, and left the skies
Warm and serene, but yet with moistened eyes
In pity of the shatter'd infant buds,
That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs,
My hunting cap, because I laugh'd and smil'd,
Chatted with thee, and many days exil'd
All torment from my breast;'twas even then,
Straying about, yet, coop'd up in the den
Of helpless discontent,hurling my lance
From place to place, and following at chance,
At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck,
And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck
In the middle of a brook,whose silver ramble
Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble,
Tracing along, it brought me to a cave,
Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave
The nether sides of mossy stones and rock,
'Mong which it gurgled blythe adieus, to mock
Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead,
Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds, and spread
Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph's home.
"Ah! impious mortal, whither do I roam?"
Said I, low voic'd: "Ah whither! 'Tis the grot
Of Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot,
Doth her resign; and where her tender hands
She dabbles, on the cool and sluicy sands:
Or 'tis the cell of Echo, where she sits,
And babbles thorough silence, till her wits
Are gone in tender madness, and anon,
Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone
Of sadness. O that she would take my vows,
And breathe them sighingly among the boughs,
To sue her gentle ears for whose fair head,
Daily, I pluck sweet flowerets from their bed,
And weave them dyinglysend honey-whispers
Round every leaf, that all those gentle lispers
May sigh my love unto her pitying!
O charitable echo! hear, and sing
This ditty to her!tell her"so I stay'd
My foolish tongue, and listening, half afraid,
Stood stupefied with my own empty folly,
And blushing for the freaks of melancholy.
Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name
Most fondly lipp'd, and then these accents came:
Endymion! the cave is secreter
Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir
No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
And trembles through my labyrinthine hair."
At that oppress'd I hurried in.Ah! where
Are those swift moments? Whither are they fled?
I'll smile no more, Peona; nor will wed
Sorrow the way to death, but patiently
Bear up against it: so farewel, sad sigh;
And come instead demurest meditation,
To occupy me wholly, and to fashion
My pilgrimage for the world's dusky brink.
No more will I count over, link by link,
My chain of grief: no longer strive to find
A half-forgetfulness in mountain wind
Blustering about my ears: aye, thou shalt see,
Dearest of sisters, what my life shall be;
What a calm round of hours shall make my days.
There is a paly flame of hope that plays
Where'er I look: but yet, I'll say 'tis naught
And here I bid it die. Have not I caught,
Already, a more healthy countenance?
By this the sun is setting; we may chance
Meet some of our near-dwellers with my car."
This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star
Through autumn mists, and took Peona's hand:
They stept into the boat, and launch'd from land.
ENDYMION.
A Romance.
"The stretched metre of an antique song." ~
Shakspeare's Sonnets.
INSCRIBED,
With Every Feeling Of Pride and Regret
and With "A Bowed Mind,"
To the Memory of
The Most English of Poets Except Shakspeare,
THOMAS CHATTERON.
------------------------
(line 144): A lovely allusion to the story of Apollo's nine years' sojourn on earth as the herdsman of Admetus, when banished from Olympus for killing the Cyclops who had forged the thunder-bolts wherewith AEsculapius had been slain.
(line 232): It was the Hymn to Pan beginning here that the young poet when engaged in the composition of Endymion was induced to recite in the presence of Wordsworth, on the 28th of December 1817, at Haydon's house. Leigh Hunt records that the elder poet pronounced it "a very pretty piece of paganism."
(line 319): Doubtless meant to refer specially to the Elgin marbles.
(line 347): The reference here is to the passage from the second Book of the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, beginning at verse 674 ... which Shelley had in mind when (Prose Works, Vol. 3, p. 56) he alluded to the Apollo "so finely described by Apollonius Rhodius when the dazzling radiance of his beautiful limbs suddenly shone over the dark Euxine."
__ note found before the Preface of Endymion, in the Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. ...,
'In Woodhouse's copy of Endymion there is a note against the passage "so I will begin" &c., line 39, Book I, to the effect that the poem was begun in the spring of 1817 and finished in the winter of 1817-18; and in the title-page he has inserted April before 1818. The statement corresponds with Keats's own record of May 1817, that he was busying himself at Margate with the commencement of Endymion.'
PREFACE.
Knowing within myself the manner in which this Poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public.
What manner I mean, will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are not of such completion as to warrant their passing the press; nor should they if I thought a year's castigation would do them any good; -- it will not: the foundations are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away: a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that while it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit to live.
This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a punishment: but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it: he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to look, and who do look with a zealous eye, to the honor of English literature.
The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.
I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness: for I wish to try once more, before I bid it farewell.
Teignmouth, April 10, 1818.
[footnote] Woodhouse notes -- "[for I wish to try once more,] This alluded to his then intention of writing a poem on the fall of Hyperion. He commenced this poem: but, thanks to the critics who fell foul of this work, he discontinued it. The fragment was published in 1820." by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Endymion - Book I
,#NFDB
30 Yoga
21 Integral Yoga
13 Occultism
11 Poetry
6 Fiction
5 Philosophy
4 Hinduism
4 Christianity
4 Buddhism
4 Baha i Faith
2 Psychology
2 Philsophy
1 Alchemy
27 Sri Ramakrishna
9 James George Frazer
8 The Mother
8 Nolini Kanta Gupta
5 Satprem
5 H P Lovecraft
5 Baha u llah
4 Vyasa
4 Saint Teresa of Avila
4 Saint Augustine of Hippo
4 Plato
4 Jorge Luis Borges
4 Bokar Rinpoche
4 A B Purani
3 Sri Aurobindo
3 Aleister Crowley
2 Thubten Chodron
2 Swami Krishnananda
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Anonymous
26 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
9 The Golden Bough
5 Words Of Long Ago
5 Talks
5 Lovecraft - Poems
4 Vishnu Purana
4 The Way of Perfection
4 Tara - The Feminine Divine
4 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
3 The Lotus Sutra
3 Liber ABA
3 Labyrinths
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
2 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
2 The Book of Certitude
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Emerson - Poems
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 City of God
2 Anonymous - Poems
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Gadadhar was on the threshold of youth. He had become the pet of the women of the village. They loved to hear him talk, sing, or recite from the holy books. They enjoyed his knack of imitating voices. Their woman's instinct recognized the innate purity and guilelessness of this boy of clear skin, flowing hair, beaming eyes, smiling face, and inexhaustible fun. The pious elderly women looked upon him as Gopala, the Baby Krishna, and the younger ones saw in him the youthful Krishna of Vrindavan. He himself so idealized the love of the gopis for Krishna that he sometimes yearned to be born as a woman, if he must be born again, in order to be able to love Sri Krishna with all his heart and soul.
--- COMING TO CALCUTTA
--
Mahimacharan and Pratap Hazra were two devotees outstanding for their pretentiousness and idiosyncrasies. But the Master showed them his unfailing love and kindness, though he was aware of their shortcomings. Mahimacharan Chakravarty had met the Master long before the arrival of the other disciples. He had had the intention of leading a spiritual life, but a strong desire to acquire name and fame was his weakness. He claimed to have been initiated by Totapuri and used to say that he had been following the path of knowledge according to his guru's instructions. He possessed a large library of English and Sanskrit books. But though he pretended to have read them, most of the leaves were uncut. The Master knew all his limitations, yet enjoyed listening to him recite from the Vedas and other scriptures. He would always exhort Mahima to meditate on the meaning of the scriptural texts and to practise spiritual discipline.
Pratap Hazra, a middle-aged man, hailed from a village near Kamarpukur. He was not altogether unresponsive to religious feelings. On a moment's impulse he had left his home, aged mother, wife, and children, and had found shelter in the temple garden at Dakshineswar, where he intended to lead a spiritual life. He loved to argue, and the Master often pointed him out as an example of barren argumentation. He was hypercritical of others and cherished an exaggerated notion of his own spiritual advancement. He was mischievous and often tried to upset the minds of the Master's young disciples, criticizing them for their happy and joyous life and asking them to devote their time to meditation. The Master teasingly compared Hazra to Jatila and Kutila, the two women who always created obstructions in Krishna's sport with the gopis, and said that Hazra lived at Dakshineswar to "thicken the plot" by adding complications.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Artists themselves, almost invariably, speak of their inspiration: they look upon themselves more or less as mere instruments of something or some Power that is beyond them, beyond their normal consciousness attached to the brain-mind, that controls them and which they cannot control. This perception has been given shape in myths and legends. Goddess Saraswati or the Muses are, however, for them not a mere metaphor but concrete realities. To what extent a poet may feel himself to be a mere passive, almost inanimate, instrumentnothing more than a mirror or a sensitive photographic plateis illustrated in the famous case of Coleridge. His Kubla Khan, as is well known, he heard in sleep and it was a long poem very distinctly recited to him, but when he woke up and wanted to write it down he could remember only the opening lines, the rest having gone completely out of his memory; in other words, the poem was ready-composed somewhere else, but the transmitting or recording instrument was faulty and failed him. Indeed, it is a common experience to hear in sleep verses or musical tunes and what seem then to be very beautiful things, but which leave no trace on the brain and are not recalled in memory.
Still, it must be noted that Coleridge is a rare example, for the recording apparatus is not usually so faithful but puts up its own formations that disturb and alter the perfection of the original. The passivity or neutrality of the intermediary is relative, and there are infinite grades of it. Even when the larger waves that play in it in the normal waking state are quieted down, smaller ripples of unconscious or half-conscious habitual formations are thrown up and they are sufficient to cause the scattering and dispersal of the pure light from above.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At the new moon, when I felt very down, he gave me the first tantric mantraa mantra to Durga. For a period of 41 days, I must repeat it 125,000 times and go every morning to the Temple, stand before Parvati and recite this mantra within me for at least one hour. Then I must go to the sanctuary of Shiva and recite another mantra for half an hour. Practically speaking, I have to repeat constantly within me the mantra to Durga in a silent concentration, whatever I may be doing on the outside. In these conditions, it is difficult to think of you and this has created a slight conflict in me, but I believe that your Grace is acting through Swami and through Durga, whom I am invoking all the time I remember what you told me about the necessity for intermediaries and I am obeying Swami unreservedly.
Mother, things are far from being what they were the first time in Rameswaram, and I am living through certain moments that are hell the enemy seems to have been unleashed with an extraordinary violence. It comes in waves, and after it recedes, I am literally SHATTEREDphysically, mentally and vitally drained. This morning, while going to the temple, I lived through one of these moments. All this suffering that suddenly sweeps down upon me is horrible. Yes, I had the feeling of being BACKED UP AGAINST A WALL, exactly as in your vision I was up against a wall. I was walking among these immense arcades of sculptured granite and I could see myself walking, very small, all alone, alone, ravaged with pain, filled with a nameless despair, for nowhere was there a way out. The sea was nearby and I could have thrown myself into it; otherwise, there was only the sanctuary of Parvati but there was no more Africa to flee to, everything closed in all around me, and I kept repeating, Why? Why? This much suffering was truly inhuman, as if my last twenty years of nightmare were crashing down upon me. I gritted my teeth and went to the sanctuary to say my mantra. The pain in me was so strong that I broke into a cold sweat and almost fainted. Then it subsided. Yet even now I feel completely battered.
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Considering it to be of no interest, Satprem unfortunately did not keep a record of his answer. The P. in question died insane, in a so-called "Japanese hospital," and one night (this is most likely the story he was telling Mother here) Satprem found him being held prisoner in a kind of hell. His body was covered with wounds which Satprem treated with balm. He then told P., "But go on, say Mother's mantra!" And the moment Satprem began to recite the mantra, the whole place explodedblown to smithereens. An instantaneous deliverance. A few months later (or it may have been a few years), P. came to see Satprem at night with a bouquet of flowers and a smile, as if to announce that he was taking on a new body.
***
0 1965-06-09, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have a whole mantra [besides the main Mantra], I told you, for years now, and it is extremely complete: it applies to all necessities and all occasions, its a long series. But for some time it has become very spontaneous, too, and very self-living: when I want to see quite concretely where someone stands (someone meditating in front of me, for instance), I recite the mantra (within, of course) and I watch the reactions, because the mantra deals with the surrender of all the parts of the being and all the modes of life: its very complete. So according to the reactions [in Mothers centers], I see very clearly. The other day, when X came, I did it (it was the first time I had done it with him), I did it, and when I came to a certain point (Mother smiles) he couldnt bear it! He sort of stiffened, bowed to me and got up. Before that, he had remained very silent, very quiet. But that (Mother laughs) You see, I invoke the Lord and ask Him to manifest His various ways of being or realizations (its not taken in a mental sense, not at all), but when I said I say many things, but up to that point he had been quiet, silent, still, and at one point (because it comes in a logical succession), I said, Manifest Your Knowledgehe felt uneasy, as if he felt he was being thrown out of himself! So I tried to calm that down, but he couldnt bear itafter five minutes, he got up and left. A real unease; because, as for me, I am inside people (I am everywhere, of course), I feel just as if it took place in my own body.
***
0 1967-09-13, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other one, A.F., has poor health, but if you recite poems of Sri Aurobindo to him, he becomes blissful! Neither of these two are ordinary children, obviously.
But Ill try the next time I see R. Its a coincidence but is there such a thing as a coincidence in the world? I dont believe in In the past (I dont know what became of him afterwards), but in the past Richard had some occult knowledge, that is I had given him enough occult knowledge for him to be able to leave his body and enter another. So did he try to do it? I know he wanted to come back here; especially after Sri Aurobindos departure, he took it into his head to come here.
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
We have set forth the details of obligatory prayer in another Tablet. Blessed is he who observeth that whereunto he hath been bidden by Him Who ruleth over all mankind. In the Prayer for the Dead six specific passages have been sent down by God, the Revealer of Verses. Let one who is able to read recite that which hath been revealed to precede these passages; and as for him who is unable, God hath relieved him of this requirement. He, of a truth, is the Mighty, the Pardoner.
Hair doth not invalidate your prayer, nor aught from which the spirit hath departed, such as bones and the like. Ye are free to wear the fur of the sable as ye would that of the beaver, the squirrel, and other animals; the prohibition of its use hath stemmed, not from the Qur'an, but from the misconceptions of the divines. He, verily, is the All-Glorious, the All-Knowing.
--
They who recite the verses of the All-Merciful in the most melodious of tones will perceive in them that with which the sovereignty of earth and heaven can never be compared. From them they will inhale the divine fragrance of My worlds-worlds which today none can discern save those who have been endowed with vision through this sublime, this beauteous Revelation. Say: These verses draw hearts that are pure unto those spiritual worlds that can neither be expressed in words nor intimated by allusion. Blessed be those who hearken.
117
--
Ye have been forbidden in the Book of God to engage in contention and conflict, to strike another, or to commit similar acts whereby hearts and souls may be saddened. A fine of nineteen mithqals of gold had formerly been prescribed by Him Who is the Lord of all mankind for anyone who was the cause of sadness to another; in this Dispensation, however, He hath absolved you thereof and exhorteth you to show forth righteousness and piety. Such is the commandment which He hath enjoined upon you in this resplendent Tablet. Wish not for others what ye wish not for yourselves; fear God, and be not of the prideful. Ye are all created out of water, and unto dust shall ye return. Reflect upon the end that awaiteth you, and walk not in the ways of the oppressor. Give ear unto the verses of God which He Who is the sacred Lote-Tree reciteth unto you. They are assuredly the infallible balance, established by God, the Lord of this world and the next. Through them the soul of man is caused to wing its flight towards the Dayspring of Revelation, and the heart of every true believer is suffused with light. Such are the laws which God hath enjoined upon you, such His commandments prescribed unto you in His Holy Tablet; obey them with joy and gladness, for this is best for you, did ye but know.
149
recite ye the verses of God every morn and eventide. Whoso faileth to recite them hath not been faithful to the Covenant of God and His Testament, and whoso turneth away from these holy verses in this Day is of those who throughout eternity have turned away from God. Fear ye God, O My servants, one and all. Pride not yourselves on much reading of the verses or on a multitude of pious acts by night and day; for were a man to read a single verse with joy and radiance it would be better for him than to read with lassitude all the Holy Books of God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting. Read ye the sacred verses in such measure that ye be not overcome by languor and despondency. Lay not upon your souls that which will weary them and weigh them down, but rather what will lighten and uplift them, so that they may soar on the wings of the Divine verses towards the Dawning-place of His manifest signs; this will draw you nearer to God, did ye but comprehend.
150
Teach your children the verses revealed from the heaven of majesty and power, so that, in most melodious tones, they may recite the Tablets of the All-Merciful in the alcoves within the Mashriqu'l-Adhkars.
Whoever hath been transported by the rapture born of adoration for My Name, the Most Compassionate, will recite the verses of God in such wise as to captivate the hearts of those yet wrapped in slumber. Well is it with him who hath quaffed the Mystic Wine of everlasting life from the utterance of his merciful Lord in My Name-a Name through which every lofty and majestic mountain hath been reduced to dust.
151
--
Ye have been prohibited from making use of pulpits. Whoso wisheth to recite unto you the verses of his Lord, let him sit on a chair placed upon a dais, that he may make mention of God, his Lord, and the Lord of all mankind. It is pleasing to God that ye should seat yourselves on chairs and benches as a mark of honour for the love ye bear for Him and for the Manifestation of His glorious and resplendent Cause.
155
1.01f - Introduction, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
Among the eight hundred disciples of Bodhisattva Varaprabha there was a man named Yaaskma who was attached to prot. Even though he had repeatedly recited the sutras he never became versed in them and forgot the greater part. That is why he was called Yaaskma, Fame Seeker.
But because he had also planted various roots of good merit, he was able to meet innumerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of kois of buddhas whom he rendered homage to, honored, revered, and praised.
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
So saying, he continued on his way along the meadow. But the cowherd boys, being afraid, did not accompany him. In the mean time the snake moved swiftly toward him with upraised hood. As soon as it came near, he recited a mantra, and the snake lay at his feet like an earthworm. The brahmachari said: 'Look here. Why do you go about doing harm? Come, I will give you a holy word. By repeating it you will learn to love God. Ultimately you will realize Him and so get rid of your violent nature.' Saying this, he taught the snake a holy word and initiated him into spiritual life. The snake bowed before the teacher and said, 'Revered sir, how shall I practise spiritual discipline?'
'Repeat that sacred word', said the teacher, 'and do no harm to anybody'. As he was about to depart, the brahmachari said, 'I shall see you again.'
1.01 - Tara the Divine, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
I will give you a mantra to recite 10,000 times, and
you will be healed." Kalu Rinpoche complied and the
--
Every day, Amala recited the praise to the deity,
and each year made a large donation to monasteries
--
As often as she could, she secretly recited Tara's praise
and mantra. Notably, when she watched over sheep
--
she recited prayers and humbly asked Tara to find her
lost husb and and children. At night, while others were
--
to come together if they could and recite 100,000
praises. A hundred people showed up, and it took us
--
to Tara and recite her praise.
We took advantage of night to continue on our
--
Tibet. Before leaving, again I asked people to recite
100,000 Tara praises.
1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
Until now, your mother could not devote herself to good works because from the time you were born she lavished her every moment on you, caring for you and seeing that you were provided with everything necessary for your upbringing. If she did find time to enter the family altar room, the sutras and dharanis she recited were always dedicated to your good health and long life, without a thought for her own karmic future, and heedless of her own physical exhaustion. Now, having retired in recent years from her former busy life, she has time to spend quietly on Buddhist devotions-but you come around, hatching your malicious schemes to frustrate and upset her, spreading silly rumors at the yearend cleaning, thinking up ways to anger her at the busy year-end season. What a bitterly cruel thing to do.
How heartwarming it is to see ordinary sons and daughters attending to their duty to their parents with benevolent smiles on their faces, sparing no expense to provide for their needs and amusement:
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
She recites an incantation, repeatedly casting her spell;
As for the gods of battle, they sharpen their weapons.
--
At Babylon the Enuma elish was recited in the temple on the fourth day of the New Year festival. This
festival, named zagmuk (beginning of the year) in Sumerian and akitu in Akkadian [note: the
1.02 - Meditating on Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
The sadhana continues with verses praising Taras qualities and requesting her inspiration for our spiritual practice. These verses, recited while we
visualize Tara in front of us, focus our attention on her enlightened qualities. The more we reect upon Taras wonderful qualities, the more we will
--
the nature of reality. We recite a mantra in order to calm our energies, concentrate our mind, and approach a state of meditative equipoise. In Green
Taras mantra, om represents Taras body, speech, and mind, the faculties that
1.02 - Skillful Means, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
What is the reason for this? Because after the parinirva of the Buddha it is hard to nd people who preserve, recite, and understand the meaning of the sutras like this. But if they should meet other buddhas they will immediately understand this teaching.
O riputra! You should wholeheartedly accept and preserve the words of the Buddha. The words of the Buddha Tathgatas are never false. There are no other vehicles, only the single buddha vehicle.
1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
Against the people who recite, copy, and preserve it.
When such people die,
1.03 - Bloodstream Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
the mind to invoke a buddha!6 Buddhas don't recite sutras.17 Bud
dhas don't keep precepts.18 And buddhas don't break precepts.
--
his nature, such a person isn't a teacher. Even if he can recite the
Twelvefold Canon,21 he can't escape the Wheel of Birth and Death.22
--
Long ago, the monk Good Star23 was able to recite the entire
Canon. But he didn't escape the Wheel, because he didn't see his
--
who recite a few sutras or shastras24 and think it's the Dharma are
fools. Unless you see your mind, reciting so much prose is useless.
1.03 - Invocation of Tara, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
- Our speech recites the text and mantras, which serve
as support to the activity of the mind. Words allow us
--
RECITATION OF THE PRAISE. The praise is recited in
three successive sequences, first uttered twice, then
--
While they recite these wishes,
the practitioners throw rice into the air which
--
Following the torma offering, we recite a text in this
sense. For example, it may be, "You, who fully rejoice
--
heart as children. They used to recite it morning and
evening, or while working, watching their herds, for
example. They also recited Tara's mantra.
The lay people's faith in Tara was immense. If they
--
during the ritual, it is written, "Through this praise recited
two, three, and seven times, if we want a son, we will have
--
He or she is allowed to recite Tara's mantra. Ritually,
the permission of Speech is conferred by repeating the
--
possible to recite the mantra even without having received
the empowerment. Is it the same for Tara?
--
meditate on the deity's body or recite the mantra for
those who have not first received the empowerment.
--
these deities, one can pray to them and recite their
mantras. This is beneficial. However, the effect will be
1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Zen
51. QUESTION: With reference to ablutions, it hath been revealed, "Let him that findeth no water for ablution repeat five times the words 'In the Name of God, the Most Pure, the Most Pure'": is it permissible to recite this verse in times of bitter cold, or if the hands or face be wounded?
ANSWER: Warm water may be used in times of bitter cold. If there are wounds on the face or hands, or there be other reasons such as aches and pains for which the use of water would be harmful, one may recite the appointed verse in place of the ablution.
52. QUESTION: Is the recitation of the verse revealed to replace the Prayer of the Signs obligatory?
--
ANSWER: It is sufficient to recite the designated verse after the last prostration. The several prostrations do not require separate repetitions of the verse.
61. QUESTION: If an Obligatory Prayer be omitted at home, is it to be compensated for by a prostration or not?
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
namely, a red bull. With this intention, a priest recited the
following spell: "Up to the sun shall go thy heart-ache and thy
--
tooth was extracted, the following prayer used to be recited:
"Big rat! little rat!
1.03 - The End of the Intellect, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
opened the book, read a line aloud and asked Sri Aurobindo to recite what followed. Sri Aurobindo concentrated for a moment, and then repeated the entire page without a single mistake. If he could read a hundred pages in half an hour, no wonder he could go through a case of books in such an incredibly short time." But Sri Aurobindo did not stop at the translations of the sacred texts; he began to study Sanskrit,
which, typically, he learned by himself. When a subject was known to be difficult or impossible, he would refuse to take anyone's word for it, whether he were a grammarian, pandit, or clergyman, and would insist upon trying it himself. The method seemed to have some merit,
1.04 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Once as we were sitting together in the refectory, this great superior put his holy mouth to my ear and said: Do you want me to show you divine prudence in extreme old age? And when I begged him to do so, the righteous man called from the second table one named Laurence, who had been about forty-eight years in the community and was second priest in the monastery. He came and made a prostration to the abbot, and took his blessing. But when he stood up, the abbot said nothing whatever to him, but left him standing by the table without eating. Breakfast had only just begun, and so he was standing for a good hour, or even two. I was ashamed to look this toiler in the face, for his hair was quite white and he was eighty years old. And when we got up, the saint sent him to the great Isidore whom we mentioned above to recite to him the beginning of the 39th Psalm.2
And I, like a most worthless person, did not miss the chance of tempting the old man. And when I asked him what he was thinking of when he was standing by the table, he said: I thought of the shepherd as the image of Christ, and I considered that I had not received the comm and from him at all, but from God. And so I stood praying, Father John, not as before a table of men, but as before the altar of God; and because of my faith and love for the shepherd, no evil thought of him entered my mind, for Love does not resent an injury.3 But know this, Father, that if anyone surrenders himself to simplicity and voluntary innocence, then he no longer gives the devil either time or place to attack him.
--
The fathers of that place told us of many triumphs of this most saintly Menas, and amongst others the following: Once the superior wanted to test his God-given patience. In the evening Menas came to the abbots cell, and having prostrated before the abbot, asked him as usual to give him instruction. But the abbot left him lying on the ground till the hour of the Office, and only then blessed him; and having rebuked him for being fond of self-display and for being impatient, he ordered him to get up. The holy man knew Menas would bear all this courageously, and therefore he made this scene for the edification of all. A disciple of Saint Menas confirmed what was told us about his director, and added: I was inquisitive to know whether sleep overcame him while he lay prostrate before the abbot. But he assured me that while lying on the ground he had recited by heart the whole psalter.
I must not fail to adorn the crown of this step with this emerald. Once I started a discussion on silence with some of the most experienced elders in the community. With a smile on their faces and in jovial mood they said to me in a friendly way: We, Father John, being material, live a material life, preferring to wage war according to the measure of our weakness, and considering it better to struggle with men, who are sometimes fierce and some times penitent, than with demons who are continually raging and up in arms against us!
1.04 - The Praise, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
illiterate farmers recited it as often as monks in the monasteries.
The praise is extracted from a Tara Tantra, and we saw earlier
--
How TO recite
THE PRAISE
--
When we recite the praise, we think that we
produce an infinite number of bodies similar to
ourselves who all , together prostrate and recite the
text. Our mind, in an attitude of great reverence and
--
proceeding from the praise. Wh~n we recite it, Tara
effectively grants us all that we ask of her.
1.053 - A Very Important Sadhana, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
A daily recitation with the understanding of the meaning of such hymns as the Purusha Sukta from the Veda, for instance, is a great svadhyaya, as Vachaspati Mishra, the commentator on the Yoga Sutras, mentions. Also, the Satarudriya which we chant daily in the temple without perhaps knowing its meaning is a great meditation if it is properly understood and recited with a proper devout attitude of mind. Vachaspati Mishra specifically refers to two great hymns of the Veda the Purusha Sukta and the Satarudriya which he says are highly purifying, not only from the point of view of their being conducive to meditation or concentration of mind, but also in other purifying processes which will take place in the body and the whole system due to the chanting of these mantras. These Veda mantras are immense potencies, like atom bombs, and to handle them and to energise the system with their forces is a spiritual practice by itself. This is one suggestion.
There are various other methods of svadhyaya. It depends upon the state of ones mind how far it is concentrated, how far it is distracted, what these desires are that have remained frustrated inside, what the desires are that have been overcome, and so on. The quality of the mind will determine the type of svadhyaya that one has to practise. If nothing else is possible, do parayana of holy scriptures the Sundara Kanda, the Valmiki Ramayana or any other Ramayana, the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana, the Srimad Bhagavadgita, the Moksha Dharma Parva of the Mahabharata, the Vishnu Purana, or any other suitable spiritual text. It has to be recited again and again, every day at a specific time, in a prescribed manner, so that this sadhana itself becomes a sort of meditation because what is meditation but hammering the mind, again and again, into a single idea? Inasmuch as abstract meditations are difficult for beginners, these more concrete forms of it are suggested. There are people who recite the Ramayana or the Srimad Bhagavata 108 times. They conduct Bhagvat Saptaha. The purpose is to bring the mind around to a circumscribed form of function and not allow it to roam about on the objects of sense.
The mind needs variety, no doubt, and it cannot exist without variety. It always wants change. Monotonous food will not be appreciated by the mind, and so the scriptures, especially the larger ones like the Epics, the Puranas, the Agamas, the Tantras, etc., provide a large area of movement for the mind wherein it leisurely roams about to its deep satisfaction, finds variety in plenty, reads stories of great saints and sages, and feels very much thrilled by the anecdotes of Incarnations, etc. But at the same time, with all its variety, we will find that it is a variety with a unity behind it. There is a unity of pattern, structure and aim in the presentation of variety in such scriptures as the Srimad Bhagavata, for instance. There are 18,000 verses giving all kinds of detail everything about the cosmic creation and the processes of the manifestation of different things in their gross form, subtle form, causal form, etc. Every type of story is found there. It is very interesting to read it. The mind rejoices with delight when going through such a large variety of detail with beautiful comparisons, etc. But all this variety is like a medical treatment by which we may give varieties of medicine with a single aim. We may give one tablet, one capsule, one injection, and all sorts of things at different times in a day to treat a single disease. The purpose is the continued assertion that God is All, and the whole of creation is a play of the glory of God.
1.05 - Buddhism and Women, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
Answer: They would recite the Refuge prayer, Tara's
Praise, and the prayer for rebirth in the Pure Land of
--
of yaks and sheep, they would recite mantras and
prayers almost continuously.
1.06 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The kathak recited the life of Prahlada from the Purana. Its substance was as follows: Hiranyakasipu, Prahlada's father, was king of the demons. He bore great malice toward God and put his own son through endless tortures for leading a religious life. Afflicted by his father, Prahlada prayed to God, "O God, please give my father holy inclinations."
At these words the Master wept. He went into an ecstatic mood. Afterwards he began to talk to the devotees.
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
If, as long as you live, you recite this prayer three times every day, not
just from the mouth (in words only) but strongly linked with your
--
will hold you dear. If you recite the Homage to the Twenty-one
Taras and this prayer, you will attain the Divine Liberating Mother.
--
while reading a prayer. To recite a prayer or look at a friend with our heart,
we must remind ourselves to bring our attention back to what were reading,
--
cherish. In the same way, even though we recite the same prayers every day,
each time we say them is a new experience. Its not the same as when we said
--
praise me and recite my long life prayer. Or, Look what my students
bought! They offered me this and that. Let me show you... Its very easy for
--
even though every day I recited a verse from Lama Chpa saying, Even if I
remain for an ocean of eons in the Avici hells for the sake of one sentient
--
important, but their quality. Many verses that we say daily are recited three
times because that gives us the opportunity to do it at least once with con-
1.099 - The Entry of the Eternal into the Individual, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
But, greater means than this is the power of mantras. The continuous recitation of certain mantras, or spiritual formulae, may create internal vibrations which enable a person to exercise supernormal powers. And the effects that follow from this practice are more lasting than the use of medicinal herbs. If a mantra is recited continuously, for a very long period, with deep concentration of mind, it sets up certain vibrations which release energy from the body and the entire system. Then, what works in ones system is the mantra itself. The deity of the mantra begins to operate. Thus, the aphorism tells us that this also is one of the ways of acquiring powers by yoga.
Austerity, or tapas, of an intense character may also generate powers. The subjugation of the senses, beyond a certain degree, will set up a corresponding reaction from within, and that reaction comes in the form of powers. Any form of self-control should bring powers; it is a natural consequence thereof. We are perpetually endowed with supernormal energy, but we look weak and incapacitated on account of indulgence of the senses. Our minds and senses are the channels for the loss of energy of the system, on account of which we appear to be divested of power. So when we block the channel by which energy is depleted, there is a rousing of the force with which we are perpetually associated. This force is not created from within. In fact, the achievements or powers we are speaking of are not generated, manufactured or invented nothing of the kind. Only they are allowed to reveal themselves, while at other times their revelation is blocked by an obstructive activity of the mind and the senses a fact which is mentioned in the next sutra.
1.09 - Legend of Lakshmi, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Thus, Brahman, have I narrated to thee, in answer to thy question, how Lakṣmī, formerly the daughter of Bhrigu, sprang from the sea of milk; and misfortune shall never visit those amongst mankind who daily recite the praises of Lakṣmī uttered by Indra, which are the origin and cause of all prosperity.
Footnotes and references:
1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
mountains, they recite some verses to the following effect: "Be not
uneasy, my friend, though we fell what we have been ordered to
1.10 - Mantra Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
10. Mantra for curing scorpion stings and cobra bites should be repeated on eclipse days for getting Mantra Siddhi quickly. You should stand in the water and repeat the Mantra. This is more powerful and effective. They can be recited on ordinary days also for attaining Mantra-Siddhi.
11. Mantra Siddhi for curing scorpion sting, cobra bites, etc., can be attained within 40 days. Repeat the Mantra with faith and devotion regularly. Have sitting in the early morning after taking bath. Observe Brahmacharya and live on milk and fruits for 40 days or take restricted diet.
--
15. He who attained Mantra Siddhi can cure cobra bite or scorpion sting or any chronic disease by mere touch on the affected part. When a man is bitten by a cobra a telegram is sent to the Mantra Siddha. The Mantra Siddha recites the Mantra and the man who is bitten by a cobra is cured. What a grand marvel! Does this not prove the tremendous power of Mantra?
16. Get the Mantra initiation from your Guru. Or pray to your Ishta Devata and start doing Japa of the particular Mantra, if you find it difficult to get a Guru.
1.10 - Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
climbs up a tree and recites lampoons about each house and its
inmates. Afterwards the disguises of bark are stripped off and they
1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Some of the Brahmo ladies sat on chairs, with music books in their hands. The songs of the Brahmo Samaj were sung to the accompaniment of harmonium and piano. Sri Ramakrishna's joy was unbounded. The invocation was followed by a prayer, and then the worship began. The acharyas, seated on the platform, recited from the Vedas: Om. Thou art our Father. Give us right knowledge; do not destroy us! We bow to Thee.
The Brahmo devotees chanted in chorus with the acharyas: Om. Brahman is Truth, Knowledge, Infinity.
--
Sri Ramakrishna asked the kathak to recite the episode of Uddhava, the friend and devotee of Krishna.
At the request of Krishna, Uddhava had gone to Vrindvan to console the cowherds and the gopis, who were sore at heart because of their separation from their beloved Krishna.
1.11 - Legend of Dhruva, the son of Uttanapada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Dhruva replied to them; "You have told me, humbly bending before you, what deity is to be propitiated: now inform me what prayer is to he meditated by me, that will offer him gratification. May the great Ṛṣis, looking upon me with favour, instruct me how I am to propitiate the god." The Ṛṣis answered; "Prince, thou deservest to hear how the adoration of Viṣṇu has been performed by those who have been devoted to his service. The mind must first be made to forsake all external impressions, and a man must then fix it steadily on that being in whom the world is. By him whose thoughts are thus concentrated on one only object, and wholly filled by it; whose spirit is firmly under control; the prayer that we shall repeat to thee is to be inaudibly recited: 'Om! glory to Vāsudeva, whose essence is divine wisdom; whose form is inscrutable, or is manifest as Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva[2].' This prayer, which was formerly uttered by your grandsire, the Manu Svāyambhuva, and propitiated by which, Viṣṇu conferred upon him the prosperity he desired, and which was unequalled in the three worlds, is to be recited by thee. Do thou constantly repeat this prayer, for the gratification of Govinda."
Footnotes and references:
1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Sri Ramakrishna arrived at Adhar's house in Calcutta. Rkhl, M., and other devotees were with the Master. Adhar had arranged to have Rajnaraya, the famous singer, and his party, recite the Chandi.
Rajnarayan began the recital in the worship hall. He sang: I have surrendered my soul at the fearless feet of the Mother; Am I afraid of Death any more? . . .
--
MASTER: "According to some people, Sukadeva only saw and touched the Ocean of Brahman; he did not dive into It. That is why he could return to the world and impart religious instruction. According to others, he returned to the world of name and form, after attaining the Knowledge of Brahman, for the purpose of teaching others. He had to recite the Bhagavata to King Parikshit and had to teach people in various ways; therefore God did not destroy his 'I' altogether. God kept in him the 'ego of Knowledge.'"
God and religious organization
--
MASTER: "I said to Keshab Sen that the 'I' that says, 'I am a leader, I have formed this party, I am teaching people', is the 'unripe I'. It is very difficult to preach religion. It is not possible to do so without receiving the commandment of God. The permission of God is necessary. Sukadeva had a comm and from God to recite the Bhagavata. If, after realizing God, a man gets His comm and and becomes a preacher or teacher, then that preaching or teaching does no harm. His 'I' is not 'unripe'; it is 'ripe'.
"I asked Keshab to give up this 'unripe I'. The ego that feels, 'I am the servant of God and lover of God' does not injure one. I said to him: 'You have been constantly talking of your organization and your followers. But people also go away from your organization.' Keshab answered: 'It is true, sir. After staying in it several years, people go to another organization. What is worse, on deserting me they abuse me right and left.' 'Why don't you study their nature?' I said. 'Is there any good in making anybody and everybody a disciple?'
1.13 - Posterity of Dhruva, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
This Earth, the mother, the nurse, the receptacle, and nourisher of all existent things, was produced from the sole of the foot of Viṣṇu. And thus was born the mighty Prithu, the heroic son of Veṇa, who was the lord of the earth, and who, from conciliating the affections of the people, was the first ruler to whom the title of Rāja was ascribed. Whoever shall recite this story of the birth of Prithu, the son of Veṇa, shall never suffer any retribution for the evil he may have committed: and such is the virtue of the tale of Prithu's birth, that those who hear it repeated shall be relieved from affliction[10].
Footnotes and references:
1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
A scholar says one thing and does another. But it is quite a different matter with a sdhu. The words and actions of a man who has given his mind to the Lotus Feet of God are altogether different. In Benares I saw a young sannyasi who belonged to the sect of Nanak.. He was the same age as you. He used to refer to me as the 'loving monk'. His sect has a monastery in Benares. I was invited there one day. I found that the mohant was like a housewife. I asked him, 'What is the way?' 'For the Kaliyuga', he said, 'the path of devotion as enjoined by Nrada.' He was reading a book. When the reading was over, he recited: 'Vishnu is in water, Vishnu is on land, Vishnu is on the mountain top; the whole world is pervaded by Vishnu.' At the end he said, 'Peace! Peace! Abiding Peace!'
Path of love suited to modern times
--
Soon the service began according to the rules of the Brahmo Samaj. The preacher was seated on the dais. After the opening prayer he recited holy texts of the Vedas and was joined by the congregation in the invocation to the Supreme Brahman. They chanted in chorus: "Brahman is Truth, Knowledge, and Infinity. It shines as Bliss and Immortality.
Brahman is Peace, Blessedness, the One without a Second; It is pure and unstained by sin." The minds of the devotees were stilled, and they closed their eyes in meditation.
1.17 - Legend of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
According to the commands of his father, Prahlāda was conducted by the Daityas back to the house of his Guru; where, assiduous in attendance on his preceptor, he constantly improved in wisdom. After a considerable time had elapsed, the sovereign of the Asuras sent for him again; and on his arrival in his presence, desired him to recite some poetical composition. Prahlāda immediately began, "May he from whom matter and soul originate, from whom all that moves or is unconscious proceeds, he who is the cause of all this creation, Viṣṇu, be favourable unto us!" On hearing which, Hiraṇyakaśipu exclaimed, "Kill the wretch! he is not fit to live, who is a traitor to his friends, a burning brand to his own race!" and his attendants, obedient to his orders, snatched up their weapons, and rushed in crowds upon Prahlāda, to destroy him. The prince calmly looked upon them, and said, "Daityas, as truly as Viṣṇu is present in your weapons and in my body, so truly shall those weapons fail to harm me:" and accordingly, although struck heavily and repeatedly by hundreds of the Daityas, the prince felt not the least pain, and his strength was ever renewed. His father then endeavoured to persuade him to refrain from glorifying his enemy, and promised him immunity if the would not be so foolish as to persevere but Prahlāda replied, that he felt no fear as long as his immortal guardian against all dangers was present in his mind, the recollection of whom was alone sufficient to dissipate all the perils consequent upon birth or human infirmities.
Hiraṇyakaśipu, highly exasperated, commanded the serpents to fall upon his disobedient and insane son, and bite him to death with their envenomed fangs: and thereupon the great snakes Kuhaka, Takṣaka,
--
Then the Brahmans who were the sons of Bhārgava, illustrious priests, and reciters of the Sāma-Veda, said to the king of the Daityas, "Sire, restrain your wrath against your own son. How should anger succeed in finding a place in heavenly mansions? As for this lad, we will be his instructors, and teach him obediently to labour for the destruction of your foes. Youth is the season, king, of many errors; and you should not therefore be relentlessly offended with a child. If he will not listen to us, and abandon the cause of Hari, we will adopt infallible measures to work his death." The king of the Daityas, thus solicited by the priests, commanded the prince to be liberated from the midst of the flames.
Again established in the dwelling of his preceptor, Prahlāda gave lessons himself to the sons of the demons, in the intervals of his leisure. "Sons of the offspring of Diti," he was accustomed to say to them, "hear from me the supreme truth; nothing else is fit to be regarded; nothing, else here is an object to be coveted. Birth, infancy, and youth are the portion of all creatures; and then succeeds gradual and inevitable decay, terminating with all beings, children of the Daityas, in death: this is manifestly visible to all; to you as it is to me. That the dead are born again, and that it cannot be otherwise, the sacred texts are warrant: but production cannot be without a material cause; and as long as conception and parturition are the material causes of repeated birth, so long, be sure, is pain inseparable from every period of existence. The simpleton, in his inexperience, fancies that the alleviation of hunger, thirst, cold, and the like is pleasure; but of a truth it is pain; for suffering gives delight to those whose vision is darkened by delusion, as fatigue would be enjoyment to limbs that are incapable of motion[3]. This vile body is a compound of phlegm and other humours. Where are its beauty, grace, fragrance, or other estimable qualities? The fool that is fond of a body composed of flesh, blood, matter, ordure, urine, membrane, marrow, and bones, will be enamoured of hell. The agreeableness of fire is caused by cold; of water, by thirst; of food, by hunger: by other circumstances their contraries are equally agreeable[4]. The child of the Daitya who takes to himself a wife introduces only so much misery into his bosom; for as many as are the cerished affections of a living creature, so many are the thorns of anxiety implanted in his heart; and he who has large possessions in his house is haunted, wherever he goes, with the apprehension that they may be lost or burnt or stolen. Thus there is great pain in being born: for the dying man there are the tortures of the judge of the deceased, and of passing again into 'the womb. If you conclude that there is little enjoyment in the embryo state, you must then admit that the world is made up of pain. Verily I say unto you, that in this ocean of the world, this sea of many sorrows, Viṣṇu is your only hope. If ye say, you know nothing of this; 'we are children; embodied spirit in bodies is eternal; birth, youth, decay, are the properties of the body, not of the soul[5].' But it is in this way that we deceive ourselves. I am yet a child; but it is my purpose to exert myself when I am a youth. I am yet a youth; but when I become old I will do what is needful for the good of my soul. I am now old, and all my duties are to be fulfilled. How shall I, now that my faculties fail me, do what was left undone when my strength was unimpaired?' In this manner do men, whilst their minds are distracted by sensual pleasures, ever propose, and never attain final beatitude: they die thirsting[6]. Devoted in childhood to play, and in youth to pleasure, ignorant and impotent they find that old age is come upon them. Therefore even in childhood let the embodied soul acquire discriminative wisdom, and, independent of the conditions of infancy, youth, or age, strive incessantly to be freed. This, then, is what I declare unto you; and since you know that it is not untrue, do you, out of regard to me, call to your minds Viṣṇu, the liberator from all bondage. What difficulty is there in thinking upon him, who, when remembered, bestows prosperity; and by recalling whom to memory, day and night, all sin is cleansed away? Let all your thoughts and affections be fixed on him, who is present in all beings, and you shall laugh at every care. The whole world is suffering under a triple affliction[7]. 'What wise man would feel hatred towards beings who are objects of compassion? If fortune be propitious to them, and I am unable to partake of the like enjoyments, yet wherefore should I cerish malignity towards those who are more prosperous than myself: I should rather sympathise with their happiness; for the suppression of malignant feelings is of itself a reward[8]. If beings are hostile, and indulge in hatred, they are objects of pity to the wise, as encompassed by profound delusion. These are the reasons for repressing hate, which are adapted to the capacities of those who see the deity distinct from his creatures. Hear, briefly, what influences those who have approached the truth. This whole world is but a manifestation of Viṣṇu, who is identical with all things; and it is therefore to be regarded by the wise as not differing from, but as the same with themselves. Let us therefore lay aside the angry passions of our race, and so strive that we obtain that perfect, pure, and eternal happiness, which shall be beyond the power of the elements or their deities, of fire, of the sun, of the moon, of wind, of Indra, of the regent of the sea; which shall be unmolested by spirits of air or earth; by Yakṣas, Daityas, or their chiefs; by the serpent-gods or monstrous demigods of Swerga; which shall be uninterrupted by men or beasts, or by the infirmities of human nature; by bodily sickness and disease[9], or hatred, envy, malice, passion, or desire; which nothing shall molest, and which every one who fixes his whole heart on Keśava shall enjoy. Verily I say unto you, that you shall have no satisfaction in various revolutions through this treacherous world, but that you will obtain placidity for ever by propitiating Viṣṇu, whose adoration is perfect calm. What here is difficult of attainment, when he is pleased? Wealth, pleasure, virtue, are things of little moment. Precious is the fruit that you shall gather, be assured, from the exhaustless store of the tree of true wisdom."
1.17 - The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Sayana takes it to mean, "I recite the hymn for water" i.e. in order to get rain; the case however is the locative plural, and dadhis.e means "I place or hold" or, with the psychological sense, "think" or "hold in thought, meditate". Dhis.an.a like dh means thought; dhiyam dadhis.e would thus mean "I think or meditate the thought."
176
1.18 - The Perils of the Soul, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
speaking-trumpet of your right hand and recite through it the
following words:
--
down on an ant-hill facing the moon, burn incense, and recite the
following incantation:
1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
It was about eight o'clock in the evening. Sri Ramakrishna asked Mahimacharan to recite a few hymns from the scriptures. Mahima read the first verse of the Uttara Git, describing the nature of the Supreme Brahman:
He, Brahman, is one, partless, stainless, and beyond the ether; Without beginning or end, unknowable by mind or intelligence.
--
After a long time the Master regained consciousness of the outer world and took his seat. He asked Mahima to recite verses describing the love of God. The latter recited from the Nrada Pancharatra:
What need is there of penance if God is worshipped with love?
--
Mahima recited the description of Om:
It is like the unceasing flow of oil; like the long peal of a bell.
1.20 - RULES FOR HOUSEHOLDERS AND MONKS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to Mahima): "Please recite that verse, the one about devotion to Hari"
Mahimacharan recited, quoting from the Nrada Pancharatra: What need is there of penance if God is worshipped with love?
What is the use of penance if God is not worshipped with love?
--
Mahima recited:
O Brahman! O my child! Cease from practising further penances.
--
"What a nice state of mind Captain has developed! He looks like a rishi when he is seated to perform worship. He performs the rati with lighted camphor and recites beautiful hymns. When he rises from his seat after finishing the worship, his eyes are swollen from emotion, as if bitten by ants. Besides, he always devotes himself to the study of the sacred books, such as the Git and the Bhagavata. Once I used one or two English words before him, and that made him angry. He said, 'English-educated people are profane.' "
After a while Adhar said humbly to the Master: "Sir, you haven't been to our place for a long time. The drawing-room smells worldly and everything else appears to be steeped in darkness."
1.21 - A DAY AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to Prankrishna and the others): "If a man leads a householder's life he must have unflagging devotion to truth. God can be realized through truth alone. Formerly I was very particular about telling the truth, though now my zeal has abated a little. If I said, 'I shall bathe', then I would get into the water of the Ganges, recite the mantra, and sprinkle a little water over my head. But still there would remain some doubt in me as to whether my bath was complete. Once I went to Ram's house in Calcutta. I happened to say, 'I shall not take any luchi.' When I sat down for the meal I felt hungry. But I had said I would not eat the luchi; so I had to fill my stomach with sweets. (All laugh.)
"But my zeal for truthfulness has abated a little now. Once I said I would go to the pine-grove, but then I felt I had no particular urge to go. What was to be done? I asked Ram about it. He said I didn't have to go. Then I reasoned to myself: 'Well, everyone is Narayana. So Ram, too, is Narayana. Why shouldn't I listen to him? The elephant is Narayana no doubt; but the mahut is Narayana too. Since the mahut asked me not to go near the elephant, then why shouldn't I obey him?' Through reasoning like this my zeal for truthfulness is slightly less strong now than before.
1.21 - Tabooed Things, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
baleful thing from the well; and the prophet recited over it certain
charms, which were specially revealed to him for the purpose. At
1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Yes. Further, I think of the magician and his magic. The magician alone is real. His magic is illusory, like a dream. I realized this when I heard the Chandi recited.
Sumbha and Nisumbha were scarcely born when I learnt that they both were dead."
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Sri Bhagavan said that Kamba Ramayana consists of 12,000 stanzas to Valmikis 24,000. Kambas can be understood only by the learned and not by all. Tulasidas had heard Kamba Ramayana recited to him in Hindi by a Tamil saint and later wrote his famous Ramayana.
Talk 417.
1.24 - Describes how vocal prayer may be practised with perfection and how closely allied it is to mental prayer, #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
of prayers which, as Christians, we must perforce recite-namely, the Paternoster and the Ave
Maria-and then no one will be able to say of us that we are repeating words without understanding
--
right at his side. I want you to understand that, if you are to recite the Paternoster well, one thing
is needful: you must not leave the side of the Master Who has taught it you.
--
it from vocal prayer faithfully recited with a realization of Who it is that we are addressing. Further,
we are under the obligation of trying to pray attentively: may God grant that, by using these means,
1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The value of this practice (repetition of the name of Amitabha Buddha) is this. So long as one person practises his method (of spirituality) and another practises a different method, they counterbalance one another and their meeting is just the same as their not meeting. Whereas if two persons practise the same method, their mindfulness tends to become deeper and deeper, and they tend to remember each other and to develop affinities for each other, life after life. Moreover, whoever recites the name of Amitabha Buddha, whether in the present time or in future time, will surely see the Buddha Amitabha and never become separated from him. By reason of that association, just as one associating with a maker of perfumes becomes permeated with the same perfumes, so he will become perfumed by Amitabhas compassion, and will become enlightened without resort to any other expe thent means.
Surangama Sutra
1.25 - Describes the great gain which comes to a soul when it practises vocal prayer perfectly. Shows how God may raise it thence to things supernatural., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
name frighten you. To recite the Paternoster and the Ave Maria, or any other petition you like, is
vocal prayer. But think how harsh your music will be without what must come first; sometimes
1.27 - AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Om! Om! Om Kli!" Again he said, "Let me have a smoke." Many of the devotees stood around. Mahimacharan was fanning him. The Master asked him to sit down and recite from the scriptures. Mahimacharan recited from the Mahanirvana Tantra: Om; I bow to Thee, the Everlasting Cause of the world; I bow to Thee, Pure Consciousness, the Soul that sustains the whole universe.
I bow to Thee, who art One without duality, who dost bestow liberation; I bow to Thee, Brahman, the all-pervading Attri buteless Reality.
--
BHAVANATH: "He can certainly recite Sanskrit verses."
MASTER: "Once I said to a man about a sdhu: 'He is a rajasic sdhu. Why should one give him food and other presents?' At this another sdhu taught me a lesson by saying to me: 'Don't say that. There are three classes of holy men: sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic.' Since that day I have respected holy men of all classes."
1.29 - Continues to describe methods for achieving this Prayer of Recollection. Says what little account we should make of being favoured by our superiors., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
about the way to recite vocal prayers well, there is no need for me to say as much as this. All I want
is that we should know102and abide with the Person with Whom we are speaking, and not turn our
1.29 - The Myth of Adonis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
they performed ceremonies and recited spells to make the rain to
fall, the sun to shine, animals to multiply, and the fruits of the
1.2 - Katha Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
17. He who being pure recites this supreme secret at the time
of the Shraddha in the assembly of the Brahmins, that turns
1.39 - The Ritual of Osiris, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the chief celebrant recited the ritual chapter of "the sowing of the
fields." At Busiris on the twentieth of Khoiak sand and barley were
1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Sri Bhagavan said that Kamba Ramayana consists of 12,000 stanzas to Valmiki's 24,000. Kamba's can be understood only by the learned and not by all. Tulasidas had heard Kamba Ramayana recited to him in Hindi by a Tamil saint and later wrote his famous Ramayana.
401
1.42 - Treats of these last words of the Paternoster Sed libera nos a malo. Amen. But deliver us from evil. Amen., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
the other vocal prayers you may have to recite.
Now let us go back and finish the journey which I have been describing, for the Lord seems to
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Later, when I was staying here I heard some man recite a piece from
Thayumanavar which mentioned the same trick of the fishermen.
1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Later, when I was staying here I heard some man recite a piece from
Thayumanavar which mentioned the same trick of the fishermen."
1.55 - The Transference of Evil, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the open air, a formula being recited in which it is bidden to fly
away with all the ill-luck and misfortunes of the occupier." In
--
standing at the head of the corpse, recites or chants a long list of
sins such as any Badaga may commit, and the people repeat the last
1.56 - The Public Expulsion of Evils, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
devils. After prayers have been recited by the priests, the blast of
a horn summons the devils to partake of the meal which has been
19.01 - The Twins, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Many may be the sacred texts he recites, but if, in his delusion, he does not act up to them, then he becomes like a cowherd who counts only others' cattle; he does not share in the holy disciplehood.
[20]
Very few may be the sacred texts he recites, but if he carries out in practice the Teaching, then abandoning passion and ill-will and delusion, possessing the right knowledge, the consciousness wholly freed, seeking nothing either here or elsewhere, he shares in the holy disciplehood.
Or, for they have false apprehensions in view.
19.18 - On Impurity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The sacred word rusts if it is never recited, a house rusts if it is never cleaned, the fair body rusts if it is slothful, a sentinel rusts if he is negligent.
[8]
1953-12-09, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
She said so. You have not read it? She had even been told that she would be alone. And she said: I am ready to be alone. You have not read it? It is in the canto they recited last year.2
Did she know she would meet the Mother of Sorrows, the Mother of Might?
--
Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII, Canto 4, SABCL. Vol. 29, recited at the School Annual function of 1 December 1953.
***
1955-03-23 - Procedure for rejection and transformation - Learning by heart, true understanding - Vibrations, movements of the species - A cat and a Russian peasant woman - A cat doing yoga, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sweet Mother, when we learn something by heart to recite it, what is the true way of learning, so that it remains?
The true way so that it remains is to understand, it is not to learn by heart. You learn something by heart, it is mechanical, you see; but after some time it will be effaced, unless you make use of it constantly. For example, you are made to learn by heart the multiplication tables; if you constantly use them, you will remember them, but if by chance for years you remain without using them, you will forget them completely. But if you understand the principle, you will be able to remember them. You see, the principle of multiplication, if you understand it with a mathematical sense, you will no longer need to learn it by heart, the operation will be done quite naturally in your brain; and for everything it is the same.
1.anon - Enuma Elish (When on high), #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
He recited it and made it subsist in the deep,
As he poured sleep upon him. Sound asleep he lay.
1.anon - Less profitable, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
See here now, I will recite the list of your lovers.
Of the shoulder (?) his hand,
1.cllg - A Dance of Unwavering Devotion, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
English version by Thupten Jinpa and Jas Elsener Original Language Tibetan 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
1f.lovecraft - A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
At one Time Johnson recited to me some lines by a Servant to the Duke
of Leeds, which had so amusd him, that he had got them by Heart. They
1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
once trying to recite it to his close friend Dr. Checkley till he saw
how greatly it disturbed the urbane rector. It read:
--
which he had meant all along to recite. An eye for an eyemagic for
magiclet the outcome shew how well the lesson of the abyss had been
1f.lovecraft - The Dunwich Horror, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
read; and I think I know the right kind of spell to recite to make the
thing fade away. Of course, one cant be sure, but we can always take a
1f.lovecraft - The Nameless City, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
abyss. Once when the descent grew amazingly steep I recited something
in sing-song from Thomas Moore until I feared to recite more:
A reservoir of darkness, black
1f.lovecraft - Winged Death, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
breathlessly as he recited the insane-sounding message so incredibly
scrawled in a place no human hand could reach:
1.jk - Endymion - Book I, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
(line 232): It was the Hymn to Pan beginning here that the young poet when engaged in the composition of Endymion was induced to recite in the presence of Wordsworth, on the 28th of December 1817, at Haydon's house. Leigh Hunt records that the elder poet pronounced it "a very pretty piece of paganism."
(line 319): Doubtless meant to refer specially to the Elgin marbles.
1.pbs - Queen Mab - Part II., #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
recites till terror credits, are pursuing
Itself into forgetfulness.
1.rb - An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
We both would unadvisedly recite
Some charm's beginning, from that book of his,
1.rvd - How to Escape?, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
How to escape? I recite the name Ram. Lord, if you are sandalwood, I am water; with the fragrance in all parts of my body. Lord, if you are a cloud, I am a peacock; looking for you like a chakora for the moon. Lord, if you are a lamp, I am the wick (bAti); with the light burning day and night. Lord, if you are a pearl, I am the thread; together like gold and suhaga. Lord, you are the master and I servant; thus is the devotion of Raidas.
1.rwe - From the Persian of Hafiz I, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
Here a verse will I recite,
Verse as beautiful as pearls.
1.rwe - Woodnotes, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
Thou canst not catch what they recite
Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right,
1.tm - A Practical Program for Monks, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
Original Language English 1 Each one shall sit at table with his own cup and spoon, and with his own repentance. Each one's own business shall be his most important affair, and provide his own remedies. They have neglected bowl and plate. Have you a wooden fork? Yes, each monk has a wooden fork as well as a potato. 2 Each one shall wipe away tears with his own saint, when three bells hold in store a hot afternoon. Each one is supposed to mind his own heart, with its conscience, night and morning. Another turn on the wheel: ho hum! And observe the Abbot! Time to go to bed in a straw blanket. 3 Plenty of bread for everyone between prayers and the psalter: will you recite another? Merci, and Miserere. Always mind both the clock and the Abbot until eternity. Miserere. 4 Details of the Rule are all liquid and solid. What canon was the first to announce regimentation before us? Mind the step on the way down! Yes, I dare say you are right, Father. I believe you; I believe you. I believe it is easier when they have ice water and even a lemon. Each one can sit at table with his own lemon, and mind his own conscience. 5 Can we agree that the part about the lemon is regular? In any case, it is better to have sheep than peacocks, and cows rather than a chained leopard says Modest, in one of his proverbs. The monastery, being owner of a communal rowboat, is the antechamber of heaven. Surely that ought to be enough. 6 Each one can have some rain after Vespers on a hot afternoon, but ne quid nimis, or the purpose of the Order will be forgotten. We shall send you hyacinths and a sweet millennium. Everything the monastery provides is very pleasant to see and to sell for nothing. What is baked smells fine. There is a sign of God on every leaf that nobody sees in the garden. The fruit trees are there on purpose, even when no one is looking. Just put the apples in the basket. In Kentucky there is also room for a little cheese. Each one shall fold his own napkin, and neglect the others. 7 Rain is always very silent in the night, under such gentle cathedrals. Yes, I have taken care of the lamp, Miserere. Have you a patron saint, and an angel? Thank you. Even though the nights are never dangerous, I have one of everything. [1499.jpg] -- from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton <
1.whitman - Respondez!, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Let the preachers recite creeds! let them still teach only what they
have been taught!
2.01 - AT THE STAR THEATRE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
These words aroused my anger. Haladhri was my cousin, older than myself. But could that restrain me? I said to him: 'You wretch! Isn't it you who take pride in the study of the Git and the Vednta? Isn't it you who teach people that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory? And yet you imagine that I shall beget children! May your mouth that recites from the Git be blighted!'
(To M.) "You see, mere study of books avails nothing. One may recite the written part for the drum glibly from memory, but to play the drum is exceedingly difficult."
The Master continued with the description of his divine madness: "Once, for a few days, I was out on an excursion with Mathur Babu in his house-boat.
2.02 - THE DURGA PUJA FESTIVAL, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Oh, what a state of mind I passed through! I would open my mouth, touching, as it were, heaven and the nether world with my jaws, and utter the word 'Ma'. I felt that I had seized the Mother, like a fisherman dragging fish in his net. Let me recite a song:
This time I shall devour Thee utterly, Mother Kli!
2.03 - THE MASTER IN VARIOUS MOODS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"But the teachings of the Vedas are different. According to the Vedas none but a brahmin can be liberated. Further, the worship is not accepted by the gods unless the mantras are recited correctly. One must perform sacrifice, worship, and so on, according to scriptural injunction. But where is the time in the Kaliyuga to perform the Vedic rituals? Therefore in the Kaliyuga the path of devotion prescribed by Nrada is best. The path of karma is very difficult. Karma becomes a cause of bondage unless it is performed in a spirit of detachment. Further, the life of man nowadays depends on food. He has no time to observe the rituals enjoined by the scriptures. The patient dies if he tries to cure his fever by taking the decoction of herbs prescribed by the orthodox native physicians.
Therefore he should take a modern 'fever mixture'.
2.05 - On Poetry, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: Kalelkar in a recent article has tried to make out that Valmiki wanted to serve janat, humanity, and so he recited the Ramayana from cottage to cottage! I can never understand this idea. I can't imagine Valmiki doing it. When did he find the time to write the Ramayana, if he was reciting it from place to place?
Sri Aurobindo: But where does Kalelkar find his authority for saying so? The Ramayana was not recited to the mass by Valmiki. It was the reciters who popularised it.
Disciple: He refers to some verse in the Ramayana which describes how the Rishis heard the Ramayana and gave Valmiki a Kaupin (loin cloth), a Kamandalu (water pot), and a Parnakuti (thatched hut).
2.05 - VISIT TO THE SINTHI BRAMO SAMAJ, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Can one find God in the sacred books? By reading the scriptures one may feel at the most that God exists. But God does not reveal Himself to a man unless he himself dives deep. Only after such a plunge, after the revelation of God through His grace, is one's doubt destroyed. You. may read scriptures by the thousands and recite thousands of texts; but unless you plunge into God with yearning of heart, you will not comprehend Him. By mere scholarship you may fool man, but not God.
"Scriptures and books-what can one achieve with these alone? Nothing can be realized without His grace. Strive with a longing heart for His grace. Through His grace you will see Him and He will talk to you."
2.06 - WITH VARIOUS DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"He recited some texts from the Vedas. He said, 'This universe is like a chandelier and each living being is a light in it.' Once, meditating in the Panchavati, I too, had had a vision like that. I found his words agreed with my vision, and I thought he must be very great man. I asked him to explain his words. He said: 'God has created men to manifest His own glory; otherwise, who could know this universe? Everything becomes dark without the lights in the chandelier. One cannot even see the chandelier itself.'
"We talked a long time. Devendra was pleased and said to me, 'You must come to our Brahmo Samaj festival.' 'That', I said, 'depends on the will of God. You can see the state of my mind. There's no knowing when God will put me into a particular state.' Devendra insisted: 'No, you must come. 'But put on your cloth and wear a shawl over your body.
--
"But he is a great devotee. When he worships he performs rati with camphor. When he recites hymns he becomes a totally different person. He becomes absorbed.
Essence of Vednta
2.10 - On Vedic Interpretation, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: In the hymns recited as flower-offerings Pupjali, they pray Svasti svrjyam, bhojyam, smrjyam, pramehyam for self-rule, and all rule of the Divine, and all enjoyment.
Sri Aurobindo: Why! you have to face property if it comes. There never was any preaching of poverty. Of course, there was Sannyasa having the ideal of 'no-property'. But that is quite a different thing from remaining poor.
2.10 - THE MASTER AND NARENDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Sukadeva was absorbed in samdhi-nirvikalpa samdhi, jada samdhi. Since Suka was to recite the Bhagavata to King Parikshit, the Lord sent the sage Nrada to him.
Nrada saw him seated like an inert thing, absolutely unconscious of the world around him. Thereupon Nrada sang four couplets on the beauty of Hari, to the accompaniment of the vina. While the first couplet was being sung the hair on Suka's body stood on end.
--
Narendra was arguing on the verandah with a Vedantist. Now and then the Master went out to look at them. As the devotees gathered in the room he asked Mahima to recite a hymn. Mahima chanted a verse from the Mahanirvana Tantra: We worship the Brahman-Consciousness in the Lotus of the Heart,
The Undifferentiated, who is adored by Hari, Hara, and Brahma. . . .
Mahima recited a few more hymns and at last one to iva, by Sankaracharya, that compared the world to a deep well and a wilderness. Mahima was a householder.
The hymn ran thus:
--
"King Janaka used to fence with two swords-the one of Knowledge and the other of action. Nothing can frighten an expert player. (To M.) "My mind is still drawn to what he just recited."
Sri Ramakrishna referred to the hymns chanted by Mahima.
--
MASTER: "But Mahima talks about bhakti also. He loves to recite the hymn: 'what need is there of penance if God is worshipped with love?' "
M. (smiling): "He says that because you make him say it."
2.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES IN CALCUTTA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"What will it avail a man to have mere scholarship? A pundit may have studied many scriptures, he may recite many sacred texts, but if he is still attached to the world and if inwardly he loves 'woman and gold', then he has not assimilated the contents of the scriptures. For such a man the study of scriptures is futile.
"The almanac forecasts the rainfall for the year. You may squeeze the book, but you won't get a drop of water-not even a single drop." (Laughter.) GIRISH (sniiling): "What did you say, sir, about squeezing the almanac? Won't a single drop of water come out of it?" (All laugh.)
2.12 - On Miracles, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
I was feeling completely bored. Then a priest approached me and put me some questions. I did not give any reply. Then they all shouted out, "He is saved, he is saved," and began to pray for me and offer thanks to God! I did not understand anything. Then the priest came to me and asked me to pray. I was never in the habit of praying but somehow I did it in the manner in which children recite their prayers before sleep in order to keep up an appearance. That was the only thing. But I never used to attend Church. I was then about ten years old. The old lady's son, Mr. Drewett, never used to meddle in these affairs because he was a man of common sense. But he went away to Australia.
When we were staying in London this old lady used to have daily family prayers and reading of some passage from the Bible. One day Manmohan said something about Moses which made her wild. She said she did not want to live under the same roof with unbelievers, and went to live somewhere else. I felt infinitely relieved and grateful to Manmohan. We were then entering upon the agnostic stage in our development.
2.14 - AT RAMS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Captain has many virtues. Every day he attends to his devotions. He himself performs the worship of the Family Deity. How many mantras he recites while bathing the image! He is a great ritualist. He performs his daily devotions, such as worship, japa, rati, recital of the scriptures, and chanting of hymns.
"I scolded Captain and said: 'Too much reading has spoiled you. Don't read any more.'
2.17 - THE MASTER ON HIMSELF AND HIS EXPERIENCES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Mahimacharan recited some texts from the scriptures. He also described various mystic rites of the Tantra.
MASTER: "Well, some say that my soul, going into samdhi, lies about like a bird in the Mahakasa, the Infinite Space.
--
The pundit recited a hymn to Narayana . Sri Ramakrishna was overwhelmed with joy.
PUNDIT (quoting from the Git.): "'with the heart concentrated by yoga, with the eye of evenness for all things, he beholds the Self in all beings and all beings in the Self.' "
--
The pundit was delighted. He recited a hymn to that effect from the tenth chapter of the Bhagavata:
O Krishna! Krishna! Mighty Yogi! Thou art the Primal Supreme Purusha:
--
"If a man but once tastes the joy of God, his desire to argue takes wing. The bee, realizing the joy of sipping honey, doesn't buzz about any more. What will you achieve by quoting from books? The pundits recite verses and do nothing else.
"What will you gain by merely repeating 'siddhi'? You will not be intoxicated even by gargling with a solution of siddhi. It must go into your stomach; not until then will you be intoxicated. One cannot comprehend what I am saying unless one prays to God in solitude, all by oneself, with a longing heart."
2.20 - THE MASTERS TRAINING OF HIS DISCIPLES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Sri Ramakrishna then recited the following song of Ramprasad: Come, let us go for a walk, O mind, to Kli, the Wish-fulfilling Tree, And there beneath it gather the four fruits of life.
When will you learn to lie, O mind, in the abode of Blessedness, With Cleanliness and Defilement on either side of you?
2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: That's true. That is why I don't grant the contention of the modernist poet who says that in order to appreciate his rhythm you must hear the poem recited by him. A clever elocutionist can make much out of a commonplace poem. He can produce rhythm where there is none in the original.
Disciple: Some people say that they like Dilip's poetry when he recites it but they cannot appreciate it when they read it themselves. It is also difficult to appreciate his poetry unless one knows the rhythms and new turns which he has introduced, because his rhythms are quite different from those of Tagore.
Sri Aurobindo: What I have found in Dilip's poetry is that it is mental poetry connected with the Bengali poetry of the pre-Tagorian era. Perhaps it is due to his father's influence which was also intellectual. What I mean is that Tagore introduced a new element of feeling and imagination in Bengali poetry; as he is a genius his poetry is beautiful but much of what is written under Tagore's influence is wishy-washy stuff, it is poetry without any backbone. There is no sound experience behind it. Even in Tagore you find that his idea is diffused into seventy or eighty lines, yet it does not come out clearly though the idea is there. In pre-Tagorian poetry they had clear intellectual ideas to express and they expressed them poetically. Dilip's poetry has two things: the subject and the treatment. Generally the subject is an idea which he develops, an intellectual thing which he expresses in poetic form; and his technique is a departure both from Tagore and the old tradition.
2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Listen to a story. There was a king who used daily to hear the Bhagavata recited by a pundit. Every day, after explaining the sacred book, the pundit would say to the king, 'O King, have you understood what I have said?' And every day the king would reply, 'You had better understand it first yourself.' The pundit would return home and think: 'Why does the king talk to me that way day after day? I explain the texts to him so clearly, and he says to me, "You had better understand it first yourself." What does he mean?' The pundit used to practise spiritual discipline. A few days later he came to realize that God alone is real and everything else-house, family, wealth, friends, name, and fame-illusory. Convinced of the unreality of the world, he renounced it. As he left home he asked a man to take this message to the king: 'O King, I now understand.'
"Here is another story. A man needed a scholar of the Bhagavata to expound the sacred text to him every day. But it was very difficult to procure such a scholar. After he had searched a great deal, another man came to him and said, 'Sir, I have found an excellent scholar of the Bhagavata.' 'Very well,' said the man, 'bring him here.' The other man replied: 'But there is a little hitch. The scholar has a few ploughs and bullocks; he is busy with them all day. He must look after the cultivation of his land. He hasn't a moment's leisure. Thereupon the man who required the scholar said: 'I don't want a Bhagavata scholar who is burdened with ploughs and bullocks. I want a man who has leisure and can tell me about God.' (To Dr. Sarhar) Do you understand?"
2.23 - THE MASTER AND BUDDHA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
In the evening lamps were lighted in the house. Sri Ramakrishna sat on his bed, facing the north. He was absorbed in contemplation of the Mother of the Universe. A few minutes later Fakir, who belonged to the priestly family of Balaram, recited the Hymn of Forgiveness addressed to the Divine Mother. Sash;, M., and two or three other devotees were in the room. After the recital Sri Ramakrishna, with folded hands, very respectfully bowed to the Deity.
M. was fanning Sri Ramakrishna. The Master said to him by signs, "Get a stone cup for me that will hold a quarter of a seer of milk — white stone." He drew the shape of the cup with his finger.
2.24 - THE MASTERS LOVE FOR HIS DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Narendra recited a few verses from the Ashtavakra Samhita. The room again became silent.
MASTER (to Hirananda, pointing to Narendra): "He seems to be walking with an unsheathed sword in his hand. (To M., pointing to Hirananda) How quiet! Like a cobra, quiet before charmer, with its hood spread."
2.25 - AFTER THE PASSING AWAY, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Narendra recited another hymn, the Eight Stanzas on the glory of Krishna:
I am consumed with false desires and wrapped in the sleep of lust:
30.05 - Rhythm in Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is in this hexameter that Homer has composed his wonderful epics with their sublime poetry. I do not wish to plague you with too many quotations from the original Greek, but let me recite the opening line of Homer's Iliad:
Mnin a/iede, the/a, P/l/iado Achi/los
3.02 - The Formulae of the Elemental Weapons, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
god is heard, and His characteristic utterance is recited.
In the third portion of the invocation the Magician asserts the
--
Without telling him what it was, the Master Therion once recited
as an invocation Sapphos Ode to Venus before a Probationer of
3.02 - The Psychology of Rebirth, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
the sacred action is recited, and then, in the course of long
periods of time, psychic changes gradually occur in the individ-
--
something acted or recited. Here the first form, the dromenon }
is characteristic of the richly developed ritual of the Catholic
3.09 - Of Silence and Secrecy, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
there is a certain magical voice in which they should be recited.
This special voice was a natural gift of the Master Therion; but it can
--
His magical resources) recited From Greenlands Icy Mountains,
and obtained His result.3
--
Conjurations should be recited, not read;3 and the entire ceremony
should be so perfectly performed that one is hardly conscious of any
3.15 - Of the Invocation, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Another method is to recite the name of the god as a mantra, or
to recite a mantra suitable to the God.
The third method is the assumption of the form of the Godby
33.03 - Muraripukur - I, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That was my first lesson in Sanskrit pronounced in the Sanskrit way. Later I have heard the correct Sanskrit accent so often from Sri Aurobindo himself. I have heard him recite from the Veda, from the Upanishads, from the Gita. Today, I too do not read from Sanskrit in the Bengali way, even when reading from an article in Bengali.
It was settled that I would join the Gardens and stay there, But I did not give up my room at the Mess. My books and papers and furniture - a bedstead and the table-lamp, for there was no electric light in those days - were all left in charge of my room-mate, and I paid only an occasional visit. I attended College as well, but at infrequent intervals. College studies could no longer interest me.
33.04 - Deoghar, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But here I must add that, although we had made the preparation of bombs our first object when we chose this lonely and out of the way place, we were not entirely heartless men, that is, atheistic and given wholly to a materialistic philosophy. It had been part of our plan to devote some time to the cultivation of an inner life too in that solitude. I remember how we would get up an hour before sunrise and sitting down in that calm atmosphere in a meditative pose we would recite aloud with deep fervour and joy the mantraof the Upanishad:
tilesu tailam dadhiniva sarpir
36.07 - An Introduction To The Vedas, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
These four divisions of the Veda are said to correspond to the four stages of human life. In the first stage, the foremost duty of a Brahmachari (a student practising celibacy) is to recite the mantras of the Samhitas which contain the quintessence of the ideal of life. In the next stage, on entering upon household life one has to practise ceremonies and sacrificial rites and thus the stress is laid on the Brahmanas. In the third stage of life, when one renounces the household life and retires into the forest one has to practise all those sacrificial rites and ceremonies symbolically as a part of one's spiritual discipline following the teachings of the Aranyakas. In the fourth and final stage, one gives up all one's earlier practices and in conformity with the guidance of the Upanishads one takes to the contemplation of the supreme Truth which cannot be attained by reasonings and discussions (naisa tarkena matiraPaneya). ow we may say that the Samhitas, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads indicate changes in the practice of the Vedic truth undergone with the march of time. The spiritual discipline of the Samhitas has for its aim the attainment of Godhood which is an aspect of the cosmic manifestation of the transcendental triune principle, Existence-Consciousness. Bliss. The discipline of the Brahmanas tries to manifest the spirit of the former through external practice. And the spiritual discipline of the Upanishads does not concern itself so much with the manifestation of the gods as it does with getting absorbed in the ultimate Source from whence the gods originated. In other words, the aim of the Upanishadic truth is to indicate how the light of consciousness dwelling in the heart of everyone like a steady flame of the size of the thumb can be merged into the boundless ocean of the transcendental consciousness.
Strictly speaking, the stages of the Samhitas, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads cannot be regarded successive stages. For there are many Upanishads which appeared earlier than many Brahmanas and some portions of the Samhitas. As we understand it, first there were the earlier mantras of the Samhitas from which there arose the two branches, Brahmanas and the Upanishads. The Brahmanas laid stress on the exoteric portions of the Samhitas, and the Upanishads on the esoteric side related to the knowledge of the ultimate Truth.
37.07 - Ushasti Chakrayana (Chhandogya Upanishad), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
morning, on getting up from bed, Ushasti said to his wife, "I am feeling awfully hungry. If there was something to eat, I would get some strength, and then I could present myself before the king. He is celebrating a sacrifice and might perhaps get me a place among the chanters of the hymns." The wife was not a person to be confounded, she said with a smile, "Well, here is some food for you, eat it up." Thanks to his wife, Ushasti had a good bite and, feeling hale and hearty, set off for the place of sacrifice. There he sat among the chanting priests, listened to them for a little while in silence, then he called the Prastota, the priest who chanted the introductory hymns, and said, "O Prastota, if one chants these introductory hymns without knowing the divinity that presides over the hymns, the head falls off." The same words he repeated to the Udgata, who recited the udgitha or hymns of the middle: "O Udgata, if one recites the udgitha hymns without knowing the divinity who presides over those hymns, he too loses his head." Finally, he called the Pratiharta as well, the one who uttered the pratihara or conluding hymns, and said, "O Pratiharta, one who utters the pratihara hymns without knowing their presiding divinity loses his head in like manner." All the priests accepted with bowed heads in due reverence these words of Ushasti.
The performer of the sacrifice, on whose behalf the sacrifice had been arranged, was struck by the wisdom of Ushasti, and he said, "Lord, who are you? I want to know about you." Ushasti replied, "I am Ushasti Chakrayana." The sacrificer now exclaimed, "Then it is you I have been looking for! These men had to be engaged because I could not find your whereabouts. Now be pleased to take charge of the chanting." Ushasti said, "Very well, it will be as you say. Let them now chant the hymns according to my directions." In this way, Ushasti agreed to take charge of the chanting, but he added this proviso, "Now that I have taken charge of your work, you would not forget about my fees I hope. You may give me whatever amount you would have given to these priests, I do not want more." The sacrificer gladly accepted this proposition. .
Then the first of the chanting priests, the Prastota, came up to Dshasti and asked him, "Lord, you said that one who recited the introductory hymns without knowing their deity would lose his head. What then is that deity?" Ushasti replied, "That deity is Prana - the Life-force. Life is the origin of all, in it they all dissolve. Life is the godhead of the introductory hymns; if one does not know what Life is, and utters these hymns, his head is bound to fall off." Next the Udgata came to him and put him his question: "Lord, you said that one who recites the udgitha hymns without knowing their presiding deity loses his head. Tell me, O Lord, who is that divinity?" "Aditya, the Sun is that deity. The whole creation raises a paean to Him as he ascends the skies. This Aditya is the godhead of the udgitha. If you sing the udgitha without knowing Aditya, then, as I have warned you, your head will surely fall off." Finally, the Pratiharta priest came to him and said, "Lord, you said that if I performed the concluding rites without knowing the divinity who presides over them, then my head was certain to fall off. Lord, I want to know who is that deity?" Ushasti replied, "Anna - Matter - Food is that deity. All these creatures find their sustenance by gathering food. Hence Food is the presiding deity of the concluding rites. If you recite the concluding hymns without knowing what Food is, your head will certainly fall off."
In this manner Ushasti gave the teaching about the Triple Principle, the Trinity represented by Life, Mind and Body; Bhuh, Bhuvah, Svar, that is, Earth, Sky and Heaven. He gave an indication of these three levels of manifested being, the triple world of this universe, spoke of the divinity that presides over this Triplicity. First of all comes the God of Life. This is the deity that is invoked at the outset, has to be so invoked in every act, in all ceremonial function, even in the effort at an inner perfection. He is the Creator, all that is manifested has Him for its driving power, sarvam ejati nihsrtam. Creation begins with a vibration of this Life - Force. The first thing necessary is to infuse Life into things. When we worship a divine image, we begin the rites with an invocation to this Life-force to enter the image; what was just an idol is awakened to life by the infusion of this Force. Life and Life-Force, this comes first. Next comes consciousness, knowledge, light, that is, the Sun-God, Aditya, and ordinarily, mind is His field. But by itself force is not enough, knowledge is not enough; this force and this light have to be embodied and given a form, they have to take physical shape with matter as the basis; they have to become an integral part of this earth of matter. Force and Light and Being are the three cosmic Principles, and. they have three Deities presiding over them. In establishing them in their unity in his awakened being man finds his entire and all round fulfilment.
3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
name for the reciter of the Mantra is b}A. Agni is the Hotri,
Brihaspati the Brahma.
7.02 - Courage, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Abu Sad prayed for a while, then he rose and recited a little poem of his own composition:
Despair not in your grief, for a joyous hour will come and take it all away;
7.07 - Prudence, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then the old couple cried out and wept. They bade the prince lead them to the spot where their son lay, their only son. They recited sacred hymns over his body and sprinkled the water of the funeral rites. Then the hermit said:
Listen, Dasaratha! Through your fault we shed tears over our dear son. One day, you also shall weep over a beloved son. Before that many years will pass; but the punishment shall surely come.
7.11 - Building and Destroying, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Later, when Tiruvalluvar came to the town of Madura, many people gathered together to hear him recite lines from his beautiful poem, and they were enchanted by the verses composed by the child from the Illupay grove:
Hard it is to find in this world
7.15 - The Family, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the Bhratridwitiya festival, sisters in Hindu families mark the foreheads of their brothers with sandalwood powder, give them sweetmeats and if they can, a gift of cloth. In this way they hope to ward off the coming of Yama, the Lord of Death. And they recite:
On my brother's brow I have made the mark,
7.16 - Sympathy, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The famous poet Firdausi wrote the history of the kings of Persia and recited it to Sultan Mahmud; the Sultan was
278
9.99 - Glossary, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Gayatri: A sacred verse of the Vedas recited daily by Hindus of the three upper castes after they have been invested with the sacred thread; also the presiding deity of the Gayatri.
gerrua: (Lit., ochre) The ochre cloth of a monk.
--
kathak: A professional reciter of stories from the Purana in an assembly.
Katyayani: A name of the Divine Mother.
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
from special books kept secret by the priests, and each is said to work a magical effect; as the reciter
or reader produces, by simply chanting them, a secret causation which results in immediate effects.
Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
following are judiciously advised: to recite or sing a
prayer known only to a few who stubbornly refuse to
--
alphabets of the gates, which must be recited over each
of the Golems organs. The word Emet, which means Truth,
BOOK XXII. - Of the eternal happiness of the saints, the resurrection of the body, and the miracles of the early Church, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Let us here recite the passage in which Tully expresses his astonishment that the apotheosis of Romulus should have been credited. I shall insert his words as they stand: "It is most worthy of remark in Romulus, that other men who are said to have become gods lived in less educated ages, when there was a greater propensity to the fabulous, and when the uninstructed were easily persuaded to believe anything. But the age of Romulus was barely six hundred years ago, and already literature and science had dispelled the errors that attach to an uncultured age." And a little after he says of the same Romulus words to this effect: "From this we may perceive that Homer had flourished long before Romulus, and that there was now so much learning in individuals, and so generally diffused an enlightenment, that scarcely any room was left for fable. For antiquity admitted fables, and sometimes even very clumsy ones; but this age [of Romulus] was sufficiently enlightened to reject whatever had not the air of truth." Thus one of the most learned men, and certainly the most eloquent, M. Tullius Cicero, says that it is surprising that the divinity of Romulus was believed in, because the times were already so enlightened that they would not accept a fabulous fiction. But who believed that Romulus was a god except Rome, which was itself small and in its infancy? Then afterwards it was necessary that succeeding generations should preserve the tradition of their ancestors; that, drinking in this superstition with their mother's milk, the state might grow and come to such power that it might dictate this belief, as from a point of vantage, to all the nations over whom its sway extended. And these nations, though they might not believe that Romulus was a god, at least said so, that they might not give offence to their sovereign state by refusing to give its founder that title which was given him by Rome, which had adopted this belief, not by a love of error, but an error of love. But though Christ is the founder of the heavenly and eternal city, yet it did not believe Him to be God because it was founded by Him, but rather it[Pg 481] is founded by Him, in virtue of its belief. Rome, after it had been built and dedicated, worshipped its founder in a temple as a god; but this Jerusalem laid Christ, its God, as its foundation, that the building and dedication might proceed. The former city loved its founder, and therefore believed him to be a god; the latter believed Christ to be God, and therefore loved Him. There was an antecedent cause for the love of the former city, and for its believing that even a false dignity attached to the object of its love; so there was an antecedent cause for the belief of the latter, and for its loving the true dignity which a proper faith, not a rash surmise, ascribed to its object. For, not to mention the multitude of very striking miracles which proved that Christ is God, there were also divine prophecies heralding Him, prophecies most worthy of belief, which being already accomplished, we have not, like the fathers, to wait for their verification. Of Romulus, on the other hand, and of his building Rome and reigning in it, we read or hear the narrative of what did take place, not prediction which beforeh and said that such things should be. And so far as his reception among the gods is concerned, history only records that this was believed, and does not state it as a fact; for no miraculous signs testified to the truth of this. For as to that wolf which is said to have nursed the twin-brothers, and which is considered a great marvel, how does this prove him to have been divine? For even supposing that this nurse was a real wolf and not a mere courtezan, yet she nursed both brothers, and Remus is not reckoned a god. Besides, what was there to hinder any one from asserting that Romulus or Hercules, or any such man, was a god? Or who would rather choose to die than profess belief in his divinity? And did a single nation worship Romulus among its gods, unless it were forced through fear of the Roman name? But who can number the multitudes who have chosen death in the most cruel shapes rather than deny the divinity of Christ? And thus the dread of some slight indignation, which it was supposed, perhaps groundlessly, might exist in the minds of the Romans, constrained some states who were subject to Rome to worship Romulus as a god; whereas the dread, not of a slight mental shock, but of severe and various punishments,[Pg 482] and of death itself, the most formidable of all, could not prevent an immense multitude of martyrs throughout the world from not merely worshipping but also confessing Christ as God. The city of Christ, which, although as yet a stranger upon earth, had countless hosts of citizens, did not make war upon its godless persecutors for the sake of temporal security, but preferred to win eternal salvation by abstaining from war. They were bound, imprisoned, beaten, tortured, burned, torn in pieces, massacred, and yet they multiplied. It was not given to them to fight for their eternal salvation except by despising their temporal salvation for their Saviour's sake.
I am aware that Cicero, in the third book of his De Republica, if I mistake not, argues that a first-rate power will not engage in war except either for honour or for safety. What he has to say about the question of safety, and what he means by safety, he explains in another place, saying, "Private persons frequently evade, by a speedy death, destitution, exile, bonds, the scourge, and the other pains which even the most insensible feel. But to states, death, which seems to emancipate individuals from all punishments, is itself a punishment; for a state should be so constituted as to be eternal. And thus death is not natural to a republic as to a man, to whom death is not only necessary, but often even desirable. But when a state is destroyed, obliterated, annihilated, it is as if (to compare great things with small) this whole world perished and collapsed." Cicero said this because he, with the Platonists, believed that the world would not perish. It is therefore agreed that, according to Cicero, a state should engage in war for the safety which preserves the state permanently in existence, though its citizens change; as the foliage of an olive or laurel, or any tree of this kind, is perennial, the old leaves being replaced by fresh ones. For death, as he says, is no punishment to individuals, but rather delivers them from all other punishments, but it is a punishment to the state. And therefore it is reasonably asked whether the Saguntines did right when they chose that their whole state should perish rather than that they should break faith with the Roman republic; for this deed of theirs is applauded by the citizens of the earthly republic. But I do not see how they could[Pg 483] follow the advice of Cicero, who tells us that no war is to be undertaken save for safety or for honour; neither does he say which of these two is to be preferred, if a case should occur in which the one could not be preserved without the loss of the other. For manifestly, if the Saguntines chose safety, they must break faith; if they kept faith, they must reject safety; as also it fell out. But the safety of the city of God is such that it can be retained, or rather acquired, by faith and with faith; but if faith be abandoned, no one can attain it. It is this thought of a most stedfast and patient spirit that has made so many noble martyrs, while Romulus has not had, and could not have, so much as one to die for his divinity.
--
Why, they say, are those miracles, which you affirm were wrought formerly, wrought no longer? I might, indeed, reply that miracles were necessary before the world believed, in order that it might believe. And whoever now-a-days demands to see prodigies that he may believe, is himself a great prodigy, because he does not believe, though the whole world does. But they make these objections for the sole purpose of insinuating that even those former miracles were never wrought. How, then, is it that everywhere Christ is celebrated with such firm belief in His resurrection and ascension? How is it that in enlightened times, in which every impossibility is rejected, the world has, without any miracles, believed things marvellously incredible? Or will they say that these things were credible, and therefore were credited? Why then do they themselves not believe? Our argument, therefore, is a summary oneeither incredible things which were not witnessed have caused the world to believe other incredible things which both occurred and were witnessed, or this matter was so credible that it needed no miracles in proof of it, and therefore convicts these unbelievers of unpardonable scepticism. This I might say for the sake of refuting these most frivolous objectors. But we cannot deny that many miracles were wrought to confirm that one grand and health-giving miracle of Christ's ascension to heaven with the flesh in which He rose. For these most trustworthy books of ours contain in one narrative both the miracles that were wrought and the creed which they were wrought to confirm. The miracles were published that they might produce faith, and the faith which they produced brought them into greater prominence. For they are read in congregations that they may be believed, and yet they would not be so read unless they were believed. For even now miracles are wrought in the name of Christ, whether by His sacraments or by the prayers or relics of His saints; but they are not so brilliant and conspicuous as to cause them to be published with such glory as accompanied the former miracles. For the canon of the sacred writings,[Pg 485] which behoved to be closed,[972] causes those to be everywhere recited, and to sink into the memory of all the congregations; but these modern miracles are scarcely known even to the whole population in the midst of which they are wrought, and at the best are confined to one spot. For frequently they are known only to a very few persons, while all the rest are ignorant of them, especially if the state is a large one; and when they are reported to other persons in other localities, there is no sufficient authority to give them prompt and unwavering credence, although they are reported to the faithful by the faithful.
The miracle which was wrought at Milan when I was there, and by which a blind man was restored to sight, could come to the knowledge of many; for not only is the city a large one, but also the emperor was there at the time, and the occurrence was witnessed by an immense concourse of people that had gathered to the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius, which had long lain concealed and unknown, but were now made known to the bishop Ambrose in a dream, and discovered by him. By virtue of these remains the darkness of that blind man was scattered, and he saw the light of day.[973]
BOOK XX. - Of the last judgment, and the declarations regarding it in the Old and New Testaments, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
After this mention of the closing persecution, he summarily indicates all that the devil, and the city of which he is the prince, shall suffer in the last judgment. For he says, "And the devil who seduced them is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, in which are the beast and the false prophet, and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever." We have already said that by the beast is well understood the wicked city. His false prophet is either Antichrist or that image or figment of which we have spoken in the same place. After this he gives a brief narrative of the last judgment itself, which shall take place at the second or bodily resurrection of the dead, as it had been revealed to him: "I saw a throne great and white, and One sitting on it from whose face the heaven and the earth fled away, and their place was not found." He does not say, "I saw a throne great and white, and One sitting on it, and from His face the heaven and the earth fled away," for it had not happened then, i.e. before the living and the dead were judged; but he says that he saw Him sitting on the throne from whose face heaven and earth fled away, but afterwards. For when the judgment is finished, this heaven and earth shall cease to be, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. For this world shall pass away by transmutation, not by absolute destruction.[Pg 374] And therefore the apostle says, "For the figure of this world passeth away. I would have you be without anxiety."[742] The figure, therefore, passes away, not the nature. After John had said that he had seen One sitting on the throne from whose face heaven and earth fled, though not till afterwards, he said, "And I saw the dead, great and small: and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of the life of each man: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their deeds." He said that the books were opened, and a book; but he left us at a loss as to the nature of this book, "which is," he says, "the book of the life of each man." By those books, then, which he first mentioned, we are to understand the sacred books old and new, that out of them it might be shown what commandments God had enjoined; and that book of the life of each man is to show what commandments each man has done or omitted to do. If this book be materially considered, who can reckon its size or length, or the time it would take to read a book in which the whole life of every man is recorded? Shall there be present as many angels as men, and shall each man hear his life recited by the angel assigned to him? In that case there will be not one book containing all the lives, but a separate book for every life. But our passage requires us to think of one only. "And another book was opened," it says. We must therefore understand it of a certain divine power, by which it shall be brought about that every one shall recall to memory all his own works, whether good or evil, and shall mentally survey them with a marvellous rapidity, so that this knowledge will either accuse or excuse conscience, and thus all and each shall be simultaneously judged. And this divine power is called a book, because in it we shall as it were read all that it causes us to remember. That he may show who the dead, small and great, are who are to be judged, he recurs to this which he had omitted or rather deferred, and says, "And the sea presented the dead which were in it; and death and hell gave up the dead which were in them." This of course took place before the dead were judged, yet it is mentioned after.[Pg 375] And so, I say, he returns again to what he had omitted. But now he preserves the order of events, and for the sake of exhibiting it repeats in its own proper place what he had already said regarding the dead who were judged. For after he had said, "And the sea presented the dead which were in it, and death and hell gave up the dead which were in them," he immediately subjoined what he had already said, "and they were judged every man according to their works." For this is just what he had said before, "And the dead were judged according to their works."
15. Who the dead are who are given up to judgment by the sea, and by death and hell.
COSA - BOOK V, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
piety, as I have before recited and confessed. But I had grown up to my
own shame, and I madly scoffed at the prescripts of Thy medicine, who
COSA - BOOK VI, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
that day, when I was preparing to recite a panegyric of the Emperor,
wherein I was to utter many a lie, and lying, was to be applauded by
Diamond Sutra 1, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
It is also ironic that while the father was busy emptying his treasury to support the Buddhist order, the son was compiling Chinas great literary anthology known as the Wen Hsuan and devoting himself to the Diamond Sutra, which he is said to have recited ten thousand times before his early death. In dividing this sutra into thirty-two chapters, Chao-ming was acknowledging what will become clearer in the chapters that follow: this sutra is not only about the body of the Buddha, which was said to be marked by thirty-two unique attributes, it is the body of the Buddha. In addition, Chao-ming gave each chapter a title. This first one he called The Cause and Reason for the Dharma Assembly. The aptness of his titles led a number of commentators, including the Tang-dynasty prime minister, Chang Wu-chin, and the Sixth Zen Patriarch, Hui-neng, to begin each chapter with an explanation of these titles.
Hui-neng says, The lay prime minister Chang Wu-chin said, If not for dharmas, there would be no way to discuss emptiness. If not for wisdom, there would be no way to speak about dharmas. The multiplicity of the myriad dharmas is what is meant by cause. And the responsiveness of the one mind is what is meant by reason. Thus, at the beginning is a chapter on the cause and reason for this dharma assembly.
Gods Script, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
I shall not recite the hardships of my toil. More than once I cried out
to the vault that it was impossible to decipher that text. Gradually, the
Guru Granth Sahib first part, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
The Pandits, the religious scholars who recite the Vedas, with the supreme sages of all the ages, sing.
The Mohinis, the enchanting heavenly beauties who entice hearts in this world, in paradise, and in the underworld of the subconscious sing.
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The Pandits, the religious scholars who recite the Vedas, with the supreme sages of all the ages, sing of You.
The Mohinis, the enchanting heavenly beauties who entice hearts in paradise, in this world, and in the underworld of the subconscious, sing of You.
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O Nanak, if I had hundreds of thousands of stacks of paper, and if I were to read and recite and embrace love for the Lord,
and if ink were never to fail me, and if my pen were able to move like the wind -
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The Hindu Pandits recite from their books, and the Siddhas sit in the temples of their gods. ||2||
The angels, Siddhas, worshippers of Shiva, heavenly musicians, silent sages, Saints, priests, preachers, spiritual teachers and commanders -
Ion, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
Ion the rhapsode has just come to Athens; he has been exhibiting in Epidaurus at the festival of Asclepius, and is intending to exhibit at the festival of the Pana thenaea. Socrates admires and envies the rhapsode's art; for he is always well dressed and in good companyin the company of good poets and of Homer, who is the prince of them. In the course of conversation the admission is elicited from Ion that his skill is restricted to Homer, and that he knows nothing of inferior poets, such as Hesiod and Archilochus;he brightens up and is wide awake when Homer is being recited, but is apt to go to sleep at the recitations of any other poet. 'And yet, surely, he who knows the superior ought to know the inferior also;he who can judge of the good speaker is able to judge of the bad. And poetry is a whole; and he who judges of poetry by rules of art ought to be able to judge of all poetry.' This is confirmed by the analogy of sculpture, painting, flute-playing, and the other arts. The argument is at last brought home to the mind of Ion, who asks how this contradiction is to be solved. The solution given by Socrates is as follows:
The rhapsode is not guided by rules of art, but is an inspired person who derives a mysterious power from the poet; and the poet, in like manner, is inspired by the God. The poets and their interpreters may be compared to a chain of magnetic rings suspended from one another, and from a magnet. The magnet is the Muse, and the ring which immediately follows is the poet himself; from him are suspended other poets; there is also a chain of rhapsodes and actors, who also hang from the Muses, but are let down at the side; and the last ring of all is the spectator. The poet is the inspired interpreter of the God, and this is the reason why some poets, like Homer, are restricted to a single theme, or, like Tynnichus, are famous for a single poem; and the rhapsode is the inspired interpreter of the poet, and for a similar reason some rhapsodes, like Ion, are the interpreters of single poets.
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SOCRATES: Do you know that the spectator is the last of the rings which, as I am saying, receive the power of the original magnet from one another? The rhapsode like yourself and the actor are intermediate links, and the poet himself is the first of them. Through all these the God sways the souls of men in any direction which he pleases, and makes one man hang down from another. Thus there is a vast chain of dancers and masters and under-masters of choruses, who are suspended, as if from the stone, at the side of the rings which hang down from the Muse. And every poet has some Muse from whom he is suspended, and by whom he is said to be possessed, which is nearly the same thing; for he is taken hold of. And from these first rings, which are the poets, depend others, some deriving their inspiration from Orpheus, others from Musaeus; but the greater number are possessed and held by Homer. Of whom, Ion, you are one, and are possessed by Homer; and when any one repeats the words of another poet you go to sleep, and know not what to say; but when any one recites a strain of Homer you wake up in a moment, and your soul leaps within you, and you have plenty to say; for not by art or knowledge about Homer do you say what you say, but by divine inspiration and by possession; just as the Corybantian revellers too have a quick perception of that strain only which is appropriated to the God by whom they are possessed, and have plenty of dances and words for that, but take no heed of any other. And you, Ion, when the name of Homer is mentioned have plenty to say, and have nothing to say of others. You ask, 'Why is this?' The answer is that you praise Homer not by art but by divine inspiration.
ION: That is good, Socrates; and yet I doubt whether you will ever have eloquence enough to persuade me that I praise Homer only when I am mad and possessed; and if you could hear me speak of him I am sure you would never think this to be the case.
Prayers and Meditations by Baha u llah text, #Prayers and Meditations by Baha u llah, #unset, #Zen
Glorified art Thou, O Lord my God! Thou beholdest my low estate and the habitation wherein I dwell, and bearest witness unto my perplexity, my crying needs, my troubles, and the afflictions I suffer among Thy servants who recite Thy verses and repudiate their Revealer, who call on Thy names and cavil at their Creator, who seek to draw nigh unto Him Who is Thy Friend and put to death Him Who is the Best-Beloved of the worlds.
Open Thou their eyes, O my God, and My Master, that they may gaze on Thy beauty, or cause them to return unto the lowest abyss of the fire. Potent art Thou to do what Thou willest. Thou art, verily, the All-Glorious, the All-Wise.
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Which of my tribulations am I to recount before Thy face, O my Lord? Am I to recite before Thee what in days of old befell me at the hands of the workers of iniquity among Thy creatures, or to describe the vexations which have compassed me about in these days for the sake of Thy good pleasure?
Thanks be to Thee, O Thou the Lord of all names; and glory be to Thee, O Maker of the heavens, for all that I have sustained in these days at the hands of such of Thy servants as have transgressed against Thee, and of Thy people that have dealt frowardly towards Thee.
--
Short obligatory prayer, to be recited
once in twenty-four hours, at noon.
--
(If anyone choose to recite instead of the long verse these words: "God testifieth that there is none other God but Him, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting," it would be sufficient. And likewise, it would suffice were he, while seated, to choose to recite these words: "I bear witness to Thy unity and Thy oneness, and that Thou art God, and that there is none other God beside Thee.")
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Whoso wisheth to recite this prayer, let him stand up and turn unto God, and, as he standeth in his place, let him gaze to the right and to the left, as if awaiting the mercy of his Lord, the Most Merciful, the Compassionate. Then let him say:
O Thou Who art the Lord of all names and the Maker of the heavens! I beseech Thee by them Who are the Day-Springs of Thine invisible Essence, the Most Exalted, the All-Glorious, to make of my prayer a fire that will burn away the veils which have shut me out from Thy beauty, and a light that will lead me unto the ocean of Thy Presence.
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
476. You will advance, whatever way you meditate on Him or recite His holy names. The cake made of
sugar candy will taste equally sweet, whether it is held straight or oblique when you eat it.
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fashion of the Mohammedans, and recite the Namaz regularly. All Hindu ideas being' wholly banished
from the mind, not only did I not salute the Hindu Gods but I had no inclination even for visiting them.
Sophist, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
But the real question is, not whether the word 'Sophist' has all these senses, but whether there is not also a specific bad sense in which the term is applied to certain contemporaries of Socrates. Would an Athenian, as Mr. Grote supposes, in the fifth century before Christ, have included Socrates and Plato, as well as Gorgias and Protagoras, under the specific class of Sophists? To this question we must answer, No: if ever the term is applied to Socrates and Plato, either the application is made by an enemy out of mere spite, or the sense in which it is used is neutral. Plato, Xenophon, Isocrates, Aristotle, all give a bad import to the word; and the Sophists are regarded as a separate class in all of them. And in later Greek literature, the distinction is quite marked between the succession of philosophers from Thales to Aristotle, and the Sophists of the age of Socrates, who appeared like meteors for a short time in different parts of Greece. For the purposes of comedy, Socrates may have been identified with the Sophists, and he seems to complain of this in the Apology. But there is no reason to suppose that Socrates, differing by so many outward marks, would really have been confounded in the mind of Anytus, or Callicles, or of any intelligent Athenian, with the splendid foreigners who from time to time visited Athens, or appeared at the Olympic games. The man of genius, the great original thinker, the disinterested seeker after truth, the master of repartee whom no one ever defeated in an argument, was separated, even in the mind of the vulgar Athenian, by an 'interval which no geometry can express,' from the balancer of sentences, the interpreter and reciter of the poets, the divider of the meanings of words, the teacher of rhetoric, the professor of morals and manners.
2. The use of the term 'Sophist' in the dialogues of Plato also shows that the bad sense was not affixed by his genius, but already current. When Protagoras says, 'I confess that I am a Sophist,' he implies that the art which he professes has already a bad name; and the words of the young Hippocrates, when with a blush upon his face which is just seen by the light of dawn he admits that he is going to be made 'a Sophist,' would lose their point, unless the term had been discredited. There is nothing surprising in the Sophists having an evil name; that, whether deserved or not, was a natural consequence of their vocation. That they were foreigners, that they made fortunes, that they taught novelties, that they excited the minds of youth, are quite sufficient reasons to account for the opprobrium which attached to them. The genius of Plato could not have stamped the word anew, or have imparted the associations which occur in contemporary writers, such as Xenophon and Isocrates. Changes in the meaning of words can only be made with great difficulty, and not unless they are supported by a strong current of popular feeling. There is nothing improbable in supposing that Plato may have extended and envenomed the meaning, or that he may have done the Sophists the same kind of disservice with posterity which Pascal did to the Jesuits. But the bad sense of the word was not and could not have been invented by him, and is found in his earlier dialogues, e.g. the Protagoras, as well as in the later.
Tablets of Baha u llah text, #Tablets of Baha u llah, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
O thou who hast set thy face towards the splendors of My Countenance! Vague fancies have encompassed the dwellers of the earth and debarred them from turning towards the Horizon of Certitude, and its brightness, and its manifestations and its lights. Vain imaginings have withheld them from Him Who is the Self-Subsisting. They speak as prompted by their own caprices, and understand not. Among them are those who have said: 'Have the verses been sent down?' Say 'Yea, by Him Who is the Lord of the heavens!' 'Hath the Hour come?' 'Nay, more; it hath passed, by Him Who is the Revealer of clear tokens! Verily, the Inevitable is come, and He, the True One, hath appeared with proof and testimony. The Plain is disclosed, and mankind is sore vexed and fearful. Earthquakes have broken loose, and the tribes have lamented, for fear of God, the Lord of Strength, the All-Compelling.' Say: 'The stunning trumpet-blast hath been loudly raised, and the Day is God's, the One, the Unconstrained.' And they say: 'Hath the Catastrophe come to pass?' Say: 'Yea, by the Lord of Lords!' 'Is the Resurrection come?' 'Nay, more; He Who is the Self-Subsisting hath appeared with the Kingdom of His signs.' 'Seest thou men laid low?' 'Yea, by my Lord, the Most High, the Most Glorious!' 'Have the tree-stumps been uprooted?' 'Yea, more; the mountains have been scattered in dust; by Him the Lord of attributes!' They say: 'Where is Paradise, and where is Hell?' Say: 'The one is reunion with Me; the other thine own self, O thou who dost associate a partner with God and doubtest.' They say: 'We see not the Balance.' Say: 'Surely, by my Lord, the God of Mercy! None can see it except such as are endued with insight.' They say: 'Have the stars fallen?' Say: 'Yea, when He Who is the Self-Subsisting dwelt in the Land of Mystery. 1 Take heed, ye who are endued with discernment!' All the signs appeared when We drew forth the Hand of Power from the bosom of majesty and might. Verily, the Crier hath cried out, when the promised time came, and they that have recognized the splendors of Sinai have swooned away in the wilderness of hesitation, before the awful majesty of thy Lord, the Lord of creation. The trumpet asketh: 'Hath the Bugle been sounded?' Say: 'Yea, by the King of Revelation! when He mounted the throne of His Name, the All-Merciful.' Darkness hath been chased away by the dawning light of the mercy of thy Lord, the Source of all light. The breeze of the All-Merciful hath wafted, and the souls have been quickened in the tombs of their bodies. Thus hath the decree been fulfilled by God, the Mighty, the Beneficent. They who reject the truth have said: 'When were the heavens cleft asunder?' Say: 'While ye lay in the graves of waywardness and error.' Among the faithless is he who rubbeth his eyes, and looketh to the right and to the left. Say: 'Blinded art thou. No refuge hast thou to flee to.' And among them is he who saith: 'Have men been gathered together?' Say: 'Yea, by My Lord! whilst thou didst lie in the cradle of idle fancies.' And among them is he who saith: 'Hath the Book been sent down through the power of the true Faith?' Say: 'The true Faith itself is astounded. Fear ye, O ye men of understanding heart!' And among them is he who saith: 'Have I been assembled with others, blind?' Say: 'Yea, by Him that rideth upon the clouds!' Paradise is decked with mystic roses, and hell hath been made to blaze with the fire of the impious. Say: 'The light hath shone forth from the horizon of Revelation, and the whole earth hath been illumined at the coming of Him Who is the Lord of the Day of the Covenant!' The doubters have perished, whilst he that turned, guided by the light of assurance, unto the Dayspring of Certitude hath prospered. Blessed art thou, who hast fixed thy gaze upon Me, for this Tablet which hath been sent down for thee--a Tablet which causeth the souls of men to soar. Commit it to memory, and recite it. By My life! It is a door to the mercy of thy Lord. Well is it with him that reciteth it at eventide and at dawn. We, verily, heard thy praise of this Cause, through which the mountain of knowledge was crushed, and men's feet have slipped. My glory be upon thee and upon whomsoever hath turned unto the Almighty, the All-Bounteous. The Tablet is ended, but the theme is unexhausted. Be patient, for thy Lord is patient. 1. Adrianople. ["Have the verses been sent down?"...] Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 131; The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, vol. 4, p. 153
118
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O Maqsúd! We have heard thy voice and perceived the sighing and lamentation thou didst raise in thy longing and eagerness. Praised be God! The sweet savors of love could be inhaled from every word thereof. Please God, this bounty may last for ever. The Servant-in-Attendance recited the verses thou hast composed. Thy name is often mentioned in the presence of this Wronged One and the glances of Our loving-kindness and compassion are directed towards thee.
Great is the station of man. Great must also be his endeavors for the rehabilitation of the world and the well-being of nations. I beseech the One true God to graciously confirm thee in that which beseemeth man's station.
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The sanctified souls should ponder and meditate in their hearts regarding the methods of teaching. From the texts of the wondrous, heavenly Scriptures they should memorize phrases and passages bearing on various instances, so that in the course of their speech they may recite divine verses whenever the occasion demandeth it, inasmuch as these holy verses are the most potent elixir, the greatest and mightiest talisman. So potent is their influence that the hearer will have no cause for vacillation. I swear by My life! This Revelation is endowed with such a power that it will act as the lodestone for all nations and kindreds of the earth. Should one pause to meditate attentively he would recognize that no place is there, nor can there be, for anyone to flee to. The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, vol. 4 p. 237
In such manner hath the Kitáb-i-Aqdas been revealed that it attracteth and embraceth all the divinely appointed Dispensations. Blessed those who peruse it. Blessed those who apprehend it. Blessed those who meditate upon it. Blessed those who ponder its meaning. So vast is its range that it hath encompassed all men ere their recognition of it. Ere long will its sovereign power, its pervasive influence and the greatness of its might be manifested on earth. Verily, thy God is the All-Knowing, the All-informed.
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This glorious Tablet hath been revealed on the Anniversary of the Birth [of the Báb] that thou mayest recite it in a spirit of humility and supplication and give thanks unto thy Lord, the All-Knowing, the All-Informed. Make thou every effort to render service unto God, that from thee may appear that which will immortalize thy memory in His glorious and exalted heaven.
Say: Glorified art Thou, O my God! I implore Thee by the Dawning-Place of Thy signs and by the Revealer of Thy clear tokens to grant that I may, under all conditions, hold fast the cord of Thy loving providence and cling tenaciously to the hem of Thy generosity. Reckon me then with those whom the changes and chances of the world have failed to deter from serving Thee and from bearing allegiance unto Thee, whom the onslaught of the people hath been powerless to hinder from magnifying Thy Name and celebrating Thy praise. Graciously assist me, O my Lord, to do whatever Thou lovest and desirest. Enable me then to fulfill that which will exalt Thy Name and will set ablaze the fire of Thy love.
Talks 151-175, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
An elderly man from Ananthapur, after hearing the Vedas recited in the hall, stood up and asked:
It is said that the non-Brahmins should not hear the recital of the
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
could recite "Om " in such a wonderful way in meeting that people were entranced by it. But after staying some months in the plains, he used to run
away to the mountains saying that he was losing his consciousness and people were dragging him into active life.
--
masses he kept his meaning a secret. Nor did he recite it to the masses.
There were the professional reciters who carried it from door to door and
popularised it. That is a different thing.
Theaetetus, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
I will describe the leaders, then: for the inferior sort are not worth the trouble. The lords of philosophy have not learned the way to the dicastery or ecclesia; they neither see nor hear the laws and votes of the state, written or recited; societies, whether political or festive, clubs, and singing maidens do not enter even into their dreams. And the scandals of persons or their ancestors, male and female, they know no more than they can tell the number of pints in the ocean. Neither are they conscious of their own ignorance; for they do not practise singularity in order to gain reputation, but the truth is, that the outer form of them only is residing in the city; the inner man, as Pindar says, is going on a voyage of discovery, measuring as with line and rule the things which are under and in the earth, interrogating the whole of nature, only not condescending to notice what is near them.
'What do you mean, Socrates?'
--
SOCRATES: In the leisure spoken of by you, which a freeman can always command: he has his talk out in peace, and, like ourselves, he wanders at will from one subject to another, and from a second to a third,if the fancy takes him, he begins again, as we are doing now, caring not whether his words are many or few; his only aim is to attain the truth. But the lawyer is always in a hurry; there is the water of the clepsydra driving him on, and not allowing him to expatiate at will: and there is his adversary standing over him, enforcing his rights; the indictment, which in their phraseology is termed the affidavit, is recited at the time: and from this he must not deviate. He is a servant, and is continually disputing about a fellow-servant before his master, who is seated, and has the cause in his hands; the trial is never about some indifferent matter, but always concerns himself; and often the race is for his life. The consequence has been, that he has become keen and shrewd; he has learned how to flatter his master in word and indulge him in deed; but his soul is small and unrighteous. His condition, which has been that of a slave from his youth upwards, has deprived him of growth and uprightness and independence; dangers and fears, which were too much for his truth and honesty, came upon him in early years, when the tenderness of youth was unequal to them, and he has been driven into crooked ways; from the first he has practised deception and retaliation, and has become stunted and warped. And so he has passed out of youth into manhood, having no soundness in him; and is now, as he thinks, a master in wisdom. Such is the lawyer, Theodorus. Will you have the companion picture of the philosopher, who is of our brotherhood; or shall we return to the argument? Do not let us abuse the freedom of digression which we claim.
THEODORUS: Nay, Socrates, not until we have finished what we are about; for you truly said that we belong to a brotherhood which is free, and are not the servants of the argument; but the argument is our servant, and must wait our leisure. Who is our judge? Or where is the spectator having any right to censure or control us, as he might the poets?
SOCRATES: Then, as this is your wish, I will describe the leaders; for there is no use in talking about the inferior sort. In the first place, the lords of philosophy have never, from their youth upwards, known their way to the Agora, or the dicastery, or the council, or any other political assembly; they neither see nor hear the laws or decrees, as they are called, of the state written or recited; the eagerness of political societies in the attainment of officesclubs, and banquets, and revels, and singing-maidens,do not enter even into their dreams. Whether any event has turned out well or ill in the city, what disgrace may have descended to any one from his ancestors, male or female, are matters of which the philosopher no more knows than he can tell, as they say, how many pints are contained in the ocean. Neither is he conscious of his ignorance. For he does not hold aloof in order that he may gain a reputation; but the truth is, that the outer form of him only is in the city: his mind, disdaining the littlenesses and nothingnesses of human things, is 'flying all abroad' as Pindar says, measuring earth and heaven and the things which are under and on the earth and above the heaven, interrogating the whole nature of each and all in their entirety, but not condescending to anything which is within reach.
THEODORUS: What do you mean, Socrates?
The Anapanasati Sutta A Practical Guide to Mindfullness of Breathing and Tranquil Wisdom Meditation, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
best to recite these precepts daily in a language that one
understands so that the meanings are clear without a doubt.
The Book of Certitude - P2, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
Twelve hundred and eighty years have passed since the dawn of the Muhammadan Dispensation, and with every break of day, these blind and ignoble people have recited their Qur'án, and yet have failed to grasp one letter of that Book! Again and again they read those verses which clearly testify to the reality of these holy themes, and bear witness to the truth of the Manifestations of eternal Glory, and still apprehend not their purpose. They have even failed to realize, all this time, that, in every age, the reading of the scriptures and holy books is for no other purpose except to enable the reader to apprehend their meaning and unravel their innermost mysteries. Otherwise reading, without understanding, is of no abiding profit unto man.
And it came to pass that on a certain day a needy man came to visit this Soul, craving for the ocean of His knowledge. While conversing with him, mention was made concerning the signs of the Day of Judgment, Resurrection, Revival, and Reckoning. He urged Us to explain how, in this wondrous Dispensation, the peoples of the world were brought to a reckoning, when none were made aware of it. Thereupon, We imparted unto him, according to the measure of his capacity and understanding, certain truths of Science and ancient Wisdom. We then asked him saying: "Hast thou not read the Qur'án, and art thou not aware of this blessed verse: 'On that day shall neither man nor spirit be asked of his Sin?' 1 Dost thou not realize that by 'asking' is not meant asking by tongue or speech, even as the verse itself doth indicate and prove? For afterward it is said: 'By their countenance shall the sinners be known, and they shall be seized by their forelocks and their feet.'" 2 1. Qur'án 55:39.
--
Likewise, He saith: "Such are the verses of God: with truth do We recite them to Thee. But in what revelation will they believe, if they reject God and His verses?" 1 If thou wilt grasp the implication of this verse, thou wilt recognize the truth that no manifestation greater than the Prophets of God hath ever been revealed, and no testimony mightier than the testimony of their revealed verses hath ever appeared upon the earth. Nay, this testimony no other testimony can ever excel, except that which the Lord thy God willeth. 1. Qur'án 45:5.
In another passage He saith: "Woe to every lying sinner, who heareth the verses of God recited to him, and then, as though he heard them not, persisteth in proud disdain! Apprise him of a painful punishment." 1 The implications of this verse, alone, suffice all that is in heaven and on earth, were the people to ponder the verses of their Lord. For thou hearest how in this day the people disdainfully ignore the divinely-revealed verses, as though they were the meanest of all things. And yet, nothing greater than these verses hath ever appeared, nor will ever be made manifest in the world! Say unto them: "O heedless people! Ye repeat what your fathers, in a bygone age, have said. Whatever fruits they have gathered from the tree of their faithlessness, the same shall ye gather also. Ere long shall ye be gathered unto your fathers, and with them shall ye dwell in hellish fire. An ill abode! the abode of the people of tyranny." 1. Qur'án 45:6.
207
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In another passage He saith: "And when Our clear verses are recited to them, their only argument is to say, 'Bring back our fathers, if ye speak the truth!'" 1 Behold, what foolish evidences they sought from these Embodiments of an all-encompassing mercy! They scoffed at the verses, a single letter of which is greater than the creation of heavens and earth, and which quickeneth the dead of the valley of self and desire with the spirit of faith; and clamoured saying: "Cause our fathers to speed out of their sepulchres." Such was the perversity and pride of that people. Each one of these verses is unto all the peoples of the world an unfailing testimony and a glorious proof of His truth. Each of them verily sufficeth all mankind, wert thou to meditate upon the verses of God. In the above-mentioned verse itself pearls of mysteries lie hidden. Whatever be the ailment, the remedy it offereth can never fail. 1. Qur'án 45:24.
210
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Although the outward meaning of "Whom God causeth to err through a knowledge" is what hath been revealed, yet to Us it signifieth those divines of the age who have turned away from the Beauty of God, and who, clinging unto their own learning, as fashioned by their own fancies and desires, have denounced God's divine Message and Revelation. "Say: it is a weighty Message, from which ye turn aside!" 1 Likewise, He saith: "And when Our clear verses are recited to them, they say, 'This is merely a man who would fain pervert you from your father's worship.' And they say, 'This is none other than a forged falsehood.'" 2 1. Qur'án 38:67.
2. Qur'án 34:43.
The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
invisible priest in a subdued voice recited the evening prayers, and the knell from above
answers the prayer from below. Only the peaceful flames of the tapers spot with golden
the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
6) Everywhere something hinders me from meeting God in my brother because he has shut the doors of his inmost temple and recites the fables of his brother's god or the god of his brother's brother. ~ Emerson
7) How astonishing is this that of all the supreme revelations of the truth the world admits and tolerates only the more ancient, those which answer least to the needs of our epoch, while it holds each direct revelation, each original thought for null and some times hates them. ~ Thoreau
The Fearful Sphere of Pascal, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
Colophon, wearied of the Homeric verses he recited from city to city, lashed
out at the poets who attributed anthropomorphic traits to the gods, and
The Zahir, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
Dawn may surprise me on a bench in Garay Park, thinking (trying to think) of the passage in the Asrar Nama where it says that the Zahir is the shadow of the Rose and the Rending of the Veil. I associate that saying with this bit of information: In order to lose themselves in God, the Sufis recite their own names, or the ninety-nine divine names, until they become meaningless. I long to travel that path. Perhaps I shall conclude by wearing away the Zahir simply through thinking of it again and again. Perhaps behind the coin I shall find God.
To Wally Zenner
Timaeus, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
HERMOCRATES: 'We will do our best, and have been already preparing; for on our way home, Critias told us of an ancient tradition, which I wish, Critias, that you would repeat to Socrates.' 'I will, if Timaeus approves.' 'I approve.' Listen then, Socrates, to a tale of Solon's, who, being the friend of Dropidas my great-grandfa ther, told it to my grandfa ther Critias, and he told me. The narrative related to ancient famous actions of the Athenian people, and to one especially, which I will rehearse in honour of you and of the goddess. Critias when he told this tale of the olden time, was ninety years old, I being not more than ten. The occasion of the rehearsal was the day of the Apaturia called the Registration of Youth, at which our parents gave prizes for recitation. Some poems of Solon were recited by the boys. They had not at that time gone out of fashion, and the recital of them led some one to say, perhaps in compliment to Critias, that Solon was not only the wisest of men but also the best of poets. The old man brightened up at hearing this, and said: Had Solon only had the leisure which was required to complete the famous legend which he brought with him from Egypt he would have been as distinguished as Homer and Hesiod. 'And what was the subject of the poem?' said the person who made the remark. The subject was a very noble one; he described the most famous action in which the Athenian people were ever engaged. But the memory of their exploits has passed away owing to the lapse of time and the extinction of the actors. 'Tell us,' said the other, 'the whole story, and where Solon heard the story.' He repliedThere is at the head of the Egyptian Delta, where the river Nile divides, a city and district called Sais; the city was the birthplace of King Amasis, and is under the protection of the goddess Neith or Athene. The citizens have a friendly feeling towards the Athenians, believing themselves to be related to them. Hither came Solon, and was received with honour; and here he first learnt, by conversing with the Egyptian priests, how ignorant he and his countrymen were of antiquity. Perceiving this, and with the view of eliciting information from them, he told them the tales of Phoroneus and Niobe, and also of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and he endeavoured to count the generations which had since passed. Thereupon an aged priest said to him: 'O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are ever young, and there is no old man who is a Hellene.' 'What do you mean?' he asked. 'In mind,' replied the priest, 'I mean to say that you are children; there is no opinion or tradition of knowledge among you which is white with age; and I will tell you why. Like the rest of mankind you have suffered from convulsions of nature, which are chiefly brought about by the two great agencies of fire and water. The former is symbolized in the Hellenic tale of young Phaethon who drove his father's horses the wrong way, and having burnt up the earth was himself burnt up by a thunderbolt. For there occurs at long intervals a derangement of the heavenly bodies, and then the earth is destroyed by fire. At such times, and when fire is the agent, those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore are safer than those who dwell upon high and dry places, who in their turn are safer when the danger is from water. Now the Nile is our saviour from fire, and as there is little rain in Egypt, we are not harmed by water; whereas in other countries, when a deluge comes, the inhabitants are swept by the rivers into the sea. The memorials which your own and other nations have once had of the famous actions of mankind perish in the waters at certain periods; and the rude survivors in the mountains begin again, knowing nothing of the world before the flood. But in Egypt the traditions of our own and other lands are by us registered for ever in our temples. The genealogies which you have recited to us out of your own annals, Solon, are a mere children's story. For in the first place, you remember one deluge only, and there were many of them, and you know nothing of that fairest and noblest race of which you are a seed or remnant. The memory of them was lost, because there was no written voice among you. For in the times before the great flood Athens was the greatest and best of cities and did the noblest deeds and had the best constitution of any under the face of heaven.' Solon marvelled, and desired to be informed of the particulars. 'You are welcome to hear them,' said the priest, 'both for your own sake and for that of the city, and above all for the sake of the goddess who is the common foundress of both our cities. Nine thousand years have elapsed since she founded yours, and eight thousand since she founded ours, as our annals record. Many laws exist among us which are the counterpart of yours as they were in the olden time. I will briefly describe them to you, and you shall read the account of them at your leisure in the sacred registers. In the first place, there was a caste of priests among the ancient Athenians, and another of artisans; also castes of shepherds, hunters, and husbandmen, and lastly of warriors, who, like the warriors of Egypt, were separated from the rest, and carried shields and spears, a custom which the goddess first taught you, and then the Asiatics, and we among Asiatics first received from her. Observe again, what care the law took in the pursuit of wisdom, searching out the deep things of the world, and applying them to the use of man. The spot of earth which the goddess chose had the best of climates, and produced the wisest men; in no other was she herself, the philosopher and warrior goddess, so likely to have votaries. And there you dwelt as became the children of the gods, excelling all men in virtue, and many famous actions are recorded of you. The most famous of them all was the overthrow of the island of Atlantis. This great island lay over against the Pillars of Heracles, in extent greater than Libya and Asia put together, and was the passage to other islands and to a great ocean of which the Mediterranean sea was only the harbour; and within the Pillars the empire of Atlantis reached in Europe to Tyrrhenia and in Libya to Egypt. This mighty power was arrayed against Egypt and Hellas and all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Then your city did bravely, and won renown over the whole earth. For at the peril of her own existence, and when the other Hellenes had deserted her, she repelled the invader, and of her own accord gave liberty to all the nations within the Pillars. A little while afterwards there were great earthquakes and floods, and your warrior race all sank into the earth; and the great island of Atlantis also disappeared in the sea. This is the explanation of the shallows which are found in that part of the Atlantic ocean.'
Such was the tale, Socrates, which Critias heard from Solon; and I noticed when listening to you yesterday, how close the resemblance was between your city and citizens and the ancient Athenian State. But I would not speak at the time, because I wanted to refresh my memory. I had heard the old man when I was a child, and though I could not remember the whole of our yesterday's discourse, I was able to recall every word of this, which is branded into my mind; and I am prepared, Socrates, to rehearse to you the entire narrative. The imaginary State which you were describing may be identified with the reality of Solon, and our antediluvian ancestors may be your citizens. 'That is excellent, Critias, and very appropriate to a Pana thenaic festival; the truth of the story is a great advantage.' Then now let me explain to you the order of our entertainment; first, Timaeus, who is a natural philosopher, will speak of the origin of the world, going down to the creation of man, and then I shall receive the men whom he has created, and some of whom will have been educated by you, and introduce them to you as the lost Athenian citizens of whom the Egyptian record spoke. As the law of Solon prescribes, we will bring them into court and acknowledge their claims to citizenship. 'I see,' replied Socrates, 'that I shall be well entertained; and do you, Timaeus, offer up a prayer and begin.'
--
CRITIAS: I will tell an old-world story which I heard from an aged man; for Critias, at the time of telling it, was, as he said, nearly ninety years of age, and I was about ten. Now the day was that day of the Apaturia which is called the Registration of Youth, at which, according to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations, and the poems of several poets were recited by us boys, and many of us sang the poems of Solon, which at that time had not gone out of fashion. One of our tribe, either because he thought so or to please Critias, said that in his judgment Solon was not only the wisest of men, but also the noblest of poets. The old man, as I very well remember, brightened up at hearing this and said, smiling: Yes, Amynander, if Solon had only, like other poets, made poetry the business of his life, and had completed the tale which he brought with him from Egypt, and had not been compelled, by reason of the factions and troubles which he found stirring in his own country when he came home, to attend to other matters, in my opinion he would have been as famous as Homer or Hesiod, or any poet.
And what was the tale about, Critias? said Amynander.
Verses of Vemana, #is Book, #unset, #Zen
There are abundance of those who recite the (tantra) treatises on religion. But there are none who mention the mantras. They have become powerless as the puppets of a show man.
328
--
Pauper Bramins meet together and recite babbling charms and talk saying they will perform the initiation of a boy into their caste. Like the crow that has drunk the washing of rice and goes on crowing.
859
--- Overview of verb recite
The verb recite has 5 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (2) declaim, recite ::: (recite in elocution)
2. (2) recite ::: (repeat aloud from memory; "she recited a poem"; "The pupil recited his lesson for the day")
3. recite, retell ::: (render verbally, "recite a poem"; "retell a story")
4. tell, narrate, recount, recite ::: (narrate or give a detailed account of; "Tell what happened"; "The father told a story to his child")
5. enumerate, recite, itemize, itemise ::: (specify individually; "She enumerated the many obstacles she had encountered"; "The doctor recited the list of possible side effects of the drug")
--- Grep of noun recite
reciter
Wikipedia - Abdul Basit 'Abd us-Samad -- Egyptian Quran reciter
Wikipedia - Birendra Krishna Bhadra -- Indian broadcaster, playwright, actor, reciter and theatre director
Wikipedia - Birkat Hachama -- Jewish blessing, thanking God for creating the sun. Recited once every 28 years.
Wikipedia - Du'a al-Baha -- Islamic prayer recommended to Muslims to recite in pre-dawns during Ramadan
Wikipedia - Hadran (Talmud) -- Short prayer recited upon the completion of study of a tractate of the Talmud or a Seder of Mishnah
Wikipedia - Jawshan Kabir -- An Islamic supplication usually recited during the holy Nights of Qadr.
Wikipedia - Kaddish -- Jewish prayer recited communally, often by mourners
Wikipedia - Kirtan -- Musically recited story in Indian traditions
Wikipedia - Muezzin -- Person appointed at a mosque to lead and recite the call to prayer
Wikipedia - QariM-JM-> -- Person who recites the Qur'an with the proper rules of recitation
Wikipedia - Tikkun Chatzot -- Jewish ritual prayer recited each night after midnight
Wikipedia - Ya Comimos -- Sephardic Jews prayer recited after a meal
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31661951-columbus-in-chains-a-prize-poem-recited-in-the-theatre-oxford-july-v
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5920.Recite_in_the_Name_of_the_Red_Rose
Orange ::: TV-PG | 24min | Animation, Drama, Romance | TV Series (2016) Episode Guide 13 episodes Orange Poster One day, Naho Takamiya receives a letter written to herself from ten years in the future. As Naho reads on, the letter recites the exact events of the day, including the transfer of a new ... S Stars: Jill Harris, Jason Liebrecht, Micah Solusod
Hakushaku to Yousei Specials -- -- Artland -- 6 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Fantasy Magic Historical -- Hakushaku to Yousei Specials Hakushaku to Yousei Specials -- Chibi-Earl and Chibi-Fairy. Every special focuses on another character, who will in their turn recite a poem by Shakespeare, that they feel describes their lives the best. -- Special - Dec 29, 2008 -- 7,891 6.41
Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken -- -- 8bit -- 24 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Comedy Demons Magic Fantasy -- Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken -- Thirty-seven-year-old Satoru Mikami is a typical corporate worker, who is perfectly content with his monotonous lifestyle in Tokyo, other than failing to nail down a girlfriend even once throughout his life. In the midst of a casual encounter with his colleague, he falls victim to a random assailant on the streets and is stabbed. However, while succumbing to his injuries, a peculiar voice echoes in his mind, and recites a bunch of commands which the dying man cannot make sense of. -- -- When Satoru regains consciousness, he discovers that he has reincarnated as a goop of slime in an unfamiliar realm. In doing so, he acquires newfound skills—notably, the power to devour anything and mimic its appearance and abilities. He then stumbles upon the sealed Catastrophe-level monster "Storm Dragon" Veldora who had been sealed away for the past 300 years for devastating a town to ashes. Sympathetic to his predicament, Satoru befriends him, promising to assist in destroying the seal. In return, Veldora bestows upon him the name Rimuru Tempest to grant him divine protection. -- -- Now, liberated from the mundanities of his past life, Rimuru embarks on a fresh journey with a distinct goal in mind. As he grows accustomed to his new physique, his gooey antics ripple throughout the world, gradually altering his fate. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 823,286 8.08
Yami Shibai -- -- ILCA -- 13 eps -- Original -- Dementia Horror Demons Supernatural -- Yami Shibai Yami Shibai -- The mysterious, yellow-masked Storyteller is a man whose true name and origin are both unknown. He appears at dusk where children gather and recites sinister tales based on Japanese urban legends, to which his young audience eerily intakes. However, the Storyteller is no ordinary teller of tales. He incorporates a kamishibai, a traditional paper-scrolling device, to add visuals to his already demented narration. -- -- A series of short horror stories, Yami Shibai begins with a bachelor who, after moving into a new apartment, immediately starts sensing a malevolent glare being pressed into him. A single talisman rests on his ceiling, but he has no way of knowing it is one of the few safeguards that separate him from a bottomless pit of suffering. Each story is more terrifying, more appalling, and more sickening than the last as the Storyteller's audience find themselves being sucked into the vicious world of his words. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Jul 15, 2013 -- 80,377 7.05
Yami Shibai -- -- ILCA -- 13 eps -- Original -- Dementia Horror Demons Supernatural -- Yami Shibai Yami Shibai -- The mysterious, yellow-masked Storyteller is a man whose true name and origin are both unknown. He appears at dusk where children gather and recites sinister tales based on Japanese urban legends, to which his young audience eerily intakes. However, the Storyteller is no ordinary teller of tales. He incorporates a kamishibai, a traditional paper-scrolling device, to add visuals to his already demented narration. -- -- A series of short horror stories, Yami Shibai begins with a bachelor who, after moving into a new apartment, immediately starts sensing a malevolent glare being pressed into him. A single talisman rests on his ceiling, but he has no way of knowing it is one of the few safeguards that separate him from a bottomless pit of suffering. Each story is more terrifying, more appalling, and more sickening than the last as the Storyteller's audience find themselves being sucked into the vicious world of his words. -- -- TV - Jul 15, 2013 -- 80,377 7.05
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The History of the Typewriter Recited by Michael Winslow
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