TERMS STARTING WITH
The question of the validity of an inference from a set of premisses is, of course, independent of the question of the truth of the premisses. -- A.C.
The question of whether the operations must be specified or merely conceivable for the proposition to have meaning (which is analogous to the constructibility problem in mathematical discussions) has occasioned considerable criticism, for there appeared to be a danger that important scientific propositions might be excluded as meaningless. To this and other problems of operationalism the logical positivists (or empiricists) have contributed formulary modifications and refinements. See Logical Empiricism. In spite of their frequent difference with regard to the empirical foundation of logic and mathematics, pragmatism has received some support from the strict logicians and mathematical philosophers. One of the most important instances historically was C. I. Lewis' paper "The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge" (University of California Publications in Philosophy, 1926). Here he stated 'that the truth of experience must always be relative to our chosen conceptual systems", and that our choice between conceptual systems "will be determined consciously or not, on pragmatic grounds".
TERMS ANYWHERE
adjudication ::: n. --> The act of adjudicating; the act or process of trying and determining judicially.
A deliberate determination by the judicial power; a judicial decision or sentence.
The decision upon the question whether the debtor is a bankrupt.
A process by which land is attached security or in satisfaction of a debt.
Again, the question whether the dimensions belong to space or to material objects arises from a false separation between these two, so that we speak of objects being in space, just as we speak of life as being in matter. We think of space as an absence of matter, as we think of darkness as an absence of light, and silence as absence of sound; and having thus created vacuums we proceed to fill them. In the view of occultism it would be nearer the truth to say that light is the absence of darkness, sound the absence of silence, and matter a form of the presence of space; and this is true in the sense that those things which appear to us most real are derived from those which seem to us most unreal, because not immediately physically perceivable. In theosophy, space is the infinite, eternal background of Being, Being itself, the ever-lasting substratum of, as well as the presence of, the universe; its apparent vacuity is due only to its lack of physical qualities to which our senses respond, and also to its perfect unity and uniformity. Space is living, incomprehensibly conscious, and hence a divinity; it is the only real world, while our manifested world born from and in it is a mayavi (illusory) one.
"All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.” ::: "The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings" or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined"? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see"?” Letters on Savitri
All can be done by the Divine — the heart and nature puri- fied, the inner consciousness awakened, the veils removed, — if one gives oneself to the Divine with trust and confidence and even xf one cannot do so fully at once, yet the more one does so, the more the inner help and guidance comes and the experi- ence of the Divine grows nithin. If the questioning mind becomes less active and humility and the will to surrender grow, this ought to be perfectly possible. No other strength and tapasya are then needed, but this alone.
anAtman. (P. anattA; T. bdag med; C. wuwo; J. muga; K. mua 無我). In Sanskrit, "no self" or "nonself" or more broadly "insubstantiality"; the third of the "three marks" (TRILAKsAnA) of existence, along with impermanence (ANITYA) and suffering (DUḤKHA). The concept is one of the key insights of the Buddha, and it is foundational to the Buddhist analysis of the compounded quality (SAMSKṚTA) of existence: since all compounded things are the fruition (PHALA) of a specific set of causes (HETU) and conditions (PRATYAYA), they are therefore absent of any perduring substratum of being. In the sutra analysis of existence, the "person" (PUDGALA) is said to be a product of five aggregates (SKANDHA)-materiality (RuPA), physical sensations (VEDANA), perception (SAMJNA), impulses (SAMSKARA), and consciousness (VIJNANA)-which together comprise the totality of the individual's physical, mental, and emotional existence. What in common parlance is called the person is a continuum (SAMTANA) imputed to the construction of these aggregates, but when these aggregates are separated at the time of death, the person also simultaneously vanishes. This relationship between the person and the skandhas is clarified in the MILINDAPANHA's famous simile of the chariot: a chariot is composed of various constituent parts, but if that chariot is broken down into its parts, there is no sense of "chariot" remaining. So it is with the person and his constituent parts, the skandhas. The Buddha is rigorously against any analysis of phenomena that imputes the reality of a person: when a questioner asks him, "Who senses?," for example, the Buddha rejects the question as wrongly conceived and reframes it in terms of conditionality, i.e., "With what as condition does sensation occur?" ("Sensory contact" [SPARsA] is the answer.) Buddhism thus rejects any notion of an eternal, perduring soul that survives death, or which transmigrates from lifetime to lifetime; rather, just as we can impute a conventional continuity to the person over one lifetime, so can this same continuity be imputed over several lifetimes. The continuum of karmic action and reaction ensures that the last moment of consciousness in the present life serves as the condition for the first moment of consciousness in the next. The next life is therefore neither the same as nor different from the preceding lifetime; instead, it is causally related to it. For this reason, any specific existence, or series of existences, is governed by the causes and conditions that create it, rendering life fundamentally beyond our attempts to control it (another connotation of "nonself") and thus unworthy as an object of attachment. Seeing this lack of selfhood in compounded things generates a sense of "danger" (ADĪNAVA) that catalyzes the aspiration to seek liberation (VIMOKsA). Thus, understanding this mark of anAtman is the crucial antidote (PRATIPAKsA) to ignorance (AVIDYA) and the key to liberation from suffering (duḥkha) and the continuing cycle of rebirth (SAMSARA). Although the notion of anAtman is applied to the notion of a person in mainstream Buddhism, in the PRAJNAPARAMITA scriptures and the broader MAHAYANA tradition the connotation of the term is extended to take in the "nonself of phenomena" (DHARMANAIRATMYA) as well. This extension may be a response to certain strands of the mainstream tradition, such as SARVASTIVADA (lit. the "Teaching That All [Dharmas] Exist"), which considered dharmas (i.e., the five skandhas and so on) to be factors that existed in reality throughout all three time periods (TRIKALA) of past, present, and future. In order to clarify that dharmas have only conventional validity, the MahAyAna posited that they also were anAtman, although the nature of this lack of self was differently understood by the YOGACARA and MADHYAMAKA schools.
Anthropology, Philosophical: (in Max Scheler) The philosophical science concerned with the questions about the essence of man. -- P.A.S.
Arambha-vada: The doctrine of the creation of the world by Isvara; the theory of a beginning, an origination, creation of the world by an agency external to the question; the doctrine of an absolute new creation; the theory of the Nyaya-Vaiseshika.
Arianism: A view named after Arius (256-336), energetic presbyter of Alexandria, condemned as a heretic by the ancient Catholic Church. Arius held that Jesus and God were not of the same substance (the orthodox position). He maintained that although the Son was subordinate to the Father he was of a similar nature. The controversy on the relation of Jesus to God involved the question of the divine status of Jesus. If he were not divine how could the church justify him as an object of worship, of trust, and adoration? If he is divine, how could such a belief square with the doctrine of one God (monotheism)? Arianism tended toward the doctrine of the subordination of Jesus to God, involving the extreme Arians who held Jesus to be unlike God and the moderate Arians who held that Jesus was of similar essence with God although not of the same substance. Some eighteen councils were convened to consider this burning question, parties in power condemning and placing each other under the ban. The Council of Nicea in 325 repudiated Arian tendencies but the issue was fought with uncertain outcome until the Council of Constantinople in 381 reaffirmed the orthodox view. -- V.F.
(a) Speculative philosophy is commonly considered to embrace metaphysics (see Metaphysics) and epistemology as its two coordinate branches or if the term metaphysics be extended to embrace the whole of speculative philosophy, then epistemology and ontology become the two main subdivisions of metaphysics in the wide sense. Whichever usage is adopted, epistemology as the philosophical theory of knowledge is one of the two main branches of philosophy. The question of the relative priority of epistemology and metaphysics (or ontology) has occasioned considerable controversy: the dominant view fostered by Descartes, Locke and Kant is that epistemology is the prior philosophical science, the investigation of the possibility and limits of knowledge being a necessary and indispensible preliminary to any metaphysical speculations regarding the nature of ultimate reality. On the other hand, strongly metaphysical thinkers like Spinoza and Hegel, and more recently S. Alexander and A. N. Whitehead, have first attacked the metaphvsical problems and adopted the view of knowledge consonant with their metaphysics. Between these two extremes is the view that epistemology and metaphysics are logically interdependent and that a metaphysically presuppositionless epistemology is as unattainable as an epistemologically presuppositionless metaphysics.
avyAkṛta. (P. avyAkata; T. lung du ma bstan pa/lung ma bstan; C. wuji; J. muki; K. mugi 無). In Sanskrit, "indeterminate" or "unascertainable"; used to refer to the fourteen "indeterminate" or "unanswered" questions (avyAkṛtavastu) to which the Buddha refuses to respond. The American translator of PAli texts HENRY CLARKE WARREN rendered the term as "questions which tend not to edification." These questions involve various metaphysical assertions that were used in traditional India to evaluate a thinker's philosophical lineage. There are a number of versions of these "unanswerables," but one common list includes fourteen such questions, three sets of which are framed as "four alternatives" (CATUsKOtI): (1) Is the world eternal?, (2) Is the world not eternal?, (3) Is the world both eternal and not eternal?, (4) Is the world neither eternal nor not eternal?; (5) Is the world endless?, (6) Is the world not endless?, (7) Is the world both endless and not endless?, (8) Is the world neither endless nor not endless?; (9) Does the tathAgata exist after death?, (10) Does the tathAgata not exist after death?, (11) Does the tathAgata both exist and not exist after death?, (12) Does the tathAgata neither exist nor not exist after death?; (13) Are the soul (jīva) and the body identical?, and (14) Are the soul and the body not identical? It was in response to such questions that the Buddha famously asked whether a man shot by a poisoned arrow would spend time wondering about the height of the archer and the kind of wood used for the arrow, or whether he should seek to remove the arrow before it killed him. Likening these fourteen questions to such pointless speculation, he called them "a jungle, a wilderness, a puppet-show, a writhing, and a fetter, and is coupled with misery, ruin, despair, and agony, and does not tend to aversion, absence of passion, cessation, quiescence, knowledge, supreme wisdom, and nirvAna." The Buddha thus asserted that all these questions had to be set aside as unanswerable for being either unexplainable conceptually or "wrongly framed" (P. thapanīya). Questions that were "wrongly framed" inevitably derive from mistaken assumptions and are thus the products of wrong reflection (AYONIsOMANASKARA); therefore, any answer given to them would necessarily be either misleading or irrelevant. The Buddha's famous silence on these questions has been variously interpreted, with some seeing his refusal to answer these questions as deriving from the inherent limitations involved in using concepts to talk about such rarified existential questions. Because it is impossible to expect that concepts can do justice, for example, to an enlightened person's state of being after death, the Buddha simply remains silent when asked this and other "unanswerable" questions. The implication, therefore, is that it is not necessarily the case that the Buddha does not "know" the answer to these questions, but merely that he realizes the conceptual limitations inherent in trying to answer them definitively and thus refuses to respond. Yet other commentators explained that the Buddha declined to answer the question of whether the world (that is, SAMSARA) will ever end because the answer ("no") would prove too discouraging to his audience.
Begging the Question: The logical fallacy of assuming in the premisses of an argument the very conclusion which is to be proved. See Petitio principii. -- G.R.M.
BhAvanAkrama. (T. Sgom rim). In Sanskrit, "Stages of Meditation," the title of three separate but related works by the late-eighth century Indian master KAMALAsĪLA. During the reign of the Tibetan king KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN at the end of the eighth century, there were two Buddhist factions at court, a Chinese faction led by the Northern Chan (BEI ZONG) monk Heshang Moheyan (MahAyAna) and an Indian faction of the recently deceased sANTARAKsITA, who with the king and PADMASAMBHAVA had founded the first Tibetan monastery at BSAM YAS (Samye). According to traditional accounts, sAntaraksita foretold of dangers and left instructions in his will that his student Kamalasīla should be summoned from India. A conflict seems to have developed between the Indian and Chinese partisans (and their allies in the Tibetan court) over the question of the nature of enlightenment, with the Indians holding that enlightenment takes place as the culmination of a gradual process of purification, the result of perfecting morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA). The Chinese spoke against this view, holding that enlightenment was the intrinsic nature of the mind rather than the goal of a protracted path, such that one need simply to recognize the presence of this innate nature of enlightenment by entering a state of awareness beyond distinctions; all other practices were superfluous. According to both Chinese and Tibetan records, a debate was held between Kamalasīla and Moheyan at Bsam yas, circa 797, with the king himself serving as judge (see BSAM YAS DEBATE). According to Tibetan reports (contradicted by the Chinese accounts), Kamalasīla was declared the winner and Moheyan and his party banished from Tibet, with the king proclaiming that thereafter the MADHYAMAKA school of Indian Buddhist philosophy (to which sAntaraksita and Kamalasīla belonged) would have pride of place in Tibet. ¶ According to Tibetan accounts, after the conclusion of the debate, the king requested that Kamalasīla compose works that presented his view, and in response, Kamalasīla composed the three BhAvanAkrama. There is considerable overlap among the three works. All three are germane to the issues raised in the debate, although whether all three were composed in Tibet is not established with certainty; only the third, and briefest of the three, directly considers, and refutes, the view of "no mental activity" (amanasikAra, cf. WUNIAN), which is associated with Moheyan. The three texts set forth the process for the potential BODHISATTVA to cultivate BODHICITTA and then develop sAMATHA and VIPAsYANA and progress through the bodhisattva stages (BHuMI) to buddhahood. The cultivation of vipasyanA requires the use of both scripture (AGAMA) and reasoning (YUKTI) to understand emptiness (suNYATA); in the first BhAvanAkrama, Kamalasīla sets forth the three forms of wisdom (prajNA): the wisdom derived from learning (sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNA), the wisdom derived from reflection (CINTAMAYĪPRAJNA), and the wisdom derived from cultivation (BHAVANAMAYĪPRAJNA), explaining that the last of these gradually destroys the afflictive obstructions (KLEsAVARAnA) and the obstructions to omniscience (JNEYAVARAnA). The second BhAvanAkrama considers many of these same topics, stressing that the achievement of the fruition of buddhahood requires the necessary causes, in the form of the collection of merit (PUnYASAMBHARA) and the collection of wisdom (JNANASAMBHARA). Both the first and second works espouse the doctrine of mind-only (CITTAMATRA); it is on the basis of these and other statements that Tibetan doxographers classified Kamalasīla as a YOGACARA-SVATANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA. The third and briefest of the BhAvanAkrama is devoted especially to the topics of samatha and vipasyanA, how each is cultivated, and how they are ultimately unified. Kamalasīla argues that analysis (VICARA) into the lack of self (ATMAN) in both persons (PUDGALA) and phenomena (DHARMA) is required to arrive at a nonconceptual state of awareness. The three texts are widely cited in later Tibetan Buddhist literature, especially on the process for developing samatha and vipasyanA.
(b) In logic: Disparate terms have been variously defined by logicians: Boethius defined disparate terms as those which are diverse yet not contradictory. See Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, I, 686. Leibniz considered two concepts disparate "if neither of the terms contains the other" that is to say if they are not in the relation of genus and species. (Couturat, Letbntz, Inedits, pp. 53, 62.) --L.W. Disparity: See Disparate. Disputatio: (Scholastic) Out of the quaestiones disputatae developed gradually a rigid form of scholastic disputation. The defensor theseos proposed his thesis and explained or proved it in syllogistic form. The opponentes argued against the thesis and its demonstration by repeating first the proposition and the syllogism proving it, then either by denying the validity of one or the other premises (nego maiorem, minorem) or by making distinctions restricting the proposition (distinguo maiorem, minorem). In the disputations of students under the direction of a magister the latter used to summarize the disputation and to "determine the question". -- R.A.
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.
Body transjormauon If the transformation is complete that means no subjection to death it does not mean that one will be bound to keep the same body for all time One creates a new body for oneself when one wants to change but how it will be done cannot be said now The present method is by physical birth — some occultists suppose that a time will come when that will not be necessary *— but the question must be left for the
Bsam yas debate. An important event in the early dissemination (SNGA DAR) of Buddhism in Tibet. During the reign of the king KHRI SRONG LDE BRTSAN at the end of the eighth century, there were two Buddhist factions at court, a Chinese faction led by the Northern Chan (BEI ZONG) monk Heshang MOHEYAN (the Chinese transcription of "MahAyAna") and an Indian faction associated with the recently deceased sANTARAKsITA who, with the king and PADMASAMBHAVA, had founded the first Tibetan monastery at BSAM YAS. According to traditional accounts, sAntaraksita foretold of dangers and left instructions in his will that his student KAMALAsĪLA be called from India. A conflict seems to have developed between the Indian and Chinese partisans (and their allies in the Tibetan court) over the question of the nature of enlightenment, with the Indians holding that enlightenment takes place as the culmination of a gradual process of purification, the result of combining ethical practice (sĪLA), meditation (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA). The Chinese spoke against this view, holding that enlightenment was the intrinsic nature of the mind itself rather than the goal of a protracted path of practice. Therefore, to recognize the presence of this innate nature of enlightenment, one need only enter a state of awareness beyond distinctions; all other practices were superfluous. According to both Chinese and Tibetan records, a debate was held between Kamalasīla and Moheyan at Bsam yas, circa 797, with the king himself serving as judge. According to Tibetan records (contradicted by Chinese accounts), Kamalasīla was declared the winner and Moheyan and his party were banished from Tibet, with the king proclaiming that the MADHYAMAKA school of Indian Buddhist philosophy (to which sAntaraksita and Kamalasīla belonged) would thereafter be followed in Tibet. Kamalasīla died shortly after the debate, supposedly assassinated by members of the Chinese faction. Scholars have suggested that although a controversy between the Indian and Chinese Buddhists (and their Tibetan partisans) occurred, it is unlikely that a face-to-face debate took place or that the outcome of the controversy was so unequivocal. The "debate" may instead have been an exchange of statements; indeed, KAmalasīla's third BHAVANAKRAMA seems to derive from this exchange. It is also important to note that, regardless of the merits of the Indian and Chinese philosophical positions, China was Tibet's chief military rival at the time, whereas India posed no such threat. The debate's principal significance derives from the fact that from this point on, Tibet largely sought its Buddhism from India; no school of Chinese Buddhism subsequently exerted any major influence in Tibet. It is said that when he departed, Moheyan left behind one shoe, indicating that traces of his view would remain in Tibet; some scholars have suggested possible connections between Chan positions and the RDZOGS CHEN teachings that developed in the ninth century. In Tibetan polemics of later centuries, it was considered particularly harsh to link one's opponent's views to the antinomian views of Moheyan. Moheyan himself was transformed into something of a trickster figure, popular in Tibetan art and drama. This event is variously referred to in English as the Council of Samye, the Council of Lha sa, and the Samye Debate. See also DUNWU.
buddhavacana. (T. sangs rgyas kyi bka'; C. foyu; J. butsugo; K. puro 佛語). In Sanskrit and PAli, "word of the Buddha"; those teachings accepted as having been either spoken by the Buddha or spoken with his sanction. Much traditional scholastic literature is devoted to the question of what does and does not qualify as the word of the Buddha. The SuTRAPItAKA and the VINAYAPItAKA of the Buddhist canon (TRIPItAKA), which are claimed to have been initially redacted at the first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST), held in RAJAGṚHA soon after the Buddha's death, is considered by the tradition-along with the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA, which was added later-to be the authentic word of the Buddha; this judgment is made despite the fact that the canon included texts that were spoken, or elaborated upon, by his direct disciples (e.g., separate versions of the BHADDEKARATTASUTTA, which offer exegeses by various disciples of an enigmatic verse the Buddha had taught) or that included material that clearly postdated the Buddha's death (such as the MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA, which tells of the events leading up to, and immediately following, the Buddha's demise, or the NAradasutta, which refers to kings who lived long after the Buddha's time). Such material could still be considered buddhavacana, however, by resort to the four references to authority (MAHAPADEsA; CATURMAHAPADEsA). These four types of authority are found listed in various SuTRAs, including the eponymous PAli MahApadesasutta, and provide an explicit set of criteria through which to evaluate whether a teaching is the authentic buddhavacana. Teachings could be accepted as authentic if they were heard from four authorities: (1) the mouth of the Buddha himself; (2) a SAMGHA of wise elders; (3) a group of monks who were specialists in either the dharma (dharmadhara), vinaya (vinayadhara), or the proto-abhidharma (mAtṛkAdhara); or (4) a single monk who was widely learned in such specializations. The teaching should then be compared side by side with the authentic SuTRA and VINAYA; if found to be compatible with these two strata of the canon and not in contradiction with reality (DHARMATA), it would then be accepted as the buddhavacana and thus marked by the characteristics of the Buddha's words (buddhavacanalaksana). Because of this dispensation, the canons of all schools of Buddhism were never really closed, but could continue to be reinvigorated with new expressions of the Buddha's insights. In addition, completely new texts that purported to be from the mouths of the buddha(s) and/or BODHISATTVAs, such as found in the MAHAYANA or VAJRAYANA traditions, could also begin to circulate and be accepted as the authentic buddhavacana since they too conformed with the reality (dharmatA) that is great enlightenment (MAHABODHI). For example, a MahAyAna sutra, the AdhyAsayasaNcodanasutra, declares, "All which is well-spoken, Maitreya, is spoken by the Buddha." The sutra qualifies the meaning of "well spoken" (subhAsita), explaining that all inspired speech should be known to be the word of the Buddha if it is meaningful and not meaningless, if it is principled and not unprincipled, if it brings about the extinction and not the increase of the afflictions (KLEsA), and if it sets forth the qualities and benefits of NIRVAnA and not the qualities and benefits of SAMSARA. However, the authenticity of the MahAyAna sutras (and later the tantras) was a topic of great contention between the proponents of the MahAyAna and mainstream schools throughout the history of Indian Buddhism and beyond. Defenses of the MahAyAna as buddhavacana appear in the MahAyAna sutras themselves, with predictions of the terrible fates that will befall those who deny their authenticity; and arguments for the authenticity of the MahAyAna sutras were a stock element in writings by MahAyAna authors as early as NAGARJUNA and extending over the next millennium. Related, and probably earlier, terms for buddhavacana are the "teaching of the master" (S. sAstuḥ sAsanam) and the "dispensation of the Buddha" (buddhAnusAsanam). See also APOCRYPHA, DAZANGJING, GTER MA.
Capacity:Any ability, potentiality, power or talent possessed by anything, either to act or to suffer. It may be innate or acquired, dormant or active. The topic of capacity figures, in the main, in two branches of philosophy: (a) in metaphysics, as in Aristotle's discussion of potentiality and actuality, (b) in ethics, where an agent's capacities are usually regarded as having some bearing on the question as to what his duties are. -- W.K.F.
Chogye Chin'gak kuksa orok. (曹溪眞覺國師語録). In Korean, "Recorded Sayings of the National Master Chin'gak of Mt. Chogye"; a collection of the sayings of the Korean SoN master CHIN'GAK HYESIM. As the first and oldest recorded saying (YULU) collection in Korea, the Chogye Chin'gak kuksa orok has served as an important source for studying the early history of kongan studies in that region (see GONG'AN). The oldest extant edition of the text dates to 1526. The collection consists largely of Hyesim's various public lectures (e.g., SHANGTANG, shizhong, and FAYU), private lessons (DUIJIs, xiaocan, and AGYO), and letters to his students. Many of his lectures are concerned with the famous kongan attributed to ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN, wherein Zhaozhou offers the reply "wu" ("no") to the question, "Does a dog have buddha nature, or not?" (see GOUZI WU FOXING).
C "language" A programming language designed by {Dennis Ritchie} at {AT&T} {Bell Labs} ca. 1972 for systems programming on the {PDP-11} and immediately used to reimplement {Unix}. It was called "C" because many features derived from an earlier compiler named "{B}". In fact, C was briefly named "NB". B was itself strongly influenced by {BCPL}. Before {Bjarne Stroustrup} settled the question by designing {C++}, there was a humorous debate over whether C's successor should be named "D" or "P" (following B and C in "BCPL"). C is terse, low-level and permissive. It has a {macro preprocessor}, {cpp}. Partly due to its distribution with {Unix}, C became immensely popular outside {Bell Labs} after about 1980 and is now the dominant language in systems and {microcomputer} applications programming. It has grown popular due to its simplicity, efficiency, and flexibility. C programs are often easily adapted to new environments. C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain, as "a language that combines all the elegance and power of {assembly language} with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language". Ritchie's original C is known as {K&R C} after Kernighan and Ritchie's book. A modified version has been {standardised (standard)} as {ANSI C}. See also {ACCU}, {ae}, {c68}, {c386}, {C-Interp}, {cxref}, {dbx}, {dsp56k-gcc}, {dsp56165-gcc}, {gc}, {GCT}, {GNU C}, {GNU superoptimiser}, {Harvest C}, {malloc}, {mpl}, {Pthreads}, {ups}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-06-01)
clumps ::: n. --> A game in which questions are asked for the purpose of enabling the questioners to discover a word or thing previously selected by two persons who answer the questions; -- so called because the players take sides in two "clumps" or groups, the "clump" which guesses the word winning the game.
Communitarianism ::: A group of related but distinct philosophies that began in the late 20th century, opposing aspects of liberalism and capitalism while advocating phenomena such as civil society. Not necessarily hostile to liberalism in the contemporary American sense of the word, communitarianism rather has a different emphasis, shifting the focus of interest toward communities and societies and away from the individual. The question of priority (individual or community) often has the largest impact in the most pressing ethical questions: health care, abortion, multiculturalism, hate speech, and so on.
Construct Validity ::: The general validity of a measuring device. Construct validity answers the question of whether or not the measuring device actually measures the construct under question.
Cosmology: A branch of philosophy which treats of the origin and structure of the universe. It is to be contrasted with ontology or metaphysics, the study of the most general features of reality, natural and supernatural, and with the philosophy of nature, which investigates the basic laws, processes and divisions of the objects in nature. It is perhaps impossible to draw or maintain a sharp distinction between these different subjects, and treatises which profess to deal with one of them usually contain considerable material on the others. Encyclopedia, section 35), are the contingency, necessity, eternity, limitations and formal laws of the world, the freedom of man and the origin of evil. Most philosophers would add to the foregoing the question of the nature and interrelationship of space and time, and would perhaps exclude the question of the nature of freedom and the origin of evil as outside the province of cosmology. The method of investigation has usually been to accept the principles of science or the results of metaphysics and develop the consequences. The test of a cosmology most often used is perhaps that of exhibiting the degree of accordance it has with respect to both empirical fact and metaphysical truth. The value of a cosmology seems to consist primarily in its capacity to provide an ultimate frame for occurrences in nature, and to offer a demonstration of where the limits of the spatio-temporal world are, and how they might be transcended.
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.
Culavedallasutta. (C. Fale biqiuni jing; J. Horaku bikunikyo; K. Pomnak piguni kyong 法樂比丘尼經). In PAli, "Shorter Discourse on Points of Doctrine"; the forty-fourth sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (a separate SARVASTIVADA recension appears as the 210th sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA; the entire discourse is also subsumed in the Tibetan translation of samathadeva's commentary to the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA), expounded by the nun DhammadinnA (S. DHARMADINNA) to her former husband, the householder VisAkha, at the Veluvana (S. VEnUVANAVIHARA) bamboo grove in RAjagaha (S. RAJAGṚHA). VisAkha approached DhammadinnA and questioned her concerning a number of points of doctrine preached by the Buddha. These questions included: what is the nature of this existing body (P. sakkAya; S. satkAya); what is its origin (SAMUDAYA), its cessation (NIRODHA), and the path (P. magga; S. MARGA) leading to its cessation; how does wrong view concerning this body (P. sakkAyaditthi; S. SATKAYADṚstI) arise and how is it removed; what is the noble eightfold path; what is concentration (SAMADHI); what are bodily, verbal, and mental formations; what is the attainment of cessation (nirodha); what is sensation (VEDANA); what are the underlying tendencies with regard to pleasant, painful, and neutral sensations and how should these be overcome; and what are the counterparts of pleasant, painful, and neutral sensations. DhammadinnA answered all of the questions put to her to the satisfaction of the householder VisAkha-proving why the Buddha considered her foremost among his nun disciples in the gift of preaching.
dbu ma chen po. (uma chenpo) [alt. dbu ma pa chen po]. In Tibetan, "great MADHYAMAKA"; a term central to the "self empty, other empty" (RANG STONG GZHAN STONG) debate in Tibetan Buddhism, on the question of which Indian masters are the true representatives of the Madhyamaka. According to the DGE LUGS view, among the three turnings of the wheel of the dharma as described in the SAMDHINIRMOCANASuTRA, the second wheel, generally identified with the view of emptiness as set forth in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutras and propounded by the Madhyamaka, is definitive (NĪTĀRTHA), while the third wheel, generally identified with YOGĀCĀRA and TATHĀGATHAGARBHA teachings, is provisional (NEYĀRTHA). Other sects, most notably the JO NANG PA, as well as certain BKA' BRGYUD and RNYING MA thinkers, especially of the so-called RIS MED movement, disagreed, asserting that the third wheel is the definitive teaching while the second wheel is provisional. (Both agree that the first wheel, setting forth the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS to sRĀVAKAs, is provisional.) For the Dge lugs pas, the highest of all Buddhist doctrines is that all phenomena in the universe are empty of an intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA); emptiness is the lack of any substantial existence. The Dge lugs pas are therefore proponents of "self-emptiness" (rang stong), arguing that that each object of experience is devoid of intrinsic nature; the unenlightened wrongly believe that such a nature is intrinsic to the object itself. In reality, everything, from physical forms to the omniscient mind of a buddha, is equally empty, and this emptiness is a nonaffirming negation (PRASAJYAPRATIsEDHA), an absence with nothing else implied in its place. Furthermore, this emptiness of intrinsic nature is the ultimate truth (PARAMĀRTHASATYA). The Jo nang pa's look to the third wheel, especially to those statements that describe the nonduality of subject and object to be the consummate nature (PARINIsPANNA) and the understanding of that nonduality as the highest wisdom, described as eternal, self-arisen, and truly established. This wisdom exists autonomously and is thus not empty in the way that emptiness is understood by the Dge lugs. Instead, this wisdom consciousness is empty in the sense that it is devoid of all defilements and conventional factors, which are extraneous to its true nature. Hence, the Jo nang pas speak of "other emptiness" (gzhan stong) the absence of extrinsic and extraneous qualities. For the Dge lugs pas, the supreme interpreter of the doctrine of emptiness (as they understand it) is CANDRAKĪRTI. The Jo nang pas do not dispute the Dge lugs reading of Candrakīrti but they deny Candrakīrti the rank of premier expositor of NĀGĀRJUNA's thought. For them, Candrakīrti teaches an emptiness that is a mere negation of intrinsic existence, which they equate with nihilism. They also do not deny that such an exposition is found in Nāgārjuna's philosophical treatises (YUKTIKĀYA). However, they claim that those works do not represent Nāgārjuna's final view, which is expressed instead in his devotional corpus (STAVAKĀYA), notably the DHARMADHĀTUSTAVA, and, according to some, in the works of VASUBANDHU, the author of two defenses of the prajNāpāramitā sutras. Those who would deny the ultimate existence of wisdom, such as Candrakīrti, are classed as "one-sided Madhyamakas" (phyogs gcig pa'i dbu ma pa) as opposed to the great Madhyamakas among whom they would include the Nāgārjuna of the hymns and ĀRYADEVA as well as thinkers whom the Dge lugs classify as Yogācāra or SVĀTANTRIKA MADHYAMAKA: ASAnGA, Vasubandhu, MAITREYANĀTHA, and sĀNTARAKsITA.
::: "Death is the question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not yet found itself. If there were no siege of death, the creature would be bound for ever in the form of an imperfect living. Pursued by death he awakes to the idea of perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Death is the question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not yet found itself. If there were no siege of death, the creature would be bound for ever in the form of an imperfect living. Pursued by death he awakes to the idea of perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
decreet ::: n. --> The final judgment of the Court of Session, or of an inferior court, by which the question at issue is decided.
demurrer ::: n. --> One who demurs.
A stop or pause by a party to an action, for the judgment of the court on the question, whether, assuming the truth of the matter alleged by the opposite party, it is sufficient in law to sustain the action or defense, and hence whether the party resting is bound to answer or proceed further.
Desideri, Ippolito. (1684-1733). Jesuit missionary to Tibet. He was born in the town of Pistoia in Tuscany in 1684 and entered the Jesuit order in 1700, studying at the Collegio Romano. Following two years of instruction in theology, he requested permission to become a missionary, departing for India in 1712 and reaching Goa the following year. Assigned to the Tibet mission, Desideri and another priest, the Portuguese Manoel Freyre, traveled by ship, horseback, and on foot to Leh, the capital of Ladakh, the westernmost Tibetan domain. Setting out for LHA SA, they were able to survive the difficult seven-month journey thanks to the protection of a Mongolian princess who allowed the two priests to join her caravan. They reached the Tibetan capital on March 18, 1716. After just a month in Lha sa, Desideri's companion decided to return to India. Desideri received permission from the ruler of Tibet, the Mongol warlord Lha bzang Khan, to remain in Tibet. He arranged for Desideri to live at RA MO CHE, and then at SE RA monastery. His notes from his studies indicate that he worked through textbooks on elementary logic through to the masterworks of the DGE LUGS sect, including the LAM RIM CHEN MO of TSONG KHA PA, which Desideri would eventually translate into Italian (the translation is lost). He would go on also to write a number of works in Tibetan, both expositions of Christianity and refutations of Buddhism. The most substantial of these was his unfinished "Inquiry into the Doctrines of Previous Lives and of Emptiness, Offered to the Scholars of Tibet by the White Lama called Ippolito" (Mgo skar [sic] gyi bla ma i po li do zhes bya ba yis phul ba'i bod kyi mkhas pa rnams la skye ba snga ma dang stong pa nyid kyi lta ba'i sgo nas zhu ba). Desideri remained in Tibet until 1721, when Tibet became a mission field of the Capuchins, requiring that the Jesuit abandon his work. After several years in India, he returned to Italy in 1727. Desideri arrived in Rome in the midst of the Rites Controversy, the question of whether non-Christian rituals (such as Chinese ancestor worship) had a place in the methods of the missionaries. As a Jesuit, Desideri was on the losing side of this debate. The last years of his life were consumed with composing long defenses of his work, as well as the remarkable account of his time in Tibet, the Relazione de' viaggi all' Indie e al Thibet. He died in Rome on April 13, 1733. Because of the suppression of the Jesuit order, Desideri's works remained largely unknown, both in Italian and Tibetan, until the twentieth century.
Determination: (Lat. determinare, to limit) The limitation of a reality or thought to a narrower field than its original one. In a monistic philosophy the original, single principle must be considered as narrowed down to various genera and species, and eventually to individual existence if such be admitted, in order to introduce that differentiation of reality which is required in a multiple world. In Platonism, the Forms or Ideas are one for each type of thing but are "determined" to multiple existence by the addition of matter (Timaeus). Neo-Platonism is even more interested in real determination, since the One is the logical antecedent of the Many. Here determination is effected by the introduction of negations, or privations, into successive emanations of the One. With Boethius, mediaeval philosophy became concerned with the determination of being-in-general to an actual manifold of things. In Boethianism there is a fusion of the question of real determination with that of logical limitation of concepts. In modern thought, the problem is acute in Spinozism: universal substance (substantia, natura, Deus) must be reduced to an apparent manifold through attributes, modes to the individual. Determination is said to be by way of negation, according to Spinoza (Epist. 50), and this means that universal substance is in its perfect form indeterminate, but is thought to become determinate by a sort of logical loss of absolute perfection. The theory is brought to an almost absurd simplicity in the Ontology of Chr. Wolff, where being is pictured as successively determined to genera, species and individual. Determination is also an important factor in the developmental theories of Hegel and Bergson. -- V.J.B.
Divisibility: The property in virtue of which a whole (whether physical, psychical or mathematical) may be divided into parts which do not thereby necessarily sever their relation with the whole. Divisibility usually implies not merely analysis or distinction of parts, but actual or potential resolution into parts. From the beginning philosophers have raised the question whether substances are infinitely or finitely divisible. Ancient materialism conceived of the physical atom as an indivisible substance. Descartes, however, and after him Leibniz, maintained the infinite divisibility of substance. The issue became the basis of Kant's cosmological antinomy (Crit. of pure Reason), from which he concluded that the issue was insoluble in metaphysical terms. In recent decades the question has had to take account of (1) researches in the physical atom, before which the older conception of physical substance has steadily retreated; and (2) the attempt to formulate a satisfactory definition of infinity (q.v.). -- O.F.K.
dweeb An even lower form of life than the {spod}, found in much the same habitat as the former. though more prevailent on {talker systems}. Unlike spods, upon receiving the desired response to the question "Are you male or female?", dweebs will then engage upon a detailed description of themselves and how wonderful they are, often in the hopes of truly impressing the other with their "charm" and "wit". Nearly all dweebs are male, but very few actually live up to the image that they present. Dweebs, unfortunately, are often the cause of ill-will, and may well bring a bad reputation to the system in question. They are often, however, easy to wind up and can be the source of great mirth to the seasoned user.
Equally difficult to deal with was the question whether (and how many) other spirits in the
evil or an opponent of God—-just as, when Abraham and Job "put God to the question, ’ they were not, on that
Explanation: In general: the process, art, means or method of making a fact or a statement intelligible; the result and the expression of what is made intelligible; the meaning attributed to anything by one who makes it intelligible; a genetic description, causal development, systematic clarification, rational exposition, scientific interpretation, intelligible connection, ordered manifestation of the elements of a fact or a statement. A. More technically, the method of showing discursively that a phenomenon or a group of phenomena obeys a law, by means of causal relations or descriptive connections, or briefly, the methodical analysis of a phenomenon for the purpose of stating its cause. The process of explanation suggests the real preformation or potential presence of the consequent in the antecedent, so that the phenomenon considered may be evolved, developed, unrolled out of its conditioning antecedents. The process and the value of a scientific explanation involve the question of the relation between cause and law, as these two terms may be identified (Berkeley) or distinguished (Comte). Hence modern theories range between extreme idealism and logical positivism. Both these extremes seem to be unsatisfactory: the former would include too much into science, while the latter would embrace a part of it only, namely the knowledge of the scientific laws. Taking into account Hume's criticism of causality and Mill's reasons for accepting causality, Russell proposes what seems to be a middle course, namely that regular sequences suggest causal relations, that causal relations are one special class of scientific generalization, that is one-way sequences in time, and that causal relations as such should not be used in the advanced stages of scientific generalization, functional relations being sufficient in all cases. However satisfactory in methodology, this view may not cover all the implications of the problem. B. There are three specific types of causal explanation, and their results may be combined: genetic or in terms of the direct and immediate conditions or causes producing a phenomenon (formal and efficient cause); descriptive, or in terms of the material elements of the phenomenon (material cause); teleological, or in terms of the ultimate end to be attained (final cause), either in accordance with the nature of the event or with the intention of the agent. The real causes of a phenomenon cannot be identified always, because the natural process of change or becoming escapes complete rationalization. But the attempt to rationalize the real by causal explanation, need not be abandoned in favor of a limited genetic description (postulational or functional) of the laws which may account for the particular phenomenon.
fell. The question is, which of the 9 orders is the
FITNESS. ::: The question is not of fitness or unfitness but of the acceptance of Grace. There is no human being whose physical outer consciousness is fit for the yoga. It is by Grace and a light from above that it can become capable and for that the necessity is to be persevering and open it to the Light.
flood ::: “And heard the questioning of the unsatisfied flood”
flood ::: n. **1. A large body of water; a great flow or stream of any fluid; any great overwhelming quantity, also poet. & fig. 2. The rise and flowing in of the tide. 3. The rising of a body of water and its overflowing onto normally dry land. 4. Any great outpouring or stream. floods. v. 5. To flow or pour in or as if in a flood. flooded, flooding. ::: And heard the questioning of the unsatisfied flood **
Great Runes Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some archaic {operating systems} still emit these. See also {runes}, {smash case}, {fold case}. Back in the days when it was the sole supplier of long-distance hardcopy transmision devices, the {Teletype Corporation} was faced with a major design choice. To shorten code lengths and cut complexity in the printing mechanism, it had been decided that {teletypes} would use a {monocase} {font}, either ALL UPPER or all lower. The Question Of The Day was therefore, which one to choose. A study was conducted on readability under various conditions of bad ribbon, worn print hammers, etc. Lowercase won; it is less dense and has more distinctive letterforms, and is thus much easier to read both under ideal conditions and when the letters are mangled or partly obscured. The results were filtered up through {management}. The chairman of Teletype killed the proposal because it failed one incredibly important criterion: "It would be impossible to spell the name of the Deity correctly." In this way (or so, at least, hacker folklore has it) superstition triumphed over utility. Teletypes were the major input devices on most early computers, and terminal manufacturers looking for corners to cut naturally followed suit until well into the 1970s. Thus, that one bad call stuck us with Great Runes for thirty years. (1994-12-02)
halting problem ::: The problem of determining in advance whether a particular program or algorithm will terminate or run forever. The halting problem is the canonical example of a otherwise the algorithm attempting to answer the question will itself run forever.Some special cases of the halting problem are partially solvable given sufficient resources. For example, if it is possible to record the complete are at most N possible different states then the algorithm can run for at most N steps without looping.A program analysis called termination analysis attempts to answer this question for limited kinds of input algorithm. (1994-10-20)
halting problem The problem of determining in advance whether a particular program or {algorithm} will terminate or run forever. The halting problem is the {canonical} example of a {provably unsolvable} problem. Obviously any attempt to answer the question by actually executing the algorithm or simulating each step of its execution will only give an answer if the algorithm under consideration does terminate, otherwise the algorithm attempting to answer the question will itself run forever. Some special cases of the halting problem are partially solvable given sufficient resources. For example, if it is possible to record the complete state of the execution of the algorithm at each step and the current state is ever identical to some previous state then the algorithm is in a loop. This might require an arbitrary amount of storage however. Alternatively, if there are at most N possible different states then the algorithm can run for at most N steps without looping. A program analysis called {termination analysis} attempts to answer this question for limited kinds of input algorithm. (1994-10-20)
hinge ::: n. --> The hook with its eye, or the joint, on which a door, gate, lid, etc., turns or swings; a flexible piece, as a strip of leather, which serves as a joint to turn on.
That on which anything turns or depends; a governing principle; a cardinal point or rule; as, this argument was the hinge on which the question turned.
One of the four cardinal points, east, west, north, or south.
IGNORANCE. ::: Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life.
This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth.
Sevenfold Ignorance ::: If we look at this Ignorance in which ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative existence in a material, ip a spatial and temporal universe, wc see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a many- sided self-ignorance. We are Ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming ; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence — that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self ; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becom- ing in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence — that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming ; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-sclf — that is the tViTid, \Vie egoistic ignorance. V/c aie ignorant of oat eteinai becoming in Time ; we take this Uttle life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space for our beginning, our middle and our end, — that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of that in us which is super-conscient, sub- conscient, intraconscient, circumcooscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence — that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming ; we take the mind or life or body or any two or all three tor our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to deter- mine sovereignly by its emergence from their operations, — that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoy- ment of our life in the world ; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal, — that is the seventh, the practical ignorance.
INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER It is important for scientists of all kinds to understand that everything has an individual character. Every primordial atom (monad) is something unique. Every combination of monads of whatever kind is something unique.
Every change (because of continual exchange of atoms in the aggregate) is unique. K
2.8.6
Uniformity is out of the question. Everything that exists is individual and unique and, once it has acquired the consciousness of unity, constitutes an ever-welcome contribution to the greater fullness of vibrant cosmic harmony. K 2.7.18 (K 2.5.9)
Intermediate between these doctrines is that of the Conceptualists, identified with the name of Abelard, who held that universals, while they exist only in the mind, yet correspond to real similarities in things, which previous to creation existed in the mind of God. These notions are well illustrated by the question as to the meaning of such words as motion, force, heat, or light. Are the things studied by science under those names generalizing terms, existing only in the mind and posterior to the objects which manifest them; or are they realities in themselves, prior to the objects, and of which the objects are manifestations? Science often unconsciously uses such words in both senses at once; force, for example, is treated as though it were at the same time a result of motion in matter and a cause of that motion.
In the Ethics these basic principles are applied to the solution of the question of human good. The good for man is an actualization, or active exercise, of those faculties distinctive of man, that is the faculties of the rational, as distinct from the vegetative and sensitive souls. But human excellence thus defined shows itself in two forms, In the habitual subordination of sensitive and appetitive tendencies to rational rule and principle, and in the exercise of reason in the search for and contemplation of truth. The former type of excellence is expressed in the moral virtues, the latter in the dianoetic or intellectual virtues. A memorable feature of Aristotle's treatment of the moral virtues is his theory that each of them may be regarded as a mean between excess and defect; courage, for example, is a mean between cowardice and rashness, liberality a mean between stinginess and prodigality. In the Politics Aristotle sets forth the importance of the political community as the source and sustainer of the typically human life. But for Aristotle the highest good for man is found not in the political life, nor in any other form of practical activity, but in theoretical inquiry and contemplation of truth. This alone brings complete and continuous happiness, because it is the activity of the highest part of man's complex nature, and of that part which is least dependent upon externals, viz. the intuitive reason, or nous. In the contemplation of the first principles of knowledge and being man participates in that activity of pure thought which constitutes the eternal perfection of the divine nature.
In the theory of obligation we find on the question of the meaning and status of right and wrong the same variety of views as obtain in the theory of value: "right," e.g., has only an emotive meaning (Ayer); or it denotes an intuited indefinable objective quality or relation of an act (Price, Reid, Clarke, Sidgwick, Ross, possibly Kant); or it stands for the attitude of some mind or group of minds towards an act (the Sophists, Hume, Westermarck). But it is also often defined as meaning that the act is conducive to the welfare of some individual or group -- the agent himself, or his group, or society as a whole. Many of the teleological and utilitarian views mentioned below include such a definition.
Inverse Address Resolution Protocol ::: (networking, protocol) (InARP) Additions to ARP typically used for Frame Relay. [Any other examples of its use?]Frame Relay stations route frames of a higher level protocol between LANs, across a Permanent Virtual Circuit. These stations are identified by their Data Link Control Identifier (DLCI), equivalent to an Ethernet address in a LAN itself.InARP allows a station to determine a protocol address (e.g. IP address) from a DLCI. This is useful if a new virtual circuit becomes available. Signalling messages announce its DLCI, but without the corresponding protocol address it is unusable: no frames can be routed to it.Reverse ARP (RARP) performs a similar task on an Ethernet LAN, however RARP answers the question What is my IP Address? whereas InARP answers the question What is your protocol address?.See RFC 2390.(2000-01-15)Incremental Prototyping Technology for Embedded Realtime
Inverse Address Resolution Protocol "networking, protocol" (InARP) Additions to {ARP} typically used for {Frame Relay}. [Any other examples of its use?] {Frame Relay} stations {route} {frames} of a higher level protocol between {LANs}, across a {Permanent Virtual Circuit}. These stations are identified by their {Data Link Control Identifier} (DLCI), equivalent to an {Ethernet address} in a {LAN} itself. InARP allows a station to determine a protocol address (e.g. {IP address}) from a DLCI. This is useful if a new {virtual circuit} becomes available. Signalling messages announce its DLCI, but without the corresponding protocol address it is unusable: no {frames} can be {routed} to it. {Reverse ARP} (RARP) performs a similar task on an {Ethernet} {LAN}, however RARP answers the question "What is my IP Address?" whereas InARP answers the question "What is your protocol address?". See {RFC 2390}. (2000-01-15)
Inverse Address Resolution Protocol ::: (networking, protocol) (InARP) Additions to ARP typically used for Frame Relay. [Any other examples of its use?]Frame Relay stations route frames of a higher level protocol between LANs, across a Permanent Virtual Circuit. These stations are identified by their Data Link Control Identifier (DLCI), equivalent to an Ethernet address in a LAN itself.InARP allows a station to determine a protocol address (e.g. IP address) from a DLCI. This is useful if a new virtual circuit becomes available. Signalling messages announce its DLCI, but without the corresponding protocol address it is unusable: no frames can be routed to it.Reverse ARP (RARP) performs a similar task on an Ethernet LAN, however RARP answers the question What is my IP Address? whereas InARP answers the question What is your protocol address?.See RFC 2390.(2000-01-15)
In vorbeigehen or vorbeireden, a patient will answer a question in such a way that one can tell the patient understood the question, although the answer itself may be very obviously wrong. For example "how many legs does a dog have?" - "six". This condition occurs in Ganser syndrome and has been observed in prisoners awaiting trial. Vorbeigehen (giving approximate answers) was the original term used by Ganser but Vorbeireden (talking past the point) is the term generally in use (Goldin 1955). This behaviour is also seen in people trying to feign psychiatric disorders (hence association with prisoners)
I remembered reading somewhere of an angel called Uriel and that he was a “regent of the sun.” He seemed a likely candidate. I was confirmed in this feeling when I came upon Uriel in Paradise Lost (111, 648 seq.) and found the archfiend himself providing warrant: “him Satan thus accosts./Uriel, for thou of those seav’n spirits that stand/In sight of God’s high Throne, gloriously bright,” etc. Poe’s Israfel, “Whose heart-strings are a lute,” was (or is) an Islamic angel, 2 and I wondered if that fact might rule him out. Then there was Longfellow’s Sandalphon. In the poem by that name, Longfellow described Sandalphon as the “Angel of Glory, Angel of Prayer.” A great angel, certainly: but, again, was he of an eminence sufficiently exalted to entitle him to “enter before the glory of the Lord” ? That was the question. Vondel’s Lucifer, Hey wood’s The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Dryden’s State of Innocence, Klopstock’s The Messiah —all these works yielded a considerable quantity of the celestial spirits, some in the top echelons, like Abdiel, Ithuriel, Uzziel, Zephon; but I had no way of telling whether any of them qualified. Surely, I comforted myself, there must be some source where the answer could be found. Actually there were a number of such sources. I had only to reach out my hand for books in my own library. Instead, in my then state of pneumatic innocence, I looked far afield.
jiaoxiang panshi. (J. kyoso hanjaku; K. kyosang p'ansok 教相判釋). In Chinese, lit., "classification and interpretation of the characteristics of the doctrine"; also known as jiaopan or PANJIAO (tenet classification). Tenet classification was a fundamental exegetical practice in East Asian Buddhism, in which scriptures or Buddhist teachings were ranked in order of their supposed relative profundity. The practice flourished in East Asia, especially during the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. As more translations of Buddhist texts became available in East Asia, indigenous exegetes struggled with the question of why this plethora of scriptural material, all of which purported to have been spoken by the Buddha himself, offered such differing presentations of Buddhist thought and practice. Drawing on the notion of UPĀYA, or skill in means, exegetes began to reflect on the context and intent of the different Buddhist scriptures that were now available to them. The origin of scriptures and their teachings were analyzed and evaluated comparatively; after which the texts were organized in a hierarchical or, in some cases, chronological, order. Different exegetical traditions adopted different classification criteria. The TIANTAI ZONG, for example, based its classification schema on the different (chronological) stages of the Buddha's teaching career, the content of those teachings, and the varying methods he used in preaching to his audience (see WUSHI BAJIAO). The HUAYAN ZONG, following the lead of FAZANG and CHENGGUAN, divided scriptures into five levels based on the profundity of their respective teachings: HĪNAYĀNA (viz., the ĀGAMAs), elementary MAHĀYĀNA (viz., YOGĀCĀRA and MADHYAMAKA), advanced Mahāyāna (SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA), sudden teachings (typically CHAN), and perfect teachings (AVATAMSAKASuTRA). Most exegetes placed the central scripture of their schools at the apex of their classificatory hierarchy, thereby using the tenet-classification system as a polemical tool to demonstrate the superiority of their own traditions. See also SIDDHĀNTA.
Jingtu qunyi lun. (J. Jodo gungiron; K. Chongt'o kunŭi non 浄土群疑論). In Chinese, "Treatise on Myriad Doubts concerning the PURE LAND," composed by the monk Huaigan (fl. c. seventh century CE). In this treatise, written largely in dialogic format, Huaigan attempts to address systematically various questions concerning the notion of rebirth in AMITĀBHA Buddha's pure land. The seven-roll treatise is divided into twelve sections in a total of 116 chapters, which cover a wide range of subjects concerning pure land doctrine. These include, as but a few representative examples, the location of the pure land within the three realms of existence (TRILOKA[DHĀTU]), the destiny (GATI) to which beings reborn there belong, where pure land rebirth belongs on MĀRGA schemata, and Huaigan's attempts to reconcile inconsistencies in different scriptures' accounts of the pure land. The Jingtu qunyi lun has therefore functioned almost as an encyclopedia for adherents of pure land teachings. The questions raised anticipate the criticisms of Huaigan's contemporaries, who specialized in the exegesis of the MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA and the new YOGĀCĀRA translations of XUANZANG; Huaigan's answers also reflect his own training in Yogācāra doctrine and his extensive command of Buddhist scriptural and commentarial literature.
j Mind ::: instrument of Truth. There are only three ways by which it can make itself a channel or instrument of Truth. Either it must fall silent in the Self and give room for a wider and greater consciousness ; or it must make itself passive to an inner Light and allow that Light to use it as a means of expres- sion ; or else it must itself change from the questioning intellec- tual superficial mind it now is to an intuitive intelligence, a mind of vision for the direct expression of the divine Truth.
Jueguan lun. (J. Zetsukanron; K. Cholgwan non 絶觀論). In Chinese, "Extinguishing Cognition Treatise," (translated into English as A Dialogue on the Contemplation-Extinguished), attributed to the legendary Indian founder of the CHAN school, BODHIDHARMA. The treatise largely consists of an imaginary dialogue between a certain learned man named Master Entrance-into-Principle (Ruli xiansheng) and his student Conditionality (Yuanmen), which unfolds as a series of questions and answers. In this dialogue, Entrance-into-Principle continuously negates the premises that underlie the questions his student Conditionality raises about the mind and its pacification, the nature of enlightenment, as well as other matters related to practice, meditation, and attainment. For example, in the opening dialogue, Conditionality asks, "What is the mind? How do we pacify it?" Master Entrance-into-Principle replies, "Neither positing 'mind' nor trying to 'pacify' it-this is pacifying it." By rejecting the dualistic perspectives inherent in Conditionality's questions, the Master finally opens his student to an experience of the pure wisdom that transcends all dualities. This style of negative argumentation, derived from MADHYAMAKA antecedents, is believed to be characteristic of the NIUTOU ZONG of the Chan school; the treatise is therefore often assumed to have been written by an adherent of that school, perhaps even by its seventh-century founder NIUTOU FARONG himself, or else during the zenith of the Niutou school in the third quarter of the eighth century. The treatise also makes use of Daoist terminology and thus serves as a valuable source for studying Chinese reinterpretations of sophisticated Buddhist doctrines. A controversial argument claiming that insentient beings also possess the buddha-nature (FOXING) also appears in the Jueguan lun. The treatise seems to have gone through several editions, some of which were preserved in the DUNHUANG caves in Chinese Xinjiang.
Kamalasīla. (T. Ka ma la shī la) (c. 740-795). One of the most important Madhyamaka authors of late Indian Buddhism, a major representative of the Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis, and a participant in the famous BSAM YAS DEBATE. According to Tibetan doxographies, he was a proponent of the YOGĀCĀRA-SVĀTANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA. Although little is known about his life, according to Tibetan sources he was a monk and teacher at NĀLANDĀ. Tibetan sources also count him as one of three (together with sĀNTARAKsITA and JNĀNAGARBHA) "Eastern Svātantrikas" (RANG RGYUD SHAR GSUM), suggesting that he was from Bengal. He was clearly a direct disciple of sāntaraksita, composing important commentaries on his teacher's two major works, the MADHYAMAKĀLAMKĀRA and the TATTVASAMGRAHA. The latter commentary, which is extant in Sanskrit, is an important source for both Hindu and Buddhist philosophical positions in the eighth century. sāntaraksita had gone to Tibet at the invitation of the Tibetan king KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN, where, with the assistance of PADMASAMBHAVA, he founded BSAM YAS, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet. According to tradition, at the time of his death sāntaraksita warned that a mistaken philosophical view would become established in Tibet and advised the king to invite Kamalasīla to come to Tibet in order to dispel it. This mistaken view was apparently that of Heshang MOHEYAN, a Northern CHAN (BEI ZONG) monk who had developed a following at the Tibetan court. Kamalasīla was invited, and a debate was held between the Indian monk and his Chinese counterpart, with the king serving as judge. It is unclear whether a face-to-face debate took place or rather an exchange of documents. According to Tibetan sources, the king declared Kamalasīla the winner, named MADHYAMAKA as the official philosophical school of his realm, and banished the Chinese contingent. (Chinese records describe a different outcome.) This event, variously known as the BSAM YAS DEBATE, the Council of Bsam yas, and the Council of Lhasa, is regarded as one of the key moments in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. Three of Kamalasīla's most important works appear to have been composed in response to the issues raised in the debate, although whether all three were composed in Tibet is not established with certainty. These texts, each entitled BHĀVANĀKRAMA or "Stages of Meditation," set forth the process for the potential BODHISATTVA to cultivate BODHICITTA and then develop sAMATHA and VIPAsYANĀ and progress through the bodhisattva stages (BHuMI) to buddhahood. The cultivation of vipasyanā requires the use of both scripture (ĀGAMA) and reasoning (YUKTI) to understand emptiness (suNYATĀ); in the first Bhāvanākrama, he sets forth the three forms of wisdom (PRAJNĀ): the wisdom derived from hearing or learning (sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNĀ), the wisdom derived from thinking and reflection (CINTĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ), and the wisdom derived from meditation (BHĀVANĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ). This "gradual" approach, very different from what was advocated in the Chinese CHAN ZONG, is set forth in all three of the Bhāvanākrama, which, according to Tibetan tradition, were composed in Tibet after the Bsam yas debate, at the request of the king. However, only the third, and the briefest, directly considers, and refutes, the view of "no mental activity" (amanasikāra), which is associated with Moheyan. It was also during his time in Tibet that Kamalasīla composed his most important independent (i.e., noncommentarial) philosophical work, the MADHYAMAKĀLOKA, or "Illumination of the Middle Way," a wide-ranging exposition of the Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis. It deals with a number of central epistemological and logical issues to articulate what is regarded as the defining tenet of the Yogācāra-Svātantrika-Madhyamaka school: that major YOGĀCĀRA doctrines, such as "mind-only" (CITTAMĀTRA), and the three natures (TRISVABHĀVA) are important in initially overcoming misconceptions, but they are in fact only provisional (NEYĀRTHA) teachings for those who have not yet understood the Madhyamaka view. The Madhyamakāloka is also important for its exploration of such central MAHĀYĀNA doctrines as the TATHĀGATAGARBHA and the question of the EKAYĀNA. On this latter point, Kamalasīla argues against the Yogācāra position that there are three final vehicles (for the sRĀVAKA, PRATYEKABUDDHA, and BODHISATTVA, with some beings excluded from any path to liberation) in favor of the position that there is a single vehicle to buddhahood (BUDDHAYĀNA) for all beings. Kamalasīla is said to have been murdered in Tibet by partisans of the Chinese position, who caused his death by squeezing his kidneys.
Kena Upanishad or Kenopanishad (Sanskrit) Kenopaniṣad [from kena by whom + upaniṣad ] An Upanishad of the Sama-Veda, which opens with the question: “By whom commanded do mind, life, voice, eye, and ear go forth into being?”
Lewis, Clarence Irving: (1883-) Professor of Philosophy at Harvard. In Logic, Lewis has originated and defended strict implication (q.v.) in contrast to material implication, urging that formal inference should be based on a relation which can be known to hold without knowing what is true or false of this particular universe. See his Survey of Symbolic Logic, and his and C. H. Langford's Symbolic Logic, esp. Ch. VIII. Lewis has argued also for "queer logics", that is, abstract systems somewhat different from the abstract system usually interpreted as logic. Lewis raises the question how "queer" a system can be and still be interpretable properly as a system of logic.
Mabinogion (Welsh) A plural form invented by Lady Charlotte Guest and applied to the Mabinogi and other medieval or earlier romances which she translated from Welsh to English. The Mabinogi proper has four branches: the stories of Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed (Pwyll prince of Dyfed); Manawyddan fab Llyr (Manawyddan son of Llyr); Branwen ferch Llyr (Branwen daughter of Llyr); and Math fab Mathonwy. The tales as they come down to us were written down in South Wales some time before the Conquest — in the last two centuries of Welsh independence — and are marked by great beauty of style and literary finish. Matthew Arnold compares them to “peasants’ huts built of the stones of Ephesus”: the substance of them comes from a profound antiquity which, with its wisdom, the latest tellers of them did not fully understand. As to that antiquity: when Bran the Blessed invaded Ireland, we are told, there was no sea between Wales and Ireland, but only two small rivers. These being unbridged, the question arose, how should the hosts of the Island of the Mighty cross them? A question Bran solved by laying down his body from bank to bank, saying: “He who is Chief, let him be the Bridge,” a saying that contains a great part of the secret wisdom of the Druids.
Madhyamakāloka. (T. Dbu ma snang ba). In Sanskrit, "Illumination of the Middle Way"; the major independent (as opposed to commentarial) work of the late eighth-century Indian master KAMALAsĪLA. The work is preserved only in Tibetan translation. While the MADHYAMAKĀLAMKĀRA of Kamalasīla's teacher, sĀNTARAKsITA, is considered the foundational philosophical text of the YOGĀCĀRA-MADHYAMAKA synthesis, the Madhyamakāloka is its most important and detailed exposition. As such, it deals with a number of central epistemological and logical issues to articulate what is regarded as the defining tenet of the YOGĀCĀRA-SVĀTANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA school: that major YOGĀCĀRA doctrines, such as "mind-only" (CITTAMĀTRA) and the three natures (TRISVABHĀVA), are important in initially overcoming misconceptions, but they are in fact only provisional (NEYĀRTHA) teachings for those who have not yet understood the Madhyamaka view. The Madhyamakāloka is also important for its exploration of such central MAHĀYĀNA doctrines as the TATHĀGATAGARBHA and the question of the EKAYĀNA. On this latter point, Kamalasīla argues against the Yogācāra position that there are three final vehicles (sRĀVAKA, PRATYEKABUDDHA, and BODHISATTVA vehicles, with some beings excluded from any path to liberation; see SAMUCCHINNAKUsALAMuLA; ICCHANTIKA) in favor of the position that there is a single vehicle to buddhahood for all beings.
Mahādeva. (T. Lha chen; C. Mohetipo; J. Makadaiba; K. Mahajeba 摩訶提婆). An Indian monk of questionable historicity, credited with the infamous "five theses" (paNcavastuni). Mahādeva appears in numerous accounts of the early centuries of the Buddhist order, but the various reports of dates, his affiliation, and his character are contradictory. Although extolled in some accounts, the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ recounts that he had sexual relations with his mother; that he murdered his father, his mother, and several ARHATs; and that his cremation fire was fueled by dog excrement. Some accounts make him a participant at the second Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, SECOND), said to have occurred a century after the Buddha's death, which resulted in the schism of the SAMGHA into the conservative STHAVIRANIKĀYA and the more liberal MAHĀSĀMGHIKA. However, the chief point of controversy there seems to have been ten relatively minor rules of discipline, the most serious of which was the prohibition against monks and nuns handling gold or silver. If Mahādeva was a historical figure, it is more likely that he was involved in a later schism that occurred within the MahāsāMghika, as a result of which the followers of Mahādeva formed the CAITYA subsect. The theses attributed to Mahādeva challenge the authority of the arhat. Although there is a lack of consistency in the various renditions of the five theses, according to one widely repeated version, the five are (1) arhats are subject to erotic dreams and nocturnal emissions; (2) arhats retain a subtle form of ignorance, called the "unafflicted ignorance" (AKLIstĀJNĀNA), which prevents them from knowing the names of people, trees, grasses, and which road to take without being told; (3) arhats are therefore subject to doubt; (4) arhats thus must rely on others for corroboration, including on the question of whether they have achieved enlightenment; (5) entry into the path can be achieved simply by attaining the first DHYĀNA, becoming a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA), and exclaiming "Oh suffering" (rather than by the more protracted method of the noble eightfold path). These theses, which are widely reported, reflect the MahāsāMghika attack on the arhat ideal, and presumably the Sthaviranikāya conception thereof. When these charges were leveled, and by whom, is unclear. In some accounts, Mahādeva was himself subject to each of these faults (reflecting on his transgression, he cried out "Oh suffering" in the night and later sought to deceive those who heard him by explaining that he had been contemplating the first of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS) and stated the five theses to protect his own claim to being an arhat.
Mahālisutta. In Pāli, the "Discourse to Mahāli"; the sixth sutta of the DĪGHANIKĀYA (there is no equivalent recension in the Chinese translations of the ĀGAMAs); preached by the Buddha to the Licchavi chief Mahāli at the Kutāgārasālā in Vesāli (S. VAIsĀLĪ). Mahāli tells the Buddha that the ascetic Sunakkhatta claimed to be able to see heavenly forms but was not able to hear heavenly sounds. Mahāli asks whether such attainments are possible, whereupon the Buddha explains how through meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA) they indeed can be developed. He further explains to Mahāli that these supernatural powers are not the reason why people join the Buddhist order, but rather to attain the four degrees of sanctity, namely, those stream-enterer (P. sotāpanna; S. SROTAĀPANNA), once-returner (P. sakadagāmi; S. SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), nonreturner (P. anāgāmi; S. ANĀGĀMIN), and arahant (S. ARHAT). These are to be attained by following the noble eightfold path (P. ariyātthangikamagga; see S. AstĀnGIKAMĀRGA). The question is then raised as to whether the soul and body are the same or different. This leads to another discussion of Buddhist practice and attainments, beginning with taking refuge in the three jewels, observing the precepts, renouncing the world to become a Buddhist monk, and controlling the senses with mindfulness (P. sati; S. SMṚTI), to cultivating the four meditative absorptions (P. jhāna; S. dhyāna), and developing the six superknowledges (P. abhiNNā; S. ABHIJNĀ), which culminate in enlightenment and liberation from the cycle of rebirth.
Mahāparinirvānasutra. (T. Yongs su mya ngan las 'das pa chen po'i mdo; C. Da banniepan jing; J. Daihatsunehangyo; K. Tae panyolban kyong 大般涅槃經). In Sanskrit, "Discourse on the Great Decease" or the "Great Discourse on the Final Nirvāna"; also known in all languages simply as the Nirvāna Sutra. As its title suggests, the SuTRA describes the events and the Buddha's final instructions prior to his passage into PARINIRVĀnA and is thus the Sanskrit retelling of the mainstream version of the text (see MAHĀPARINIBBĀNASUTTA). However, although some of the same events are narrated in both versions, the Sanskrit text is very different in content, providing one of the most influential sources for MAHĀYĀNA views of the true nature of the Buddha and his NIRVĀnA, and of the buddha-nature (referred to in the sutra as both BUDDHADHĀTU, or "buddha-element," and TATHĀGATAGARBHA). There appear to have been a number of Sanskrit versions of the sutra, the earliest of which was likely compiled in Kashmir (see KASHMIR-GANDHĀRA) in the third century CE. One piece of internal evidence for the date of composition is the presence of prophecies that the dharma would fall into decline seven hundred years after the Buddha's passage into nirvāna. None of the Sanskrit versions is extant (apart from fragments), but several are preserved in Chinese and Tibetan translations. The earliest and shortest of these translations is in six rolls, translated into Chinese by FAXIAN (who brought the Sanskrit text to China from India) and BUDDHABHADRA, and completed in 418 CE. A second version was translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan at the end of the eighth century. The longest version, in forty rolls, was translated into Chinese by DHARMAKsEMA and completed in 423. It is known as the "Northern Text." This version was later translated into Tibetan from the Chinese as the Yongs su mya ngan las das pa chen po'i mdo. Besides the Tibetan translation of the long Chinese version by Dharmaksema, there is another version of the sutra in Tibetan translation, a Mahāparinirvānasutra in 3,900 slokas, translated by Jinamitra, Dhyānagarbha, and Ban de btsan dra, as well as a few folios of a translation of the sutra by Kamalagupta and RIN CHEN BZANG PO. The Faxian and Dharmaksema Chinese versions were subsequently edited into a single work, in thirty-six rolls. Chinese scriptural catalogues (JINGLU) also refer to two other translations of the sutra, made prior to that of Faxian, but these are no longer extant. There were significant differences between the versions of Faxian and Dharmaksema (and hence apparently in the Sanskrit recensions that they translated), so much so that scholars speculate that the shorter version was composed in a non-Mahāyāna community, with Mahāyāna elements being added to what evolved into the longer version. The most famous of the differences between the versions occurs on the question of whether all beings, including "incorrigibles" (ICCHANTIKA), possess the buddha-nature; the shorter version says that they do not and they are therefore condemned to eternal damnation; the longer version says that they do and thus even they retain the capacity to achieve enlightenment. The shorter version of the sutra describes the SAMGHA as consisting of monks and nuns and preaches about the need to provide donations (DĀNA) to them; the longer version includes the laity among the saMgha and preaches the need for charity to all persons. The longer version also recommends various forms of punishment, including execution, for those who denigrate the Mahāyāna. The sutra also makes reference to other famous sutras, such as the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, and is mentioned in other sutras, such as the MAHĀMEGHASuTRA. The Mahāparinirvānasutra, like other important sutras extolling tathāgatagarbha thought, such as the sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA, plays on the classical doctrine of the four "inverted views" (VIPARYĀSA), according to which sentient beings mistakenly view that which is suffering as being pleasurable, that which is impermanent as permanent, that which is impure as pure, and that which is without self as having self. In this sutra, by contrast, the four right views of suffering, impermanence, impurity, and no-self are proclaimed to be erroneous when describing the Buddha, his nirvāna, and the buddhadhātu; these are instead each said to be in fact blissful, permanent, pure, and endowed with self (see GUnAPĀRAMITĀ). Thus, the Buddha did not pass into nirvāna, for his lifespan is incalculable. The Buddha's nirvāna-which is referred to in the sutra as "great nirvāna" (mahānirvāna) or "great final nirvāna" (MAHĀPARINIRVĀnA)-differs from that of the ARHAT. The nirvāna of the arhat is said to be merely the state of the absence of the afflictions (KLEsA) but with no awareness of the buddhadhātu. The nirvāna of the buddha is instead eternal, pure, blissful, and endowed with self, a primordially existent reality that is only temporarily obscured by the klesa; when that nirvāna and buddhadhātu are finally "recognized," buddhahood is then achieved. The Buddha reveals the existence of this nirvāna to bodhisattvas. Because the buddhadhātu is present within all sentient beings, these four qualities are therefore found not simply in the Buddha but in all beings. This implies, therefore, that the Buddha and all beings are endowed with self, in direct contradiction to the normative Buddhist doctrine of no-self (ANĀTMAN). Here, in this sutra, the teaching of no-self is described as a conventional truth (SAMVṚTISATYA): when the Buddha said that there was no self, what he actually meant was that there is no mundane, conditioned self among the aggregates (SKANDHA). The Buddha's true teaching, as revealed at the time of his nirvāna, is that there is a "great self" or a "true self" (S. mahātman; C. dawo), which is the buddhadhātu, in all beings. To assert that there is no self is to misunderstand the true dharma. The doctrine of emptiness (suNYATĀ) thus comes to mean the absence of that which is compounded, suffering, and impermanent. These teachings would become influential in Tibet, especially among the proponents of the doctrine of "other emptiness" (GZHAN STONG). See also GUnAPĀRAMITĀ.
Mahīsāsaka. [alt. MahiMsāsaka] (P. MahiMsāsaka; T. Sa ston pa; C. Huadi bu; J. Kejibu; K. Hwaji pu 化地部). One of the eighteen traditional "mainstream" (i.e., non-MAHĀYĀNA) NIKĀYAs or schools of Indian Buddhism. The school may be named eponymously after its founder, whose name seems to mean "Governing the Land," a brāhmana who had been a district governor before becoming an ARHAT. The school probably emerged some three centuries after the demise of the Buddha. Within the traditional division of schools into two groups, the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA and the STHAVIRANIKĀYA, the Mahīsāsaka is placed among the latter. The school was an offshoot of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA and it may have spawned in turn the later DHARMAGUPTAKA school. Epigraphic evidence of the school has been found as far north as the Punjab and as far south as NĀGĀRJUNAKOndĀ. The Chinese pilgrim FAXIAN came across its recension of the VINAYA in Sri Lanka. Like the other schools of the day, the Mahīsāsaka distinguished itself from its contemporaries through its position on a number of contested issues, including the question of which works should be included in the TRIPItAKA. In accordance with the Sarvāstivāda, it upheld that notion that dharmas function during all three time periods of past, present, and future. On the question of the whether or not there was an intermediate state (ANTARĀBHAVA) between death and rebirth, the Mahīsāsaka asserted that there was not, but that a subtle form of the aggregates (SKANDHA) was carried forward into the next lifetime. The Mahīsāsaka also asserted that the fourth noble truth of the path (MĀRGASATYA) was an unconditioned factor (ASAMSKṚTADHARMA) like the third noble truth of cessation (NIRODHASATYA). The school also held that the Buddha is a member of the SAMGHA, a question with important implications for the division of alms and monastic properties. The YOGĀCĀRA-exegete ASAnGA is said to have been ordained in this school.
“Meditate all the time — nothing is so easy and so helpful. Far better is this for most students than to have a set period: quiet, unremitting thought on the questions you have, continuing even when the hands are busy with the tasks of the day, and the mind itself quite absorbed by other duties. In the back of the consciousness there can still be this steady undercurrent of thought. It is likewise a protecting shield in all one’s affairs, for it surrounds the body with an aura drawn forth from the deeper recesses of the auric egg . . .” (FSO 39).
microLenat /mi:"-kroh-len"-*t/ The unit of {bogosity}, written uL; the consensus is that this is the largest unit practical for everyday use. The microLenat, originally invented by David Jefferson, was promulgated as an attack against noted computer scientist {Doug Lenat} by a {tenured graduate student} at {CMU}. Doug had failed the student on an important exam for giving only "AI is bogus" as his answer to the questions. The slur is generally considered unmerited, but it has become a running gag nevertheless. Some of Doug's friends argue that *of course* a microLenat is bogus, since it is only one millionth of a Lenat. Others have suggested that the unit should be redesignated after the grad student, as the microReid. [{Jargon File}]
Mogharāja. (C. Mianwang [biqiu]; J. Men'o [biku]; K. Myonwang [pigu] 面王[比丘]). The Sanskrit and Pāli proper name of an eminent ARHAT declared by the Buddha to be foremost among monks who wore coarse robes. According to Pāli sources, he was a brāhmana ascetic who studied under Bāvarī, and one of sixteen students sent to defeat the Buddha in debate. When the Buddha answered the question posed by Mogharāja, he attained arahantship immediately. He became known for stitching his robes from coarse cloth discarded by tailors and dyers. Mogharāja suffered from various skin ailments and, believing his residence to be infested with insects, he slept on a straw bed laid out in the open, even during the winter. When the Buddha inquired how he fared, Mogharāja responded that he was happy even in the cold. The boils and sores that covered his body were a consequence of a misdeed performed in a previous life. During the time of Padumuttara Buddha he had blackened the floor of the Buddha's cloister with soot from a fire; for this transgression, he was compelled to suffer in hell for a thousand years and after that to endure skin disease for another five hundred lifetimes. It was during the lifetime of Padumuttara that Mogharāja heard him praise a disciple as foremost among those who wore coarse clothing, and he resolved to attain that preeminence during the dispensation of a future buddha.
Muchu mondo. (夢中問答). In Japanese, "Questions and Answers in Dreams," a primer on ZEN (C. CHAN) training attributed to the RINZAISHu master MUSo SOSEKI (1275-1351). The Muchu mondo is a record of the answers given by Muso to the questions regarding Zen asked by Ashikaga Tadayoshi (1306-1352), the brother of the shogun Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358). In total, Tadayoshi and Muso exchanged ninety-three sets of questions and answers that covered a wide range of subjects, including everything from praying for merit to the study of koans (C. GONG'AN) and the practice of seated meditation (J. zazen; C. ZUOCHAN). Due to its simple and clear discussion of topics relevant to a lay audience, the Muchu mondo has been widely read within the tradition and republished often.
Nominalism: (Lat. nominalis, belonging to a name) In scholastic philosophy, the theory that abstract or general terms, or universals, represent no objective real existents, but are mere words or names, mere vocal utterances, "flatus vocis". Reality is admitted only to actual physical particulars. Universals exist only post res. Opposite of Realism (q.v.) which maintains that universals exist ante res. First suggested by Boethius in his 6th century Latin translation of the Introduction to the Categories (of Aristotle) by Porphyry (A.D. 233-304). Porphyry had raised the question of how Aristotle was to be interpreted on this score, and had decided the question in favor of what was later called nominalism. The doctrine did not receive any prominence until applied to the Sacrament of the Eucharist by Berengar in the 11th century. Berengar was the first scholastic to insist upon the evidence of his senses when examining the nature of the Eucharist. Shortly after, Roscellinus, who had broadened the doctrine to the denial of the reality of all universals and the assertion of the sole reality of physical particulars, was forced by the Council of Soissons to recant. Thereafter, despite Abelard's unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the doctrine with realism by finding a half-way position between the two, nominalism was not again explicitly held until William of Occam (1280-1349) revived it and attempted to defend it within the limits allowed by Church dogma. In the first frankly nominalistic system Occam distinguished between the real and the grammatical meanings of terms or universal. He assigned a real status to universals in the mind, and thus was the first to see that nominalism can have a subjective as well as an objective aspect. He maintained that to our intellects, however, everything real must be some particular individual thing. After Occam, nominalism as an explicitly held doctrine disappeared until recently, when it has been restated in certain branches of Logical Positivism. -- J.K.F.
Non-Being: Non-existence or the non-existent; absence or piivation of existence or the existent; absence of determinateness or what is thus indeterminate; unreality of the unreal --either lack of any reality or what is so lacking (absence, negation, or privation of reality), or lack of a particular kind of reality or what is so lacking; otherness or existents of another order of reality than a specified type; failure to fulfill the defining criteria of some category, or what so fails; a category encompassing any of the above. Confusion of non-existence and unreality renders paradoxical the question whether non-being is. -- M.T.K.
nondeterministic polynomial time "complexity" (NP) A set or property of computational {decision problems} solvable by a {nondeterministic Turing Machine} in a number of steps that is a {polynomial} function of the size of the input. The word "nondeterministic" suggests a method of generating potential solutions using some form of {nondeterminism} or "trial and error". This may take {exponential time} as long as a potential solution can be verified in {polynomial time}. NP is obviously a superset of P ({polynomial time} problems solvable by a deterministic {Turing Machine} in {polynomial time}) since a deterministic algorithm can be considered as a degenerate form of nondeterministic algorithm. The question then arises: is NP equal to P? I.e. can every problem in NP actually be solved in polynomial time? Everyone's first guess is "no", but no one has managed to prove this; and some very clever people think the answer is "yes". If a problem A is in NP and a polynomial time algorithm for A could also be used to solve problem B in polynomial time, then B is also in NP. See also {Co-NP}, {NP-complete}. [Examples?] (1995-04-10)
On the question as to what acts are right or to be done ethical theories fall into two groups (1) Axiological theories seek to determine what is right entirely by reference to the goodness or value of something, thus miking the theory of obligation dependent on the theorv of value. For a philosopher like Martineau it is the comparative goodness of its motive that determines which act is right. For a teleologist it is the comparative amount of good which it brings or probably will bring into being that determines which act is right -- the egoistic teleologist holding that the right act is the act which is most conducive to the good of the agent (some Sophists, Epicurus, Hobbes), and the universalistic teleologist holding that the right act is the act which is most conducive to the good of the world as a whole (see Utilitarianism). (2) On deontological theories see Deontological ethics and Intuitionism.
paramatthasangha. (S. paramārthasaMgha; T. don dam pa'i dge 'dun; C. shengyi seng; J. shogiso; K. sŭngŭisŭng 勝義僧). In Pāli, "ultimate community"; a technical term used in the Pāli commentaries to answer the question of what precisely constitutes the SAMGHA jewel among the three jewels (RATNATRAYA), as in the refuge (sARAnA) formula, "I go for refuge to the saMgha." That is, does the saMgha constitute the larger community of the Buddhist faithful, only those who have been ordained as monks or nuns, or only those who achieved some level of enlightenment? According to the Pāli tradition, the paramatthasangha consists of the seven and/or eight dakkhineyyapuggala (S. daksinīyapudgala), or "person(s) worthy to receive gifts," described in the DĪGHANIKĀYA. In keeping with the canonical definition of noble persons (P. ariyapuggala; S. ĀRYAPUDGALA), the term paramatthasangha thus refers specifically to ordained monks and nuns who have reached any of the four ĀRYA paths: that of (1) sotāpanna (S. SROTAĀPANNA), or stream-enterer, (2) sakkadāgāmi (S. SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), or once-returner, (3) anāgāmi (S. ANĀGĀMIN), or nonreturner, and (4) arahant (S. ARHAT), or worthy one. Technically speaking, then, this advanced paramatthasangha group constitutes the saMgha jewel. The paramatthasangha is contrasted in the Pāli commentaries with the SAMMUTISAnGHA (S. saMvṛtisaMgha) or "conventional saMgha," which is comprised of monks and nuns who are still puthujjanas (S. PṚTHAGJANA), or ordinary unenlightened persons. Since the paramatthasangha refers only to those who are both enlightened and ordained, the term necessarily excludes all laymen, enlightened or otherwise, as well as any nonhuman beings (such as divinities, etc.) even if they are enlightened, for nonhuman beings are ineligible for ordination as monks or nuns. Also excluded are all BODHISATTVAs, since by definition in the Pāli tradition bodhisattvas remain unenlightened persons until the night that they attain buddhahood. Buddhas are also excluded from the paramatthasangha because they comprise the buddha jewel among the three jewels. While novices technically are outside the saMgha by virtue of not having yet received higher ordination (UPASAMPADĀ), enlightened novices are nevertheless included in the paramatthasangha as objects of refuge.
pāramitā. (P. pāramī; T. pha rol tu phyin pa; C. boluomi; J. haramitsu; K. paramil 波羅蜜). In Sanskrit, "perfection," a virtue or quality developed and practiced by a BODHISATTVA on the path to becoming a buddha. The term is paranomastically glossed by some traditional commentators as "gone beyond" or "gone to the other side" (see PARA), although it seems in fact to derive from Skt. parama, meaning "highest" or "supreme." The best-known enumeration of the perfections is a group of six: giving (DĀNA), morality (sĪLA), patience or forbearance (KsĀNTI), effort (VĪRYA), concentration (DHYĀNA), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). There are also lists of ten perfections. In the MAHĀYĀNA (specifically in the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA), the list of ten includes the preceding six, to which are added method (UPĀYA), vow (PRAnIDHĀNA), power (BALA), and knowledge (JNĀNA), with the explanation that the bodhisattva practices the perfections in this order on each of the ten bodhisattva stages or grounds (BHuMI). Thus, giving is perfected on the first bhumi, morality on the second, and so on. In Pāli sources, where the perfections are called pāramī, the ten perfections are giving (dāna), morality (sīla), renunciation (nekkhamma; S. NAIsKRAMYA), wisdom (paNNā), effort (viriya), patience (khanti), truthfulness (sacca; S. SATYA), determination (adhitthāna; S. ADHIstHĀNA), loving-kindness (mettā; S. MAITRĪ), and equanimity (upekkhā; S. UPEKsĀ). The practice of these perfections over the course of the many lifetimes of the bodhisattva's path eventually fructifies in the achievement of buddhahood. The precise meaning of the perfections is discussed at length, as is the question of how the six (or ten) are to be divided between the categories of merit (PUnYA) and wisdom (JNĀNA). For example, according to one interpretation of the six perfections, giving, morality, and patience contribute to the collection of merit (PUnYASAMBHĀRA); concentration and wisdom contribute to the collection of wisdom (JNĀNASAMBHĀRA), and effort contributes to both. Commentators also consider what distinguishes the practice of these six from other instances of the practice of giving, etc. Some MADHYAMAKA exegetes, for example, argue that these virtues only become perfections when the bodhisattva engages in them with an understanding of emptiness (suNYATĀ); for example, giving a gift without clinging to any conception of giver, gift, or recipient.
particularism ::: In epistemology, the approach wherein one asks the question "What do we know?" before asking "How do we know?" The term appears in Roderick Chisholm's "The Problem of the Criterion" and in the work of his student, Ernest Sosa ("The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge"). Particularism is contrasted with methodism, which answers the latter question before the former. Since the question "What do we know?" implies that humans retain knowledge, particularism is fundamentally anti-skeptical.
pessimism ::: The belief that the experienced world is the worst possible. It involves a general belief that things are bad, and tend to become worse; or that looks to the eventual triumph of evil over good; it contrasts with optimism, the contrary belief in the goodness and betterment of things generally. A common conundrum illustrates optimism versus pessimism with the question - does one regard a given glass of water as: "Is the glass half empty or half full?" Conventional wisdom expects optimists to reply with half full and pessimists to respond with half empty, but this is not always the case.
petitionarily ::: adv. --> By way of begging the question; by an assumption.
Petitio principii, or begging the question, is a fallacy involving the assumption as premisses of one or more propositions which are identical with (or in a simple fashion equivalent to) the conclusion to be proved, or which would require the conclusion for their proof, or which are stronger than the conclusion and contain it as a particular case or otherwise as an immediate consequence. There is a fallacy, however, only if the premisses assumed (without proof) are illegitimate for some other reason than merely their relation to the conclusion -- e.g., if they are not among the avowed presuppositions of the argument, or if they are not admitted by an opponent in a dispute. -- A.C.
pleadings ::: n. pl. --> The mutual pleas and replies of the plaintiff and defendant, or written statements of the parties in support of their claims, proceeding from the declaration of the plaintiff, until issue is joined, and the question made to rest on some single point.
*Prāsangika. (T. Thal 'gyur ba). In Sanskrit, "Consequentialist," one of the two main branches of the MADHYAMAKA school, so called because of its use of consequences (PRASAnGA) rather than autonomous syllogisms (SVATANTRAPRAYOGA) in debates about the nature of reality. Its leading proponents include BUDDHAPĀLITA and CANDRAKĪRTI. The other branch of Madhyamaka is *SVĀTANTRIKA, represented by such figures as BHĀVAVIVEKA, JNĀNAGARBHA, sĀNTARAKsITA, and KAMALAsĪLA. The designation "Prāsangika" as a subschool of Madhyamaka does not occur in Indian literature; it was coined retrospectively in Tibet to describe the later developments of the Indian Madhyamaka school. In the doxographical literature of the DGE LUGS sect in Tibet, where *Prāsangika is ranked as the preeminent school of Indian Buddhist philosophy, Prāsangika differs from Svātantrika primarily on questions of the nature of emptiness (suNYATĀ) and the correct role of reasoning in understanding it, although other points of difference are also enumerated, including the question of whether the arhat must understand the selflessness of phenomena (DHARMANAIRĀTMYA) in order to achieve liberation.
pratītyasamutpāda. (P. paticcasamuppāda; T. rten cing 'brel bar 'byung ba; C. yuanqi; J. engi; K. yon'gi 起). In Sanskrit, "dependent origination," "conditioned origination," lit., "origination by dependence" (of one thing on another); one of the core teachings in the Buddhist doctrinal system, having both ontological, epistemological, and soteriological implications. The notion of the conditionality of all existence is foundational in Buddhism. According to some accounts of the Buddha's life, it constituted the fundamental insight on the night of his enlightenment. In other accounts, in the first seven days and nights following his enlightenment, he sat contemplating the significance of his experience; finally on the seventh night he is said to have contemplated the fully realized chain of dependent origination in both forward and reverse order. In one of the earliest summaries of the Buddha's teachings (which is said to have been enough to bring sĀRIPUTRA to enlightenment), the Buddha is said to have taught: "When this is present, that comes to be. / From the arising of this, that arises. / When this is absent, that does not come to be. / From the cessation of this, that ceases." (P. imasmiM sati idaM hoti/imasuppādā idaM uppajjati/imasmiM asati idaM na hoti/imassa nirodhā idaM nirujjhati). This notion of causality (idaMpratyayatā) is normatively described in a sequence of causation involving twelve interconnected links (NIDĀNA), which are often called the "twelvefold chain" in English sources: (1) ignorance (AVIDYĀ, P. avijjā), (2) predispositions, or volitional actions (S. SAMSKĀRA, P. sankhāra), (3) consciousness (S. VIJNĀNA, P. viNNāna), (4) name and form, or mentality and materiality (NĀMARuPA), (5) the six internal sense-bases (ĀYATANA), (6) sensory contact (S. SPARsA, P. phassa), (7) sensation, or feeling (VEDANĀ), (8) thirst, or attachment (S. TṚsnĀ, P. tanhā), (9) grasping, or clinging (UPĀDĀNA), (10) existence or a process of becoming (BHAVA), (11) birth or rebirth (JĀTI), and (12) old age and death (JARĀMARAnA), this last link accompanied in its full recital by sorrow (soka), lamentation (parideva), pain (DUḤKHA) grief (daurmanasya), and despair (upāyāsa). Some formulations of the chain, as in the MAHĀPADĀNASUTTANTA, include only ten links (skipping the first two), suggesting that the standard list of twelve links developed over time. (The commentary to the Mahāpadānasuttanta explains away this inconsistency by noting that the ten-linked chain does not take past lives into account but applies only to the current life.) Each link in this chain of causality is said to be the condition for the following link, thus: "dependent on ignorance, predispositions (S. avidyāpratyayāḥ saMskārāḥ; P. avijjāpaccayā sankhārā), ... dependent on birth, old age and death (S. jātipratyayāM jarāmaranaM; P. jātipaccayā jarāmaranaM)." This chain of dependent origination stands as the middle way (MADHYAMAPRATIPAD) between the two "extreme views" (ANTAGRĀHADṚstI) of eternalism (sĀsVATADṚstI)-viz., the view that there is a perduring soul that continues to be reborn unchanged from one lifetime to the next-and annihilationism (UCCHEDADṚstI)-the view that the person ceases to exist at death and is not reborn-because it validates the imputed continuity (SAMTĀNA) of the personality, without injecting any sense of a permanent substratum of existence into the process. Thus, when the Buddha is asked, "Who is it who senses?," he rejects the question as wrongly framed and rephrases it as, "With what as condition does sensation (vedanā) occur? By contact (sparsa)." Or when asked, "Who is it who is reborn?," he would rephrase the question as "With what as condition does birth (jāti) occur? By becoming (bhava)." Accurate understanding of dependent origination thus serves as an antidote (PRATIPAKsA) to the affliction of delusion (MOHA) and contemplating the links in this chain helps to overcome ignorance (AVIDYĀ). ¶ The twelvefold chain of dependent origination is generally conceived to unfold in what are referred to as the "forward" and "reverse" orders, although in fact both versions proceed through the chain in the same sequence. First, as a progressive process of ontological becoming (bhavānulomaparīksā), the forward version of the chain describes the process by which ignorance ultimately leads to birth and death and thus the full panoply of existence in the turning wheel of SAMSĀRA; in forward order, the chain is therefore an elaboration of the second noble truth, the truth of the origin of suffering (SAMUDAYASATYA). Second, the reverse order of the chain describes a negative process of soteriological eradication (ksayavyayānulomaparīksā), where the cessation of ignorance serves as the condition for the cessation of predispositions, and so on through the entire chain until even old age and death are eradicated and the adept is released from continued rebirth in saMsāra; in reverse order, the chain is therefore an elaboration of the third noble truth, the truth of the cessation of suffering (NIRODHASATYA). As a chain of ontological becoming, some traditional commentators organize the twelve links as occurring during the course of a single lifetime. Other commentators instead divide the twelve links over three lifetimes to illustrate explicitly the process of rebirth: ignorance and predispositions are assigned to a previous lifetime; consciousness, name and form, sense-fields, contact, sensation, thirst, grasping, and becoming are assigned to the current lifetime; and this leads to future birth, and eventual old age and death, in the immediately following lifetime. According to this interpretation, ignorance does not refer to a primordial ignorance, but rather to a specific moment of unsystematic reflection on things (AYONIsOMANASKĀRA) that prompts a volitional action (saMskāra). The predispositions created by that action imprint themselves on consciousness, which refers here to the "linking consciousness" (pratisaMdhivijNāna) that links the past and present lives, a consciousness that is reborn, developing into a body with internal sense organs and a mind with sensory consciousnesses, which come into contact with external sensory objects, giving rise to sensations that are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Sensations of pleasure, for example, can give rise to attachment to those sensations and then clinging, an intensification of that attachment. Such clinging at the end of life sustains the process of becoming, which leads to rebirth in the next existence, where one once again undergoes aging and death. This sequence of dependent conditions has repeated itself since time immemorial and will continue on indefinitely until liberation from rebirth is achieved. To illustrate the role of pratītyasamutpāda in the cycle of rebirth, its twelve links are sometimes depicted around the perimeter of the "wheel of life" (BHAVACAKRA). ¶ In the Upanisāsutta of the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA, the standard twelvefold chain of dependent origination is connected to an alternate chain that is designated the "supramundane dependent origination" (P. lokuttara-paticcasamuppāda; S. lokottara-pratītyasamutpāda), which explicitly outlines the process leading to liberation. Here, the last factor in the standard chain, that of old age and death (jarāmarana), is substituted with suffering, which in turn becomes the first factor in this alternate series. According to the Nettipakarana, a Pāli exegetical treatise, this chain of supramundane dependent origination consists of (1) suffering (P. dukkha; S. duḥkha), (2) faith (P. saddhā; S. sRADDHĀ), (3) delight or satisfaction (P. pāmojja; S. prāmodya), (4) rapture or joy (P. pīti; S. PRĪTI), (5) tranquillity or repose (P. passaddhi; S. PRAsRABDHI), (6) mental ease or bliss (SUKHA), (7) concentration (SAMĀDHI), (8) knowledge and vision that accords with reality (P. yathābhutaNānadassana; S. YATHĀBHuTAJNĀNADARsANA), (9) disillusionment (P. nibbidā; S. NIRVEDA), (10) dispassion (P. virāga; S. VAIRĀGYA), (11) liberation (P. vimutti; S. VIMUKTI), and (12) knowledge of the destruction of the contaminants (P. āsavakkhayaNāna; S. āsravaksayajNāna; see ĀSRAVAKsAYA). The Kimatthiyasutta of the AnGUTTARANIKĀYA gives a slightly different version of the first links, replacing suffering and faith with (1) observance of precepts (P. kusalasīla; S. kusalasīla) and (2) freedom from remorse (P. avippatisāra; S. avipratisāra). ¶ Another denotation of pratītyasamutpāda is a more general one, the notion that everything comes into existence in dependence on something else, with such dependence including the dependence of an effect upon its cause, the dependence of a whole upon its parts, and the dependence of an object on the consciousness that designates it. This second meaning is especially associated with the MADHYAMAKA school of NĀGĀRJUNA, which sees a necessary relation between dependent origination and emptiness (suNYATĀ), arguing that because everything is dependently arisen, everything is empty of independence and intrinsic existence (SVABHĀVA). Dependent origination is thus central to Nāgārjuna's conception of the middle way: because everything is dependent, nothing is independent, thus avoiding the extreme of existence, but because everything is originated, nothing is utterly nonexistent, thus avoiding the extreme of nonexistence. In East Asia, and specifically the HUAYAN ZONG, this second interpretation of dependent origination is also recast as the unimpeded (wu'ai) "dependent origination of the DHARMADHĀTU" (FAJIE YUANQI), in which all things throughout the entire universe are conceived as being enmeshed in a multivalent web of interconnection and interdependency.
punyajNānasaMbhāra. (T. bsod nams dang ye shes kyi tshogs; C. fuzhi ziliang; J. fukuchi shiryo; K. pokchi charyang 福智資糧). In Sanskrit, "equipment" or "collection of merit and knowledge," a term that encompasses all the practices and deeds that a BODHISATTVA perfects along the path to buddhahood. It is said that a bodhisattva must amass both a collection of merit (PUnYA) and a collection of knowledge (JNĀNA) in order to achieve buddhahood; this is because merit will help to overcome the afflictions (KLEsA), while knowledge will help to counter ignorance (AVIDYĀ). MAHĀYĀNA exegetes explain that the collection of merit fructifies as the material body (RuPAKĀYA) of a buddha (which includes both the SAMBHOGAKĀYA and the NIRMĀnAKĀYA) and the collection of knowledge fructifies as the DHARMAKĀYA. As such, the collection of merit is associated with UPĀYA, or method, and the collection of knowledge is associated with PRAJNĀ, or wisdom. Mahāyāna scholiasts have also explored the question of the relationship between the accumulation of these two collections and the practice of the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ). Among various opinions set forth, a common one states that practice of the first three perfections-of giving (DĀNA), morality (sĪLA), patience (KsĀNTI)-contributes to the collection of merit; the practice of the last two perfections-concentration (DHYĀNA) and wisdom (prajNā)-contributes to the collection of knowledge; and the perfection of effort (VĪRYA) contributes to both.
Quaestio: (Scholastic) A subdivision or chapter of some treatise. Later, the special form, imitating or actually reproducing a discussion, to which a thesis is proposed, then the arguments against it are listed, next the objections or argumenta contra are exposed, and the question is solved in the so-called corpus articuli, usually introduced by the standing phrase respondeo dicendum, finally the objections against the thesis and the response or solution are taken up one by one and answered. This is the quaestio disputata. The quaestio quodlibetalis stems from disputations in which all kind of problems were brought up and the leader had to arrange them somehow and to answer all of them. -- R.A.
quiddity ::: n. --> The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity, of a thing; that which answers the question, Quid est? or, What is it?
A trifling nicety; a cavil; a quibble.
Rāstrapālaparipṛcchā. (T. Yul 'khor skyong gis zhus pa; C. Huguo pusahui [jing]; J. Gokoku bosatsue[kyo]; K. Hoguk posal hoe [kyong] 護國菩薩會[經]). In Sanskrit, "The Questions of RĀstRAPĀLA," one of the earliest MAHĀYĀNA sutras; the terminus ad quem for its composition is the third century CE, when DHARMARAKsA (c. 233-310) translated the sutra into Chinese (c. 270 CE), probably following a manuscript from the GANDHĀRA region in the KHAROstHĪ script. (The extant Sanskrit recension is much later.) There are also two later Chinese translations, one made c. 585-600 by JNĀNAGUPTA and other c. 980 by DĀNAPĀLA. The Rastrapāla represents a strand of early MAHĀYĀNA (found also in such sutras as the KĀsYAPAPARIVARTA and the UGRAPARIPṚCCHĀ) that viewed the large urban monasteries as being ill-suited to serious spiritual cultivation because of their need for constant fund-raising from the laity and their excessive entanglements in local politics. The Rāstrapāla strand of early Mahāyāna instead dedicated itself to forest dwelling (see ARANNAVĀSI) away from the cities, like the "rhinoceros" (KHAdGAVIsĀnA), and advocated a return to the rigorous asceticism (S. DHuTAGUnA; see P. DHUTAnGA) that was thought to characterize the early SAMGHA. To the Rāstrapāla author(s), the Buddha's own infinitely long career as a bodhisattva was an exercise in self-sacrifice and physical endurance, which they in turn sought to emulate through their own asceticism. The physical perfection the Buddha achieved through this long training, as evidenced in his acquisition of the thirty-two major marks of the superman (MAHĀPURUsALAKsAnA), receives special attention in the sutra. This approach is in marked contrast to other early Mahāyāna sutras, such as the AstASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ, which were suspicious of the motives of forest dwellers and supportive of cenobitic monasticism in the towns and cities, where monks and nuns would be in a better position to serve the laity by preaching the dharma to them.
Ratnakīrti. (T. Dkon mchog grags pa). Eleventh-century YOGĀCĀRA logician and student of JNānasrīmitra at VIKRAMAsĪLA monastery. He is the author of ten extant treatises on logic, including the Apohasiddhi, or "Proof of Exclusion." The work deals with the topic of APOHA, the theory that words refer to concepts rather than to objects in the world and that these concepts are the exclusion of their opposite, i.e., that one's idea of a table, for example, is not that of a specific table but rather a generic image of everything that is "non-nontable," i.e., not not a table. Buddhist logicians considered the question of the negative and positive aspects of the meaning of words as well as their sequence; Ratnakīrti argued that they are simultaneous. The Ratnakīrtikalā, a commentary to the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, is attributed to Ratnakīrti, but its author may be a different scholar of the same name.
Renunciation Not a painful obligation, but the result of a free choice; nor the giving up of an object of desire in favor of another object of desire. The question of advantage or disadvantage does not enter into it; these are delusions of the personal ego. The one who truly renounces abandons the acquisitiveness and desire for personal advantage which are the law of the lower nature, and follows the law of the higher nature, which is the law of love and harmony. The question as to whether he gains or loses is then relatively meaningless for him, for he has forgotten himself, because he has found his greater self.
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.
rhetorical question: A question, which does not expect an answer, usually asked for effect or comment. On occasion the speaker or author offers the answer to the question.
riddle: A word puzzle where something is described and then a question is asked. An audience would then have to decipher and guess what the speaker is referring to. The answer to the question is usually an object, person or idea. Riddles have been popular in all cultures, during all ages.
RTFS ::: (jargon) 1. Read The Fucking Source. Variant form of RTFM, used when the problem at hand is not necessarily obvious and not answerable from the manuals - directed at the person asking the question, but rather at the people who failed to provide adequate documentation.2. Read The Fucking Standard; this oath can only be used when the problem area (e.g. a language or operating system interface) has actually been codified in a deficient, the deprecation inherent in this term may be directed as much against the standard as against the person who ought to read it.[Jargon File]
RTFS "jargon" 1. Read The Fucking Source. Variant form of {RTFM}, used when the problem at hand is not necessarily obvious and not answerable from the manuals - or the manuals are not yet written and maybe never will be. For even trickier situations, see {RTFB}. Unlike RTFM, the anger inherent in RTFS is not usually directed at the person asking the question, but rather at the people who failed to provide adequate documentation. 2. Read The Fucking Standard; this oath can only be used when the problem area (e.g. a language or operating system interface) has actually been codified in a ratified standards document. The existence of these standards documents (and the technically inappropriate but politically mandated compromises that they inevitably contain, and the impenetrable {legalese} in which they are invariably written, and the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic process by which they are produced) can be unnerving to hackers, who are used to a certain amount of ambiguity in the specifications of the systems they use. (Hackers feel that such ambiguities are acceptable as long as the {Right Thing} to do is obvious to any thinking observer; sadly, this casual attitude toward specifications becomes unworkable when a system becomes popular in the {Real World}.) Since a hacker is likely to feel that a standards document is both unnecessary and technically deficient, the deprecation inherent in this term may be directed as much against the standard as against the person who ought to read it. [{Jargon File}]
safe A safe program analysis is one which will not reach invalid conclusions about the behaviour of the program. This may involve making safe approximations to properties of parts of the program. A safe approximation is one which gives less information. For example, strictness analysis aims to answer the question "will this function evaluate its argument"?. The two possible results are "definitely" and "don't know". A safe approximation for "definitely" is "don't know". The two possible results correspond to the two sets: "the set of all functions which evaluate their argument" and "all functions". A set can be safely approximated by another which contains it.
safe ::: A safe program analysis is one which will not reach invalid conclusions about the behaviour of the program. This may involve making safe approximations to properties of parts of the program. A safe approximation is one which gives less information.For example, strictness analysis aims to answer the question will this function evaluate its argument?. The two possible results are definitely and don't their argument and all functions. A set can be safely approximated by another which contains it.
Sajip. (四集). In Korean, "Fourfold Collection," a compilation of three Chinese CHAN and one Korean SoN texts that has been used in Korean Buddhist seminaries (kangwon) since at least the eighteenth century as the core of the monastic curriculum. The four books in the collection provide monks and nuns with, first, a systematic overview of mature Korean Buddhist thought and soteriology, focusing on the accommodation between Buddhist doctrinal study (KYO)-specifically HUAYAN (K. Hwaom) thought-and CHAN (Son) meditation practice and different schemata of awakening (C. WU; K. o) and cultivation (C. xiu; K. su); and second, extensive grounding in the theory and mode of practice of "questioning meditation" (K. kanhwa Son; C. KANHUA CHAN), the predominant form of meditative practice in Korea since the middle of the Koryo dynasty. The books of the "Fourfold Collection" are, in their traditional order: (1) The "Letters of Dahui" (C. DAHUI PUJUE CHANSHI SHU, better known in Korea by its abbreviated title Sojang, C. SHUZHUANG), a collection of the correspondence between the Chinese LINJI master DAHUI ZONGGAO (1089-1163) and various of his lay and ordained students, which describe the specifics of kanhua Chan meditation; (2) The "Chan Prolegomenon" (CHANYUAN ZHUQUANJI DUXU, known in Korea by its abbreviated title of TOSo), by GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841), which provides an overarching hermeneutical framework-drawing on a series of polarities such as sudden and gradual, emptiness and self-nature, true and provisional-through which to understand the relationships among the teachings of representative traditions of Chan and the various doctrinal traditions, leading to a vision of Buddhism that reconciles the scholastic schools and the Chan schools; (3) The "Essentials of Chan" (GAOFENG HESHANG CHANYAO, typically known in Korea as the SoNYO), by GAOFENG YUANMIAO (1238-1295), which Koreans have considered one of the clearest expositions of kanhwa Son in all of Son literature and use as a primer on the technique; (4) The "Excerpts from the 'Dharma Collection and Special Practice Record' with Personal Notes" (PoPCHIP PYoRHAENGNOK CHoRYO PYoNGIP SAGI, usually known by its abbreviated title CHoRYO) by POJO CHINUL (1158-1210), which offers an exhaustive examination of the question of whether enlightenment is achieved via a sudden or gradual process of soteriological development, advocating as the optimal stratagem the approach of sudden awakening followed by gradual cultivation (K. tono chomsu; C. DUNWU JIANXIU), and first introducing to Korea the kanhwa Son technique; through this examination, Chinul specifically correlates the path as described in the doctrinal teachings of Buddhism (Kyo) with the practice of Son, an approach that subsequently becomes emblematic of Korean Buddhism. The four books of the Sajip are thus intended to provide monks and nuns with substantial grounding in the theory and practice of kanhwa Son prior to their beginning intensive training in the meditation hall (Sonbang).
sākyamuni. (P. Sakkamuni; T. Shākya thub pa; C. Shijiamouni; J. Shakamuni; K. Sokkamoni 釋迦牟尼). In Sanskrit, "Sage of the sĀKYA Clan," one of the most common epithets of GAUTAMA Buddha, especially in the MAHĀYĀNA traditions, where the name sĀKYAMUNI is used to distinguish the historical buddha from the myriad other buddhas who appear in the SuTRAs. The sākyas were a tribe in northern India into which was born SIDDHĀRTHA GAUTAMA, the man who would become the historical buddha. According to the texts, the sākya clan was made up of KsATRIYAs, warriors or political administrators in the Indian caste system. The sākya clan flourished in the foothills of the Himālayas, near the border between present-day Nepal and India. Following the tradition's own model, which did not seek to provide a single and seamless biography of Gautama or sākyamuni until centuries after his death, this dictionary narrates the events of the life of the Buddha in separate entries about his previous lives, his teachings, his disciples, and the places he visited over the course of his forty-five years of preaching the dharma. In India, accounts of events in the life of the Buddha first appeared in VINAYA materials, such as the Pāli MAHĀVAGGA or the LOKOTTARAVĀDA school's MAHĀVASTU. Among the Pāli SUTTAs, one of the most detailed accounts of the Buddha's quest for enlightenment occurs in the ARIYAPARIYESANĀSUTTA. It is noteworthy that many of the most familiar events in the Buddha's life are absent in some of the early accounts: the miraculous conception and birth; the death of his mother, Queen MĀYĀ; his sheltered youth; the four chariot rides outside the palace where he beholds the four portents (CATURNIMITTA); his departure from the palace; and his abandonment of his wife, YAsODHARĀ, and his newborn son, RĀHULA. Those stories appear much later, in works like AsVAGHOsA's beloved verse narrative, the BUDDHACARITA, from the second century CE; the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school's third- or fourth-century CE LALITAVISTARA; and the NIDĀNAKATHĀ, the first biography of the Buddha in Pāli, attributed to BUDDHAGHOSA in the fifth century CE, some eight centuries after the Buddha's passing. Even in that later biography, however, the "life of the Buddha" ends with ANĀTHAPIndADA's gift of JETAVANA grove to the Buddha, twenty years after the Buddha's enlightenment and twenty-five years before his death. Other biographical accounts end even earlier, with the conversion of sĀRIPUTRA and MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA. Indeed, Indian Buddhist literature devotes more attention to the lives of previous buddhas and to the former lives (JĀTAKA) of Gautama or sākyamuni than they do to biographies of his final lifetime (when biography is taken to refer to a chronological account from birth to death). And even there, the tradition takes pains to demonstrate the consistency of the events of his life with those of previous buddhas; in fact, all buddhas are said to perform the same eight or twelve deeds (see BAXIANG; TWELVE DEEDS OF A BUDDHA). The momentous events of his birth, renunciation, enlightenment under the BODHI TREE, and first turning of the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) are described in detail in a range of works, and particular attention is given to his death, in both the Pāli MAHĀPARINIBBANASUTTA and the Sanskrit MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA. And all traditions, whether MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS or the Mahāyāna, are deeply concerned with the question of the location of the Buddha after his passage into PARINIRVĀnA.
samānapratibhāsadharmin. (T. chos can mthun snang). In Sanskrit, lit. "subject that appears the same" or "commonly appearing subject," a term in Buddhist logic, particularly important in Tibetan Buddhism. This term refers to the common basis (T. gzhi mthun) that must be present in order for a reasonable and constructive debate to occur. In other words, if adherents of two different doctrinal systems try to debate, but employ only terms and ideas that are unique to their own systems, then no position can be effectively proven or refuted. Furthermore, the participants in a debate must have a common understanding of the subject that is being debated and a shared understanding of what constitutes a logical example. This term is also understood to mean that the participants in a debate must understand the scripture on which the debate is based. Some Buddhist philosophers, such as Jayānanda, refuted the notion that debate or inference (ANUMĀNA) was in any way constructive on the following general grounds: to the enlightened mind, all phenomena are devoid of substance or definition and therefore no phenomenon can serve as a samānapratibhāsadharmin. This is a central issue in MADHYAMAKA, where the proponent of emptiness (suNYATĀ) rejects the notion of anything that possesses its own nature (SVABHĀVA). This raises the question of whether there is a commonly appearing subject in a debate between a Madhyamaka and non-Madhyamaka; if there is, to what degree is the appearance "common"; and how does the Madhyamaka present his position under such circumstances.
Same and Other: One of the "persistent problems" of philosophy which goes back at least to Parmenides and Heraclitus (q.v.). In its most general form it raises the question: Is reality explicable in terms of one principle, ultimately the same in all things (monism), or is reality ultimately heterogeneous, requiring a plurality of first principles (pluralism)? Plato really developed the problem (in the Sophist, Parmenides and Timaeus) by suggesting that both sameness and otherness are required for a complete explanation of things. It is closely related to the problems of One and Many, Identity and Difference, of Universal and Individual in Mediaeval Scholasticism. With Hegel and Fichte the problem becomes fused with that of Spirit and Matter, or of Self and Not-self. -- V.J.B.
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.
saMvṛti. (P. sammuti; T. kun rdzob; C. shisu/su; J. sezoku/zoku; K. sesok/sok 世俗/俗). In Sanskrit, "conventional" or "relative"; a term used to designate the phenomena, concepts, and understanding associated with unenlightened, ordinary beings (PṚTHAGJANA). SaMvṛti is akin to the Sanskrit term LAUKIKA (mundane), in that both are used to indicate worldly things or unenlightened views, and is typically contrasted with PARAMĀRTHA, meaning "ultimate" or "absolute." In Sanskrit the term carries the connotation of "covering, concealing," implying that the independent reality apparently possessed by ordinary phenomena may seem vivid and convincing, but is in fact ultimately illusory and unreal. Much analysis and debate has occurred within the various philosophical schools regarding the questions of if, how, and in what way saMvṛti or conventional phenomena exist. For example, in his PRASANNAPADĀ, the seventh-century scholar CANDRAKĪRTI lists the following three characteristics of saMvṛti. First, they conceal reality (avacchādana). Second, they are mutually dependent (anyonyasamāsraya), meaning that saMvṛti phenomena are dependent on causes and conditions. Finally, they are concerned with worldly activities or speech (lokavyavahāra). Buddhas and BODHISATTVAs use their understanding of conventional reality to help them convey the DHARMA to ordinary beings and lead them away from suffering. See also SAMVṚTISATYA.
sāriputra. (P. Sāriputta; T. Shā ri bu; C. Shelifu; J. Sharihotsu; K. Saribul 舍利弗). In Sanskrit, "Son of sārī"; the first of two chief disciples of the Buddha, along with MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA. sāriputra's father was a wealthy brāhmana named Tisya (and sāriputra is sometimes called Upatisya, after his father) and his mother was named sārī or sārikā, because she had eyes like a sārika bird. sārī was the most intelligent woman in MAGADHA; she is also known as sāradvatī, so sāriputra is sometimes referred to as sāradvatīputra. sāriputra was born in Nālaka near RĀJAGṚHA. He had three younger brothers and three sisters, all of whom would eventually join the SAMGHA and become ARHATs. sāriputra and Mahāmaudgalyāyana were friends from childhood. Once, while attending a performance, both became overwhelmed with a sense of the vanity of all impermanent things and resolved to renounce the world together. They first became disciples of the agnostic SANJAYA VAIRĀtĪPUTRA, although they later took their leave of him and wandered through India in search of the truth. Finding no solution, they parted company, promising one another that whichever one should succeed in finding the truth would inform the other. It was then that sāriputra met the Buddha's disciple, AsVAJIT, one of the Buddha's first five disciples (PANCAVARGIKA) and already an arhat. sāriputra was impressed with Asvajit's countenance and demeanor and asked whether he was a master or a disciple. When he replied that he was a disciple, sāriputra asked him what his teacher taught. Asvajit said that he was new to the teachings and could only provide a summary, but then uttered one of the most famous statements in the history of Buddhism, "Of those phenomena produced through causes, the TATHĀGATA has proclaimed their causes (HETU) and also their cessation (NIRODHA). Thus has spoken the great renunciant." (See YE DHARMĀ s.v.). Hearing these words, sāriputra immediately became a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA) and asked where he could find this teacher. In keeping with their earlier compact, he repeated the stanza to his friend Mahāmaudgalyāyana, who also immediately became a streamenterer. The two friends resolved to take ordination as disciples of the Buddha and, together with five hundred disciples of their former teacher SaNjaya, proceeded to the VEnUVANAVIHĀRA, where the Buddha was in residence. The Buddha ordained the entire group with the EHIBHIKsUKĀ ("Come, monks") formula, whereupon all except sāriputra and Mahāmaudgalyāyana became arhats. Mahāmaudgalyāyana was to attain arhatship seven days after his ordination, while sāriputra reached the goal after a fortnight upon hearing the Buddha preach the Vedanāpariggahasutta (the Sanskrit recension is entitled the Dīrghanakhaparivrājakaparipṛcchā). The Buddha declared sāriputra and Mahāmaudgalyāyana his chief disciples the day they were ordained, giving as his reason the fact that both had exerted themselves in religious practice for countless previous lives. sāriputra was declared chief among the Buddha's disciples in wisdom, while Mahāmaudgalyāyana was chief in mastery of supranormal powers (ṚDDHI). sāriputra was recognized as second only to the Buddha in his knowledge of the dharma. The Buddha praised sāriputra as an able teacher, calling him his dharmasenāpati, "dharma general" and often assigned topics for him to preach. Two of his most famous discourses were the DASUTTARASUTTA and the SAnGĪTISUTTA, which the Buddha asked him to preach on his behalf. Sāriputra was meticulous in his observance of the VINAYA, and was quick both to admonish monks in need of guidance and to praise them for their accomplishments. He was sought out by others to explicate points of doctrine and it was he who is said to have revealed the ABHIDHARMA to the human world after the Buddha taught it to his mother, who had been reborn in the TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven; when the Buddha returned to earth each day to collect alms, he would repeat to sāriputra what he had taught to the divinities in heaven. sāriputra died several months before the Buddha. Realizing that he had only seven days to live, he resolved to return to his native village and convert his mother; with this accomplished, he passed away. His body was cremated and his relics were eventually enshrined in a STuPA at NĀLANDĀ. sāriputra appears in many JĀTAKA stories as a companion of the Buddha, sometimes in human form, sometimes in animal form, and sometimes with one of them a human and the other an animal. sāriputra also plays a major role in the MAHĀYĀNA sutras, where he is a common interlocutor of the Buddha and of the chief BODHISATTVAs. Sometimes he is portrayed as a dignified arhat, elsewhere he is made the fool, as in the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA when a goddess turns him into a woman, much to his dismay. In either case, the point is that the wisest of the Buddha's arhat disciples, the master of the abhidharma, does not know the sublime teachings of the Mahāyāna and must have them explained to him. The implication is that the teachings of the Mahāyāna sutras are therefore more profound than anything found in the canons of the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS. In the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYA ("Heart Sutra"), it is sāriputra who asks AVALOKITEsVARA how to practice the perfection of wisdom, and even then he must be empowered to ask the question by the Buddha. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, it is sāriputra's question that prompts the Buddha to set forth the parable of the burning house. The Buddha predicts that in the future, sāriputra will become the buddha Padmaprabha.
Self-love: The term may be used to denote self-complacency or self-admiration (see Spinoza, Ethics, Book III, Prop. 55, note), but in ethical discussion it usually designates concern for one's own individual interest, advantage, or happiness. Taking the term in this latter sense philosophers have debated the question whether or not all of our actions, approvals, etc., are motivated entirely by self-love. Hobbes holds that they are. Spinoza, similarity, holds that the endeavor to conserve oneself is the basis of all of one's actions and virtues. Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, and Hume, in opposition to Hobbes, argued that benevolence or sympathy and the moral sense or conscience are springs of action which are not reducible to self-love. Butler also pointed out that self-love itself presupposes the existence of certain primary desires, such as hunger, with whose satisfaction it is concerned, and which therefore cannot be subsumed under it. See Egoism. -- W.K.F.
Sign-Language: A system of signs established either traditionally (primitive tribes) or technically (deaf-mutes) for the purpose of communicating concepts or sentences, rather than letters or sounds or words as in signalling The question of the priority of vocal and gesture speech is much debated, but there is no doubt that primitive peoples used signs for communicating intentions and expressing their needs, especially when dealing with tribes with a different tongue. This is almost a psychological reflex, as it may be noted in the elementary improvised mimic of travellers among people they do not understand, and also in the vivid gestures accompanying the utterances of even civilized people like those of the Mediternnean shores. Sign-languages have a psychological, sociological and ethnological importance, as they may reveal the fundamental trains of thought, the sociological status, the race peculiarities, the geographical segregation, and even the beliefs and rituals of those who use them. Their study would also give material for various syntactical, semantical and logical problems.
Solomon, King of Israel and Judah (Hebrew) Shĕlomoh [from shālōm prosperous cf Arab zuleima, Greek Salomon Latin solomo, genitive solomonis, French Salomon] Peace, prosperity; according to orthodox Biblical chronology, he lived 993-953 BC, the youngest son of David whom he succeeded through the influence of his mother Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan. Throughout the East, especially in Arabia and thence in Europe, there are many legends of his wisdom and magical powers, and notably with regard to his seal, the six-pointed star or double interlaced equilateral triangles (Solomon’s seal); his meeting with the Queen of Sheba and his answering of the questions and riddles propounded by her and others; and his judgments. Solomon is said to have gotten “his secret learning from India through Hiram, the king of Ophir, and perhaps Sheba” (IU 1:135, 136n).
srenika heresy. (C. Xianni waidao, J. Senni gedo, K. Sonni oedo 先尼外道). A heresy that originated with srenika VATSAGOTRA, an ascetic wanderer (PARIVRĀJAKA) and contemporary of GAUTAMA Buddha, who claimed that the impermanent physical body was simply a temporary vessel for a permanent self (ĀTMAN); also known as the Senika heresy. In the Aggi-Vacchagottasutta ("Discourse to Vatsagotra on the [Simile of] Fire"), the seventy-second sutta in the Pāli MAJJHIMANIKĀYA, Vacchagotta (the Pāli equivalent of Vatsagotra) has a celebrated exchange with the Buddha concerning ten "indeterminate questions" (AVYĀKṚTA)-i.e., whether the world is eternal or not eternal, infinite or finite, what is the state of the TATHĀGATA after death, etc. The Buddha refuses to respond to any of the questions, since an answer would entangle him in an indefensible philosophical position. Instead, to convey some semblance of the state of the tathāgata after death, the Buddha uses the simile of extinguishing of fire: just as, after a fire has been extinguished, it would be inappropriate to say that it has gone anywhere, so after the tathāgata has extinguished each of the five aggregates (SKANDHA), they cannot be said to have gone anywhere. At the conclusion of the discourse, Vatsagotra accepts the Buddha as his teacher. (The Ānandasutta of the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA explains that the Buddha kept silent in response to Vatsagotra's questions about the nature of the self in order to prevent him from falling into the extremes of either sĀsVATAVĀDA, "eternalism," or UCCHEDAVĀDA, "annihilationism.") The DAZHIDU LUN (*MahāprajNāpāramitāsāstra) identifies the Vacchagotta of the Pāli suttas with srenika Vatsagotra, the namesake of what in MAHĀYĀNA sources is termed the srenika heresy. The locus classicus for this heresy appears in the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA. There, when srenika raises the question about whether there is a self or not, the Buddha keeps silent, so srenika himself offers a fire simile, but with a radically different interpretation from what is found in the Aggi-Vacchagottasutta. He instead compares the physical body and the self to a house and its owner: even though the house may burn down in a fire, the owner is safe outside the house; thus, the body and its constituents (skandha) may be impermanent and subject to dissolution, but not the eternal self. The srenika heresy is a frequent topic in the CHAN literature of East Asia. NANYANG HUIZHONG (675?-775), a successor of the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG (638-713), is said to have criticized the "mind itself is buddha" (zixin shi fo) teaching of MAZU DAOYI (709-788) and other HONGZHOU ZONG teachers as being akin to the srenika heresy. The Japanese SoToSHu ZEN master DoGEN KIGEN (1200-1253), in his BENDoWA and SHoBoGENZo, criticizes as equivalent to the srenika heresy the view that the mind-nature is eternal (shinsho joju) even though the body perishes. There is much scholarly debate about whether Dogen's criticism was directed at the "original enlightenment" (HONGAKU; cf. BENJUE) thought of the medieval TENDAISHu, or against the teachings of his rival Zen school, the DARUMASHu, whose similar declarations that the mind is already enlightened and that practice was not necessary opened it to charges of antinomianism.
statable ::: a. --> That can be stated; as, a statablegrievance; the question at issue is statable.
stavakāya. (T. bstod tshogs). In Sanskrit, "collection of hymns," or "corpus of hymns"; the devotional works attributed to NĀGĀRJUNA. There are traditionally four works in this group, known collectively as the CATUḤSTAVA. They are the LOKĀTĪTASTAVA, the NIRAUPAMYASTAVA, the ACINTYASTAVA, and the PARAMĀRTHASTAVA, although a number of other important hymns, including the DHARMADHĀTUSTAVA, are also ascribed to Nāgārjuna. This group of texts is often referred to in connection with YUKTIKĀYA, the "corpus of reasoning" or "collection of reasoning," a term used to refer collectively to six works that traditionally constitute NĀGĀRJUNA's philosophical oeuvre. Those six works are the MuLAMADHYAMAKAKĀRIKĀ, the YUKTIsAstIKĀ, the suNYATĀSAPTATI, the VIGRAHAVYĀVARTANĪ, the VAIDALYASuTRANĀMA, and the RATNĀVALĪ. In some versions, there are only five works in this corpus, with the Ratnāvalī eliminated. These two collections of Nāgārjuna's works figure prominently in the "self-emptiness, other-emptiness" (RANG STONG GZHAN STONG) debate in Tibetan Buddhism, where the parties disagree on the question of which corpus represents Nāgārjuna's definitive view. The proponents of the rang stong, or "self-empty" position, see a consistent philosophical view between the two collections, whereas the proponents of gzhan stong, or "other-emptiness," find a more substantialist position in the corpus of hymns and regard this as Nāgārjuna's true position.
St. Thomas was a teacher and a writer for some twenty years (1254-1273). Among his works are: Scriptum in IV Libros Sententiarum (1254-1256), Summa Contra Gentiles (c. 1260), Summa Theologica (1265-1272); commentaries on Boethius. (De Trinitate, c. 1257-1258), on Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite (De Divinis Nominibus, c. 1261), on the anonymous and important Liber de Causis (1268), and especially on Aristotle's works (1261-1272), Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul, Posterior Analytics, On Interpretation, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption; Quaestiones Disputatae, which includes questions on such large subjects as De Veritate (1256-1259); De Potentia (1259-1263); De Malo (1263-1268); De Spiritualibus Creaturis, De Anima (1269-1270); small treatises or Opuscula, among which especially noteworthy are the De Ente et Essentia (1256); De Aeternitate Mundi (1270), De Unitate Intellecus (1270), De Substantiis Separatis (1272). While it is extremely difficult to grasp in its entirety the personality behind this complex theological and philosophical activity, some points are quite clear and beyond dispute. During the first five years of his activity as a thinker and a teacher, St. Thomas seems to have formulated his most fundamental ideas in their definite form, to have clarified his historical conceptions of Greek and Arabian philosophers, and to have made more precise and even corrected his doctrinal positions, (cf., e.g., the change on the question of creation between In II Sent., d.l, q.l, a.3, and the later De Potentia, q. III, a.4). This is natural enough, though we cannot pretend to explain why he should have come to think as he did. The more he grew, and that very rapidly, towards maturity, the more his thought became inextricably involved in the defense of Aristotle (beginning with c. 1260), his texts and his ideas, against the Averroists, who were then beginning to become prominent in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris; against the traditional Augustinianism of a man like St. Bonaventure; as well as against that more subtle Augustinianism which could breathe some of the spirit of Augustine, speak the language of Aristotle, but expound, with increasing faithfulness and therefore more imminent disaster, Christian ideas through the Neoplatonic techniques of Avicenna. This last group includes such different thinkers as St. Albert the Great, Henry of Ghent, the many disciples of St. Bonaventure, including, some think, Duns Scotus himself, and Meister Eckhart of Hochheim.
sunyatā. (T. stong pa nyid; C. kong; J. ku; K. kong 空). In Sanskrit, "emptiness"; the term has a number of denotations, but is most commonly associated with the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ) sutras and the MADHYAMAKA school of Mahāyāna philosophy. In its earlier usage, "emptiness" (as sunya) is the third of the four aspects of the truth of suffering (DUḤKHASATYA), the first of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS: viz., the aggregates (SKANDHA) are (1) impermanent, (2) associated with the contaminants, (3) empty of cleanliness, and (4) nonself. There are a number of explanations of emptiness in this early usage, but most suggest the absence of cleanliness or attractiveness in the body that would lead to grasping at the body as "mine" (S. ātmīya, mama). This misapprehension is counteracted by the application of mindfulness with regard to the body (KĀYĀNUPAsYANĀ), which demonstrates the absence or emptiness of an independent, perduring soul (ĀTMAN) inherent in the skandhas. In its developed usage in the Madhyamaka school, as set forth by NĀGĀRJUNA and his commentators, emptiness becomes an application of the classical doctrine of no-self (ANĀTMAN) beyond the person (PUDGALA) and the skandhas to subsume all phenomena (DHARMA) in the universe. Emptiness is the lack or absence of intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA) in any and all phenomena, the final nature of all things (DHARMATĀ), and the ultimate truth (PARAMĀRTHASATYA). Despite its various interpretations among the various Madhyamaka authors, emptiness is clearly neither nothingness nor the absence of existence, but rather the absence of a falsely imagined type of existence, identified as svabhāva. Because all phenomena are dependently arisen, they lack, or are empty of, an intrinsic nature characterized by independence and autonomy. Nāgārjuna thus equates sunyatā and the notion of conditionality (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA). The YOGĀCĀRA school introduces the concept of the "three natures" (TRISVABHĀVA) to give individual meanings to the lack of intrinsic existence (NIḤSVABHĀVA) in the imaginary nature (PARIKALPITASVABHĀVA), the dependent nature (PARATANTRASVABHĀVA), and the consummate nature (PARINIsPANNASVABHĀVA). Parinispanna in this Yogācāra interpretation is emptiness in the sense of the absence of a difference of entity between object and subject; it is the emptiness of the parikalpitasvabhāva or imagined nature in a paratantra or dependent nature. In Tibet, the question of the true meaning of emptiness led to the RANG STONG GZHAN STONG debate.
superprogrammer A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are. Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude. For example, one programmer might be able to write an average of three lines of working code in one day, while another, with the proper tools, might be able to write 3,000. This range is astonishing; it is matched in very few other areas of human endeavour. The term "superprogrammer" is more commonly used within such places as IBM than in the hacker community. It tends to stress naive measures of productivity and to underweight creativity, ingenuity, and getting the job *done* - and to sidestep the question of whether the 3,000 lines of code do more or less useful work than three lines that do the {Right Thing}. Hackers tend to prefer the terms {hacker} and {wizard}. [{Jargon File}]
tathāgatagarbha. (T. de bzhin gshegs pa'i snying po; C. rulaizang; J. nyoraizo; K. yoraejang 如來藏). In Sanskrit, variously translated as "womb of the TATHĀGATAs," "matrix of the tathāgatas," "embryo of the tathāgatas," "essence of the tathāgatas"; the term probably means "containing a tathāgatha." It is more imprecisely interpreted as the "buddha-nature," viz., the potential to achieve buddhahood that, according to some MAHĀYĀNA schools, is inherent in all sentient beings. The tathāgatagarbha is the topic of several important Mahāyāna sutras, including the TATHĀGATAGARBHASuTRA (with its famous nine similes about the state), the sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA, the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA, and the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA (where it is identified with the ĀLAYAVIJNĀNA), as well as the important Indian sĀSTRA, the RATNAGOTRAVIBHĀGA (also known as the Uttaratantra), with a commentary by ASAnGA. The concept is also central to such East Asian apocryphal scriptures as the DASHENG QIXIN LUN and the KŬMGANG SAMMAE KYoNG. The concept of tathāgatagarbha seems to have evolved from a relatively straightforward inspiration that all beings are capable of achieving buddhahood to a more complex doctrine of an almost genetic determination that all beings would eventually become buddhas; the Lankāvatāra goes so far as to describe the tathāgatagarbha itself as possessing the thirty-two marks of a superman (MAHĀPURUsALAKsAnA). Tathāgatagarbha thought seeks to answer the question of why ignorant beings are able to become enlightened by suggesting that this capacity is something innate in the minds of all sentient beings, which has become concealed by adventitious afflictions (ĀGANTUKAKLEsA) that are extrinsic to the mind. "Concealment" (S. saMdhi/abhisaMdhi; C. yinfu) here suggests that the tathāgatagarbha by the presence of the afflictions; or, second, it is an active agent of liberation, which secrets itself away inside the minds of sentient beings so as to inspire them toward enlightenment. The former passive sense is more common in Indian materials; the latter sense of tathāgatagarbha as an active soteriological potency is more typical of East Asian presentations of the concept. Tathāgatagarbha thought could thus claim that enlightenment need involve nothing more rigorous than simply relinquishing the mistaken notion that one is deluded and accepting the fact of one's inherent enlightenment (see also BENJUE; HONGAKU). The notion of tathāgatagarbha was a topic of extensive commentary and debate in India, Tibet, and East Asia. It was not the case, for example, that all Mahāyāna exegetes asserted that all sentient beings possess the tathāgatagarbha and thus the capacity for enlightenment; indeed, the FAXIANG ZONG, an East Asian strand of YOGĀCĀRA, famously asserted that some beings could so completely lose all aspiration for enlightenment that they would become "incorrigible" (ICCHANTIKA) and thus be forever incapable of liberation. There was also substantial debate as to the precise nature of the tathāgathagarbha, especially because some of its descriptions made it seem similar to the notion of a perduring self (ĀTMAN), a doctrine that is anathema to most schools of Buddhism. The srīmālādevīsiMhanāda, for example, described the tathāgatagarbha as endowed with four "perfect qualities" (GUnAPĀRAMITĀ): permanence, purity, bliss, and self, but states that this "self" is different from the "self" (ĀTMAN) propounded by the non-Buddhists. In an effort to avoid any such associations, CANDRAKĪRTI explains that the tathāgatagarbha is not to be understood as an independent quality but rather refers to the emptiness (suNYATĀ) of the mind; it is this emptiness, with which all beings are endowed, that serves as the potential for achieving buddhahood. In Tibet, Candrakīrti's view was taken up by the DGE LUGS sect, while the more literal view of the tathāgatagarbha as an ultimately real nature obscured by conventional contaminants was asserted most famously by the JO NANG. Both the extensive influence of the doctrine and the controversy it provoked points to an ongoing tension in the Mahāyāna between the more apophatic discourse on emptiness, found especially in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutras, and the more substantialist descriptions of the ultimate reality implied by such terms as tathāgatagarbha, DHARMADHĀTU, and DHARMAKĀYA. The term is also central to the larger question of whether enlightenment is something to be achieved through a sequence of practices or something to be revealed in a flash of insight (see DUNWU). See also HIHAN BUKKYo.
tathāgatagotra. (T. de bzhin gshegs pa'i rigs; C. rulai xing; J. nyoraisho; K. yorae song 如來性). In Sanskrit, "tathāgata lineage"; a term used to describe that element in the mental continuum (SAMTĀNA) of a sentient being that makes it destined to achieve enlightenment as a buddha. In this sense, the term is roughly synonymous with TATHĀGATAGARBHA and BUDDHADHĀTU ("buddha element," or "buddha-nature"). The Mahāyāna schools differ on the question of whether all sentient beings are endowed with this lineage, with the MADHYAMAKA asserting that they are, while some followers of the YOGĀCĀRA argue that beings are endowed with different lineages, which will lead them to follow the paths of the sRĀVAKA or PRATYEKABUDDHA to become an ARHAT, and still other beings have no spiritual lineage at all (see ICCHANTIKA).
teleologism ::: The supposition that there is design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in the works and processes of nature, and the philosophical study of that purpose. Teleology stands in contrast to philosophical naturalism, and both ask questions separate from the questions of science. While science investigates natural laws and phenomena, philosophical naturalism and teleology investigate the existence or non-existence of an organizing principle behind those natural laws and phenomena. Philosophical naturalism asserts that there are no such principles, while teleology asserts that there are.
The differences begin when the questions of the mode of creation and mediators between God and the world are dealt with. In these matters there are to be noted three variations. Saadia rejected entirely the theory of the emanation of separate intelligences, and teaches God's creation from nothing of all beings in the sublunar and upper worlds. He posits that God created first a substratum or the first air which was composed of the hyle and form and out of this element all beings were created, not only the four elements, the components of bodies in the lower world, but also the angels, stars, and the spheres. Bahya's conception is similar to that of Saadia. The Aristotelians, Ibn Daud, Maimonides, and Gersonides accepted the theory of the separate intelligences which was current in Arabic philosophy. This theory teaches that out of the First Cause there emanated an intelligence, and out of this intelligence another one up to nine, corresponding to the number of spheres. Each of these intelligences acts as the object of the mind of a sphere and is the cause of its movement. The tenth intelligence is the universal intellect, an emanation of all intelligences which has in its care the sublunar world. This theory is a combination of Aristotelian and neo-PIatonic teachings; Ibn Daud posits, however, in addition to the intelligences also the existence of angels, created spiritual beings, while Maimonides seems to identify the angels with the intelligences, and also says that natural forces are also called angels in the Bible. As for creation, Ibn Daud asserts that God created the hyle or primal matter and endowed it with general form from which the specific forms later developed. Maimonides seems to believe that God first created a substance consisting of primal matter and primal form, and that He determined by His will that parts of it should form the matter of the spheres which is imperishable, while other parts should form the matter of the four elements. These views, however, are subject to various interpretations by historians. Gabirol and Gersonides posit the eternal existence of the hyle and limit creation to endowing it with form and organization -- a view close to the Platonic.
The human soul is considered by Plato to be an immaterial agent, superior in nature to the body and somewhat hindered by the body in the performance of the higher, psychic functions of human life. The tripartite division of the soul becomes an essential teaching of Platonic psychology from the Republic onward. The rational part is highest and is pictured as the ruler of the psychological organism in the well-regulated man. Next in importance is the "spirited" element of the soul, which is the source of action and the seat of the virtue of courage. The lowest part is the concupiscent or acquisitive element, which may be brought under control by the virtue of temperancc The latter two are often combined and called irrational in contrast to the highest part. Sensation is an active function of the soul, by which the soul "feels" the objects of sense through the instrumentality of the body. Particularly in the young, sensation is a necessary prelude to the knowledge of Ideas, but the mature and developed soul must learn to rise above sense perception and must strive for a more direct intuition of intelligible essences. That the soul exists before the body (related to the Pythagorean and, possibly, Orphic doctrine of transmigration) and knows the world of Ideas immediately in this anterior condition, is the foundation of the Platonic theory of reminiscence (Meno, Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus). Thus the soul is born with true knowledge in it, but the soul, due to the encrustation of bodily cares and interests, cannot easily recall the truths innately, and we might say now, subconsciously present in it. Sometimes sense perceptions aid the soul in the process of reminiscence, and again, as in the famous demonstration of the Pythagorean theorem by the slave boy of the Meno, the questions and suggestions of a teacher provide the necessary stimuli for recollection. The personal immortality of the soul is very clearly taught by Plato in the tale of Er (Repub. X) and, with various attempts at logical demonstration, in the Phaedo. Empirical and physiological psychology is not stressed in Platonism, but there is an approach to it in the descriptions of sense organs and their media in the Timaeus 42 ff.
The Mother: "Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3.
The Mother: “Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender.” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3.
The necessity involved in an obligation may be of various kinds -- sheer physical compulsion, social pressure, prudential necessity, etc. Thus not all obligation is moral, e.g. when one says, "The force of the wind obliged me to take cover". The question is what sort of necessity is involved in moral obligation? Is moral obligation hypothetical or is it categorical? Hypothetical obligation is expressed in such sentences as "If you want so and so, e.g. happiness, then you must or should do such and such." Here the necessity or obligatoriness is conditional, depending on whether or not one desires the end to which the action enjoined is conducive. Categorical obligation is expressed by simple sentences of the form, "You ought to do such and such". Here the necessity of doing such and such is unconditional.
Theology: (Gr. theos, god, logos, study) Simply stated, theology is a study of the question of God and the relation of God to the world of reality. Theology, in the widest sense of the term, is a branch of philosophy, i.e., a special field of philosophical inquiry having to do with God. However, the term is widely employed to mean the theoretical expression of a particuhr religion. In the latter sense, theology becomes "Christian", "Jewish", "Presbyterian", "Reformed", etc. When thus employed, theology becomes in a narrow sense "historic", "systematic", "polemic", "ecclesiastical", "apologetic", etc., -- phases of theoretical discussions within a particular religious faith. Theology need not have any necessary reference to religion, it may be a purely theoretical discussion about God and God's relation to the world on a disinterested plane of free inquiry. -- V.F.
Theology: The study of the question of God and the relation of God to the world of reality.
theory of computation ::: In theoretical computer science and mathematics, the theory of computation is the branch that deals with how efficiently problems can be solved on a model of computation, using an algorithm. The field is divided into three major branches: automata theory and languages, computability theory, and computational complexity theory, which are linked by the question: "What are the fundamental capabilities and limitations of computers?".[309]
Theosophy teaches that unity and duality, with their development as plurality in manifestation, subsist throughout the universe, every duality being comprised in a unity existing on a higher plane of being than its dual manifestation — and the duality reproducing itself in the webwork of pluralities composing the manifested universe. This is on the principle of the Pythagorean Monad producing the Duad, which produces the Triad, the last again reproducing itself in incomputable hierarchical numbers. Thus, light and dark are the dual manifestations of that which is called at once absolute light and darkness; spirit and matter are the dual manifestations of the one life; the most fundamental duality being the alternation between manvantara and pralaya, which are aspects of the ever-productive ineffable source. Monistic and dualistic philosophies merely accentuate each its own side of the question, and in reality each view more or less implies the other. The Zoroastrian doctrine, for example, in its esoteric side recognized that dualism applies only to the planes of manifestation which flow forth from it.
The question of the validity of an inference from a set of premisses is, of course, independent of the question of the truth of the premisses. -- A.C.
The question of whether the operations must be specified or merely conceivable for the proposition to have meaning (which is analogous to the constructibility problem in mathematical discussions) has occasioned considerable criticism, for there appeared to be a danger that important scientific propositions might be excluded as meaningless. To this and other problems of operationalism the logical positivists (or empiricists) have contributed formulary modifications and refinements. See Logical Empiricism. In spite of their frequent difference with regard to the empirical foundation of logic and mathematics, pragmatism has received some support from the strict logicians and mathematical philosophers. One of the most important instances historically was C. I. Lewis' paper "The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge" (University of California Publications in Philosophy, 1926). Here he stated 'that the truth of experience must always be relative to our chosen conceptual systems", and that our choice between conceptual systems "will be determined consciously or not, on pragmatic grounds".
“The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings’ or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined’? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see’?” Letters on Savitri
There is, however, greater difficulty in making freedom of the will compatible with divine prescience of human action. The question arises, does God know beforehand what man will do or not? If he does, it follows that the action is determined, or if man can choose, His knowledge is not true. Various answers were proposed by Jewish philosophers to this difficult problem. Saadia says that God's knowledge is like gazing in a mirror of the future which does not influence human action. He knows the ultimate result. Maimonides says that God's knowledge is so totally different from human that it remains indefinable, and consequently He may know things beforehand, and yet not impair the possibility of man to choose between two actions. Ibn Daud and Gersonides limit God's knowledge and say that He only knows that certain actions will be present to man for choice but not the way he will choose. Crescas is more logical and comes to the conclusion that action is possible only per se, i.e., when looked upon singly, but is necessary through the causes. Free will is in this case nominal and consist primarily in the fact that man is ignorant of the real situation and he is rewarded and punished for his exertion to do good or for his neglect to exert himself.
The second question in value-theory is the question "What things are good? What is good, what is the highest good, etc.;" On this question perhaps the main issue historically is between those who say that the good is pleasure, satisfaction, or some state of feeling, and those who say that the good is virtue, a state of will, or knowledge, a state of the intellect. Holding the good to be pleasure or satisfaction are some of the Sophists, the hedonists (the Cyrenaic, the Epicureans, Hobbes, Hume, Bentham, Mill, Sidgwick, Spencer, Schlick). Holding virtue or knowledge or both to be good or supremely good are Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Neo-Platonists, Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, G. E. Moore, H. Rashdall, J. Laird, W. D. Ross, N. Hartmann.
This representation does not reproduce faithfully all particulars of the traditional account. The fact is that the traditional doctrine, having grown up from various sources and under an inadequate formal analysis, is not altogether what seems to be the best representation, and simply note the four following points of divergence: We have defined the connectives ⊃x and ∧x in terms of universal and existential quantification, whereas the traditional account might be thought to be more closely reproduced if they were taken as primitive notations. (It would, however, not be difficult to reformulate the functional calculus of first order so that these connectives would be primitive and the usual quantifiers defined in terms of them.) The traditional account associates the negation in E and O with the copula (q. v.), whereas the negation symbol is here prefixed to the sub-formula P(x). (Notice that this sub-formula represents ambiguously a proposition and that, in fact, the notation of the functional calculus of first order provides for applying negation only to propositions.) The traditional account includes under A and E respectively, also (propositions denoted by) P(A) and ∼P(A), where A is an individual constant. These singular propositions are ignored in our account of opposition and immediate inference, but will appear in § 5 as giving variant forms of certain syllogisms. Some aspects of the traditional account require that A and E be represented as we have here, others that they be represented by [(Ex)S(x)][S(x) ⊃x P(x)] and [(Ex)S(x)][S(x) ⊃x ∼P(x)] respectively. The question concerning the choice between these two interpretations is known as the problem of existential import of propositions. We prefer to introduce (Ex)S(x) as a separate premiss at those places where it is required. Given a fixed subject S and a fixed predicate P, we have, according to the square of opposition, that A and O are contradictory, E and I are contradictory, A and E are contrary, I and O are subcontrary, A and I are subaltern, E and O are subaltern. The two propositions in a contradictory pair cannot be both true and cannot be both false (one is the exact negation of the other). The two propositions in a subaltern pair are so related that the first one, together with the premiss (Ex)S(x), implies the second (subalternation). Under the premiss (Ex)S(x), the contrary pair, A, E, cannot be both true, and the subcontrary pair, I, O, cannot be both false.
Thus the question whether the mystical drink was an actual drink, or merely a mystical one, cannot be answered by a simple yes or no. Originally it was entirely mystical, later it remained as mystical as ever, but the body with its grossness, and the astral influences with their terrible power over the men and women of the time, were temporarily reduced to quiescence by a preparation known to initiates to have the power of bringing about the condition required, without any permanent or even long after-effect, very much as a sedative will be given by a physician today. It is of course true that if this drink, however relatively innocent in a single instance, were to be constantly repeated, it would have developed into a drug habit.
To revert to the question as to whether angels have an existence outside Holy Writ, or
trikāya. (T. sku gsum; C. sanshen; J. sanshin; K. samsin 三身). In Sanskrit, lit. "three bodies"; one of the central doctrines of MAHĀYĀNA buddhology. The three bodies refer specifically to three distinct bodies or aspects of a buddha: DHARMAKĀYA, the "dharma body" or "truth body"; SAMBHOGAKĀYA, the "enjoyment body" or "reward body"; and NIRMĀnAKĀYA, "emanation body" or "transformation body." The issue of what actually constituted the Buddha's body arose among the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS over such questions as the body he used on miraculous journeys, such as the one that he took to TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven to teach his mother MĀYĀ; the conclusion was that he had used a "mind-made body" (MANOMAYAKĀYA), also called a nirmānakāya, to make the trip. The notion of different buddha bodies was also deployed to respond to the question of the nature of the Buddha jewel (buddharatna), one of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) or three refuges (TRIsARAnA) of Buddhism. Since the physical body of the Buddha was subject to decay and death, was it a suitable object of refuge? In response to this question, it was concluded that the Buddha jewel was in fact a body or group (kāya) of qualities (dharma), such as the eighteen unique qualities of a buddha (ĀVEnIKA[BUDDHA]DHARMA). This "body of qualities," the original meaning of dharmakāya, was sometimes contrasted with the physical body of the Buddha, called the RuPAKĀYA ("material body") or the vipākakāya, the "fruition body," which was the result of past action (KARMAN). With the development of Mahāyāna thought, the notion of dharmakāya evolved into a kind of transcendent principle in which all buddhas partook, and it is in this sense that the term is translated as "truth body." In the later Mahāyāna scholastic tradition, the dharmakāya was said to have two aspects. The first is the SVABHĀVIKAKĀYA, or "nature body," which is the ultimate nature of a buddha's mind that is free from all adventitious defilements (āgantukamala). The second is the jNānakāya, or "wisdom body," a buddha's omniscient consciousness. The dharmakāya was the source of the two other bodies, both varieties of the rupakāya: the saMbhogakāya and the nirmānakāya. The former, traditionally glossed as "the body for the enjoyment of others," is a resplendent form of the Buddha adorned with the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks (MAHĀPURUsALAKsAnA), which appears only in buddha fields (BUDDHAKsETRA) to teach the Mahāyāna to advanced bodhisattvas. Some sāstras, such as the BUDDHABHuMIsĀSTRA (Fodijing lun) and CHENG WEISHI LUN, distinguish between a "body intended for others' enjoyment" (PARASAMBHOGAKĀYA) and a "body intended for personal enjoyment" (SVASAMBHOGAKĀYA). In the trikāya system, the nirmānakāya is no longer a special body conjured up for magical travel, but the body of the Buddha that manifests itself variously in the world of sentient beings in order to teach the dharma to them. It also has different varieties: the form that manifests in the mundane world as the Buddha adorned with the major and minor marks is called the UTTAMANIRMĀnAKĀYA, or "supreme emanation body"; the nonhuman or inanimate forms a buddha assumes in order to help others overcome their afflictions are called the JANMANIRMĀnAKĀYA, or "created emanation body."
triyāna. (T. theg pa gsum; C. sansheng; J. sanjo; K. samsŭng 三乘). In Sanskrit, "three vehicles," three different means taught in Buddhist soteriological literature of conveying sentient beings to liberation. There are two common lists of the three: (1) the vehicles of the sRĀVAKA, PRATYEKABUDDHA (both of which lead to the state of an ARHAT), and BODHISATTVA (which leads to buddhahood); (2) the HĪNAYĀNA, MAHĀYĀNA, and VAJRAYĀNA, although the vajrayāna is considered by its adherents to be a form of the Mahāyāna; the vajrayāna would speak instead of the HĪNAYĀNA, PĀRAMITĀYĀNA, and VAJRAYĀNA. According to some Mahāyāna sutras, most famously the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the three vehicles (in the first sense above) are an expedient device (UPĀYA) developed by the Buddha to entice beings of differing spiritual capacities toward enlightenment; in fact, however, there is really only one vehicle (EKAYĀNA) by which all beings proceed to buddhahood. Thus, in the Mahāyāna philosophical schools, the question arises of whether or not there are "three final vehicles," that is, whether the state of the arhat is a permanent dead end or whether arhats would also eventually continue on to buddhahood. For example, the position that there are three separate and final vehicles is associated with the YOGĀCĀRA school of ASAnGA and the Chinese FAXIANG ZONG. The position that there are not three, but instead a single decisive vehicle, is associated with the MADHYAMAKA school of NĀGĀRJUNA and CANDRAKĪRTI and the Chinese TIANTAI ZONG.
Turing test ::: (artificial intelligence) A criterion proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 for deciding whether a computer is intelligent. Turing called it the Imitation Game and offered it as a replacement for the question, Can machines think?A human holds a written conversation on any topic with an unseen correspondent (nowadays it might be by electronic mail or chat). If the human believes he is talking to another human when he is really talking to a computer then the computer has passed the Turing test and is deemed to be intelligent.Turing predicted that within 50 years (by the year 2000) technological progress would produce computing machines with a capacity of 10**9 bits, and that with such machinery, a computer program would be able to fool the average questioner for 5 minutes about 70% of the time.The Loebner Prize is a competition to find a computer program which can pass an unrestricted Turing test. is a program that attempts to pass the Turing test.See also AI-complete. .(2004-02-17)
Turing test "artificial intelligence" A criterion proposed by {Alan Turing} in 1950 for deciding whether a computer is intelligent. Turing called it "the Imitation Game" and offered it as a replacement for the question, "Can machines think?" A human holds a written conversation on any topic with an unseen correspondent (nowadays it might be by {electronic mail} or {chat}). If the human believes he is talking to another human when he is really talking to a computer then the computer has passed the Turing test and is deemed to be intelligent. Turing predicted that within 50 years (by the year 2000) technological progress would produce computing machines with a capacity of 10**9 bits, and that with such machinery, a computer program would be able to fool the average questioner for 5 minutes about 70% of the time. The {Loebner Prize} is a competition to find a computer program which can pass an unrestricted Turing test. {Julia (http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/mlm/julia.html)} is a program that attempts to pass the Turing test. See also {AI-complete}. {Turing's paper (http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000499/00/turing.html)}. (2004-02-17)
unembarrassed ::: a. --> Not embarrassed.
Not perplexed in mind; not confused; as, the speaker appeared unembarrassed.
Free from pecuniary difficulties or encumbrances; as, he and his property are unembarrassed.
Free from perplexing connection; as, the question comes into court unembarrassed with irrelevant matter.
Universals A philosophical and logical term, used in opposition to particulars. For example, matter may be called a universal, and material bodies may be called particulars; or life may be a universal, and living beings particulars. The universal is sometimes defined as that which is left when all particularities or differences have ceased to be. The question arises as to which shall be considered real. If the particulars are realities, then the universals become mere abstract ideas: thus mankind would be merely an indefinite number of human beings. But if the universal is real, then we regard particular humans as being each a manifestation on respective lower planes of man, the Heavenly Man or Qabbalistic ’Adam Qadmon. Again, if living beings are real, then life becomes an abstraction. But if life is a real entity in itself, then living beings are its particular manifestations. The philosophy which starts with universals and proceeds to particulars is called deductive: it is that of theosophy and of Pythagoras and Plato. The inductive philosophy of Aristotle and Francis Bacon proceeds from particulars to universals. Space, motion, duration, intelligence, etc., in themselves abstract realities, are regarded by theosophy as universals, whereas from the opposite viewpoint they appear as only abstractions from experience. The deductive method has its uses in applied science, but in fact it tacitly assumes certain universals and reasons back to them from particulars.
upadesa. (P. upadesa; T. man ngag/gtan phab; C. youpotishe; J. upadaisha; K. ubajesa 優波提舍). In Sanskrit, "instruction," "teaching"; one of the nine (NAVAnGA) (Pāli) or twelve (DVĀDAsĀnGA[PRAVACANA]) (Sanskrit) categories (AnGA) of Buddhist scripture according to their structure or literary style, where it may refer to the subsequent elaboration by the great disciples of a sutra that the Buddha had just spoken. In Mahāyāna treatises (sĀSTRA), upadesa may suggest that the text is conveying something hidden or special in the Buddha's words (BUDDHAVACANA) that the student may not immediately realize is there. In Tibet, there was the question of whether a teacher's personal instructions (man ngag) to a student were superior to the explanation in a Buddhist text. The name BKA' GDAMS, literally, "those who take the words of the Buddha as instructions" (gdams ngag), may reflect a response to such a view. See also AnGA.
Utpalavarnā. (P. Uppalavannā; T. Ut pa la'i mdog; C. Lianhuase; J. Rengeshiki; K. Yonhwasaek 蓮華色). One of two chief nun disciples of the Buddha, the first being KsEMĀ. According to Pāli accounts, where she is known as Uppalavannā, she was born into a banker's family in Sāvatthi (sRĀVASTĪ) and was renowned for her beauty. Her name, lit. "blue-lotus colored," refers to her skin complexion, which was dark like a blue lotus flower. Men of all ranks, royals and commoners, sought her hand in marriage. Her father, fearing to offend any of them, suggested to her that she renounce the world. Already inclined by nature to renunciation, Uppalavannā became a Buddhist nun. While sweeping an uposatha (S. UPOsADHA) assembly hall, she attained meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; DHYĀNA) by concentrating on the light of a candle, and soon became an ARHAT possessed of the analytical attainments (P. patisambhidā; S. PRATISAMVID). Uppalavannā was renowned for her various supernatural powers born from her mastery of meditative absorption. The Buddha declared her to be chief among his nun disciples in supranormal powers (P. iddhi; S. ṚDDHI). After she had become a nun and an arhat, Uppalavannā was raped by her cousin Ānanda (not the Ānanda who was the Buddha's attendant), who had been enamored of her when she was a laywoman. Although he was swallowed by the earth for his heinous crime, the case raised the question within the monastic community as to whether arhats are capable of experiencing sensual pleasure and thus had sexual desire. The Buddha asserted categorically that arhats are immune to sensuality. Several verses of the THERĪGĀTHĀ are attributed to Uppalavannā. She and sĀRIPUTRA are also said to have been the first to greet the Buddha at SĀMKĀsYA when he descended on ladders from the TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven, where he had been instructing his mother, MĀYĀ; in order to make her way through the large crowd that had gathered, she disguised herself as a CAKRAVARTIN. Among the many crimes of the Buddha's evil cousin DEVADATTA was beating her to death after she chastised him for attempting to assassinate the Buddha; he thus committed the deed of immediate retribution (ĀNANTARYAKARMAN) of killing an arhat. The commentary to the Therīgāthā and the Sanskrit VINAYAVIBHAnGA provide differing accounts of how she became a nun. The first is briefer and has her come from Sāvatthi (S. sRĀVASTĪ); the latter is more extensive and has her come from TAKsAsILĀ (P. Taxila). In both accounts, she gives birth to two children by two different men and becomes separated from both children. Years later, she unknowingly marries her son, who then marries her daughter (whom Utpalavarnā also does not recognize) as his second wife, making Utpalavarnā husband to her son and co-wife to her daughter. In the Pāli account, her eventual recognition of this state of affairs is sufficient to cause her to renounce the world. In the Sanskrit account, she gives birth to a son by her first son and when she realizes this, she becomes a courtesan, who is hired to seduce MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA. She is unsuccessful, and his words convince her to renounce the world and become a nun.
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.
Vatsagotra. [alt. Vatsa, VaMsa] (P. Vacchagotta; C. Pocha; J. Basa; K. Pach'a 婆差). In Sanskrit, lit. "Calf Ancestry," an ARHAT and disciple of the Buddha. According to Pāli accounts, where he is known as Vacchagotta, he was a wandering mendicant of great learning who was converted and attained arhatship in a series of encounters with the Buddha. Numerous discourses in the Pāli SUTTAPItAKA concern metaphysical questions that Vacchagotta poses to the Buddha; an entire section of the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA is devoted to these exchanges. In other suttas, he raises similar questions in conversations with such important disciples of the Buddha as Mahāmoggallāna (MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA) and ĀNANDA. Vacchagotta's gradual conversion is recorded in a series of discourses contained in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA. In the Tevijja-Vacchagottasutta, he rejoices at the words of the Buddha. In the Aggi-Vacchagottasutta, Vacchagotta has a renowned exchange concerning ten "indeterminate questions" (AVYĀKṚTA)-is the world eternal or not eternal, infinite or finite, what is the state of the TATHĀGATA after death, etc. The Buddha refuses to respond to any of the questions, and instead offers the simile of extinguishing fire to describe the state of the tathāgata after death: just as after a fire has been extinguished, it would be inappropriate to say that it has gone anywhere, so too after the tathāgata has extinguished each of the five aggregates (P. khandha; S. SKANDHA), he cannot be said to have gone anywhere. At the conclusion of the discourse, Vacchagotta accepts the Buddha as his teacher. In the Mahāvacchagottasutta, he is ordained by the Buddha and attains in sequence all the knowledges possible for one who is not yet an arhat. The Buddha instructs him in the practice of tranquility (P. samatha; S. sAMATHA) and insight (VIPASSANĀ; S. VIPAsYANĀ) whereby he can cultivate the six superknowledges (P. abhiNNā; S. ABHIJNĀ); Vacchagotta then attains arhatship. ¶ The DAZHIDU LUN (*MahāprajNāpāramitā-sāstra) identifies the Vacchagotta of the Pāli suttas with srenika Vatsagotra, the namesake of what in MAHĀYĀNA sources is called the sREnIKA HERESY. The locus classicus for this heresy appears in the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA. There, when srenika raises the question about whether there is a self or not, the Buddha keeps silent, so srenika himself offers the fire simile, but with a very different interpretation than the Buddha's. He compares the physical body and the eternal self to a house and its owner: even though the house may burn down in a fire, the owner is safe outside the house; thus, the body and its constituents (SKANDHA) may be impermanent and subject to dissolution, but not the self. In other Sanskrit sources, Vatsagotra also seems to refer to the figure most typically known as Vatsa (T. Be'u) or VaMsa, a student of the ascetic Kāsyapa.
Viewing the question from the consciousness aspect, death means the exchange of one mode of consciousness for others. We cannot say offhand that we are either mortal or immortal, since we contain various elements of both kinds. The essence of the individuality is unconditionally immortal, its sheaths or bodies are mortal in various and relative degrees.
wenda. (J. mondo; K. mundap 問答). In Chinese, lit. "question and answer"; pedagogical technique used in the CHAN (J. ZEN; K. SoN) school that involves an "exchange" or "dialogue" between a Chan master and a disciple regarding the Buddhist teachings. The exchange often consists of questions from the disciple and the master's response, but sometimes the master would also question the disciple to check his or her level of understanding and attainment. The master's answers are typically not a theoretical or discursive response to the question, but instead will employ logical contradiction, contextual inappropriateness, and illocutionary uses of language in order to challenge the understanding of the student. The master's answer might not even be a verbal response at all but might instead employ "the stick and the shout" (BANGHE) as a way of goading the student out of his conventional ways of comprehension. The ultimate goal is to prompt not mere intellectual understanding but an experience of awakening (C. WU; J. SATORI). The recorded sayings (YULU) of eminent Chan masters often include a section on their wenda. These wenda constitute a major part of the GONG'AN literature of the Chan tradition, and the practice of wenda is itself performed using phrases drawn from the gong'an texts. During the Song dynasty in China, Chan monks were appointed to monastic positions, such as "interrogating monk" (wenseng) or "Chan receptionist" (chanke), whose responsibility was to ask questions of the master on behalf of the congregation, transforming wenda into a formal, ritualized occasion.
who ::: object. --> Originally, an interrogative pronoun, later, a relative pronoun also; -- used always substantively, and either as singular or plural. See the Note under What, pron., 1. As interrogative pronouns, who and whom ask the question: What or which person or persons? Who and whom, as relative pronouns (in the sense of that), are properly used of persons (corresponding to which, as applied to things), but are sometimes, less properly and now rarely, used of animals, plants, etc. Who and whom, as compound relatives, are also used especially of
Wumen guan. (J. Mumonkan; K. Mumun kwan 無門關). In Chinese, lit., "Gateless Checkpoint," or "Wumen's Checkpoint"; compiled by the CHAN master WUMEN HUIKAI, after whom the collection is named, also known as the Chanzong Wumen guan ("Gateless Checkpoint of the Chan Tradition"). Along with the BIYAN LU ("Blue Cliff Record"), the Wumen guan is considered one of the two most important GONG'AN (J. koan; K. kongan) collections of the Chan tradition. In the summer of 1228, at the request of the resident monks at the monastery of Longxiangsi, Wumen lectured on a series of forty-eight cases (gong'an) that he culled from various "transmission of the lamplight" (CHUANDENG LU) histories and the recorded sayings (YULU) of previous Chan masters. His lectures were recorded and compiled that same year and published with a preface by Wumen in the following year (1229). Another case (case 49), composed by the layman Zheng Qingzhi, was added to the Wumen guan in 1246. The Wumen guan begins with a popular case attributed to ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN, in which Zhaozhou replies "WU" (no) to the question, "Does a dog have buddha nature, or not?" (see WU GONG'AN). Wumen himself is known to have struggled with this case, which was given to him by his teacher Yuelin Shiguan (1143-1217). The Japanese monk SHINICHI KAKUSHIN, who briefly studied under Wumen in China, brought the Wumen guan to Japan. Although the collection was once declared to be heretical by the SoToSHu in the mid-seventeenth century, many Japanese commentaries on the Wumen guan were composed at the time, testifying to its growing influence during the Edo period.
Xiangyan Zhixian. (J. Kyogen Chikan; K. Hyangom Chihan 香嚴智閑) (d. 898). Chinese CHAN master in the GUIYANG ZONG of the Chan tradition. Zhixian entered the monastery under BAIZHANG HUAIHAI and later became a student of YANGSHAN HUIJI. Zhixian dwelled for a long time at Mt. Xiangyan, whence his toponym. One day while he was sweeping the garden, Zhixian is said to have attained awakening when he heard the bamboo brush against the roof tiles. He is best known for the GONG'AN case "Xiangyan Hanging from a Tree": A man is dangling by his mouth from the branch of a tall tree, his hands tied behind his back and nothing beneath his feet. Someone comes under the tree branch and asks, "Why did BODHIDHARMA come from the West?" If he keeps his mouth clenched and refuses to answer, he is rude to the questioner; but if he opens his mouth to answer, he will fall to his death. How does he answer? Upon Zhixian's death, he was given the posthumous title Chan master Xideng (Inheritor of the Lamplight).
xilai yi. (J. seiraii; K. sorae ŭi 西來意). In Chinese, lit. "the meaning of coming from the west"; in CHAN literature, a common allusion to the question "What was the meaning of [Bodhidharma's] coming from the west?" (xilai yi ruohe), i.e., "Why did BODHIDHARMA, the founding patriarch of Chan, come from India to propagate Chan?" This question was commonly asked in Chan GONG'AN exchanges to test the spiritual depth of a teacher or disciple and as a meditative topic in "questioning meditation" (KANHUA CHAN). The phrase is found in HUANGBO XIYUN's (d. c. 850) CHUANXIN FAYAO, and the use of the question is well displayed in a famous exchange involving MAZU DAOYI (709-788) and his disciple Hongzhou Shuiliao (d.u.): when Shuiliao asks Mazu this question, Mazu encourages him to come closer, whereupon he kicks him to the ground, and Shuiliao immediately jumps up, enlightened. ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN's (778-897) answer to this question is the famous gong'an: "Cypress tree in front of the courtyard" (TINGQIAN BOSHUZI). Some of the other answers that appear in Chan literature include "sitting for a long time is a bother" (BIYAN LU, case no. 17), "there is no meaning in Bodhidharma's coming from the west" (Biyan lu, case no. 20), and "Zang's head is white, Hai's head is black" (Biyan lu, case no. 73).
yuktikāya. (T. rigs tshogs). In Sanskrit, literally "corpus of reasoning," or "collection of reasoning"; a term used in the Indian and Tibetan traditions to refer collectively to six works that traditionally constitute NĀGĀRJUNA's philosophical oeuvre. The six works are the MuLAMADHYAMAKAKĀRIKĀ, YUKTIsAstIKĀ, suNYATĀSAPTATI, VIGRAHAVYĀVARTANĪ, VAIDALYAPRAKARAnA, and RATNĀVALĪ. (Some versions list only five works in the corpus, eliminating the Ratnāvalī; others substitute the AKUTOBHAYĀ in place of the Ratnāvalī as the sixth work). This group of texts is often referred to in connection with the STAVAKĀYA, or "corpus of hymns," the devotional works attributed to Nāgārjuna. There are traditionally four works in this group of hymns, known collectively as the CATUḤSTAVA: the LOKĀTĪTASTAVA, NIRAUPAMYASTAVA, ACINTYASTAVA, and PARAMĀRTHASTAVA, although a number of other important hymns are also ascribed to Nāgārjuna. These two collections of Nāgārjuna's works figure prominently in the "self-emptiness, other emptiness" (RANG STONG GZHAN STONG) debate in Tibetan Buddhism, where the parties disagree on the question of which corpus represents Nāgārjuna's final view.
Zongmen huomen. (J. Shumon wakumon; K. Chongmun hongmun 宗門或問). In Chinese, "Some Inquiries into the [Chan] Tradition," composed by the CHAN master ZHANRAN YUANDENG in the CAODONG ZONG. In 1605, Zhanran replied to inquiries he had received from Chan neophytes about the school's distinctive teachings and practices and edited together fifty-two of these exchanges as the Zongmen huomen. (The zongmen of the title is a common designation for the CHAN ZONG, especially in Song-dynasty and later materials.) As Zhanran explains in his preface, he wrote this text because it is difficult for neophytes to understand Chan since there are so many different Chan teachings and practices. For example, to the question of what is most essential in Chan meditation and how one should begin in Chan practice, Zhanran answers that one must aspire to investigate the matter of birth-and-death. As to how to investigate the matter of birth-and-death, he answers that one has to arouse three states of mind: (1) the mind of great faith; (2) the mind of ferocious effort (cf. YONGMAENG CHoNGJIN) and nonretrogression; and (3) the mind of great doubt (see YIQING). (Cf. SANYAO). In the course of his exposition, Zhanran also covers other Buddhist practices, including recitation of the Buddha's name (NIANFO), but he is adamant that Chan is the best and most direct way to enlightenment. In addition to the series of exchanges, Zhanran also appends the following related texts to the Zongmen huomen: the Canchan shinan ("Difficulties in Investigating Chan"), Huomen ("Some Inquiries"), Buyi ("Appended Sayings"), Daming Dingzi men ("Clear Replies to Dingzi's Inquiries"), and the Daguan heshang zhaoyang zhuan ("Tale of the Monk Daguan's Invitation to Disaster"), a fervent defense of the renowned Chan master DAGUAN ZHENKE (a.k.a. ZIBO), who died amid political intrigue at court.
KEYS (10k)
4 The Mother
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1:The question is not can you. It's will you." ~ Jim Stovall, #KEYS
2:The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. ~ Ayn Rand, #KEYS
3:The question "why?" asks for a cause ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Metaphysics 7, lect. 17)., #KEYS
4:The question of time does not arise at all to the one established in one's true nature. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
5:Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
6:If one wishes to obtain a definite answer from Nature one must attack the question from a more general and less selfish point of view. (415) ~ Max Planck, #KEYS
7:It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #KEYS
8:You should seek the source and merge in it. Because you imagine yourself to be out of it, you raise the question "Where is the source?" ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
9:When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, "What do I need to get to be happy?" The question becomes, "What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?" ~ D.T. Suzuki, #KEYS
10:Human spirituality is to seek an answer to the question: 'how can you make sense out of a world which does not seem to be intrinsically reasonable?'" ~ John D. Morgan. From "Death and Spirituality,", (1993), #KEYS
11:The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.'' ~ President John F. Kennedy, #KEYS
12:The universe swings again into orbit around us.
Am I looking for you or you for me?
The question is wrong.
As long as I keep using two pronouns,
I am this in-between, two-headed thing.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi#KEYS
13:What you are looking for is what you already are, not what you will become. What you already are is the answer and the source of the question. Looking to become something is completely conceptual, merely an idea. ~ Jean Klein, #KEYS
14:The question "What will happen" belongs to time; the soul is outside time. The soul has not been and will not be, it always is. If it were not, there would be nothing. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
15:When contemplating nature, whether in great things or small, I have constantly asked myself the question: is it the object which is here declaring itself, or is it you yourself? ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections §593, #KEYS
16:The highest truth is daiji, translated as dai jiki in Chinese scriptures. This is the subject of the question the emperor asked Bodhidharma: "What is the First Principle?" Bodhidharma said, "I don't know." "I don't know" is the First Principle. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #KEYS
17:Every question about God presupposes what is being asked about; and that which the question presupposes is that which is to be given as the answer… For God is the Absolute Presupposition of all things that are in anyway presupposed. ~ Nicholas of Cusa, De Sapientia II, #KEYS
18:Human spirituality is to seek an answer to the question: how can you make sense out of a world which does not seem to be intrinsically reasonable." ~ John D. Morgan, co-author of "Death and Spirituality,", (1993), author of "Violence is the Dark Side of Spirituality,", (2001)., #KEYS
19:It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question." ~ Eugene Ionesco, (1909 - 1994) Romanian-French playwright, one of the foremost figures of the French Avant-garde theatre; his plays depict the solitude and insignificance of human existence in a tangible way, Wikipedia., #KEYS
20:Work is part of the sadhana, and in sadhana the question of usefulness does not arise, that is an outward practical measure of things, though even in the outward ordinary life utility is not the only measure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Work and Yoga, #KEYS
21:But at bottom, no matter how it may be disguised by technological jardon, the question is whether or not every aspect of human thought is reducible to a logical formalism, or, to put it into the modern, idiom, whether or not human thought is entirely computable.
~ Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason,#KEYS
22:I have a thousand brilliant lies For the question: How are you? I have a thousand brilliant lies For the question: What is God? If you think that the Truth can be known From words, If you think that the Sun and the Ocean Can pass through that tiny opening Called the mouth, O someone should start laughing! Someone should start wildly Laughing Now!
~ Hafiz,#KEYS
23:Have I the capacity and are there potentialities in me to follow this path?
This is not the question, the question is whether you have the necessary aspiration, determination and perseverance and whether you can by the intensity and persistence of your aspiration make all the parts of your being answer to the call and become one in the consecration.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
24:He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask, Musk said. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment
~ ?,#KEYS
25:MESSAGES FOR CENTRES AND ORGANISATIONS (Suggested programme for a study group)
1. Prayer (Sri Aurobindo, Mother - grant us your help in our endeavour to understand your teaching.)
2. Reading of Sri Aurobindo's book.
3. A moment of silence.
4. One question can be put by whoever wants to put a question on what has been read.
5. Answer to the question.
6. No general discussion. This is not the meeting of a group but simply a class for studying Sri Aurobindo's books. 31 October 1942
~ The Mother,#KEYS
26:To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub.
For in this sleep of death what dreams may come. ~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet,#KEYS
27:But you must remember one thing. One cannot see God sporting as man unless one has had the vision of Him. Do you know the sign of one who has God-vision? Such a man acquires the nature of a child. Why a child? Because God is like a child. So he who sees God becomes like a child.
God-vision is necessary. Now the question is, how can one get it? Intense renunciation is the means. A man should have such intense yearning for God that he can say, 'O Father of the universe, am I outside Your universe? Won't You be kind to me, You wretch? ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
28:To return to the question of the development of the Will. It is always something to pluck up the weeds, but the flower itself needs tending. Having crushed all volitions in ourselves, and if necessary in others, which we find opposing our real Will, that Will itself will grow naturally with greater freedom. But it is not only necessary to purify the temple itself and consecrate it; invocations must be made. Hence it is necessary to be constantly doing things of a positive, not merely of a negative nature, to affirm that Will.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, Part 2,#KEYS
29:Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation.
No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite discarded. How to regard them is the question,--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness ~ William James,#KEYS
30:
Sweet Mother,
Why has the Divine made His path so difficult? He can make it easier if He wants, can't He?
First of all, one should know that the intellect, the mind, can understand nothing of the Divine, neither what He does nor how He does it and still less why He does it. To know something of the Divine, one has to rise above thought and enter into the psychic consciousness, the consciousness of the soul, or into the spiritual consciousness.
Those who have had the experience have always said that the difficulties and sufferings of the path are not real, but a creation of human ignorance, and that as soon as one gets out of this ignorance one also gets out of the difficulties, to say nothing of the inalienable state of bliss in which one dwells as soon as one is in conscious contact with the Divine. So according to them, the question has no real basis and cannot be posed. ~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother, 21 September 1959,#KEYS
31:the importance and power of surrender :::
Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender. You can surrender either through knowledge or through devotion. You may have a strong intuition that the Divine alone is the truth and a luminous conviction that without the Divine you cannot manage. Or you may have a spontaneous feeling that this line is the only way of being happy, a strong psychic desire to belong exclusively to the Divine: I do not belong to my self, you say, and give up the responsibility of your being to the Truth. Then comes self-offering: Here I am, a creature of various qualities, good and bad, dark and enlightened. I offer myself as I am to you, take me up with all my ups and downs, conflicting impulses and tendencies - do whatever you like with me.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
32:It has been argued that this is no relation peculiar to the constitution of humanity and its outlook upon an objective world, but the very nature of existence itself; all phenomenal existence consists of an observing consciousness and an active objectivity, and the Action cannot proceed without the Witness because the universe exists only in or for the consciousness that observes and has no independent reality. It has been argued in reply that the material universe enjoys an eternal self-existence: it was here before life and mind made their appearance; it will survive after they have disappeared and no longer trouble with their transient strivings and limited thoughts the eternal and inconscient rhythm of the suns. The difference, so metaphysical in appearance, is yet of the utmost practical import, for it determines the whole outlook of man upon life, the goal that he shall assign for his efforts and the field in which he shall circumscribe his energies. For it raises the question of the reality of cosmic existence and, more important still, the question of the value of human life.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 23,#KEYS
33:In a letter the question raised was: "Is not all action incompatible with Sri Aurobindo's yoga"?
Sri Aurobindo: His idea that all action is incompatible with this yoga is not correct. Generally, it is found that all Rajasic activity does not go well with this yoga: for instance, political work.
The reasons for abstaining from political activity are:
1. Being Rajasic in its nature, it does not allow that quiet and knowledge on the basis of which the work should really proceed. All action requires a certain inner formation, an inner detached being. The formation of this inner being requires one to dive into the depth of the being, get the true Being and then prepare the true Being to come to the surface. It is then that one acquires a poise - an inner poise - and can act from there. Political work by Rajasic activity which draws the being outwards prevents this inner formation.
2. The political field, together with certain other fields, is the stronghold of the Asuric forces. They have their eye on this yoga, and they would try to hamper the Sadhana by every means. By taking to the political field you get into a plane where these forces hold the field. The possibility of attack in that field is much greater than in others. These Asuric forces try to lead away the Sadhaka from the path by increasing Kama and Krodha - desire and anger, and such other Rajasic impulses. They may throw him permanently into the sea of Rajasic activity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO#KEYS 34:What is the most useful idea to spread and what is the best example to set?
The question can be considered in two ways, a very general one applicable to the whole earth, and another specific one which concerns our present social environment.
From the general point of view, it seems to me that the most useful idea to spread is twofold:
1) Man carries within himself perfect power, perfect wisdom and perfect knowledge, and if he wants to possess them, he must discover them in the depth of his being, by introspection and concentration.
2) These divine qualities are identical at the centre, at the heart of all beings; this implies the essential unity of all, and all the consequences of solidarity and fraternity that follow from it.
The best example to give would be the unalloyed serenity and immutably peaceful happiness which belong to one who knows how to live integrally this thought of the One God in all.
From the point of view of our present environment, here is the idea which, it seems to me, it is most useful to spread:
True progressive evolution, an evolution which can lead man to his rightful happiness, does not lie in any external means, material improvement or social change. Only a deep and inner process of individual self-perfection can make for real progress and completely transform the present state of things, and change suffering and misery into a serene and lasting contentment.
Consequently, the best example is one that shows the first stage of individual self-perfection which makes possible all the rest, the first victory to be won over the egoistic personality: disinterestedness.
At a time when all rush upon money as the means to sat- isfy their innumerable cravings, one who remains indifferent to wealth and acts, not for the sake of gain, but solely to follow a disinterested ideal, is probably setting the example which is most useful at present.
~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, Volume-2, 22-06-1912, page no.66-67,#KEYS
35:This is true in a general way; when those born scattered over the world at great distances from one another are driven by circumstances or by an impulsion to come and gather here, it is almost always because they have met in one life or another (not all in the same life) and because their psychic being has felt that they belonged to the same family; so they have taken an inner vow to continue to act together and collaborate. That is why even though they are born far from one another, there is something which compels them to come together; it is the psychic being, the psychic consciousness that is behind. And only to the extent the psychic consciousness is strong enough to order and organise the circumstances or the life, that is, strong enough not to allow itself to be opposed by outside forces, outside life movements, can people meet.
It is profoundly true in reality; there are large "families of beings" who work for the same cause, who have gathered in more or less large numbers and who come in groups as it were. It is as though at certain times there were awakenings in the psychic world, as though lots of little sleeping children were being called to wake up: "It is time, quick, quick, go down!" And they hurry down. And sometimes they do not drop at the same place, they are dispersed, yet there is something within which troubles them, pushes them; for one reason or another they are drawn close and that brings them together. But it is something deep in the being, something that is not at all on the surface; otherwise, even if people met they would not perhaps become aware of the bond. People meet and recognise each other only to the extent they become conscious of their psychic being, obey their psychic being, are guided by it; otherwise there is all that comes in to oppose it, all that veils, all that stupefies, all those obstacles to prevent you from finding yourself in your depths and being able to collaborate truly in the work. You are tossed about by the forces of Nature.
There is only one solution, to find your psychic being and once it is found to cling to it desperately, to let it guide you step by step whatever be the obstacle. That is the only solution. All this I did not write but I explained it to that lady. She had put to me the question: "How did I happen to come here?" I told her that it was certainly not for reasons of the external consciousness, it was something in her inner being that had pushed her. Only the awakening was not strong enough to overcome all the rest and she returned to the ordinary life for very ordinary reasons of living. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,#KEYS
36:
Sweet Mother, how can one feel the divine Presence constantly?
Why not?
But how can one do it?
But I am asking why one should not feel it. Instead of asking the question how to feel it, I ask the question: "What do you do that you don't feel it?" There is no reason not to feel the divine Presence. Once you have felt it, even once, you should be capable of feeling it always, for it is there. It is a fact. It is only our ignorance which makes us unaware of it. But if we become conscious, why should we not always be conscious? Why forget something one has learnt? When one has had the experience, why forget it? It is simply a bad habit, that's all.
You see, there is something which is a fact, that's to say, it is. But we are unaware of it and do not know it. But after we become conscious and know it, why should we still forget it? Does it make sense? It's quite simply because we are not convinced that once one has met the Divine one can't forget Him any more. We are, on the contrary, full of stupid ideas which say, "Oh! Yes, it's very well once like that, but the rest of the time it will be as usual." So there is no reason why it may not begin again.
But if we know that... we did not know something, we were ignorant, then the moment we have the knowledge... I am sincerely asking how one can manage to forget. One might not know something, that is a fact; there are countless things one doesn't know. But the moment one knows them, the minute one has the experience, how can one manage to forget? Within yourself you have the divine Presence, you know nothing about it - for all kinds of reasons, but still the chief reason is that you are in a state of ignorance. Yet suddenly, by a clicking of circumstances, you become conscious of this divine Presence, that is, you are before a fact - it is not imagination, it is a fact, it's something which exists. Then how do you manage to forget it once you have known it?
...
It is because something in us, through cowardice or defeatism, accepts this. If one did not accept it, it wouldn't happen.
Even when everything seems to be suddenly darkened, the flame and the Light are always there. And if one doesn't forget them, one has only to put in front of them the part which is dark; there will perhaps be a battle, there will perhaps be a little difficulty, but it will be something quite transitory; never will you lose your footing. That is why it is said - and it is something true - that to sin through ignorance may have fatal consequences, because when one makes mistakes, well, these mistakes have results, that's obvious, and usually external and material results; but that's no great harm, I have already told you this several times. But when one knows what is true, when one has seen and had the experience of the Truth, to accept the sin again, that is, fall back again into ignorance and obscurity - this is indeed an infinitely more serious mistake. It begins to belong to the domain of ill-will. In any case, it is a sign of slackness and weakness. It means that the will is weak.
So your question is put the other way round. Instead of asking yourself how to keep it, you must ask yourself: how does one not keep it? Not having it, is a state which everybody is in before the moment of knowing; not knowing - one is in that state before knowing. But once one knows one cannot forget. And if one forgets, it means that there is something which consents to the forgetting, it means there is an assent somewhere; otherwise one would not forget.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 403,405,406,#KEYS
37: Sri Aurobindo writes here: "...Few and brief in their visits are the Bright Ones who are willing or permitted to succour." Why?
(1 "The Way", Cent. Vol. 17, p. 40.)
One must go and ask them! But there is a conclusion, the last sentences give a very clear explanation. It is said: "Nay, then, is immortality a plaything to be given lightly to a child, or the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling?" This comes back to the question why the adverse forces have the right to interfere, to harass you. But this is precisely the test necessary for your sincerity. If the way were very easy, everybody would start on the way, and if one could reach the goal without any obstacle and without any effort, everybody would reach the goal, and when one has come to the end, the situation would be the same as when one started, there would be no change. That is, the new world would be exactly what the old has been. It is truly not worth the trouble! Evidently a process of elimination is necessary so that only what is capable of manifesting the new life remains. This is the reason and there is no other, this is the best of reasons. And, you see, it is a tempering, it is the ordeal of fire, only that which can stand it remains absolutely pure; when everything has burnt down, there remains only the little ingot of pure gold. And it is like that. What puts things out very much in all this is the religious idea of fault, sin, redemption. But there is no arbitrary decision! On the contrary, for each one it is the best and most favourable conditions which are given. We were saying the other day that it is only his friends whom God treats with severity; you thought it was a joke, but it is true. It is only to those who are full of hope, who will pass through this purifying flame, that the conditions for attaining the maximum result are given. And the human mind is made in such a way that you may test this; when something extremely unpleasant happens to you, you may tell yourself, "Well, this proves I am worth the trouble of being given this difficulty, this proves there is something in me which can resist the difficulty", and you will notice that instead of tormenting yourself, you rejoice - you will be so happy and so strong that even the most unpleasant things will seem to you quite charming! This is a very easy experiment to make. Whatever the circumstance, if your mind is accustomed to look at it as something favourable, it will no longer be unpleasant for you. This is quite well known; as long as the mind refuses to accept a thing, struggles against it, tries to obstruct it, there are torments, difficulties, storms, inner struggles and all suffering. But the minute the mind says, "Good, this is what has to come, it is thus that it must happen", whatever happens, you are content. There are people who have acquired such control of their mind over their body that they feel nothing; I told you this the other day about certain mystics: if they think the suffering inflicted upon them is going to help them cross the stages in a moment and give them a sort of stepping stone to attain the Realisation, the goal they have put before them, union with the Divine, they no longer feel the suffering at all. Their body is as it were galvanised by the mental conception. This has happened very often, it is a very common experience among those who truly have enthusiasm. And after all, if one must for some reason or other leave one's body and take a new one, is it not better to make of one's death something magnificent, joyful, enthusiastic, than to make it a disgusting defeat? Those who cling on, who try by every possible means to delay the end even by a minute or two, who give you an example of frightful anguish, show that they are not conscious of their soul.... After all, it is perhaps a means, isn't it? One can change this accident into a means; if one is conscious one can make a beautiful thing of it, a very beautiful thing, as of everything. And note, those who do not fear it, who are not anxious, who can die without any sordidness are those who never think about it, who are not haunted all the time by this "horror" facing them which they must escape and which they try to push as far away from them as they can. These, when the occasion comes, can lift their head, smile and say, "Here I am."
It is they who have the will to make the best possible use of their life, it is they who say, "I shall remain here as long as it is necessary, to the last second, and I shall not lose one moment to realise my goal"; these, when the necessity comes, put up the best show. Why? - It is very simple, because they live in their ideal, the truth of their ideal; because that is the real thing for them, the very reason of their being, and in all things they can see this ideal, this reason of existence, and never do they come down into the sordidness of material life.
So, the conclusion:
One must never wish for death.
One must never will to die.
One must never be afraid to die.
And in all circumstances one must will to exceed oneself. ~ The Mother, Question and Answers, Volume-4, page no.353-355,#KEYS
38:The Two Paths Of Yoga :::
14 April 1929 - What are the dangers of Yoga? Is it especially dangerous to the people of the West? Someone has said that Yoga may be suitable for the East, but it has the effect of unbalancing the Western mind.
Yoga is not more dangerous to the people of the West than to those of the East. Everything depends upon the spirit with which you approach it. Yoga does become dangerous if you want it for your own sake, to serve a personal end. It is not dangerous, on the contrary, it is safety and security itself, if you go to it with a sense of its sacredness, always remembering that the aim is to find the Divine.
Dangers and difficulties come in when people take up Yoga not for the sake of the Divine, but because they want to acquire power and under the guise of Yoga seek to satisfy some ambition. if you cannot get rid of ambition, do not touch the thing. It is fire that burns.
There are two paths of Yoga, one of tapasya (discipline), and the other of surrender. The path of tapasya is arduous. Here you rely solely upon yourself, you proceed by your own strength. You ascend and achieve according to the measure of your force. There is always the danger of falling down. And once you fall, you lie broken in the abyss and there is hardly a remedy. The other path, the path of surrender, is safe and sure. It is here, however, that the Western people find their difficulty. They have been taught to fear and avoid all that threatens their personal independence. They have imbibed with their mothers' milk the sense of individuality. And surrender means giving up all that. In other words, you may follow, as Ramakrishna says, either the path of the baby monkey or that of the baby cat. The baby monkey holds to its mother in order to be carried about and it must hold firm, otherwise if it loses its grip, it falls. On the other hand, the baby cat does not hold to its mother, but is held by the mother and has no fear nor responsibility; it has nothing to do but to let the mother hold it and cry ma ma.
If you take up this path of surrender fully and sincerely, there is no more danger or serious difficulty. The question is to be sincere. If you are not sincere, do not begin Yoga. If you were dealing in human affairs, then you could resort to deception; but in dealing with the Divine there is no possibility of deception anywhere. You can go on the Path safely when you are candid and open to the core and when your only end is to realise and attain the Divine and to be moved by the Divine. There is another danger; it is in connection with the sex impulses. Yoga in its process of purification will lay bare and throw up all hidden impulses and desires in you. And you must learn not to hide things nor leave them aside, you have to face them and conquer and remould them. The first effect of Yoga, however, is to take away the mental control, and the hungers that lie dormant are suddenly set free, they rush up and invade the being. So long as this mental control has not been replaced by the Divine control, there is a period of transition when your sincerity and surrender will be put to the test. The strength of such impulses as those of sex lies usually in the fact that people take too much notice of them; they protest too vehemently and endeavour to control them by coercion, hold them within and sit upon them. But the more you think of a thing and say, "I don't want it, I don't want it", the more you are bound to it. What you should do is to keep the thing away from you, to dissociate from it, take as little notice of it as possible and, even if you happen to think of it, remain indifferent and unconcerned. The impulses and desires that come up by the pressure of Yoga should be faced in a spirit of detachment and serenity, as something foreign to yourself or belonging to the outside world. They should be offered to the Divine, so that the Divine may take them up and transmute them. If you have once opened yourself to the Divine, if the power of the Divine has once come down into you and yet you try to keep to the old forces, you prepare troubles and difficulties and dangers for yourself. You must be vigilant and see that you do not use the Divine as a cloak for the satisfaction of your desires. There are many self-appointed Masters, who do nothing but that. And then when you are off the straight path and when you have a little knowledge and not much power, it happens that you are seized by beings or entities of a certain type, you become blind instruments in their hands and are devoured by them in the end. Wherever there is pretence, there is danger; you cannot deceive God. Do you come to God saying, "I want union with you" and in your heart meaning "I want powers and enjoyments"? Beware! You are heading straight towards the brink of the precipice. And yet it is so easy to avoid all catastrophe. Become like a child, give yourself up to the Mother, let her carry you, and there is no more danger for you.
This does not mean that you have not to face other kinds of difficulties or that you have not to fight and conquer any obstacles at all. Surrender does not ensure a smooth and unruffled and continuous progression. The reason is that your being is not yet one, nor your surrender absolute and complete. Only a part of you surrenders; and today it is one part and the next day it is another. The whole purpose of the Yoga is to gather all the divergent parts together and forge them into an undivided unity. Till then you cannot hope to be without difficulties - difficulties, for example, like doubt or depression or hesitation. The whole world is full of the poison. You take it in with every breath. If you exchange a few words with an undesirable man or even if such a man merely passes by you, you may catch the contagion from him. It is sufficient for you to come near a place where there is plague in order to be infected with its poison; you need not know at all that it is there. You can lose in a few minutes what it has taken you months to gain. So long as you belong to humanity and so long as you lead the ordinary life, it does not matter much if you mix with the people of the world; but if you want the divine life, you will have to be exceedingly careful about your company and your environment.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
39:
The whole question.
The whole question? And now, do you understand?... Not quite? I told you that you did not understand because it was muddled up; in one question three different ideas were included. So naturally it created a confusion. But taken separately they are what I explained to you just now, most probably; that is to say, one has this altogether ignorant and obliterated consciousness and is convinced that he is the cause and effect, the origin and result of himself, separate from all others, separate with a limited power to act upon others and a little greater capacity to be set in movement by others or to react to others' influence. That is how people think usually, something like that, isn't that so? How do you feel, you? What effect do you have upon yourself? And you? And you?... You have never thought about it? You have never looked into yourself to see what effect you exercise upon yourself? Never thought over it? No? How do you feel? Nobody will tell me? Come, you tell me that. Never tried to understand how you feel? Yes? No? How strange! Never sought to understand how, for example, decisions take place in you? From where do they come? What makes you decide one thing rather than another? And what is the relation between a decision of yours and your action? And to what extent do you have the freedom of choice between one thing and another? And how far do you feel you are able to, you are free to do this or that or that other or nothing at all?... You have pondered over that? Yes? Is there any one among the students who has thought over it? No? Nobody put the question to himself? You? You?...
Even if one thinks over it, perhaps one is not able to answer!
One cannot explain?
No.
It is difficult to explain? Even this simple little thing, to see where in your consciousness the wills that come from outside meet your will (which you call yours, which comes from within), at what place the two join together and to what extent the one from outside acts upon that from within and the one from within acts upon that from outside? You have never tried to find this out? It has never seemed to you unbearable that a will from outside should have an action upon your will? No?
I do not know.
Oh! I am putting very difficult problems! But, my children, I was preoccupied with that when I was a child of five!... So I thought you must have been preoccupied with it since a long time. In oneself, there are contradictory wills. Yes, many. That is one of the very first discoveries. There is one part which wants things this way; and then at another moment, another way, and a third time, one wants still another thing! Besides, there is even this: something that wants and another which says no. So? But it is exactly that which has to be found if you wish in the least to organise yourself. Why not project yourself upon a screen, as in the cinema, and then look at yourself moving on it? How interesting it is!
This is the first step.
You project yourself on the screen and then observe and see all that is moving there and how it moves and what happens. You make a little diagram, it becomes so interesting then. And then, after a while, when you are quite accustomed to seeing, you can go one step further and take a decision. Or even a still greater step: you organise - arrange, take up all that, put each thing in its place, organise in such a way that you begin to have a straight movement with an inner meaning. And then you become conscious of your direction and are able to say: "Very well, it will be thus; my life will develop in that way, because that is the logic of my being. Now, I have arranged all that within me, each thing has been put in its place, and so naturally a central orientation is forming. I am following this orientation. One step more and I know what will happen to me for I myself am deciding it...." I do not know, I am telling you this; to me it seemed terribly interesting, the most interesting thing in the world. There was nothing, no other thing that interested me more than that.
This happened to me.... I was five or six or seven years old (at seven the thing became quite serious) and I had a father who loved the circus, and he came and told me: "Come with me, I am going to the circus on Sunday." I said: "No, I am doing something much more interesting than going to the circus!" Or again, young friends invited me to attend a meeting where we were to play together, enjoy together: "No, I enjoy here much more...." And it was quite sincere. It was not a pose: for me, it was like this, it was true. There was nothing in the world more enjoyable than that.
And I am so convinced that anybody who does it in that way, with the same freshness and sincerity, will obtain most interesting results.... To put all that on a screen in front of yourself and look at what is happening. And the first step is to know all that is happening and then you must not try to shut your eyes when something does not appear pleasant to you! You must keep them wide open and put each thing in that way before the screen. Then you make quite an interesting discovery. And then the next step is to start telling yourself: "Since all that is happening within me, why should I not put this thing in this way and then that thing in that way and then this other in this way and thus wouldn't I be doing something logical that has a meaning? Why should I not remove that thing which stands obstructing the way, these conflicting wills? Why? And what does that represent in the being? Why is it there? If it were put there, would it not help instead of harming me?" And so on.
And little by little, little by little, you see clearer and then you see why you are made like that, what is the thing you have got to do - that for which you are born. And then, quite naturally, since all is organised for this thing to happen, the path becomes straight and you can say beforehand: "It is in this way that it will happen." And when things come from outside to try and upset all that, you are able to say: "No, I accept this, for it helps; I reject that, for that harms." And then, after a few years, you curb yourself as you curb a horse: you do whatever you like, in the way you like and you go wherever you like.
It seems to me this is worth the trouble. I believe it is the most interesting thing.
...
You must have a great deal of sincerity, a little courage and perseverance and then a sort of mental curiosity, you understand, curious, seeking to know, interested, wanting to learn. To love to learn: that, one must have in one's nature. To find it impossible to stand before something grey, all hazy, in which nothing is seen clearly and which gives you quite an unpleasant feeling, for you do not know where you begin and where you end, what is yours and what is not yours and what is settled and what is not settled - what is this pulp-like thing you call yourself in which things get intermingled and act upon one another without even your being aware of it? You ask yourself: "But why have I done this?" You know nothing about it. "And why have I felt that?" You don't know that, either. And then, you are thrown into a world outside that is only fog and you are thrown into a world inside that is also for you another kind of fog, still more impenetrable, in which you live, like a cork thrown upon the waters and the waves carry it away or cast it into the air, and it drops and rolls on. That is quite an unpleasant state. I do not know, but to me it appears unpleasant.
To see clearly, to see one's way, where one is going, why one is going there, how one is to go there and what one is going to do and what is the kind of relation with others... But that is a problem so wonderfully interesting - it is interesting - and you can always discover things every minute! One's work is never finished.
There is a time, there is a certain state of consciousness when you have the feeling that you are in that condition with all the weight of the world lying heavy upon you and besides you are going in blinkers and do not know where you are going, but there is something which is pushing you. And that is truly a very unpleasant condition. And there is another moment when one draws oneself up and is able to see what is there above, and one becomes it; then one looks at the world as though from the top of a very very high mountain and one sees all that is happening below; then one can choose one's way and follow it. That is a more pleasant condition. This then is truly the truth, you are upon earth for that, surely. All individual beings and all the little concentrations of consciousness were created to do this work. It is the very reason for existence: to be able to become fully conscious of a certain sum of vibrations representing an individual being and put order there and find one's way and follow it.
And so, as men do not know it and do not do it, life comes and gives them a blow here: "Oh! that hurts", then a blow there: "Ah! that's hurting me." And the thing goes on like that and all the time it is like that. And all the time they are getting pain somewhere. They suffer, they cry, they groan. But it is simply due to that reason, there is no other: it is that they have not done that little work. If, when they were quite young, there had been someone to teach them to do the work and they had done it without losing time, they could have gone through life gloriously and instead of suffering they would have been all-powerful masters of their destiny.
This is not to say that necessarily all things would become pleasant. It is not at all that. But your reaction towards things becomes the true reaction and instead of suffering, you learn; instead of being miserable, you go forward and progress. After all, I believe it is for this that you are here - so that there is someone who can tell you: "There, well, try that. It is worth trying." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 199,#KEYS
40:[The Gods and Their Worlds]
[...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same.
This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds.
There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth.
All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete.
One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is.
Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence.
But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it.
When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation.
Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being!
I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised.
Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness!
These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects.
In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism.
If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality.
If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, 355
,#KEYS
41:Mental Education
OF ALL lines of education, mental education is the most widely known and practised, yet except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make it something very incomplete and in the end quite insufficient.
Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language.
A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases. Normally these phases follow one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may alternate or even proceed simultaneously. These five phases, in brief, are:
(1) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
(2) Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
(3) Organisation of one's ideas around a central idea, a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life.
(4) Thought-control, rejection of undesirable thoughts, to become able to think only what one wants and when one wants.
(5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.
It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be given.
Undeniably, what most impedes mental progress in children is the constant dispersion of their thoughts. Their thoughts flutter hither and thither like butterflies and they have to make a great effort to fix them. Yet this capacity is latent in them, for when you succeed in arousing their interest, they are capable of a good deal of attention. By his ingenuity, therefore, the educator will gradually help the child to become capable of a sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete absorption in the work in hand. All methods that can develop this faculty of attention from games to rewards are good and can all be utilised according to the need and the circumstances. But it is the psychological action that is most important and the sovereign method is to arouse in the child an interest in what you want to teach him, a liking for work, a will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more.
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
You will gradually show the child that everything can become an interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy.
In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his mind, one should see not only that he studies many varied topics, but above all that a single subject is approached in various ways, so that the child understands in a practical manner that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual problem, of considering it and solving it. This will remove all rigidity from his brain and at the same time it will make his thinking richer and more supple and prepare it for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental learning and, little by little, an aspiration for a truer source of knowledge will awaken in him.
Indeed, as the child grows older and progresses in his studies, his mind too ripens and becomes more and more capable of forming general ideas, and with them almost always comes a need for certitude, for a knowledge that is stable enough to form the basis of a mental construction which will permit all the diverse and scattered and often contradictory ideas accumulated in his brain to be organised and put in order. This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's thoughts. All contradictions can be transformed into complements, but for that one must discover the higher idea that will have the power to bring them harmoniously together. It is always good to consider every problem from all possible standpoints so as to avoid partiality and exclusiveness; but if the thought is to be active and creative, it must, in every case, be the natural and logical synthesis of all the points of view adopted. And if you want to make the totality of your thoughts into a dynamic and constructive force, you must also take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of this synthesis. The higher and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise.
It goes without saying that this work of organisation cannot be done once and for all. The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of new knowledge, enlarge its frame-work to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and reorganise its thoughts, so that each of them may find its true place in relation to the others and the whole remain harmonious and orderly.
All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great that they appear almost insurmountable.
And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions.
For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.
But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.
The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep.
When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity. Bulletin, November 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
42:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.
The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.
The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.
It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.
As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.
And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.
It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!
This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.
My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?
A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.
Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.
Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.
If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.
First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!
Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"
I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.
Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.
These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."
Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.
If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'
The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passage
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae.
Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?
And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?
And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.
I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!
"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,
'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'
Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,
Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vain
Upon the axis of its pain,
Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,
Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."
Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!
One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.
But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!
'Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:The Question is what is The Question? ~ john-wheeler, @wisdomtrove 2:Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 3:it's time to simply be with the question." ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 4:To be, or not to be, that is the question. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 5:Is there life before death? - that is the question! ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 6:What is the answer? In that case, what is the question? ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 7:Just when I nearly had the answer, I forgot the question. ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 8:The question is not Will you succeed? but rather, Will you matter? ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 9:Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 10:This is Sunday, and the question arises, what'll I start tomorrow? ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 11:The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 12:The question not many ask is: why are the laws of physics like they are? ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 13:To choose the light or to choose other things is always the question. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 14:The question of how things will settle down is the only important question. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 15:Let us be practical and ask the question: How do we love our enemies? ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 16:As for morality, well that's all tied up with the question of consciousness. ~ roger-penrose, @wisdomtrove 17:The question "Is this an act of self-love or is it an act of self-sabotage?" is ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 18:I am truly grateful that faith enables me to move past the question of & 19:The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 20:Instead of the question "What must I do for my employer?" substitute "What can I do" ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 21:The question was put to him, what hope is; and his answer was, "The dream of a waking man." ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 22:The question is not "To be or not to be," it is what we should be until we are not. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 23:In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 24:No matter how successful you've been in the past the question is what's your next miracle. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 25:The question is always the same with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you? ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 26:The question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 27:Life in itself is so beautiful that to ask the question of the meaning of life is simply nonsense. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 28:The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 29:To the question what wine he found pleasant to drink, he replied, "That for which other people pay." ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 30:The question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 31:That's precisely the question everyone should be asking-why the hell not? - Why not you, why not now. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 32:The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here? ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 33:Stranger, pause and ask thyself the question, Canst thou do likewise? If not, with a blush retire. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 34:The question is not, & 35:The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 36:She is not perfect. You are not perfect. The question is whether or not you are perfect for each other ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 37:So the question rises: How much liberty can you get away with? Well, you get no more liberty than you give! ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 38:Irrational barriers and ancient prejudices fall quickly when the question of survival itself is at stake. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 39:The question you should be asking isn't, "What do I want?" or "What are my goals?" but "What would excite me? ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 40:I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 41:If you can put the question, & 42:You ask, & 43:Your values are your current estimations of truth. They represent your answer to the question of how to live. ~ steve-pavlina, @wisdomtrove 44:Don't mistake movement for achievement. It's easy to get faked out by being busy. The question is: Busy doing what? ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 45:The question is no longer between violence and non-violence it is between non-violence and non-existence. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 46:The question is not whether the formula for success will work, but rather whether the person will work the formula. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 47:Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself - Death. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 48:Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 49:Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 50:The question isn't whether or not you should wait to be picked, the question is whether you care enough to pick yourself. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 51:The question who ought to be boss is like who ought to be the tenor in the quartet? Obviously, the man who can sing tunor. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 52:If you do not believe in a personal God, the question: & 53:It is important to realize that our inability to answer a question says nothing about whether the question itself has an answer. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 54:While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question & 55:Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look at the stars. This practice should answer the question. ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 56:The kingdom of God is available to you in the here and the now. But the question is whether you are available to the kingdom. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 57:Who am I, and where am I going? You are the answer to this question. You are here to ask the question, and to be the answer. ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 58:The literature of science is filled with answers found when the question propounded had an entirely different direction and end. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 59:The question isn't so much "Are you parenting the right way?" as it is: "Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?" ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove 60:The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 61:& 62:Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 63:In response to the question, & 64:My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God? ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 65:Just before she died she asked, What is the answer? No answer came. She laughed and said, In that case, what is the question? Then she died. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 66:In political administration, no problem is ever simple. It can never be reduced to the question whether a certain measure is good or not. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 67:The question is not what I should do in the future to get it, but rather, what am I presently doing that prevents me from realizing it right now? ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 68:Please, put aside all excuses and ask yourself, "What should I be doing?" Yes, you alone can make a difference. The question is, will you? ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 69:The the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hope are optimistic. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 70:Reality offers us such wealth that we must cut some of it out on the spot, simplify. The question is, do we always cut out what we should? ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove 71:Of course you want to be rich and famous. It's natural. Wealth and fame are what every man desires. The question is: What are you willing to trade for it? ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 72:The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? but: Are you in love with Jesus? ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 73:The question and the cry & 74:The answer to the question "where do good ideas come from" is always the same, the come from bad ideas. If you come up with 20 bad ideas you get one good one. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 75:As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove 76:The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me? ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 77:We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn't an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 78:It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 79:Direction determines destination. So the question you must ask yourself; & 80:The question was a fashionable one, whether a definite line exists between psychological and physiological phenomena in human activity; and if so, where it lies? ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 81:Yoga means we take responsibility for the tasks in our life. Whatever we are supposed to have karmically, life gives us. The question is: how do we handle it? ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 82:Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 83:The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 84:The question is this - Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 85:I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of & 86:The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 87:But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 88:Give all your attention to the question: ‘What is it that makes me conscious?’, until your mind becomes the question itself and cannot think of anything else. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 89:What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write? ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 90:We have not, in fact, proved that science excludes miracles: we have only proved that the question of miracles, like innumerable other questions, excludes laboratory treatment. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 91:In a civilization like ours, I feel that everyone has to come to terms with the claims of Jesus Christ upon his life, or else be guilty of inattention or of evading the question. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 92:The question that faces the strategic decision maker is not what his organisation should do tomorrow. It is, what do we have to do today to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow? ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 93:We are not for everyone and everyone is not for us. The question is, & 94:The question & 95:When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, What do I need to get to be happy? The question becomes, What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have? ~ d-t-suzuki, @wisdomtrove 96:When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, What do I need to get to be happy? The question becomes, “What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have? ~ d-t-suzuki, @wisdomtrove 97:Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 98:One [television] program was an interminable exploration of the question: can a woman with a low I.Q. be happily married to a man with a high one? The answer seemed to be yes and no. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 99:Don't spend your precious time asking "Why isn't the world a better place?" It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is "How can I make it better?" To that there is an answer. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 100:Just as ice is nothing but water, so the Beloved is without form, without quality, and the question of manifestation does not arise. When this is realized, one has realized one’s Self. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 101:Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, "What comes into your mind when you think about God?" we might predict with certainty the future of that man. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 102:The entire sweep of human history from the dark ages into the unknown future was considerably less important at the moment than the question of a certain girl and her feelings toward him. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 103:The challenge of every team is to build a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another because the question is usually not how well each person performs, but how well they work together. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 104:For the purpose of my life, I don't ask the question. First of all, I believe. I think the Five Books of Moses are inspired. Call it divine. I don't know. But I would certainly call it inspired. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 105:One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows... . Knowledge is the thing you know and how can you know more than you do know. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 106:The question of immortality is of its nature not a scholarly question. It is a question welling up from the interior which the subject must put to itself as it becomes conscious of itself. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 107:In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 108:There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 109:The ruling power is always faced with the question, In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 110:Once again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 111:It posed the question posed by all such stone piles.: how had puny men moved stones so big? And, like all such stone piles, it answered the question itself. Dumb terror had moved those stones so big ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 112:I will remove from my vocabulary such words and phrases as quit, cannot, unable, impossible, out of the question, improbable, failure, unworkable, hopeless, and retreat; for they are the words of fools. ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove 113:If we're looking for intelligence in the universe I think everybody assumes that this has to start with life and so the question is: "How likely is it that there will be life elsewhere in the universe?" ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 114:I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 115:It answers the question that was tormenting you: my love, you are not & 116:Q: When I ask a question and you answer, what exactly happens? M: The question and the answer - both appear on the screen. The lips move, the body speaks - and again the screen is clear and empty. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 117:The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your & 118:Conversion is not only changing the faith. Conversion is changing the heart and working over there is the grace of God. Then only comes the question of change of faith. Nobody can force you, not even the holy prophets. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 119:What kind of dog is that?" I would always give the same answer: "She's a brown dog." Similarly, when the question is raised, "What kind of God do you believe in?" my answer is easy: "I believe in a magnificent God. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 120:I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 121:These false answers such as, I am stone, I am bird, I am animal, I am man, I am woman, I am great, I am small are, in turn, received, tested and discarded until the Question arrives at the right and Final Answer, I AM GOD. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 122:Only in the few universes that are like ours would intelligent beings develop and ask the question: ‘Why is the universe the way we see it?’ The answer is then simple: If it had been any different, we would not be here! ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 123:There is a riddle about a man who is locked in a room with nothing but a bed and a calendar, and the question is: How does he survive? The answer is: He eats dates from the calendar and drinks from the springs of the bed. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 124:Billions of things could happen that you haven’t even thought of yet. The question is not whether they will happen. Things are going to happen. The real question is whether you want to be happy regardless of what happens. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove 125:Give up the idea of being the body and face the question: Who am l? At once a process will be set in motion which will bring back reality, or, rather, will take the mind to reality. Only, you must not be afraid. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 126:When you ask for help listen. It's one thing to ask the question and it's another thing to listen to the answer. Many people ask questions but they do not like what they hear and so they pretend that they heard nothing at all. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 127:The experiment is to ask the question; the observation is to look at yourself and see what happens. Being a science the law cannot vary. Any apparent variation is in you, you will have stepped off the way of facts into conclusions. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 128:His view of the world is one that keeps his blood pressure low, sweeping the cholesterol from his relaxed, freeway-sized arteries. Everyone knows he is going to live till age ninety, although the question that goes begging is, what? ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 129:Nevertheless, the liturgy of Ash Wednesday is not focussed on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God. The question of sinfulness is raised precisely because this is a day of mercy, and the just do not need a savior. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 130:We ourselves need love; it's not only society, the world outside, that needs love. But we can't expect that love to come from outside of us. We should ask the question whether we are capable of loving ourselves as well as others. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 131:Perhaps the way to meet tomorrow’s challenges is not to use yesterday’s solutions, but to dare to think the previously unthinkable, to speak the previously unspeakable, and to try that which was previously out of the question. ~ neale-donald-walsch, @wisdomtrove 132:In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth? ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove 133:In my early professionals years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth? ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove 134:The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: & 135:It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 136:She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.‚Äù Waddington, smiling, translated the question. ‚ÄúShe says I’m good.‚Äù ‚ÄúAs if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,‚Äù Kitty mocked. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 137:The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the question is what is his attitude to the world and all life that comes within his reach. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 138:You’re not perfect, sport. And let me save you the suspense: This girl you met, she isn’t perfect either. But the question is whether or not you’re perfect for each other. That’s the whole deal — that’s what intimacy is all about. — Good Will Hunting ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 139:it is all the question of identity. ... As long as the outside does not put a value on you it remains outside but when it does put a value on you then it gets inside or rather if the outside puts a value on you then all your inside gets to be outside. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 140:Our model of the cosmos must be as inexhaustible as the cosmos. A complexity that includes not only duration but creation, not only being but becoming, not only geometry but ethics. It is not the answer we are after, but only how to ask the question. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 141:We are a bit of stellar matter gone wrong. We are physical machinery—puppets that strut and talk and laugh and die as the hand of time pulls the strings beneath. But there is one elementary inescapable answer. We are that which asks the question. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 142:I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man was rooted in the answers given by faith and that I did not have the right to deny them on the grounds of reason; above all, I realized that these answers alone can form a reply to the question of life. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 143:When you have a problem, a desire exudes forth from you, and Source hears it and answers it immediately. Once you remove your attention from the problem, you then allow the solution. Give birth to the question and let it go - and allow the answer to flow. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 144:A commander in chief ought to say to himself several times a day: If the enemy should appear on my front, on my right, on my left, what would I do? And if the question finds him uncertain, he is not well placed, he is not as he should be, and he should remedy it. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 145:We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 146:You see, my friends... you begin to ask the questions, & 147:I should like to raise the question whether the inevitable stunting of the sense of smell as a result of man's turning away from the earth, and the organic repression of the smell-pleasure produced by it, does not largely share in his predisposition to nervous diseases. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 148:The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises the question, "Why does it exist at all?" Through its fitness of construction, it offers the apology for its existence. But where it is a work of beauty it has no question to answer; it has nothing to do, but to be. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 149:All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichman chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 150:I find myself immersed in the deep mystery. Then something astonishing happens. The inarticulate question of the heart dissolves into the ocean of mystery. And I feel I’ve found the answer I’m looking for. But this answer, like the question, is more of a feeling than a thought. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 151:The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra. The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me you don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step the man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 152:If you're feeling pain, express that to the Lord. If you're feeling worried, express those worries. One passage that gives me comfort is in Psalms, Chapter 11, verse 3, it reads, "When all that is good falls apart, what can good people do?" That's really the question of the day. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 153:The next thing to be said about what long-range planning is not, is that it does not deal with future decisions. It deals with the futurity of present decisions. Decisions exist only in the present. The question that faces the long-range planner is not what we should do tomorrow. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 154:Far more often [than asking the question & 155:After I give lectures-on almost any subject-I am often asked, "Do you believe in UFOs?" I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, "How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?" ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 156:Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. Every breath we take, every step we take, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 157:Every decision that you make either moves you toward your personality, or toward your soul. Each decision you make is an answer to the question, & 158:The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State's honey and avoiding the sting? ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 159:I know for sure, that the universe is wise and compassionate. The question then becomes: How can there be such brutality and pain and such suffering in the world if the universe is compassionate and wise. The reason is we put it there. We create it. And it is up to us to stop creating it. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 160:As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of & 161:The Question is not how much are you going to accomplish? Or can you show some results? But are you in love with Jesus? In our world of brokeness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God; a heart that forgives, cares, reaches out and wants to heal. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 162:Truth has always had many loud proclaimers, but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the truth, allow it to permeate his whole being, accept all its consequences, and not have an emergency hiding place for himself and a Judas kiss for the consequence. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 163:Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized& 164:I cannot remember a time when the question of why people behave as they do was not intensely interesting to me. The desire to understand was very important. When I was young, I was aware of the fact that much of the time, the reasons a person gave for his actions were not the actual reasons. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 165:Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence‚Äì whether much that is glorious‚Äì whether all that is profound‚Äì does not spring from disease of thought‚Äì from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 166:The question of being is everything. Nothing could be more important or consequential-n othing where the stakes run so high. To remain unconscious of being is to remain asleep to our own reality and therefore asleep to reality at large. The choice is simple: awaken to being or sleep an endless sleep. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 167:When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean ‚Äî neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master ‚Äî that’s all. ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 168:I think there is, not in the sense that I enjoy it, but that it's an important question. It's the question, "Does the presence of pain mean God doesn't care? Does God not love me anymore?" I think that's a very common connection we tend to make. I see that a lot in my own life and in the lives of others. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 169:So the question is not: Why start off on such a path? You have already started off. You did so with the first beat of your heart. The question is: Do I wish to walk this path consciously, or unconsciously? With awareness or lack of awareness? As the cause of my experience, or at the effect of it? ~ neale-donald-walsch, @wisdomtrove 170:No matter who we are, life is going to put us through the changes we need to go through. The question is: Are we willing to use this force for our transformation? I saw that even very intense situations don’t have to leave psychological scars, if we are willing to process our changes at a deeper level. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove 171:And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 172:Considering the multitude of mortals that handle the pen in these days, and can mostly spell, and write without glaring violations of grammar, the question naturally arises: How is it, then, that no work proceeds from them, bearing any stamp of authenticity and permanence; of worth for more than one day? ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 173:There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list. Arthur Eddington ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 174:We no longer even understand the question whether change is by itself good or bad, ... We start out with the axiom that it is the norm. We do not see change as altering the order... We see change as being order itself - indeed the only order we can comprehend today is a dynamic, a moving, a changing one. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 175:When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of & 176:Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who is above, and his true position will be exposed. Let him be forced into making a choice between God and money, between God and men, between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human love, and God will take second place every time. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 177:We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 178:The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 179:The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher's or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself - Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 180:In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed? ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 181:I went to a heavy metal concert. The singer yelled out, "How many of you people feel like human beings tonight?" And then he said, "How many of you feel like animals?" The thing is, everyone cheered after the animals part, but I cheered after the human beings part because I did not know there was a second part to the question. ~ mitch-hedberg, @wisdomtrove 182:I think the question is, how do we live with change? Change in our friends, change in our lovers? Change in me and change in my body, from the stroke. Things have changed this plane of consciousness. We've tried to keep things the same. It causes suffering. This suffering is another step in your spiritual life, in your spiritual journey. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 183:What was the question? ... Oh. Where do I get my crazy ideas? Answer: sleep-fairy, walk-fairy, shower-fairy. Book-fairy. And in these last few years, from my wife. Now when I have questions I ask her and she tells me the answer. If you haven't already, I'd suggest you want to find your soulmate, as soon as you can. Next question? ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 184:No amount of outer technology, no amount of computers and biotechnology and nanotechnology is going to stop the continuation of warfare and racism and environmental destruction. What's called for on the Earth at this time is really a change of heart ... the question is really not the future of humanity, but the presence of eternity. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 185:Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not & 186:This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness... they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 187:... for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification. In their origin these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which could lie in the future. With God all is Now. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 188:I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question: How are you? I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question: What is God? If you think that the Truth can be known from words; if you think that the Sun and the Ocean can pass through that tiny opening called the mouth, someone should start laughing! Someone should start wildly laughing now! ~ hafez, @wisdomtrove 189:I'm all for past influences; the question is whether they are deterministic. Freud and the behaviorists argue that what we are at any given moment is billiard balls whose past determines our future course. That doesn't take into account that we are forever generating internal representations of positive futures and choosing among them. ~ martin-seligman, @wisdomtrove 190:I think the oversight is great, and I think that oversight ought to be devoted almost entirely to the question is this being done at market you know. In other words, you want to make sure that the government isn't investing foolishly. But you don't want to care about which congressional districts it goes to or whether banks get favored over. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 191:I wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 192:We have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society. We are still called upon to give aid to the beggar who finds himself in misery and agony on life's highway. But one day, we must ask the question of whether an edifice which produces beggars must not be restructured and refurbished. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 193:[I] put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No! ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 194:When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand, … Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further, I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave, But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 195:Q: Surely there must be something in common between the many points of consciousness we are. M: First know your own mind and you will find that the question of other minds does not arise at all, for there are no other people. You are the common factor, the only link between the minds. Being is consciousness; & 196:So when people ask me if I believe God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn't exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It's like asking for directions to the edge of the earth; the earth is a sphere, it doesn't have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise. ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 197:Now, you see, if you understand what I'm saying, with your intelligence, and then take the next step and say "But I understood it now, but I didn't feel it." Then, next I raise the question: Why do you want to feel it? You say: "I want something more", because that's again that spiritual greed. And you could only say that because you didn't understand it. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 198:The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it from the moment you are alive you are bound to be concerned with love because love is not just something that happens to you: It is a certain special way of being alive. Love is in fact an intensification of life a completeness a fullness a wholeness of life. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 199:My biggest faults is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. It's like I was raising chickens inside me. The chickens lay eggs and the eggs hatch into other chickens, which then lay eggs. Is this any way to live a life? What with all these faults I've got going, I have to wonder. Sure, I get by. But in the end, that's not the question, is it? ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 200:In every age immorality has found no less support in religion than morality has. If the achievements of religion in respect to man's happiness, susceptibility to culture and moral control are no better than this, the question cannot but arise whether we are not overrating its necessity for mankind, and whether we do wisely in basing our cultural demands upon it. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 201:I often feel like saying, when I hear the question & 202:It turns out, however, that how much life satisfaction people report is itself determined by how good we feel at the very moment we are asked the question. Averaged over many people, the mood you are in determines more than 70 percent of how much life satisfaction you report and how well you judge your life to be going at that moment determines less than 30 percent. ~ martin-seligman, @wisdomtrove 203:Remember one thing: meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 204:What I try to do is narrow the sermon series down to one big question. In this case the question is: What happens when grace happens? I knew I wanted to preach about grace. I just felt as if it was time for our church to be refreshed and see the beauty of God's grace - the uniqueness of the Christian grace as compared to the teachings of other world religions on forgiveness. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 205:You know, it’s the same thing as the question of free will and destiny, the question of creativity - you, the artist, you’re not the puppet of the piano, you’re not the puppet of the muse, but you’re not its master, either. It’s a relationship, it’s a conversation, and all it wants is to be treated with respect and dignity - and it will return ten thousand times over. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 206:However, community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another. Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own. The question, therefore, is not & 207:On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 208:All I did was collect a few of the questions I've been asked through the years, write up a brief response and put them in this publication. As a pastor, you get asked questions and receive emails. Many of them I had answered, but just in conversation. So we kind of re-crafted the question and answered it. It turned out to be an interesting exercise. I hope it's encouraging for people. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 209:I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn’t keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 210:Someone asked me whether I was aware of all the people out there who were praying for the President. And I had to say, "Yes, I am. I've felt it. I believe in intercessory prayer." But I couldn't help but say to that questioner after he'd asked the question that - or at least say to them that if sometimes when he was praying he got a busy signal, it was just me in there ahead of him. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 211:In reality all existence, every form, is my own, within my consciousness. I cannot tell what I am because words can describe only what I am not. I am, and because I am, all is. But I am beyond consciousness and, therefore, in consciousness I cannot say what I am. Yet, I am. The question & 212:Oh Lord, there it is again. The question;" What kind of business should I start?" Incidentially, it has a twin that also sets me off: "What should I specialize in during the second year of my MBA studies?" Sorry, but those are two of the most profoundly upsetting questions anyone can ask - upsetting because the answer should be obvious: Do what turns you on, not what the statistics say is best. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 213:As followers of Christ, we are to be careful not to remain victims of the many cultural presuppositions of who he is, and what he teaches, insofar as taking for granted our own caricatures of him. Let it boil in both mind and heart the question, & 214:Chris Langan] told me not long ago. I found if I go to bed with a question on my mind, all I have to do is concentrate on the question before I go to sleep and I virtually always have the answer in the morning. Sometimes I realize what the answer is because I dreamt the answer and I can remember it. Other times I just feel the answer, and I start typing and the answer emerges onto the page. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 215:My opposition to war is not based upon pacifist or non-resistant principles. It may be that the present state of civilization is such that certain international questions cannot be discussed; it may be that they have to be fought out. But the fighting never settles the question. It only gets the participants around to a frame of mind where they will agree to discuss what they were fighting about. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 216:Strangely enough, for many many years I didn't talk about my childhood and then when I did I got a ton of mail - literally within a year I got a couple of thousand letters from people who'd had a worse childhood, a similar childhood, a less-bad childhood, and the question that was most often posed to me in those letters was: how did you get past the trauma of being raised by a violent alcoholic? ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 217:We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses& 218:And above all, you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling‚Ķthe question should never be: ‚ÄòDo I like that kind of service?‚Äô but ‚ÄòAre these doctrines true: Is holiness there? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to move to this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike for this particular door-keeper? ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 219:Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 220:Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question "What on earth is he up to now?" will intrude. It lays one's devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, "I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 221:The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question & 222:[My father] impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made me?" cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "Who made God? ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 223:The question "What shall we do about it?" is only asked by those who do not understand the problem. If a problem can be solved at all, to understand it and to know what to do about it are the same thing. On the other hand, doing something about a problem which you do not understand is like trying to clear away darkness by thrusting it aside with your hands. When light is brought, the darkness vanishes at once. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 224:Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all. When people suggest you follow your "passion" or your "bliss," I propose that they are, in fact, referring to the same singular concept: excitement. This brings us full circle. The question you should be asking isn't, "What do I want?" or "What are my goals?" but "What would excite me?" ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 225:It turns out that the men who ultimately, who unpretentiously value peace are willing to sacrifice their own peace of mind in order to render it. The question is, & 226:It seems then, say I, that you leave politics entirely out of the question, and never suppose, that a wise magistrate can justly be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy, such as those of Epicurus, which, denying a divine existence, and consequently a providence and a future state, seem to loosen, in a great measure, the ties of morality, and may be supposed, for that reason, pernicious to the peace of civil society. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 227:Q: When I see something pleasant, I want it. Who exactly wants it? The self or the mind? M: The question is wrongly put. There is no & 228:Tell me," said the atheist , "Is there a God really?" Said the master, "If you want me to be perfectly honest with you, I will not answer." Later the disciples demanded to know why he had not answered. "Because the question is unanswerable," said the Master. "So you are an atheist?" "Certainly not. The atheist makes the mistake of denying that of which nothing may be said... and the theist makes the mistake of affirming it. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 229:Arabia was idolatrous when, six centuries after Jesus, Muhammad introduced the worship of the God of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Moses, and Jesus. The Ariyans and some other sects had disturbed the tranquility of the east by agitating the question of the nature of the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. Muhammad declared that there was none but one God who had no father, no son and that the trinity imported the idea of idolatry. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 230:Q: How does one bring to an end this sense of separateness? M: By focussing the mind on & 231:I ask that you offer to the political arena, and to the critical problems of our society which are decided therein, the benefit of the talents which society has helped to develop in you. I ask you to decide, as Goethe put it, whether you will be an anvilor a hammer. The question is whether you are to be a hammerwhether you are to give to the world in which you were reared and educated the broadest possible benefits of that education. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 232:I find myself immersed in the deep mystery. Then something astonishing happens. The inarticulate question of the heart dissolves into the ocean of mystery. And I feel I’ve found the answer I’m looking for. But this answer, like the question, is more of a feeling than a thought. I can’t really express the inarticulate question, because it’s too deep for words. I can’t really express the inarticulate answer, because it’s too deep for words. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 233:Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine... I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 234:Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 235:There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it: What is the purpose of life? Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with: To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 236:Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 237:Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question ‘What is God like?’ and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 238:As I wonder deeply about life, I find myself immersed in the deep mystery. Then something astonishing happens. The inarticulate question of the heart dissolves into the ocean of mystery. And I feel I’ve found the answer I’m looking for. But this answer, like the question, is more of a feeling than a thought. I can’t really express the inarticulate question, because it’s too deep for words. I can’t really express the inarticulate answer, because it’s too deep for words. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 239:That is the first thing to learn - not to seek. When you seek you are really only window-shopping. The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosophers or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself and that is why you must know yourself. Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self. To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 240:As many critics of religion have pointed out, the notion of a creator poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress. If God created the universe, what created God? To say that God, by definition, is uncreated simply begs the question. Any being capable of creating a complex world promises to be very complex himself. As the biologist Richard Dawkins has observed repeatedly, the only natural process we know of that could produce a being capable of designing things is evolution. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 241:Why should you row a boat race? Why endure the long months of pain in preparation for a fierce half hour that will leave you all but dead? Does anyone ask the question? Is there anyone who would not go through all the costs, and more, for the moment when anguish breaks into triumph or even for the glory of having nobly lost? Is life less than a boat race? If a man will give the blood in his body to win the one, will he spend all the might of his soul to prevail in the other? ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 242:Christianity is not a patent medicine. Christianity claims to give an account of facts - to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 243:The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me? It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a religion, just as a person may not know that he has a heart, but it is no more possible for a person to exist without a religion than without a heart. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 244:To the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, the question whether Progress is inevitable or even real is not a matter of primary importance. For them, the important thing is that individual men and women should come to the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, and what interests them in regard to the social environment is not its progressiveness or non-progressiveness (whatever those terms may mean), but the degree to which it helps or hinders individuals in the their advance towards man's final end. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 245:Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borrowed her husband's. If this had been all there was to her, she wouldn't have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered from an incurable case of of pretentiousness. Lacking any internalized values of her own, such people can arrive at a standpoint only by adopting other people's standards or views. The only principle that governs their minds is the question "How do I look? ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 246:The problem comes up because we ask the question in the wrong way. We supposed that solids were one thing and space quite another, or just nothing whatever. Then it appeared that space was no mere nothing, because solids couldn't do without it. But the mistake in the beginning was to think of solids and space as two different things, instead of as two aspects of the same thing. The point is that they are different but inseparable, like the front end and the rear end of a cat. Cut them apart, and the cat dies. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 247:O, this faith is a living, busy, active, powerful thing! It is impossible that it should not be ceaselessly doing that which is good. It does not even ask whether good works should be done; but before the question can be asked, it has done them, and it is constantly engaged in doing them. But he who does not do such works, is a man without faith. He gropes and casts about him to find faith and good works, not knowing what either of them is, and yet prattles and idly multiplies words about faith and good works. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 248:The kakapo is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it's about to trip over something - but flying is out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 249:If peace were the goal of today's intellectuals, a failure of that magnitude - and the evidence of unspeakable suffering on so large a scale - would make them pause and check their statist premises. Instead, blind to everything but their hatred for capitalism, they are now asserting that & 250:People want their reason for living to be a singular thing, like a career or a relationship, because this makes an individual feel secure in the physical world. We don't fare well in the realm of the invisible - so telling someone that their purpose is multilayered and includes the arduous journey of discovering who they really are is not always the answer they want to hear. But consider the complexity of the question: What is my reason for living? How can that question not include a journey into the depths of your own life? ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 251:The constantly recurring question must be: What shall we unite with and from what shall we separate? The question of coexistence does not enter here, but the question of union and fellowship does. The wheat grows in the same field as the tares, but shall the two cross-pollinate? The sheep graze near the goats, but shall they seek to interbreed? The unjust and the just enjoy the same rain and sunshine, but shall they forget their deep moral differences and intermarry? ... The Spirit-illuminated church will have none of this ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 252:People want their reason for living to be a singular thing, like a career or a relationship, because this makes an individual feel secure in the physical world. We don't fare well in the realm of the invisible - so telling someone that their purpose is multilayered and includes the arduous journey of discovering who they really are is not always the answer they want to hear. But consider the complexity of the question: What is my reason for living? How can that question not include a journey into the depths of your own life? ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 253:Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question "What will make me happy?" as "What will make me healthy?" Our souls do not spell out their troubles. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 254:The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 255:The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question "Do you see the same truth?" would be "I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend," no Friendship can arise - though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 256:... she took her hand and raised her brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstacy in the air. Where to begin?& 257:I confess . . . that I am not myself very much concerned with the question of influence, or with those publicists who have impressed their names upon the public by catching the morning tide and rowing very vast in the direction in which the current was flowing; but rather that there should always be a few writers preoccupied in penetrating to the core of the matter, in trying to arrive at the truth and to set it forth, without too much hope, without ambition to alter the immediate course of affairs, and without being downcast or defeated when nothing appears to ensue. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 258:As I considered the matter carefully it gradually came to light that all those matters only were referred to mathematics in which order and measurements are investigated, and that it makes no difference whether it be in numbers, figures, stars, sounds or any other object that the question of measurement arises. I saw consequently that there must be some general science to explain that element as a whole which gives rise to problems about order and measurement, restricted as these are to no special subject matter. This, I perceived was called & 259:There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 260:A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms . . . If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 261:And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him? ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 262:It is for the Guru to point out the method; he will show you the way to understanding and instruct you in your sadhana. It is for you to keep on practiCing it faithfully. But the fruit comes spontaneously in the form of Self-revelation. The power to make you grasp the Ungraspable duly manifests itself through the Guru. Where the question "How am I to proceed?" arises, fulfillment has obviously not yet been reached. Therefore, never relax your efforts until there is Enlightenment. Let no gaps interrupt your attempt, for a gap will produce an eddy, whereas your striving must be continuous like the flowing of oil, it must be sustained, constant, an unbroken stream. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 263:Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 264:When people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there is no time for god to make the universe in. It’s like asking directions to the edge of the earth; The Earth is a sphere; it doesn’t have an edge; so looking for it is a futile exercise. We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe,and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization; There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful. ~ stephen-hawking, @wisdomtrove 265:If a man approaches a fact in the world around him with a judgment arising from his previous experiences, he shuts himself off by this judgment from the quiet, complete effect which this fact can have on him. The learner must be able each moment to make himself a perfectly empty vessel into which the new world flows. Knowledge is received only in those moments in which every judgment, every criticism coming from ourselves, is silent. For example, when we meet a person, the question is not at all whether we are wiser than he. Even the most unreasoning child has something to reveal to the greatest sage. And if he approach the child with his prejudgment, be it ever so wise, he pushes his wisdom like a dulled glass in front of what the child ought to reveal to him. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 266:When it comes right down to it, the challenge of mindfulness is to realize that this is it Right now is my life. The question is, What is my relationship to it going to be? Does my life just automatically happen to me? Am I a total prisoner of my circumstances or my obligations, of my body or my illness, or of my history? Do I become hostile or defensive or depressed if certain buttons get pushed, happy if other buttons are pushed, and frightened if something else happens? What are my choices? Do I have any options? We will be looking into these questions more deeply when we take up the subject of our reactions to stress and how our emotions affect our health. For now the important point is to grasp the value of bringing the practice of mindfulness into the conduct of our daily lives. Is there any waking moment of your life that would not be richer and more alive for you if you were more fully awake while it was happening? ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:guidance on the question. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
2:The question is yet before the court. ~ Horace, #NFDB
3:To be or not to be is not the question. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
4:Which begs the question, What is? ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
5:Answers are easy. What’s the question? ~ Jim C Hines, #NFDB
6:The question is what is the question? ~ John Wheeler, #NFDB
7:She’s leading us here. The question ~ Catherine Bybee, #NFDB
8:Be the answer not the question. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
9:To fly or not to fly, that's the question. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
10:We exist within the question of God. ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
11:Consider the question suitably modified. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
12:Dying is totally out of the question. ~ Allison Pearson, #NFDB
13:the question, he finds he can’t. “What is ~ Mary Kubica, #NFDB
14:Whatever the question, love is the answer. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
15:YOU WILL NOT. IT’S OUT OF THE QUESTION, ~ John Flanagan, #NFDB
16:Love is the Answer. What was the Question? ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
17:The question caught me off guard. ~ The Arbinger Institute, #NFDB
18:If one can't answer,
simplify the question. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
19:Love is the question; Love is the answer. ~ Daniel Johnston, #NFDB
20:To fear or not to fear, that is the question. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
21:I am an agnostic as to the question of God. ~ Clarence Darrow, #NFDB
22:I know you love me. The question is, how much? ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
23:Literature is the question minus the answer. ~ Roland Barthes, #NFDB
24:Meditation raises the question: Who are we really? ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
25:To be, or not to be, that is the Question: ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
26:To be or not to be that is the question ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
27:To be or not to be, that's the question ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
28:And the question is, which one is really "you. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
29:and the question is, which one is really “you, ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
30:Pretend I asked, now answer the question. ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
31:Resignation is just simply out of the question. ~ John Podesta, #NFDB
32:To be or not to be that is the question. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
33:What are we doing here, that is the question. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
34:If you know the question, you know half. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
35:Say, what's the question mark for? Sexual identity? ~ Dan Slott, #NFDB
36:The question is just as important as the answer. ~ Charlie Rose, #NFDB
37:to be or not to be. that is the question. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
38:All knowledge meets an end at the question '...Why? ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
39:Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
40:Pretend I asked, now answer the question... ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
41:To be, or not to be, that is the question. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
42:To be, or not to be, that is the question: ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
43:The question is there, whther we answer it or not. ~ Thomas Nagel, #NFDB
44:The question was What if I could make her happy? ~ Melanie Harlow, #NFDB
45:Genius sees the answer before the question. ~ J Robert Oppenheimer, #NFDB
46:The question you should be asking is, am I a good girl ~ Ker Dukey, #NFDB
47:Utter originality is, of course, out of the question. ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
48:We all fall in life The question is who gets back up! ~ Greg Plitt, #NFDB
49:Technology is the answer, but what was the question? ~ Cedric Price, #NFDB
50:The question of sex will take care of itself. ~ Helen Frankenthaler, #NFDB
51:To be, or not to be, that is the question.... ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
52:And now the question: what do we do with the longing ~ Mary Jo Bang, #NFDB
53:I think people hear the question they want to hear. ~ Chris Christie, #NFDB
54:So the question is ... You wanna be a Scruffian or not? ~ Hal Duncan, #NFDB
55:The question ocasionally invents the answer. (142) ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
56:Ask the question. Always ask the question, never assume. ~ Mary Frame, #NFDB
57:How to lie without lying? Avoid answering the question. ~ Chloe Neill, #NFDB
58:Is there life before death? - that is the question! ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
59:The only dumb question is the question you don't ask. ~ Paul MacCready, #NFDB
60:The question is not how to get cured, but how to live. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
61:The question of societal fairness is always pertinent. ~ Martin Schulz, #NFDB
62:Art is life, life is art - the question is what came first? ~ Lady Gaga, #NFDB
63:If you can't handle the answer, then don't ask the question. ~ T A Uner, #NFDB
64:Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning? ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
65:The question of being is the darkest in all philosophy. ~ William James, #NFDB
66:It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. ~ Eugene Ionesco, #NFDB
67:It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. ~ Eug ne Ionesco, #NFDB
68:Theology must begin and end with the question of truth. ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
69:To the question Do I matter? Jesus is indeed the answer. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
70:What is the answer? In that case, what is the question? ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
71:You can't know the answer until you ask the question. ~ Jennifer E Smith, #NFDB
72:You can’t know the answer until you ask the question. ~ Jennifer E Smith, #NFDB
73:Do we dare be ourselves? That is the question that counts. ~ Pablo Casals, #NFDB
74:Heart answered the question
which yet to be posed by mind. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
75:It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. ~ Eug ne Ionesco, #NFDB
76:He asked the question, but slammed the door on any answers. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
77:I don't know the question, but sex is definitely the answer. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
78:If love is the answer, then I'm changing the question. ~ Ilsa Madden Mills, #NFDB
79:If you want an answer, you’ll have to risk the question. ~ Catherine Bybee, #NFDB
80:My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?' ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
81:The answer is that the question itself is strictly inapposite. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
82:To nae nae, or not the nae nae, that is the question ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
83:To nae nae, or not to nae nae: that is the question. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
84:Why. Why. Why. WHY.
The question my life had become. ~ Courtney Summers,#NFDB
85:You can either ask the question or experience the answer. ~ Kalki Bhagavan, #NFDB
86:Asking the question matters more than finding the answer. ~ Mark Beauregard, #NFDB
87:Chocolate. It’s always the answer, no matter the question. ~ Suzanne Wright, #NFDB
88:I always ask the question, "Is this what I want in my life? ~ Kathy Ireland, #NFDB
89:The question is not can animals speak but can they suffer. ~ Jeremy Bentham, #NFDB
90:The question is not what you look at…but what you see ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
91:The question is unanswerable because its truth can't be tested. ~ Jen Nadol, #NFDB
92:The question is, where will your joy meet the world’s need? ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB
93:The shining was back, and strong. The question was, why now? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
94:Being a rock star was out of the question. I can't sing. ~ Linda Evangelista, #NFDB
95:The greatest discoveries all start with the question "Why?" ~ Robert Ballard, #NFDB
96:The question is unanswerable, which is not to say futile. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
97:The question you're not supposed to ask is the important one. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
98:if love is the answer then I don't wanna ask the question ~ Ilsa Madden Mills, #NFDB
99:The question is not what you look at, but what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
100:The Question to everyone's answer is usually asked from within ~ Steve Miller, #NFDB
101:To ensnare an elusive answer, camouflage the question. ~ Khang Kijarro Nguyen, #NFDB
102:Donald Griffin’s The Question of Animal Awareness. ~ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, #NFDB
103:I can answer the question, but am I bright enough to ask it?”) ~ John Brockman, #NFDB
104:The only stupid question is the question that is never asked. ~ Ramon Bautista, #NFDB
105:the question hung there like an invisible wall of flatulence ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
106:The question to everyone's answer is usually asked from within. ~ Steve Miller, #NFDB
107:Can one come 2 conclusions,
Before the question is conceived? ~ Tupac Shakur,#NFDB
108:If you don't know the question, you are not ready for the answer. ~ Vivian Amis, #NFDB
109:My favorite Aggie joke? I'm sorry I don't understand the question ~ Lyle Lovett, #NFDB
110:The question is not Will you succeed? but rather, Will you matter? ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
111:The question is: what is a sane man to do in an insane society? ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
112:The question is: how to be a good person if I don’t believe anymore ~ E Lockhart, #NFDB
113:The question isn't "Why do we die?" The question is "Why do we live? ~ S M Reine, #NFDB
114:Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
115:The question is the primary form of communication for little kids. ~ Jim Gaffigan, #NFDB
116:The question shouldn't be what we ought to do, but what we can do. ~ Rory Stewart, #NFDB
117:[27] The question now arises: •How are all these imperatives possible? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
118:the question falls within the penumbra of the detective’s expertise. ~ Paul Levine, #NFDB
119:The question, love, is whether you want me enough to take the risk. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
120:The question we should be asking. Would I want to be sponsored by me? ~ Jeff Olson, #NFDB
121:They say drugs are not the answer, but really, what is the question? ~ Janet Fitch, #NFDB
122:to remain silent is out of the question for a strong and honest man. ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB
123:You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
124:It's hard to answer the question "what's wrong?" when nothing is right. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
125:Opportunities come. The question is what will you do when they arrive? ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
126:Pain has a flavor. The question is...what does it taste like to you? ~ Lisa Gardner, #NFDB
127:The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
128:The question is, would you rather keep your secrets or keep her? ~ Penelope Douglas, #NFDB
129:The question was: Will you meet me tomorrow? And the word was: Yes. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
130:Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
131:The question is, do you want to play Russian roulette with your brain? ~ Devra Davis, #NFDB
132:The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
133:The question was simply this: Would the world be French or British? ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
134:Weren’t the question the man had wrong, it was his way of asking it. ~ Justin Cronin, #NFDB
135:It’s not the answer that enlightens, but the question. EUGENE IONESCO ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
136:"Only keep the question, 'What is the best way of helping other people?'" ~ Seungsahn, #NFDB
137:WE ARE ALL, I SUPPOSE, beholden to our parents—the question is, how much? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
138:God is always present. The question is, how present are we? ~ Zalman Schachter Shalomi, #NFDB
139:He slapped her face with amazing objectivity and repeated the question. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
140:If somebody's not prepared to answer the question, you can keep asking ~ Martin Bashir, #NFDB
141:I know that I exist; the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
142:I want to shove the question down his throat until he chokes on it. ~ Courtney Summers, #NFDB
143:Sometimes if you received an answer, the question might be taken away. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
144:The question isn't at what age I want to retire, it's at what income. ~ George Foreman, #NFDB
145:The question is whether [suicide] is the way out, or the way in. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
146:The question not many ask is: why are the laws of physics like they are? ~ Paul Davies, #NFDB
147:The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable. ~ Edward Hopper, #NFDB
148:To choose the light or to choose other things is always the question. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
149:Also I think you’re stalling because you don’t want to answer the question. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
150:If you do not connect with others, influence is out of the question.”8 ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
151:If you don't like the question that's asked, answer some other question. ~ Howard Baker, #NFDB
152:Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO is the answer. ~ Erik Naggum, #NFDB
153:Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration. ~ Iain Banks, #NFDB
154:That's always the question. How to defend yourself without being nasty. ~ Elizabeth Hay, #NFDB
155:The question of common sense is always: 'what is it good for?' - ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
156:The question was, which would the chemo kill first: the cancer or me? ~ Lance Armstrong, #NFDB
157:The question we should be asking ourselves is: "Who do I need to become? ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
158:We have the answers, all the answers; it’s the question we do not know. ~ Verne Harnish, #NFDB
159:When we have arrived at the question, the answer is already near. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
160:Who am I, why am I here? Forget the question, someone give me another beer. ~ Meat Loaf, #NFDB
161:As to classing it in the list of fables, the idea was out of the question. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
162:But Tolkien doesn't ask the question: What was Aragorn's tax policy? ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
163:By asking the question How can I afford it? your brain is put to work. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
164:How we ask the question is extremely important to how we find the answer. ~ C K Prahalad, #NFDB
165:It doesn't matter what the question is, Alex, the answer is always love ~ Victor J Banis, #NFDB
166:Often the question of, "Who am I?" should be answered with, "Whose am I? ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
167:So here’s the question,” Melinda led in. “Who’s Tall, Dark and Smoldering? ~ Julie James, #NFDB
168:The question I ask myself like almost everyday is 'Am I doing the most ~ Mark Zuckerberg, #NFDB
169:The question is: until reinforced, can we learn the ways of church mice. ~ Al Swearengen, #NFDB
170:We all know your idea is crazy. The question is whether it is crazy enough. ~ Niels Bohr, #NFDB
171:Will Iraq be a democracy? The question is, 'Will America be a democracy?' ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
172:Already old, the question Who shall die? Becomes unspoken Who is innocent? ~ Karl Shapiro, #NFDB
173:Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?' ~ Garrett Hardin, #NFDB
174:Of course God already knows what I need. The question is - do I know? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
175:one speaks of acceptable risks, the question is always acceptable to whom? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
176:Tax credits instead of a huge bureaucracy. This is the question for me. ~ William Kristol, #NFDB
177:The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds. ~ William James, #NFDB
178:The question of how things will settle down is the only important question. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
179:There is no such thing as a “good man.” Good for what? is the question. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
180:But on the question of who you're writing for, don't be eager to please. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
181:Humans can be noble. The question is: Will we put forth what is necessary? ~ Keith Raniere, #NFDB
182:The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
183:The question is not whether we will barbecue, but how we will barbecue. ~ Joan Z Borysenko, #NFDB
184:The question that sometime's drive's me hazy, am i or the other's crazy? ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
185:To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
186:Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
187:We are all, I suppose, beholden to our parents - the question is, how much? ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
188:Everyone is ambition. The question is whether he is ambitious to be or to do. ~ Jean Monnet, #NFDB
189:Hence the question: Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house? ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
190:I’m thinking,” he said. To bed or not to bed his wife? That was the question. ~ Maya Rodale, #NFDB
191:Remember, if you don't get the question right, your answer doesn't matter. ~ William S Lind, #NFDB
192:Sometime it's more difficult to know the question than to find an answer. ~ Matthew Skelton, #NFDB
193:The question is never "Should I be annoyed?" but "How annoyed should I be? ~ Sloane Crosley, #NFDB
194:The question is not can they reason nor can they talk but can they suffer? ~ Jeremy Bentham, #NFDB
195:The question of how things will settle down is the only important question... ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
196:Always in search of the question that might make you ask me one in return ~ Matthew Zapruder, #NFDB
197:If life is merely a joke, the question still remains: for whose amusement? ~ Publilius Syrus, #NFDB
198:I know the answer now, but I’m so frightened I’ve forgotten the question. ~ Michael Robotham, #NFDB
199:The question for writing then is this: how long are you willing to be unheard? ~ Peter Elbow, #NFDB
200:The question I constantly asked myself was this: What am I supposed to do? ~ Emily P Freeman, #NFDB
201:The question of immortality came before him. He was not in the least interested. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
202:We have to be that wedge that drives the question and asks the hard questions ~ Danny Glover, #NFDB
203:Every political theology is exorcising demons—the question is which demons. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
204:If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?” —LILY TOMLIN ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
205:Let us be practical and ask the question: How do we love our enemies? ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
206:stop. In addition, there was the question of what had happened to such a bullet. ~ Jim Bishop, #NFDB
207:The question any novel is really trying to answer is, Is life worth living? ~ Nicholson Baker, #NFDB
208:THE QUESTION I MUST ASK MYSELF: DO I TREAT OTHERS BETTER THAN THEY TREAT ME? ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
209:The question is not if we worship, but what we give our hearts to worship. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
210:The question isn't were you challenged. The question is were you changed? ~ Leonard Ravenhill, #NFDB
211:The question "Is this an act of self-love or is it an act of self-sabotage?" is ~ Debbie Ford, #NFDB
212:The question of what happens after life is question that unifies human beings. ~ Georgia Byng, #NFDB
213:The question that drives me hazy is whether it is I or others who is crazy. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
214:"What did you do?” This time the question tears from my throat like a growl. ~ Veronica Roth, #NFDB
215:Drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
216:Goal: Look inside yourself and honestly answer the question, do I need guidance? ~ Demi Lovato, #NFDB
217:The male human being did not enter into the question of His conception. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
218:The question becomes not just how to accumulate more, but how to covet less. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
219:The question is always the answer, provided you want the answer badly enough. ~ Barbara Hambly, #NFDB
220:The question is not what you look at, but what you see. —Henry David Thoreau ~ Robert I Sutton, #NFDB
221:When one speaks of acceptable risks, the question is always acceptable to whom? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
222:Why do you love me?” I ask, throwing the question back at him. “Why do I breathe? ~ Julia Kent, #NFDB
223:YES is the answer to the question is: Is it a good idea to have sex every day? ~ Chloe Thurlow, #NFDB
224:Always ask yourself the question "Is this going to help get me to my goal or not? ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
225:Always ask yourself the question “Is this going to help get me to my goal or not? ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
226:Binding emissions targets for the developing nations are out of the question. ~ Eileen Claussen, #NFDB
227:It's the question mark that comes with death that we can't face, not the period. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
228:It’s the question mark that comes with death that we can’t face, not the period. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
229:Oscar Wilde said it's never the question that's indiscreet, only the answers. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
230:Tell your secrets. [In reply to the question "How does one become a prophet?"] ~ Allen Ginsberg, #NFDB
231:The question is not how much water I have, the question is, how much can you drink? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
232:The question is not whether to close the parks, but how to accomplish this goal. ~ James Hansen, #NFDB
233:What was life asking of me? How could I respond when I didn't know the question? ~ Ruta Sepetys, #NFDB
234:You can't know the answer until you ask the question.
-Mrs. Patterson ~ Jennifer E Smith,#NFDB
235:And the next moment she was hating herself for the folly which asked the question. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
236:Peace in Palestine is inevitable. The question is how do we make it happen today. ~ Darrell Issa, #NFDB
237:The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
238:The question isn't 'Do we worship?' The question is 'Who (or what) do we worship?' ~ Pete Wilson, #NFDB
239:The question now wasn’t whether my eating inflicted harm, but what kind of harm. ~ Tovar Cerulli, #NFDB
240:The question that is upon my lips (please forgive me) is the doubt in your heart ~ Jeremy Aldana, #NFDB
241:When you take away the question mark, it usually turns their headline into a lie. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
242:But the question that really drove me crazy was: Why had he kissed me? Luisa ~ Allison van Diepen, #NFDB
243:Everybody has choices. The question is whether you will choose to see them or not. ~ Brinda Berry, #NFDB
244:Have people look at their trials with the question, “What can I learn through this? ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
245:It's true, I suffer a great deal-but do I suffer well? That is the question. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #NFDB
246:The question is how to arrive at your opinions and not what your opinions are. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
247:The trains always arrive at your station. The question is which one to take? ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
248:Nonsense! If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it? ~ Nellie Bly, #NFDB
249:Once miracles are admitted, every scientific explanation is out of the question. ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
250:The question is: how you cross uneven ground, how you assemble networks around you. ~ Reid Hoffman, #NFDB
251:The question isn't what I would have done. The question is what do you want to do? ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
252:the question of what humanity is to be is going to be decided in the next sixty years. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
253:The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
254:When you ask the question differently, you look for answers in different places. ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
255:Would you like to hold my sword?" He asked the question with a gleam in his eyes. ~ Karpov Kinrade, #NFDB
256:Cassirer asks the question, How can a sensory content become the vehicle of meaning? ~ Walker Percy, #NFDB
257:It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about? ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
258:Random Girl after a hookup: "Do you love me" Tucker: "I don't understand the question. ~ Tucker Max, #NFDB
259:Some days there comes a time that no matter what the question is, the answer is wine.— ~ Katie Reus, #NFDB
260:The best musicians answer something in you when you don’t even know the question. ~ Allison Pearson, #NFDB
261:The question is not if we are going to die or not, but how are we going to live. ~ Joan Z Borysenko, #NFDB
262:I think the question of abortion is one that should be left for the states to decide. ~ John F Kerry, #NFDB
263:Some things suck; they hurt bad. The question is, Do you have the courage to let them? ~ Ethan Hawke, #NFDB
264:The question I should have asked is not what is the rule, but what is the principle. ~ Andrew Fastow, #NFDB
265:The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but "Can they suffer? ~ Jeremy Bentham, #NFDB
266:The question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence ~ John Green, #NFDB
267:We all get distracted, the question is, would you bounce back or bounce backwards? ~ Kendrick Lamar, #NFDB
268:We can't own each other's past. The question is whether we have a future together. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
269:And so that is the question I leave you with in this final: What is your cause for hope? ~ John Green, #NFDB
270:Do you have any Black Eyed Peas?"
He looked puzzled by the question.
"To eat? ~ Jennifer Probst,#NFDB
271:Life is the question and life is the answer, and God is the reason and love is the way. ~ Johnny Cash, #NFDB
272:Stay with the question. The more it troubles you, the more it has to teach you. ~ Jacqueline Winspear, #NFDB
273:The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
274:The question is, are we using our emotions to entangle ourselves or to liberate ourselves? ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
275:The question is, how long does Mr. Spinny have to live? And what does that tell us? ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
276:The question is not, will God keep his promises, but, will we build our lives upon them? ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
277:The question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence. ~ John Green, #NFDB
278:What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question. ~ Jonas Salk, #NFDB
279:Why am I unhappy? The question carries with it the virus that will destroy everything. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
280:Can art change the world? Maybe ... we should change the question: Can art change people's lives? ~ JR, #NFDB
281:Every day people judge all other people. The question is whether they judge wisely. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
282:If “best years ahead” is the answer, then “things stupid people say” is the question. ~ Gena Showalter, #NFDB
283:If you can answer the question of why you’re doing it, it’s the right thing to do. ~ Justin Timberlake, #NFDB
284:Instead of the question "What must I do for my employer?" substitute "What can I do" ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
285:People ask the question, 'If you're offered VP, would you take it?' No, I won't take it. ~ Nikki Haley, #NFDB
286:Random Girl after a hookup: "Do you love me"
Tucker: "I don't understand the question. ~ Tucker Max,#NFDB
287:The question is not, "Do you want to go to heaven?" The question is, "Do you want God?" ~ Paul Washer, #NFDB
288:The question is not, "Why is there only one way to God?" but "Why is there even one way?" ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
289:The question isn’t ‘Is he normal?’ or ‘Are you normal?’ but ‘What is normal for us? ~ Bethenny Frankel, #NFDB
290:The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch. ~ James McBride, #NFDB
291:The question was put to him, what hope is; and his answer was, "The dream of a waking man." ~ Diogenes, #NFDB
292:Every couple fights. The question really isn’t if we fought as much as how we fought. ~ Jennifer Coburn, #NFDB
293:I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
294:It's true, I suffer a great deal-but do I suffer well? That is the question. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #NFDB
295:The essence of the question is the opening up, and keeping open, of possibilities. ~ Hans Georg Gadamer, #NFDB
296:The question is not "To be or not to be," it is what we should be until we are not. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
297:We don't have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we do it. ~ Erik Qualman, #NFDB
298:We will not allow to become a political issue in this country the question of Asianisation. ~ Bob Hawke, #NFDB
299:All trials force the question, Who are you really? And you must trust yourself to answer ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
300:At the end of life, each of us must answer the question, Whose story captured my soul? ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
301:Every day all people judge all other people. The question is whether we judge wisely. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
302:I feel like the torch has been passed to me. The question is what am I going to do with it. ~ Ato Boldon, #NFDB
303:I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes. ~ Leonard Bernstein, #NFDB
304:In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
305:The question is never ‘Are you in a storm?’ The question is ‘Is Jesus in your boat?’ ~ Rich Wilkerson Jr, #NFDB
306:The question is not who,” said Dumbledore, his eyes on Colin. “The question is, how. . . . ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
307:The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things. ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
308:The question of dying becomes a wise reminder. It cures us of our innocence of the future. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
309:The question was not how to get a job, but how to live by such jobs as I could get. ~ Dorothy Richardson, #NFDB
310:What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why. ~ Allen Tate, #NFDB
311:at him. ‘What could be wrong?’ Not knowing how to answer, she turned the question back to ~ Josephine Cox, #NFDB
312:How short was the road from that decision to this moment? The question ached like a bruise. ~ Jane Harper, #NFDB
313:It's true, I suffer a great deal--but do I suffer well? That is the question. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #NFDB
314:The question for the child is not Do I want to be good? but Whom do I want to be like? ~ Bruno Bettelheim, #NFDB
315:The question isn't "is your novel good enough?" The question is: "Do you believe in it? ~ Giuseppe Bianco, #NFDB
316:The question is -- Who will get to heaven first; the man who talks or the man who acts? ~ Melvin B Tolson, #NFDB
317:The question now is, can we survive ourselves? Can we even manage to become the next human? ~ Chip Walter, #NFDB
318:We must all learn to hear what we do not like. The question is not, 'Is it pleasant?' ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
319:What went wrong? That is the question, and not "To be or not to be," for all of Shakespeare. ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
320:Your body is a temple. The question is, how many thousands of people do you want inside? ~ Isaac Bonewits, #NFDB
321:Drop the question of what tomorrow may bring, and count as profit every day that Fate allows you. ~ Horace, #NFDB
322:I lost the ability to consider the question of predestination with necessary scepticism. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
323:It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is what are you so busy about? ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
324:It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is what are you so busy about? ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
325:No decisions should ever be made without asking the question, is this for the common good? ~ Michael Moore, #NFDB
326:(Reply on what constitutes scientific proof:)"The question is much too difficult for me. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
327:The first question at that time in poetry was simply the question of honesty, of sincerity. ~ George Oppen, #NFDB
328:There's always the question when you're making a documentary if the talking heads will work. ~ Heidi Ewing, #NFDB
329:We have learned the answers, all the answers: it is the question that we do not know. ~ Archibald MacLeish, #NFDB
330:All television is educational television. The question is merely, ‘What is it teaching? ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer, #NFDB
331:Authenticity is too big a subject to just toss in with the question about the photographs! ~ Rachel Kushner, #NFDB
332:Go ahead and flunk me for begging the question, then go ahead and fuck yourself for asking it. ~ Adam Levin, #NFDB
333:I consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill off my finer feelings. ~ Mary MacLane, #NFDB
334:If love is the answer, then I'm changing the question."
Leo Tate Very Bad Things ~ Ilsa Madden Mills,#NFDB
335:I knew I could make money from songwriting, so how much and when was not really the question. ~ Ryan Tedder, #NFDB
336:It's not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
337:The question is always the same with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you? ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
338:"The question of human relationship and of the inner cohesion of our society is an urgent one." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
339:I am a kind of joke, but the question is: which kind? My job is to keep everyone guessing. ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
340:It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
341:It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
342:Most people think they KNOW the answer. I am willing to ADMIT I don't even know the question. ~ Arsenio Hall, #NFDB
343:One said whatever would be of advantage; the question whether it was true no longer arose. ~ Alvin Plantinga, #NFDB
344:She wants me. I know it. She knows it. Now the question is— what are we going to do about it? ~ Meghan March, #NFDB
345:Spectroscopy can probably answer the question, 'Is there anybody out there?' Are we alone? ~ Garik Israelian, #NFDB
346:The question is not whether Scotland can survive as a separate state. Of course it could. ~ Alistair Darling, #NFDB
347:The question of divine knowledge is so deep that it is really known only to those who have it. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
348:The question of receiving the immigrant is an ethical issue that becomes a political issue. ~ Ruben Martinez, #NFDB
349:The question of whether I, as a whistleblower, should be pardoned, is not for me to answer. ~ Edward Snowden, #NFDB
350:The question was heatedly debated of how much Western culture should be brought into China. ~ Chen Ning Yang, #NFDB
351:When the hypocrisy of life appears we often fail to recognise it or the question it raises ~ Jeremy Griffith, #NFDB
352:Would it have made a difference?
This is the question we always ask after we have given up. ~ Thomas King,#NFDB
353:Are you tired?" Carol asked calmly.
The question seemed not of now but of always. ~ Patricia Highsmith,#NFDB
354:But crazy people never think they're crazy. You're sane just by the virtue of the question. ~ Jacquelyn Frank, #NFDB
355:It is not enought to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
356:Life in itself is so beautiful that to ask the question of the meaning of life is simply nonsense. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
357:Literature is the question without the answer. Philosophy is the answer without the question. ~ Chloe Thurlow, #NFDB
358:The question is not to know what is the meaning of life, but what meaning I can give to my life. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
359:"The question is: what at this moment is the natural direction of the growth of this individual?" ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
360:The question of time does not arise at all to the one established in one's true nature. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
361:(...) the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
362:The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
363:We cannot be deaf to the question: 'Do I love this world so well that I have to know how it ends? ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
364:Yes" actually means "No" 100% of the time, when the question is "Can I give you some advice? ~ Demetri Martin, #NFDB
365:Fire looked into his quiet eyes, touched his dear familiar face and considered the question. ~ Kristin Cashore, #NFDB
366:It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
367:It's amazing how much data is out there. The question is how do we put it in a form that's usable? ~ Bill Ford, #NFDB
368:So-and-so’s son died.’ (‘The question’). Answer: ‘Since it’s nothing he can control, it isn’t bad. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
369:(...) the question is not simply wether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
370:The Reformation did not directly touch the question of the true character of God's church. ~ John Nelson Darby, #NFDB
371:The sanctity-of-life principle underscores the gravity of the question of when human life begins. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
372:How far is truth susceptible of embodiment? That is the question, that is the experiment. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
373:In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
374:Is climate change pseudoscience? If I'm going to answer the question, the answer is: absolutely. ~ Ivar Giaever, #NFDB
375:It is out of the question for our people to rise by treading down any of their own number. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
376:Sometimes the reason we do not see the answer is that we are looking too closely at the question. ~ Paul Murray, #NFDB
377:The fundamental work of investment management is filtering. The question is what do you filter. ~ Donald Luskin, #NFDB
378:The Government of the United States possesses no power whatever over the question of religion. ~ James Buchanan, #NFDB
379:The only appropriate response to the question, 'Can I be frank?' is, 'Yes, if I can be Barbara. ~ Fran Lebowitz, #NFDB
380:The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
381:"The question is: what at this moment is the natural direction of the growth of this individual?" - ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
382:The question of integrity will get finer and finer and more delicate and more beautiful. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
383:The question: What color is my parachute?
The answer: blood red, brains gray, sludge black. ~ Jesse Petersen,#NFDB
384:To the question what wine he found pleasant to drink, he replied, "That for which other people pay." ~ Diogenes, #NFDB
385:Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless. BERTRAND RUSSELL, ATHEIST ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
386:Well, changes have been made. The question is whether we've done enough by way of change. ~ Richard Ben Veniste, #NFDB
387:Where you point the camera is the question and the picture you get is the answer to decipher. ~ Robert Polidori, #NFDB
388:Whether you’re in a leadership role or not, the question is, how safe do you feel where you work? ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
389:Do you trust me?
The question is usually asked before an admission that such trust is misplaced. ~ S J Watson,#NFDB
390:Everyone gets discourages...The question is: Are you going to give up or get up? It's a choice. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
391:For me the question was, do I want my paycheck to be dependent on how other people think I look? ~ Kathy Ireland, #NFDB
392:Historically, the rabbis are split on the question of dreams. None of them denied their power. ~ Rodger Kamenetz, #NFDB
393:I guess the question is, ‘What do we need to let go of and what do we need to move on to?’” No ~ Spencer Johnson, #NFDB
394:Satchell Paige once posed the question, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? ~ Alan Russell, #NFDB
395:The question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
396:The question nowadays is not what makes government work. The question is how do we make it stop. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
397:You say you don’t know who you are,” adds Rachel. “But the question should be—who do you want to be? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
398:It doesn't matter. What's done is done. The question is whether you're going to let it define you. ~ Dana Delamar, #NFDB
399:I wasn't the cutest or the most talented, but I could get through the question-and-answer period. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
400:The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here? ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
401:The question is precisely to know whether the past has ceased to exist, or ceased to be useful... ~ Henri Bergson, #NFDB
402:There is no good answer to being a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
403:A few words about the question of whether photography is art or not: I never understood the question. ~ Ernst Haas, #NFDB
404:Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question. ~ Raymond Geuss, #NFDB
405:Do we still remember the question we are trying to answer? Or have we substituted an easier one? ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
406:God is Love. We eventually have to ask ourselves the question; why was Love nailed to a cross? ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
407:I'm not fond of ideologies. I don't like it when people have answers before they know the question. ~ Peter Moskos, #NFDB
408:The question of truth is forever in the air, and people look for it with particular fervor in art. ~ Duane Michals, #NFDB
409:The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim. ~ Edsger Dijkstra, #NFDB
410:Ari felt like, Hellooo, I have wings! I turn into a wolf! Blending is out is out of the question! ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
411:If you don't listen to the question entirely, then
you are going to revise your answers frequently. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
412:Let’s face up to the question of who we support; let’s defend the bastards and reform them later. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
413:Now people ask whether photography is art, but I think the question is of absolutely no interest. ~ Peter Lindbergh, #NFDB
414:That's precisely the question everyone should be asking-why the hell not? - Why not you, why not now. ~ Tim Ferriss, #NFDB
415:Then, the question I asked myself was: Do I look pretty? Now the question I ask is: Do I look strong? ~ Ally Condie, #NFDB
416:Then, the question I asked myself was, do I look pretty? now the question I ask is, do I look strong? ~ Ally Condie, #NFDB
417:The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself. ~ Stokely Carmichael, #NFDB
418:The question is not whether you ever gave yourself to God, but whether you are His now. ~ Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, #NFDB
419:The question isn't whether we 'need' guns. It's wether the government should have a monopoly on force ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
420:To be or not to be is not the question, the vital question is how to be and how not to be… ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
421:What is the answer?"
[ I [Alice B Toklas] was silent ]
In that case, what is the question? ~ Gertrude Stein,#NFDB
422:And the question is always "When are you going to have kids?" Rather than "Do you want to have kids? ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
423:Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
...live in the question. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
424:Melbourne is the kind of town that really makes you consider the question 'Is there life after death? ~ Bette Midler, #NFDB
425:Stranger, pause and ask thyself the question, Canst thou do likewise? If not, with a blush retire. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
426:The question isn't who will be with me in life, rather how will I create the ending I am proud of? ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
427:The question is, will poisoning the voices kill them, or just make them really, really pissed off? ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
428:Thoreau said: “It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is what are you so busy about? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
429:You can always debate about what you should have done. The question is what are you going to do? ~ Hubert H Humphrey, #NFDB
430:An Indian Affairs agent said, 'The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages? ~ David Grann, #NFDB
431:Life gives meaning to life. The answer to the meaning of life is hidden right there inside the question. ~ Wendy Mass, #NFDB
432:Seducing him in the tub smelling of vinegar was out of the question. There had to be some boundaries. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
433:[The question for the behavioral disciplines is simply] what is better, and how do we get there? ~ Kenneth E Boulding, #NFDB
434:The question we must ask for ourselves is: Are we going to be miserable just because other people are? ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
435:There is no good answer to how to be a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
436:The responsible person seeks to make his whole life a response to the question and call of God. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
437:The truth is that I want It, and the price I must pay is to ask the question again and again and again ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
438:We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness? ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
439:Good blurbs are short, sweet, and limited to six. They answer the question “Why should I buy this book? ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
440:I’d spent fourteen years as a we. An us. And becoming a me at this point was entirely out of the question ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
441:If you can put the question, 'Am I or am I not responsible for my acts?' then you are responsible. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #NFDB
442:I sensed only an instant of apprehension. She never raised an eyebrow at the question.. Such a brave girl. ~ Tite Kubo, #NFDB
443:The next day, all that stopped him from feeling pure exultance was the question: had it been too easy? ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
444:The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
445:The question is one of fighting the causes and not just being satisfied with getting rid of the effects. ~ Che Guevara, #NFDB
446:The transformation in higher education is already here; the question is how learning institutions respond. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
447:But I was thinking of a way To multiply by ten, And always, in the answer, get The question back again. ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
448:If he still isn’t giving you what you want, the question to ask yourself is whether you really want him. ~ Sherry Argov, #NFDB
449:Imagine that you are in control of your life. Now, the question is: Why do you have to imagine this? ~ Ernie J Zelinski, #NFDB
450:Life is not a popularity contest. Take the hill, but first answer the question: What is my hill?. ~ Matthew McConaughey, #NFDB
451:She is not perfect. You are not perfect. The question is whether or not you are perfect for each other ~ Robin Williams, #NFDB
452:The Question was this: If you could jump into a time machine and go back to 1932, would you kill Hitler? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
453:We all need to have dreams. The question is, does the dream control you or do you control the dream? ~ Robin Jones Gunn, #NFDB
454:What [Prozac] does is completely annihilate the sexual drive, so the question of passion hardly arises. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
455:You ask, 'How to live my life?' But with the question you are suffocating life itself, for life is spontaneity. ~ Mooji, #NFDB
456:Cheryl Cole got malaria...well I guess that answers the question what do you give someone who has everything ~ Sean Lock, #NFDB
457:If you ask me a question, don't tell me what the question is in advance, 'cause I'd rather not know. ~ Geraldine Ferraro, #NFDB
458:Racism is on its deathbed – the question is, how costly will racists make the funeral? MARTIN LUTHER KING ~ A C Grayling, #NFDB
459:The autumn leaf might cling to its branch, but it was already dead. The question was when it would fall. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
460:How far can they travel before you lose them?” Kiral asked the shaman, who seemed puzzled by the question. ~ Anthony Ryan, #NFDB
461:In the problem of anxiety we must, therefore, always ask the question of what vital value is being threatened ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
462:It is true: Montaigne achieved little else in his life aside from posing the question: “How should I live? ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
463:It's almost inevitable that we become religious people. The question is, what kind of religion is it? ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
464:I want to give up being a bullet I've been a bullet too long The question is Can you give up being a killer? ~ John Agard, #NFDB
465:Man may live and man may die searching for the question why. But if he tries to rule the sky, he must fall. ~ Cat Stevens, #NFDB
466:Normally I am not so violent. Everything comes from the question: Where will I die? It is a strong concern. ~ Mick Jagger, #NFDB
467:Posing the question: does the god of love use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray and fluoride toothpaste? ~ Harlan Ellison, #NFDB
468:The votaries of nonviolence cannot harbour violence even in thought, let alone the question of doing it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
469:To die or not to die, that is the question; it is nobler to live in torment and rage than not to live at all? ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
470:To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
471:An there is always the question: is it really proven that retaliatory actions solve the security problem?. ~ Moshe Sharett, #NFDB
472:"Do you have the talent?" is rarely the question. "Do you have the guts to finish?" is the real question. ~ Orrin Woodward, #NFDB
473:even if the question is a real one, does the fact that science cannot answer it imply that religion can. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
474:Every moment is a moment. Every moment makes a certain request of us. The question is how we answer it. ~ Charlotte Selver, #NFDB
475:For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. ~ Paul Watzlawick, #NFDB
476:Getting rid of an incompetent leader isn’t our biggest problem. The question is what happens next.’ ~ Svetlana Alexievich, #NFDB
477:I am clearly vulnerable on the question of socializing under circumstances not appropriate for a married man. ~ Chuck Robb, #NFDB
478:In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question. ~ William Godwin, #NFDB
479:Irrational barriers and ancient prejudices fall quickly when the question of survival itself is at stake. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
480:It’s done, he growled at himself after a while. You fucked up somewhere. The question is what you do now. ~ Brian Staveley, #NFDB
481:Never answer the question that is asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you. ~ Robert McNamara, #NFDB
482:The question I have heard from some Democrats saying that "You know what? Push for gun control, but not now." ~ Chuck Todd, #NFDB
483:The question is why marriage should be redefined, and how same-sex marriage will strengthen the institution. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
484:There was nothing judgemental or accusatory about the question, so why did I still feel like an idiot? ~ Alexandra Bracken, #NFDB
485:Think about it. Every time you fail at a task you've actually learned something new. The question is "what? ~ Iimani David, #NFDB
486:To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
487:In the future the question will not be, "Are people credit-worthy", but rather, "Are banks people-worthy?" ~ Muhammad Yunus, #NFDB
488:I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
489:It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” —Henry David Thoreau ~ Brian P Moran, #NFDB
490:Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question. ~ Tennessee Williams, #NFDB
491:The question is no longer if we are called to leverage our lives for the Great Commission, only where and how. ~ J D Greear, #NFDB
492:the question is not, "Am I perfect in myself before the law?" but, "Am I perfect in Christ Jesus? ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
493:the question is not so much whether they are guilty as whether we are making the right decision for ourselves. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
494:The question of how one survived is simply not asked. It is not polite. How one survived is best not discussed. ~ Nick Cole, #NFDB
495:The question you should be asking isn't, "What do I want?" or "What are my goals?" but "What would excite me? ~ Tim Ferriss, #NFDB
496:The simple answer to the question of why we get fat is that carbohydrates make us so; protein and fat do not. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
497:A homeless man standing at the off-ramp: the question in these moments isn't whether Jesus is in Him, but in me. ~ Mark Hart, #NFDB
498:How would he answer the question? No idea. In that moment he realized something inside was very, very dead. ~ James L Rubart, #NFDB
499:...no one has ever doubted you would die for those you love ... the question then becomes would you live? ~ Elizabeth Isaacs, #NFDB
500:Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing it is out of the question. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
501:That's the question, isn't it?" you said one night. "Does death bring freedom, or is it the end of freedom? ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
502:There was no progress. No stability. There was just the question of whether things happened far enough away. ~ Nick Harkaway, #NFDB
503:Whatever sociology may be, it is the result of constantly asking the question, what is the meaning of this? ~ C Wright Mills, #NFDB
504:You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
505:As if in the end, it will be the question of whether a baker or a hunter will extend my longevity the most. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
506:Every artist gets asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” The honest artist answers, “I steal them. ~ Austin Kleon, #NFDB
507:I always said all my life, if I wasn't born and they gave me the question, I'd say, I don't want to be born. ~ Jack Kevorkian, #NFDB
508:In Eleven Minutes, I started with the question of why sexuality is considered one of the major issues in life. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
509:Perhaps the question should not be: "Why are other persecuted?" Perhaps the better question is: "Why are we not? ~ Nik Ripken, #NFDB
510:The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
511:The question is what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying? ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
512:The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether government works. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
513:But neither would she ever resolve the question of what was worse: losing a child or never having one. ~ Barbara Taylor Sissel, #NFDB
514:Don't mistake movement for achievement. It's easy to get faked out by being busy. The question is: Busy doing what? ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
515:Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences them, is not something dreadful also. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
516:Every artist gets asked the question, 'Where do you get your ideas?' The honest artist answers, 'I steal them.' ~ Austin Kleon, #NFDB
517:For all we know, the handwriting might have been on the wall all along. The question is: was the ink invisible? ~ Amos Tversky, #NFDB
518:If the rose puzzled its mind over the question how it grew, it would not have been the miracle that it is. ~ Jack Butler Yeats, #NFDB
519:The question is not whether the formula for success will work, but rather whether the person will work the formula. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
520:The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying? ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
521:The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim. ~ Jerry Kaplan, #NFDB
522:Trump challenges us with the question “Are you going to believe me, or are you going to believe your lying eyes? ~ Bandy X Lee, #NFDB
523:Understanding was out of the question; and indeed how passionately, just then, I did not want to be understood. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
524:Are you here to kill me?" The question startled her, but with the day I was having, I thought it was justified. ~ Kalayna Price, #NFDB
525:Our greatness, our talent has never been the question. It's been a matter of grappling for control over what we do. ~ Spike Lee, #NFDB
526:The headline reads, HAVE YOU SEEN MY DICK?” “It was the question of the hour for women everywhere, I assure you. ~ Marina Adair, #NFDB
527:The question is not what was different about Bathsheba. The difference was what had become different about David. ~ Johnny Hunt, #NFDB
528:The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to. ~ Marian Wright Edelman, #NFDB
529:The question is: Particularly in the post-9/11 era, are societies becoming more liberal or more authoritarian? ~ Edward Snowden, #NFDB
530:The question is, what colour will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying? ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
531:The question struck him deep, in a place he'd kept insulated for so long he'd forgotten that it was vulnerable. ~ Gregg Hurwitz, #NFDB
532:The question that surrounds lovemaking is, "Did you cum?" and the unasked question beneath that is, "Am I all right? ~ Sam Keen, #NFDB
533:The question you should be asking isn't, "What do I want?" or "What are my goals?" but "What would excite me? ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
534:The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me? ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
535:This is the question: Are you using God to get something from Him? Or is God Himself the goal of your striving? ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
536:Throwing away Zen mind is correct Zen mind. Only keep the question, 'What is the best way of helping other people?' ~ Seungsahn, #NFDB
537:A story starts with a hero who wants something. And then the question becomes: Will the hero get what she wants? ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
538:Critical sobriety is out of the question so long as this master of terror-in-the-commonplace exerts his spell. ~ Anthony Boucher, #NFDB
539:If I'm educated and passionate about a topic, I'll answer the question. But I also know when to shut the hell up. ~ Kevin Durant, #NFDB
540:I sensed only an instant of apprehension.
She never raised an eyebrow at the question..
Such a brave girl. ~ Tite Kubo,#NFDB
541:I think that religion is an integral part of human needs, but the question also is how you understand religion. ~ Michael Haneke, #NFDB
542:Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself - Death. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
543:Man is the only one in whom the instinct of life falters long enough to enable it to ask the question "Why? ~ Joseph Wood Krutch, #NFDB
544:Of course I can climb it. I'm practically a progidy in PE," I pointed out. "The question is, can you, Mr Smoker? ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
545:The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That's the question to be worried about. ~ Ray Dalio, #NFDB
546:The question for the child is not, `Do I want to be good?"' Bettelheim writes, "but Who do I want to be like? ~ Charles W Colson, #NFDB
547:The question of how you can hope and expect someone to forgive you when deep down you don’t forgive yourself. ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
548:The ultimate lesson of the question was that detailed prior knowledge was less important than a way of thinking. ~ David Epstein, #NFDB
549:They get up every day and go work for money, not taking the time to ask the question, ‘Is there another way? ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
550:You can think a thing over many times and still have no idea how you'll answer the question, if ever it's asked. ~ Laurie Graham, #NFDB
551:As Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about? ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
552:As Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Morality, like art, means drawing a line somewhere.” The question is: where is the line? ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
553:Avoid people who say they know the answer. Keep the company of people who are trying to understand the question. ~ Billy Connolly, #NFDB
554:Buying a gun was out of the question. First, it would be difficult to keep nearby while doing a nude massage. ~ Marshall Thornton, #NFDB
555:I'm not sure if that answers the question and I have absolutely no problem with any major world religion on Earth. ~ John Hodgman, #NFDB
556:I'm sorry."
About what?"
He shrugged, made uncomfortable by the question."I'm not sure. It's a Canadian thing. ~ Tanya Huff,#NFDB
557:I'm staggered by the question of what it's like to be a multimilionaire. I always have to remind myself that I am. ~ Bruce Willis, #NFDB
558:I really care about where things are going. I care about what people are feeling and I like to ask the question why. ~ Asher Roth, #NFDB
559:Men have called me mad, but the question is not settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
560:Or really, the question is: Is there a difference between when life begins and when life as a human begins? ~ Michael S Gazzaniga, #NFDB
561:The question for us is not what new story will come out next. The question is, what are we going to do about it? ~ Edward Snowden, #NFDB
562:The question is no longer between violence and non-violence it is between non-violence and non-existence. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
563:A definition is death. A definition is the answer to which you must look up the question in the back of your book. ~ Peter Hammill, #NFDB
564:Did you ever think about killing me? She swallowed the question. She wasn't sure which answer would upset her more ~ Stylo Fantome, #NFDB
565:Everyday ask yourself the question, "Do I want to experience Peace of Mind or do I want to experience Conflict? ~ Gerald Jampolsky, #NFDB
566:In the meditation, of course, the question is repeated and repeated until you run out of answers - or so I hear. ~ Quentin S Crisp, #NFDB
567:It's not controversial to say that human activity is contributing in some way. The question is how serious that is. ~ Bobby Jindal, #NFDB
568:Life loves to reveal herself to the raw, courageous doubters; to those who are willing to live inside the question. ~ Jacob Nordby, #NFDB
569:People will disappoint you. The question to ask is whether you can learn to live with the disappointment and move on. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
570:They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind. ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
571:But perhaps the question is not whether you can stand with the king... but whether your king can stand with you. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
572:Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
573:In fact, the possibility was so far out of the question, the possibility and the question were on separate continents. ~ Tessa Dare, #NFDB
574:I think we all [americans] think we're a special country. But the question is, what - what call does that give us? ~ Chris Matthews, #NFDB
575:The question ‘Don’t you remember me?’ is awkward, especially if it was asked by someone you have never known. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
576:The question is, once you have this idea, is this enough? Is it something people would actually switch just to have? ~ Emmett Shear, #NFDB
577:The question to ask is not whether you are a success or a failure, but whether you are a learner or a nonlearner. ~ Benjamin Barber, #NFDB
578:We all get hurt. The question is: Who do you love enough, trust enough, and want enough to give the power to hurt you? ~ Katy Evans, #NFDB
579:Your subject should always answer the question “What is the problem to be solved?” or “What is the job to be done?” A ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
580:But whenever I look at the question of how to live, the answer's always staring me in the face. I'm already doing it. ~ Damien Hirst, #NFDB
581:for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
582:If we say that no one's out there And we say we're goin' nowhere And we avoid the question Is this all that it means? ~ Harry Chapin, #NFDB
583:If you do not believe in a personal God, the question: 'What is the purpose of life?' is unaskable and unanswerable. ~ J R R Tolkien, #NFDB
584:I think that the solution of the question of numerical superiority of Russian conventional forces has to be solved. ~ Helmut Schmidt, #NFDB
585:Modern philosophy from Descartes onward has asked itself the question: How can the subject really know the object? ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
586:The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
587:The question isn't, 'What do we want to know about people?', It's, 'What do people want to tell about themselves?' ~ Mark Zuckerberg, #NFDB
588:The question is, when does the therapeutic community end and the reality kick back in Then, what do you do with them ~ James Johnson, #NFDB
589:The question now isn’t whether I want to fool around with this man. The question is how I’m ever going to give it up. ~ Sarina Bowen, #NFDB
590:The question remains... who takes care of you, Miss Vale?"
"I might ask the same question of you, Lord Dryden. ~ Julie Anne Long,#NFDB
591:The question to ask about the writer isn't 'Why does he behave so badly?' but 'What does he gain by wearing this mask? ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
592:The question was, have you heard from anyone on the [Donald] Trump transition team? We have not been contacted. ~ Lawrence O Donnell, #NFDB
593:We face the question whether a still higher "standard of living" is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
594:You could probably get through life without knowing how to roast a chicken, but the question is, would you want to? ~ Nigella Lawson, #NFDB
595:And no matter what I was doing, another me sat in my belly, absolutely cold with terror over the question of my life. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
596:And you loved me like I was, and had always been, the answer and the question did not, and would never, matter. ~ Tyler Knott Gregson, #NFDB
597:Here's the question I would ask you to consider; do you treat yourself the way you want other people to treat you? ~ James Arthur Ray, #NFDB
598:I rolled my eyes. Yes boys. You can both write your names in the snow. The question is who would make bigger letters. ~ Alice Clayton, #NFDB
599:I wondered if there were other restless people asking the question with me: What if Jesus meant the stuff he said?. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
600:Read and admire, but then go back to first principles and ask the question yourself, in your own way. Dare to disagree. ~ David Whyte, #NFDB
601:The question is, "Are you spiritual or are you not?" The truth is you are. The reality is you don't believe it ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
602:The question is not so much whether there is life on Mars as whether it will continue to be possible to live on Earth ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
603:The question, I've come to think, is not what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
604:The question of naturalism is a fallacy, it does not exist... The photographic image replaces naturalistic experience. ~ Sid Grossman, #NFDB
605:The question of the composition of perceptible objects is one which already occupied the mind of the ancient Greeks. ~ Johannes Stark, #NFDB
606:The question you must answer isn't how to get ahead. It's how to go somewhere that matters. And have fun along the way. ~ Umair Haque, #NFDB
607:The Russians need to understand that you cannot have peace [in Syria] unless you resolve the question of Sunni buy-in. ~ John F Kerry, #NFDB
608:Which are truer, the happy memories, or the unhappy ones? He decided, eventually, that the question was unanswerable. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
609:Who let the dogs in? ...This, we fear, is going to be the question. Who let the dogs in? Who let the dogs in? Who? Who? ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
610:At those critical junctures, the question is not simply whether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
611:I didn't say anything. Sometimes even the right answers sound wrong if you don't like the question. That's the truth. ~ Dan Gemeinhart, #NFDB
612:If he had looked at the question as an outsider,” James wrote, “he could not possibly have been surprised by that failure. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
613:[If you want to] ask the question what is beautiful? It's the life that you lead. It's the life that all women lead. ~ Charlize Theron, #NFDB
614:Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
615:The question isn’t whether or not you should wait to be picked, the question is whether you care enough to pick yourself. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
616:The question is there in each silence. The question is there in the space between you. But you cannot bring it aloud. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
617:When do you bleed a patient?"
The question brought me up short. "When I want him to die?" I asked dubiously. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,#NFDB
618:as long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong? If you want sense, you’ll have to make it yourself. ~ Norton Juster, #NFDB
619:But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus. ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
620:I had received an answer to the question that Holmes had put to me. Now all I needed to know was why I had asked it. ~ Anthony Horowitz, #NFDB
621:It is a very mad world. Blind people are leading other blind people. And nobody raises the question: where are we going and why? ~ Osho, #NFDB
622:The question is, can a human being hold on to God in the face of suffering? After all, suffering is the test of love. ~ John Ortberg Jr, #NFDB
623:The question who ought to be boss is like who ought to be the tenor in the quartet? Obviously, the man who can sing tunor. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
624:When you can't answer the question, flip it over. Forget what makes something go fast--what makes it slow down? ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
625:Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question. ~ Ralph Ellison, #NFDB
626:And yet, something has changed for the better. We have rediscovered that capitalism is not the answer, but the question. ~ Eric Hobsbawm, #NFDB
627:At high school they expect answers, but at university all you're supposed to do is dispute the wording of the question. ~ Eleanor Catton, #NFDB
628:Everything in your life comes at a price. The question you have to ask yourself is, what price are you willing to pay. ~ Paullina Simons, #NFDB
629:I once had the nerve to ask Picasso the question, 'What is art?' He answered, 'Art is a lie which makes us see the truth. ~ James Dickey, #NFDB
630:Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven't asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. ~ Clay Christensen, #NFDB
631:Talking to girls was out of the question. To me, they were like some exotic alien species, both beautiful and terrifying. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
632:The question is not what man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
633:This is the problem with stories. Stories always mean something. The question is ... What exactly do they mean? ~ Cressida Cowell, #NFDB
634:We can appreciate each other's languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away. ~ Ngugi wa Thiong o, #NFDB
635:At first, the question was, Who’s to blame? But then, when we learned more, we started thinking, What should we do? ~ Svetlana Alexievich, #NFDB
636:How did it come to be that you think men and women are the same? Well, there's a simple answer to the question: Feminism. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
637:People will disappoint you, Gemma. The question to ask is whether you can learn to live with the disappointment and move on. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
638:Silence can answer the question words may fail to answer. If you want to know what silence can do, keep silence! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
639:The kingdom of God is available to you in the here and the now. But the question is whether you are available to the kingdom. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
640:The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. ~ Dick Cheney, #NFDB
641:The question then will be, whether a consolidated government can preserve the freedom and secure the rights of the people. ~ George Mason, #NFDB
642:There’s a simple answer to the question of what to eat at snack time. Nothing. Don’t eat snacks. Period. Simplify your life. ~ Jason Fung, #NFDB
643:What indeed is there to say? To be or not to be married, that was the question, and they had decided it in the affirmative. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
644:You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book? ~ Gabrielle Zevin, #NFDB
645:Although she was not conventionally beautiful, she was so original that it rendered the question of beauty inconsequential. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
646:At first I was almost about to despair, I thought I never could bear it — but I did I bear it. The question remains: how? ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
647:Grace is at a low ebb in that soul which can even raise the question of how far it may go in worldly conformity. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
648:Green eggs, or not green eggs? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to eat them in a box, with a fox— ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
649:I can’t afford it,” your brain stops working. By asking the question “How can I afford it?” your brain is put to work. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
650:It's normally agreed that the question 'How are you?' doesn't put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
651:Just because the question can be answered doesn't mean that anyone is obliged to answer it, or that it ought to be asked. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
652:Know what you do to me, city girl?” The question seemed to ease her mind. The corner of her lips curled up. “Good to know. ~ Denise Hunter, #NFDB
653:Nothing generates more heat in the government than the question of who is chosen to participate in important meetings. ~ Richard Holbrooke, #NFDB
654:Personally, I think no question containing either/or deserves a serious answer, and that includes the question of gender. ~ Kate Bornstein, #NFDB
655:The question is not why fools fall in love. It is expected of them. When "smart" people fall in love - that's the problem. ~ Jessica Zafra, #NFDB
656:The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying? Personally, ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
657:The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim. ~ Edsger W Dijkstra, #NFDB
658:The simplest kind of decision is binary: that is, the question can be answered, in principle at least, by either yes or no. ~ E J W Barber, #NFDB
659:we have to discover the truth for ourselves. The world doesn’t even ask the question if there is a greater truth to know, ~ Tony Bertauski, #NFDB
660:What I want is to get done what the people desire to have done, and the question for me is how to find that out exactly. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
661:What makes 'good tape'? That is the question that has consumed my life for the past 20 years, and I have an answer for you ~ Alex Blumberg, #NFDB
662:While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question 'what killed him' is more important. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
663:A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
664:Anderson [Cooper], I guess the question I have is why can't CNN cover Obamacare, and ISIS, and radical Islamic terrorism? ~ Anderson Cooper, #NFDB
665:By some fluke, my folks forgot to ask me the question most crucial to ensuring a lifetime of self-doubt: 'What if you fail? ~ Lizz Winstead, #NFDB
666:Fear is temporary. Regret is permanent. Adventure is taking a chance because it’s better than the question mark if you don’t. ~ Dan Skinner, #NFDB
667:God is speaking to all of us, all the time. The question is not, to whom does God talk? The question is, who listens? ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
668:Grace is at a low ebb in that soul, which can even raise the question of how far it may go in worldly conformity. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
669:I'm often asked whether I believe in Global Warming. I now just reply with the question: "Do you believe in Gravity?" ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
670:In the question of peace, people spoke up and demonstrated for peace and against the threat of war, the threat of atomic war. ~ Stefan Heym, #NFDB
671:It is a curious fact that with every great revolutionary movement the question of 'free love' comes into the foreground. ~ Friedrich Engels, #NFDB
672:No vision issue today is bigger than the question of efficiency versus some combination of innovation and customer service. ~ John P Kotter, #NFDB
673:Risking your life is of no consequence when you are on your own; but the question changes when you are part of a family unit. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
674:The moment a child answers the question ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ he is halfway to being an adult. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean, #NFDB
675:The point is that in society everybody must answer the question of what he is—as distinct from the question of who he is— ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
676:The question about who you will love and when you will love him is out of your hands. It’s a mystery that you can’t solve. ~ Cheryl Strayed, #NFDB
677:The question for me was, could TV actually teach? I knew it could, because I knew 3-year-olds who sang beer commercials! ~ Joan Ganz Cooney, #NFDB
678:The question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a persons needs. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
679:The question, then, is whether the only force that keeps us from carrying out misdeeds is the fear of being seen by others ... ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
680:TRUST took as its starting point the question, What would happen if a movie took the character of a teen-age girl seriously?. ~ Hal Hartley, #NFDB
681:Accept ignorance; pay more attention to the question than the answer; never be afraid to go in the opposite direction. ~ Richard Saul Wurman, #NFDB
682:And of course with any wall there’s the question not just of what are you keeping out, but also what are you holding in. ~ John Joseph Adams, #NFDB
683:As I always say: If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is: Do you want to do it?
―Nellie Bly ~ Matt Phelan,#NFDB
684:Ask yourself the question: If I don't do it, who will? If you find the answer is no one will do it, then do it yourself. ~ Omar Saif Ghobash, #NFDB
685:Every minute of every day, the question is never will we be doing something, but rather what that something is we’ll be doing. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
686:I see that the West is beginning to separate the question of nuclear armament from the peaceful use of nuclear energy. ~ Mir Hossein Mousavi, #NFDB
687:I wondered if there were other restless people asking the question with me: What if Jesus meant the stuff he said?. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
688:So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years? ~ Paul Ryan, #NFDB
689:Stop blaming people for not making you to achieve your dreams. The question is "are they the people having those dreams? ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
690:The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, was currently researching the question: How many whales can you catch in one week? ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
691:The question isn't whether you have a good master or a bad master, it's to be your own master. That is the dignity of humanity. ~ Alan Keyes, #NFDB
692:The thought of any more murders taking place was simply out of the question. I’d never heard of a career murderer before. ~ Kerri Maniscalco, #NFDB
693:This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
694:Wait... maybe the question isn't "How do I beat him?" Maybe the question in "Dude, why are we even fighting in the first place? ~ Ryan North, #NFDB
695:Wait... maybe the question isn't "How do I beat him?" Maybe the question is "Dude, why are we even fighting in the first place? ~ Ryan North, #NFDB
696:A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.
So the question is: Have you ever done that? ~ Seth Godin,#NFDB
697:But Frankl’s concern is less with the question of why most died than it is with the question of why anyone at all survived. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
698:I mention this because there is the question of how children become aware of what the world is, and how to act in it. How, ~ Elizabeth Strout, #NFDB
699:I posed the question that if Jesus could have done what He was sent to do on this earth without fasting, why did He fast? ~ Jentezen Franklin, #NFDB
700:It is important to realize that our inability to answer a question says nothing about whether the question itself has an answer. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
701:It is not the question, what am I going to be when I grow up; you should ask the question, who am I going to be when I grow up. ~ Goldie Hawn, #NFDB
702:Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
703:Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is waste to be asking the question when you are the answer ~ Campbell, #NFDB
704:Morality can provide at most only a severely limited and insufficient answer to the question of how a person should live. ~ Harry G Frankfurt, #NFDB
705:Nevertheless, it would be correct, in answer to the question ‘who first invented the symbol for zero?’ to say: the Babylonians.13 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
706:Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?' ~ Erwin Chargaff, #NFDB
707:The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth. ~ Peter Abelard, #NFDB
708:The question is whether personal freedom is worth the terrible effort, the never-lifted burden and risks of self-reliance. ~ Rose Wilder Lane, #NFDB
709:The question of why one player won a game rather than another is different from the question of how hard the game is to play. ~ David Graeber, #NFDB
710:What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
711:Why do humans need answers? Partly I suppose because without one, almost any one, the question itself soon sounds silly. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
712:You can't believe because she tells you to," I said
"No. The question is: how to be a good person if I don't believe anymore. ~ E Lockhart,#NFDB
713:Art is solving problems that cannot be formulated before they have been solved. The shaping of the question is part of the answer. ~ Piet Hein, #NFDB
714:Escape was out of the question. The atmosphere outside the dome was cyanide, and Earth was 446,120,000,000,000,000 miles away. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
715:I have often said China is not lacking in material resources. The question is whether we can make full and good use of them. ~ Chiang Kai shek, #NFDB
716:In answer to the question “What are dogs thinking?” the grand conclusion was this: they’re thinking about what we’re thinking. ~ Gregory Berns, #NFDB
717:I've had that my whole career. People were always hedging around the question of: Why are you so dark? What happened to you? ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
718:More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
719:My father said, Politics asks the question: Is it expedient? Vanity asks: Is it popular? But conscience asks: Is it right? ~ Dexter Scott King, #NFDB
720:Of course, everybody says they're for peace. Hitler was for peace. Everybody is for peace. The question is: What kind of peace? ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
721:Success will come when the societal attitude changes and not a single woman in America asks herself the question 'What did I do?'. ~ Joe Biden, #NFDB
722:The question is, not what rights naturally belong to man, but how they may be most equally and effectually guarded in society. ~ Roger Sherman, #NFDB
723:The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question. ~ Joseph Telushkin, #NFDB
724:The question you need to answer is what you want to do with your life given that you don't have the time to do everything? ~ Jacob Lund Fisker, #NFDB
725:There has been an earth for a little more than a billion years. As for the question of the end of it I advise: Wait and see! ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
726:when it comes to the question of dependence or independence!—At any rate, it must be better to have only one to please than two. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
727:Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look at the stars. This practice should answer the question. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
728:I find the question of whether gender differences are biologically determined or socially constructed to be deeply disturbing. ~ Carol Gilligan, #NFDB
729:In response to the question, 'How can we help to promote world peace?' Mother Theresa replied, 'Go home and love your children. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
730:The question how to live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question presented itself—death. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
731:The question is not how much does the youth know when he has finished his education but how much does he care?” Charlotte Mason ~ Cindy Rollins, #NFDB
732:What happened?” He directed the question her way. Hadleigh shrugged, it seemed obvious to her. “I think I broke the pretty one. ~ Jane Cousins, #NFDB
733:What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own. ~ Margaret Deland, #NFDB
734:When we choose to share things, the question is whether we can do so without changing or sugar-coating what we are saying. For ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
735:Who am I, and where am I going? You are the answer to this question. You are here to ask the question, and to be the answer. ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
736:A man in his life may have many teachers, some most unexpected. The question lies with the man himself: Will he learn from them? ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
737:Americans tend to endorse the use of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia when the question is abstract and hypothetical. ~ Ezekiel Emanuel, #NFDB
738:At the end of the day, the question to ask yourself is this: do your expenses, big and small, bring you the thrill they once did? ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
739:Given our examination of the behavior of our police forces at this moment the question of protection has an extra resonance, yes? ~ Laura Mullen, #NFDB
740:Little Lottie King is all grown up, and she just landed me in a heap of trouble. Now the question is, how can I see her again? ~ Eddie Cleveland, #NFDB
741:Only English folk know what is meant by gravy; consequently, the English alone are competent to speak on the question of sauce. ~ George Gissing, #NFDB
742:The question isn’t what are we going to do. It’s what are you going to do. Because I’m right here waiting for you to figure it out. ~ Vi Keeland, #NFDB
743:The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question. ~ Nikolai A Berdyaev, #NFDB
744:To accuse me of making sensations is the easiest way of attacking me, and in reality leaves the question of sculpture untouched. ~ Jacob Epstein, #NFDB
745:To drink or not to drink? That was the question.
I sipped it. If he’d spiked it, I could still kill him before I passed out. ~ Ilona Andrews,#NFDB
746:Universities have come to realize that online is not a fad. The question is not whether to engage in this area but how to do it. ~ Daphne Koller, #NFDB
747:We will not discuss the question as to when this shall be, lest we lose the comfort of the certainty that it shall be. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
748:Who are you?'
I didn't understand the question.
I'm Uri', he said. 'What's your name?'
I gave him my name. 'Stopthief. ~ Jerry Spinelli,#NFDB
749:Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears. ~ Raymond Queneau, #NFDB
750:I don’t like questions. They invent the answers. The real answers are discovered, before you even know what the question is. ~ William McIlvanney, #NFDB
751:The literature of science is filled with answers found when the question propounded had an entirely different direction and end. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
752:The question is not whether we evaluate ourselves against others; rather, the question is by what standard do we measure ourselves? ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
753:The question of identity is a question involving the most profound panic—a terror as primary as the nightmare of the mortal fall. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
754:The question {WHY}, though, never goes away-- not for me, not for anybody. We keep groping toward light while living in darkness. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
755:U.N. weapons inspectors found empty chemical warheads in Iraq. So, the question everyone is asking now is how did Sean Penn miss this? ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
756:What if you, too, were to greet every interaction in your life with the question 'What's the potential opportunity that this is?' ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
757:What really makes it an invention is that someone decides not to change the solution to a known problem, but to change the question. ~ Dean Kamen, #NFDB
758:And to the question asked by Ecclesiastes six thousand years ago, 'That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?... ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
759:"Does God know he [exists]?" "Of course he does. Otherwise, you could not have asked the question, and I could not have answered." ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
760:In other words, return on assets seeks to answer the question, “How efficiently is this company using its assets to generate profits? ~ Mike Piper, #NFDB
761:The memory of the heart was far stronger than whatever was kept in the mind. The question was, what did people keep in their heart? ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
762:The question arises whether all lawyers are the same. This is like asking whether everything that gets into a sewer is garbage. ~ Florynce Kennedy, #NFDB
763:The question of vernaculars as media of instruction is of national importance; neglect of the vernaculars means national suicide. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
764:The question that motivates my research is, if we can put a man on the Moon with 100,000 [people], what can we do with 100 million? ~ Luis von Ahn, #NFDB
765:The question tumbles out of my mouth like a smooth stone in a stream, its edges worn clean by how often I roll it around in my head. ~ Sara Raasch, #NFDB
766:The question 'Who am I?' is not really meant to get an answer, the question 'Who am I?' is meant to dissolve the questioner. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
767:We'll probably live 20 more years than our grandparents did. The question is, what are you going to do with those extra 20 years? ~ Justin Zackham, #NFDB
768:What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence, the question is what you can make people believe that you have done. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
769:When does a novel begin? The question is almost as difficult to answer as the question, when does the human embryo become a person? ~ David Lodge, #NFDB
770:whole life in the will of God: the question of who God wants us to be as well as what he wants us to do (where appropriate). What ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
771:Everything comes at a price. Everthing in your life. The question you have to ask yourself is, what price are you willing to pay? ~ Paullina Simons, #NFDB
772:For the critics who think Chesterton frivolous or 'paradoxical' I have to work hard to feel even pity; sympathy is out of the question. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
773:Grace gave her a gentle smile. "You know what the answer is, don't you? Chocolate. It's always the answer, no matter the question. ~ Suzanne Wright, #NFDB
774:He wanted to ask why, but the question was so obvious, just hanging out there within easy view, that to voice it would be redundant. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
775:In between levels, he looked at me and asked the question that turns every boy into a man: "Wanna see some boobs?" My time had come. ~ Tyler Oakley, #NFDB
776:It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself. ~ Betty Friedan, #NFDB
777:It is in rugged crises, in unbearable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of the question, that the angel is shown. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
778:It is not for me to change you. The question is, how can I be of service to you without diminishing your degrees of freedom? ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
779:Posing the question: does the god of love use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray and fluoride toothpaste? ~ Deathbird Stories, by Harlan Ellison [1], #NFDB
780:The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book? ~ David Attenborough, #NFDB
781:The question is: Shouldn't Hezbollah disarm? And ultimately they should. And it's necessary for the Lebanese government to succeed. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
782:The question that a lot of people ask me all the time is how did you make it? The truth be told, it was nothing but the grace of God. ~ Tyler Perry, #NFDB
783:There are going to be frustrations in life. The question is not: How do I escape? It is: How can I use this as something positive? ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
784:This is the way I’ve always been. I think of the answer long after the person asking the question has lost interest and walked away. ~ Jael McHenry, #NFDB
785:What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done? ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
786:Her grandmother had once told her that one of life's best lessons was not being afraid to look foolish -- to just ask the question. ~ Melissa Senate, #NFDB
787:He turned away from the bar as if he could leave the question there. But questions had no location; they could follow him around. ~ Richard Matheson, #NFDB
788:If all be a Dream, then he doth but dream that he makes the Question; and so it is not much matter that a waking Man should answer him. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
789:My personal safety does not count as a factor in the question of Ireland’s rights. I thank no one for refraining from murdering me. ~ Tim Pat Coogan, #NFDB
790:One might say that Christianity’s original answer to the question “What is the purpose of life?” was: the purpose of life is Sunday. ~ Pekka Himanen, #NFDB
791:Still, the question remained. Was he straitjacket strange or just go-off-by-yourself-at-recess-and-put-bugs-in-your-nose strange? ~ Clare Vanderpool, #NFDB
792:The fact is, there is nothing that an ingenious mind cannot explain; but the question is, Is the explanation the right one? ~ Mary Elizabeth Braddon, #NFDB
793:The question isn't so much "Are you parenting the right way?" as it is: "Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?" ~ Brene Brown, #NFDB
794:We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
795:All our problems, all our disputes, all our disagreements can be resolved quickly to mutual satisfaction if we address the question. ~ Benazir Bhutto, #NFDB
796:As I read in a Quora thread when somebody asked the question “How do I get motivated?”: “F%*k motivation. Instead, cultivate discipline. ~ Steve Kamb, #NFDB
797:I tried to focus on the question and not the fact his cooking was better than the majority of the intimate relationships I had been in. ~ Kate Danley, #NFDB
798:No failure you have need to fear, Except to fail to do your best— What have you done, what can you do? That is the question, that the test. ~ Various, #NFDB
799:Sometimes I think our love is inexperienced. The question of dying becomes a wise reminder. It cures us of our innocence of the future. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
800:The question isn’t, “What do I want to get done in the next thirty days?” but, “Who do I want to become in this next season of my life? ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
801:The question of the next generation will not be one of how to liberate the masses, but rather, how to make them love their servitude. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
802:The question was which spell did I make? Which did I have time to make? The answer was eerily simple. I had time to make all of them. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
803:The question whether our conscious personality survives after death has been answered by almost all races of men in the affirmative. ~ James G Frazer, #NFDB
804:What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? ~ Jeremy Bentham, #NFDB
805:But that's the thing with the what-if game-- you really can never know the answer to the question. And maybe it's better that way. ~ Elizabeth Eulberg, #NFDB
806:But that’s the thing with the what-if game — you really can never know the answer to the question. And maybe it’s better that way. ~ Elizabeth Eulberg, #NFDB
807:Every minute of every day, the question is never will we be doing something, but rather what that something is we’ll be doing. Sometimes ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
808:He saw that as usual it would be better to be careful as for some years now he had found being good to be almost out of the question. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
809:He's into you, isn't he. Answer the question, Marissa. Flyboy with the superhero plasma... he wants you, doesn't he?"
-Butch and Marissa ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
810:I always say that you can't be afraid to ask the question. What's the worst that could happen? The answer could be "no" and you go on. ~ Susan Stroman, #NFDB
811:If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
812:it has become more important than ever to look at the question of nationalism—of nationalistic contempt and nationalistic arrogance. ~ Vasily Grossman, #NFDB
813:It's not so much the question that offends me; it's that the people asking it don't seem to respect the moral seriousness of the question. ~ Phil Klay, #NFDB
814:Lower your sights, boy,' he said to Joe Winder. 'I agree, justice is probably out of the question. But we can damn sure ruin their day. ~ Carl Hiaasen, #NFDB
815:My wife asked me once if I weren't a comedian, what I would do. I couldn't answer the question. I never imagined doing anything else. ~ Dave Chappelle, #NFDB
816:Psychopaths are notorious for not answering the question posed them or for answering in a way that seems unresponsive to the question. ~ Robert D Hare, #NFDB
817:That's my answer to the question what is your strongest emotion, if you ever want to ask me: Curiosity, old bean. Curiosity every time. ~ Elaine Dundy, #NFDB
818:The question is really how do we think seriously about this mechanism called a market. It ought to be determining not values but prices. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
819:Were you playing with Stuart?" she asked. The question was loaded. I was a filthy, filthy woman, and even the five-year-old knew it. ~ Maureen Johnson, #NFDB
820:You do have to listen to the stories, for stories always mean something. The question that worries me is: WHAT exactly do they mean? ~ Cressida Cowell, #NFDB
821:America is a nation of immigrants. And so the question is, how do we make legal immigration faster, less bureaucratic, cut the red tape? ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
822:And I spent the day in bed chewing aspirin and sipping tea, pondering the question, Now that I have my life back, what should I do with it? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
823:choice.—The question is, What influences, directs, or determines the mind or Will to come to such a conclusion or choice as it does? ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
824:culture? As Lesslie Newbigin poses the question, “Can one who goes the way of the Cross sit in the seat of Pilate when it falls vacant? ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
825:I think that people are going to move. They always have and that's going to continue. The question is, how are we going to deal with it? ~ Mohsin Hamid, #NFDB
826:Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
827:Listening is not understanding the words of the question asked, listening is understanding why the question was asked in the first place. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
828:One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. ~ Elon Musk, #NFDB
829:Proximity to the condemned and incarcerated made the question of each person’s humanity more urgent and meaningful, including my own. ~ Bryan Stevenson, #NFDB
830:The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
831:The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived. ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
832:As LEGO found out more than a decade ago, the question “What are you most proud of?” can yield surprising and transformative answers. ~ Martin Lindstrom, #NFDB
833:How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry. ~ Allen Tate, #NFDB
834:instead they give me a new approach to thinking about the question so that I can solve it better on my own. Most “bad” recommendations ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
835:One of the silliest of all discussions is the question whether God is personal-it would be more useful to inquire whether ice is frozen. ~ Austin Farrer, #NFDB
836:Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question. ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
837:The question is not how to get good people to rule; THE QUESTION IS: HOW TO STOP THE POWERFUL from doing as much damage as they can to us. ~ Karl Popper, #NFDB
838:The question of souls is old—we demand our bodies, now. We are tired of promises, god is deaf, and his church is our worst enemy. ~ Voltairine de Cleyre, #NFDB
839:The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, ~ Neil MacGregor, #NFDB
840:When we talk about the foreign, the question becomes one of us versus them. But in the end, is one just the opposite side of the other? ~ Lewis H Lapham, #NFDB
841:when you avoid one life question, you answer another life question. The question is : what life question do you want to answer? ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
842:I don't think there is any good answer to the question why shouldn't gays and lesbians who want to serve their country be allowed to do it. ~ John Bolton, #NFDB
843:In the end, the question is not, how do we use nature to serve our interests? It's how can we use humans to serve nature's interest?' ~ William McDonough, #NFDB
844:I think the question that nobody wanted to deal with is the question they're posing: did my kid die in vain? Because the answer is too awful. ~ Joan Baez, #NFDB
845:It was hard to tell if he was smiling or sneering. His face seemed to say, "Yes, this is also an answer, but not to the question I asked. ~ Sana Krasikov, #NFDB
846:It was nearly midnight when the conversation finally stopped on its own weight. The question was unresolved, at least in any explicit way. ~ Bob Woodward, #NFDB
847:Let him go. Let one of them go. Knowing it and doing it, two separate
accomplishments. Let one man go. The question had to be, which one? ~ Megan Hart,#NFDB
848:Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
849:Technologies will come and go, so you need to be able to both ask and answer the question: What do you do as a company, why do you exist? ~ Satya Nadella, #NFDB
850:The question for the Republicans running the confirmation hearings in the United States Senate is whose rules are they going to use? ~ Lawrence O Donnell, #NFDB
851:The question isn't whether the world is perfect.
The real question to consider is: If it were, would you still be in it? ~ Eric Micha el Leventhal,#NFDB
852:Were you playing with Stuart?" she asked.
The question was loaded. I was a filthy, filthy woman, and even the five-year-old knew it. ~ Maureen Johnson,#NFDB
853:Being a narcissist isn't easy when the question is not of loving your own image, but of recreating the self through deliberate acts of alienation. ~ Orlan, #NFDB
854:Demands for equality need to be as complicated as the inequalities they seek to address. The question is: who do we want to be equal to? ~ Reni Eddo Lodge, #NFDB
855:Did science promise happiness? I do not believe it. It promised truth, and the question is to know if we will ever make happiness with truth. ~ Emile Zola, #NFDB
856:Everyone wants to be with you when you win Grand Slams, but who will stick close when the whole world turns on you? That's the question. ~ Maria Sharapova, #NFDB
857:Evil likes darkness.” “Why is that?” Seth asked. Grandma thought about the question a moment before answering. “Because evil likes to hide. ~ Brandon Mull, #NFDB
858:If one wishes to obtain a definite answer from Nature one must attack the question from a more general and less selfish point of view. (415) ~ Max Planck, #NFDB
859:If we would answer the question of the existence of the Evil then we would not be sinners, we could make something else responsible. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
860:In response to the question, 'How do you know when you're finished?' Pollock replied, 'How do you know when you're finished making love? ~ Jackson Pollock, #NFDB
861:Key in life is to be able to answer the question "How much is enough?" Modern society has a desire to accumulate stuff & do nothing with it ~ Gunter Pauli, #NFDB
862:One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
863:The question for me is not are we political, but how are we political? We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
864:The question which we must ask ourselves is not whether we like or do not like what is going on, but what we are going to do about it. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
865:There may be certain genres that men dominate, but fiction not so much. The question of prizes is tricky because there are so many prizes. ~ Emma Donoghue, #NFDB
866:When everything else is gone, balls are all any of us really have left. The question is: are yours made of flesh and blood, or steel? ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
867:Consciously and unconsciously, an artist engaged in serious work is always raising or dealing with the question, 'What really matters?' ~ Freeman Patterson, #NFDB
868:I'd say that the question whether love still exists plays the same role in my novels as the question of God's existence in Dostoevsky. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
869:It is not necessary for me always to premise, that I speak of the condition of the whole sex, leaving exceptions out of the question. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, #NFDB
870:Mudface is the mud in your goatface. What would you say if someone was asked the question 'Does a dog have a Buddha nature?' and said 'Woof! ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
871:My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God? ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
872:So where do we go from here?”…
“That’s up to you, sweetheart. I’m yours, Jenny. I always have been. The question is, are you still mine? ~ Scarlett Cole,#NFDB
873:Swaminathan had never thought that this story contained a moral. But now he felt that it must have one since the question paper mentioned it. ~ R K Narayan, #NFDB
874:The question is no longer whether the United States should contribute to assuring Israel's survival and prosperity; that goes without saying. ~ George Ball, #NFDB
875:the question is not whether your company’s employees and leaders have the right skills; it’s whether they have the potential to learn new ones. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
876:The question was which spell did I make? Which did I have time to make?
The answer was eerily simple.
I had time to make all of them. ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB
877:when God calls us to something, the answer is Carpe Diem. And the question we should be asking Him is, “What can I do for you and your kingdom? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
878:Also I kind of want to see what he looks like, because, frankly, his back is begging the question – what the hell does his front look like? ~ Sarah Alderson, #NFDB
879:He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry? 'A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.' ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
880:How many of us have asked the question, ‘If this great country of ours can put a man on the moon why can’t we find a cure for cancer? ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
881:In this respect, Darwinism was typical of the more primitive cosmogonies. They avoided the question of how the world developed ex nihilo. Darwin ~ Tom Wolfe, #NFDB
882:People will ask you the question 'how is life treating you?' But my question is 'how are you treating life?' On that your happiness rests ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru, #NFDB
883:So the question becomes, Daughter of the Dragon, what will you sacrifice? What will you let be taken away so that you, too, can have power? ~ Kiersten White, #NFDB
884:The question is: how do we get to be that guy? The one who is facing his own death with complete calm, ready to get on with the moving-on. ~ Caitlin Doughty, #NFDB
885:the question is not how to get rid of fear, but how to awaken the intelligence with which to face and to understand and go beyond fear. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
886:The question is who ought to make that decision, the Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear. I'm a commander guy. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
887:…to apply scientific arguments to the question of God’s existence, as if this were somehow a showstopper, is committing a category error ~ Francis S Collins, #NFDB
888:Under the circumstances the only honest answer an intelligent person can give to the question ‘Is there a God?’ is to say, ‘I do not know. ~ Khushwant Singh, #NFDB
889:Who are Bella and Edward?” I shrug off the question and don’t turn around as I ask, “What?” “Or Mac and Jericho? How about Jamie and Claire? ~ Rachel Hollis, #NFDB
890:You are fully capable of deciding your own destiny. The question you face is: which path will you choose? This is something only you can decide. ~ Ben Cross, #NFDB
891:... each point in the universe must make up its own mind on the question of acknowledgement before acknowledgement can be considered universal. ~ Vikram Seth, #NFDB
892:Everybody ages. Everybody dies. There is no turning back the clock. So the question in life becomes: What are you going to do while you're here ~ Goldie Hawn, #NFDB
893:Everything comes at a price, Tatiana. Everything in your life. The question you have to ask yourself is, what price are you willing to pay? ~ Paullina Simons, #NFDB
894:I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
895:I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’ ~ Alasdair MacIntyre, #NFDB
896:I have often been asked whether I am a women or an athlete. The question is absurd. Men are not asked that. I am an athlete. I am a women. ~ Billie Jean King, #NFDB
897:I think referendums are fantastic as long as the question is phrased in a way which is not meant to deliberately confuse or confound people. ~ Cate Blanchett, #NFDB
898:Just before she died she asked, What is the answer? No answer came. She laughed and said, In that case, what is the question? Then she died. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
899:Ostara, if one dies while in these othere states of consciousness, one dies indeed. this begs the question, are dreams truly only ever dreams? ~ Nancy Holder, #NFDB
900:To fill in all the gaps in my knowledge beforehand was out of the question for me. I had to write now, or not at all. And I wanted to write. ~ Johan Huizinga, #NFDB
901:We're all in the game. We all drive cars, and we're all hooked on oil. The question is how we can get unhooked before we drown in the stuff. ~ Ross Macdonald, #NFDB
902:When people asked me, "Do you get high to go onstage?" I could never understand the question. I mean, I'd been high since eight that morning. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
903:You should seek the source and merge in it. Because you imagine yourself to be out of it, you raise the question "Where is the source?" ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
904:An owner unknowingly scattering people’s attention is a common cause of the question “Why’s everyone working so much but nothing’s getting done? ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
905:But beyond all that, the question that is continually begged is why isn't America leading the way toward total abolition of nuclear weapons. ~ Dennis Kucinich, #NFDB
906:I love the question-and-answer. I love to see liberals try to thrash their way to a coherent argument. And actually, I think it's fun to debate. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
907:In political administration, no problem is ever simple. It can never be reduced to the question whether a certain measure is good or not. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
908:I was so sleepy (and sore) that another bout of sex was out of the question, unless Eric had suddenly developed an interest in necrophilia. ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
909:My truth - what I believe - is that there are no answers here and, if you are looking for answers, you'd better choose the question carefully. ~ Javier Bardem, #NFDB
910:see the question now as the equivalent of a cry of helpless rage, another way of saying How could this have happened when everything was normal. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
911:Shaney is a prince?” Sara squeaked the question. “Why does no one tell me these things? This is my kingdom, but I don’t know what’s going on. ~ Donna McDonald, #NFDB
912:The question and the cry 'Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance 'I am!' ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
913:The question is not so much what the hand is doing (passing over some cash or a check) but what the heart is thinking while the hand is doing it. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
914:The question is not what I should do in the future to get it, but rather, what am I presently doing that prevents me from realizing it right now? ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
915:The question, therefore, is, not whether a man is strong or weak, but whether he is able to endure the measure of his sufferings. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
916:The question was no longer slavery, but white supremacy, which Pollard described as the “true cause of the war” and the “true hope of the South. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
917:We're all blessed and we're all blighted, Chief Inspector," said Finney. "Everyday each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count? ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
918:With leadership the question at the beginning of the day is, 'how far can we take this...how big can we grow it...and how fast can we get there?' ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
919:Words like aparigraha (non-possession) and samabhava (equability) gripped me. How to cultivate and preserve that equability was the question. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
920:At the end of the day the question comes, what are you doing for the world? You have to try to do something that's going to add something positive. ~ Paul Feig, #NFDB
921:Far better than a precise plan is a clear sense of direction and compelling beliefs. And that lies within you. The question is, how do you evoke it? ~ Dee Hock, #NFDB
922:For myself, I can't understand a life without a job. I don't know what I would do without employment. Retirement is out of the question for me. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
923:global warming, for example, the proper question is not whether man is causing global warming. The question is whether man can fix global warming ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
924:Nature will never confront you with a problem you can't solve. You already have the answer, that is why the question appears before you. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
925:The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.” ~ Pierre Abelard ~ David Litwack, #NFDB
926:The question is simply,'Who is your master?'Once that's settled, you ask whether any word have been spoken. If it has, you have your orders. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
927:The question of the social uses of photography opens out into the very largest issues of the self, of the relationship to community, to reality. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
928:The question was summed up for him thus: "If I do not accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what answers do I accept? ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
929:...to apply scientific arguments to the question of God's existence, as if this were somehow a showstopper, is committing a category error. ~ Francis S Collins, #NFDB
930:We’re all blessed and we’re all blighted, Chief Inspector,” said Finney. “Every day each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count? ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
931:After all, the fundamental question of philosophy (like that of psychoanalysis) is the same as the question of the detective novel: who is guilty? ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
932:All knowledge has an ultimate goal. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is, say what you will, nothing but a dismal begging of the question. ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
933:Almost everyone thinks they are a good person, but the question you should be asking is, am I good enough to go to Heaven? How would you know? ~ Candace Cameron, #NFDB
934:I asked them the other evening to name the three most important human beings in history. They protested that the question made no sense to them. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
935:I love to believe that there's one god but there's many different religions so there's just the question of which long distance company you pick. ~ Adam Ferrara, #NFDB
936:Just before she Gertrude Stein died she asked, `What is the answer?' No answer came. She laughed and said, `In that case, what is the question? ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
937:The question, then, is whether being an “individual” makes a difference anymore. That it can matter at all. And if not, whether we in fact care. ~ Chang rae Lee, #NFDB
938:The the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hope are optimistic. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
939:When it came down to it, one of them called the shots. The other did what he was told. The question is, what if the other is a lot more than one? ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
940:You better arm yourselves to answer your children's and grandchildren's questions... no matter what the question is... without being judgmental. ~ Josh McDowell, #NFDB
941:And the question of Wester religion,” Flattery said, “is: What lies beyond death? But the question of the Zen master is: What lies beyond waking? ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
942:and yet still the question was there, and my mind went to it like a tongue probing the tender spot of a loose tooth: it hurt but I wanted to know ~ Nicole Krauss, #NFDB
943:As I've grown as a person and gotten to know myself more - the question of how someone becomes who they become has gotten really interesting to me. ~ Ari Graynor, #NFDB
944:Everyone gets lucky for some amount in their life. And the question is, are you alert enough to know you're being lucky or you're becoming lucky? ~ Kevin Systrom, #NFDB
945:If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question (of whether you are past the boundary) is to answer it. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
946:It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
947:Leadership doesn’t ask the question “How good can I get? How far can I get?” Leadership asks the question “How far can the people around me get? ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
948:"Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer." ~ Joseph Campbell#meaning, #NFDB
949:She raised her eyes from the table and put the question to him as if the thought had just struck her, but it had obviously not just struck her. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
950:So the question is not, when is an idea too big? It’s how do I make all ideas smaller and achievable? You do this by developing the idea muscle: ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
951:The question before the advanced nations is not whether they can afford to help the developing nations, but whether they can afford not to do so. ~ Indira Gandhi, #NFDB
952:The question of how to function openly as a religious person in an increasingly secular, relativistic culture is not particular to Southern Baptists. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
953:You are confusing two notions, "the solution of a problem" and "the correct posing of the question". Only the second is essential for the artist. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
954:Abbott's Admonitions: (1) If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know. (2) If you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question. ~ Paul Dickson, #NFDB
955:a hermeneutics of suspicion is radically reductionistic. It simply abandons the question of truth, reducing it to questions of power and desire. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
956:Education is not the answer to the question. Education is the means to the answer to all questions. —BILL ALLIN, SOCIOLOGIST AND EDUCATION ACTIVIST ~ Josh Kaufman, #NFDB
957:Here is the cake, and here is the fork, and here's the desire to put it inside us, and then the question behind every question: What happens next? ~ Richard Siken, #NFDB
958:He vaguely desired to walk around and around the body and stare; the impulse of the living to try to read in dead eyes the answer to the Question. ~ Stephen Crane, #NFDB
959:Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping. ~ Clive James, #NFDB
960:Reality offers us such wealth that we must cut some of it out on the spot, simplify. The question is, do we always cut out what we should? ~ Henri Cartier Bresson, #NFDB
961:Sometimes I think that we, as teachers, are so eager to get to the answers that we do not devote sufficient time to developing the question. ~ Daniel T Willingham, #NFDB
962:The question now is how best to help the Iraqi people build a democratic and free Iraqi society that ensures respect for the rights of all Iraqis. ~ Mary Robinson, #NFDB
963:The question we face is whether this candidate can succeed. The question we seem to answer is whether she interviews well. Let’s not substitute. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
964:there remains the big picture, the question of how much randomness contributes to where we are in life and how well we can predict where we are ~ Leonard Mlodinow, #NFDB
965:What is the answer?” Gertrude Stein asked Alice B. Toklas as Stein was dying. There was no reply. “In that case, what is the question?” Stein asked. ~ Nora Ephron, #NFDB
966:If you knew the world was about to end, what would you say? Or maybe the question should be, if this world was going to end, whom would you tell? ~ Travis Thrasher, #NFDB
967:I was in the neighborhood," he said, answering the question I was about to ask. His lips twitched. "You know, wandering around, trying to be a hero. ~ Brodi Ashton, #NFDB
968:So the question really is, Why doesn't that pain make you say, I won't do it again? When the pain is so bad that you have to say that, but you don't. ~ Lydia Davis, #NFDB
969:The question is, rather, whether or not America is to enter a new and distressing phase of history where men no longer pursue happiness but buy it. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
970:The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
971:the question of what kind of fiscal and social state will emerge in the developing world is of the utmost importance for the future of the planet. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
972:This radiant weather, when mere living is a joy, and sitting still over the fire out of the question, has been going on for more than a week. ~ Elizabeth von Arnim, #NFDB
973:Who decides the rightness? That is the question that can never be answered satisfactorily. The law doesn’t decide if it’s wrong, only if it’s legal. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
974:He’d been all geared up for a night alone with Lila, fulfilling her fantasies before he popped the question when she was too sated to say no. He hoped. ~ Cari Quinn, #NFDB
975:I always wanted to do a Hollywood story. The thing about actors, though, is that they go through a streak of roles. The question is, what's in between? ~ Tom Folsom, #NFDB
976:I figured the Nightingale Investigations job application form had the question "Are you hot? Yes. No. If you answered no, please exit the building. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
977:Reality offers us such wealth that we must cut some of it out on the spot, simplify. The question is, do we always cut out what we should? ~ Henri Cartier Bresson, #NFDB
978:The only answer to the question of the meaning of life has to begin from the fact of our human finitude, of our vulnerability and our fallibility. ~ Simon Critchley, #NFDB
979:The question in life is not whether you get knocked down. You will. The question is, are you ready to get back up... And fight for what you believe in? ~ Dan Quayle, #NFDB
980:The question 'What was there before creation?' is meaningless. Time is a property of creation, therefore before creation there was no before creation. ~ Glen Duncan, #NFDB
981:Were we, all of us, so used to apathy and deceit that not one had bothered to raise the question of it? Did we all take betrayal so much for granted? ~ Claire North, #NFDB
982:What if the question is not why I am so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am? ~ Oriah Dreamer, #NFDB
983:You cant prevent undernourishment so easily, but famines you can stop with half an effort. Then the question was why dont the governments stop them? ~ Amartya Sen, #NFDB
984:And sometimes the question that you pose or the project that you start yourself turns into something else, you know, but at least it gets you started. ~ Bruce Nauman, #NFDB
985:A society needs famous people; the question is whom it chooses for that role. Any criticism of its choice is by implication a criticism of that society. ~ Max Frisch, #NFDB
986:Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. ~ Paul Tillich, #NFDB
987:I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them. ~ E L Doctorow, #NFDB
988:I don't want to run for governor, but I don't think anyone should put public service out of the question because that's not what a good citizen does. ~ Warren Beatty, #NFDB
989:The question "From where does the poet get it?" addresses only the what, nobody learns anything about the how when asking that question. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
990:The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers? ~ Andy Stern, #NFDB
991:There is the question of whether life is long enough to get over anything. I sat down on the ground to avoid tipping over from the enormity of it all. ~ Jim Harrison, #NFDB
992:They presume on their justification in being whatever they are—unlike a thought, which by nature is open to challenge and invites the question “Why? ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
993:Human resources are the most valuable asset for any company. But how much you value people as human beings is the question most CEOs fumble to answer. ~ Rashmi Bansal, #NFDB
994:. . . I am at a complete loss to understand what my age has to do with it? The question is what are my convictions, not what is my age, isn't it? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
995:Most journeys have a clear beginning, but on some the ending is less well-defined. The question is, at what point do you bite your lip and head for home? ~ Tahir Shah, #NFDB
996:Of course you want to be rich and famous. It's natural. Wealth and fame are what every man desires. The question is: What are you willing to trade for it? ~ Confucius, #NFDB
997:Rock is for everybody; it should be so implicitly anti-elitist that the question of whether somebody's qualified to perform it should never even arise. ~ Lester Bangs, #NFDB
998:The end of the world is on people's minds. We have the power to destroy or save ourselves, but the question is what do you do with that responsibility. ~ Nicolas Cage, #NFDB
999:Wall Street got drunk and now it's got a hangover. And the question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do those fancy financial instruments? ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1000:What do guys with big dicks say in the morning?”
“Huh?” The question confused him. “What?”
Lea nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t think you’d know. ~ Matthew FitzSimmons,#NFDB
1001:When it came down to it, one of them called the shots.
The other did what he was told.
The question is, what if the other is a lot more than one? ~ Markus Zusak,#NFDB
1002:You cannot spend two thousand years trying to understand God and then simply abandon the question and declare that we’re not interested in it anymore. ~ Martin Walser, #NFDB
1003:Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was a virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was gross insult. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1004:I don't think where people come from is that important. It doesn't matter if you come from reality TV. The question is whether you can inspire people. ~ Kinky Friedman, #NFDB
1005:In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1006:Taking the question in general, I should say, in the case of many poets, that the most important thing for them to do ... is to write as little as possible ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
1007:The most reliable predictor of whether students liked a course, it turned out, was their answer to the question ‘‘Did the professor respect you? ~ Kwame Anthony Appiah, #NFDB
1008:True is such a twentieth-century concept. The question is, can I get you to believe it, can I get it repeated enough times to make it as good as true. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1009:You can always find an evolutionary quotation for anything. But the question is whether it's functional, which is not the same as being evolutionary. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1010:Each new generation asks – What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be – Why does man need a meaning to life? ~ Peter Wessel Zapffe, #NFDB
1011:For me, the question was, how can one take a live-action performance and put it in the parameter of one of those cartoons? How much can you get away with? ~ Johnny Depp, #NFDB
1012:God's command 'Go ye, and preach the gospel to every creature' was the categorical imperative. The question of personal safety was wholly irrelevant. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
1013:I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society. ~ Northrop Frye, #NFDB
1014:If one really knew what one was doing, why do it? It seems to me if you had the answer why ask the question? The thing is there are so many questions. ~ Lee Friedlander, #NFDB
1015:It occurred to me that this was one of the few decisions that a segregated prisoner could make: to talk or not to talk. For Newton, that was the question. ~ Laura Bates, #NFDB
1016:It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1017:Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question "why" is lacking. What does nihilism mean?--that the supreme values devaluate themselves. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1018:Perhaps I am no one.
True, I have a body
and I cannot escape from it.
I would like to fly out of my head,
but that is out of the question. ~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
1019:The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
1020:The question to ask is what will satisfy you? What will bring you peace? And perhaps the answer to those is in asking yourself when you were last happy. ~ Eleanor Brown, #NFDB
1021:You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not? ~ Amy Tan, #NFDB
1022:An Anarchist is anyone who denies the necessity and legitimacy of government; the question of his methods of attacking it is foreign to the definition. ~ Benjamin Tucker, #NFDB
1023:Direction determines destination. So the question you must ask yourself; 'Are all the disciplines that I'm currently engaged in taking me where I want to go?' ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
1024:For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics? ~ Richard Courant, #NFDB
1025:I am a mother, she thought—not an answer to the question being asked, and no more her ultimate ambition than happiness, but her ultimate identity. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
1026:I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves? ~ Charles Lindbergh, #NFDB
1027:It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1028:I wondered what I would have done to stay alive, and I honestly couldn't answer the question. So I had no choice, I had to write the books to find out. ~ Tony Schumacher, #NFDB
1029:So, standing here looking at you, all grown up, the question I ask is simple. In the long run, how different is a goddam hot dog from a Vienna sausage? ~ Charles Frazier, #NFDB
1030:The greatest issue is to raise the question of birth control out of the gutter of obscenity ... into the light of intelligence and human understanding. ~ Margaret Sanger, #NFDB
1031:The question is not at present, however, of removing mountains, a thing that will one day be simple to us, but of waking and rising from the dead now. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1032:The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? but: Are you in love with Jesus? ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
1033:There is no 'as far as possible' on the question of untouchability. If it is to go, it must go in its entirety from the temples as from everywhere else. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1034:The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
1035:Throughout history, self-styled arbiters have taken it upon themselves to decide the question of what can or cannot be the legitimate purview of art. ~ Barbara Goldsmith, #NFDB
1036:Why go now? That is the question people asked when I announced I was retiring. A combination of things made me feel it was all drawing to a natural end. ~ Graeme Le Saux, #NFDB
1037:Acting requires absorption, but not self-absorption and, in the actor's mind, the question must always be 'Why am I doing this?,' not 'How am I doing it? ~ Maureen Lipman, #NFDB
1038:A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?) ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1039:Because in life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with them. Stop failing backward and start failing forward! ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1040:If we have 99% [market] share of Ford Company, the question to us is 'How do we improve the customer satisfaction in order to get that additional 1% share? ~ Michael Dell, #NFDB
1041:If you spend too much time focusing on whether or not you’ve found your true calling, the question will be rendered moot when you find yourself out of work. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1042:It is only natural that for any statesman at the helm of any government the question of his country's security should be a concern of the utmost importance. ~ Eisaku Sato, #NFDB
1043:Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising. ~ Raymond Carver, #NFDB
1044:Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists. ~ Jack Vance, #NFDB
1045:The big winner last night in New Hampshire - Senator John Kerry. He won 39 percent of the vote, which is pretty good, and begs the question, why the long face? ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
1046:The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery ~ Patrick Henry, #NFDB
1047:There are countless artists whose shoes I am not worthy to polish - whose prints would not pay the printer. The question of judgment is a puzzling one. ~ Maxfield Parrish, #NFDB
1048:There is only ever one answer to the question what did you do with your life, and it's the same--fleeting and unknowable--for every one of us. I lived. ~ Marianne Wiggins, #NFDB
1049:There's never an easy answer to the question "Should we do more testing?" because information can guide risk reduction, but doesn't necessarily do so. ~ Gerald M Weinberg, #NFDB
1050:Are you going to hurt me?” I hated the weakness in my voice, the weakness of the question, but I had to ask. His warm breath tickled my ear. “Definitely.” My ~ Celia Aaron, #NFDB
1051:Before any movie of yours gets made, it will be vetted by the studio's marketing department. So, you do have to answer the question: Who is your movie for? ~ Thomas Lennon, #NFDB
1052:Before you embark on it you ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
1053:Books had seen me through an earlier time of trouble, and their presence all around me was both a comfort and an answer to the question of why I had come here. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1054:Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
1055:I am concentrating docilely on the question why U.S. restrooms always appear to us as infirmaries for public distress, the place to reagain control. ~ David Foster Wallace, #NFDB
1056:In literature, it’s the question that launches grand journeys, because heroes are often dropped into deep, dark jungles and forced to machete their way out. ~ Sarah Hepola, #NFDB
1057:It's inevitable that you will die, so the only question is when. The great thrillers are the moments that play and tease with the question, "When will it be?" ~ David Hare, #NFDB
1058:MAY it please your Honors: I was desired by one of the court to look into the books, and consider the question now before them concerning Writs of Assistance. ~ James Otis, #NFDB
1059:The answer to the question "where do good ideas come from" is always the same, the come from bad ideas. If you come up with 20 bad ideas you get one good one. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
1060:The partisan when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
1061:The question: 'is the Euclidean geometry true?' has no significance for Poincaré, for these is no such thing as one geometry being more true than another. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
1062:The question of how and why the encrustations and rigidifications of human emotional life are brought about led directly into the realm of vegetative life. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #NFDB
1063:Suddenly the question about whether or not I was sexy didn’t matter. He wanted me. Knowing made me feel like I was the most desirable woman in the universe. ~ Rebecca Royce, #NFDB
1064:The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me? ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1065:To me the question of inspiration is an exercise in hindsight. The truth is inspiration is mysterious at the time. I don't think it's ever a rational process. ~ Julia Leigh, #NFDB
1066:Unlike de Valera whose talent lay in getting and holding power, Collins asked himself the question, ‘All this for what?’, and tried to provide the answers. ~ Tim Pat Coogan, #NFDB
1067:We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn't an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1068:When once we are freed from the goal [of solving problems], the question of whether it is a positive approach or a negative approach does not even arise. ~ U G Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1069:Finally, Carol said in a tone of hopelessness, ‘Darling, can I ask you to forgive me?’ The tone hurt Therese more than the question. ‘I love you, Carol. ~ Patricia Highsmith, #NFDB
1070:God is angry at the evil that ruins his children. The question is not, “How dare a loving God be angry?” but rather, “How could a loving God feel anything less? ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1071:I think in a couple of weeks, the question of all these bad write-offs will be behind us because everybody is going to throw in the towel on bad accounting. ~ Muriel Siebert, #NFDB
1072:It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1073:One Mormon raised the question with his spouse, who minched no words in replying, 'All right Jody - you get another wife and I'll get another husband!' ~ Leonard J Arrington, #NFDB
1074:That’s not the question you should be asking, though, if this is a dream. The question you should be asking is what you’re going to do now? Because you’re awake? ~ T J Klune, #NFDB
1075:The person with the question needed something and they got it. The person with the answer was doing something else and had to stop. That’s rarely a fair trade. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
1076:The programmers have another saying: 'The question of whether a machine can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.' ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
1077:What drove the hominins on through to larger brains, higher intelligence, and thence language-based culture? That, of course, is the question of questions. ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
1078:why did it have to happen?'It was one more hollow echo to the question humanity had been asking for millenniums, the question men were seemingly born to ask. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1079:[Answering the question 'If you had caused the end of the world, what would you do?'] I would try to fix it. I would go to bed on time and brush my teeth. ~ Quvenzhane Wallis, #NFDB
1080:A priest's life is spent between question and answer-- or between a question and the attempt to answer it. The question is the summary of the spiritual life. ~ Naguib Mahfouz, #NFDB
1081:As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1082:Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly, he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know. ~ Leslie Fiedler, #NFDB
1083:For businesses to be successful, they need to constantly ask the question: how can we provide value to our customers? At the end of the day, that is what matters. ~ Eli Broad, #NFDB
1084:I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
1085:In recent years, academics, policy-makers, and experts have raised the question of the applicability of peacetime environmental law in times of armed conflict. ~ Widad Akreyi, #NFDB
1086:The question is not whether we want to keep this open, neutral Internet - we do, or should - but whether government rulemaking can give us the result we want. ~ Edward Felten, #NFDB
1087:The question isn't whether or not to censor artists who espouse misogynistic views. The question is whether or not we support them as listeners and consumers. ~ Dessa Darling, #NFDB
1088:To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war...I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict. ~ Hans Blix, #NFDB
1089:Your beliefs have no value - unless you take action to change the things you believe should be better. Ask yourself the question; What am I going to do about it? ~ Ginny Dye, #NFDB
1090:But as to the question, ‘What more convenient way of punishment can be found?’ I think it much easier to find out that than to invent anything that is worse; why ~ Thomas More, #NFDB
1091:I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society. [p.92] ~ Northrop Frye, #NFDB
1092:If Romeo had never met Juliet, maybe they both would have still been alive, but would they have been alive for is the question Shakespeare wants us to answer. ~ Gary D Schmidt, #NFDB
1093:In a world as out of balance as this world, everyone can find something to do. And the question isn't can you do everything; the question is, can you do anything? ~ Bill Ayers, #NFDB
1094:The existence of inherent limits of experience in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter. ~ Wilhelm Dilthey, #NFDB
1095:The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1096:The question is, what are we to do in order to consolidate peace on a universal and durable foundation, and what are the essential elements of such a peace? ~ Arthur Henderson, #NFDB
1097:The question of bread for myself is a material question; but the question of bread for my neighbour, for everybody, is a spiritual and a religious question. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev, #NFDB
1098:The question of engineering should be of interest not only to those of us who are engineers, but to the entire public which lives in an engineering world ~ Karl Taylor Compton, #NFDB
1099:The question that runs through these disputatio is the following: What if “horror” has less to do with a fear of death, and more to do with the dread of life? ~ Eugene Thacker, #NFDB
1100:The question then is, how much are you willing to give?"
And I answered, "Anything."
A breath later, Zane echoed my response with, "Everything. ~ Amelia Atwater Rhodes,#NFDB
1101:The question was a fashionable one, whether a definite line exists between psychological and physiological phenomena in human activity; and if so, where it lies? ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1102:We call for, on the other hand - how do you deal with ISIS [Islamic State], of course, is the question that comes up immediately, ISIS and other terrorist groups. ~ Jill Stein, #NFDB
1103:While psychiatry is concerned with the question of why some people become insane, the real question is why most people do not become insane. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1104:Yoga means we take responsibility for the tasks in our life. Whatever we are supposed to have karmically, life gives us. The question is: how do we handle it? ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1105:Everyone who believes in God must therefore admit (quite apart from the question of prayer) that God has not chosen to write the whole of history with His own hand. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1106:Frankly, I kind of want you to be haunted by the unansweredness of the question, because I think being haunted by such things is a valuable part of being a person. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1107:Horror films are very functional like comedies. The main thing with a comedy, the big question is "is it funny?" And with horror the question is "is it scary?" ~ Leigh Whannell, #NFDB
1108:Is it right to probe so deeply into Nature's secrets? The question must here be raised whether it will benefit mankind, or whether the knowledge will be harmful. ~ Pierre Curie, #NFDB
1109:Kora may have been a witch, and your father may have had prophetic dreams. But you Paige, is not a witch. You are something much more, but the question is what? ~ Rebekkah Ford, #NFDB
1110:Let's say that what's out there is a narrative. Often enough, the picture plays with the question of what actually is happening. Almost the way puns function. ~ Garry Winogrand, #NFDB
1111:Meaning 'by way of the anus'. 'Per Annum', with two n's, means 'yearly'. The correct answer to the question, 'What is the birthrate per anum?' is zero (one hopes). ~ Mary Roach, #NFDB
1112:New Rule: 12 years after 9/11 and admits yet another debate whether to bomb yet another Muslim country. America must stop asking the question: Why do they hate us? ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
1113:The older I get, Mr. Lapine, the more I realize it’s sometimes preferable not knowing the answers to things. In fact, I often wish I’d never heard the question. ~ Tracy Guzeman, #NFDB
1114:The question is: How do we succeed in Iraq? And you don't succeed by leaving before the mission is complete, like some in this political process are suggesting. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1115:The question is not whether or not our children sin later in life. The question is, do we have a biblical obligation to train them before they leave home? ~ Voddie T Baucham Jr, #NFDB
1116:The question is whether we're ready to undertake responsibility for overcoming the crisis or will again sink in debates, mutual recriminations and half-steps ~ Yevgeny Primakov, #NFDB
1117:The question therefore is... how can we build a health care system that will actually help people achieve what’s most important to them at the end of their lives ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
1118:What did I do that I didn't have to do? That was always the question. Figure out what we choose when we're free to choose anytime and you'll know who we really are. ~ Dan Wells, #NFDB
1119:You can take the tiger out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the tiger.
The question is, how can you get the tiger back in the jungle? ~ Bill Watterson,#NFDB
1120:Entertaining these opinions of the course to be pursued, I beg of gentlemen to look at the question, as I have done, in a calm review of facts and of principles. ~ Caleb Cushing, #NFDB
1121:I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
1122:I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of 'what else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?' ~ Brian Eno, #NFDB
1123:Nothing is ever so good that it can’t stand a little revision, and nothing is ever so impossible and broken down that a try at fixing it is out of the question. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
1124:Stick me in a confessional and ask the question: Sir, if you had the authority, would you forbid smoking in America? You'd get a solemn and contrite, Yes. ~ William F Buckley Jr, #NFDB
1125:The question isn’t whether you should stay or go. The question is: How would your life be transformed if you chose to love this time with all your intelligence? ~ Cheryl Strayed, #NFDB
1126:The question is whether Donald Trump recognizes that Vladimir Putin is a bad guy. And I guess there's no indication that he regards Putin as in any way a bad guy. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
1127:The question of questions for the politicians should ever be-What type of social structure am I tending to produce? But this is a question he never entertains. ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
1128:The question “What will happen” belongs to time; the soul is outside time. The soul has not been and will not be, it always is. If it were not, there would be nothing. ~ Tolstoy, #NFDB
1129:What a strange phrase - not seeing other people. As if it's been constructed to be a lie. We see other people all the time. The question is what we do about it. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
1130:What is it between Obama and Iran? That's the question we all ought to have. Because it sure seems to me like Obama's got some sort of affection for that nation. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1131:Why was he in this state? Or perhaps the question was why had he not always been in this state? Why had he not always found life so disturbing and so poignant? ~ Edward St Aubyn, #NFDB
1132:Why would these people do this for us?” This is the question the church ought to be continually raising in people’s minds by its radical service to the world.13 ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1133:Any critic of Cezanne who described him as a painter of country scenes would be moving in the wrong direction. You must begin with the question of style . . . ~ Charles Tomlinson, #NFDB
1134:Even something as harsh as “Why did you do it?” can be calibrated to “What caused you to do it?” which takes away the emotion and makes the question less accusatory. ~ Chris Voss, #NFDB
1135:Now and then I'll get a student who asks a question that puts me up against the wall and maybe by the end of the semester I can begin to deal with the question. ~ Garry Winogrand, #NFDB
1136:Regardless of whether I can shift my affections to another - and the heart, as you observed, is a notoriously fickle beast - the question remains: should I? ~ Christopher Paolini, #NFDB
1137:So the question becomes, if you are ever faced with this choice, are you willing to die for what you believe in? For that is the only way you will deny him. ~ Christopher Paolini, #NFDB
1138:Still, the conscientious detective is obliged to examine the question of motive in a new light, to place it within the matrix of our present unusual circumstance. ~ Ben H Winters, #NFDB
1139:The question is not whether I'm sure, but whether you are. Because I know exactly what I want, and I'm not the kind of guy who's afraid to go after it once I see it. ~ Elle Casey, #NFDB
1140:Those who are driven by poverty, those who're free from material worries hunger exhausting labor a joyless existence ask the same question, the question of meaning. ~ Kathy Acker, #NFDB
1141:We were broken, brittle and fragile. The question was, were we still precious to each other? Or, instead of everything falling into place, had it fallen into pieces? ~ Megan Hart, #NFDB
1142:What a strange phrase — –not seeing other people. As if it’s been constructed to be a lie. We see other people all the time. The question is what we do about it. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
1143:Will we fight or will we retreat? That is the question that is posed to us. Some of my friends on the other side of the aisle often refer to Iraq as a distraction. ~ John Boehner, #NFDB
1144:Actually, he was a very warm, compassionate man who never stopped feeling sorry for himself.
“Why me?” was his constant lament, and the question was a good one. ~ Joseph Heller,#NFDB
1145:Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1146:If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better. ~ Paula Cole, #NFDB
1147:If the show encourages an audience to ask the question, "Is this character's emotional response to this situation valid?," then that's a really good question to ask. ~ Charlie Cox, #NFDB
1148:If you enjoy peace now, remember it is out of the toils of those who were gone before you. The question is "will you leave peace behind you when you are gone"? ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1149:It has nothing to do with commercial success. You cannot calculate in your head how to put the mosaic together to make a commercial film: that's out of the question. ~ Arthur Cohn, #NFDB
1150:My emotional and intellectual response to Hiroshima was that the question of the social responsibility of a journalist was posed with greater urgency than ever. ~ Wilfred Burchett, #NFDB
1151:The question is rarely asked, "Why is it that so few other Americans have these protections?" The question is more often asked, "Why do teachers have it so easy?" ~ Dana Goldstein, #NFDB
1152:The question is: Which means best advances the regulator’s goal, subject to the constraints (whether normative or material) that the regulator must recognize? My ~ Lawrence Lessig, #NFDB
1153:The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying. ~ Edward Hoagland, #NFDB
1154:Are you asking a question because you want to know the answer or are you asking the question because you want your partner to know that you are having this question? ~ Esther Perel, #NFDB
1155:He used to - when he was just a kitten - stand and stare up at us as if asking a question. We never understood what the question was. Maybe now he knows the answer. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1156:If Romeo had never met Juliet, maybe they both would have still been alive, but what they would have been alive for is the question Shakespeare wants us to answer. ~ Gary D Schmidt, #NFDB
1157:Is it considered improper if Valek and I...? You know.'
'Yelena,' Leif said with mock indignation. 'Don't tell me you and Valek--'
'Just answer the question. ~ Maria V Snyder,#NFDB
1158:The question, then, is, What do we give a fuck about? What are we choosing to give a fuck about? And how can we not give a fuck about what ultimately does not matter? ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1159:There have been many different artists that have been inspirational. I suppose the question is directed to what was the reason why I went into fantasy illustration. ~ Boris Vallejo, #NFDB
1160:What would you do when you weren’t online?” To Schillace and his colleagues, the question was shortsighted. It was like condemning an appliance for using electricity. ~ Steven Levy, #NFDB
1161:When an ecstatic is asked the question, What is it that love dares the self to do? she will answer: Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty. ~ Anne Carson, #NFDB
1162:By the time I was at college, I became very alert to the question of racial discrimination, and I remember one of my first writing attempts had to do with a lynching. ~ Albert Maltz, #NFDB
1163:He drove into me hard, slipping into my slick tunnel with ease. “Who are you to me?”
My blood stirred in my veins from me just hearing the question. “You’re queen. ~ Kenya Wright,#NFDB
1164:In relation to the question of hope, I think the only hope we have is hope against hope. We hope for a better world. But of course we can do better than just hope. ~ Simon Critchley, #NFDB
1165:Is Tyson okay?” I asked. The question seemed to take my dad by surprise. He’s fine. Doing much better than I expected. Though “peanut butter” is a strange battle cry. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1166:Maybe the question we need to ask isn't whether there's any fresh twenty-first century sin - but whether the people who define sin have changed, because of the times. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1167:Our romantic options are unprecedented and our tools to sort and communicate with them are staggering. And that raises the question: Why are so many people frustrated? ~ Aziz Ansari, #NFDB
1168:The question is not whether you would like to be president or not. The question is: Do you think you can win and do you want to run? And none of those are clear to me. ~ John McCain, #NFDB
1169:The question isn't whether I have time to read or not (time that nobody will ever give me, by the way), but whether I'll allow myself the pleasure of being a reader. ~ Daniel Pennac, #NFDB
1170:The question is this - Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
1171:The question is what are my convictions, not what is my age, isn't it?" "When you are older, you'll understand for yourself the influence of age on convictions. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1172:The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about. ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
1173:the question that we must ultimately answer is this: What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am? ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1174:The truth is that this was something over which I had no control and the question is not why but what. What am I going to do with this? What am I going to make of it? ~ Vicki Forman, #NFDB
1175:Yesterday on CNN, Joe Biden said he hasn't made up his mind about whether he'll run for president in 2016. Which raises the question: 'Who was raising that question?' ~ Jimmy Fallon, #NFDB
1176:I'm raising the question of whether focusing on the afterlife beyond history can unintentionally but tragically lead to the abandonment of this earth and this life. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1177:Is Tyson okay?' I asked. The question seemed to take my dad by surprise. 'He's fine. Doing much better than I expected. Though 'peanut butter' is a strange battle cry. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1178:May be the question we need to ask isn't whether there's any fresh twenty first century sin...but whether the people who define sin have changed, because of the times. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1179:The question is not if the candidate's heart is favorable to Christianity, but if he has Christ as his starting point even for politics, and will speak out His name! ~ Abraham Kuyper, #NFDB
1180:The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1181:The question of religion was a matter for each individual's conscience, and in a great many cases was the outcome of birth or residence in a certain geographical area. ~ James Larkin, #NFDB
1182:The question, then, was how long could a human being stay awake? Keith Richards could party for three days straight, but I wasn't sure if he counted as a human being. ~ Daryl Gregory, #NFDB
1183:What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence," returned my companion, bitterly. "The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
1184:What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,” returned my companion, bitterly. “The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
1185:What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,” returned my companion, bitterly. “The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done? ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
1186:He sometimes asked himself a question about life. Which are truer, the happy memories, or the unhappy ones? He decided, eventually, that the question was unanswerable. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
1187:If there are more dead than living, then the world is about death, and the question is: What are we to do with all the death? Who is going to remember all the dead? ~ Aleksandar Hemon, #NFDB
1188:I have spoken with people at the highest level of intelligence. And I asked them the question, "Does it work? Does torture work?" And the answer was, "Yes, absolutely." ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
1189:I intend to focus on the question of truth. That means I do not inquire about facticity-what happened-but what is
claimed, what is asserted here about reality. ~ Walter Brueggemann,#NFDB
1190:I think the problem with polemics is that it's general and it's lazy. When you say, "This is bad," that's a general thing. We're more interested in asking the question. ~ Tony Goldwyn, #NFDB
1191:I was asked in an interview which was more important: money or love?
I told the interviewer that if he had to ask the question, he wouldn't understand the answer. ~ John Lennon,#NFDB
1192:Land. If you understand nothing else about the history of Indians in North America, you need to understand that the question that really matters is the question of land. ~ Thomas King, #NFDB
1193:Tell me, my heart, would you rather wed a handsome man or a wealthy one?” Zariya considered the question. “If I had the luxury of choice, I would choose a kind man. ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
1194:What you intend and what you do not intend have smaller import than you might suspect. The question is not what you shall do with life but what life shall do with you. ~ John C Wright, #NFDB
1195:Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that's not the right question. The question is: Are we living a life that is worth the harm? ~ Joseph Fink, #NFDB
1196:Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is: Are we living a life that is worth the harm? ~ Joseph Fink, #NFDB
1197:Because she was very much his lover, even if they’d never been skin to skin. The idea of being with any other woman after he met her had simply been out of the question. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
1198:If world leaders decide to [meet the Millennium Development Goals], I think it can be done by 2015...The question is, is there a political will to make this investment? ~ Thoraya Obaid, #NFDB
1199:I look around for a conveniently loaded pistol.Sadly, there doesn't seem to be one available, so I have no choice but to answer the question. - Queen of Babble Gets Hitched ~ Meg Cabot, #NFDB
1200:Many of us, wishing to be spared hard work, gladly accept what tradition teaches. But the fact that we have no simple answer does not me that we can evade the question. ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
1201:The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles? ~ John Adams, #NFDB
1202:The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
1203:The question remains: which brands will commit to creating a private sector pillar of social change, and which will become casualties of their own outdated thinking? ~ Simon Mainwaring, #NFDB
1204:The war was about everything, it was everything, and the question of where it came from was meaningless. There was only the question of how to live through it. ~ Brian Francis Slattery, #NFDB
1205:Thousands of years ago the question was asked: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. ~ Eugene V Debs, #NFDB
1206:We might have been better off if the question of Obama's patriotism had been raised before he was first elected. Never should we ignore so many red flag warnings again. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
1207:Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run. ~ Gifford Pinchot, #NFDB
1208:and To be or not to be, that is the question;
Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or, by opposing, end them. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
1209:And when is necessary to kill, she asked herself as she headed in the direction of the hallway, and she herself answered the question, When what is alive is already dead. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
1210:But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
1211:Emily Post's Etiquette is out again, this time in a new and an enlarged edition, and so the question of what to do with my evenings has been all fixed up for me. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
1212:Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts - and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society? ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
1213:Give all your attention to the question: 'What is it that makes me conscious?', until your mind becomes the question itself and cannot think of anything else. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
1214:In terms of spiritual development, it's not a big deal whether you have sex or not, the question is more of who you have sex with and what their energy is doing to you. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1215:Is Tyson okay?' I asked.
The question seemed to take my dad by surprise. 'He's fine. Doing much better than I expected. Though 'peanut butter' is a strange battle cry. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1216:Leaving was out of the question, of course. A combination of pride, obstinacy, and simple gonadal fury rooted him in his tracks. Here he would do battle, and that was that. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
1217:Pity it's not sixteen million. If it were sixteen million, it would be very good. The question would have been solved already long ago. Pity it wasn't twenty-six million. ~ Savitri Devi, #NFDB
1218:The great monopoly in this country is the money monopoly. So long as it exists, our old variety of freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
1219:What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write? ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
1220:What do you want? How do you want it? I never felt like I had a good answer. For the first time, I realized why. Because what I wanted was to not be asked the question. ~ Laurelin Paige, #NFDB
1221:A mystery is a problem that encroaches upon itself because the questioner becomes the object of the question. Getting to Mars is a problem. Falling in love is a mystery. ~ Gabriel Marcel, #NFDB
1222:Are you alone?" So that's what this call was about. For some reason, the question made my throat tighten. "No," I said, "Elvis is here. Would you like to talk to him? ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
1223:Are you sure you want to do this?” Big Tag asked the question in and exaggerated whisper. “Because we can still get you out of here. I’ve got an extraction team standing by. ~ Lexi Blake, #NFDB
1224:As a believer and a child of the King, to consider casting a vote for someone or for something that would go against what God would vote for ought to be out of the question. ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
1225:A shared vision is not an idea...it is rather, a force in people's hearts...at its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question 'What do we want to create? ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
1226:Each new generation asks – What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be – Why does man need a meaning to life? ~ Peter Wessel Zapffe, #NFDB
1227:I declare and protest in advance, that I do not intend, at this time at least; to be drawn or driven into the question of slavery, in either of its subdivisions or forms. ~ Caleb Cushing, #NFDB
1228:If the question is do people (in the Liberal Party) believe that human beings are the main cause of the planet warming, then I'd say a majority don't accept that position. ~ Nick Minchin, #NFDB
1229:I was too weird, even for the weirdos. And girls? Talking to girls was out of the question. To me, they were like some exotic alien species, both beautiful and terrifying. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
1230:No. That was out of the question. Jail was preferable. There they only limited you physically. In a mental ward they tampered with your soul and world-view and mind. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
1231:So the question is whether people prefer to be marginal in a mainstream world, or mainstream in a marginal world, and many people quite understandably prefer the latter. ~ Andrew Solomon, #NFDB
1232:the past can never be literally true in memory: it must be continuously edited, and the question is only whether we take creative control of the editing or not. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
1233:The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? —REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1234:The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
1235:The question whether the long effort to put an end to war can succeed without another major convulsion challenges not only our minds but our sense of responsibility. ~ Emily Greene Balch, #NFDB
1236:What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,” returned my companion, bitterly. “The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done? ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
1237:...You know something, don't you?"
"I know lots of things--your inquiry needs to be more specific."
"Just answer the question."
"True/false or multiple choice? ~ Neal Shusterman,#NFDB
1238:Do we dare to be ourselves?' This is the question that counts - and not, 'Must a man be helpless?' ...A man can do something for peace without having to jump into politics. ~ Pablo Casals, #NFDB
1239:Find a target. Know where your influence is heading towards. Find out those who will be interested in what you do and “why”. Now work hard to answer the question “why? ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1240:I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1241:I think the form, the Hollywood movie, I think the quality is obviously always going to be there and I think that the question of taste, there's always a question of taste. ~ Keanu Reeves, #NFDB
1242:I've referred to [Marcus Lemonis] as my celebrity crush. I'm totally describing my celebrity crush, and that was not the question. But I am a fan of his. I really am. ~ June Diane Raphael, #NFDB
1243:Last is D, the number of spatial dimensions. Due to interest in M-theory, physicists have returned to the question of whether life is possible in higher or lower dimensions. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
1244:Motherhood was the beginning of my own journey asking the question, 'Why am I here?' I had to stop and think: What am I doing to teach my daughter? What do I believe in? ~ Madonna Ciccone, #NFDB
1245:None of us is beyond the task of missions...The question is not whether or not we will be working to spread the gospel around the world, but what role we will play in this. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
1246:NOVELIST AND EXISTENTIALIST PHILOSOPHER ALBERT CAMUS POSED the question, “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” His point was that everything in life is choice. ~ Barry Schwartz, #NFDB
1247:Of course, with any new technology, the question in the back of everyone's mind is 'Can I have sex with it or use it to kill people?'
-Flintstones Vol. 2: Bedrock Bedlam ~ Mark Russell,#NFDB
1248:One has to always ask the question: Where can one be most effective in helping shape policies? It is always difficult when you're inside because you're very constrained. ~ Joseph Stiglitz, #NFDB
1249:Stay with the question. The more it troubles you, the more it has to teach you. In time, Maisie, you will find that the larger questions in life share such behavior. ~ Jacqueline Winspear, #NFDB
1250:The question for someone who was raised in a closed circle and then leaves it, is what is the us, and what is the them, and how do you ever move from one to the other? ~ Patricia Lockwood, #NFDB
1251:The question is not whether a community lives or dies, the question is on what plane does it live? There are different modes of survival. But all are not equally honorable. ~ B R Ambedkar, #NFDB
1252:The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? —REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1253:The question shouldn't be "Why are you, a Christian, here in a death camp, condemned for trying to save Jews?' The real question is "Why aren't all the Christians here? ~ Joel C Rosenberg, #NFDB
1254:The question shouldn't be “Why are you, a Christian, here in a death camp, condemned for trying to save Jews?' The real question is “Why aren't all the Christians here? ~ Joel C Rosenberg, #NFDB
1255:The transient vacuities of our cultural icons—success, peace, happiness, and distraction—pale before the question of whether or not one experiences this life as meaningful. ~ James Hollis, #NFDB
1256:We'll keep guessing at what it might be that he's hiding. But I think the question is, were Donald Trump ever to get near the White House, what would be those conflicts? ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
1257:When the student is ready the teacher appears. When the question is asked then the answer is heard. When we are truly ready to receive then what we need will become available. ~ John Gray, #NFDB
1258:You think you're disconnected. But the question is, what are you disconnected from?
You're actually constantly disconnecting from yourself by having all these things ~ Marina Abramovi,#NFDB
1259:I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1260:Presumably he would know what the Question to the Ultimate Answer is. It’s always bothered me that we never found out.” “Think of a number,” said the computer, “any number. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1261:Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead – a dead parent, for example – can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts. ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
1262:Sometime in your life Allison Sekemoto you will kill a human being. The question is not if it will happen, but when. Do you understand?" I didn't then, not really. I do now. ~ Julie Kagawa, #NFDB
1263:That's the question: is truth an illusion, or is illusion truth, or are they essentially the same? Myself, I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true. ~ Truman Capote, #NFDB
1264:The question felt more personal than professional. A father disappointed that his son had broken a promise. And in this case, a broken promise might have gotten him killed. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
1265:The question isn't who causes something to happen, but rather, whether you see the outcome with His eyes or yours. Whether or not you trust He's got it all in His hands. ~ Susan May Warren, #NFDB
1266:We have not, in fact, proved that science excludes miracles: we have only proved that the question of miracles, like innumerable other questions, excludes laboratory treatment. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1267:Are you alone?"
So that's what this call was about. For some reason, the question made my throat tighten. "No," I said, "Elvis is here. Would you like to talk to him? ~ Maggie Stiefvater,#NFDB
1268:For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
1269:Learn to see - accustoming the eye to calm, to patience, to letting-things-come-to-it; learning to defer judgment, to encircle and encompass the question on all sides. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1270:So I return to the question, "if I loved myself, truly and deeply, what would I do?" The answer comes easy: I'd fly. Fly as high as I possibly can. Then, I'd fly higher. ~ Kamal Ravikant, #NFDB
1271:The question concerning technology is the question concerning the constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to presence of truth, comes to pass ~ Martin Heidegger, #NFDB
1272:The question 'Who am I?' is not an idle one. How you answer the question will determine how you live the rest of your life. It will determine the quality of your life. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1273:There's no happy ending where we prevent climate change any more. Now the question is, is it going to be a miserable century or an impossible one, and what comes after that. ~ Bill McKibben, #NFDB
1274:Think of the question of mass incarceration. Think of the coding that the Republican Party has used for years, whether they're talking about Obama or blacks or Willie Horton. ~ Henry Giroux, #NFDB
1275:Well, of course it was Billy screwing with his mind. That's what Billy did. Dear Old Dad had a PhD in mind screwing. The question was, was it just Billy screwing with his mind? ~ Barry Lyga, #NFDB
1276:When a focused mind determines where to go, the question of how to get there will not be too important because the focused mind surely finds its way to its destination! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1277:With such compelling information, the question is why havent we been able to do more to prevent the crisis of underage drinking? The answer is: the alcohol industry. ~ Lucille Roybal Allard, #NFDB
1278:Years and years. Why did it have to happen? It was one more hollow echo to the question humanity had been asking for millenniums, the question men were seemingly born to ask ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1279:A civilized society must count animals as worthy of moral consideration and ethical treatment. The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? ~ Jeremy Bentham, #NFDB
1280:and most profoundly personal philosophical inquiry that we can undertake. It is the question that defines us as human beings. The novel begins precisely at noon on July 20, ~ Thornton Wilder, #NFDB
1281:An intellectual may be interested in ideas and policies for their own sake, but a politician's interest is exclusively in the question of whether an idea's time has come. ~ Michael Ignatieff, #NFDB
1282:Are we living a life that is safe from harm?
Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm? ~ Joseph Fink,#NFDB
1283:If he is old enough to ask the question he is old enough to receive true answers. I am not putting the thoughts into his head, but helping him unfold those already there. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
1284:If one looks at a thing with the intention of trying to discover what it means, one ends up no longer seeing the thing itself, but of thinking of the question that is raised. ~ Rene Magritte, #NFDB
1285:I know. And I'm Sorry. People will disappoint you, Gemma. The question to ask is whether you can learn to live with the disappointment and move on. I'm offering you a new world. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
1286:In a civilization like ours, I feel that everyone has to come to terms with the claims of Jesus Christ upon his life, or else be guilty of inattention or of evading the question. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1287:In most job interviews, people say they are looking for people skills and emotional intelligence. That's reasonable, but the question is, how do you define what that looks like? ~ Susan Cain, #NFDB
1288:I think investment psychology is by far the more important element, followed by risk control, with the least important consideration being the question of where you buy and sell. ~ Tom Basso, #NFDB
1289:I've always believed that if you're truly in love with someone, you shouldn't be able to answer the question 'What do you love about him?' with any kind of real satisfaction. ~ Andrea Seigel, #NFDB
1290:On the question of the world as a whole, science founders. For scientific knowledge the world lies in fragments, the more so the more precise our scientific knowledge becomes. ~ Karl Jaspers, #NFDB
1291:Ritual murder is referred to in court files which are located in Rome. There are pictures in it which show that in 23 cases, the Church itself has dealt with the question. ~ Julius Streicher, #NFDB
1292:The major point at which his reason and his sense of humor left him was when he approached the question of what people were really supposed to do with their time on Earth. He ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1293:There is the question of accumulation (...) just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
1294:When I was in India I met and conversed briefly with Shri Atmananda Guru of Trivandrum, and the question he gave me to ponder was this: 'Where are you between two thoughts? ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1295:Do not get yourself into the illusion that there is something so unique about the question of organ or body parts ... that the general rules of economics do not apply. ~ Richard Allen Epstein, #NFDB
1296:For some reason, people repeatedly have asked RBG when she thought there would be enough women on the court. The question is asinine, her answer effective: 'When there are nine. ~ Irin Carmon, #NFDB
1297:If Russia is prepared to run the risk of cutting off supplies to its neighbors if they have a disagreement, how reliable are they as a supplier? You have to ask the question. ~ William Ramsay, #NFDB
1298:Responding to the question "If Mr. Stalin dies, what will be the effect on international affairs?" That is a good question for you to ask, not a wise question for me to answer. ~ Anthony Eden, #NFDB
1299:The question that faces the strategic decision maker is not what his organisation should do tomorrow. It is, what do we have to do today to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow? ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
1300:You don’t start communities, he said. Communities already exist. They’re already doing what they want to do. The question you should ask is how you can help them do that better. ~ Jeff Jarvis, #NFDB
1301:But epistemology is always and inevitably personal. The point of the probe is always in the heart of the explorer: What is my answer to the question of the nature of knowing? ~ Gregory Bateson, #NFDB
1302:Indeed, the best answer I have ever heard to the question of what it would be like to be dead (i.e., be nonbeing) is to imagine how it felt to be before you were conceived. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
1303:John F. Kennedy responded, as he often did when at his best, skillfully mixing dollops of wit with, self-deprecation, and the principle of not-really-going-near-the-question. ~ David Pietrusza, #NFDB
1304:naivete is the only road to salvation. But for those who feel and conceive life as a long agony, the question of salvation is a simple one. There is no salvation on their road. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
1305:Once you have awakened to the question of faith, you cannot simply return to your everyday agenda like a committed atheist could. You cannot retreat to the comforts of atheism. ~ Martin Walser, #NFDB
1306:One thing, change, is what everyone says. The question is, what type of change? What's the right change to produce a different outcome for the people left behind by globalization? ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
1307:On the question of taking credit for what goes right and blame for what goes wrong - having led the Conservative party for four years, I have never heard of this notion before. ~ William Hague, #NFDB
1308:Since change is inevitable, the question is: Do you act to stop it and try to protect yourself from it, or do you become the master of change by accepting it and being open to it? ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
1309:Strident minorities, acting on the growing disposition to censor their opponents, ensure that the deeper the question, the more likely it is to be settled by shallow arguments. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1310:The motor of our ingenuity is the question ‘Does it have to be like this?’, from which arise political reforms, scientific developments, improved relationships, better books. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1311:The question is how our own meanings are related to those of the universe as a whole. We could say that our action toward the whole universe is a result of what it means to be us. ~ David Bohm, #NFDB
1312:The question of religion is not so simple as you see it: it is not at all a matter of intellectual conviction or philosophy or even belief, but rather a matter of inner experience. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1313:To the question: How do the authors of sketches, stories and novels get along in life, the following answer can or must be given: They are stragglers and they are down at heel. ~ Robert Walser, #NFDB
1314:We just need to figure out how to navigate the rest of the world, and we’ll either sink or swim. I’m a really good swimmer. The question is, how long can you hold your breath? ~ Melissa Foster, #NFDB
1315:An uprising would punish only the country, and that is out of the question. But there is yet another approach, the most effectiveform of resistance: contemptuous compliance. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
1316:Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1317:At every turn, when humanity is asked the question, 'Do you want temporary economic gain or long-term environmental loss, which one do you prefer,' we invariably choose the money. ~ Ethan Hawke, #NFDB
1318:Bekhir’s brow furrowed. He was a man of traditional sensibilities, and the question made him uncomfortable. But after some hemming and hawing, he growled, “Of course. He’s my child. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1319:He found all things come back to the question of what he personally might have been, how he might have led his life and "turned out," if he had not so, at the outset, given it up. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
1320:How can time be long or short? Time is without length or breadth. The question is, what happened during its passing. And what happened is, our lives have been joined together. ~ Rohinton Mistry, #NFDB
1321:I do think that it is impossible to do Christian theology with integrity in America without asking the question, What has the gospel to do with the black struggle for liberation? ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
1322:I found if I go to bed with a question on my mind, all I have to do is concentrate on the question before I go to sleep and I virtually always have the answer in the morning. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
1323:[Replying to the question of the presenter: "where did the name "Sex Pistols" come from, who thought this name up?"] Some animal. I can't remember. It doesn't matter. It's history. ~ John Lydon, #NFDB
1324:The magnificently humble. The enormously small. The meaningfully ridiculous. Robert Walser's work often reads like a dazzling answer to the question, How immense can modesty be? ~ Rivka Galchen, #NFDB
1325:The question of whether one alleges the Superiority or Inferiority of any given race is irrelevant; racism has only one psychological root: the racist's sense of his own Inferiority. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
1326:Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, "What comes into your mind when you think about God?" we might predict with certainty the future of that man. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1327:What do you thing you're doing?" The question was directed at Lila.
"Just having a bit of fun," she said.
"You can't go around making people."
"Obviously I can," she said ~ V E Schwab,#NFDB
1328:All over Greece, strangers of a certain age will greet one another with the question, "And where were you and what did you do when Xerxes came to Marathon?" Then they exchange lies. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
1329:And when is it necessary to kill, she asked herself as she headed in the direction of the hallway, and she herself answered the question, When what is still alive is already dead. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
1330:As someone fairly committed to the death of our solar system and ultimately the entropy of the universe, I think the question of what we should worry about is irrelevant in the end. ~ Bruce Hood, #NFDB
1331:A teenage taste of beer aside, Mitt Romney does not consume alcohol. Which begs the question, will total abstention put his candidacy, perhaps even this great nation in jeopardy? ~ Martin Bashir, #NFDB
1332:I don't think there is any advantage to digital unless it's in a case like Slumdog Millionaire, where you have to get a shot and a big bulky film camera is out of the question. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond, #NFDB
1333:If you were running a solar company you may be okay - you may be able to keep growing. The question for physics is: Can you grow fast enough to begin to catch up with the damage? ~ Bill McKibben, #NFDB
1334:Looking for bad bonds inside a CDO was like fishing for crap in a Port-O-Let: The question wasn’t whether you’d catch some but how quickly you’d be satisfied you’d caught enough. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1335:The monopoly of science in the realm of knowledge explains why evolutionary biologists do not find it meaningful to address the question whether the Darwinian theory is true. ~ Phillip E Johnson, #NFDB
1336:The question is not, “Will my calendar be full?” but “Who will fill my calendar?” If we are leaders of others, the question is not, “Will I see people?” but “Who will I see?” My ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1337:The question is,” said Edmund, “whether it doesn’t make things worse, looking at a Narnian ship when you can’t get there.”
“Even looking is better than nothing,” said Lucy. ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB
1338:The question posed in 1:9, “Does Job fear God for no reason?” appears to be the leading concern of the prose, and it receives a full and satisfactory answer by the book’s conclusion. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1339:The question that generals wanted to hear from their civilian masters after Desert Storm was not “What are you doing for us?” but “What can we do for you and the troops?” The ~ Andrew J Bacevich, #NFDB
1340:Where are they, the American fiction writers whose works are interested in the question “What do these people have to do with us?” and “What are we doing out there in the world? ~ Kamila Shamsie, #NFDB
1341:Who [...] is the invincible human being?’ Epictetus once asked, before answering the question himself: ‘One who can be disconcerted by nothing that lies outside the sphere of choice. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1342:Why are some people highly principled and willing to do anything for their principles, while most of us are not? And I am willing to not only ask, but also answer the question. ~ David Bezmozgis, #NFDB
1343:Blessed is the man who “takes the risk of a decision” —
asks himself the question: “Would it solve the problem?
Is it right as I see it? Is it in the best interests of all? ~ Marianne Moore,#NFDB
1344:Does a daughter judge her father?” whispered Qing-jao. “Of course she does,” said Father. “Every day all people judge all other people. The question is whether we judge wisely. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1345:It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation He answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1346:Looking for bad bonds inside a CDO was like fishing for crap in a Port-O-Let: The question wasn’t whether you’d catch some but how quickly you’d be satisfied you’d caught enough. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1347:No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1348:The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant “government of the people” but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term “people” to actually mean. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
1349:The question “What are you willing to die for?” is not the same question as “What are you willing to kill for?” Jesus was willing to die for that which he was unwilling to kill for. ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
1350:The question, "What is the purpose thereof?" cannot be asked about anything which is not the product of an agent; therefore we cannot ask what is the purpose of the existence of God. ~ Maimonides, #NFDB
1351:This chapter also explores the question, "Who is the true yogi?" This word yogi may bring to mind images of amazing people who do strange contortions with their bodies. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
1352:Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
1353:What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever. ~ Bernhard Schlink, #NFDB
1354:After years of investigating aging populations, researchers’ answer to the question of how much is not much. If all you do is walk several times a week, your brain will benefit. Even ~ John Medina, #NFDB
1355:Do we eagerly long for the coming of Christ? Or do we want him to wait while our love affair with the world runs its course? That is the question that tests the authenticity of faith. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1356:For centuries Eastern heart and intellect have been absorbed in the question Does God exist? I propose to raise a new question new, that is to say, for the East Does man exist? ~ Muhammad Iqbal, #NFDB
1357:For example, the question “Do you now feel a slight numbness in your left leg?” always prompts quite a few people to report that their left leg does indeed feel a little strange. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1358:I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome. ~ Golda Meir, #NFDB
1359:If someone can find the idea of the supernatural to be meaningful—an idea that can be grasped, that is worth grasping—then, and only then, is the question ‘Is it true?’ significant. ~ Holly Ordway, #NFDB
1360:If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the question we should be asking is not “How do I stop suffering?” but “Why am I suffering—for what purpose? ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1361:In your relationship, you should not have to play the detective to get to the truth; you should be able to ask the question and he give you the answer. It should be as simple as that. ~ Amari Soul, #NFDB
1362:I suppose if I had to give a one-word answer to the question of why I read, that word would be pleasure. The kind of pleasure you can get from reading is like no other in the world. ~ Wendy Lesser, #NFDB
1363:Put a Post-it on your computer screen or set an Outlook reminder to alert you at least three times daily with the question: Are you inventing things to do to avoid the important? ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1364:The basic Buddhist stand on the question of equality between the genders is age-old. At the highest tantric levels, at the highest esoteric level, you must respect women: every woman. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1365:This is the question I want everyone to ask yourself every single day when you come up with something you feel that needs to be done: if not now, then when? And if not me, then who? ~ Mick Ebeling, #NFDB
1366:This was the paradox: How would I ever heal from losing the person who healed me? The question was so enormous that I could see only my entire life, everything I know, filling it. ~ Zinzi Clemmons, #NFDB
1367:To live a feminist life is to make everything into something that is questionable. The question of how to live a feminist life is alive as a question as well as being a life question. ~ Sara Ahmed, #NFDB
1368:Unlike abortion nobody gets hurt when gays marry but it does have deep implications for what kind of society we want to be. Therefore, individual states should decide the question. ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
1369:We can look high or we can look low in books or in journals, but the result is the same. The scientific literature has no answers to the question of the origin of the immune system. ~ Michael Behe, #NFDB
1370:We have to live with ambiguity. We have to give ourselves over to it. The question is: How? How are we going to live in a universe where important questions will always go unanswered? ~ John Green, #NFDB
1371:between speakers. Grammar is simply a tool to facilitate that. The question is also an intentional act – an action intended to elicit a particular kind of action from the hearer. ~ Daniel L Everett, #NFDB
1372:I don’t believe that blood makes a family; kin is the circle you create, hands held tight. There is something to shared genetics, but the question is, what exactly is that something? ~ Tayari Jones, #NFDB
1373:If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the question we should be asking is not "How do I stop suffering?" but "Why am I suffering- for what purpose? ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1374:The dinosaur skeleton was a body plus time. They all were. The question was what they wanted to do and who they wanted to love in the years when muscle and skin still covered them. ~ Ramona Ausubel, #NFDB
1375:The question of international norms or international resolutions, you know, coming from Mr. Obama is not really about whether there are international norms or resolutions to uphold. ~ Vijay Prashad, #NFDB
1376:The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1377:You have been to Ryloth before, have you not, Lord Vader?” The question dredged memories of war from the depths of Vader’s mind. “Long ago, Master. Before I learned wisdom.” “Of course. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1378:If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the question we should be asking is not "How do I stop suffering?" but "Why am I suffering - for what purpose? ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1379:I got interested in the question of literacy because writers are always moaning about why more people don't read books. They long for the good old days when people read serious novels. ~ Robert Hass, #NFDB
1380:I think that the question of how power can be exerted from the lower reaches has never been more important. It will ultimately determine whether another world is indeed possible. ~ Frances Fox Piven, #NFDB
1381:Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1382:Once again no one in the U.S. government had made any public statement either supporting the trial or criticizing the Hitler regime. The question remained: what was everyone afraid of? ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB
1383:She slammed the book closed, ran to her bed, gathered her stuffed animals up in her arms, started chewing on her blanket, and cried for a while, considering the question of trolls. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
1384:This dinosaur skeleton was a body plus time. They all were. The question was what they wanted to do and who they wanted to love in the years when muscle and skin still covered them. ~ Ramona Ausubel, #NFDB
1385:When people asked me, "Do you get high to go onstage?" I could never understand the question. I mean, I'd been high since eight that morning. Going onstage had nothing to do with it. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
1386:Why do you keep coming back just to sit beside my bed?”
Seeming surprised by the question, he'd answered in a gravelly voice, "This is . . . satisfying. To me. I find it deeply so. ~ Kresley Cole,#NFDB
1387:Freud articulated the standard opinion when he asked with supposed seriousness, 'What does a woman want?'... Today the question that is the yeast in the social dough is, 'What do men want? ~ Sam Keen, #NFDB
1388:Guess who's running for president? Jeb Bush. Jeb was governor of Florida and he speaks fluent Spanish, which raises the question: What language did his brother speak? What was that? ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
1389:Happiness is not negated by subsequent pain. But it does make the possibility for future happiness seem dimmer. Every good moment is shadowed by the question of that moment's longevity. ~ Joseph Fink, #NFDB
1390:Herr Schiller? Are there really any such things as ghosts?' The old man did not even show surprise at the question. He heaved a sigh. 'Yes Pia, there are. But never the ones you expect. ~ Helen Grant, #NFDB
1391:I heard your girl's smart," Pigpen pipes up to ease the building tension. "In fact, I've heard she's fucking Einstein, which brings up the question how the hell she ended up with you. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
1392:In fact, all of our searching, streaming, downloading, and sharing is being used to answer the question the music industry has been asking for a century: What do people want to hear next? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1393:Sometime in your life, Alison Sekemoto, you will kill a human being. Accidentally or as a conscious, deliberate act. It is unavoidable. The question is not if it will happen, but when. ~ Julie Kagawa, #NFDB
1394:The question I'm constantly asking myself is: what are we afraid of? I think it's important for us to follow that line of fear, because that is ultimately our line of growth. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
1395:The universe isn’t based on magic—there isn’t one set of circumstances for the good and one for the evil. Everyone suffers sometime. The question is what you do with your suffering. ~ Sylvain Reynard, #NFDB
1396:We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough. ~ Niels Bohr, #NFDB
1397:Were you lying?"
"I never lie," he said piously. "About what?"
"The sand, the snake."
For a young man who never lied, he seemed surprisingly unoffended by the question. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,#NFDB
1398:When you're experiencing that year-in, year-out challenge of being on your own, it's easy to ask the question "What does everyone else know that I don't?" I suggest you flip that around. ~ Sara Eckel, #NFDB
1399:With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People...ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to. ~ Dick Cheney, #NFDB
1400:I am ceaselessly occupied with the question of the constitution of radiation … This quantum question is so incredibly important and difficult that everyone should busy himself on it. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1401:If [you are] over the age of 10, the question isn't whether or not to eat healthy to prevent heart disease, it's whether or not you want to reverse the heart disease you already have. ~ Michael Greger, #NFDB
1402:I'm forty two years old. And I became a psychotherapist because I was fucked-up. That's the truth - though it's not what I said during the interview when the question was put to me. ~ Alex Michaelides, #NFDB
1403:Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man's world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer? ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1404:Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man’s world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer? ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1405:It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1406:Now the question is, now that we are there, what should we do in the best interest of the U.S., not only from a standpoint of the necessity of some stable democracy in the Middle East. ~ Mike Huckabee, #NFDB
1407:The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1408:There are many more secrets in the world that are waiting to be found. The question of how many secrets exist in our world is roughly equivalent to how many startups people should start. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
1409:The Supreme Court raises the question, what kind of country will we be? The Supreme Court needs to stand on the side of the American people, not on the side of the powerful, wealthy. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
1410:This movie, it’s about the new generation, and what they’ve inherited, the light and the dark, and asking the question as they face the greatest evil: Are they prepared? Are they ready? - ~ J J Abrams, #NFDB
1411:To the question of whether sharing 96% of our genetic make-up with chimps makes us 96 percent chimp; we also share about 50% of our DNA with bananas - that does not make us half bananas! ~ Steve Jones, #NFDB
1412:We had to rescue Tavi – or what was left of him – but the question was how? We couldn't exactly walk up to Titanus, give him a stern look, and say, "Bad dinosaur! You spit that out now! ~ Tim Waggoner, #NFDB
1413:When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, "What do I need to get to be happy?" The question becomes, "What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?" ~ D T Suzuki, #NFDB
1414:While there were many factors in the 2016 election, from false news to voter suppression and Russian hacking, the question is why so many people responded to Donald Trump's demagoguery. ~ Riane Eisler, #NFDB
1415:Who the Hell is Lane?" he asked. Unmistakably, it was the question of a still very young man who, now and then, is not inclined to admiti that he know the first names of certain people. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
1416:You know and we know, as practical men that the question of justice arises only between parties equal in strength and that the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
1417:Do humanity and yourself a favor. Never, ever, give just a one-sentence response to the question, "Where are you from?" Give the asker some fuel for his tank, some fodder for his trough. ~ Leil Lowndes, #NFDB
1418:Don't spend your precious time asking "Why isn't the world a better place?" It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is "How can I make it better?" To that there is an answer. ~ Leo F Buscaglia, #NFDB
1419:He looked around circumspectly, then introduced himself: Professor Camestres. At the question “Professor of what?” he made a vague gesture, as if urging us to exercise greater discretion. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
1420:He slings his arm around my shoulder. I feel the question after he does it. -Is this okay?- I don't think it is. I don't know how to fold myself into him in any way that feels right. ~ Courtney Summers, #NFDB
1421:It’s not as hard as you thought, is it?” Callan asked. The question confused me so I tore my eyes from Beck and Brody to look at him. “What is?” “Loving two men at the same time.” Fear ~ Sloane Kennedy, #NFDB
1422:On same-sex marriage, the question is not how same-sex marriage hurts your marriage – that’s a nonsensical and stupid question, like asking how enslavement of others hurts you personally. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
1423:Reverie by the open window in the sweet futility of a mild evening was yet to strike the Australian male as a requirement. (There would be the question of fly screens, for one thing.) ~ Shirley Hazzard, #NFDB
1424:The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man. ~ Anthony Burgess, #NFDB
1425:And why should he interest himself at all in my moral and intellectual capacities: what is it to him what I think and feel?' I asked myself. And my heart throbbed in answer to the question. ~ Anne Bront, #NFDB
1426:But, all told, the question of how bad things will get is not actually a test of the science; it is a bet on human activity. How much will we do to stall disaster, and how quickly? ~ David Wallace Wells, #NFDB
1427:I find it fascinating that Paul [the apostol], writing to the Galatians, responds to the question, "What does it mean to live in Christ?" by saying, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
1428:I say with my own authority that if you go on questioning without accepting anybody's answer, including mine, by and by you will find that the answer is not found but the question disappears. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1429:I've been talking about retiring for years. It's my standard answer to the question, 'What are your future plans?' The truth is, I'll always want to do things that are worthwhile or fun. ~ Dick Van Dyke, #NFDB
1430:The constant tug between nature and civilization is what keeps on our toes. Though of course, that did rather beg the question of how you defined nature and how you defined civilization. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
1431:The question is not whether or not there should be a cult of the individual, but rather whether or not the individual concerned represents the truth, if he does then he should be worshiped. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
1432:The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Greatness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man. ~ Anthony Burgess, #NFDB
1433:When the question is difficult and a skilled solution is not available, intuition still has a shot: an answer may come to mind quickly—but it is not an answer to the original question. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1434:And why should he interest himself at all in my moral and intellectual capacities: what is it to him what I think and feel?' I asked myself. And my heart throbbed in answer to the question. ~ Anne Bronte, #NFDB
1435:For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,#NFDB
1436:Having first determined the question according to his will, man then resorts to experience; and bending her into conformity with his placets, leads her about like a captive in a procession. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1437:Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.
Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away. ~ George Packer,#NFDB
1438:I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities? ~ Wynton Marsalis, #NFDB
1439:If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the question we should be asking is not “How do I stop suffering?” but “Why am I suffering—for what purpose?” Hiroo ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1440:If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
1441:It has been said that the question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is so profound that it would occur only to a metaphysician, yet so simple that it would occur only to a child. ~ Jim Holt, #NFDB
1442:(life science) definitions. The question that runs through these disputatio is the following: What if “horror” has less to do with a fear of death, and more to do with the dread of life? ~ Eugene Thacker, #NFDB
1443:She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame of the candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate as impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
1444:The question is not, "Do you know you are a sinner?" the question is this, "As you have heard me preach the Gospel, has God so worked in your life that the sin you once loved you now hate?" ~ Paul Washer, #NFDB
1445:The question of good and evil remains in irremediable chaos for those who seek to fathom it in reality. It is mere mental sport to the disputants, who are captives that play with their chains. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1446:The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
1447:The question really is how do we get Embassy Officers into the minds of the American business community. That is a much more difficult task than understanding a statistical matrix. ~ Lawrence Eagleburger, #NFDB
1448:The rights of the people who have done terrible things are hard to defend. You have to keep pointing out, the question is the process to determine whether they've done the terrible things. ~ Barney Frank, #NFDB
1449:For me the question that you have to ask, about any magazine, is whether it's needed, whether it's publishing things that no one else could publish, or publish equally well. So there's that. ~ Lorin Stein, #NFDB
1450:If the house were on fire, what would you save? The cat? The computer? The only existing picture of your dead sister? Rather, the question should be: What would you be willing to lose? ~ Tanya Anne Crosby, #NFDB
1451:I have a desire to help animals, the question of whether it makes financial sense, it's my money and I get to do what I want with it. It's an expensive hobby I picked up at the end of my life. ~ Sam Simon, #NFDB
1452:I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality...to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not? ~ Storm Thorgerson, #NFDB
1453:I've laid out a very, very detailed immigration plan on my website, tedcruz.org. It's 11 pages of existing federal law and in particular the question of what to do with people who are here now. ~ Ted Cruz, #NFDB
1454:May I ask you a question?” “Of course.” “If I offered you ten million dollars or a clear conscience, which would you take?” He considered the question. “Both,” Victor said. “I am a thief. ~ Orest Stelmach, #NFDB
1455:People do not see that the main question is not : "Am I loved?" which is to a large extent the question : "Am I approved of? Am I protected? Am I admired?" The main question is: "Can I love? ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1456:Replacing “progress” with “innovation” skirts the question of whether a novelty is an improvement: the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer. ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
1457:So the question is, which boulder are you going to choose to roll? The "must lose weight" boulder or the "fuck you I will boldly, defiantly accept the body I've got and LIVE IN IT" boulder? ~ Kate Harding, #NFDB
1458:The goal of the disciple of Jesus, then, is not to answer the question, “What is God’s will for my life?” The goal, instead, is to walk in God’s will on a moment-by-moment, day-by-day basis. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
1459:Those localized efforts take a long time and they don't deal with the larger issue of ISIL and the question of what you're going to do to really have a solution here. We have to save Syria. ~ John F Kerry, #NFDB
1460:A Dark Night is a mental and emotional state of despair that arises when something is so painful that it blots out all other considerations and makes carrying on as usual out of the question. ~ Susan Piver, #NFDB
1461:Emerging in the 1960s, cognitive psychology used the same rigorous scientific approach as behaviorism but returned to the question of how behavior is actually generated inside the head. ~ Tom Butler Bowdon, #NFDB
1462:if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1463:In the end the question is: Who is to be master, man or his machines? As long as the control over technology rests primarily on economic calculation, the victor is not likely to be man. ~ Robert Heilbroner, #NFDB
1464:I thought then of catechism classes, about chanting the answer to a question, an answer that was "because he has said it and his word is true." I could not remember the question. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, #NFDB
1465:Production does not consist in things laboriously made, but in things serviceably consumable; and the question for the nation is not how much labour it employs, but how much life it produces. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
1466:Saying "I'm Christian and gay" proves nothing. The question shouldn't be Can a person be homosexual and still belong to God? But rather, Is homosexuality right or wrong according to the Bible. ~ Joe Dallas, #NFDB
1467:So the question is not so much "What are you passionate about?" The question is "What are you passionate enough about that you can endure even the most disagreeable aspects of the work. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1468:The entire sweep of human history from the dark ages into the unknown future was considerably less important at the moment than the question of a certain girl and her feelings toward him. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
1469:The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Greatness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
1470:The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
1471:There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list. ~ Arthur Eddington, #NFDB
1472:To find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
1473:What is a person to do, I asked, when their obligations to their family conflict with other obligations—to friends, to society, to themselves? I began the research. I narrowed the question, ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
1474:You must ask God what he thinks of you, and you must stay with the question until you have an answer. The battle will get fierce here. This is the last thing the Evil One wants you to know. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
1475:For the novelist or poet, for the scientist or artist, the question is not where do ideas come from, the question is how they come. The how is the mystery. The how is fragile. ~ E L Konigsburg, #NFDB
1476:I sighed and stared off without any particular focus. "I miss him so much." "I'm sorry," she said. "Will it ever get better?" The question seemed to catch her by surprise. "I...I don't know. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
1477:Let such a person rejoice even to ask the question, "What does this mean?" Yes, let him rejoice in that, and choose to find by not finding rather than by finding fail to find you. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1478:The question of education has nothing to do with the question of the vote. On numerous occasions it has been proved in history that people can enjoy the vote even if they have no education. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
1479:The question was, “Is your sexuality constructed by environment and experience, or is it innate?” I examined this issue by wanking off a man in a toilet. In conclusion, your sexuality is innate. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1480:There was nothing more pressing to do all day, every day, except think about the question that his whole life had failed to answer: How did music trick the body into thinking it had a soul? ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
1481:To say that the universe was here last year, or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder ~ Clarence Darrow, #NFDB
1482:We all have nightmares, we all wake up, we all have certain ideas of something that could be hiding around the corner and the question of does that really exist, but we get on with our lives. ~ Rupert Wyatt, #NFDB
1483:You may have been too quick to admit the difficulty of a specific task. The question is "how many times have you tried dealing with it"? Don't say it's difficult if you haven't tried it! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1484:As you see, it is not that I don't know my own mind, I know it very well but only up to a certain point in the matter. I know perfectly well what the question is. It's the answer I want. ~ Alessandro Baricco, #NFDB
1485:But that's the thing with the -what if game- you really never know the answer to the question. And maybe it's better that way. Because underneath the surface what-ifs are much worse ones. ~ Elizabeth Eulberg, #NFDB
1486:But that's the thing with the what -if game- you really never know the answer to the question. And maybe it's better that way. Because underneath the surface what-ifs are much worse ones. ~ Elizabeth Eulberg, #NFDB
1487:Do you know a single person who loves and is loved, who is loved unconditionally and who, at the same time, is ugly? There’s no need to ponder the question. There is no such person.” He ~ Jan Philipp Sendker, #NFDB
1488:I wake up, but where? I don't just think this, I actually voice the question to myself: "Where am I?" As if I didn't know: I'm here. In my life. A feature of the world that is my existence. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1489:I wouldn't say that the efforts of academics to critique the media's messages are "half-hearted." As far as I am aware, the efforts scarcely exist: very few even pay attention to the question. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1490:Man only of all earthly creatures, asks, Can the dead die forever? - and the instinct that urges the question is God's answer to man, for no instinct is given in vain. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
1491:Notice how often he reframes the question (examines whether the question is the right question) before answering. In several cases, how he dissects wording is as interesting as his answers. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1492:Not only in Canada but in other countries where we have to rely on immigration for our growth, the question of coexistence of values in communities is important. It has to be dealt with. ~ Philippe Couillard, #NFDB
1493:One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows.... Knowledge is the thing you know and how can you know more than you do know. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
1494:The Anglo-American tradition of constitutional thinking should be understood in this way, as addressing the question of how to limit the power of government, without losing its benefits. That ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1495:The challenge of every team is to build a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another because the question is usually not how well each person performs, but how well they work together. ~ Vince Lombardi, #NFDB
1496:The machines, the modern mode of production, slowly undermined domestic production and not just for thousands but for millions of women the question arose: Where do we now find our livelihood? ~ Clara Zetkin, #NFDB
1497:The question is whether NGOs that bring protection or aid or reparation therapies are furthering the possibility of self-determination or extending a form of managerial power and paternalism. ~ Judith Butler, #NFDB
1498:The question is: Would there be a market in Germany for certain types of employment if one were to allow the employed person to earn less than is necessary to maintain his standard of living? ~ Angela Merkel, #NFDB
1499:The universe swings again into orbit around us.
Am I looking for you or you for me?
The question is wrong.
As long as I keep using two pronouns,
I am this in-between, two-headed thing. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
1500:Trust me when I say this: the issue isn’t whether your life is going well or falling apart; the question is, what makes you so sure you can tell the difference? Things are seldom as they appear. ~ Levi Lusko, #NFDB
438 Integral Yoga
76 Occultism
58 Christianity
52 Philosophy
38 Psychology
24 Yoga
17 Poetry
14 Fiction
11 Science
7 Education
6 Hinduism
4 Integral Theory
2 Theosophy
2 Cybernetics
2 Baha i Faith
1 Thelema
1 Sufism
1 Mythology
1 Mysticism
1 Alchemy
252 The Mother
165 Sri Aurobindo
161 Satprem
85 Nolini Kanta Gupta
39 Aleister Crowley
36 Carl Jung
22 Plotinus
22 A B Purani
21 Saint Augustine of Hippo
15 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
12 H P Lovecraft
11 Plato
10 Sri Ramakrishna
9 James George Frazer
8 Swami Krishnananda
8 Friedrich Nietzsche
8 Aldous Huxley
7 Swami Vivekananda
7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
7 Rudolf Steiner
7 Nirodbaran
6 Jordan Peterson
6 George Van Vrekhem
5 Saint John of Climacus
3 Walt Whitman
3 Vyasa
3 Robert Browning
3 Paul Richard
3 Patanjali
3 Jorge Luis Borges
3 Franz Bardon
2 William Wordsworth
2 Percy Bysshe Shelley
2 Norbert Wiener
2 Lewis Carroll
2 Edgar Allan Poe
2 Baha u llah
27 Magick Without Tears
24 The Synthesis Of Yoga
22 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
20 City of God
19 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
19 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
18 The Life Divine
18 Questions And Answers 1956
18 Agenda Vol 10
17 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
17 Agenda Vol 08
17 Agenda Vol 04
16 Letters On Yoga II
16 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
15 Agenda Vol 07
14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
13 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
12 Talks
12 Lovecraft - Poems
12 Liber ABA
12 Letters On Yoga IV
12 Agenda Vol 11
12 Agenda Vol 09
11 Questions And Answers 1953
11 Mysterium Coniunctionis
10 The Practice of Psycho therapy
10 The Future of Man
10 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
10 Record of Yoga
10 Agenda Vol 13
10 Agenda Vol 06
10 Agenda Vol 05
10 Agenda Vol 02
9 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
9 The Golden Bough
9 Questions And Answers 1955
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
8 Twilight of the Idols
8 The Study and Practice of Yoga
8 The Perennial Philosophy
8 Questions And Answers 1954
8 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
8 Essays Divine And Human
8 Agenda Vol 01
7 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
7 The Problems of Philosophy
7 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
6 Some Answers From The Mother
6 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
6 Preparing for the Miraculous
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Essays On The Gita
6 Agenda Vol 12
6 Agenda Vol 03
5 Vedic and Philological Studies
5 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
5 The Human Cycle
5 On Education
5 Letters On Yoga III
5 Letters On Yoga I
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
5 Aion
4 Words Of Long Ago
4 The Phenomenon of Man
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
4 On the Way to Supermanhood
4 Letters On Poetry And Art
4 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
3 Vishnu Purana
3 The Secret Of The Veda
3 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
3 The Blue Cliff Records
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Raja-Yoga
3 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
3 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
3 Isha Upanishad
3 Browning - Poems
3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
2 Wordsworth - Poems
2 Words Of The Mother II
2 Whitman - Poems
2 The Practice of Magical Evocation
2 The Essentials of Education
2 Symposium
2 Shelley - Poems
2 Savitri
2 Prayers And Meditations
2 Cybernetics
2 Alice in Wonderland
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Apart from the Question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak for another order of reality, and even taking it at its face value, what is to be noted here is the idea of a cosmic cycle, and a cosmic cycle that proceeds through the principle of sacrifice. If it is asked what there is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rather naf description of a very commonplace happening that gives it an honoured place in the Upanishads, the answer is that it is wonderful to see how the Upanishadic Rishi takes from an event its local, temporal and personal colour and incorporates it in a global movement, a cosmic cycle, as a limb of the Universal Brahman. The Upanishads contain passages which a puritanical mentality may perhaps describe as 'pornographic'; these have in fact been put by some on the Index expurgatorius. But the ancients saw these matters with other eyes and through another consciousness.
We have, in modern times, a movement towards a more conscious and courageous, knowledge of things that were taboo to puritan ages. Not to shut one's eyes to the lower, darker and hidden strands of our nature, but to bring them out into the light of day and to face them is the best way of dealing with such elements, which otherwise, if they are repressed, exert an unhealthy influence on the mind and nature. The Upanishadic view runs on the same lines, but, with the unveiling and the natural and not merely naturalisticdelineation of these under-worlds (concerning sex and food), it endows them with a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual whole; and man is taught to consider and to mould all his movementsof soul and mind and bodyin the light and rhythm of that integral Reality.11
--
The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the Question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.
But Yama did answer and unveil the mystery and impart the supreme secret knowledge the knowledge of the Transcendent Brahman: it is out of the transcendent reality that the immanent deity takes his birth. Hence the Divine Fire, the Lord of creation and the Inner Mastersarvabhtntartm, antarymis called brahmajam, born of the Brahman. Yama teaches the process of transcendence. Apart from the knowledge and experience first of the individual and then of the cosmic Brahman, there is a definite line along which the human consciousness (or unconsciousness, as it is at present) is to ascend and evolve. The first step is to learn to distinguish between the Good and the Pleasurable (reya and preya). The line of pleasure leads to the external, the superficial, the false: while the other path leads towards the inner and the higher truth. So the second step is the gradual withdrawal of the consciousness from the physical and the sensual and even the mental preoccupation and focussing it upon what is certain and permanent. In the midst of the death-ridden consciousness in the heart of all that is unstable and fleetingone has to look for Agni, the eternal godhead, the Immortal in mortality, the Timeless in time through whom lies the passage to Immortality beyond Time.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
be pertinent with regard to the Question of secrecy.
It has become difficult for me to take this matter
--
We now, for the first time, attack the Question of
doubt.
--
Paragraph 6 puts the Question, "Then is sanity or
insanity desirable?" The oak is weakened by the ivy
--
path of the Sun. the Question, How? Not by their own virtues, but by the
silence which results when they are all done with.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the managements on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, history and economics. In his later days he took over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third floor of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the Question of imparting education through the medium of the mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the Morton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession ; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of man a calling for which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be moved very much by Sdhus, temples and Durga Puja celebrations. The piety and eloquence of the great Brahmo leader of the times, Keshab Chander Sen, elicited a powerful response from the impressionable mind of Mahendra Nath, as it did in the case of many an idealistic young man of Calcutta, and prepared him to receive the great Light that was to dawn on him with the coming of Sri Ramakrishna into his life.
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
the Question which Arjuna asks Sri Krishna in the Gita (second chapter) occurs pertinently to many about all spiritual personalities: "What is the language of one whose understanding is poised? How does he speak, how sit, how walk?" Men want to know the outer signs of the inner attainment, the way in which a spiritual person differs outwardly from other men. But all the tests which the Gita enumerates are inner and therefore invisible to the outer view. It is true also that the inner or the spiritual is the essential and the outer derives its value and form from the inner. But the transformation about which Sri Aurobindo writes in his books has to take place in nature, because according to him the divine Reality has to manifest itself in nature. So, all the parts of nature including the physical and the external are to be transformed. In his own case the very physical became the transparent mould of the Spirit as a result of his intense Sadhana. This is borne out by the impression created on the minds of sensitive outsiders like Sj. K. M. Munshi who was deeply impressed by his radiating presence when he met him after nearly forty years.
The Evening Talks collected here may afford to the outside world a glimpse of his external personality and give the seeker some idea of its richness, its many-sidedness, its uniqueness. One can also form some notion of Sri Aurobindo's personality from the books in which the height, the universal sweep and clear vision of his integral ideal and thought can be seen. His writings are, in a sense, the best representative of his mental personality. The versatile nature of his genius, the penetrating power of his intellect, his extraordinary power of expression, his intense sincerity, his utter singleness of purpose all these can be easily felt by any earnest student of his works. He may discover even in the realm of mind that Sri Aurobindo brings the unlimited into the limited. Another side of his dynamic personality is represented by the Ashram as an institution. But the outer, if one may use the phrase, the human side of his personality, is unknown to the outside world because from 1910 to 1950 a span of forty years he led a life of outer retirement. No doubt, many knew about his staying at Pondicherry and practising some kind of very special Yoga to the mystery of which they had no access. To some, perhaps, he was living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as 'public', 'altruistic' or 'beneficial'. Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for mankind in general. His outward non-participation in public life was construed by many as lack of love for humanity.
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
true that in my answers many aspects of the Question have been
neglected which could have been examined with interest - that
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have nothing else to add except this. When the Question
of distempering X's rooms arose, I looked very carefully several
--
I know that I was not obliged to give Y an explanation for my decision. In his expression, the Question was
there, but I could easily have ignored it. Why did I show
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But what then constitutes this higher or highest existence to which our evolution is tending? In order to answer the Question we have to deal with a class of supreme experiences, a class of unusual conceptions which it is difficult to represent accurately in any other language than the ancient Sanskrit tongue in which alone they have been to some extent systematised.
The only approximate terms in the English language have other associations and their use may lead to many and even serious inaccuracies. The terminology of Yoga recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle,5 a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle6 which are described as those of knowledge and bliss. But this knowledge is not a systematised result of mental questionings and reasonings, not a temporary arrangement of conclusions and opinions in the terms of the highest probability, but rather a pure self-existent and self-luminous Truth. And this bliss is not a supreme pleasure of the heart and sensations with the experience of pain and sorrow as its background, but a delight also selfexistent and independent of objects and particular experiences, a self-delight which is the very nature, the very stuff, as it were, of a transcendent and infinite existence.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
smile which was a pleasure to see? I don't ask the Question in
order to get an answer from you, for I think that I know it; it
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So according to them, the Question has no real basis and
cannot be posed.
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The breath and the surge of the new creation cannot be mistaken. the Question that confronts us today is no longer whether the New Man, the Super-humanity, will come or if at all, when; but the Question we have to answer is who among us are ready to be its receptacle, its instrument and embodiment.
***
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now the Question is, does Reason never fail? Is it such a perfect instrument as intellectualists think it to be? There is ground for serious misgivings. Reason says, for example, that the earth revolves round the sun: and reason, it is argued, is right, for we see that all the facts are conformableto it, even facts that were hitherto unknown and are now coming into our ken. But the difficulty is that Reason did not say that always in the past and may not say that always in the future. The old astronomers could explain the universe by holding quite a contrary theory and could fit into it all their astronomical data. A future scientist may come and explain the matter in quite a different way from either. It is only a choice of workable theories that Reason seems to offer; we do not know the fact itself, apart perhaps from exactly the amount that immediate sense-perception gives to each of us. Or again, if we take an example of another category, we may ask, does God exist? A candid Rationalist would say that he does not know although he has his own opinion about the matter. Evidently, Reason cannot solve all the problems that it meets; it can judge only truths that are of a certain type.
It may be answered that Reason is a faculty which gives us progressive knowledge of the reality, but as a knowing instrument it is perfect, at least it is the only instrument at our disposal; even if it gives a false, incomplete or blurred image of the reality, it has the means and capacity of correcting and completing itself. It offers theories, no doubt; but what are theories? They are simply the gradually increasing adaptation of the knowing subject to the object to be known, the evolving revelation of reality to our perception of it. Reason is the power which carries on that process of adaptation and revelation; we can safely rely upon Reason and trust It to carry on its work with increasing success.
01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This much as regards what Sri Aurobindo is not doing; let us now turn and try to understand what he is doing. The distinguished man of action speaks of conquering Nature and fighting her. Adopting this war-like imagery, we can affirm that Sri Aurobindo's work is just such a battle and conquest. But the Question is, what is nature and what is the kind of conquest that is sought, how are we to fight and what are the required arms and implements? A good general should foresee all this, frame his plan of campaign accordingly and then only take the field. The above-mentioned leader proposes ceaseless and unselfish action as the way to fight and conquer Nature. He who speaks thus does not know and cannot mean what he says.
European science is conquering Nature in a way. It has attained to a certain kind and measure, in some fields a great measure, of control and conquest; but however great or striking it may be in its own province, it does not touch man in his more intimate reality and does not bring about any true change in his destiny or his being. For the most vital part of nature is the region of the life-forces, the powers of disease and age and death, of strife and greed and lustall the instincts of the brute in man, all the dark aboriginal forces, the forces of ignorance that form the very groundwork of man's nature and his society. And then, as we rise next to the world of the mind, we find a twilight region where falsehood masquerades as truth, where prejudices move as realities, where notions rule as ideals.
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, the Question is, what is the insufficiency of Reason? How does it limit man? And what is the Superman into which man is asked or is being impelled to grow?
Reason is insufficient and unsatisfactory because, as Bergson explains, it does not and cannot embrace life as a whole, seize man and the world in an integral realisation. The greater part of the vast mystery of existence escapes its envergure. Reason is that faculty which is for analysing, defining, classifying and fixing things. It is a power that has grown in man in order that he may best manipulate the things of the world. It is utilitarian, practical in its nature and outlook. And as practical dealing requires that things should be stable and separate entities, therefore Reason cannot but see things in solid and in the fragments of a solid. It cuts up existence into distinct parts and diverse elements; and these again it seeks to relate and aggregate, in accordance with what it calls "laws". Such a process has been necessary for man in conducting life and action successfully. Originally a bye-product of active life, Reason gradually separated itself and came finally to have an independent status and function, became or sought to become the instrument of knowledge, of Truth.
--
And the faculty of Intuition said to be the characteristic of the New Man does not mean all that it should, if we confine ourselves to Bergson's definition of it. Bergson says that Intuition is a sort of sympathy, a community of feeling or sensibility with the urge of the life-reality. The difference between the sympathy of Instinct and the sympathy of Intuition being that while the former is an unconscious or semi-conscious power, the latter is illumined and self-conscious. Now this view emphasises only the feeling-tone of Intuition, the vital sensibility that attends the direct communion with the life movement. But Intuition is not only purified feeling and sensibility, it is also purified vision and knowledge. It unites us not only with the movement of life, but also opens out to our sight the Truths, the fundamental realities behind that movement. Bergson does not, of course, point to any existence behind the continuous flux of life-power the elan vital. He seems to deny any static truth or truths to be seen and seized in any scheme of knowledge. To him the dynamic flow the Heraclitian panta reei is the ultimate reality. It is precisely to this view of things that Bergson owes his conception of Intuition. Since existence is a continuum of Mind-Energy, the only way to know it is to be in harmony or unison with it, to move along its current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the Question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth?
Matter forms the lowest level of reality. Above it is the elan vital. Above the elan vital there is yet the domain of the Spirit. And the Spirit is a static substance and at the same a dynamic creative power. It is Being (Sat) that realises or expresses itself through certain typal nuclei or nodi of consciousness (chit) in a continuous becoming, in a flow of creative activity (ananda). The dynamism of the vital energy is only a refraction or precipitation of the dynamism of the spirit; and so also static matter is only the substance of the spirit concretised and solidified. It is in an uplift both of matter and vital force to their prototypesswarupa and swabhavain the Spirit that lies the real transformation and transfiguration of the humanity of man.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But the Yogi is a wholly conscious being; a perfect Yogi is he who possesses a conscious and willed control over his instruments, he silences them, as and when he likes, and makes them convey and express with as little deviation as possible truths and realities from the Beyond. Now the Question is, is it possible for the poet also to do something like that, to consciously create and not to be a mere unconscious or helpless channel? Conscious artistry, as we have said, means to be conscious on two levels of consciousness at the same time, to be at home in both equally and simultaneously. The general experience, however, is that of "one at a time": if the artist dwells more in the one, the other retires into the background to the same measure. If he is in the over-consciousness, he is only half-conscious in his brain consciousness, or even not conscious at allhe does not know how he has created, the sources or process of his creative activity, he is quite oblivious of them" gone through them all as if per saltum. Such seems to have been the case with the primitives, as they are called, the elemental poetsShakespeare and Homer and Valmiki. In some others, who come very near to them in poetic genius, yet not quite on a par, the instrumental intelligence is strong and active, it helps in its own way but in helping circumscribes and limits the original impulsion. The art here becomes consciously artistic, but loses something of the initial freshness and spontaneity: it gains in correctness, polish and elegance and has now a style in lieu of Nature's own naturalness. I am thinking of Virgil and Milton and Kalidasa. Dante's place is perhaps somewhere in between. Lower in the rung where the mental medium occupies a still more preponderant place we have intellectual poetry, poetry of the later classical age whose representatives are Pope and Dryden. We can go farther down and land in the domain of versificationalthough here, too, there can be a good amount of beauty in shape of ingenuity, cleverness and conceit: Voltaire and Delille are of this order in French poetry.
The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is the reason of this elaboration, this check and constraint upon the natural and direct outflow of the animal instincts in man? It has been said that the social life of man, the fact that he has to live and move as member of a group or aggregate has imposed upon him these restrictions. The free and unbridled indulgence of one's bare aboriginal impulses may be possible to creatures that live a separate, solitary and individual life but is disruptive of all bonds necessary for a corporate and group life. It is even a biological necessity again which has evolved in man a third and collateral primary instinct that of the herd. And it is this herd-instinct which naturally and spontaneously restrains, diverts and even metamorphoses the other instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside for the moment the Question whether man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whether they correspond to certain actual realities apart from and co-existent with these latter, we will recognise the simple fact of control and try to have a glimpse into its mechanism.
There are three lines, as the Psycho-analysts point out along which this control or censuring of the primary instincts acts. First, there is the line of Defence Reaction. That is to say, the mind automatically takes up an attitude directly contrary to the impulse, tries to shut it out and deny altogether its existence and the measure of the insistence of the impulse is also the measure of the vehemence of the denial. It is the case of the lady protesting too much. So it happens that where subconsciously there is a strong current of a particular impulse, consciously the mind is obliged to take up a counteracting opposite impulse. Thus in presence of a strong sexual craving the mind as if to guard and save itself engenders by a reflex movement an ascetic and puritanic mood. Similarly a strong unthinking physical attraction translates itself on the conscious plane as an equally strong repulsion.
--
Yet even here the process of control and transformation does not end. And we now come to the Fifth Line, the real and intimate path of yoga. Conscious control gives us a natural mastery over the instinctive impulses which are relieved of their dark tamas and attain a purified rhythm. We do not seek to hide or repress or combat them, but surpass them and play with them as the artist does with his material. Something of this katharsis, this aestheticism of the primitive impulses was achieved by the ancient Greeks. Even then the primitive impulses remain primitive all the same; they fulfil, no doubt, a real and healthy function in the scheme of life, but still in their fundamental nature they continue the animal in man. And even when Conscious Control means the utter elimination and annihilation of the primal instinctswhich, however, does not seem to be a probable eventualityeven then, we say, the basic problem remains unsolved; for the urge of nature towards the release and a transformation of the instincts does not find satisfaction, the Question is merely put aside.
Yoga, then, comes at this stage and offers the solution in its power of what we may call Transubstantiation. That is to say, here the mere form is not changed, nor the functions restrained, regulated and purified, but the very substance of the instincts is transmuted. The power of conscious control is a power of the human will, i.e. of an individual personal will and therefore necessarily limited both in intent and extent. It is a power complementary to the power of Nature, it may guide and fashion the latter according to a new pattern, but cannot change the basic substance, the stuff of Nature. To that end yoga seeks a power that transcends the human will, brings into play the supernal puissance of a Divine Will.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the law of aging; consequently the Question of age will not arise
for them.
--
is that You are not very pleased with the Questions I ask
You every Wednesday. Is this true?
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Here is the crux of the Question. The dictum of utilitarian philosophers is a golden rule which is easy to formulate but not so to execute. For the line of demarcation between one's own rights and the equal rights of others is so undefinable and variable that a title suit is inevitable in each case. In asserting and establishing and even maintaining one's rights there is always the possibilityalmost the certaintyof encroaching upon others' rights.
What is required is not therefore an external delimitation of frontiers between unit and unit, but an inner outlook of nature and a poise of character. And this can be cultivated and brought into action by learning to live by the sense of duty. Even then, even the sense of duty, we have to admit, is not enough. For if it leads or is capable of leading into an aberration, we must have something else to check and control it, some other higher and more potent principle. Indeed, both the conceptions of Duty and Right belong to the domain of mental ideal, although one is usually more aggressive and militant (Rajasic) and the other tends to be more tolerant and considerate (sattwic): neither can give an absolute certainty of poise, a clear guarantee of perfect harmony.
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
one cannot even ask the Question anymore; for the vibration
of aspiration, luminous and calm, has nothing to do with the
--
I have never discussed with my friends the Question
of knowing why we are here on earth, but I have thought
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Now you may ask me the Questions you wanted to ask Thats all?
Mother, there is not even one single man?
--
Before, when there were we started with 35 or 36 people but even when it got up to 150, even with 150it was as if they were all nestled in a cocoon in my consciousness: they were so near to me that I could constantly guide ALL their inner or outer movements. Day and night, at each moment, everything was totally under my control. And naturally, I think they made a great deal of progress at that time: it is a fact that I was CONSTANTLY doing the sadhana2 for them. But then, with this baby boom The sadhana cant be done for little sprouts who are 3 or 4 or 5 years old! Its out of the Question. The only thing I can do is wrap them in the Consciousness and try to see that they grow up in the best of all possible conditions. However, the one advantage to all this is that instead of there being such a COMPLETE and PASSIVE dependence on the disciples part, each one has to make his own little effort. Truly, thats excellent.
I dont know to whom I was mentioning this today (I think it was for a Birthday3 No, I dont know now. It was to someone who told me he was 18 years old. I said that between the ages of 18 and 20, I had attained a constant and conscious union with the Divine Presence and that I had done this ALL ALONE, without ANYONES help, not even books. When a little later I chanced upon Vivekanandas Raja Yoga, it really seemed so wonderful to me that someone could explain something to me! And it helped me realize in only a few months what would have otherwise taken years.
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This vision took place early in the night and woke me up with a rather unpleasant feeling. Then I fell back to sleep and forgot about it; but a little while ago, when I was thinking of the Question put to me, it returned. It returned with a great intensity and so imperatively that now, just as I wanted to tell you what kind of collectivity we wish to realize according to the ideal described by Sri Aurobindo in the last chapter of The Life Divinea gnostic, supramental collectivity, the only kind that can do Sri Aurobindos integral yoga and be realized physically in a progressive collective body becoming more and more divine the recollection of this vision became so imperative that I couldnt speak.
Its symbolism was very clear, though of quite a familiar nature, as it were, and because of its very familiarity, unmistakable in its realism Were I to tell you all the details, you would probably not even be able to follow: it was rather intricate. It was a kind of (how can I express it?)an immense hotel where all the terrestrial possibilities were lodged in different apartments. And it was all in a constant state of transformation: parts or entire wings of the building were suddenly torn down and rebuilt while people were still living in them, such that if you went off somewhere within the immense hotel itself, you ran the risk of no longer finding your room when you wanted to return to it, for it might have been torn down and was being rebuilt according to another plan! It was orderly, it was organized yet there was this fantastic chaos which I mentioned. And all this was a symbola symbol that certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo has written here1 regarding the necessity for the transformation of the body, the type of transformation that has to take place for life to become a divine life.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This morning I asked myself the Question, is money truly under Natures control? I shall have to see Because for me personally, she always gives everything in abundance.
When I was young, I was as poor as a turkey, as poor as could be! As an artist, I sometimes had to go out in society (as artists are forced to do). I had lacquered boots that were cracked and I painted them so it wouldnt show! This is to tell you the state I was inpoor as a turkey. So one day, in a shop window, I saw a very pretty petticoat much in fashion then, with lace, ribbons, etc. (It was the fashion in those days to have long skirts which trailed on the floor, and I didnt have a petticoat which could go with such things I didnt care, it didnt matter to me in the least, but since Nature had told me I would always have everything I needed, I wanted to make an experiment.) So I said, Well, I would very much like to have a petticoat to go with those skirts. I got five of them! They came from every direction!
--
Then the war and all the difficulties came, bringing a tremendous increase of people and expenditure (the war cost a fortuneanything at all cost ten times more than before), and suddenly, finished, nothing more. Not exactly nothing, but a thin little trickle. And when I asked, it didnt come. So one day, I put the Question to Ganesh through his image (! ), I asked him, What about your promise?I cant do it, its too much for me; my means are too limited!Ah! I said to myself (laughing), What bad luck! And I no longer counted on him.
Once someone even asked Santa Claus! A young Muslim girl who had a special liking for Father Christmas I dont know why, as it was not part of her religion! Without saying a word to me, she called on Santa Claus and told him, Mother doesnt believe in you; you should give Her a gift to prove to Her that you exist. You can give it to Her for Christmas. And it happened! She was quite proud.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It was the same thing for visions of past lives. I knew NOTHING when I would have the experience, not even the possibility of past lives, and only after having had the experience would I study the Question and, for example, even verify certain historical facts that had occurred in my vision but about which I had no prior knowledge.
***
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Suddenly, while I was speaking (it was while I was speaking), I felt, Well really, can anything be done with such material? Then, quite naturally, when I stopped speaking, oh!I felt that I was being pulled! Then I understood. Because I had asked myself the Question, But what is HAPPENING in there behind all those forms? I cant say that I was annoyed, but I said to myself, Well really, this has to be shaken up a bit! And just as I had finished, something pulled meit pulled me out of my body, I was literally pulled out of my body.
And then, down into this hole I still see what I saw then, this crevasse between two rocks. The sky was not visible, but on the rock summits I saw something like the reflection of a glimmera glimmercoming from something beyond, which (laughing) must have been the sky! But it was invisible. And as I descended, as if I were sliding down the face of this crevasse, I saw the rock edges; and they were really black rocks, as if cut with a chisel, cuts so fresh that they glistened, with edges as sharp as knives. There was one here, one there, another there, everywhere, all around. And I was being pulled, pulled, pulled, I went down and down and downthere was no end to it, and it was becoming more and more compressing.1 It went down and down
0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
My explanations will have to be simple, for X speaks English with difficulty, thus subtleties are out of the Question. (I am teaching him a little English while he is teaching me Sanskrit, and we manage to understand each other rather well all the same. He understands more than he can speak.)
I do not want to mention this to Swami, as X is not very happy about the way Swami seizes upon every occasion to appropriate things, and particularly mantras (I will explain this to you when we meet again). It is especially the way he says I. Nothing very seriousit is Swamis bad side, though he has good ones too. You know that, however.
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In December 1958, when Mother stopped the Questions and Answers at the playground and thereafter left the Ashram building only rarely.
***
0 1960-06-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But when a question is put to me, it comes coated with all the mental atmosphere of whoever is asking the Question. And this coating is often a mere reflectionmuch of the life has been removed.
The same thing occurs, there is the same difference, when I say something and when I see it (for example, when I look at one of those essential problems that will be solved only when the world changes). When I look at that in silence, there is a power of life and truthwhich evaporates when its put into words. It becomes diminished, impoverished and of course distorted. When you write or speak, the experience disintegrates, its inevitable.
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Are these disorders necessary for it to become like that? I have my doubts. I have my doubts. But the Question cant even be asked, because what it implies seems to verge on a fatalism having no truth in itselfit is not a fatalism, not at all. What is it? Something that defies expression.
(silence)
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They also had a sudden brainstorm to affiliate with the Sri Aurobindo Society. But the Sri Aurobindo Society has absolutely nothing to do with their project: its a strictly external thing, organized by businessmen to bring in moneyEXCLUSIVELY. That is, they want to put people in a position where they feel obliged to give (so far they have succeeded and I believe they will succeed). But this has nothing to do with working for an ideal, it is COMPLETELY practical.10 And of course, World Union has nothing to offer the Sri Aurobindo Society: they would simply siphon off funds. So I told them, Nothing doingits out of the Question!
But your name is there as President of the Sri Aurobindo Society, they said. My name is there to give an entirely material guarantee that the money donated will really and truly be used for the Work to be done and for nothing else; its only a moral and purely practical guarantee. These people arent even asked to understand what Sri Aurobindo has said but simply to participate. Its a different matter for those in World Union, who are working for an ideal: they want to prepare the world to receive (laughing) the Supermind! Let them prepare it! It doesnt matter, they will achieve nothing at all, or very little. Its unimportant. Thats my point of view and I have told them so.
--
This is the text of Mother's reply to J.: 'I have read Z's account and your own letter on this subject. in the faith of his devotion, he must have been quite offended. The truth in what he says is that any idea, WHATEVER its degree of truth, is ineffective if it does not also carry the power acquired through realization, by a real change of consciousness. And if the proponent of this idea does not himself have the realization, he must seek the backing of those who have the power. On the other hand, what you say is true: an idea ought to be accepted on the basis of its inherent truth and not because of the personality expounding it, however great this personality may be. These two truths or aspects of the Question are equally true but also equally incomplete: they are not the whole truth. Both of them must be accepted and combined with many other aspects of the Question if you want to even begin to approach the dynamic power of the realization. Don't you see how ridiculous this situation is? Three people of goodwill meet in the hope of teaching men the necessity for a "World Union" and they are not even able to keep a tolerant or tolerable union among themselves, because each sees a different angle of the procedure to be followed for implementing their plan.'
Although it began as a fund-raising organization for the needs of the Ashram and Auroville, this 'strictly external thing,' which had 'nothing to do with working for an ideal,' would, after Mother's departure, coolly declare itself the 'owner' and guide of Auroville.
0 1961-05-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To tell the truth, this question seems stupid to me, because one can have mastery over circumstances only if one becomes the Supremebecause the Supreme alone has mastery over circumstances. So the Question is senseless.
If you become identified with the Supreme and there is but ONE willHis then of course you have supreme mastery. Otherwise its all nothing but illusion. You imagine that by wanting a certain thing you can change circumstances, but you still have to be in total ignorance to believe that the change occurs because YOU want it toin fact, the Supreme is making use of you. Consequently, you have no mastery at all; you are an instrument used by the Supreme, and thats all.
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it doesnt keep them from starting up again! They did so particularly after I read the passage where Sri Aurobindo affirms, THIS time I have come for THATand I shall do it. The day when I read this I turned towards him, not actually putting the Question to him but simply turning towards him, and he told me, Read the book through to the end. And I know, I know its truewhen I have read the book through to the end I will understand what he has done and I will even have the power to reply to all these suggestions. But meanwhile, everything that wants to keep me from doing it, all this obscure and subconscious ill will, tries its best to keep me from reading, including giving me this eye hemorrhage.
Well, since I believerightly or wrongly, I dont know that the doctor has more experience than I, that from the therapeutic and biological standpoint he knows a bit more, I showed him the eye and asked, Can I read? Better not read until its finished, he replied, and told me to wash my eyes with glucose. (Its a useful piece of information for those with tired eyes: mix the glucoseliquid glucose, the kind that comes in ampoules for injectionwith something like the blue water we make here, half and half. Open the ample, put a third of it in the eye-cup, then add the blue water.) I have already tried it once and found that it gives a great deal of strength to the eyes. Tomorrow Im going to start doing it regularly. There you are.
--
In the final analysis, everything obviously depends upon the Supremes Will because, if one looks deeply enough into the Question, even physical laws and resistances are nothing for Him. But this kind of direct intervention takes place only at the extreme limit; if His Will is to be expressed in opposition, as it were, to the whole set of laws governing the Manifestationwell, that only comes at the very last second. Sri Aurobindo has expressed this so well in Savitri, so well! At least three times in the book he has expressed this Will that abolishes all established laws, all of them, and all the consequences of these laws, the whole formidable colossus of the Manifestation, so that in the face of it all, That can express itself and this takes place at the very last second, so to speak, at the extreme limit of possibility.
I must say that there was a time when, as Sri Aurobindo had entrusted his work to me, there was a kind of tension to do it (it cant be called an anxiety); a tension in the will. This too has now ended (Mother stretches her arms into the Infinite). Its finished. But there MAY still be something tense lurking somewhere in the subconscient or the inconscient I dont know, its possible. Why? I dont know. I mean I have never been told, at any time, neither through Sri Aurobindo nor directly, whether or not I would go right to the end. I have never been told the contrary, either. I have been told nothing at all. And if at times I turn towards Thatnot to question, but simply to know the answer is always the same: Carry on, its not your problem; dont worry about it. So now I have learned not to worry about it; I am consciously not worried about it.
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Exactly what came to me I receive all the Questions people ask. the Question arises immediately: if one kills out of cruelty, for instance, or inflicts pain out of cruelty, did that ever have a place? For even though deformed in appearance, it is nevertheless (we always come back to the same thing) an expression of the Divine.
What lies behind, tell me?
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother is referring to the book Satprem will write on Sri Aurobindo, which prompted the Questions posed in this conversation.
'Evolutor': a word coined by Mother.
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First of all, in the Questions and Answers you speak of the reversal of consciousness. Is this synonymous with the psychic realization? Because in one Conversation you connect the two things: the reversal of consciousness and the discovery of the psychic being.
Its the result of this discovery. In fact, its the result of union with the psychic being.
0 1961-08-08, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this is probably why there are things he cant make out in his contact with me, because he simply doesnt understand. For example, these physical disorders baffle him, they seem incompatible with my realization. As long as the Question of transformation does not come into play, the realization I had was sufficient to establish a kind of very stable orderreaction against the transformative will is what causes these disorders. And this he does not understandto him something seems not to be functioning properly. He must feel a contradiction between certain things he perceives in my consciousness and my contact with the material world. This being this, he thinks, that ought to be like that; so why? He doesnt understand.1
X's astonishment raises an extremely important point, drawing the exact dividing line between all the traditional yogas and the new yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Mother. To a tantric, for example, it seems unthinkable that Mother, with a consciousness so powerful as to scoff at the laws of nature and comm and the elements (if she wishes), could be subjected to absurd head colds or an eye hemorrhage or even more serious disorders. For him, it is enough to simply lift a finger and emit a vibration which instantly muzzles the disorderyes, of course, but for Mother it is not a question of 'curing' a head cold by imposing a higher POWER on Matter, but of getting down to the cellular root and curing or transforming the source of the evil (which causes death as easily as head colds, for it is the same root of disorder). It is not a question of imposing oneself on Matter through a 'power,' but of transforming Matter. Such is the yoga of the cells.
0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think I made this experiment in 1904, so when I arrived here it was all a work accomplished and a well-known domain; and when the Question of finding the Supermind came up, I had only to resume an experience I was used to I had learned to repeat it at will, through successive exteriorizations. It was a voluntary process.
When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. Its strange, he said to me, its an endless work! Nothing seems to get doneeverything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again. Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: It will be like that until we touch bottom. So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience how to put it? practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Dear Sir I must begin by telling you that although this text is an excellent essay, it is not, in its present form, a book for the Spiritual Masters series. Let us enumerate the reasons for this. First of all, the general impression is of an ABSTRACT text. I can straight-away imagine your reaction to this and I dread misunderstandings! But putting myself in the readers place, since, once again, it does involve a collection intended for a wide public that we are beginning to know well, I can assure you that this public will not be able to follow page after page of reflections upon what one is bound to call a philosophical and spiritual system. Obviously this impression is caused primarily by the fact that you have begun with twenty-one pages where the reader is assumed to already know of Sri Aurobindos historical existence and the content of the Vedas and the Upanishads, plus I dont know how many other notions of rite, truth, divinity, wisdom, etc., etc. In my view, and the solution is going to appear cruel to you, for you certainly value these twenty-one pages [on the Secret of the Veda], they should purely and simply be deleted, for everything you say there, which is very rich in meaning, can only become clear when one has read what follows. There are many books in which readers can be asked to make the effort entailed in not understanding the beginning until they have read the end: but not books of popular culture. One could envisage an introduction of three or four pages to situate the spiritual climate and cultural world in which Sri Aurobindos thought has taken place, provided, however, that it is sufficiently descriptive, and not a pre-synthesis of everything to be expounded upon in what follows. In a general way you are going to smile, finding me quite Cartesian! But the readership we address is more or less permeated by a widespread Cartesianism, and you can help them, if you like, to reverse their methodology, but on the condition that you make yourself understood right from the start. Generally, you dont make enough use of analysis and, even before analysis, of a description of the realities being analyzed. That is why the sections of pure philosophical analysis seem much too long to us, and, even apart from the abstract character of the chapter on evolution (which should certainly be shorter), one feels at a positive standstill! After having waited patiently, and sometimes impatiently, for some light to be thrown on Sri Aurobindos own experience, one reads with genuine amazement that one can draw on energies from above instead of drawing on them from the material nature around oneself, or from an animal sleep, or that one can modify his sleep and render it conscious master illnesses before they enter the body. All of that in less than a page; and you conclude that the spirit that was the slave of matter becomes again the master of evolution. But how Sri Aurobindo was led to think this, the experiences that permitted him to verify it, those that permit other men to consider the method transmittable, the difficulties, the obstacles, the realizationsdoesnt this constitute the essence of what must be said to make the reader understand? Once again, it is the Question of a pedagogy intimately tied in with the spirit of the collection. Let me add as well that I always find it deplorable when a thought is not expressed purely for its own sake, but is accompanied by an aggressive irony towards concepts which the author does not share. This is pointless and harms the ideas being presented, all the more so because they are expressed in contrast with caricatured notions: the allusions you make to such concepts as you think yourself capable of evoking the soul, creation, virtue, sin, salvationwould only hold some interest if the reader could find those very concepts within himself. But, as they are caricatured by your pen, the reader is given the impression of an all too easily obtained contrast between certain ideas admired and others despised. Whereas it would be far more to the point if they corresponded to something real in the religious consciousness of the West. I have too much esteem for you and the spiritual world in which you live to avoid saying this through fear of upsetting you.
Amen.
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Question, of course, is the supramentalization of MATTER the consciousness, thats nothing at all. Most people who have had that experience had it on the mental level, which is relatively easy. Its very easy: abolition of limits set by the ego, indefinite expansion with a movement following the rhythm of the Becoming. Mentally, its all very easy. Vitally. A few months after I withdrew to my room, I had the experience in the vitalwonderful, magnificent! Of course to have the experience there, the mind must have undergone a change, one must be in complete communion; without exception, any individual vital being that hasnt been prepared by what might be called a sufficient mental foundation would be panic-stricken. All those poor people who get scared at the least little experience had better not dabble with thistheyd panic! But as it happensthrough divine grace, you might saymy vital, the vital being of this present incarnation, was born free and victorious. It has never been afraid of anything in the vital world; the most fantastic experiences were practically childs play. But when I had that experience, it was so interesting that for a few weeks I was tempted to stay in it; it was. I once told you a little about that experience (it was quite a while ago, at least two years).5 I told you that even during the day I seemed to be sitting on top of the Earth that was this realization in the vital world. And what fantastic nights it gave me! Nights I have never been able to describe to anyone and never mentioned but I would look forward to the night as a marvelous adventure.
I voluntarily renounced all that in order to go further. And when I did it, I understood what people here in India mean when they say: he surrendered his experience. I had never really understood what that meant. When I did it, I understood. No, I said, I dont want to stop there; I am giving it all to You, that I may go on to the end. Then I understood what it meant.
0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Looking at it as a difference in attitude, the Question is readily cleared up. But if I want the truth the true truth behind this difference, it becomes very difficult.
And that is exactly what I have seen in the light of the events described in Perseus. If you dont take the problem generally but specifically, down to the least detail. But it evaporates as soon as you formulate it. Only when you feel it concretely, when you get a grip on it, can you grasp both things.
0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, its peoples thoughts that are so annoying! Everybody, everybody is constantly thinking about old age and death, and death and old age and illness oh, theyre such a nuisance! Me, I never think of it. Thats not the Question. The difficulty lies in the Work itself; it doesnt depend on a certain number of years, which besides is completely its nothing, one second in eternity, a mere nothing!
But truly, if someone (I dont know who or what this Someone is) if I am given the time, I will know I am convinced of it. For despite all the growing difficulties, there is also a growing knowledge, a constant progress. So from that standpoint, I CANNOT be mistaken; it is impossible. This Presence is becoming so concrete and so (what shall I say?) so helpful, so concrete in its help. But it obviously takes a long time.
0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Certain stages of your development even require the gurus physical presence: you must no longer go into trance unless he is there, sitting beside you. Out of the Question! Cant you just imagine me saddled with loads of people! Its impossible; I couldnt even do the job properly. No, its impossible, it would simply mean exposing a lot of people to permanent danger and I dont want to.
So well put this Talk aside.
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, something has come and wants to manifest here, so I am being prepared, I see plainly that I am being. How to adapt this (the body)? Thats the Question.
They are experimenting! Well see whats going to happen. This work is fairly new! (Mother laughs.)
0 1962-09-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the middle of the First World War, Sri Aurobindo noted with prophetic force: The defeat of Germany could not of itself kill the spirit then incarnate in Germany; it may well lead merely to a new incarnation of it, perhaps in some other race or empire, and the whole battle would then have to be fought over again. So long as the old gods are alive, the breaking or depression of the body which they animate is a small matter, for they know well how to transmigrate. Germany overthrew the Napoleonic spirit in France in 1813 and broke the remnants of her European leadership in 1870; the same Germany became the incarnation of that which it had overthrown. The phenomenon is easily capable of renewal on a more formidable scale.2 Today we are finding that the old gods know how to transmigrate. Gandhi himself, seeing all those years of nonviolence culminate in the terrible violence that marked Indias partition in 1947, ruefully observed shortly before his death: The attitude of violence which we have secretly harboured now recoils on us, and makes us fly at each others throats when the Question of distribution of power arises. Now that the burden of subjection is lifted, all the forces of evil have come to the surface. For neither nonviolence nor violence touch upon the root of Evil.
Ahimsa: nonviolence.
0 1963-01-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I count on the Question to set off the movement, because for the moment theres nothing.
More and more its like that: I know what I must do at the time of doing it, I know what I must say at the time of saying it. I dont try, though once or twice I did try just to seeuseless, nothing comes. But when it has to come, it comes as if a tap were openedeffortlessly, without my having to do anything, it just comes.
0 1963-03-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Question we could ask is: Will the human species be like those species that met with extinction? Some species became extinct (though not species that lasted as long as the human species, as far as I know (?), and also not those which had in them the seed of progress, a possibility of progress). The impression is rather that evolution will follow a curve drawing nearer and nearer to a higher species, and maybe all that is still too close to the lower species will fall away, just as those species fell away in the past.
We always forget that not only is everything possibleeverything, even the most contradictory things but every possibility is given at least one moment of existence.
0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, it refers to dualities: life and death, error and knowledge, love and cruelty. We can, of course, leave aside any question on death, but that was the Question that came to me.
I tell you, it would mar a subject that may, in a few months (a few months or a few years, I dont know), grow clearer. There may be something worth telling then.
--
The only thing that has come to my consciousness so far is for me to be in an inner state such that I could sit for two or three hours, while people file past me (of course, its out of the Question to distribute anything myself, its impossible). Simply, for me to be absorbed in contemplation so that it wouldnt matter, people filing past wouldnt alter my state.
It was suggested to me in the form of a vision: I was sitting on a somewhat high chair downstairs, on the ground floor (in the meditation hall where I went in 1960), while people filed past me. But then there should be some sort of distribution, and I am more in favor of something printed than a material object. A material object I am much too poor, in the first place. Something printed.
0 1963-03-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It turns out that he had already sent me his questions, at the same time last year, and that I had already sent them back. But they put it all down to my so-called illness, so he sends the same questions again, now that I am in a fit state to answer! So again I return them with the same answer: not possible. We were joking the other day: Nolini was reading me the Questions, and to every question I answered (tone of a pupil at fault), Dont know, dont know!
(Mother laughs)
0 1963-04-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had two experiences of that kind. The first was at Tlemcen3 and the second in Japan. There was an epidemic of influenza, an influenza that came from the war (the 1914 war), and was generally fatal. People would get pneumonia after three days, and plop! finished. In Japan they never have epidemics (its a country where epidemics are unknown), so they were caught unawares; it was an ideal breeding ground, absolutely unpreparedincredible: people died by the thousands every day, it was incredible! Everybody lived in terror, they didnt dare to go out without masks over their mouths. Then somebody whom I wont name asked me (in a brusque tone), What Is this? I answered him, Better not think about it. Why not? he said, Its very interesting! We must find out, at least you are able to find out whatever this is. Silly me, I was just about to go out; I had to visit a girl who lived at the other end of Tokyo (Tokyo is the largest city in the world, it takes a long time to go from one end to the other), and I wasnt so well-off I could go about in a car: I took the tram. What an atmosphere! An atmosphere of panic in the city! You see, we lived in a house surrounded by a big park, secluded, but the atmosphere in the city was horrible. And the Question, What Is this? naturally came to put me in contact I came back home with the illness. I was sure to catch it, it had to happen! (laughing) I came home with it.
Like a bang on the head I was completely dazed. They called a doctor. There were no medicines left in the citythere werent enough medicines for people, but as we were considered important people (!) the doctor brought two tablets. I told him (laughing), Doctor, I never take any medicines. What! he said. Its so hard to get them!Thats just the point, I replied, theyre very good for others! Then, then suddenly (I was in bed, of course, with a first-rate fever), suddenly I felt seized by trance the real trance, the kind that pushes you out of your body and I knew. I knew: Its the end; if I cant resist it, its the end. So I looked. I looked and I saw it was a being whose head had been half blown off by a bomb and who didnt know he was dead, so he was hooking on to anybody he could to suck life. And each of those beings (I saw one over me, doing his business!) was one of the countless dead. Each had a sort of atmospherea very widespread atmosphereof human decomposition, utterly pestilential, and thats what gave the illness. If it was merely that, you recovered, but if it was one of those beings with half a head or half a body, a being who had been killed so brutally that he didnt know he was dead and was trying to get hold of a body in order to continue his life (the atmosphere made thousands of people catch the illness every day, it was swarming, an infection), well, with such beings, you died. Within three days it was overeven before, within a day, sometimes. So once I saw and knew, I collected all the occult energy, all the occult power, and (Mother bangs down her fist, as if to force her way into her body) I found myself back in my bed, awake, and it was over. Not only was it over, but I stayed very quiet and began to work in the atmosphere. From that moment on, mon petit, there were no new cases! It was so extraordinary that it appeared in the Japanese papers. They didnt know how it happened, but from that day on, from that night on, not a single fresh case. And people recovered little by little.
0 1963-05-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Maybe it will go fast. But the Question boils down to a SUFFICIENT aspiration, sufficiently intense and effective to attract That which can transform all this: complication into Simplicity, cruelty into Love and so forth.
Its no use complaining and saying its a pity things are that way. They are the way they are. Why? When things are no longer that way, well probably know why. Or to put it differently: if we knew why, they would no longer be that way.
0 1963-06-08, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I wondered. But the Question isnt put correctly. It is something eternal which, because of what happened at that time (not at that minute, because, as I said, it must have been going on long before and long afterwards) it has become something new, for that reason, BECAUSE of what happened.1 Coming back to all the things we know, we could say (but thats the usual idle talk) that it is something newly manifested.
But my impression was an impression of Eternity. An Eternity BEYOND TIME (not something that lasts forever: something timeless), yes, the word would be: manifesting, making itself perceptible, or becoming active thats not it, because Yes, acting, becoming perceptible because it acts.
0 1963-06-22, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And quite clearly, certainties as WE conceive of them, I mean someone who knows (and someone who knows can only be the Supreme) and tells you clearly, Here is where you stand, and with YOUR way of seeing things, well (Mother laughs), such certainties arent to be expected, it seems! Probably its quite stupid to ask the Question.
You do feel its a bit stupid, but you often feel the need to know! (laughter) Its stupid, but.
0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont think the Question bothers him much (!) His concern is how to exert his power and keep people in it, so as, maybe, to prove his superiority.
This much conviction they still have, you see, that their religion IS superior to all others, their power is superior to all others, and therefore they have to be more powerful than the others. Thats the main idea: To be the most powerful. And whats the way, now, for them to gain that all-powerfulness? Already for two or three generations, they have understood the necessity of a broadening: the narrowness of their dogma gave them too many weak points. But he [Paul VI] understands maybe even better. Well see what happens.
0 1963-08-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, you should be able to stick your nose into it without getting worked up! And its quite possible. Its something the body has achieved, here, this body: it can intervene without getting worked up. But thats not the Question! the Question is something BEHIND that. Thats not it. the Question is: if we leave disorder alone (if, to be precise, we let it reach its maximum), will the progress (what we call progress, that is, the change) not be greater?
Will the garden not be eaten up by the insects? Thats the Question.
We dont make the experiment!
0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its true that the doctor himself said ([laughing], the doctor1 symbolizes Doubt with a capital D) that if you teach your body to bear pain, it grows more and more enduring and doesnt get disrupted so fast thats a concrete result. People who know how not to be thoroughly upset as soon as they have a pain here or there, who are able to bear quietly and keep their balance, it seems that in their case the bodys capacity to bear disorder without breaking down increases. Thats very important. You remember, in a previous Agenda I asked myself the Question from a purely practical and physical point of view, and it does seem to be true. Inwardly, I have been told many a timetold and shown with all sorts of little experiences that the body can bear far more than people think, provided they dont add fear or anxiety to the pain; if you can get rid of that mental factor, the body, left to itself, without either fear or fright or anxiety for what will happenwithout anguishcan bear a great deal.
The second step is that once the body has decided to bear pain (it really takes the decision to do so), instantly the acuteness, the acute sensation in the pain vanishes. I am speaking on an absolutely material level.
--
But the Question arose for this body [Mothers], just to see, you know. And I saw all kinds of things, and finally the answer was always the same (you see, the problem was presented to me to enable me to understand the situation in all its aspects and see the necessities), that naturally everything would be for the best! (Laughing) Without a doubt. But I mean it was presented very concretely and, I could say, very personally to make me understand the problem. And there was that old thing I was told the other day (old, that is, a few days old! i: I was told that THE CELLS THEMSELVES would be given a free choice. So the conclusion of all that meditation was that there must be a new element in the consciousness of the cellular aggregatesa new element a new experience that must be in progress. The result: last night, I had a series of fantastic cellular experiences, which I cannot even explain and which must be the beginning of a new revelation.
When the experience began, there was something looking on (you know, there is always in me something looking on somewhat ironically, always amused) which said, Very well! If that happened to someone else, he would think he was quite sick! (laughing) Or half mad. So I stayed very quiet and thought, All right, let it be, Ill watch, Ill see Ill see soon enough! It has started, so it will have to end! Indescribable! Indescribable (the experience will have to recur several times before I can understand), fantastic! It started at 8:30 and went on till 2:30 in the morning; that is to say, not for a second did I lose consciousness, I was there watching the most extraordinary things for six hours.
0 1963-08-13b, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here is what came to me for the Questions and Answers after you left, you will see if you can use it and insert it in the text:
I do not readily use the word God because religions have made it the name of an almighty being, foreign to his creation, outside of it. Which is incorrect.
0 1963-09-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, once you are here on this earth and you have to go to the end, even if the end is nothingness, you go to the end and its just as well to do so as best you can, that is to say, to your fullest satisfaction. I happened to have some philosophical curiosity and to study all kinds of problems, and I came upon Sri Aurobindos teaching, and what he taught (I would say revealed, but not to a materialist) is by far, among the systems men have formulated, the most satisfying FOR ME, the most complete, and what answers the most satisfactorily all the Questions that can be asked; it is the one that helps me the most in life to have the feeling that life is worth living. Consequently, I try to conform entirely to his teaching and to live it integrally in order to live as best I can for me. I dont mind at all if others dont believe in itwhether they believe in it or not is all the same to me; I dont need the support of others conviction, its enough if I am myself satisfied.
Well, theres no reply to that.
0 1963-09-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its still much, much too limited and ignorant for that Power to be allowed to act. It [Mothers individuality] sees many sides of the Question, but not all. It isnt in spite of everything, it has its own angleas long as there remains an angle, the Power isnt allowed to act.
Though, yes, there was that experience the other day, when all was the Lord, all, with all things as they are, as we see them; when all was That in SUCH a perfect whole, perfect because it was so complete, and so harmonious because it was so conscious, and in a perpetual Movement of progression towards a greater perfection. (Thats something odd, things cant stay still for a quarter of a second: they are constantly, constantly, constantly progressing towards a more perfect Totality.) Then, at that moment, if the Power acts (probably it does act), if the Power acts, it acts as it should. But it isnt always there it isnt always there, there is still a sense of the things that are to fade away and of those that are to comeof the passage; a progression which which isnt all-containing.
0 1963-09-28, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, I was always under the impression that the earth was a symbolic representation of the universe in order to concentrate the Work on one point so that it could be done more consciously and deliberately. And I was always under the impression that Sri Aurobindo too thought that way. But here I had read Savitri without noticing this. But now that I read it and I am so immersed in that problem In other words, its as if it were the Question given me to resolve.
I noticed it while reading.
--
Everything is possible to me, you know, absolutely everything, even the seemingly most contradictory thingsreally, I am totally unable to raise a mental or logical or reasonable objection either to this or to that. But the Question (Mother leaves her sentence unfinished). That is to say, the Lords Will is very clear to Him, and (laughing) the whole thing is to unite with that Will and know it.
It had always seemed to me that way [the earth as a symbolic point of concentration], but I am so convinced that Sri Aurobindo saw things more truly and totally than anyone did that, naturally, when he says something, you tend to consider the problem!
0 1963-10-05, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there are some beings that have been in two or three persons: for example, a vital being that went from one person to another (a being I know very well, so I know it happened that way), and what I saw was the BEING, not the different persons. A vital, female-looking being (they take on a sexual appearance when they have been in human beings: they retain the female or male appearance), a female-looking being, and just when the Question of preparing my bath arose (always that bath Ill have to find out what it means), she had something very urgent to do, went into her room, then (laughing) came out again a minute later with a dress a sort of green dressgrass green but brightwith an immense train! And she walked past so proudly: Yes, I wanted to show them who I am. What an admirable comedy! If I had the time to write, it could make utterly charming stories.
But Ill have to find out what that bath is which comes repeatedly.
0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday (this is an example I give you, but in all three domains its similar), yesterday it was a question of money. the Question of money, for more than twelve years, has been a problemgrowing increasingly acute because the expenses are increasing fantastically while the income is decreasing! (laughing) So the two things together make the problem very acute. It results in things to be paid but no money, which means that the cashier (the poor cashier, it does him a lot of good from the yogic viewpoint: he has acquired a calm that he never had before! But still he is the one who has to stand the greatest tension), the cashier spends money and I cannot reimburse him. Very well. And then its not for me to run about, look for money, arrange things, discuss with people, of course, that wouldnt be proper (!), and those who do it for me have in them a rather sizable amount of tamas, which I cannot yet shake up. Anyway, yesterday they proposed something absurd to me (I dont want to go into the details, it doesnt matter), but their proposal was absurd and put me in a totally unacceptable situation. In other words, it might have brought a legal action against me, I might have been summoned before the court, anyway, all kinds of inadmissible thingsnot that I care personally, but theyre inadmissible. When they proposed their idea to me, I looked and saw it was silly; I was very quiet, when, suddenly, there came into me a Power (I told you it happens now and then) like this (massive gesture). When it comes, you feel as though you could destroydestroy everything with it you see, its too awesome for the present state of the earth. So I answered very quietly that it was unacceptable, I said why, and I returned the paper. Then something COMPELLED me to add: If I am here, it is not because of any necessity or obligation; it is not a necessity from the past, not a karma, not any obligation, any attraction, any attachment, but only, solely and absolutely because of the Lords Grace. I am here because He keeps me here, and when He no longer keeps me here, when He considers I am not to stay any longer, I wont stay. And I added (I was speaking in English), As for me (as for me [gesture upward] that is, not this [gesture to the body]), as for Me, I consider that the world isnt ready: its way of responding inwardly and outwardly, even visibly in those around me, proves that the world isnt ready something must happen for it to be ready. Or else it will take QUITE SOME TIME for it to be prepared. Its all the same to me: whether it is ready or not makes no difference. And everything could collapse, Icouldntcareless. And with what force I said that! My arm rose, my fist banged on the tablemon petit, I thought I was going to break everything!
I was watching the scene, thinking, Why the devil am I made to do this?! These people are, apparently, quite devoted, quite surrendered and intimate enough not to be afraid. (I dont know what effect it had on them, but it must have had some effect.) As soon as it was over, I started working again, looking into affairs and so on. Afterwards, once I was alone, I wondered, Why did that come into me? And in the evening, I had the solution to the situation: its here (Mother takes an envelope on the table). I didnt even look at it (Mother opens the envelope and looks at the amount of a check).
0 1964-01-15, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And one, two, ten, fifty experiences like thatthose two struck me. The first, because the NEXT DAY Pavitra told me a gentleman had written to ask me the Question I told you: he had been very ill, he was in bed, anyway at deaths door, and he had written to ask that question.
Curious, isnt it?
0 1964-02-15, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Then the Question comes up of Mothers photograph with a veil and the date when it was taken. That photograph is to be included in Satprems book on Sri Aurobindo, and Mother had said to date it 1914.)
The photo was taken in 19 (Mother tries to remember).
0 1964-03-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, yes, thats the Question!
The true perception of the physical worldof trees, of people, of a stonewhat would it be like to a supramental eye?
0 1964-06-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Dont worry about the Bulletin: Nolini has only just finished his translation. I will revise the Questions and Answers with Pavitra, and as for the aphorism, we will see later.
I have received a letter from Bharatidi,1 who is reading your book with enthusiasm and a fine understanding.
0 1964-08-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But thats just the Question: how is it that in this country one man hasnt arisen, a man you would support from behind?
I think its the result of having been under the domination of another country for such a long time. People lost interest in politics (people of value, those who werent after personal gains). I think thats why.
0 1964-08-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Question I am asking myself is whether the cells have an autonomous existence or whether they must remain aggregated in the way they are, obeying a collective consciousness.2 I do not mean the body consciousness, which is an entity; I mean: does the cell, as an individuality, have the will to remain in its present collectivity? Just as an individual willingly collaborates with a society, with an aggregate, does the individual cell have the will to remain in its aggregate, or is it only the central consciousness that has that will?
They speak of the consciousness of EACH cell, which has its own life code, and communicates with the other cells for a particular work by sending out messages.
0 1964-10-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I ask myself the Question because you feel that that transparency is transparent indeed, but its a bit nothinga nothing thats full, but still is nothing: you dont know. You dont know if its a kind of higher tamas or
Above all, one should be trusting.
0 1964-10-24a, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No powers I knew very well I had no powers! And I couldnt have cared less because I understood perfectly well that what is being attempted now isnt miraculous events at all, but the LOGICAL and normal and inevitable CONSEQUENCE of the supramental transformation that is the whole point. That I know and knew, and thats why I didnt even bother about powers; anyway it hadnt even remotely occurred to me that I might work a miracle for the doctor or for this or that other person who approaches me I didnt think about it, it didnt enter my consciousness. Only, on the 18th, through that occasion it entered my consciousness, and so I asked the Question to find out why I never thought about it: Why? And I was positively told: You MUST NOT wield powers, because thats not the way things should be done.
I do understand, but
0 1964-10-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One should be able to keep that bliss while being quite active and hard at work. I am not referring to the inner joy, not at all, theres no question of that, its out of the Question, its immutably established: I am referring to that Joy IN THE BODY ITSELF.
That sort of quiet satisfaction which it feels, now it feels it even when there are sharp pains, with the trusting feeling that its all with a view to transformation and progress and the future Realization. It no longer worriesit no longer worries at all, it no longer frets at all, it no longer even has the sense of the effort to be made in order to endure: theres a smile.
0 1964-12-02, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, in matters of faith (I dont mean for a very precise and very clear scientific mind), but in matters of faith, there is so far no clear proof that the Lord wants to realize Himself here; except, perhaps, for two or three visionaries who had the experience. Someone asked me if there had been a supramental realization previously, that is, before historical times (because historical times are extremely limited, of course). Naturally, the Question always corresponds to one of the things that are shown to me in moments of concentration. So I answered very spontaneously that there hadnt been a collective realization, but that there might have been one or several individual realizations, as examples of what would be and as a promisea promise and examples: This is what will be.
Ive had some very precise memorieslived memoriesof a human life on earth, quite primitive (I mean outside any mental civilization), a human life on earth that wasnt an evolutionary life, but the manifestation of beings from another world. I lived in that way for a timea lived memory. I still see it, I still have the image of it in my memory. It had nothing to do with civilization and mental development: it was a blossoming of force, of beauty, in a NATURAL, spontaneous life, like animal life, but with a perfection of consciousness and power that far surpasses the one we have now; and indeed with a power over all surrounding Nature, animal nature and vegetable nature and mineral nature, a DIRECT handling of Matter, which men do not havethey need intermediaries, material instruments, whereas this was direct. And there were no thoughts or reasoning: it was spontaneous (gesture indicating the direct radiating action of will on Matter). I have the lived memory of this. It must have existed on earth because it wasnt premonitory: it wasnt a vision of the future, it was a past memory. So there must have been a moment It was limited to two beings: I dont have the feeling there were many. And there was no childbirth or anything animal, absolutely not; it was a life, yes, a truly higher life in a natural setting, but with an extraordinary beauty and harmony! And I dont have the feeling it was (how can I explain?) something known; the relationships with vegetable life and animal life were spontaneous ones, absolutely harmonious, and with the sensation of an undisputed power (you didnt even feel it was possible for it not to be), undisputed, but without any idea that there were other beings on earth and that it was necessary to look after them or make a demonstrationnothing of the sort, absolutely nothing of mental life, nothing. A life just like that, like a beautiful plant or a beautiful animal, but with an inner knowledge of things, perfectly spontaneous and effortlessan effortless life, perfectly spontaneous. I dont even have the feeling that there was any question of food, not that I remember; but there was the joy of Life, the joy of Beauty: there were flowers, there was water, there were trees, there were animals, and all that was friendly, but spontaneously so. And there were no problems! No problems to be solved, nothing at allone just lived!
0 1965-02-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I was asked the Question and I answered (in English).
But there is something interesting here. I have noticed this: if you try EVERY SECOND to discern the impulse of your action, how difficult it is! To discern whether it comes from the ego, whether it comes from darkness, whether it comes from the Light. And when you want to express as purely as possible what exclusively comes from the Supreme, you have to work at it every second and it is there was a time (not so long ago) when I used to consider it was materially practically impossiblenot in the main lines or in the great movements that come from the higher parts of the being, but in all that is purely material, absolutely material. And all of a sudden, at the beginning of this year, with this Salute to the advent of the Truth5 there came a sort of very sharp inner sense, very sharp, very precise, and so QUIET, So quiet, which gave the power to clearly see the origin of a material impulse or a material reaction, EVEN IN VERY SMALL THINGS. It was very interesting. So I studied carefully, and it has become almost automatic.
0 1965-03-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And completely, completely outside thought. The thought comes AFTER. For instance, for this dream, when you asked me the Question, I said, Logically, since the vibration is here (indicates below the feet), it must be a memory. And with a kind of certainty because because the perception is perfectly impersonal.
Its an extraordinarily sensitive mechanism, and with an almost infinite field of receptivity (gesture of gradation).
0 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All in all, the Question may not be so much a transformation of Matter as of becoming conscious of the true unfolding.
Thats precisely what I mean. The transformation can take place up to a point without your even being conscious of it!
0 1965-06-18 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There still remains the Question I asked you on the same subject: I find it hard to see how the supramental body, which is made of a very material but nevertheless different matter2
Ah, I had another experience about that a few days ago. You know that they are speaking of a substance denser than physical substance. What do they call it? (Mother cannot remember) Thon had already spoken about it, but I thought it was his imagination. But I have been told that it has been scientifically discovered and that the amount of that denser matter seems to be INCREASING.
0 1965-06-26, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, no! Does this patient give to You any credit for his marked and miraculous improvement? I have put the Question to him specificallyNo, I do not, such is the reply. Nor does the doe, nor does anyone observing the case. So be it.
So what do they think it is?
0 1965-07-17, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If we look at the Question from a sufficient height, in order to manifest, this Truth-Power needs a response, you follow, and It doesnt want to have any preference: it matters little whether this point or that point, this or that will manifest It; It goes like this (gesture of a massive, general pressure), It imposes itself on the earth-atmosphere, and whats capable of responding responds. And then, on the point that responds, the Force manifests.
It isnt the Force that selects the point (I dont know if I am making myself understood): it is a global action, and whats capable of responding responds.
0 1965-07-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is a constant, constant work, for everything, but everything. Its odd: if the Question is food, it thinks the food is poisoned or that it wont be digested, or this or that, or that the whole functioning will be upset; you go to sleepimmediately comes the suggestion that you will be agitated, unable to rest, that you will have bad dreams; you speak to someone the suggestion that you didnt say what you should have said or that it will cause the person harm; you write something that it wasnt exactly right. Its frightening, frightening.
It will have to change.
0 1965-09-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A member of UNESCO has asked a stupid question, something to this effect: There was a time when India represented the spiritual consciousness (or taught the spiritual consciousness, I dont remember now), but now that she is engaged in such a war, who will play this role?2 So instead of replying to the Question, because I might have told him a thing or two, I answered what youve just read.
Of course! All those Europeans for fifty years they have been told about Gandhi, so now they dont understand!
--
There was a letter from S.M. this morning, saying that the Question would never be resolved unless they (gesture sweeping Pakistan away).
Yes, but thats not what the Prime Minister says.
--
Here is the exact text of the Question: "If India, who held (till recently) the hope for humanity in the light of her spiritual leaders, can get involved in such a war, who would lead the world?"
See Sri Aurobindo and Mother on India and Her Destiny, p. 13.
0 1965-09-22, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In any event, the voice [Mothers message] has been heardheard and accepted in Delhi. Now, of course, there is the Question of strength: will they be strong enough to But the point is established.
(Satprem, in disbelief) It has entered their heads?
0 1965-09-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I cant say I am asking the Question because thats not true, I am not asking it, but the two possibilities are there (gesture in suspense). Well, there is no answer either to one or to the other. At times I have the vision that its going to be the end (a very practical vision of what I want to do), that comes, but against a backdrop of complete uncertainty; and the next minute, there is the possibility of going right to the end of the transformation, with the clear vision of what must be done, but a backdrop there isnt a backdrop of the Assurance that it will BE that waynei ther in one case nor in the other. And I know this is deliberate, because its necessary for the work of the cells. If, for instance, I received from the Supreme the Order (sometimes I receive it clearly, as clearly as), if I received from Him the certitude that whatever the difficulties, whatever the appearances of the path, this body will go right to the end of the transformation, well, there would be a slackening somewhere, which would be very bad. I know that myself, I know it perfectly well. So, thats how it is: I walk on, without knowing what will happen tomorrow. Yesterday, I could have said, Yes, maybe this is the end (as it seems X3 kindly said to people who had gone to see him: he said I had six months to live, that in six months I would go[laughing] thats typical of his usual predictions), well, with yesterdays experience, I said, Its quite possible. And with that same total indifference, you know: Its quite possible. With a quotation from Sri Aurobindo saying, Nothing can alter the splendor of the Consciousness of Eternity. Thats it. And then when this state has gone and the other one comes, you say, Whatever does dying mean! What does it mean? How can you say that? And its not that the two states alternate with (how can I explain?) oppositionsits not that at all, its almost simultaneous (Mother intertwines the fingers of her two hands), but now you see this, now you see that. And its one and the same totality of something which is the Truth, but which is still a bit cloudyit isnt fully grasped like this (gesture).
This is the normal state, but its obviously being worked out, being built, taking shape.
0 1966-01-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Question is more of a subtle order: its to know whether the thing is really there, in the inner or higher worlds, and I have to do it, or whether its a decision of my writers ego that wants to write.
The thing is there (how can I explain?).
0 1966-02-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When people asked Thon, How did things come to happen that way? (he used to say that the first Emanation and the next three separated themselves), Why did they separate themselves?, he would reply very simply (laughing), Why is the world as it is, in this state of disorder? Why is it like that? Thats not the interesting point: the interesting point is to make it what it must be. But after all those years, there is something in me that would like to have the power or the key: the process. And is it not necessary to feel or live or see (but see, I mean, see actively) how it went this way (Mother bends her wrist in one direction) in order to be able to go that way (she bends it in the opposite direction)? Thats the Question.
(silence)
0 1966-03-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a question Id like to ask you. Its in fact the Question I wanted to ask you last time. When one is in that eternal Consciousness, to be with or without a body makes little difference, but when one is dead, as it is called, Id like to know if the perception of the material world remains clear and precise, or if it becomes as vague and imprecise as might be the consciousness one has of the other worlds when one is on this side, in this world? Sri Aurobindo speaks of a play of hide and seek, but the play of hide and seek is interesting if one state of being doesnt deprive of the consciousness of the other states?
Yesterday or the day before, the whole day from morning to evening, something was saying, I am I am or have the consciousness of a dead person on earth. I am putting it into words, but it seemed to say, This is how the consciousness of a dead person is in relation to the earth and physical things. I am a dead person living on earth. According to the stand of the consciousness (because the consciousness changes its stand constantly), according to the stand of the consciousness, it was, This is how the dead are in relation to the earth, then, I am absolutely like a dead person in relation to the earth, then, I am the way a dead person lives without any consciousness of the earth, then, I am quite like a dead person living on earth and so on. And I went on speaking, acting, doing as usual.
--
Yes, quite a few times, several times, the body did ask the Question, Why dont I feel Your Power and Your Force in me? And the answer was always a smiling answer (I am putting it into words, but its wordless), the answer is always: Patience, patience, you must be READY for that to be.
***
0 1966-04-24, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As to whether the Divine seriously means something to happen, I believe it is intended. I know with absolute certitude that the Supramental is a truth and its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable. the Question is as to the when and the how. That also is decided and predestined from somewhere above; but it is here being fought out amid a rather grim clash of conflicting forces. For in the terrestrial world the predetermined result is hidden and what we see is a whirl of possibilities and forces attempting to achieve some thing with the destiny of it all concealed from human eyes. This is, however, certain that a number of souls have been sent to see that it shall be now. That is the situation. My faith and will are for the now. I am speaking of course on the level of the human intelligencemystically-rationally, as one might put it. To say more would be going beyond that line. You dont want me to start prophesying, I suppose? As a rationalist, you cant.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1966-06-11, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Soon afterwards, the Question comes up of the publication of the previous conversation, of June 8, 1966, in the appendix to the Playground Talk of April 19, 1951 fifteen years earlier. Satprem voices certain doubts, emphasizing the vast difference between the two texts.)
We must put it in [the conversation of June 8], its very important. Very useful. People must know it.
0 1966-07-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From what point of view do you ask the Question?
If it is from the political point of viewpolitics is in complete falsehood and I am not concerned with it.
0 1966-08-10, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had seen the man two days earlier: he is very fine. If I hadnt seen him I wouldnt have answered, but as I saw him and he happens to be fine, I suspected from the way he asked the Question that he must be a-gentleman-born-in-a-Catholic-family. So I answered, This question may be asked of EVERY human being, and the answer is, yes, potentially. And out of consideration for his goodwill, I added (I dont remember the exact words): This is the task everyone must accomplish.
Since then, he has been quite silent.
0 1966-09-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It would be better to have wisdom than an opinion. That is to say, to consider all the possibilities, all the aspects of the Question, and then to try and be as unegoistic as possible, and for an action, for instance, to see which one may be useful to the largest number of people or may demolish the fewest things, which one is the most constructive. Anyway, even looking at it from a nonspiritual viewpoint, from a merely utilitarian and nonegoistic viewpoint, its better to act according to wisdom than according to ones opinion.
Yes, but what would be the right way to go about it when you arent in the light, without getting your opinion or ego mixed up in it?
0 1966-09-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am absolutely convinced (because Ive had experiences that proved it to me) that the life of this body its life, what makes it move and changecan be replaced by a force; that is to say, a sort of immortality can be created, and the wear and tear can disappear. These two things are possible: the power of life can come, and the wear and tear can disappear. And it can come about psychologically, through total obedience to the divine Impulsion, so that every moment you have the force you need, you do the thing that must be doneall these things, all of them are certitudes. Certitudes. Theyre not a hope, not an imagining: they are certitudes. Of course, you must educate the body and slowly transform and change the habits. It can be done, all that can be done. But the Question is, how much time would it take to do away with the necessity (to take just this problem) of the skeleton? This is still very far ahead, it seems to me. Which means many intermediary stages will be needed. Sri Aurobindo said that life can be prolonged indefinitely. Yes, thats clear. But we arent yet built with something that completely escapes dissolution, the necessity of dissolution. Bones are very durable, they can even last a thousand years if conditions are favorable, thats agreed, but it doesnt mean immortality IN PRINCIPLE. Do you understand what I mean?
No. Do you think it would have to be a nonphysical substance?
0 1966-11-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was the story of Ford, who had sent word to Sri Aurobindo and me that he was coming here to ask us the Question that tormented him: What happens after death? And he said he was ready to give his fortune to whoever could answer him. Someone had told him, Yes, Sri Aurobindo can answer you. So Ford had sent word that he was preparing to come and ask us his question. And then he died!
No, those are questions asked by ignorant people. They should first learn the matter and know what theyre talking about.
There is the soul. There is the soul, which is quite simply an emanation of we can call it the supreme Consciousness, supreme Reality, supreme Truth, anything, whatever they like, its all the same to meany words they like. But anyway, the soul is an emanation of That, a direct emanation. In the body, That becomes clothed in the psychic being. The psychic being is a being which is progressively formed throughout all the existences. So are you talking about the soul, are you talking about the psychic being (which is first an embryo and eventually becomes a conscious, perfectly independent being), or are you simply talking of the life of an individual consciousness after death? Because thats yet another thing. There are proofs of that; but in that case, its a quite vital consciousness of an inferior order, and it may happen to immediately come back into another body through some combination of circumstances (it was into the same family that the father had come back), and to come back with the memory. Otherwise, according to the experiences of those who have studied the Question, its only the psychic being in the process of being formed that retains the memory of its former existences. But it retains the memory of the material, purely physical existence ONLY FOR THOSE MOMENTS WHEN IT PARTICIPATED. So, instead of all those stories that are told (and are made up), you only have memories like that (Mother draws a series of points in space with her fingertips), which may be more or less detailed, more or less complete, but which are only fragmentary memories of the MOMENT when the psychic physically manifested. Lots of people do have this sort of memory, but they dont know what it is. Most of the time they regard it as dreams or imaginings. Those who know (that is to say, who are conscious of what goes on in their physical consciousness) can see that its memories.
The number of memories of this kind Ive had is almost incalculable. But it doesnt have the same character as the memories of the higher consciousness (then its not a memory: its a sort of vision the higher beings2 have of life; but thats something else). The memories I speak of are memories of the psychic being, they have a different character: a rather personal character, I mean there is the sense of a PERSON remembering something. While the others, the visions from above, are memories of an acting consciousness. But the memories of the psychic being arent mentalized, that is, if for instance at the time of the recollection you werent paying attention to the way you were dressed or the surroundings, you dont remember them. You only remember what took place and especially what took place from the point of view of the consciousness and the feelings and the inner movements.
--
It fits with what I told you last time: the STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS are what reincarnate, evolving, developing, growing more perfect. Thats rather how it was, thats how that memory came. Its like that with many memories. And I know that to say states of consciousness are what reincarnate, to adopt that as the sole explanation would be incorrectits absolutely incorrect but its one way of looking at the Question beyond the sense of the little personality. It broadens the consciousness: one has in oneself things far more universal and far less limited than personal experiences. Just as in life some people have an exceptional life, in the same way they also have exceptional moments in their life, when they no longer are one single little person: they are a force in action. Thats how it is.
Ultimately, this question (I read the Question, it has been published somewhere and it was read to me) is a question asked by ignorant people. They ask you something, but they are ignorant. They should begin by studying the subject in the first place and learn something about it, then they would be able to understand the proof we can give them. Otherwise they wont understand it.
I was asked the Question (by someone who sent me the article in the hope I would answer), I said, No! They arent ready for the answer; let them do their homework first, then well answer them.
They are ignorant people who want to be taught things the ready-cooked dinner! (Laughing) That wont do.
0 1966-11-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In reality, its a threefold movement: the creation, which was the flight from the Divine (according, of course, to the ordinary conception which says that the creation fell, it wandered away from the Divine and men wandered away from the Divine); that was the first movement. But thats because he sees it too closely; he doesnt see that the Divine plunged to the very bottom of the Inconscient. (And thats the Question: Why did He plunge to the very bottom of the Inconscient? Thats to be investigated [Mother laughs], one doesnt yet know how to explain it: everyone explains it differently.) He plunged to the very bottom (as for me, I think I know why, but that will be for later). He plunged to the very bottom of the Inconscient: beneath the stone (Mother makes a gesture of immutability, at the very bottom), beneath the mineral; the mineral is already a first awakening of the consciousness. But you have to see it as a whole to understand that its an ascent. If you see human life as it is, the impression is that men become lost in the fall, but thats the result of the Mind; the Mind needed to go through the whole experience, to go down to the very bottom in order to understand everything and bring everything back towards the ascent. For plants, its really an ascent. Thus, according to this vision, there are three movements. But if you see the whole simultaneously, there are only two movements: the first movement is the descent of the Lord into the Inconscient (we cant say anything about that for the moment; once we have emerged from it, well be able to say); the second (the first we can conceive of) is, very, very slowly, through all possible experiences, even the most complete mental denials of the Divine, the ascent towards the Divine. And then, once we have climbed up (Mother makes a gesture of descent), Come, come here: change this prison into the mansion of the Divine.
That will be very good, a very good message for 4.5.67.
0 1966-11-12, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats just the Question. No, she put it the other way around: What will have to happen to YOU people so you start wanting to be conscious? How much (gesture of hammering) will you need to
Anyway
0 1966-11-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When will Matter be ready for that? Thats the Question.
Inwardly its easy, but outwardly There is all of a sudden, especially in the brains matter, here (gesture to the temples), that movement of descent, of the Lord taking possession, and then outwardly you feel as if youre fainting. Thats why you cant remain standing and have to lie down; but when you lie down, its almost instantaneous, everything disappears: the sense of time, of difficulty, absolutely everything there only remains a luminous immensity, peaceful and so strong!
0 1966-12-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But from the standpoint of external form, the Question remains of which method is easier: using the already written text, or writing everything anew. Writing everything anew You understand, unless you are the master of your activity
Yes, I am going to fall back into the same conflict.
0 1966-12-24, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From every side they ask the Question (they are all like that), What IS the Truth? What do you mean when you speak of the Truth?
They want a mental definition of the Truth.
Truth cannot be expressed in the minds terms. Thats the point. And all the Questions they ask are mental ones.
Truth cannot be formulated, it cannot be defined, but it can be LIVED.
0 1967-01-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, I was asked the Question; I was asked whether abuse, the feeling of being abused, and what in English is called self-respect (which is somewhat akin to self-esteem), have a place in the sadhana. Naturally, they dont, that goes without saying! But I saw the movement, it was extremely clear: I saw that without ego, when the ego isnt there, there CANNOT be that sort of ruffling in the being. I went back far into the past, to the time when I could still feel it (years ago), but now its not even something unfamiliarits something which is impossible. The whole being, and strangely even the physical constitution, doesnt understand what it means. Its the same thing when materially there is a knock (Mother shows a scratch on her elbow), like this for instance: its no longer felt the way an injury is felt. Its no longer felt that way. More often than not, theres nothing at all, it goes absolutely unnoticed on the whole; but when there is something, its only an impressiona very sweet, very intimate impressionof a help trying to make itself felt, of a lesson to be learned. But not the way its done mentally where there is always a stiffening; its not that: its immediately a kind of offering in the being, which gives itself in order to learn. I am speaking of all the cells. Its very interesting. Of course, if we mentalize it, we have to say its the sense or awareness of the divine Presence in all things, and that the mode the mode of contactcomes from the state in which we are.
This is the bodys experience.
0 1967-01-21, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body was in the habit of fulfilling its functions automatically, as something natural, which means that for it, the Question of their importance or usefulness did not arise: it didnt have that mental vision, for instance, or vital vision of things, of whats important or interesting and what isnt. That didnt exist. But now that the cells are becoming conscious, they seem to step back (Mother makes a gesture of stepping back): they look at themselves, they begin to watch themselves act, and they very much wonder, Whats the use of all this? And then, an aspiration: How? How should things truly be? Whats our function, our usefulness, our basis? Yes, what should be our basis and our standard of life? To express it mentally again, we could say, How will we be when we are divine? What will be the difference? Whats the divine way of being? And there, what speaks is that whole kind of physical base which is entirely made up of thousands of small things absolutely indifferent in themselves, whose raison dtre is only as a whole, as a totality, like a support to another action, but which in themselves seem devoid of any meaning. And then, its again the same thing: a sort of receptivity, of silent opening to let oneself be permeated, and a very subtle perception of a way of being that would be luminous, harmonious.
That way of being is still quite indefinable; but in this search there is a constant perception (which translates itself in vision) of a multicoloured light, of all the coloursall the colours not in layers but as though (stippling gesture) a combination of dots, of all the colours. Two years ago (a little more than two years, I dont remember), when I met the Tantrics, when I came into contact with them, I started seeing that light, and I thought it was the tantric light, the tantric way of seeing the material world. But now, I see it constantly, associated with everything, and it seems to be what we might call a perception of true Matter. All possible colours are combined without being mixed together (same stippling gesture), and combined in luminous dots. Everything is as though made up of this. And it seems to be the true mode of being I am not yet sure, but in any case its a far more conscious mode of being.
0 1967-01-28, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From every side people ask the Question of the sexual relationship between man and woman and of spiritual discipline.
(Mother remains silent awhile)
0 1967-02-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And when you are on the very lowest rung of the ladder of consciousness, those manners of speaking become increasingly concrete, absolute, hard, and exclusive of all that isnt themselves: those are religions. Oh, by the way, it seems the Pope was approached about Auroville and he asked if there would be a Catholic church! They put the Question to me. I said, No. No churches, no temples.
But it might be amusing if we put together one specimen of every religion from every country and every epoch. A city of religions, can you see that? The totem pole next to the cathedral! Oh, that would be very amusing! All the ancient religions the Egyptian, the Tyrian, the Scandinavian gods and then the new religions.
--
And finally, what was the occult influence of this Judaism on human evolution? The more I think about it, the more the threads of it all appear to me so tied up and entangled together that only a knowledge in overview seems capable of helping to bring out the essential. Well, Mother, I leave it all to you. I hope you will be able to tell me the way in which we here should approach the Question and to give me the few major elements on which I will be able to build my exposition.
November, 1960
0 1967-02-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once, very long ago, when Sri Aurobindo was telling me about himself, that is, of his childhood, his education, I put the Question to him, I asked him, Why am I, as an individual being, so mediocre? I can do anything; all that I have tried to do I have done, but never in a superior way: always like this (gesture to an average level). Then he answered me (at the time I took it as a kindness or commiseration), Thats because it gives great supplenessa great suppleness and a vast scope; because those who have perfection are concentrated and specialized. As I said, I took it simply like a caress to comfort a child. But now I realize that the most important thing is not to have any fixity: nothing should be set, definitive, like the sense of a perfection in the realization that puts a total stop to the forward march. The sense of incapacity (with the meaning I said of mediocrity, of something by no means exceptional) leaves you in a sort of expectation (gesture of aspiration upward) of something better. And then, the most important thing is supplenesssuppleness, suppleness. Suppleness and breadth: reject nothing as useless or bad or inferiornothing; set nothing up as really superior and beautifulnothing. Remain ever open, ever open.
The ideal is to have this suppleness and receptivity and surrender, that is, so total an acceptance of the Influence that no matter what comes the instrument adapts itself instantly to express it naturally, spontaneously and effortlessly. With everything, of course: with the plastic arts, with music, with writing.
0 1967-03-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(the text of the Questions:)
Are the time and manner of death always chosen by the soul? In huge human destructions through bombings, floods, earthquakes, have all the souls chosen to die together at that time?
The vast majority of human beings have a collective destiny. For them, the Question does not arise.
One who has an individualized psychic being can survive even in the midst of collective catastrophes, if such is the choice of his soul.
0 1967-03-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same with all the Questions I am asked (I receive innumerable questions), its all like this (same gesture), everything is like this and one cant see anything. If one remains quiet the Light goes through, everything becomes limpid, transparent, and it becomes so natural, so simple! So simple, so obvious: there is ONE thing that can be done and its the true thing. All the rest (same gesture of seething).
Some people live in a constant whirl, and theyre quite surprised that everything goes wrong! They meet with complications, with And its always that (same gesture).
0 1967-05-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sometimes, it has such an extraordinary sense of humour, with such subtletyhe just picks up the slightly ridiculous side of the person who wrote or asked the Question, then answers with imperturbable seriousness. Admirable!
***
--
Among the Questions put to Mother, let us note these: "It is said that in 1967 the Supermind will enter the phase of realising power. What does 'realising power' mean exactly?" (Mother:) Acting decisively on the mind of men and the course of events. "Does this date4.5.67mark the beginning of what the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have called the new race the race of superman?" (Mother:) Since a few months the children born, amongst our people mostly, are of a very special kind.
Savitri, I.IV.55.
0 1967-05-24, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here, I added, But anyway, since you ask me the Question, I will answer you.
The Divine is an absolute of perfection, eternal source of all that exists, whom we grow progressively conscious of, while being Him from all eternity.
--
When I was given the Question, it was just as if that person were saying to me, Yes, yes, thats all very fine, but after all, what IS the Divine! So I read his letter, and there was that total silence, of everything, and a sort of SINGLE gazea single gaze encompassing everythingwhich wanted to see I remained like that, looking, until the words came. Then I wrote: Here is ONE answer there could be a hundred which would be just as good.
And at the same time, when there was that look at the something which had to be defined, there was a great silence everywhere and a great aspiration (gesture like a rising flame), and all the forms that that aspiration has taken. It was very interesting. The history of the aspiration of the earth towards the marvellous Unknown we want to become.
0 1967-05-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, because its no more than one side of the Question. Sri Aurobindo always described all the sides, and if they are put together, it becomes something that far exceeds all opinions people have. So to publish just one part without its counterpart, isnt quite right.
A time may come when well have to tell Sri Aurobindos vision and how the world has evolved since he spoke about it (that would be very interesting). For that wed have to find again everything he said on the different subjects. From the religious point of view, I have been thinking about it for a long time. Those are the two things that cant be touched without instantly arousing human passions, and there, peoples vision is quite narrow, limited, so that they no longer understand anything. Politics and religion, it would be better to wait a little. In ten years, perhaps. It could be, things are going fast. In ten years, maybe well be able to see and say a little something. In any case, its better to put this letter aside. (Laughing) Its not the time to fling stones at them!
0 1967-06-21, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Question was worded thus: "Must we think that these two great peoples in conflict represent symbolic forces that are destined to decide the fate of our civilization?"
See Satprem's article in Addendum.
0 1967-07-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When it comes to languages, its very interesting. Those are things that come, stay for an hour or two, then go away; they are like lessons, things to be learned. And so, one day, there came the Question of languages, of the different languages. Those languages were formed progressively (probably through usage, until, as you said, one day someone took it into his head to fix it in a logical and grammatical way), but behind those languages, there are identical experiencesidentical in their essence and there are certainly sounds that correspond to those experiences; you find those sounds in all languages, the different sounds with minor differences. One day (for a long time, more than an hour), it unfolded with all the evidence to support it, for all languages. Unfortunately, I couldnt see clearly, it was at night, so I couldnt note it down and it went away. But it should be able to come back. It was really interesting (Mother tries to recall the experience.) There were even languages I had never heard: Ive heard many European languages; in India, several Indian languages, chiefly Sanskrit; and then, Japanese. And there were languages I had never heard. It was all there. And there were sounds, certain sounds that come from all the way up, sounds (how can I explain?), sounds we might call essential. And I saw how they took shape and were distorted in languages (Mother draws a sinuous descending line that branches out). Sounds like the affirmative and the negativewhat, for us, is yes and noand also the expression of certain relationships (Mother tries to remember). But the interesting point was that it came with all the words, lots of words I didnt know! And at that time I knew them (it comes from a subconscient somewhere), I knew all those words.
At the same time, there was a sort of capacity or possibility, a state in which one was able to understand all languages; that is, every language was understood because of its connection with that region (gesture to the heights, at the origin of sounds). There didnt seem to be any difficulty in understanding any language. There was a sort of almost graphic explanation (same sinuous descending line branching out) showing how the sound had been distorted to express this or that or
0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Wait, theres something else again. Oh, poor K., he held examinations (theyre out of their minds with their exams!), he held examinations on a text or a subject he had dictated to the students in his class. In other words, they had the answer quite ready. Two of the boys (one of whom K. finds very intelligen the is, moreover and has a liking for, while he doesnt like the other) were late, and K. asked the boy he doesnt like to bring to him at home the result of their work. He brought it. K. read it, and to one of the Questions, the two boys answers were not quite identical but extremely similar. It was precisely the subject K. had dictated to them, so it was natural enough that the answers should be similar. K. felt right away that the boy had copied from the other, and told him so! The boy lost his temper and spoke to him rather rudely. So K. writes to tell me the whole story in his own way, and the boy writes to tell me the whole story, in his own way, moreover expressing regret that he was rude to his teacher. But K. remains convinced that he copied. So, a flood of letters Finally I wrote to K., Send me the two texts, I will see (not see with my eyes, but like that, feeling the thing). The boy did NOT copy. But to me, its far worse, because it means K. made a mental formation with wordswords put in a certain order and stuffed it into their brains. And they repeat it parrot fashionnaturally, it bears an extraordinary similarity to his teaching. Finally, K. told me, If I accept that the boy didnt copy, I am obliged to give him a very good mark, which I cant do! (Mother laughs) And he asks me, What should I do? I replied yesterday evening: There is a very simple way out: cancel the exam. Take all the papers, tie them into a bundle, put them away in your cupboard, and pretend it never existed and in future, no more exams! And at the end of the year, when you have to give marks to the students, well, instead of using such an artificial method, you will be obliged to observe attentively, follow the childs inner development, have a deeper contact with him (Mother laughs mockingly), and know if he has really understood or not! Then you will be able to give marks instead of basing yourself on the parrot-like repetition of something they have learned without understanding. And I sent that. So now, theyre in a fix! (Mother laughs) I find it so funny, its very amusing!
They had to hold a teachers meeting to face up to my answer! (Mother laughs) I upset the whole School!
--
You remember, in America a society or university or whatever held a kind of contest to prove life after death,1 and they gave two or three questions to be resolved. And I was asked, Why dont you answer? I said, the Questions are not properly formulated, theyre put by ignorant people, so how can one answer? (I told you that long ago, I think.) Well, its the same thing here. What they ask is ignorant, it isnt properly formulated; its formulated by people who dont understand anything, so how can one answer them!
***
0 1967-07-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a time I attended a private school: I didnt go to a state school because my mother considered it unfitting for a girl to be in a state school! But I was in a private school, a school of high repute at the time: their teachers were really capable people. The geography teacher, a man of renown, had written books, his books on geography were well-known. He was a fine man. So then, we were doing geography (I enjoyed maps more fully because it all had to be drawn) and one day, the teacher looked at me (he was an intelligent man), he looked at me and asked, Why are towns, the big cities, settled on rivers? I saw the students bewildered look, they were saying to themselves, Lucky the Question wasnt put to me! I replied, But its very simple! Its because rivers are a natural means of communication. (Mother laughs) He too was taken aback! Thats how it was, all my studies were like that, I enjoyed myself all the timeenjoyed myself thoroughly, it was great fun!
The teacher of literature He was an old fellow full of all the most conventional ideas imaginable. What a bore he was, oh! So all the students sat there, their noses to the grindstone. He would give subjects for essaysdo you know The Path of Later On and the Road of Tomorrow? I wrote it when I was twelve, it was my homework on his question! He had given a proverb (now I forget the words) and expected to be told all the sensible things! I told my story, that little story, it was written at the age of twelve. Afterwards he would eye me with misgivings! (Laughing) He expected me to make a scene. Oh, but I was a good girl!
0 1967-07-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Afterwards I had to be busy with other things, but its there. And the Question was, Why? Why isnt there in this brain the capacity to perceive and transcribe things as he had it?
And so the conclusion. Ive always heard it said (I dont know if its true) that men think in a certain way and women in another. On an external level, the difference is not visible, but the attitude the mental attitudeis perhaps different. The mental attitude on the Prakriti side is always action, always action; the mental attitude on the Purusha3 side is conception: conception, overall vision, and also observation, as though it observed what the Prakriti had done and saw how it was done. Now I understand that. Thats how it is. Naturally, no man (here on earth) is exclusively masculine and no woman is exclusively feminine, because it has all been mixed together again and again. Similarly, I dont think any one race is absolutely pure: all that is over, its been mingled together (it is another way to re-create Oneness). But there have been TENDENCIES; Its like that note about Israelites and Muslims, its just a manner of speaking; if I were told, This is what you said, I would reply, Yes, I said that, but I can also say something else and many other things! Its a way of selecting certain things and bringing them to the fore with an action in view (its always with an action in view). But for the moment, everything is like that, everywhere mixed and mingled together with a view to general unificationno one nationality is pure and separate from the others, that no longer exists. But to a certain vision, each thing has its essential role, its raison dtre, its place in universal history. Its like that very strong impression that the Chinese are lunar, that when the moon grew cold, some beings managed to come to the earth, and those beings are at the origin of the Chinese nation; but now there only remains a tracea trace which is the memory of that distinctiveness. And its everywhere the same thing: if you look at the individuals of every nation, you find in every nation that everything is there, but with the memory the memory of a specificness which has been its raison dtre in the great terrestrial unfolding.
0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont feel this man is an intellectual, thats not the difficulty. But how to free them from the hold? Thats the Question.
Yes, it is. Thats what I felt when I saw him: that thing which was there over him. Its a sort of thing common to all those people.
--
And to think that It has happened not once or twice but hundreds of times that people who loved someone (they loved their father or brother, or their mother), as soon as that person is dead, if they see him in a dream or vision, they get terribly frightened and want to chase him away! Why? If I ask them why, its such a spontaneous movement in them that they cant answer me. They cant, they find it so natural that they are surprised I should ask the Question.
Thats what I said to T. (I dont think she understood), I told her that there isnt so much difference between what men call life and what they call death; the difference is very small, and grows still smaller when you go into the problem in depth and in all the details. One always make a clean cut between the twoits quite stupid: some living are already half dead, and many dead are VERY alive.
0 1967-11-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I do! Thats why I asked you the Question. I am not doubting anything. I asked you how its done, thats what I dont see. For instance, I shave every morning. Well, in the morning you are dazed, tired, the mind doesnt work, the vital doesnt work.
Yes, its an excellent opportunity.
0 1968-01-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I come with my work unfinished! The work remains to be done (Mother points to a bundle of letters) Now the nights begin at 11 P.M., no more lunch, of course rest is out of the Question, and no more exercises, so And people and people and more people at least a quarter of whom go back unsatisfied, without my having seen them, because I dont have the time.
I think its because my whole life long, until the age of about forty, I was perhaps the most punctual person in the world: I was always right on the dotmaybe there was something proud which has got a good knock!
0 1968-02-17, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont find it interesting AT ALL. But isnt it dangerous? Thats the Question.
It means, at any rate, giving a false idea of Auroville. It opens the door to all kinds of ambiguities.
0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But Id like to know (I am beginning to be interested in the problem, I am looking at it): will this residue (Mother breaks off). But the Question isnt like that, its a question of TIME. With time (Sri Aurobindo said three hundred years), with time EVERYTHING would get to change. But there is the wave of habits, and the easy solution which consists in quite simply taking this (Mother points to her own body as to an old garment) and throwing it away: Off with you, I no longer want you! Its disgusting. Because it can no longer get along fast enough, one takes it and says, Off with you! Go away, I no longer want you, go to decomposition. Its disgusting.
And I FEEL the atmosphere. There is the whole collective thought, people writing to me, I hope youll still live for a long time! (Mother laughs) And all the usual nonsense. You know, they are so full of idiotic goodwill. It makes a difficult environment.
0 1968-06-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats what we might call the individual work. Only, to what extent can this transformation be integral? Thats the Question. Ive said its a much accelerated work, obviously, but in spite of that, you feel the amount of experiences necessary for the transformation is so tremendous that the limits of a lifetime are too short. But then Ive already told you several times that this aggregate has not an impression, but a very clear perception that a certain disequilibrium or disorder (which may apparently be very slight, a mere nothing) is enough to cause dissolution. It feels that the slightest thing is enough, and that only the higher Will to keep it together is preventing things from reaching that stage. Like that. It depends on That. I lived the first thirty years of my life (nearly thirty, twenty-five to thirty) with the sensation that NOTHING could bring about dissolution; that if disorder came, order would quite naturally be restored to allow the body to go on. Very strong, it was very strong. Then there was a period when there was nothing, neither on one side nor on the other; and then, slowly, slowly, there has now come the perception that the LEAST thing is enough, and that its only the SUPREME Will (not even higher: the supreme Will) that is preventing dissolution. It exclusively depends on That.
And as you say, this presence is maintained to the extent its useful and indispensable for a certain aspect of the work. And in that case, theres no question of a long or short time, of when, how, what and all that Its as You will. Constantly, in every cell, every activity, every moment: What You will, Lord. All the time. Like that. No question. Only, there is an observation, a very clear perception of the fact that this supreme Will is what enables things to carry on as they do.
0 1968-07-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had made a reply to T.F.s pupils on the Question, What is death? (They had written to me and I had replied.) But then, they didnt understand anything. And here are their new questions:
(Mother holds out a letter to Satprem)
0 1968-07-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There remains the Question of Msgr. R., who wrote to you I read you his letter last time.
Is he asking for a reply?
0 1968-08-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Poignantly, Mother was answering the Question in the surrounding atmosphere.
???
0 1968-08-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was the physical asking questions. I dont know, probably through the contact with A.s atmosphere,2 this body became interested to know how it was all formed. A. was here and I knew he could answer, so I asked him the Questions.
Do we know how Matter was formed?
0 1968-10-26, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the power to relieve (not to heal: the power to relieve), far from having diminished, has increased. When I am told that someone is ill, at least ninety-nine times in a hundred, I have already EXPERIENCED the thing, and what I am told makes me say, Ah, its so and so. I have already experienced it as being part of my physical being (gesture in the distance), an immense physical being, you know, immense and without precise form. And its this precision and this division that are (what should I say?) are they the obstacle or the cause (probably both) that prevent the Harmony from being established? Its because we REALLY are separate. But then, can you conceive how a world thats not really separate would be? Because, you understand, the Question is serious: if for the world to exist as it is, it has to be really separate, and if being really separate is the cause of all misery, then And yet, in another way (I dont know how), in another way I know (its not I who knows: theres no I there), I know, I KNOW (its the great I who knows) that the desertion, the disappearance of this world is NOT the solution. But what is it?.
This is the only world where division is no longer the result of a state of consciousness, but a FACT. So? Everywhere else, its the result of a state of consciousness: if the consciousness changes, the state changesnot here. Its the only world: here. And yet it [division] is a falsehood.
0 1968-11-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At first, because I hadnt seen her [after her death], I thought it was her old Buddhism and she had gone into some Nirvana. But then, her thought constantly coming like this: And what happens when one leaves ones body? Thats the strange thing. And its SHE whos putting the Question. Its that thought.
Yes, that very thought came to me very strongly too.
0 1968-12-21, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Someone (not me) has asked a question. It seems its typical of the Questions people ask after reading your Notes. Would you like to know?
It must again be something
--
So there remains the Question (this is something ahead, its probably coming): how is the experience to express itself materially? For the body itself, its perfectly obvious: for, say, an hour, or two, or three, it suffered a lot, very miserable (not a moral suffering: a wholly physical suffering), then all of a sudden, brrff! all gone. The body has apparently remained the same (Mother looks at her hands), in its appearance, but instead of an inner disorder that makes it suffer, everything is fine, and theres a great peace, a great tranquillityeverything is fine. But thats for ONE bodyhow does that act on others? Its beginning to perceive the possibility in other consciousnesses. On the moral level (that is to say, the level of attitudes, character, reactions), its very visible; even sometimes on the physical level: something suddenly disappearsas we had the experience when Sri Aurobindo would remove a pain (Mother shows a hand of the subtle physical coming and taking away the pain), we would wonder Ah! Gone, vanished, like that. But its not constant, not general, its only to show it can be like that through the fact that it happens in one case or anotherto show that things CAN be like that.
We might put it this way: the body has the sense of being shut inside somethingshut in, yesshut as if inside a box, but it can see through; it sees and can also have an action (though limited) THROUGH something thats still there and which must disappear. That something gives a sense of imprisonment. How is it to disappear? That I dont know yet.
0 1968-12-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Finally theres a letter from P.L. My stay in Spain was prolonged more than I had thought. Tell Sweet Mother that I am continuing my struggle and my effort, that she follows me everywhere and her protection is my support. I will tell you about my experience. I went to spend a weekend by the sea, where I have a very pretty tiny apartment. There I meditate and go through all the teachings of Mother again by immersing myself in The Life Divine and the Questions and Answers. I lighted an incense stick. Suddenly my whole body broke into a profuse sweat, and an atrocious struggle began. If I could use religious terms from before my Ashramite experiences, I would say that all of St. Anthonys temptations fell on me to destroy and shatter me spiritually. First, a disarray, a very deep distress of helplessness: What use is my life? What am I doing? Why do I live? My efforts are useless. Then there was the attraction of woman, which came to ridicule my continence. Everything was called into question: whys and more whys made my head burst. After that came the invasion of power: Why did you renounce the hope of becoming a bishop? Glory would have come to you. Then the desire for money. Everything in a macabre and at the same time attractive carrousel. Finally, total solitude abandoned by all, all having gone away: my friends, my connections in the Vatican, my family, all of you. How much time went by? I do not know. Nevertheless I think I heard a very small voice (but I was so weak that I cannot say if it was true) telling me, Do not weep, I am with you. If I am with you, others are superfluous, and if you are without me, others wont be able to help you. I remained in a void the whole night passed. In the morning, the sunshine, everything was so beautiful! When I returned to the Rome house, I was told I was transformed! So there.
I did say that to him [I am with you].
0 1969-01-04, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Soon afterwards, Mother turns to the Question of Sri Aurobindos centenary, in 1972.)
Theyre preparing here a publication in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, and two other languages I forget, to which they intend to add Tamil and Telugu, of all the works of Sri Aurobindo. Its a tremendous task.
0 1969-02-01, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Second question: If the sense of I-ness has identified more with the mind in life, is it the same sense of I-ness that has all the experiences after death, that is to say, which retains at the same time the memories of its life? I ask the Question with regard to the mind, since after death it remains formed a little longer than the other parts do.
Thats not true. Its not true that the mind lasts longer.
0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is the Synthesis, then the Questions and Answers: this very long talk [on illness].
In this connection, yesterday R. [Aurovilles architect] asked me questions so as to be able to answer people; he asked me if it was necessary to have organization and so on. And then it came, but in such an imperative manner; I replied that organization was discipline in action, and that to live, discipline is quite indispensable. I said that the bodys whole functioning is a discipline, and if there is a part that no longer wants to follow the disciplineout of revolt or incapacity or for any reasonif it stops following the discipline, you fall ill.
0 1969-02-15, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The cells themselves were saying their effort to be transformed, and there was a Calm. (How can I explain this?) The body was saying its aspiration and will to prepare itself, and, not asking but striving to be what it should be; all that always with this question (its not the body that asks it, its the environment, those around the world, as if the world were asking the Question): Will it continue, or will it have to dissolve? The body is like this (gesture of abandon, hands open upward), it says, What You will, Lord. But then, it knows the Question is decided, and One doesnt want to tell itit accepts. It doesnt lose patience, it accepts, it says, Very well, it will be as You will. But That which knows and That which doesnt answer is something that cant be expressed. It is yes, I think the only word that can describe the sensation it gives is an Absolutean Absolute. Absolute. Thats the sensation: of being in the presence of the Absolute. The Absolute: absolute Knowledge, absolute Will, absolute Power Nothing, nothing can resist. And then this Absolute (theres this sensation, concrete) is so merciful! But if we compare it with all that we regard as goodness, mercy ugh! thats nothing at all. Its THE Mercy with the absolute power and its not Wisdom, not Knowledge, its It has nothing to do with our process. And That is everywhere, its everywhere. Its the bodys experience. And to That it has given itself entirely, totally, without asking anythinganything. A single aspiration (same gesture, hands open upward), To be capable of being That, what That wills, of serving Thatnot even serving, of BEING That.
But that state, which lasted for several hours never had this body, in the ninety-one years its been on earth, felt such happiness: freedom, absolute power, and no limits (gesture here and there and everywhere), no limits, no impossibilities, nothing. It was all other bodies were itself. There was no difference, it was only a play of the consciousness (gesture like a great Rhythm) moving about.
0 1969-03-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There had always been a question mark. We can conceive that in the supermind, procreation will be unnecessary, because life on earth will last at will, so it wont be necessary to have oneself replaced because one is going away But what about the intermediary? There often was the Question of the intermediary [between man and the supramental being]: How is it going to take place, how? The old animal way (Mother shakes her head), although Y. is in favor of its continuation! But then, the other day, mon petit, for several hours, there was a whole lived scene (lived in imagination, of course) but its only a partial solution to the problem. Its incomplete. This question had been asked: All this work of transformation of the cells, of consciousness in the cells, with the ordinary way [of dying], wont it be wasted since the body is going to disintegrate? Then there came in a very precise, almost concrete manner: there is a way, which is, before dying, to prepare within oneself a body with all the transformed, illumined, conscious cells, to collect them together and form a body with the maximum number of conscious cells; then, when the work is over, the full consciousness enters it and the other body can dissolve, it no longer matters.
But it was it was really amusing! And the objections of age, possibility, capacity, no longer existed. If this intermediary method is considered useful (I mean, practical), the possibility is there; this Consciousness was showing the body that the possibility is there. Foroh, for hours and hoursit insisted, it didnt want to go! It insisted until the body had completely understood. And there is no need of a material intervention: it can be done (thats known, there have been fully recognized cases), the physical intervention wasnt necessary, it was replaced by an intervention in the subtle physical, which was sufficient. All that in every detail, with every explanation and everything. Then, when it was thoroughly done, it was over, the chapter was closed. But it was really unexpected, I had never thought of such a thing! And the way it was presented! It was so concrete and so simpleso simple, so concrete and all objections were resolved.
0 1969-04-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother has not heard the Question)
Its an open door. They must step through the door and go into the future (gesture of piercing above), towards what has not yet manifested.
0 1969-04-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, there you are. So its all right. In a way, its all right. I feel its still Lets see, let me try to mentalize a bit: the impression is as if the supreme Consciousness had undertaken the work of transformation of the body and were doing it thoroughly, but also without hesitation, without compromise or anything of the sort, and the Question is whether the body will hold out. Thats how it is. The body knows itit knows and doesnt have a shadow of fear, I must sayits all the same to it: What You want will be fine. At times it feels a little suffering for one thing or another, a little friction (a pain here or there some pains arent too pleasant), and at such times it always says (Mother opens her hands): As You will, Lord. And within a few minutes at the most, the thing calms down. But it has stopped wondering whether or not it will last, whether or not it will succeedall that is over, gone: Its as You will, as You will. It uses those words because we can use only one language, which is quite incapable of expressing things; we dont know anything else, so we use that language. When it says, As You will, theres this movement of (gesture of dilation and expansion) what should I call it? Its like an easing in all the cellsthey ease up. They ease up in the supreme Light, in the supreme Consciousness, like that. Then you feel the form is about to disappear, but (Mother looks at the skin of her hands) it must be the consciousness contained in the cells [that spreads about]; I dont think its the substance, because (Mother looks at the skin of her hands) so far it has remained as it is! But that [easing] stays there for a rather long time.
But there are no words to express that, because I think (I dont know whether some people felt it, but if they did, they didnt know what it was because they didnt express it), I think its new. Its new for the body. Its new. A sort of as if one were tense, and the tension were easing, easing up (same gesture of expansion and diffusion). Yes, its quite like that, as when one is tense, like someone full of tension, and it eases up. Now its like that for all the cells.
0 1969-05-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother opens her eyes wide) I never even asked myself the Question! I took it for granted.
But I cant make out the difference: for me theres always the force, so I cant tell the difference between forces.
0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But how can That, that immensity, become this? I dont know. the Question is, How did That become this? Thats how it came: How could That, the Wonder, become thisthis hideous, monstrous thing?
But the process to change this back into That is what I dont know The process is abdication (what word should we use?), self-giving (thats not it). But the body felt everything, everything to be so horrible. There was a very, very difficult day.2 And curiously, I knew at that time that it was the exact repetition of the experience Buddha Siddhartha had, and that it was IN this experience that he said, There is only one way out: Nirvana. And at the SAME TIME, I had the true state of consciousness: his solution and the true one. That was really interesting. How the Buddhistic solution is only ONE step taken on the pathone step. And BEYOND that (not on another path, but BEYOND that) is where the true solution lies. It was a decisive experience.
--
But the body had a few very difficult hours. And to it, thats always indifferent, it says, All right, its fully ready for dissolution or There was no question of that; there was no question of that, the Question was to know how to receive the Cure. And what is the Cure like?Inexpressible with our means.
But its not that its veiled or hidden or anything: its HERE. Why? What in the whole deprives you of the power to live THAT? I dont know. Its here, HERE! All the rest, including death and everything, really becomes a falsehood, that is to say, something that does not exist.
0 1969-06-28, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its magnificent, mon petit, you know, its inspired. Theres only the Question of that single word. For such a long time Ive been there, racking my brains to find a word!
ONE, with a capital O, when its written, its fine, but when its heard
0 1969-07-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, thats the Question.
Why?
0 1969-07-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Among the Questions, there was also this one: "What should be the goal of our life?" Mother's answer: "Materially speaking, to be shrewd. Spiritually speaking, to be sincere." (!)
Four years later, at the end of 1973, when Mother left her body, the French publisher Robert Laffont will take this book for publication.
0 1969-08-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I remember Its interesting because while I was in that state, I remembered the Question youd asked me about Pavitra, whether the principle of individuality persists; so something in me said to you, Now you see, its like this! (Mother laughs) I remembered your question, I said, Its like this, there is NO MORE separation, but but this marvel of complexity remains the marvel of a complexity. And the impression is that everything, but everything that is has its own place, but when its in its place, then its perfectly harmonious.
Oh, it was it was a real revelation.
0 1969-09-20, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres the Bulletin: the Questions and Answers.
Is it worth publishing?
--
(Then in the same Talk, a child asks Mother the difference between what she calls the Divine and what people call God. Mother puts off the Question until later.)
Did I reply?
0 1969-09-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(A.R.:) Exactly, I fully agree with Mother. But the problem remains in spite of this explanation. the Question mark subsists, because, of course, Ive had numerous opportunities to experiment with itits something I frequently realize and yet the results are different, I mean that one doesnt get the result one might have hoped for, which seems (I say, seems) really normal in the circumstances.
(Satprem to A.R.:) You mean, when you want to cure someone?
0 1969-10-01, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats only incidental, because the true reason for his coming to India is really the Questions he asked you the other day.
Yes As for me, I think he can be cured quickly. I dont know the condition of his hernia, it depends (some are bad), but if its an ordinary one, it can be cured quickly.1
0 1969-12-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Those things come in an imperative way I dont try, I dont call. Even, after I read the Questions, I said to myself, Oh, Im not going to answer thisand poff!
***
0 1969-12-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They need I see that, Ive received letters again, to which I reply (Mother vainly looks for other papers near her) It comes every day. And Sri Aurobindo wrote wonderful things on the Question. Very recently (yesterday or the day before), I answered a question about an aphorism of Sri Aurobindos in which he said that atheism was NECESSARY because of religions and all their misdeeds.2 I was asked a question and I answered that also.
People are still very small.
0 1970-01-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So when one reaches the top of the stem, there are a number of staircases in every direction, so that one can emerge into the temple on any side. The center is absolutely bare, and all around is a sort of footbridge where one emerges from the depths: thats where all those staircases end. And everything bare. There will just be that big carpet bordered from corner to corner by kinds of footbridges. It will appear to be hanging. All white and smooth. Then there was the Question of the twelve columns: Paolo said he felt the twelve columns were still an ancient symbol that wouldnt go very well with the shell, and instead, he suggested to have symbolically twelve supports, twelve bases of columns that would act as backrests.
Image 4
--
the Question was in fact that it should be a perfect circle.
If its a perfect circle, then the height should be half the distance between the walls.
0 1970-02-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ayudh puja or "festival of arms." On a similar occasion, when Mother was seriously attacked, Sri Aurobindo had to write the disciples a letter in which he said, "The Mother has had a very severe attack and she must absolutely husb and her forces.... It is quite out of the Question for her to begin seeing everybody and receiving thema single morning of that kind of thing would exhaust her altogether. You must remember that for her a physical contact of this kind with others is not a mere social or domestic meeting with a few superficial movements which make no great difference one way or the other. It means for her an interchange, a pouring out of her forces and a receiving of things good, bad and mixed from them which often involves a great labour of adjustment and elimination and in many cases, though not in all, a severe strain on the body."
(November 12, 1931, Cent. Ed., 25.315)
0 1970-02-21, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a bit difficult to definewords diminish a lot. It resembles what we call peace, but its luminous, with such an impression of (whats the word?) ease, well-being something Its not turned this way (gesture to oneself), its turned that way (gesture outward), and thats what makes it so hard to explain. Its not in the body, in itself, that it finds its well-being, its a well-being (gesture in every direction), a sort of radiating well-being, and so yes, something resembling a certitude theres no more anxiety is quite out of the Question (question is quite out of the Question!), but it is its more what we call positively well-being and certitude. Something inexpressible. Its so vast (in the body, thats the point), so vast Really it was like an offering for today.
The whole day yesterday, the attack was very strong, as if to see whether the body would bear up. But it kept its trust and calm certitude (that it had the whole day long), and then it became something that was it, but Its hard to explain.
0 1970-03-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But all possibilities are there! Its only the Question of Matter having to adapt to the infiltration of another force.
Yes.
--
Thats the Question.
If the Spirit wants, it can. If the Spirit sees the time has come, it can. Theres no reason why not.
0 1970-04-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But how? Thats the Questionhow?
By using the material body as a support.
0 1970-04-08, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its especially, especially the Question of eating, because for an extremely long time (many years) there has been no interest in food, none at all. Its taken only its taken with a certain knowledge of what is needed, but thats all. Well, now, its almost difficult to swallow. Especially that: very difficult to swallow.
(Mother goes into a long contemplation)
0 1970-05-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, ordinary sightgone; ordinary hearinggone; capacity to work (Mother makes a gesture of writing)gone. And it can ONLY come back in the true way, when But Ive had the proof that EVERYTHING can come back WONDERFULLY. the Question is
I have understood, the body has understoodit has understood, it has had the experience. What will come next? Well see.
0 1970-05-20, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the substance, thats the Question: how to [change it]?
Ah! That even the body doesnt [know]. I tell you, thats how it is: now and then, once, twice, three times a day at the most, or once at night: a few seconds (Mother opens her eyes in wonder), and then, poff! its gone.
0 1970-07-11, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems that a Tamil yogi [Swami Ramalingam] of this region, who lived around 1850, had experiences, which he described in a poem and appear rather connected. Experiences of the transformation of the skeleton, bones, etc. Its a Tamilian who sent me this letter, asking me to put the Question to you.
All right.
0 1970-07-22, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have something about this Tamil Swami who had that experience of the bodys transformation. You remember this Swami Ramalingam who had that vision of the Grace-Light? You made a few remarks, part of which I passed on to the person who had asked the Question. And Ive raised a storm.
Oh, why?
0 1970-08-05, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What speaks, what observes is a center of consciousness thats here (gesture above), but naturally its not localized: its to communicate with the mouth and senses. Its here (same gesture above). But it doesnt have the character of a personality. You understand, if someone asks me, How do you see this?, it takes me a moment to understand the Question. I dont get a sense of someone seeing.
Certain experiences make me think that this sense of personal limitation isnt necessary to physical existenceits a thing we have to learn, but its not necessary. The impression had always been there that a body defined as making up separate individualities is necessaryits not. One can live physically without that, the body can live without that. Spontaneously, that is to say, left to its old habits and ways of being, its very difficult, it results in an internal organization that quite looks like disorderits difficult. You see, problems crop up all the time, for everythingEVERYTHING there isnt one activity of the body thats not called into question by that.2 The process is no longer the old process, its no longer as it was, but as it is hasnt become a habit, a spontaneous habit, which means its not natural, it demands that the consciousness should be constantly watchful for everything, even to swallow lunch, you understand? So that makes life a bit difficultspecially, specially when I see people. I see lots and lots of people (forty or fifty people every day), and everyone brings something, so that this Consciousness that makes it all function has to make do with all that comes from outside. And, you know, I see that many people fall ill (or they think theyre ill, or seem to have some illness, or really have one), but in the body it becomes concrete through their own way of being, which is the old way. To this new physical consciousness, it could be avoided, but, oh, how difficult! Through a sort of conscious concentration, you have to keep up a state, a way of being that isnt natural according to the old nature, but which is clearly the new way of being. That way, you can avoid illness. But its an almost Herculean labor.
0 1970-09-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You understand, that it will be conquered I am ABSOLUTELY certain of, but has the time come? Thats the Question.
And its this, this doubt, thats a torture.
0 1971-03-13, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We should find out what T.K. is using, because. Using the same word is out of the Question.
But T.K. may not use the same word because she has a totally different vocabulary.
0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In fact, again on the 18th, the day after this conversation, the president of India, V.V. Giri, in a press interview in which he was spiritedly asked why he still had not recognized Bangladesh, said, "The central government is studying the Question whether recognition should be granted to Bangladesh." Then he added, "Our sympathy is with the people of Bangladesh. It is up to the Prime Minister [Indira] and the central cabinet to decide the Question." (P.T.I)
One wonders what kind of news Mother was getting from her entourage.
0 1971-08-18, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These last few days (and quite strongly this morning) I have had the impression: the Divine is all things, and we are born so that each one makes a choice and manifests one of those thingsone or several. And so comes the Question of deciding on the choice, but thats just where one must surrender entirely and leave the choice entirely to the Divine. We have been created as we are, and thats the reason for all this wavering, these complications but what we have to learn is to leave it to that is, have no desire, no preference, and leave the choice entirely to the Divine.
(Mother goes within)
0 1971-10-02, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Last year, after the death of General de Gaulle, Satprems friend Y.L. had met Andr Malraux at Verrires; he immediately asked her, Is the Mother still alive? As Y.L. was a little taken aback, he added, I went there before you, 33 years ago. So I assume you know what they have been looking for in India. Again a few days ago, Y.L. met Andr Malraux after his cry Volunteer for Bengal; he said to her, What is essential in the fight Im going to wage for Bengal is to know the attitude and action of Pondicherry. Y.L. therefore came to put the Question directly to Mother. Mother asked, When is Andr Malraux meeting Indira Gandhi? In November, in Paris. Mother again asked, When is Andr Malraux thinking of coming to India? I dont know. Then Mother remained absorbed a long time and said, He will only get THE answer when he arrives in India, because the answer is in him. After meeting Indira Gandhi in Paris, Andr Malraux will renounce his plan of action. Let us note that when Y.L. met him, he leafed through the Auroville pressbook and said, All this is familiar Im part of it I know this. And closing the book, Its as if the sun had risen. And it goes down. And we begin again. Y.L. simply replied: And what if the sun has risen for good?)
[These notes are taken from Y.L.s travel diary.]
0 1971-10-30, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Question is to know if this [the body] will be able to follow. To follow, it not only has to last, but it has to acquire a new strength and a new life. That I dont know. In any case, it doesnt matter the consciousness is clear, and the consciousness is not subject to this (Mother points to her body). If it can be used, so much the better, if not. There are still things to be found.
Oh, many things to be found! The old routine is over.
0 1971-12-11, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the problem is fundamental. It is not a question of bringing a new philosophy to the world or new ideas or illuminations, as they are called. the Question is not of making the Prison of our lives more habitable, or of endowing man with ever more fantastic powers. Armed with his microscopes and telescopes, the human gnome remains a gnome, pain-ridden and helpless. We send rockets to the moon, but we know nothing of our own hearts. It is a question, says Sri Aurobindo, of creating a new physical nature which is to be the habitation of the Supramental being in a new evolution.3 For, in actuality, he says, the imperfection of Man is not the last word of Nature, but his perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit.4 Beyond the mental man we are, there exists the possibility of another being who will be the spearhead of evolution as man was once the spearhead of evolution among the great apes. If, says Sri Aurobindo, the animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man, man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god.5 Sri Aurobindo has come to tell us how to create this other being, this supramental being, and not only to tell us but actually to create this other being and open the path of the future, to hasten upon earth the rhythm of evolution, the new vibration that will replace the mental vibrationexactly as a thought one day disturbed the slow routine of the beastsand will give us the power to shatter the walls of our human prison.
Indeed, the prison is already starting to collapse. The end of a stage of evolution, announced by Sri Aurobindo, is usually marked by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out of the evolution.6 Everywhere about us we see this paroxysmal shattering of all the old forms: our borders, our churches, our laws, our morals are collapsing on all sides. They are not collapsing because we are bad, immoral, irreligious, or because we are not sufficiently rational, scientific or human, but because we have come to the end of the human! To the end of the old mechanism for we are on our way to SOMETHING ELSE. The world is not going through a moral crisis but through an evolutionary crisis. We are not going towards a better worldnor, for that matter, towards a worse onewe are in the midst of a MUTATION to a radically different world, as different as the human world was from the ape world of the Tertiary Era. We are entering a new era, a supramental Quinary. We leave our countries, wander aimlessly, we go looking for drugs, for adventure, we go on strike here, enact reforms there, foment revolutions and counterrevolutions. But all this is only an appearance; in fact, unwittingly, we are looking for the new being. We are in the midst of human evolution.
0 1972-03-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know. I know that. All depends on what the Divine Will isHe doesnt tell me! When I ask Him, I have the impression (once or twice, in moments of difficulty, I have put the Question regarding this body), and then (laughing) I seem to see a smile, you know, a smile as big as the world, but no answer.
I can still see that smile: Dont try to know, it is not yet time.
0 1972-03-25, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats the Question I dont know. I dont know.
I dont know.
--
The two different thingstotally differentwere procreation, which was no longer possible, and food. Though even our present food is manifestly not the same as that of chimpanzees or even the first humans; its quite different. So now, it seems we have to find a food that doesnt require all this digesting. Not exactly liquid, but not solid either. And theres also the Question of the mouth I dont know about thatand the teeth? Naturally, chewing should no longer be necessary, and therefore teeth wouldnt be either. But there has to be something to replace them. I havent the slightest idea what the face looked like. But it didnt seem too, too unlike what it is now.
What will change a great deal, of courseit had acquired a prominent roleis breathing. That being depended much on it.
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Your reply to the Questions of a Swedish magazine regarding whether religions have in fact promoted the conditions of tolerance and understanding among men happened to fall into my hands just as I have started giving a series of lectures on your works at the International University Center of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. This coincidence, along with a long-standing familiarity with your books, prompt me to write you a few words about another testimony, that of Sri Aurobindo, which I am sure you are aware of, but whose work, still incompletely translated in French, remains poorly known in Europe.
I seem to find in Sri Aurobindos work an answer that meets yours and develops it for the Question is indeed to reinstate the gods IN man after having reinstated the demons, as you rightly stated in the Swedish article but I also find there an answer to the agonizing question constantly raised by your characters from The Royal Way to The Walnut Trees of Altenburg. Indeed, all of them seek a deeper notion in man that will deliver them from death and solitudethis is the Question of the West, to which Sri Aurobindo brings a solution at once dynamic and illuminating. Hence, I am taking the liberty of sending by surface mail one of Sri Aurobindos books in the original English entitled The Human Cycle. I hope it will interest you.
I call on you rather than any other contemporary writer because I think your works embody the very anguish of the West, an anguish I have bitterly experienced all the way to the German concentration camps at the age of twenty, and then in a long and uneasy wandering around the world. Insofar as I have always turned to you, daring and searching with each of your characters what surpasses man, I am again turning to you because I have a feeling that, more than anyone else, you can understand Sri Aurobindos message and perhaps draw a new impetus from it. I am also thinking of a whole generation of young people who expect much from you: more than an ideal of pure heroism, which only opens the doors (as does all self-offering) on another realm of man we have yet to explore, and more than a fascination with death, which also is only a means and not an end, although its brutal nakedness can sometimes open a luminous breach in the bodily prisonwhere we seem to have been immured alive and we emerge into a new dimension of our being. For we tend too often to forget that it is for living that your heroes think so constantly of death; also I think that the young people I mentioned want the truth of Tchen and Katow, the truth of Hernandez, Perken and Moreno [characters in Malrauxs novels] beyond their death.
--
To the Question raised by the Swedish magazine and to the one many characters in your books ask themselves, I believe that Sri Aurobindo and his vast synthesis bring the key to a reconciliation and long-sought answer, a reconciliation between being and doing, which religion is incapable of supplying. Through our Yoga, Sri Aurobindo wrote, we propose nothing less than to break totally the past and present formations which make up the ordinary mental and material man and create a new centre of vision, a new universe of activities in ourselves, which will form a divine humanity or a superhuman nature. This is not an idea but an experience to be lived, which Sri Aurobindo has minutely described in his extensive body of works. It is what some thousand men and women from all over the world are trying to do at the Pondicherry Ashram.
In your reply to the Swedish magazine, you emphasize, The major obstacle to tolerance is not agnosticism but Manichaeism. That is also why religions will never be able to unite humanity, because they have remained Manichaean in their principle, because they are founded on morality, on a sense of good and evil, necessarily varying from one country to the next. Religions will not reconcile men with one another any more than they have reconciled men with themselves, or reconciled their aspiration to be with their need for action and for the same reasons, for in both cases they have dug an abyss between an ideal good, a being they have relegated to heaven, and an evil, a becoming, which reigns supreme in a world where all is vanity. I would like to quote here a passage from Sri Aurobindos Essays on the Gita which throws a clear light on the problem: To put away the responsibility for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices in which the religious thought of India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the worlds are Gods discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony.2 I believe that the characters of your books would not be seeking sacrifice and death so intensely if they did not feel the side of light and joy behind the mask of darkness in which they so passionately lose themselves.
0 1972-04-04, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The architect:) the Question in our minds, Mother, was to know whether you saw these people as being useful in providing Auroville with a certain type of difficulty.
No! Certainly not! No, no, I dont favor deliberately adding difficulties! I know they come for. But they shouldnt be invitedon the contrary. They shouldnt. Things should be made as easy as possible. Only, we shouldnt be ruffled by difficulty, thats the point. I am not at all saying that difficulties should be accepteddont invite them at all, at all, at all; life is difficult enough as it is! But when a difficulty comes, you must take heart and face it courageously.
0 1972-07-15, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(with a gesture Mother dismisses the Question)
Id like to LIVE like that. I dont know.
0 1972-07-22, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats not what it means. It means. Oh, it was so clear when he told me! the Question was by no means that of an individual: it was a question of the whole, a vision of the whole that things arent as they seem to be, behind theres (Mother holds her head in her hands). I dont know anymore, mon petit.
I know that when it came, it was meant on the contrary to tell you not to pay attention to peoples mistakes because things had to be seen from the standpoint of the whole, within the Whole. That was it. I felt this was the last stage, which would propel you into the Vision, the vision of the whole I mentioned. When I wrote that, I felt you were ready to have that vision of the whole and had to be told just so that you would give your external consent to it. When I was told you were unhappy [with my letter], I was puzzled I didnt understand. How come? On the contrary the feeling was that the time had come for you to rise above all human conceptions and to look at the creation and all circumstancesALL circumstanceswithin the Great Plane, the immense divine plane. Such was my impression.
0 1972-08-09, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In simple terms, we could say that all living matter on earth is "assembled" by the sun's energy (including and especially what we use for food); that same matter is then "disassembled" to release and provide us with that SAME energy. the Question is, could one directly absorb those SAME energy particles without going through the intermediary process?
Eight minutes.
0 1972-08-16, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is my body follow? Thats the Question.
My body is constantly like this (same gesture): what You will, Lord, what You will. But it must nevertheless undergo a transformation.
0 1972-11-25, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother returns the Question) How was it?
I dont know. Seemingly quite good, in any case!
0 1972-12-16, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother does not seem to have heard the Question)
As I told you: I am satisfiedis that alright?
02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To begin with, we refuse to admit or recognise that there is or is bound to be a contradiction or opposition between Matter and Spirit, between body and soul or between the human and the divine. We start with an experience, a realisation which declares the essential unity and identity of the duality. That is the thing that has to be posited first clear and nett. the Question next arises how the two are one and identical; this demands some clarification. For, is it meant that they are one and the same in the sense that Zeus and Jupiter are the same or that water and H2O are the same? Apart from any barren theorising, is it not a universal and eternal and invariable experience that to attain to the Divine one must leave behind the human, to become the immortal one must cease to be a mortal and to live in the Spirit one has to deny Matter? The real answer, however, is that it is so and it is not so. The dilemma is not so trenchant as it has been made out to be.
To the regard of one line of experience, Matter seems opposed to Spirit only so far as the actual and outer formulation of Matter is concerned: even then the opposition is only apparent and relative. This is the very crux of the problem. For, to such a regard Spirit becomes Matter also, it is also Matterannam brahma eva. Spirit is consciousness, cit; and Matter, it is said, is unconsciousness, acit. But unconsciousness need not be and is not, in our view, the absolute negation or utter absence of consciousness, it is only an involved or involute consciousness. If consciousness is wakefulness, unconsciousness is nothing more than forgetfulness: it is only an abeyance or suspension of consciousness, not annihilation.
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As we see it we believe that the whole future of mankind, the entire value of earthly life depends upon the issue of the present deadly combat. The path that man has followed so long tended steadily towards progress and evolutionhow-ever slow his steps, however burdened with doubt and faintness his mind and heart in the ascent. But now the crucial parting of the ways looms before him. the Question is, will the path of progress be closed to him for ever, will he be compelled to revert to a former unregenerate state or even something worse I than that? Or will he remain free to follow that path, rise gradually and infallibly towards perfection, towards a purer, I fuller, higher and vaster luminous life? Will man come down' to live the life of a blind helpless slave under the clutches of I the Asura or even altogether lose his soul and become the legendary demon who carries no head but only a decapitated trunk?
We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison with the Asuraon this material plane of ours; but in man dwells the Divine and against the divine force and might, no asuric power can ultimately prevail. The human being who has stood against the Asura has by that very act sided with the gods and received the support and benediction of the Divine. The more we become conscious about the nature of this war and consciously take the side of the progressive force, of the divine force supporting it, the more will the Asura be driven to retire, his power diminished, his hold relaxed. But if through ignorance and blind passion, through narrow vision and obscurant prejudice we fail to distinguish the right from the wrong side, the dexter from the sinister, surely we shall invite upon mankind utter misery and desolation. It will be nothing less than a betrayal of the Divine Cause.
--
This war is a great menace; it is also a great opportunity. It can land humanity into a catastrophe; it can also raise it to levels which would not have been within its reach but for the occasion. The Forces of Darkness have precipitated themselves with all their might upon the world, but by their very downrush have called upon the higher Forces of Light also to descend. The true' use of the opportunity offered to man would be to bring about a change, better still, a reversal, in his consciousness, that is to say, it will be of highest utility if it forces upon him by the pressure of inexorable circumstancessince normally he is so unwilling and incapable to do it through a spontaneous inner awakening the inescapable decision that he must change and shall change; and the change is to be for or towards the birth of a spiritual consciousness in earthly life. Indeed the war might be viewed" as the birth-pangs of such a spiritual consciousness. Whether the labour would be sublimely fruitful here and how or end in barrenness is the Question the Fates and the gods are asking of man the mortal beingtoday.
***
02.02 - Rishi Dirghatama, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Here are some more of his aspirations, the Questions that trouble him, the riddles whose solution he needs most. He calls upon the world and asks:
Tell me where is the end of this earth? Tell me where is the nodus of this universe? Tell me what is the meaning of the energy-flow from the energetic steed?
--
As are the Questions so are the answers, equally enigmatic and obscure.
About the Word, the mystery which Dirghatama unveils is an extraordinary revelationso curious, so illuminating. In later times many lines of spiritual discipline have adopted his scheme and spread it far and wide. Dirghatama himself was an uncommon wizard of words. The truths he saw and clothed in mantras have attained, as I have already said, general celebrity. He says: "The Word is off our categories. It has four stations or levels or gradations." The Rishi continues: "Three of them are unmanifested, unbodied; only the fourth one is manifest and bodied, on the tongue of man." This terminology embodying a fundamental principle has had many commentaries and explanations. Of these the most well-known is that given by the Tantras. They have named the fourfold words as (1) par, supreme; (2) payant, the seeing one; (3) madhyam, the middle one or the one within and (4) vaikhar, the articulate word. In modern language we may say that the first one is the self-vibration of the Supreme Being or Consciousness; the second is the vibration of the higher-mind or the pure intelligence; the third is the vibration of the inner heart; and the fourth the vibration of physical sound, of voice. In philosophical terms of current English we may name these as (1) revelatory, (2) intuitive, (3) inspirational and (4) vocal.
02.03 - An Aspect of Emergent Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The fact is admitted, on the whole, unless one is a Fundamentalist and prefers still to live in the consciousness of a bygone century. Difference comes in when the Question of explanations and of viewpoints regarding them is raised. A materialist like Professor Broad would consider Mind and Life as fundamentally formations of Matter, however different they might seem from each other and from the latter. Water, the so-called miracle product of Oxygen and Hydrogen, according to him, is as material as these two; even so Life and Mind, however miraculously produced, being born of Matter, are nothing but the same single reality, only in different forms. Others, who are more or less idealists, Alexander and Lloyd Morgan, for example (some of them call themselves neo-realists, however), would not view the phenomenon in the same way. Alexander says that Matter and Life and Mind are very different from each other; they are truly emergents, that is to say, novelties; but how the thing has been possible, one need not inquire; one should accept the fact with natural piety.
Morgan proffers an explanation. He says that whatever there is, exists in God who is the all-continent. In fact, everything that is or was or shall be is in Him. And the evolutionary gradation expresses or puts in front, one by one, all the principles or types of existence that God holds in Himself. The explanation hardly explains. It simply posits the existence of Matter and Life and Mind and whatever is to come hereafter in the infinity of God, but the passage from one to another, the connecting link between two succeeding terms, and the necessity of the link, are left as obscure as before. Life is tagged on to Matter and Mind is tagged on to Life in the name of the Lord God.
--
This, however, is an aspect of the problem with which we are not immediately concerned. There is one question with which we have omitted to deal but which is nearer to us and touches present actualities. We spoke of the emergence of the Deity and of the Supreme Deityafter Mind. the Question is, how long after? I do not refer to the duration of time needed, but to the steps or the stages that have to be passed. For between Mind and Deity, certainly between Mind and the Supreme Deity (Purushottama, as we would say), there may presumably still lie a course of graded emergence. In fact, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the Overmind and the Supermind, as farther steps of the evolutionary progress coming after Mind. He says that Mind closes the interior hemisphere of man's nature and consciousness; with Overmind man enters into the higher sphere of the Spirit. In this view, the religious feeling or perception or conduct would be but an intermediary stage between Mind and Overmind. They are not really emergent properties, but reflections, faint echoes and promises of what is to come, mixed up with attributes of the present mentality. The Overmind brings in a true emergence.
Still Overmindwhose characteristic is a cosmic consciousness and a transcendence of all ego-senseis not the firm basis on which a new terrestrial organisation can stand and endure. It is still a basis of unstable equilibrium. For it is not the supernal light and, although it transcends all ignorance, yet does not possess that absolute synthetic unity, that transcendent power of consciousness which is at once the cosmic and the individual. That is the domain of the Supermind.
02.05 - Federated Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The organization of this greater and larger unit is the order of the day. It does not seem possible at this stage to go straight to the whole of humanity at large and make of it one single indivisible entity, obliterating all barriers of race and nation. An intermediate step is still necessary even if that remains the final end. Nationhood has been a helper in that direction; it is now a bar. And yet an indiscriminate internationalism cannot meet the situation today, it overshoots the mark. The march of events and circumstances prescribe that nations should combine to form groups or, as they say in French, societies of nations. The combination, however, must be freely determined, as voluntary partnership in a common labour organisation for common profit and achievement. This problem has to be solved first, then only can the Question of nationalism or other allied knots be unravelled. Nature the Sphinx has set the problem before us and we have to answer it here and now, if humanity is to be saved and welded together into a harmonious whole for a divine purpose.
***
02.13 - In the Self of Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Must answer to the Questioning of his soul.
For here was no firm clue and no sure road;
02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Question now is to devise ways and means of materialising this ideal. Circumstanced as man is, in doubt and darkness with regard to his inner nature, one most often does not know one's true vocation; those who do know their minds and are sure of their "mission in life" are the fortunate few, and very few indeed they are. Of the vast majority, some discover themselves only at the fag-end of their life or when they are already far too committed and in harness in alien fields and among alien faces; others do not discover themselves at all, they need no such revelation: these form the general mass in which the individuals have not developed so far as to come out into any bold relief, they are cast into the stereotype mould, moved more or less by the same general forces of nature and are indistinguishable from each other. It is upon this mass of uniformity that the totalitarian regimentation bases itself easily and naturally.
Still even if human nature in the mass is like this, what the totalitarian system does is to fix and eternise the mould. To admit Nature as it is and leave it at that, to arrange and organize things within that given framework, is, to say the least, only another form of the old laissez-faire system. Take Nature as it is, but go farther and beyond. That is the problem of all human endeavour.
03.02 - The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the face of established opinion and tradition (and in the wake of the prophetic poet) I propose to demonstrate that Philosophy has as much claim to be called an art, as any other orthodox art, painting or sculpture or music or architecture. I do not refer to the element of philosophyperhaps the very large element of philosophy that is imbedded and ingrained in every Art; I speak of Philosophy by itself as a distinct type of au thentic art. I mean that Philosophy is composed or created in the same way as any other art and the philosopher is moved and driven by the inspiration and impulsion of a genuine artist. Now, what is Art? Please do not be perturbed by the Question. I am not trying to enter into the philosophy the metaphysicsof it, but only into the science the physicsof it. Whatever else it may be, the sine qua non, the minimum requisite of art is that it must be a thing of beauty, that is to say, it must possess a beautiful form. Even the Vedic Rishi says that the poet by his poetic power created a heavenly formkavi kavitva divi rpam asajat. As a matter of fact, a supreme beauty of form has often marked the very apex of artistic creation. Now, what does the Philosopher do? The sculptor hews beautiful forms out of marble, the poet fashions beautiful forms out of words, the musician shapes beautiful forms out of sounds. And the philosopher? The philosopher, I submit, builds beautiful forms out of thoughts and concepts. Thoughts and concepts are the raw materials out of which the artist philosopher creates mosaics and patterns and designs architectonic edifices. For what else are philosophic systems? A system means, above all, a form of beauty, symmetrical and harmonious, a unified whole, rounded and polished and firmly holding together. Even as in Art, truth, bare sheer truth is not the object of philosophical inquiry either. Has it not been considered sufficient for a truth to be philosophically true, if it is consistent, if it does not involve self-contradiction? The equation runs: Truth=Self-consistency; Error=Self-contradiction. To discover the absolute truth is not the philosopher's taskit is an ambitious enterprise as futile and as much of a my as the pursuit of absolute space, absolute time or absolute motion in Science. Philosophy has nothing more to doand nothing lessthan to evolve or build up a system, in other words, a self-consistent whole (of concepts, in this case). Art also does exactly the same thing. Self-contradiction means at bottom, want of harmony, balance, symmetry, unity, and self-consistency means the contrary of these things the two terms used by philosophy are only the logical formulation of an essentially aesthetic value.
Take, for example, the philosophical system of Kant or of Hegel or of our own Shankara. What a beautiful edifice of thought each one has reared! How cogent and compact, organised and poised and finely modelled! Shankara's reminds me of a tower, strong and slender, mounting straight and tapering into a vanishing point among the clouds; it has the characteristic linear movement of Indian melody. On the otherhand, the march of the Kantian Critiques or of the Hegelian Dialectic has a broader base and involves a composite strain, a balancing of contraries, a blending of diverse notes: thereis something here of the amplitude and comprehensiveness of harmonic architecture (without perhaps a corresponding degree of altitude).
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Question, however, can be raised the moderns do raise it and naturally in the present age of science and universal educationwhy should not all men equally have the right to spiritual sadhana? If spirituality is the highest truth for man, his greatest good, his supreme ideal, then to deny it to anyone on the ground, for example, of his not being of the right caste, class, creed, or sex, to keep anyone at a distance on such or similar grounds is unreasonable, unjust, reprehensible. These notions, however, are born of a sentimental or idealistic or charitable disposition, but unfortunately they do not stand the impact of the realities of life. If you simply claim a thing or even if you possess a lawful right to a worthy object, you do not acquire thereby the capacity to enjoy it. Were it so, there would be no such thing as mal-assimilation. In the domain of spiritual sadhana there are any number of cases of defective metabolism. Those that have fallen, strayed from the Path, become deranged or even have had to leave the body, make up a casualty list that is not small. They were misfits, they came by their fate, because they encroached upon a thing they were not actually entitled to, they were dragged into a secret, a mystery to which their being was insensible.
In a general way we may perhaps say, without gross error, that every man has the right to become a poet, a scientist or a politician. But when the Question rises in respect of a particular person, then it has to be seen whether that person has a natural ability, an inherent tendency or aptitude for the special training so necessary for the end in view. One cannot, at will, develop into a poet by sheer effort or culture. He alone can be a poet who is to the manner born. The same is true also of the spiritual life. But in this case, there is something more to take into account. If you enter the spiritual path, often, whether you will or not, you come in touch with hidden powers, supra-sensible forces, beings of other worlds and you do not know how to deal with them. You raise ghosts and spirits, demons and godsFrankenstein monsters that are easily called up but not so easily laid. You break down under their impact, unless your adhr has already been prepared, purified and streng thened. Now, in secular matters, when, for example, you have the ambition to be a poet, you can try and fail, fail with impunity. But if you undertake the spiritual life and fail, then you lose both here and hereafter. That is why the Vedic Rishis used to say that the ear then vessel meant to hold the Soma must be properly baked and made perfectly sound. It was for this reason again that among the ancients, in all climes and in all disciplines, definite rules and regulations were laid down to test the aptitude or fitness of an aspirant. These tests were of different kinds, varying according to the age, the country and the Path followedfrom the capacity for gross physical labour to that for subtle perception. A familiar instance of such a test is found in the story of the aspirant who was asked again and again, for years together, by his Teacher to go and graze cows. A modern mind stares at the irrelevancy of the procedure; for what on earth, he would question, has spiritual sadhana to do with cow-grazing? In defence we need not go into any esoteric significance, but simply suggest that this was perhaps a test for obedience and endurance. These two are fundamental and indispensable conditions in sadhana; without them there is no spiritual practice, one cannot advance a step. It is absolutely necessary that one should carry out the directions of the Guru without question or complaint, with full happiness and alacrity: even if there comes no immediate gain one must continue with the same zeal, not giving way to impatience or depression. In ancient Egypt among certain religious orders there was another kind of test. The aspirant was kept confined in a solitary room, sitting in front of a design or diagram, a mystic symbol (cakra) drawn on the wall. He had to concentrate and meditate on that figure hour after hour, day after day till he could discover its meaning. If he failed he was declared unfit.
Needless to say that these tests and ordeals are mere externals; at any rate, they have no place in our sadhana. Such or similar virtues many people possess or may possess, but that is no indication that they have an opening to the true spiritual life, to the life divine that we seek. Just as accomplishments on the mental plane,keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane,mere self-control, patience and forbearance or endurance and perseverance do not create a claim to spiritual realisation, let alone physical austerities. In conformity with the Upanishadic standard, one may not be an unworthy son or an unworthy disciple, one may be strong, courageous, patient, calm, self-possessed, one may even be a consummate master of the senses and be endowed with other great virtues. Yet all this is no assurance of one's success in spiritual sadhana. Even one may be, after Shankara, a mumuksu, that is to say, have an ardent yearning for liberation. Still it is doubtful if that alone can give him liberation into the divine life.
03.03 - A Stainless Steel Frame, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is needed then is an army of souls: individuals, either separately or in groups, who have contacted their inmost reality, their divinity, in some way or othermen with a new consciousness and aspiration, a new life and realisation. They will live in the midst of the general degeneration and disintegration, not aloof and immured in their privacy of purity, but take part in the normal activities of everyday life, still acting from the height and depth of the pure consciousness prove by their very living that one can be in the world and yet not of it, doing what is necessary for the maintenance and enhancement of life and yet not stooping to the Questionable ways that are supposed to be necessary and inevitable. In other words, they will disprove that safety and success and prosperity in life can be had only if one follows the lead of Evil, if one sells one's soul. On the contrary, by living out one's divine essence one will have conquered the worldihaiva tairjitam. At every moment, in all circumstances one follows the voice of the highest in oneself. If it is that and no other inferior echo, then one becomes fearless and immortal and all-conquering.
Such souls living and moving among men with little faith and in circumstances adverse and obscure will forge precisely the new steel frame, the stainless-steel frame upon which the new society will be securely based.
03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And heard the Questioning of the unsatisfied flood
And toiled with the form-maker, measuring Mind.
03.06 - Here or Otherwhere, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It can, however, be asked, what then is meant by being in the world? If it means merely sitting quiet, suffering and observing nonchalantly the impacts of the world something in the manner described by Matthew Arnold in his famous lines on the East, well, that stoic way, the way of indifference is a way of being in the world which is not very much unlike not being in the world; for it means simply erecting a wall of separation or isolation within one's consciousness without moving away physically. It is a psychological escapism. But if by living in the world we should mean participating in the movements of the worldnot only being but becoming, not merely standing as a witness but moving out as a doer then the problem becomes different. For the Question we have to ask in that case is what happens to our dutieslife in the world being a series of duties, duty to oneself (self-preservation), duty to the family (race-preservation), duty to the country, to humanity and, finally, duty to God (which last belongs properly to the life in Yoga). Now, can all these duties dwell and flourish together? The Christ is categorical on the point. He says, in effect: Leave aside all else and follow Me and look not back. Christ's God seems to be a jealous God who does not tolerate any other god to share in his sovereign exclusiveness. You have to give up, if you wish to gain. They who lose life shall find it and they who stick to life shall as surely lose it.
But is not The Gita's solution somewhat different? Sri Krishna urges Arjuna to be in the very thick of a deadly fight, not a theoretical or abstract combat, but take a hand in the direst man-slaughter, to do the deed (even like Macbeth) but yogically. Yes, The Gita's position seems to be thatto accept all life integrally, to undertake all necessary work (kartavyam karma) and turn them Godward. The Gita seeks to do it in its own way which consists of two major principles: (1) to do the work, whatever it may be, unattachedwithout any desire for the fruit, simply as a thing that has to be done, and (2) to do it as a sacrifice, as an offering to the supreme Master of works.
the Question naturally turns upon the nature and the kind of workwhe ther there is a choice and selection in it. Gita speaks indeed of all works, ktsna-karmakt, but does that really mean any and every work that an ignorant man, an ordinary man steeped in the three Gunas does or can do? It cannot be so. For, although all activity, all energy has its source and impetus in the higher consciousness of the Divine, it assumes on the lower ranges indirect, diverted or even perverted formulations and expressions, not because of the inherent falsity of these so-called inferior strata, the instruments, but because of their temporary impurity and obscurity. There are evidently activities and impulsions born exclusively of desire, of attachment and egoism. There are habits of the body, urges of the vital, notions of the mind, there are individual and social functions that have no place in the spiritual scheme, they have to be rigorously eschewed and eliminated. Has not the Gita said, this is desire, this is passion born of the quality of Rajas? . . . There is not much meaning in trying to do these works unattached or to turn them towards the Divine. When you are unattached, when you turn to the Divine, these 'Simply drop away of themselves. Yes, there are social duties and activities and relations that inevitably dissolve and disappear as you move into the life divine. Some are perhaps tolerated for a period, some are occasions for the consciousness to battle and surmount, grow strong and pass beyond. You have to learn to go beyond and new-create your environment.
It was Danton who said, one carries not his country with him at the sole of his shoe. Even so you cannot hope to shift bodily your present social ensemble, place it wholesale in the divine life on the plea that it will be purified and transformed in the process. Purification is there indeed, but one must remember purification literally means burning and not a little of the past and present has to be burnt down to ashes.
03.06 - The Pact and its Sanction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The whole difficulty centres upon the Question: who rouses whom, and what is the principle that is meant to rouse. There is a slogan that incited the Red Terror of the French Revolution; there is the other one which inspired the Nazis; there is still another one rampant that had the seal and sanction of Stalin and his politburo. These have spread their dark wings and covered the saviour light. On the other hand, the voice of the Vedic Rishi that hymned the community of faith and speech and act, the kindly light that Buddha carried to suffering humanity, the love and sacrifice of Christ showing and embleming the way of redemption, the saints and sages in our own epoch who have visioned the ideal of human unity in a divine humanity, even secular leaders who labour for "one world", "a brave new world"all point to the other line of growth and development that man can follow and must and shall follow. The choice has to be made and the right direction given. In India today, there are these two voices put against each other and clear in their call: one asks for unity and harmony, wideness and truth, the other its contrary working for separativeness, disintegration, narrowness, and make-believe and falsehood. One must have the courage and the sagacity to fix one's loyalty and adhesion.
A true covenant there can be only between parties that work for the light, are inspired by the same divine purpose. Otherwise if there is a fundamental difference in the motive, in the soul-impulse, then it is no longer a pact between comrades, but a patchwork of irreconcilable elements. I have spoken of the threefold sanction of the covenant. The sanction from the top initiates, plans and supports, the sanction from the bottom establishes and furnishes the field, but it is the sanction from the mid-region that inspires, executes, makes a living reality of what is no more than an idea, a possibility. On one side are the Elders, the seasoned statesmen, the wise ones; on the other, the general body of mankind waiting to be moved and guided; in between is the army of young enthusiasts, enlightened or illumined (not necessarily young in age) who form the pra, the vital sheath of the body politic. Allby far the largest part of itdepends upon the dreams that the Prana has been initiated and trained to dream.
This life principle of a body politic seems in Pakistan to be represented by the Ansars. the Question then to be determined is whether they have accepted the Pact or not. If they have, is it merely a political expedient or do they find in it a real moral value? We have to weigh and judge the ideal and motive that inspire this organisation which seeks to be the steel frame supporting or supported by the Government. We ask: is this a nucleus, a seed bed for the new life to take birth and grow, the new life that would go to the making of the new world and humanity? And we have to ask India too, has she found her nucleus or nuclei, on her side, that would generate and foster the power of her soul and spirit? The high policy of a government remains a dead law or is misconstrued and misapplied through local agents: they are in fact the local growths that feed the national life and are fed by it and they need careful nurture and education, for upon them depends ultimately the weal or the woe of the race.
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03.07 - Brahmacharya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This new approach has rectified much of the wrong handling of the problem of education to which we have been accustomed. Even this new orientation, however, is not sufficient: along with freedom and autonomy, the element of discipline and order has also to be brought in, if not quite in the old way at least in a new manner. It will not do to say simply that it must be self-discipline and self-order, but the Question is how it is to be practically carried out. In ancient times it was done by living the life of an aspirant, not merely by studying and going to school, being only a student but living in the hours of the teacher, in the atmosphere of his direct presence and influence: the teacher too was not a machine issuing mechanical instruction, but a Person who loved and whom one loved, a warm embodiment of the ideal.
In our days there has been this unhappy division between the student and the aspirant. In the student life, life and study are things apart. One may be a good student, study very seriously and attain considerable eminence in intellectual achievement, and yet in life one may remain quite the ordinary man with very normal reactions. Along with the brain we do not endeavour to educate the life instincts and body impulses. This portion of our nature we leave all alone and do not dare or care to handle it consciously. Sometimes we call that freedom; but it is more slavery than freedom, slavery to our commonplace animal nature. Because one follows one's impulses and instincts freely, without let or hindrance one feels as if he were free. Far from it.
03.08 - The Democracy of Tomorrow, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In this connection we can recall Plato's famous serial of social types from aristocracy to tyranny, the last coming out of democracy the type that precedes it, (almost exactly as we have experienced it in our own days). But the most interesting point to which we can look with profit is Plato's view that the types are as men are, that is to say, the character and nature of man in a given period determines the kind of government or social system he is going to have. There has been this cyclic rotation of types, because men themselves were rotating types, because, in other words, the individuals composing human society had not found their true reality, their abiding status. Plato's aristocracy was the ideal society, it was composed of and ruled by the best of men (aristas, srestha) the wisest. And the Question was put by many and not answered by Plato himself, what brought about the decline in a perfect system. We have attempted to give our answer.
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03.08 - The Standpoint of Indian Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All art is based upon this peculiar virtue of the mind that naturally and spontaneously transforms or distorts the objective world presented to its purview. the Question, then, is only of the degree to which the metamorphosis has been carried. At the one end, there is the art of photography, in which the degree of metamorphosis is at its minimum; at the other, there seems to be no limit, for the mind's capacity to dissolve and recreate the world of sense-perception is infinite and many modern schools of European art have gone even beyond the limit that the "unnatural" Indian art did not consider it necessary to transgress. Now, the classical artist selects a position as close as he can to the photographer, tries to give the mind's view of Nature and creation, as far as possible, in the style and norm of the sense-perceptions. He takes his stand upon these and from there reaches out towards whatever imaginative reconstructions are justified within the bounds laid out by them. The general ground-plan is, almost rigorously, the form given by the physical eye. The art of the East, and even, to a large extent, the art of mediaeval Europe, followed a different line. Here the scheme of the sense-perceptions was rejected, the artist sought to build on other foundations. His procedure was, first, to get a focus within the mind, to discover a psychological standpoint, and from there and in accordance with the subtler laws and conventions of an inner vision create a world that is unique and stands by itself. The aim was always to build from within, at the most, from within outwards, but not from without, not even from without inwards. This inner world has its own laws and they differ from the laws of optics which govern the physical sight; but there is no reason why it should be called unnatural. It is unnatural only in the sense that it does not copy physical Nature; it is quite natural in the 1 sense that it is a faithful reproduction of another, a psychological Nature.
Indian art is pre-eminently and par excellence the art of this inner re-formation and revaluation. It has thrown down completely and clearly the rigid scaffolding of the physical vision. We take here a sudden leap, as it were, into another world, and sometimes the feeling is that everything is reversed; it is not exactly that we feel ourselves standing on our heads, but it is, as if, in the Vedic phrase, the foundations were above and all the rest branched out from them downwards. The artist sees with an eye, and constructs upon a plan that conveys the merest excuse of an actual visible world. There are other schools in the East which have also moved very far away from the naturalistic view; yet they have kept, if not the form, at least, the feeling of actuality in their composition. Thus a Chinese, a Japanese, or a Persian masterpiece cannot be said to be "natural" in the sense in which a Tintoretto, or even a Raphael is natural; yet a sense of naturalness persists, though the appearance is not naturalistic. What Indian art gives is not the feeling of actuality or this sense of naturalness, but a feeling of truth, a sense of realityof the deepest reality.
03.11 - Modernist Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Well, the Question is, has it succeeded? For here, as in everything else, nothing succeeds like success. Any theory may be as good as any other, but its test is only in the fait accompli. Neither Pound nor Eliot has that touch of finality and certainty, the definitiveness and au thenticity beyond doubt, the Q.E.D. that a major and supreme creator imposes.
Bottrall, a modernist poet himself, says in effect the same thing. His poetic credo runs in this wise:
03.11 - The Language Problem and India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
French and English being given the place of honour, now the Question is with regard to the vernacular of those who do not speak either of these languages. We have to distinguish two categories of languages: national and international. French and English being considered international languages par excellence, the others remain as national languages, but their importance need not be minimised thereby. First of all, along with the two major international languages, there may be a few others that can be called secondary or subsidiary international languages according as they grow and acquire a higher status. Thus Russian, or an Asiatic, even an Indian language may attain that position, because of wide extension or inherent value of popularity or for some other reason. Indeed, a national language cultivated and enriched by its nationals can force itself on the world's attention and fairly become a world language. Tagore was able to give that kind of world importance to the Bengali language.
It may be questioned whether too many languages are not imposed on us in this way and whether it will not mean in the end a Babel and inefficiency. It need not be so and it is not going to be so. We must remember the age we are in, its composite structure, its polyphonic nature. In the ancient and mediaeval ages, the ages of separatism and exclusiveness of clans and tribes and regions, even in the later age of the states and nations, the individual group-consciousness was strong and sedulously fostered. Languages and literature grew and developed more or less independently and with equal vigour, although always through some kind of give and take. But the modern world has been made so inextricably one, ease of communication and free interchange have obliterated the separating boundaries, not only geographical but psychological. The modern consciousness has so developed and is so circumstanced that one can very easily be bi-lingual or even trilingual: indeed one has to be so, speaking and writing with equal felicity not only one's mother tongue but one or more adopted tongues. Modern culture means that.
03.13 - Dynamic Fatalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If it is so, then what is the necessity at all of work and labour and travailthis difficult process of sadhana? the Question is rather naive, but it is very often asked. The answer also could be very simple. The change decreed is precisely worked out through the travail: one is the end, the other is the means; the goal and the process, both are decreed and inevitable. If it is argued, supposing none made the effort, even then would the change come about, in spite of man's inaction? Well, first of all, this is an impossible supposition. Man cannot remain idle even for a moment: not only the inferior Nature, but the higher Nature too is always active in himremember the words of the Gita though behind the veil, in the inner consciousness. Secondly, if it is really so, if man is not labouring and working and making the attempt, then it must be understood that the time has not yet come for him to undergo the change; he has still to wait: one of the signs of the imminence of the change is this very intensity and extensiveness of the labour among mankind. If, however, a particular person chooses to do nothing, prefers to wait and seehopes in the end to jump at the fruit all at once and possess it or hopes the fruit to drop quietly into his mouthwell, this does not seem to be a likely happening. If one wishes to enjoy the fruit, one must share in the effort to sow and grow. Indeed, the process itself of reaching the higher consciousness involves a gradual heightening of the consciousness. The means is really part of the end. The joy of victory is the consummation of the joy of battle.
Man can help or retard the process of Nature, in a sense. If his force of consciousness acts in line with Nature's secret movement, then that movement is accelerated: through the soul or self that is man, it is the Divine, Nature's lord and master who drives and helps Nature forward. If, on the contrary, man follows his lesser self, his lower ego, rajasic and tamasic, then he throws up obstacles and barriers which hamper and slow down Nature's march.
03.15 - Origin and Nature of Suffering, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
True, but even this is an intermediate state. For there is another in which suffering is not merely suppressed but sublimated, wholly transmuted: there is then nothing else but delight, pure and entire. That is the soul state, the state of permanent dwelling in the Spirit. Now, we come back to the Question why or how does the soul, being all delight, become in life the very opposite of its essential nature, a thing of misery, why does the spirit descend or condescend to take the form of matter: it is an old-world and eternal problem that has been asked and faced and answered in various ways through the ages.
Here is, briefly, how we view the Question. The soul accepts a mortal life of pain and suffering, welcomes an apparent denial of its essential nature for two reasons: (1) to grow and increase in consciousness through such experiences,pain and suffering being one variety of the fuel that tends the Fire that is our soul; and (2) to transfer its inalienable purity into Matter, by its secret pressure and influence gradually transform earthly life into a movement of its own divine state, the state of inviolable Bliss.
All experiences, all contacts with the forms and forces of Life and Matter act indeed as fuel to the flame of the soul's consciousness, whether they are good, bad or indifferent according to some outward view or standard. And in response to the nature and degree of the growth and increase demanded, does the soul choose its fuel, its external mode of life and surroundings. If suffering and misery help to kindle and increase the flame, the soul has no jugups, repulsion for them. Indeed, it accepts the forms of misery in order to cure them, transform them, to bring out of them their original norms of beauty and bliss of which they are a degradation and an aberration.
04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Creation has evolved. That is to say, there has been a growth and unfoldment and progress. From nebulae to humanity the march cannot but be called an advance, a progress, in more senses than one. But the Question is about man. Has man advanced, progressed since his advent upon earth? If so, in what manner, to what extent? Man has been upon earth for the last two million years, they say. From what has happened before him in the course of Nature's evolution, it is legitimate to infer that man too, in his turn, has moved forward in the line towards growth and development. In fact, if we admit that man started life as a savage or jungle-man or ape-man, and look at him as he is today, we have perforce to acknowledge that he has not merely changed but progressed too. the Question to be answered is in what sense this progress has been made.
Modern knowledge has taught us that what marks the growth of man is his use of tools. An animal has nothing else than its own limbs as its all-serving tool. Man emerged as man the day he knew how to use tools as an extension of his limbs. And the cycles of human growth have, in consequence, been marked off by the type of tools used. As we all know, anthropologists tell us, there have been four such cycles or ages: (1) the Old Stone Age, (2) the New Stone Age, (3) the Bronze Age and (4) the Iron Age.
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the Question is now asked how far this self-consciousness given to man by his progress from stone to steelhas advanced and what is its future. The crucial problem is whether man has progressed in historical times. Granted that man with an iron tool is a more advanced type of humanity than man with a chipped stone tool, it may still be enquired whether he has made any real advance since the day he learnt to manipulate metal. If by advance or progress we mean efficiency and multiplication of tools, then surely there can be no doubt that Germany of today (perhaps now we have to say Germany of yesterday and America of today) is the most advanced type of humanityindeed they do make the claim in that country.
So it is argued that man may have built up more and more efficient organisation in his outer life, he may have learnt to wield a greater variety and wealth of tools and instruments in an increasing degree of refinement and power; but this does not mean that his character, his nature or even the broad mould of his intelligence has changed or progressed. The records and remains of Pre-dynastic Egypt or of Proto-Aryan Indus valley go to show that those were creations of civilised men, as civilised as any modern people. The mind that produced the Rig Veda or the Book of the Dead or conceived the first pyramid is, in essential power of intelligence, no whit inferior to any modern scientific brain. Hence a distinction is sometimes made between culture and civilisation; what the moderns have achieved is progress with regard to civilisation, that is to say, the outer paraphernalia; but as regards culture a Plato, a Lao-tse, a Yajnavalkya are names to which we still bow down.
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We propose, however, to reopen the Question and enquire if there has not been some kind of radical change or progress in the make-up of human nature and civilisation even within the span of historical times. This reminds us of the remarkable conclusion or discovery made by the much maligned and much adulated Psycho-analysts.
Jung speaks of two kinds or grades of thinking: (1) the directed thinking and (2) the wishful thinking; one conscious and objective, the other automatic and subjective. The first is the modern or scientific thinking, the second the old-world mythopoeic thinking. These two lines of mental movement mark off two definite stages in the cultural history of man. Down to the Middle Ages man's mental life was moved and coloured by his libidodesire soul; it is with the Renascence that he began to free his mind from, the libido and transfer and transform the libido into non-egoistic and realistic thinking. In simpler psychological terms we can say that man's mentality was coloured and modulated by his biological make-up out of which it had emerged; the age of modernism and scientism began with the development of a rigorous rationalism which means a severance and transcendence of the biological antecedent.
04.04 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As we say, there are not only aspects of the Divine, but there are also levels in him. The spiritual consciousness rises tier upon tier and each spur has its own view and outlook, rhythm and character. Now, as long as man was chiefly preoccupied with his physico-vital or mentalised physico-vital activities, as long as the burden of his body and life and even mind lay heavy on him and their gravitational pull was normally very strong, almost irresistible, the spiritual impulse in him acted generally and fundamentally as a movement of escape from them into some thing beyond. It was a negative movement on the whole and it was enough to dissociate, reject, sublimate the lower status and somehow rise into something which is not that (neti): the Question was not important at that stage of the human consciousness about a scientific scrutiny of the Beyond, its precise constitution and composition.
But once there is the possibility gained of a more normalised, familiar and wider reconnaissance of the Beyond, when the human being has been mentalised to a degree and in a manner that makes it inevitable for him to overpass to a higher status and live there habitually, then it becomes an urgent matter of concern to know and find out where one goes exactly, on which level and in what domain, once one is beyond. the Question, it is true, engaged the attention of the ancients too; but it was more or less an interesting inquiry, a good part speculative and theoretical; it had not the reality and insistence of the need of the hour. We have today chalked out an almost exhaustive science of the inferior consciousness, of the lower hemisphereof course, so far as it is possible for such a science to be exhaustive moving in the light of the partial and inferior consciousness. In the same way we need at the present hour a complete and precise science of the Divine Consciousness. As there is a logic of the finite, there is also a logic of the infinite, not merely its magic, and that too has to be discovered and laid out.
Thus, the highest and most comprehensive description of the Divine is perhaps the formula Sat-chit-ananda. But even so, it is a very general and, after all, an inadequate description. It has to be filled in and supplemented by other categories as well, if one may say so. For Sat-chit-ananda presents to us the Sat Brahman. There is also the Asat Brahman. And again we must accept a reality which is neither Sat nor Asatnsadsnno sadst, says the Veda. And as for the filling up of the details in an otherwise almost blank and featureless infinity, Sri Aurobindo's charting of that vast unknownwith the categories of the Supermind and its various levels, of the Overmind and its levels too, all forming the Divine Status and Consciousness is a new, almost a revolutionary revelation, just the required science which the present world needs and demands and for which it has been prepared through all the cycles of evolution.
04.06 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As we say, there are not only aspects of the Divine, but there are also levels in him. The spiritual consciousness rises tier upon tier and each spur has its own view and outlook, rhythm and character. Now, as long as man was chiefly preoccupied with his physico-vital or mentalised physico-vital activities, as long as the burden of his body and life and even mind lay heavy on him and their gravitational pull was normally very strong, almost irresistible, the spiritual impulse in him acted generally and fundamentally as a movement of escape, from them into something beyond. It was a negative movement on the whole and it was enough to dissociate, reject, sublimate the lower status and somehow rise into something which is not that (neti): the Question was not important at that stage of the human consciousness about a scientific scrutiny of the Beyond, its precise constitution and composition.
But once there is the possibility gained of a more normalised, familiar and wider reconnaissance of the Beyond, when the human being has been mentalised to a degree and in a manner that makes it inevitable for him to overpass to a higher status and live there habitually, then it becomes an urgent matter of concern to know and find out where one goes exactly, on which level and in what domain, once one is beyond. the Question, it is true, engaged the attention of the ancients too; but it was more or less an interesting enquiry, a good part speculative and theoretical; it had not the reality and insistence of the need of the hour. We have today chalked out an almost exhaustive science of the inferior consciousness, of the lower hemisphereof course, so far as it is possible for such a science to be exhaustive moving in the light of the partial and inferior consciousness. In the same way we need at the present hour a complete and precise science of the Divine Consciousness. As there is a logic of the finite, there is also a logic of the infinite, not merely its magic, and that too has to be discovered and laid out.
Thus, the highest and most comprehensive description of the Divine is perhaps the formula Sat-chit-ananda. But even so, it is a very general and, after all, an inadequate description. It has to be filled in and supplemented by other categories as well, if one may say so. For Sat-chit-ananda presents to us the Sat Brahman. There is also the Asat Brahman. And again we must accept a reality which is neither Sat nor Asatnsadsnno sadst, says the Veda. And as for the filling up of the details in an otherwise almost blank and featureless infinity, Sri Aurobindo's charting of that vast unknownwith the categories of the Supermind and its various levels, of the Overmind and its levels too, all forming the Divine Status and Consciousness is a new, almost a revolutionary revelation, just the required science which the present world needs and demands and for which it has been prepared through all the cycles of evolution.
04.07 - Matter Aspires, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is asked now if the machine is capable of so much mathematics, may it not be capable also of poetic creation? The possibility has been discussed in a very lively and interesting manner in The Hibbert Journal (October, '49 and January, '50). The writer Sir Robert Watson-Watt thinks it is not impossible, indeed quite possible, for a machine to write, for example, a sonnet. Only the Question will be with regard to the kind the quality and standardof the poetic creation. What will come out of the machine will depend upon what has been put into it, that is to say, what the brain that constructed it succeeded in transplanting into it. The writer after weighing the pros and cons arrives at the remarkable and amusing conclusion that a machine built by a second class brain may succeed in producing a poem of third class merit, but it can never produce anything first class. To produce a first class poem through a machine at least a first class brain' must work at it. But the pity is that a Shakespeare or a Milton would prefer to write straight away a poem himself instead of trying to work it out through a machine which may give out in the end only a second class or worse production.
I said it is an amusing discussion. But what is apt to be forgotten in such "scientific" discussions is, as has been pointed out by Rev. Trethowan in his criticism of Sir Robert, that all genuine creation is a freak, that is to say, it is a movement of freedom, of incalculable spontaneity. A machine is exactly the sum of its component parts; it can give that work (both as regards quantity and quality) which is confined within the frame and function of the parts. Man's creative power is precisely this that it can make two and two not merely four but infinity. There is a force of intervention in him whichupsets the rule of the parallelogram of forces that normally governs Matter and even his own physical brain and mind. There is in him truly a deus ex machine. Poetry, art, all creative act is a revelation, an intrusion of a truth, a reality from another plane, of quite a different order, into the rigid actuality and factual determinism.. Man's secret person is a sovereignly free will. A machine is wholly composed of actualities-the given-and brings out only a resultant of the permutation and combination of the data: it is a pure deduction.
05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Creation as a movement or expression of consciousness need not be dubbed a metaphysical jargon; it can be assumed as a scientific working hypothesis and seen how it affects our view, meets our problems and difficulties, whether it can give a satisfactory clue to some of the riddles of physical and psychical phenomena. A scientific supposition (or intuition) is held to be true if it can be applied invariably to facts of life and experience and if it can open up to our vision and perception new facts. The trend of scientific discoveries today is towards the positing of a background reality in Nature of which energy (radiant and electrical) is the first and overt form. We discarded ether, only to replace it by field and disposition. We have arrived at a point where the Question is whether we cannot take courage" in both hands and declare, as some have already done, that the substratum in Nature is consciousness-energy and on that hypothesis better explain certain movements of Matter and Life and Mind in a global unity. Orthodox and die-hard views will always protest and cry that it is a misalliance, a misjoinder to couple together Matter and Consciousness or even Life and Consciousness. But since the light has touched the higher mind even among a few of the positivist type, the few may very well be the precursor of the order of the day.
After all, only one bold step is needed: to affirm unequivocally what is being suggested and implied and pointed to in a thousand indirect ways. And Science will be transformed. The scientist too, like the famous Saltimbanque (clown) of a French poet, may one day in turning a somersault, suddenly leap up and find himself rolling into the bosom of the stars.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So the scientists of today are waking up to this disconcerting fact. And some have put the Question very boldly and frankly: do not all laws of Nature contain this original sin of the observer's interference, indeed may not the laws be nothing else but that? Thus Science has landed into the very heart the bog and quagmire, if you likeof abstruse metaphysics. Eddington says, there is no other go for Science today but to admit and delcare that its scheme and pattern of things, as described by what is called laws of Nature, is only a mental construct of the Scientist. The "wonderful" discoveries are nothing but jugglery and legerdemain of the mindwhat it puts out of itself unconsciously into the outside world, it recovers again and is astonished at the miracle. A scientific law is a pure deduction from the mind's own disposition. Eddington goes so far as to say that if a scientist is sufficiently introspective he can trace out from within his brain each and every law of Nature which he took so much pains to fish out from Nature by observation and experiment. Eddington gives an analogy to explain the nature of scientific law and scientific discovery. Suppose you have a fishing net of a particular size and with interstices of a particular dimension; you throw it into the sea and pull out with fishes in it. Now you count and assort the fishes, and according to the data thus obtained, you declare that the entire sea consists of so many varieties of fish and of such sizes. The only error is that you could not take into account the smaller fishes that escaped through the interstices and the bigger ones that did not at all fall into the net. Scientific statistics is something of this kind. Our mind is the net, and the pattern of Nature is determined by the mind's own pattern.
Eddington gives us absolutely no hope for any knowledge of an objective world apart from the objectification of mind's own constructs. This is a position which a scientist, quascientist, finds it difficult to maintain. Remedies and loop-holes have been suggested with what result we shall presently see.
--
Apart from the standpoint of theoretical physics developed by Einstein, the more practical aspect as brought out in Wave Mechanics leads us into no less an abstract and theoretical domain. The Newtonian particle-picture, it is true, has been maintained in the first phase of modern physics which specialised in what is called Quantum Mechanics. But waves or particlesalthough the Question as to their relative validity and verity still remains opendo not make much difference in the fundamental outlook. For in either view, the individual unit is beyond the ken of the scientist. A wave is not a wave but just the probability of a wave: it is not even a probable wave but a probability wave. Thus the pattern that Wave Mechanics weaves to show the texture of the ultimate reality is nothing more than a calculus of probabilities. By whichever way we proceed we seem to arrive always at the same inevitable conclusion.
So it is frankly admitted that what Science gives is not a faithful description of actuality, not a representation of material existence, but certain conventions or convenient signs to put together, to make a mental picture of our sensations and experiences. That does not give any clue to what the objective reality mayor may not be like. Scientific laws are mental rules imposed upon Nature. It may be asked why does Nature yield to such imposition? There must be then some sort of parallelism or commensurability between Nature and the observing Mind, between the pattern of Nature and the Mind's scheme or replica of it. If we successfully read into Nature things of the Mind, that means that there must be something very common between the two. Mind's readings are not mere figments, hanging in the air; for they are justified by their applicability, by their factual translation. This is arguing in a circle, a thorough-going mentalist like Eddington would say. What are facts? What is life? Anything more than what the senses and the mind have built up for us?
Jeans himself is on the horns of a dilemma.2 Being a scientist, and not primarily a mathematician like Eddington, he cannot very well acquiesce in the liquidation of the material world; nor can he refute successfully the facts and arguments that Science itself has brought forward in favour of mentalism. He wishes to keep the Question open for further light and surer grounds. In the meanwhile, however, he is reconciled to a modified form of mentalism. The laws of Nature, he says, are surely subjective in the sense that astronomical or geographical concepts, for example, such as the system of latitudes, longitudes, equator and axis, ellipse and quadrant and sextant, are subjective. These lines and figures are' not drawn physically upon the earth or in space: they are mental constructs, they are pointers or notations, but they note and point to the existence and the manner of existence of real objects in a real world.
In other words, one tries to come back more or less to the common-sense view of things. One does not argue about what is naturally given as objective reality; whatever the mental gloss over it, it is there all the same. One accepts it, takes it on trust, if you likeone can admit even that it is an act of faith, as Russell and the Neo-Realists would maintain.
05.29 - Vengeance is Mine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The right attitude, then, for a sadhak who has to live dangerously in the world of today is to rise above the turmoils that surge around, to lift the consciousness to a serener height and aspire wholly towards the help and guidance from above, not to be moved by the blast that passes but hold himself firmly anchored upon the rock of ages, the Divine Grace. It is only then that the Question can come of actually taking part in the battle of life for it is then that you can act as God's agent or instrument. If you have to take to the field of actual battle you must first receive God's commission (chaprashas Ramakrishna called it), even as Arjuna did.
***
05.34 - Light, more Light, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Question of false light or of wrong perception need not trouble you too much. If you are sincere, if you have the correct attitude, things will come always right to you. The trouble is for him who is not himself true or does not propose to be true.
This spontaneous recognition of the light in you is also called, in the Yogic language, openness. It means you are ready, at least, something in you is ready, to accept and admit the light when it presents itself before you. If you have any hesitation to receive it for its own sake, if you wish to corroborate your initial perception you can look for its sign manual: the peace, the freedom, the elevation, the quiet certitude, the exquisite sweetness or gladness it brings, its own luminosity which is found neither here nor elsewhere but in its own body of self.
06.10 - Fatigue and Work, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Question is not about your scope and capacity. All depends upon your attitude, the consciousness with which you approach a work, especially when you are a sadhak. When a work comes to you or when you have to do a work, you must take it up as a thing worth doing. Whatever the value given to it normally or you often put upon it, you should not neglect or merely tolerate it, but welcome it and set about it with the utmost conscientiousness possible. Even if it were a trifling insignificant thing, a menial affair, for example, do not consider it as mean or beneath your dignity. Directly you begin to do a thing in the right spirit, you will find it becoming miraculously interesting. Try to bring perfection even in that bit of insignificance. Do it with a goodwill, even if it is scrubbing the floor, telling yourself: I must do it as best I can, that is to say, this too I shall do even better than a servant, I shall make the floor look really neat and clean and beautiful. That is the crux of the matter. You should try to bring out the best in you and put it into your work. In other words, the work becomes an instrument of progress. The goodwill, attention, concentration, self-forgetfulness and the control over yourself, over your organs and nerves the smaller the work the more detailed is the control gainedall which are involved in doing a work perfectly, with as much perfection as it is possible for you to command, are elements called forth in you and help to make you a better man. Indeed a work for which you have no preferential bias, to which you are not emotionally attached, even indifferent normally, may be of especial help, for you will be able to do it with less nervous disturbance, with a large amount of detachment and disinterestedness.
Man usually chooses his work or is made to choose a work because of a vital preference, a prejudice or notion that it is the kind in which he can shine or succeed. This egoistic vanity or opportunism may be necessary or unavoidable in ordinary life; but when one wishes to go beyond the ordinary life and aspires for the true life, this attachment or personal choice is more an impediment than a help to progress, towards finding the way to the true life. The Yogic attitude to work therefore is that of absolute detachment, not to have any choice, but to accept and do whatever is given to you, whatever comes to you in your normal course of life and do it with the utmost perfection possible. It is in that way and that way alone that all work becomes supremely interesting, and all life a miracle of delight.
06.35 - Second Sight, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The animal acts by instinct, we say; that is to say, it goes straight to the thing to be done: in order to do a thing it does not make a choice between possibilities, there is no selective process in its consciousness. It is the human consciousness alone that says, this is not to be done, but that to be done, not this but that or puts the Question, which one, to be or not to be? This is what we mean by discrimination or deliberation. Normally, this faculty is absent in the animal. We have said of refined feelings in man; refined here need not mean always ennobled or morally elevated; it may mean also more subtle, more complicated and be applied to some baseracutely perversefeelings which are perhaps peculiarly human. Domestic animals sometimes contract them from men: jealousy, spitefulness, vengeance, vindictiveness of an extreme degree are likely to be found more among animals living with men than those that are in the wild state. We have heard of elephants brooding over a hurt or even an insult for long months and taking revenge when occasion presents itself. And we have heard of a cat jumping out of a window into the street below and killing itself simply because it thought its mistress showed more love towards another cat.
The humanising of animals living with men, through its good and bad effects, has an evolutionary value: that is to say, some animals in that way attain almost to a human status in their soul. And occultists state that souls do pass in this manner from the animal to the human incarnation.
06.36 - The Mother on Herself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The truth I bring will manifest itself and will be embodied upon earth; for, it is the earth's and world's inevitable destiny. the Question of time is not relevant. In one respect the truth which I say will be made manifest is already fully manifest, is already realised and established: there is no question of time there. It is in a consciousness timeless or eternally present. There is a process, a play of translation between that timeless poise and the poise in time that we know here below. The measure of that hiatus is very relative, relative to the consciousness that measures, long or short according to the yardstick each one brings. But that is not the essence of the problem: the essence is that the truth is there active, in the process of materialisation, only one should have the eye to see it and the soul to greet it.
***
07.11 - The Problem of Evil, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As to the Question why this deviation, this evil at all, I can say, first of all, what you call evil may be only what is not convenient to you, but from the standpoint of universal arrangement that may be the most convenient. Secondly, the thing might have been just an accident, so to say, in the beginning. And what we are concerned with is not so much its why or even how but with the remedy to be found for the evil that is there. Viewing philosophically, however, we may note that the universe in which we live is evidently one movement out of many (actual and possible), that it follows its own law which is not the same elsewhere, that if the principle on which this universe has been created is that of free will, then you cannot prevent the disorderly movement from taking place until a knowledge comes and illumines the choice. If one is free to choose, one may choose the wrong thing, not necessarily the right thing, for if it were decided beforeh and that the choice must be always good and in the right direction, then the choice would no longer be free.
But in reality these questions cannot be adequately answered in that way. It is a problem to which mental answersof which the mental formulations evenonly serve to diminish the dimensions of the problem; the Question itself reduces the problem to a more or less elementary formula corresponding only vaguely and superficially and incompletely to the reality of things.
To be able to understand you must become. If you want to understand the why and the how of the universe you must identify yourself with the universe. And that is not easy.
In truth, the Question itself is wrong. It is childish. It presupposes things that are themselves questionable. There are certain ideas about creation which have been almost universally current, more or less permanently accepted by human thought during ages; they are of an astounding simplicity. There is a world here, it is said, and up there somewhere there is a being called God; This person one day thought of creating some kind of thing, a visible form. The world was the result. Evidently we see a lot of mistakes in his work. We conclude the creator perhaps is a well-meaning benevolent person, but not all-powerful; some other thing or being there is that contradicts him. Or perhaps he is all-powerful but then has no heart and must be cruelty itselfviewing the condition of his creation which is a story of sorrow and trouble and misery. Such an idea, I say, is simplicity itself, the simplicity of a child brain. When one speaks of God the creator as a potter making a pot, one thinks of him as a human being, only in bigger proportions. Truly, it is not God who has made man in his image, it is man who has made God in his image.
As I say, the Question is wrongly put. The very form of the Question already assumes a certain notion about God and creation. Your postulates or axioms themselves are vitiated.
The universe and its creator are not separate things, they are one and identical in their origin. The universe is God himself projected into Space (and Time). So the universe is the Divine in one aspect or another. You cannot divide the two, making one the creator and the other, his work, the watch-maker and his watch. You put your idea of the Divine upon him and ask, why he has created such a nasty world. If the Divine were to answer, It is not I, it is yourself. Become myself again, you will no longer feel and see as you do now you are not yourself, therefore your question and your problem! Indeed, when you unite your consciousness with the divine consciousness there is no longer any problem. Everything appears then natural and simple, and correct and as it should be. It is when you cut yourself from your origin and stand outside, in front of him and against him that all the trouble begins. Of course you may ask, how is it that the Divine has tolerated a part of himself going out and separating itself and creating all this disorder? I would reply on behalf of the Divine, If you want to know, you had better unite yourself with the Divine, for that is the only way of knowing why he has done so. It is not by questioning him by your mind that you will get the answer. The mind cannot know. And repeat, when you come to this identification, all problems are solved. The feeling, one can explain, that things are not all right, that they should be otherwise comes precisely from the fact that there is a divine will unfolding itself in a continuous progression, that things that were and are have to give place to things that shall be and shall be better and better than they have been. The world that was good yesterday will no longer be so tomorrow. The universe might have appeared quite harmonious in some other age but now appears quite discordant: it is because we see the possibility of a better universe. If we found it as it should be, we would not do what we have to do, we would not try to make it better. Even so, we would conceive the Divine in a very human way; for we remain imprisoned within ourselves, confined to this consciousness of ours which is like a grain of sand in the infinite immensity. You want to understand the immensity? That is not possible. It is possible only under one condition; be one with the immensity. The drop of water cannot very well ask how the ocean is: it has to lose itself into the ocean.
07.19 - Bad Thought-Formation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are many things in the world you do not approve of. Some people who, as they put it, wish to have the knowledge, want to find out why it is so. It is a line of knowledge. But I say it is much more important to find out how to make things otherwise than they are at present. That is exactly the problem Buddha set before himself. He sat under a tree and continued till he found the solution. The solution, however, is not very satisfactory: You say, the world is bad, let us then do away with the world; but to whose profit, as Sri Aurobindo asks very pertinently? The world will no longer be bad, since it will exist no more. The world will have to be rolled back into its origin, the original pure existence or non-existence. Then man will be, in Sri Aurobindo's words, the all-powerful master of something that does not exist, an emperor without an empire, a king without a kingdom. It is a solution. But there are others, which are better. We consider ours to be the best. There are some who say, like the Buddha, evil comes from ignorance, remove the ignorance and evil will disappear. Others say that evil comes from division, from separation; if the universe were not separated from its origin, there would be no evil. Others again declare that it is an evil will that is the cause of all, of separation and ignorance. Then the Question is, where does this bad will come from? If it were at the origin of things, it must have been in the origin itself. And then some question the bad will itself,there is no such thing, essentially, fundamentally, it is pure illusion.
Do animals have a bad will?
08.16 - Perfection and Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Question still remains whether the thing can happen and will happen individually before it happens collectively. But no individual realisation even can be complete or approach perfection, unless and until it is in harmony with a group consciousness representing a new world. There is always an interdependence between the individual and the collective so much so that an individual realisation is bound to be restricted and diminished in an unresponsive atmosphere. Earth life as a whole has to follow a certain curve of progress in order that a new world and a new consciousness may appear in it.
So the future realisation does depend, partially at least, upon you, individually and collectively. Have you ever tried to conceive what the new consciousness might mean, what the new race and the new world would look like?
08.21 - Human Birth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, a fully formed conscious soul wanting to take birth looks generally from its psychic domain for a corresponding psychic light upon some place on earth. In its previous birth, before leaving the earthly atmosphere, it chose, as the result of its total experience in that life, the conditions of its future life, not in details, but more or less in a general way. Such cases are very exceptional. We here perhaps can speak of it, but for the majority of the human population, even among the most well-educated, the Question does not arise.
Normally we are dealing with a soul that is growing, which is in the process of its growth. Now, there are all the stages of growth, from the tiniest spark that is becoming a little flame of light up to the fully conscious and fully formed being. This ascent of the soul in order to become a mature conscious being, having its own will and deciding its own destiny, takes thousands of years.
08.25 - Meat-Eating, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But if you wish to move from the ordinary life to a higher life, the problem acquires an interest. And again, for a higher life if you wish to move up still farther and prepare yourself for transformation, then the problem becomes very important. For there are certain foods that help the body to become more refined and others that keep it down to the level of animalhood. But it is only then that the Question acquires an importance, not before. Before you come to that point, you have a lot of other things to do. It is certainly better to purify your mind, purify your vital before you think of purifying your body. For even if you take all possible precautions and live physically with every care to eat only the things that help to refine the body, but the mind and the vital remain full of desire and inconscience and obscurity and all the rest, your care will serve no purpose. Your body will become perhaps weak, disharmonious with your inner life and drop off one day.
You must begin from within. I have said a hundred times, you must begin from above. You must purify first the higher regions and then purify the lower ones. I do not mean by this that you should give yourself up to all the licences that degrade the body. I do not mean that at all. I am not advising you not to control your desires. What I mean is this: do not try to be an angel in the body before you are already something of the kind in your mind and in your vital. For that will bring about a dislocation, a lack of balance. And I have always said that to maintain the balance, all the parts must progress together. In trying to bring light into one part you must not leave another part in darkness. You must not leave any obscure corner anywhere.
08.26 - Faith and Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One must aspire, it is indispensable; but there are people who aspire and yet with so much conflict within them, between faith and want of faith, trust and distrust, between optimism that is sure of victory and pessimism that is just waiting for the catastrophe to come etc., etc. If such is the state of your being, you may aspire but nothing will come out of it. You say, "I aspire and I get nothing"; that is because you are demolishing your aspiration all the while by your want of trust. But if truly you have the trust, things would be different. Children, for example, when they are left to themselves, when they have not been deformed by elderly people, have a great confidence that everything will be all right. When they have an accident they never think that it will be anything serious. They have the spontaneous conviction that it will be set right soon and that helps things to get right soon. When you aspire for the Force, ask for the Divine's help, if you do it with an unshakable certitude that the thing will come, in that case, it is impossible for it not to come. In fact, as I say, such a conviction is in itself an inner opening. There are people who are naturally and automatically in this condition. Whenever or wherever there occurs an opportunity to receive something from above they are there present. And there are others who always fail to be on the spot when there is an occasion for the descent: they close themselves at the right moment. But they who have the childlike reliance they never miss an opportunity. It is a very curious phenomenon. Apparently there may not be much difference between the two types. Both may have the same goodwill, the same aspiration, the same desire to do one's best, but he who has a happy confidence in him, who does not question, who does not ask if he will have the thing or not, whether the Divine will answer or notfor, to him that is not the Question, it is understood and taken for granted: "The thing I need I shall be given," he says, "if I pray my prayer will be granted, in am in difficulty and I ask for help, the help will come, it will not only come but settle everything"I say, the person who has such a spontaneous, candid, unquestioning reliance gets the best conditions under which an effective descent can take place; its action then is marvellous.
It is with your mental contradictions and doubts that you spoil everything, with this kind of ideas that enter into you when you are in difficulty: "It is impossible, I shall never come to the end of it, supposing the situation gets worse, supposing I am to roll down etc., etc... " In this way you build up a wall between yourself and the Force that you want to receive.
08.33 - Opening to the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You are to open yourself to the Divine and receive Him. Usually you open yourself in all directions to everything and everybody in the world. You open your surface being and receive there all sorts of influences from all quarters. So inside you there-comes about what we can call a hotch-potch of all contrary and contradictory movements: and that creates difficulties without number. Now instead of that, live away from the surface, from the outside and open up to the Divine and receive nothing hut the Divine force. If you can do that all difficulties practically disappear. But, of course, the trouble is there. Unless one is alchemically conditioned, it is an impossibility to have relations with people, to talk to them, to deal with them, have interchanges with them and yet not absorb something out of them. If one can surround oneself with an atmosphere that acts as a filter, then all that come from outside are checked and sifted before they reach you or touch you. That needs a good training and a large experience. That is why people in ancient days who wanted an easier path took to solitude, into the depths of the forest, on the top of a hill or under a cave so that they might not have to deal with people for that naturally reduces undesirable interchanges. Only, it has also been found that such people begin to take an enormous interest in the life of animals and plants instead of men: for it is indeed difficult to do without interchange with something or other. So the best thing would be to face the problem squarely, to clo the yourself with an atmosphere totally concentrated on the Divine so that whatever passes across is filtered in its passage. And further, there is the Question of food. The body is obliged to take in foreign matter in order to subsist, it would therefore absorb at the same time a fair quantity of inert and unconscious forces or that of some not very desirable consciousness. I once spoke to you of the consciousness that one absorbs with food, there is also unconsciousness that one absorbs in the same way. That is why in many systems of Yoga you are advised to offer first to the Divine your food and then eat it: it means calling down the Divine into your food before absorbing it. Offering means putting in contact: the food is put in contact with type Divine, i.e. put under His influence. This is a very good, a very useful procedure; if you knew how to do it, it would diminish very much the labour of the inner transformation that one has to do. For in the world we live in solidarity with all others. You cannot take in a single breath of air without absorbing the vibrations, the numberless vibrations that come from all kinds of movements and all kinds of people. So if you want to keep yourself intact, you must, as I have said, maintain yourself in the condition of a filter allowing nothing undesirable to enter. Or put on a mask as one does when crossing an infected and poisoned locality, or do something similar.
One must have around oneself an atmosphere so condensed, condensed in a spirit of total surrender, that nothing can enter without being automatically filtered. There are wicked thoughts, evil will about you, harmful formations sent out by bad people. The air pullulates with these: dark noisome bacilli. It is so troublesome to be always on the look-out, at every step to be on one's guard, to move slowly with care and caution and precautions; even then one is not sure. But if you cover yourself with the cloak of light, the light of a happy, sincere surrender, and aspiration, that is a wonderful filter, that gives you automatic protection. The undesirable forces not only cannot enter, they are thrown back upon their originator, the attackers themselves become their own victims.
09.05 - The Story of Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Besides, it is sure and certain that as soon as you are truly in love, you do not put the Question any more. It is so childish, ridiculous and insignificant to put the Question. As soon as you are truly in love, you have the entire plenitude of delight and realisation. You do not need any kind of response. You are the Love. That is all. You have the full satisfaction of love. And there is no need of reciprocity.
IV
09.12 - The True Teaching, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
On other occasions, the Question posed and the subject chosen are conveyed by the mind to the higher Consciousness. The mind receives a response from that Consciousness and conveys it through the word. This is what generally happens in all teachings, provided that the one who teaches has the capacity to pass the Question on to the higher Consciousnessa capacity not always present.
I should tell you that the second method does not interest me much. Very often, when the Question or the subject fails to give me the possibility of entering into a state of consciousness that interests me, I far prefer to keep silent. And it is, as it were, a sense of duty that makes me talk.
I am informing you in advance, because in the past I have cut short the conversation and passed abruptly into meditation.
09.13 - On Teachers and Teaching, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If you have passed through that discipline and succeeded, then you will not have wasted your time here. I ask everyone who accepts the work of giving lessons to accept it in that spirit. It is all very nice to be obliging, to give service, to be useful; it is a very good thing, certainly. But it is only one side, perhaps the most unimportant side of the Question. The much greater, more important side is this, that you have been given the Grace so that you may arrive at mastering yourself, at an understanding of your subject and of other persons which you could not have done but for this opportunity. And if you have not profited during all these years that you have been teaching, well, it means you have wasted at least half of your time.
What about the organisation of studies at the Ashram school? If the students are given full freedom, as it is supposed you have given them, that is to say, if they are permitted to come to the classes or go away from them as they like or learn or not learn their lessons according to their choice, then how can a system or organisation work?
09.14 - Education of Girls, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Question is about our physical education and, in a general way, the psychological basis of our activities here. These things have, of course, been written about and spoken of by me and by Sri Aurobindo very often, but evidently the idea does not seem to have entered your consciousness.
I do not wish to wage a war against what you feel and do, but I would like you at least to understand why things are done here in the way they are being done instead of letting yourself go thoughtlessly in a retrograde movement towards all that is done elsewhere, under the plea that that is how your fathers and grandfa thers and great grandfa thers and all the ancestors of yourself and of all your friends and relatives did in the past and considered it as the normal and natural way of doing things.
09.16 - Goal of Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You say it is obvious that evolution has a goal and that it cannot stop here or now. It seems to you obvious because you have read Sri Aurobindo's books. But if you take anybody you meet in the street and ask him what is the purpose of the universe or of the evolution, you will see that he will answer by saying that he knows nothing about it. Even here there are many, perhaps hundreds, if you ask them individually not to repeat what they have read but to say what they feel and think by themselves about the Question, what is the intention behind the universal evolution or whether there is any intention at all, they will not be able to give a better answer. I do not think that there are many who will be able to tell you in all sincerity, "It is like this, it is like that, it is evident, etc., etc." A good number may be able to quote passages from Sri Aurobindo; otherwise, if you cease thinking, thinking with what you have read or heard, if you try to express your own personal experience, would you have any certitude to declare? I do not speak of the result of what you have learnt, what you have read or heard about, I speak of your own personal experience, exclusively genuinely your own, something that is evident because it is your life and realisation. Are you capable of anything of that kind?
If you have an experience of the kind, I shall be glad to congratulate you and say that you have not wasted your time here.
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Like a perfect lady, I have kept the tit bit to the last. It is absolutely essential to begin a magical diary, and keep it up daily. You begin by an account of your life, going back even before your birth to your ancestry. In conformity with the practice which you may perhaps choose to adopt later, given in Liber Thisarb, sub figura CMXIII, paragraphs 27-28, Magick, pp. 420-422, you must find an answer to the Question: "How did I come to be in this place at this time, engaged in this particular work?" As you will see from the book, this will start you on the discovery of who you really are, and eventually lead you to your recovering the memory of previous incarnations.
As it is difficult for you to come to Town except at rare and irregular intervals, may I suggest a plan which has previously proved very useful, and that is a weekly letter. Eliphas Lvi did this with the Baron Spedalieri, and the correspondence is one of the most interesting of his works. You ask such questions as you wish to have answered, and I answer them to the best of my ability. I, of course, add spontaneous remarks which may be elicited by my observations on your progress and the perusal of your magical diary. This, of course, should be written on one side of the paper only, so that the opposite page is free for comments, and an arrangement should be made for it to be inspected at regular intervals.
--
It occurs to me that so far we have done nothing about the astral plane and this path of Tau of which you speak. Have you had any experience of travelling in the astral? If not, do you think that you can begin by yourself on the lines laid down in Liber O, sections 5 and 6? (See Magick, pp. 387-9). If not you had better let me take you through the first gates. the Question of noise instantly arises; I think we should have to do it not earlier than nine o'clock at night, and I don't know whether you can manage this.
Love is the law, love under will.
1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Science, as we know, is fast reaching the point where it will be forced to admit the fact of the etheric body, because the difficulties of refusing to acknowledge it, will be far more insuperable than an admission of its existence. Scientists admit already the fact of etheric matter; the success of photographic endeavor has demonstrated the reality of that which has hitherto been considered unreal, because (from the standpoint of the physical) intangible. Phenomena are occurring all the time which remain in the domain of the supernatural unless accounted for through the medium of etheric matter, and in their anxiety to prove the spiritualists wrong, scientists have aided the cause of the true and higher spiritism by falling back on reality, and on the fact of the etheric body, even though they consider it a body of [89] emanative radiationbeing concerned with the effect and not having yet ascertained the cause. Medical men are beginning to study (blindly as yet) the Question of vitality, the effect of solar rays upon the physical organism, and the underlying laws of inherent and radiatory heat. They are beginning to ascribe to the spleen functions hitherto not recognised, to study the effect of the action of the glands, and their relation to the assimilation of the vital essences by the bodily frame. They are on the right road, and before long (perhaps within this century) the FACT of the etheric body and its basic function will be established past all controversy, and the whole aim of preventive and curative medicine will shift to a higher level. All we can do here is to give simply, and in a condensed form, a few facts which may hasten the day of recognition, and further the interest of the true investigator. Let me, therefore, briefly state what will be dealt with in our remaining three points:
The functions of the etheric body.
1.00c - INTRODUCTION, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
again to that absolute. This being granted, the Question is,
which is better, the absolute or this state? There are not
--
Now the Question arises, is going back to God the higher state,
or is it not? The philosophers of the Yoga school answer
1.00 - Preface, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Since the Question of Magick has been slightly dealt with in the last chapter of this book, it is perhaps advisable here to state that the interpretations given to certain doctrines and to some of the Hebrew letters border very closely on magical formulae. I have purposely refrained, however, from entering into a deeper consideration of the Practical Qabalah, although several hints of value may be discovered in the explanation of the Tetragrammaton, for example, which may prove of no inconsiderable service. As I have previously remarked, this book is primarily intended as an elementary textbook of the Qabalah, interpreted as a new system for philosophical classification. This must consti- tute my sole excuse for what may appear to be a refusal to deal more adequately with methods of Attainment.
- Israel Regardie.
1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
further reason to exist. The impulse had only occurred, because of the Question I was attempting to
answer: how can men do terrible things to one another? I meant other men, of course bad men but I
had still asked the Question. There was no reason for me to assume that I would receive a predictable or
personally meaningless answer.
1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Being more or less bankrupt, the best thing we can do is to attack the problem afresh without preconceived ideas. Let us begin by doubting every statement. Let us find a way of subjecting every statement to the test of experiment. Is there any truth at all in the claims of various religions? Let us examine the Question.
Our original difficulty will be due to the enormous wealth of our material. To enter into a critical examination of all systems would be an unending task; the cloud of witnesses is too great. Now each religion is equally positive; and each demands faith. This we refuse in the absence of positive proof. But we may usefully inquire whether there is not any one thing upon which all religions have agreed: for, if so, it seems possible that it may be worthy of really thorough consideration.
--
This is the object of the usual monastic vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience. If you have no property, you have no care, nothing to be anxious about; with chastity no other person to be anxious about, and to distract your attention; while if you are vowed to obedience the Question of what you are to do no longer frets: you simply obey.
There are a great many other obstacles which you will discover as you go on,and it is proposed to deal with each in turn. But let us pass by for the moment to the point where you are nearing success.
1.00 - The way of what is to come, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
40. In 1913, Jung called this process the introversion of the libido (On the Question of psychological types, CW 6).
41. In 1912, Jung had written, "It is a common error to judge longing in terms of the quality of the object... Nature is only beautiful on account of the longing and love accorded to it by man. The aesthetic attributes emanating therefrom apply first and foremost to the libido, which alone accounts for the beauty of nature" (Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, CW B, 147).
1.012 - Sublimation - A Way to Reshuffle Thought, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
But vairagya is not an abandonment of things in the world. It is an abandonment of false values, the wrong interpretation of things, and a misconstruing of one's relationship with everything around oneself. It is this erroneous notion about things around oneself that is the reason for attachments, aversions, likes, dislikes, and what not. So also is the principle of self-control. A rejection of an existent value is impossible. This is very important to remember. Anything that is real cannot be rejected. If we think that the world is real, we cannot abandon it - the Question of abandoning it does not arise. Anything which has already been declared to be real cannot be abandoned. How can we abandon real things? So, also, if self-control or self-restraint implies a withdrawal of consciousness from those things or values which are real and external to oneself, then it is impossible, because the consciousness or the mind which is expected to withdraw itself from externals will insist that abandonment of real values is impracticable and unadvisable.
Here we have not merely an effort of the will, but an educative process of the understanding. Understanding plays a very serious role in every walk of life. When the understanding is clear, the will can be applied in its implementation. But, the will is not to be applied bereft of understanding. Otherwise, that which the understanding has not accepted as correct will react upon us it will have a deleterious effect upon the entire system. That which the understanding or the reason cannot accept, our whole personality will not accept, and that which we cannot accept cannot become part of our nature; and thus, a new difficulty will be created.
--
Consciousness does not move in a direction without a purpose; and if the purpose is meaningful, at least from its own point of view, nobody can resist it. It sees a meaning in the way in which it moves towards the object, and when the meaning is there, then naturally nobody can control it. "I see significance in it. There is a purpose behind it and there is a reason a very good reason for my action in that direction," says consciousness. So the Question of controlling the movement of consciousness does not arise. If the movement is meaningless, we may control it; but if it is meaningful, how can we control it? So, the resisting of the vehemence of consciousness in the direction of an object is possible only if the meaning that it reads into the object is sublimated.
As long as we see a meaning in a thing, there is no doubt about it, and nobody else can influence us. No law, no order will work against a meaning that is seen by a person with open eyes. If I tell you that it is midnight, you will not believe it. "Why are you saying it is midnight? You can see it is daylight." We have faith that it is daytime on account of our clear perception of daylight. We are seeing it directly, and why is someone saying it is something else? So when consciousness sees a peculiar and definite meaning or significance in an object in front of it which it regards as valuable, worthwhile and necessary for its happiness, then no law or order will operate against it. It breaks all laws, be they social, personal, or moral any law, whatever it is because it is the law of reality, and the law of reality is more powerful than any other law that is made by man. Why is it called the law of reality? It is called the law of reality because it is seen physically as an indubitable something about which there is no doubt in the mind, and we cannot frame a law contrary to what we see physically and palpably as something real.
--
Perceptions need not always be correct, though perceptions may insist that as long as they are there, the object is real. As long as the perceptions are there, their objects certainly will look real. Otherwise, it would not be a perception. But is the perception correct? This is the Question. Here we raise a very fundamental question which is philosophical, and even deeper than philosophical. When the emotion, the consciousness, directs itself towards an object for the achievement of its purpose, is it being motivated by a correct perception of values, or is it blundering in its attitude towards things due to certain other factors? Perhaps it is mistaken. Yet it will not accept the mistake as long as it sees things by an identification of itself with the object in front of it.
Here, we feel that the withdrawal of consciousness from its object would be something like tearing off our own skin from our body. How can we tear off our own skin? It would be terrible, but this is what is happening when we practise self-control. We are tearing off our flesh, and it is so painful. But the pain is lessened if the consciousness is properly educated and made to reasonably accept the background of its attitudes and the incorrectness of its perceptions, for reasons which are superior to the one that it is adopting at the present moment.
1.01 - A NOTE ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
If we are to find a definitive answer to the Question of the en-
titative progress of the Universe we must do so by adopting the
--
man soul the Question of whether the Universe is still developing
then becomes a matter of deciding whether the human spirit is still
1.01 - Appearance and Reality, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
'appearance' and 'reality', between what things seem to be and what they are. The painter wants to know what things seem to be, the practical man and the philosopher want to know what they are; but the philosopher's wish to know this is stronger than the practical man's, and is more troubled by knowledge as to the difficulties of answering the Question.
To return to the table. It is evident from what we have found, that there is no colour which pre-eminently appears to be _the_ colour of the table, or even of any one particular part of the table--it appears to be of different colours from different points of view, and there is no reason for regarding some of these as more really its colour than others. And we know that even from a given point of view the colour will seem different by artificial light, or to a colour-blind man, or to a man wearing blue spectacles, while in the dark there will be no colour at all, though to touch and hearing the table will be unchanged. This colour is not something which is inherent in the table, but something depending upon the table and the spectator and the way the light falls on the table. When, in ordinary life, we speak of _the_ colour of the table, we only mean the sort of colour which it will seem to have to a normal spectator from an ordinary point of view under usual conditions of light. But the other colours which appear under other conditions have just as good a right to be considered real; and therefore, to avoid favouritism, we are compelled to deny that, in itself, the table has any one particular colour.
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
"ascent." They have to speak of it so often that the Question naturally arises as to
what they are doing about their own spiritual ascent.
--
of forest, field, and stream long before the Question of moral
conscience ever existed. What is more, these beings were as
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the Question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits.
They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on.
1.01 - How is Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds Attained?, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
possessing these higher faculties gave instruction to others who were in search of them. Such a training is called occult (esoteric) training, and the instruction received therefrom is called occult (esoteric) teaching, or spiritual science. This designation naturally awakens misunderstanding. The one who hears it may very easily be misled into the belief that this training is the concern of a special, privileged class, withholding its knowledge arbitrarily from its fellow-creatures. He may even think that nothing of real importance lies behind such knowledge, for if it were a true knowledge-he is tempted to think-there would be no need of making a secret of it; it might be publicly imparted and its advantages made accessible to all. Those who have been initiated into the nature of this higher knowledge are not in the least surprised that the uninitiated should so think, for the secret of initiation can only be understood by those who have to a certain degree experienced this initiation into the higher knowledge of existence. the Question may be raised: how, then, under these circumstances, are the uninitiated to develop any human interest in this so-called esoteric knowledge?
p. 3
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When, by means of meditation, a man rises to union with the spirit, he brings to life the eternal in him, which is limited by neither birth nor death. The existence of this eternal being can only be doubted by those who have not themselves experienced it. Thus meditation is the way which also leads man to the knowledge, to the contemplation of his eternal, indestructible, essential being; and it is only through meditation that man can attain to such knowledge. Gnosis and Spiritual Science tell of the eternal nature of this being and of its reincarnation. the Question is often asked: Why does a man know nothing of his experiences beyond the borders of life and death? Not thus should we ask, but rather: How can we attain such knowledge? In right meditation the path is opened. This alone can
p. 34
1.01 - Introduction, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Now, among all the inquiries possible to the human spirit, those which are concerned with the very origin of being and of the universe are surely the most disinterested. What profit comparable to the results of our utilitarian Sciences can we reap from the discovery, even if that discovery be possible, of the first reasons of things? Among all the Questions that the mind can present to itself, this is, in appearance, the least useful; for that very reason it is in reality the most fertile. It is the most transcendent, the most daring of all, and for that reason we choose it in preference to all others.
For the boldest, the highest Wisdom! For the pioneers of action and thought, the heroic march through the paths of the unknown!
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
things, to the modern mind. the Question of the nature of the substance of sol the sun (to take a single
example) occupied the minds of those who practiced the pre-experimental science of alchemy for many
--
believe that the Question of how to act could even be reasonably asked, let alone answered:
Just because our moral philosophers knew the facts of morality only very approximately in arbitrary
--
desirability of the place travelled to depends on the valence of the place vacated. the Question of what
should be? (what line should be travelled?) therefore has contained within it, so to speak, three
--
We answer the Question what should be? by formulating an image of the desired future.
We cannot conceive of that future, except in relationship to the (interpreted) present and it is our
interpretation of the emotional acceptability of the present that comprises our answer to the Question what
is? [what is the nature (meaning, the significance) of the current state of experience?].
We answer the Question how then should we act? by determining the most efficient and self-consistent
strategy, all things considered, for bringing the preferred future into being.
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Sri Ramakrishna asked them: "Where do you live? What is your occupation? Why have you come to Baranagore?" M. answered the Questions, but he noticed that now and then the Master seemed to become absent-minded. Later he learnt that this mood is called bhava, ecstasy. It is like the state of the angler who has been sitting with his rod: the fish comes and swallows the bait, and the float begins to tremble; the angler is on the alert; he grips the rod and watches the float steadily and eagerly; he will not speak to anyone. Such was the state of Sri Ramakrishna's mind. Later M. heard, and himself noticed, that Sri Ramakrishna would often go into this mood after dusk, sometimes becoming totally unconscious of the outer world.
M: "Perhaps you want to perform your evening worship. In that case may we take our leave?"
1.01 - Meeting the Master - Authors first meeting, December 1918, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
But the Question: "Why did I order the Arya?" remained. On trying to find an answer I found that I had known him before the appearance of the Arya.
The Congress broke up at Surat in 1907. Sri Aurobindo had played a prominent part in that historic session. From Surat he came to Baroda, and at Vankaner Theatre and at Prof. Manik Rao's old gymnasium in Dandia Bazar he delivered several speeches which not only took the audience by storm but changed entirely the course of many lives. I also heard him without understanding everything that was spoken. But ever since I had seen him I had got the constant feeling that he was one known to me, and so my mind could not fix the exact time-moment when I knew him. It is certain that the connection seemed to begin with the great tidal wave of the national movement in the political life of India; but I think it was only the apparent beginning. The years between 1903 and 1910 were those of unprecedented awakening and revolution. The generations that followed also witnessed two or three powerful floods of the national movement. But the very first onrush of the newly awakened national consciousness of India was unique. That tidal wave in its initial onrush defined the goal of India's political ideal an independent republic. Alternating movements of ebb and flow in the national movement followed till in 1947 the goal was reached. The lives of leaders and workers, who rode, willingly and with delight on the dangerous crest of the tidal wave, underwent great transformations. Our small group in Gujarat got its goal fixed the winning of undiluted freedom for India.
--
But, though I had seen him from a distance and felt an unaccountable familiarity with him, still I had not yet met him personally. When the Question of putting into execution the revolutionary plan which Sri Aurobindo had given to my brother, the late C. B. Purani, at Baroda in 1907, arose, I thought it better to obtain Sri Aurobindo's consent to it. Barindra, his brother, had given the formula for preparing bombs to my brother, and I was also very impatient to begin the work. But still we thought it necessary to consult the great leader who had given us the inspiration, as the lives of many young men were involved in the plan.
I had an introduction to Sj. V. V. S. Aiyar who was then staying at Pondicherry. It was in December 1918 that I reached Pondicherry. I did not stay long with Mr. Aiyar. I took up my bundle of books mainly the Arya and went to No. 41, Rue Franois Martin, the Arya office, which was also Sri Aurobindo's residence. The house looked a little queer, on the right side, as one entered, were a few plantain trees and by their side a heap of broken tiles. On the left, at the edge of the open courtyard, four doors giving entrance to four rooms were seen. The verandah outside was wide. It was about eight in the morning. The time for meeting Sri Aurobindo was fixed at three o'clock in the afternoon. I waited all the time in the house, occasionally chatting with the two inmates who were there.
--
I paused for a moment, considered the Question with myself and said: "If you give the assurance, I can accept it."
"Then I give you the assurance that India will be free," he said in a serious tone.
--
It was time for me to leave. the Question of Indian freedom again arose in my mind, and at the time of taking leave, after I had got up to depart, I could not repress the Question it was a question of my very life for me: "Are you quite sure that India will be free?"
I did not, at that time, realise the full import of my query. I wanted a guarantee, and though the assurance was given my doubts had not completely disappeared.
1.01 - Necessity for knowledge of the whole human being for a genuine education., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
Dear friends! Our assignment for this educational conference is to answer the Question: What is the role of education and teaching to be for the future in terms of both the individual and society? Anyone who looks with an unbiased eye at modern civilization and its various institutions can hardly question the importance of this theme today (by today I mean the current decade in history). This theme touches on questions deep in the souls and hearts of a great many people.
Knowledge of the Whole Human Being
--
Rather than groping about in abstractions, lets just look at specifics; we shall examine one particular characteristic in human nature the temperament. Lets begin by looking not at a childs temperament, which of course offers us no choicewe have to educate each human being regardless of temperament (and well speak later about the childrens temperaments)but lets begin rather by looking at the teachers temperament. The teacher enters the school and meets the child with a very specific tem- peramentcholeric, sanguine, melancholic, or phlegmatic. the Question is: As educators, what can we do to control our own temperaments; how can we perhaps educate ourselves in relation to our own temperament? To answer this question we must first look directly at the fundamental question: How does a teachers temperament affect the child, just by being what it is?
The Choleric Temperament
--
Thus, we see that a fundamental issue in teaching and educa- tion is the Question of who the teacher is. What must really live in the children, what must vibrate and well up into their very hearts, wills, and eventually into their intellect, lives initially in the teach- ers. It arises simply through who they are, through their unique nature, character, and attitude of soul, and through what they bring the children out of their own self-development. So we can see how it is only a true knowledge of human nature, cultivated comprehensively, that can serve as the foundation for a true art of teaching and fulfill the living needs of education. Im eager to pursue these matters further in the lectures that follow.
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
Yogis and Sankhyas both avoid the Question of creation. The
Yogis want to establish a God, but carefully avoid this
1.01 - The Unexpected, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The morning meal however was stopped very soon, since it was too early for his appetite. Here I must mention a minor but interesting episode about tea. It was a well-known fact that Sri Aurobindo was fond of a daily cup of tea. The accident had upset that long standing habit. Now the Question was taken up. Dr. Manilal proposed that Sri Aurobindo should take a cup of marmite during the day as well as tea. Sri Aurobindo would not take both. I do not remember whether he took marmite at all, but I distinctly remember that he was taking tea. I also had a personal reason for this recollection, for I was, and even now am, a lover of tea, if not a mild addict. But Sri Aurobindo's way of drinking tea was rather odd; he had to drink it from a feeding cup! Could anyone relish a fine beverage taken out of a feeding cup, I wondered! Before the accident whenever we heard the tinkling sound of his spoon at midnight from his corner room, we used to say, "Sri Aurobindo is having tea!" One day he suddenly declared, "I won't take tea any more!" Thus a life-long habit was given up in an instant! This incident recalls another which took place many years earlier. It concerns his early habit of smoking cigars. A cigar was almost always between his lips. Once Devdas Gandhi, son of Mahatma Gandhi, visited him and saw the inevitable cigar. He shot the Question, "Why are you attached to smoking?" At once came the retort, "Why are you so attached to nonsmoking?" This gives us a hint that Sri Aurobindo smoked, but without any real attachment and the proof came a few years later when the Mother began to take charge of household affairs and smoking was indulged in by all the inmates. She favoured non-smoking. Without the slightest hesitation Sri Aurobindo put aside his cigar. There was an end to an inveterate habit without the least fuss.
To resume our story. When everything had settled down and our work had fallen into a regular pattern, the "famous" talks started, in the evening. At the beginning Sri Aurobindo, lying on his back, used to speak in a low voice to the group crowded near the bed. Naturally on that occasion all of us, except Purani who stood at a distance, would rally round to listen to his finely cadenced voice and his utterances on various topics made in an intimate tone. He would rarely look at anybody while talking.
1.01 - What is Magick?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
(Illustration: Two generations ago it was supposed theoretically impossible that man should ever know the chemical composition of the fixed stars. It is known that our senses are adapted to receive only an infinitesimal fraction of the possible rates of vibration. Modern instruments have enabled us to detect some of these suprasensibles by indirect methods, and even to use their peculiar qualities in the service of man, as in the case of the rays of Hertz and Rntgen. As Tyndall said, man might at any moment learn to perceive and utilize vibrations of all conceivable and inconceivable kinds. the Question of Magick is a question of discovering and employing hitherto unknown forces in nature. We know that they exist, and we cannot doubt the possibility of mental or physical instruments capable of bringing us in relation with them.)
13. Every man is more or less aware that his individuality comprises several orders of existence, even when he maintains that his subtler principles are merely symptomatic of the changes in his gross vehicle. A similar order may be assumed to extend throughout nature.
1.020 - The World and Our World, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The subject of our discussion is the mental cognition of objects. In the experience of an object, does the mind influence the object, or does the object influence the mind? This is the central issue in all philosophical schools, which has led to various divergent doctrines such as idealism, realism, materialism, subjectivism, etc. There has been very little progress towards an answer to this query because, just as we cannot know whether the beauty that we see in an object is in our own mind or if it is really in the object, so there is the Question is the mind influencing the object, or is the object influencing the mind? The difficulty arises on account of the position of the perceiving subject itself. To hold that the mind entirely influences the object, that it determines it in every manner, would be another way of saying that we have created the world and everything is in our hands which does not seem to be the truth of things.
Everything does not seem to be in our hands. We cannot change the pattern of things. We cannot make the sun rise in the west merely because we think that it should be so. So there seems to be something which is outside the jurisdiction of mental operations, to which the operations of the mind should accord, and whose law the mind has to follow. We cannot suddenly imagine that a cup of milk is identical with a stone. The stone and the milk are not identical, and the mind cannot change one into the other by any amount of thought. So, the hard reality, in the form of an external something which the world presents before the mind, has led many to conclude that the mind cannot determine the objects. On the other hand, the objects have a reality of their own and they influence the mind, so that the mind subjects itself to the conditions of the object, rather than conditions the object by its own laws.
--
So, the birth or death, the life or the extinction of a person, is not the real cause of the joy or sorrow of a person. It is the reaction that the mind sets up in respect of a particular event as it is conveyed to it subjectively which is considered as being the cause of its joy and sorrow. This is another interpretation. With all our thinking, we cannot come to a definite conclusion about the nature of things. We cannot say whether our mind is largely responsible for our joys and sorrows, or whether objects also have some say in this matter. The difficulty arises on account of a relativity of action and reaction between subject and object, and no one has answered this question properly. Similar to this is the Question of the perception of beauty in things. No one can say, even today, whether the beauty is present in the object outside, or present in the mind inside. Somehow we reconcile ourselves by saying that both factors coincide, and there is some truth in this side and some truth in that side.
The difficulty is simply because the mind cannot think both ways, and the truth lies neither on this side nor on that side. The isolation of the individual from its relationship with the pattern of things is the cause of its difficulty in understanding anything. The whole universe is an organic structure in which the percipient is included as a vital part. For instance, we cannot study the nature of the heart of a human being by removing it from the body. Though it is a fleshy substance and can be examined pathologically, medically, etc., studying it like this would be meaningless because the moment the heart is removed from the body it ceases to be a heart and becomes only a lump of flesh. The heart has to be studied in its connection with the body in its working condition, and not by isolating it from the organic relationship it has with the body.
--
If unity is the whole truth there would be no need of perception, and the Question of attraction would not arise, because the subject has basically become one with the object, and is one with it. Where there is an utter unity of the subject and the object, neither perception would be there, nor any kind of love or hatred. If there is utter isolation, even then there would be no perception. If we are really disconnected from all things, we can neither see anything, nor can we have love and hatred towards things.
If we are really one with things, then also it is the same thing. So either way, whether we emphasise the unity aspect or the diversity aspect exclusively, we find that there is no perception, and no love and hatred. Perception and love and hatred are hybrids born out of a mixed-up attitude that has arisen on account of a transference of values, by which what is meant is, a little of the unity aspect is transferred to the diversity aspect, and a little of the diversity aspect is transferred to the unity aspect, so that we live in a very utterly false world of created counterfeit circumstances. Neither do we live in unity, nor do we live in diversity. Then, where are we living.
--
For all practical purposes, we can agree with the author of the Panchadasi and conclude that we need not interfere with the scheme of things from the point of view of Ishvara's creation. People can be there, and things can be there they have to be there. We have to change our attitude, which means to say we have to reorganise the method of the working of our own mind inside, in respect of existent objects outside. This is only a tentative answer, and not the final answer, because we have not yet finally given the judgement as to the nature of things. We have temporarily accepted the existence of a world outside us, just as we temporarily accept the meaning of an 'x' in an equation in algebra. Though the 'x' itself may have no meaning ultimately, it is a necessary assumption which solves the Question, and afterwards it cancels itself.
So, in the end, we will find that while the acceptance of the existence of things independent of the mind by way of what is known as Ishvara srishti may be necessary for the solution of our problem, the world also will modify itself accordingly when the individual advances further, because all spiritual advance is a parallel advance both from the side of the subject and the object. It is not only one side that is evolving. The evolution of the individual is, at the same time, a corresponding evolution of all conditions in which the individual is involved, including society and the world.
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This peculiar feature of spiritual practice, sadhana, being so difficult to understand intellectually, cannot be regarded as merely an individual's affair. Sadhana is God's affair, ultimately. Spiritual sadhana is God's grace working. Though it appears that is individual effort, it only seems to be so, but really it is something else. Not even the greatest of philosophical thinkers, such as Shankara, could logically answer the Question, "How does knowledge arise in the jiva?" How can it be said that individual effort produces knowledge of God? Knowledge of God cannot rise by individual effort, because individual effort is so puny, so inadequate to the purpose, to the task, that we cannot expect such an infinite result to follow from the finite cause. The concept of God is an inscrutable event that takes place in the human mind. Can we imagine an ass thinking about God? However much it may put forth effort and go on trying its best throughout its life, the concept of God will never arise in an ass's mind or in a buffalo's mind. How it arises is a mystery. Suddenly, it comes.
It has been said that all great things are mysteries. They are not calculated effects produced logically by imagined causes, but are mysteries, which is another way of saying that all of this is unthinkable by the human mind. Knowledge somehow arises. One fine morning we get up and find that we are fired with a love for God. What has happened to us? Why is it that we suddenly we say, "Oh, today I am something different." Why we are something different today? From where has this inspiration come? Nobody knows what has happened. If we read the lives of great masters, sages and saints, we will find that they were all suddenly fired with a longing which they could not explain, and no one can explain ordinarily. That knowledge, that aspiration, that love of God has not come from books. It has not come from any imaginable source. It has simply come that is all. How? Nobody knows.
1.02 - Groups and Statistical Mechanics, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
It is simpler to repel the Question posed by the Maxwell
demon than to answer it. Nothing is easier than to deny the pos-
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
least not primarily). The right hemisphere remains concerned with answering the Questions: what is this
new thing like? and this means what should be done in the presence of this unexpected occurrence?
--
To ask the Question what is it that two or more discriminable beings or things or situations might
share? is really to ask at what levels of analysis might two or more things be considered the same? and
--
affect. the Question of the proper ordering of those forces (who, or what, should rule?) comprises the
central problem of morality and the primary problem facing human individuals and social organizations.
1.02 - Meeting the Master - Authors second meeting, March 1921, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Instead of giving a direct reply he parried the Question, as I had grown a beard: "And what has happened to you?"
But afterwards in the course of the conversation he explained to me that when the Higher Consciousness, after descending to the mental level, comes down to the vital and even below the vital, then a transformation takes place in the nervous and even in the physical being. He asked me to join the meditation in the afternoon and also the evening sittings.
--
On the last day of my stay of eleven days I met Sri Aurobindo between three and four in the afternoon. The main topic was Sadhana.When I got up to take leave I asked him: "What are you waiting for?" I put the Question because it was clear to me that he had been constantly living in the Higher Consciousness.
"It is true," he said, "that the Divine Consciousness has descended but it has not yet descended into the physical being. So long as that is not done the work cannot be said to be accomplished."
1.02 - Prana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
This opens to us the door to almost unlimited power. Suppose, for instance, a man understood the Prana perfectly, and could control it, what power on earth would not be his? He would be able to move the sun and stars out of their places, to control everything in the universe, from the atoms to the biggest suns, because he would control the Prana. This is the end and aim of Pranayama. When the Yogi becomes perfect, there will be nothing in nature not under his control. If he orders the gods or the souls of the departed to come, they will come at his bidding. All the forces of nature will obey him as slaves. When the ignorant see these powers of the Yogi, they call them the miracles. One peculiarity of the Hindu mind is that it always inquires for the last possible generalisation, leaving the details to be worked out afterwards. the Question is raised in the Vedas, "What is that, knowing which, we shall know everything?" Thus, all books, and all philosophies that have been written, have been only to prove that by knowing which everything is known. If a man wants to know this universe bit by bit he must know every individual grain of sand, which means infinite time; he cannot know all of them. Then how can knowledge be? How is it possible for a man to be all-knowing through particulars? The Yogis say that behind this particular manifestation there is a generalisation. Behind all particular ideas stands a generalised, an abstract principle; grasp it, and you have grasped everything. Just as this whole universe has been generalised in the Vedas into that One Absolute Existence, and he who has grasped that Existence has grasped the whole universe, so all forces have been generalised into this Prana, and he who has grasped the Prana has grasped all the forces of the universe, mental or physical. He who has controlled the Prana has controlled his own mind, and all the minds that exist. He who has controlled the Prana has controlled his body, and all the bodies that exist, because the Prana is the generalised manifestation of force.
How to control the Prana is the one idea of Pranayama. All the trainings and exercises in this regard are for that one end. Each man must begin where he stands, must learn how to control the things that are nearest to him. This body is very near to us, nearer than anything in the external universe, and this mind is the nearest of all. The Prana which is working this mind and body is the nearest to us of all the Prana in this universe. This little wave of the Prana which represents our own energies, mental and physical, is the nearest to us of all the waves of the infinite ocean of Prana. If we can succeed in controlling that little wave, then alone we can hope to control the whole of Prana. The Yogi who has done this gains perfection; no longer is he under any power. He becomes almost almighty, almost all-knowing. We see sects in every country who have attempted this control of Prana. In this country there are Mind-healers, Faith-healers, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, Hypnotists, etc., and if we examine these different bodies, we shall find at the back of each this control of the Prana, whether they know it or not. If you boil all their theories down, the residuum will be that. It is the one and the same force they are manipulating, only unknowingly. They have stumbled on the discovery of a force and are using it unconsciously without knowing its nature, but it is the same as the Yogi uses, and which comes from Prana.
1.02 - Prayer of Parashara to Vishnu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Having glorified him who is the support of all things; who is the smallest of the small[4]; who is in all created things; the unchanged, imperishable[5] Puruṣottama[6]; who is one with true wisdom, as truly known[7]; eternal and incorrupt; and who is known through false appearances by the nature of visible objects[8]: having bowed to Viṣṇu, the destroyer, and lord of creation and preservation; the ruler of the world; unborn, imperishable, undecaying: I will relate to you that which was originally imparted by the great father of all (Brahmā), in answer to the Questions of Dakṣa and other venerable sages, and repeated by them to Purukutsa, a king who reigned on the banks of the Narmadā. It was next related by him to Sāraswata, and by Sāraswata to me[9]. Who can describe him who is not to be apprehended by the senses: who is the best of all things; the supreme soul, self-existent: who is devoid of all the distinguishing characteristics of complexion, caste, or the like; and is exempt front birth, vicissitude, death, or decay: who is always, and alone: who exists every where, and in whom all things here exist; and who is thence named Vāsudeva[10]? He is Brahma[11], supreme, lord, eternal, unborn, imperishable, undecaying; of one essence; ever pure as free from defects. He, that Brahma, was all things; comprehending in his own nature the indiscrete and discrete. He then existed in the forms of Puruṣa and of Kāla. Puruṣa (spirit) is the first form, of the supreme; next proceeded two other forms, the discrete and indiscrete; and Kāla (time) was the last. These four-Pradhāna (primary or crude matter), Puruṣa (spirit), Vyakta (visible substance), and Kāla (time)-the wise consider to be the pure and supreme condition of Viṣṇu[12]. These four forms, in their due proportions, are the causes of the production of the phenomena of creation, preservation, and destruction. Viṣṇu being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and time, sports like a playful boy, as you shall learn by listening to his frolics[13].
That chief principle (Pradhāna), which is the indiscrete cause, is called by the sages also Prakriti (nature): it is subtile, uniform, and comprehends what is and what is not (or both causes and effects); is durable, self-sustained, illimitable, undecaying, and stable; devoid of sound or touch, and possessing neither colour nor form; endowed with the three qualities (in equilibrium); the mother of the world; without beginning; and that into which all that is produced is resolved[14]. By that principle all things were invested in the period subsequent to the last dissolution of the universe, and prior to creation[15]. For Brahmans learned in the Vedas, and teaching truly their doctrines, explain such passages as the following as intending the production of the chief principle (Pradhāna). "There was neither day nor night, nor sky nor earth, nor darkness nor light, nor any other thing, save only One, unapprehensible by intellect, or That which is Brahma and Pumān (spirit) and Pradhāna (matter)[16]." The two forms which are other than the essence of unmodified Viṣṇu, are Pradhāna (matter) and Puruṣa (spirit); and his other form, by which those two are connected or separated, is called Kāla (time)[17]. When discrete substance is aggregated in crude nature, as in a foregone dissolution, that dissolution is termed elemental (Prākrita). The deity as Time is without beginning, and his end is not known; and from him the revolutions of creation, continuance, and dissolution unintermittingly succeed: for when, in the latter season, the equilibrium of the qualities (Pradhāna) exists, and spirit (Pumān) is detached from matter, then the form of Viṣṇu which is Time abides[18]. Then the supreme Brahma, the supreme soul, the substance of the world, the lord of all creatures, the universal soul, the supreme ruler, Hari, of his own will having entered into matter and spirit, agitated the mutable and immutable principles, the season of creation being arrived, in the same manner as fragrance affects the mind from its proximity merely, and not from any immediate operation upon mind itself: so the Supreme influenced the elements of creation[19]. Puruṣottama is both the agitator and the thing to be agitated; being present in the essence of matter, both when it is contracted and expanded[20]. Viṣṇu, supreme over the supreme, is of the nature of discrete forms in the atomic productions, Brahmā and the rest (gods, men, &c.)
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
experience. Then the Question is whether that experience
belongs to a particular soul, or to the body simply, whether
--
infinite series A B A B A B, etc. the Question is
which is first, A or B. If you take the series as A , you will
1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
transformism, the Question of the germinal transmission to the
children of characteristics acquired by the parents has become one
1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
Of course, Maeterlinck has a right to think this way, and nobody wants to dispute that. the Question is, however, whether such an attitude isnt really absurd. Indeed, it does become absurd when you consider this: I have, unfortunately, written a great many books in my life (as you can see from the unusual appearance of the book table here). No sooner have I finished writing one, than I begin another. When Maurice Maeterlinck reads the new book, hell discover once again that in the first chapters I am shrewd, levelheaded and scientific, and then I lose my mind later on. Then I begin to write a third book; the first chapters again are reasonable and so forth. Consequently, if nothing else, I seem to have mastered the art of becoming at will a completely reasonable human being in the early part of a book andequally by choicea lunatic later, only to return to reason when I write the next book. In this way, I take turns being reasonable and a lunatic. Naturally, Maeterlinck has every right to find this; but he misses the absurdity of such an idea. A modern man of his importance thus falls into absurdities; but this, as I say, is only a little parenthetical remark.
4 . Maurice Maeterlinck (18621949), Belgian poet, dramatist, and essayist. In Paris he gained a reputation through Symbolist verse and became a leading Symbolist playwright. He was awarded a Nobel prize for literature in 1911.
1.02 - The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
95 Now it is absolutely out of the Question that all the individ-
uals who believe in a dual descent have in reality always had
--
100 We must now turn to the Question of how the existence of
archetypes can be proved. Since archetypes are supposed to
--
10 9 Now it is quite out of the Question that the patient could
have had any knowledge whatever of a Greek papyrus published
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Nor does an Indian ever ask: "Do you believe in God?" the Question would seem to him as childish as: "Do you believe in CO2?"
He simply says: "Have the experience yourself; if you do this, you'll get that result; if you do that, you'll get another result." All the ingenuity, the skill and precision we have expended for the last century or two in the study of physical phenomena, the Indian has brought, with equal exactness for the last four or five millennia, to the observation of inner phenomena. For a people of "dreamers," they have some surprises in store for us. And if we are a little honest, we will soon admit that our own "inner" studies, i.e., our psychology and psychoanalysis, or our knowledge of man, demands an ascesis as methodical and patient, and sometimes as tedious, as the long studies required to master nuclear physics. If we want to take up this path, it is not enough to read books or to collect clinical studies on all the 14
--
Indeed, if we brought as much sincerity, meticulousness, and perseverance to the study of the inner world as we do to the study of our books, we would go fast and far the West also has surprises in store for us but it must first get rid of its preconceptions (Columbus did not draw the map of America before leaving Palos). These simple truths may be worth repeating, for the West seems to be caught between two falsehoods: the overly serious falsehood of the spiritualists, who have already settled the Question of God in a few infallible paragraphs, and the not-serious-enough falsehood of the rudimentary occultists and psychics, who have reduced the invisible to a sort of freak-show of the imagination. India, wisely, refers us to our own direct experience and to experimental methods. Sri Aurobindo would soon put this fundamental lesson of experimental spirituality into practice.
But what kind of men, what human substance, was he going to find in that India he did not know? Once we have set aside the exotic facade and the bizarre (to us) customs that amuse and intrigue tourists,
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
OUR starting point has been the psychological doctrine, That art thou. the Question that now quite naturally presents itself is a metaphysical one: What is the That to which the thou can discover itself to be akin?
To this the fully developed Perennial Philosophy has at all times and in all places given fundamentally the same answer. The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to the to self and so make room, as it were, for God. Out of any given generation of men and women very few will achieve the final end of human existence; but the opportunity for coming to unitive knowledge will, in one way or another, continually be offered until all sentient beings realize Who in fact they are.
1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
" soul". We find one writer predicating of the soul that it is a, b, and c, while his fellow-students protest vehemently that it is nothing of the sort, but d, e, andf. However, let us suppose for a moment that by some miracle we obtain a clear idea of the meaning of the word. The trouble has merely begun. For there immediately arises the Question of the relation of one term to the others.
In view of this continual source of misunderstanding, it is clearly necessary to establish a fundamental and universal language for the communication ofideas, One understands with bitter approval the sad outburst of the aged Fichte :
--
Thirdly, the meaning of the terms is not as clear, precise, and comprehensive as could be wished. There is most certainly a great deal of pedantry, disputed matter, and confusion. Only recently, I learn that Mrs. Rhys Davids hes issued a book on Buddhist Origins, in which the Question among others is raised by her as to the correct translation or meaning of the Pali word" Dhamma"; whether it implies "law", "conscience", "life", or simply the
Buddhist doctrine.
1.02 - The Recovery, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Along with the sponging the talks would start: Purani from behind, I from the front, Dr. Manilal sitting on one side and Satyendra standing on the other. We all took part in the talk and worked at the same time. And Sri Aurobindo, perhaps melting by the touch of hot water, would release his silence into a many-hued speech. Sometimes Purani hurled a question from behind, Satyendra took it up, then I answered, and so the Question went round with Sri Aurobindo sitting at the centre, listening quietly, answering, or to our delight, springing a surprise by a sudden joke! At times he sat still, leaning against the chair with two fingers of his right hand on his lips, as if musing on something. After a while he would relax and the talk would follow. Once in the midst of our engrossed talk, there was a mild tap at the door. Sri Aurobindo looked at us, and we wondered who could be violating the privacy. Another tap, and the door was opened by one of us; to our surprise it was the Mother who came with a piece of paper in her hand and said, "For Sri Aurobindo." It was some important war news that had just been relayed over the radio. This little incident is a pointer to the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's vital interest in the war.
The last thing to be done was the bending of the knee. As I have mentioned, there was an exercise called hanging the leg. Manilal's approaching visit for the Darshan would make Sri Aurobindo utter, "Oh, Manilal is coming, I must hang my leg!" or when Manilal would enquire from Baroda about it, he would reply with a smile, "It is still hanging!" The bending exercise was apparently an ineffectual one, but Sri Aurobindo persisted and we too encouraged him as if he were a little child. At any rate the result was not proportionate to the effort. Dr. Rao who was very happy to see the Master at last free from the tyrannical shackles of the splints took the opportunity, whenever he came, of massaging his leg. "May I do it, Sir?" he would ask and would never forget to praise Sri Aurobindo as an ideal patient.
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
The would-be initiate must bring with him a certain measure of courage and fearlessness. He must positively go out of his way to find opportunities for developing these virtues. His training should provide for their systematic cultivation. In this respect, life itself is a good school-possibly the best school. The student must learn to look danger calmly in the face and try to overcome difficulties unswervingly. For instance, when in the presence of some peril, he must swiftly come to the conviction that fear is of no possible use; I must not feel afraid; I must only think of what is to be done. And he must improve to the extent of feeling, upon occasions which formerly inspired him with fear, that to be frightened, to be disheartened, are things that are out of the Question as far as his own inmost self is concerned. By self-discipline in this direction, quite definite qualities are develop which are necessary for initiation into the higher mysteries. Just as man requires nervous force in his physical being in order to use his physical sense, so also he
p. 75
1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
We shall examine the Question of time in detail later in our discussion; here we wish to point out that there is a forgotten but essential interconnection between time and the psyche. The closed horizons of antiquity's celestial cave-like vault express a soul not yet awakened to spatial time-consciousness and temporal quantification. The "heaven of the heart" mentioned by Origen was likewise a self-contained inner heaven first exteriorized into the heavenly landscapes of the frescoes by the brothers Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti in the church of St. Francesco in Assisi (ca. 1327-28). One should note that these early renderings of landscape and sky, which include a realistic rather than symbolic astral-mythical moon, are not merely accidental pictures with nocturnal themes. In contrast to the earlier vaulted sky, the heaven of these frescoes is no longer an enclosure; it is now rendered from the vantage point of the artist and expresses the incipient perspectivity of a confrontation with space, rather than an unperspectival immersion or inherence in it. Man is henceforth not just in the world but begins to possess it; no longer possessed by heaven, he becomes a conscious possessor if not of the heavens, at least of the earth. This shift is, of course, a gain as well as a loss.
There is a document extant that unforgettably mirrors this gain and loss, this surrender and beginning; in a few sentences it depicts the struggle of a man caught between two worlds. We refer to the remarkable letter of the thirty-two year old Petrarch to Francesco Dionigidi Borgo San Sepolcro in 1336 (the first letter of his Familiari, vol. 4), in which he describes his ascent of Mount Ventoux. For his time, his description is an epochal event and signifies no less than the discovery of landscape: the first dawning of an awareness of space that resulted in a fundamental alteration of European man's attitude in and toward the world.
--
Let us, however, return to the Question of perspectivity. We have noted that perspective is the pre-eminent expression of the emergent consciousness of fifteenth-century European man, the palpable expression of his objectivation of spatial awareness. Besides illuminating space, perspective brings it to man's awareness and lends man his own visibility of himself. We have also noted that in the paintings of Giotto and Masaccio this evident perception of man comes to light for the first time. Yet this very same perspective whose study and gradual acquisition were a major preoccupation for Renaissance man not only extends his image of the world achieving spatialization but also narrows his vision - a consequence that still afflicts us today.
Perspectival vision and thought confine us within spatial limitations. Elsewhere we have alluded to the antithesis inherent in perspective: it locates and determines the observer as well as the observed. The positive result is a concretion of man and space; the negative result is the restriction of man to a limited segment where he perceives only one sector of reality.
--
Aretino's reproach, as well as Agrippa's more pointed remark, both of which characterize the unperspectival world and its mode of expression as "deformity" and "false vision", demonstrate clearly that space had already entered consciousness and become accepted at the outset of the sixteenth century. Having achieved and secured the awareness of space, man in the sixteenth century is overcome by a kind of intoxication with it. This perspectival intoxication with space is clearly evident, for example, in Altdorfer's interiors and in the many depictions of church interiors by the Netherlandic masters that have an almost jubilant expression. It is this jubilation that silences the voice of those who still attempted to preserve the old attitude toward the world. The silencing of objections was facilitated to a considerable degree by the fact that Petrarch's experience of landscape and space, as well as Leonardo's application and theory of perspective, had become common property and were evident in the increasing prevalence of landscape painting throughout Europe. We shall only mention a few of the great European masters who repeatedly took up the Question of the perception and depiction of space in landscape: Altdorfer, van Goyen; Poussin, Claude Lorrain; Ruysdael, Magnasco; Watteau, Constable, Corot, Caspar David Friedrich; Millet, Courbert;Manet,Monet, Renoir, and finally, van Gogh and Rousseau.
Space is the insistent concern of this era. In underscoring this assertion, we have relied only on the testimony of its most vivid manifestation, the discovery of perspective. We did, however, mention in passing that at the very moment when Leonardo discovers space and solves the problem of perspective, thereby creating the possibility for spatial objectification in painting, other events occur which parallel his discovery. Copernicus, for example, shatters the limits of the geocentric sky and discovers heliocentric space; Columbus goes beyond the encompassing Oceanos and discovers earth's space: Vesalius, the first major anatomist, bursts the confines of Galen's ancient doctrines of the human Body and discovers the body's space; Harvey destroys the precepts of Hippocrates' humoral medicine and reveals the circulatory system. And there is Kepler, who by demonstrating the elliptical orbit of the planets, overthrows antiquity's unperspectival world-image of circular and flat surfaces (a view still held by Copernicus) that dated back to Ptolemy's conception of the circular movement of the planets.
1.02 - The Ultimate Path is Without Difficulty, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
not answer the Question or explain it to the man. How little
you realize that you've stumbled past it.
1.02 - What is Psycho therapy?, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
treatment. It is quite out of the Question to apply psychoanalysis to several
patients at once. It is anything but a mechanical routine.
1.037 - Preventing the Fall in Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
When there is a physical condition of the type of painful illness, the practice should not be diminished. Generally, when we have a little fever, we will not be able to sit for meditation; and of course when there is a headache, it is out of the Question. But knowing that these are the necessary and expected consequences of practice, one should not become diffident, and the practice of meditation should not be brought down to a lower level, either in quantity or quality, merely because of these obstacles. They will be there for some days, and sometimes even for months, but they will pass away. Just as when we clean a room with a broom there is a rise of dust, and it may look as if we are worsening the condition in the room rather than cleaning it, that is not the truth, because afterwards all of the dust will vanish and the whole room will be clean. Likewise, in the beginning it may look as if there is something worse happening to us than what has occurred earlier, but it is not true. We are getting cleaned up, and a day will come when the storm will cease and we shall be happy.
When there is intense pain an intolerable physical condition which prevents sitting for meditation one can split up the sessions for meditation into one, two, three, four or five sittings, but the total quantity should not be diminished. If we are in the habit of sitting for three hours meditation, and it is not possible to do so when we have got a headache, we may split it into six parts. But it should not be completely given up on the plea that we are ill and therefore cannot do the practice, because if we miss the practice its intensity will come down, and then the reaction produced by non-practice will really be disadvantageous - more disadvantageous than the pains we feel due to the rise of reactions by correct practice.
1.03 - A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction
Duck; "it's generally a frog or a worm. the Question is, what did the archbishop find?"
The Mouse did not notice this question, but hurriedly went on, "'--found it advisable to go with Edgar Atheling to meet William and offer him the crown.'--How are you getting on now, my dear?" it continued, turning to
1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
communicated?). The answer to the Question what constitutes the highest value? or what is the highest
good? is in fact the solution to the meta-problem, not the problem, although solutions to the latter have
1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
*4 6 the Question of therapy is a problem that cannot be disposed
of in a few words. It was not my intention to deal with it here,
1.03 - Hieroglypics Life and Language Necessarily Symbolic, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
But to give a complete answer, I shall have to go back to the beginning, and restate the original problem; and I beg that you will not suppose that I am evading the Question, or adopting the Irish method of answer- ing it by another, though I know it may sound as if I were.
Let me set out by restating our original problem; what we want is Truth; we want an even closer approach to Reality; and we want to discover and discuss the proper means of achieving this object.
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
One such interview is given here to illustrate how he dealt with the Questions of Sadhana.
Disciple: I have, at present, a very strong impulse to realise the infinite Transcendent Shakti. I want to know whether it is safer to leave the sadhana to the Universal or to the Divine?
--
Sri Aurobindo: He has his own ideas and if he wants to practise Raja Yoga he must go to a Rajayogi Guru. For this Yoga his mind must undergo a radical change. My giving him the Yoga at present is out of the Question. If he wants to prepare himself he can practise the separation of Purusha and Prakriti.
3 JANUARY 1924 (Second Interview)
1.03 - .REASON. IN PHILOSOPHY, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
even as a problem; just as little as does the Question concerning the
general value of such a convention of symbols as logic.
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
So the Question can finally be posed: fulfillment of the world
by divergence, or fulfillment of the same world by convergence? It
1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
"Did he sleep at night?" was the Question very often asked. To all appearance he did sleep and quite sufficiently. The Mother and he always insist on observing normal rules of health. We must eat well and sleep well, So, if there was a physical need for food, there could be a need for sleep as with us, but with a difference. For our sleep is a heavy plunge into inconscience where we forget everything, whereas a Yogi sleeps awake. There is also a state in which the physical body is apparently asleep, while the subtle body goes out visiting various persons in their sleep. The Mother has said that she does most of the subtle work in this way at night. Sri Aurobindo wrote to me, "In former days when she was spending the night in a trance and out working in the Ashram, she brought back with her the knowledge of all that was happening to everybody... I often know from her what has happened before it is reported by anyone."
This is the overall picture of Sri Aurobindo's outer life as we saw it and lived it together through his last twelve years. The programme remained, on the whole, constant till the end except for some minor variations due to exigencies of circumstances. I have said nothing about his inner life, for I was not given a vision or perception of that vast secret field; nor had I Arjuna's unique privilege of seeing his Vivarpa, except some glimpses of his God-like stature. Sri Aurobindo had reminded me again and again in his letters that my physical crust was too thick. All the same, the joy, peace, light and energy that constantly sustained us could come from his silent Presence alone. People used to remark that we seemed to be beings of another world. Unfortunately, that brightness and felicity gave place to a grave seriousness with the rolling of years and a shadow of gloom was over us all, though we could not account for it at the time. Besides, the dark underside of our human nature, I am talking particularly of myself also began to show its grisly face. "Mortality bears ill the Eternal's touch." Of course, Sri Aurobindo remained samam brahman. Our frailties and shortcomings he had already seen from above, and was prepared for them when he accepted us for his service; he had never shown any annoyance. On the contrary, he forgave us all. Though he was impersonal by nature, hardly looked at us while talking, rarely spoke our name while asking for something, there was an ineffable sweetness in his Presence. And during our pranam on our birthdays or Darshan days, he used to make up for all his want of expression by melting into fatherly or friendly love and affection. He would pat us on the head, press it long with his warm velvety hands and look into our eyes with the tenderness of his sweet personality. Satyendra told me that when on his birthday he used to rub some attar on Sri Aurobindo's hand, he would then put forward the other one. His constant silent love and compassion shine ever bright in the depths of our hearts.
1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The character of this inner crisis is therefore not the Questioning of the thinker; it is not a recoil from the appearances of life and a turning of the eye inward in search of the truth of things, the real meaning of existence and a solution or an escape from the dark riddle of the world. It is the sensational, emotional and moral revolt of the man hitherto satisfied with action and its current standards who finds himself cast by them into a hideous chaos where they are in violent conflict with each other and with themselves and there is no moral standing-ground left, nothing to lay hold of and walk by, no dharma.1 That for the soul of action in the mental being is the worst possible crisis, failure and overthrow. The revolt itself is the most elemental and simple possible; sensationally, the elemental feeling of horror, pity and disgust; vitally, the loss of attraction and faith in the recognised and familiar objects of action and aims of life; emotionally, the recoil of the ordinary feelings of social man, affection, reverence, desire of a common happiness and satisfaction, from a stern duty outraging them all; morally, the elementary sense of sin and
Dharma means literally that which one lays hold of and which holds things together, the law, the norm, the rule of nature, action and life.
1.03 - THE ORPHAN, THE WIDOW, AND THE MOON, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[20] The quotation from Vigenerus bears no little resemblance to a long passage on the phases of the moon in Augustine.132 Speaking of the unfavourable aspect of the moon, which is her changeability, he paraphrases Ecclesiasticus 27 : 12 with the words: The wise man remaineth stable as the sun, but a fool is changed as the moon,133 and poses the Question: Who then is that fool who changeth as the moon, but Adam, in whom all have sinned?134 For Augustine, therefore, the moon is manifestly an ally of corruptible creatures, reflecting their folly and inconstancy. Since, for the men of antiquity and the Middle Ages, comparison with the stars or planets tacitly presupposes astrological causality, the sun causes constancy and wisdom, while the moon is the cause of change and folly (including lunacy).135 Augustine attaches to his remarks about the moon a moral observation concerning the relationship of man to the spiritual sun,136 just as Vigenerus did, who was obviously acquainted with Augustines epistles. He also mentions (Epistola LV, 10) the Church as Luna, and he connects the moon with the wounding by an arrow: Whence it is said: They have made ready their arrows in the quiver, to shoot in the darkness of the moon at the upright of heart.137 It is clear that Augustine did not understand the wounding as the activity of the new moon herself but, in accordance with the principle omne malum ab homine, as the result of mans wickedness. All the same, the addition in obscura luna, for which there is no warrant in the original text, shows how much the new moon is involved. This hint of the admitted dangerousness of the moon is confirmed when Augustine, a few sentences later on, cites Psalm 71 : 7: In his days justice shall flourish, and abundance of peace, until the moon shall be destroyed.138 Instead of the strong interficiatur the Vulgate has the milder auferaturshall be taken away or fail.139 The violent way in which the moon is removed is explained by the interpretation that immediately follows: That is, the abundance of peace shall grow until it consumes all changefulness of mortality. From this it is evident that the moons nature expressly partakes of the changefulness of mortality, which is equivalent to death, and therefore the text continues: For then the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed, and whatever resists us on account of the weakness of the flesh shall be utterly consumed. Here the destruction of the moon is manifestly equivalent to the destruction of death.140 The moon and death significantly reveal their affinity. Death came into the world through original sin and the seductiveness of woman (= moon), and mutability led to corruptibility.141 To eliminate the moon from Creation is therefore as desirable as the elimination of death. This negative assessment of the moon takes full account of her dark side. The dying of the Church is also connected with the mystery of the moons darkness.142 Augustines cautious and perhaps not altogether unconscious disguising of the sinister aspect of the moon would be sufficiently explained by his respect for the Ecclesia-Luna equation.
[21] All the more ruthlessly, therefore, does alchemy insist on the dangerousness of the new moon. Luna is on the one hand the brilliant whiteness of the full moon, on the other hand she is the blackness of the new moon, and especially the blackness of the eclipse, when the sun is darkened. Indeed, what she does to the sun comes from her own dark nature. The Consilium coniugii143 tells us very clearly what the alchemists thought about Luna:
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Sephiros and gave rise to them in a process which can be mathematically stated. S. Liddell McGregor Mathers asks, " How is Number Two to be found ? " He answers the Question in his Introduction to the Kabbalah
Unveiled :
1.03 - The Sunlit Path, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But then, where is that elusive self?... To ask the Question is to knock at the door of the next circle, to engage in the movement of introspection of the second kind. And here, too, it is pointless to theorize on the nature of the self; it must be sought and discovered experientially. Now, we did say that the method had to take place in life and matter, because we can very well shut ourselves up in a room, keep out the sounds of the world, keep out its desires, tensions and countless tentacles; we can hold all these things at arm's length and, maybe, from within our little inner circle catch a glimpse of self, some ineffable transcendence, but the minute we open the door of our room and let go of our grip, everything will fall back on us again, like a mantle of seaweed over a diver, and we will find ourselves exactly as before, only less capable of putting up with the noise and swarm of little cravings awaiting their hour. It is not by the grip of our virtues or exceptional meditations that we shall clear away that mantle, but by something else altogether. We will therefore start with what we are and as we are, at the physical level of everyday life.
We are Bill Smith, a name without a meaning, a legal artifice to tie us to the great Machine and to an obscure genealogy we do not know much about, except that we are the son of our father, who was the son of his father, who was the son of his father, and that evidently we shall be the father of our son, who will be the father of his son, who will be the father of his son, and so on endlessly. And we walk up and down the great boulevard of the world, here or there, in a Los Angeles which looks more and more like Tokyo, which looks more and more like Mexico City, which looks more and more like every city in the world, just as one anthill looks like another. We can very well take a plane, but we will find ourselves again everywhere. We are French or American, but, to tell the truth, that is only history and passports, another artifice to bind us hand and foot to one machine or another, while our brother in Calcutta or Rangoon walks the same boulevard with the same question, under a yellow, red or orange flag. All this is the vestige of the hunting grounds, but there is not much left to hunt, save ourselves, and we are well on our way to being crushed out of that possibility, too, under the steamroller of the great Machine. So we go up and down the stairs, make phone calls, rush around, rush to vacation or enjoy life, like our brother under a yellow or a brown skin: in English, French and Chinese, we are harassed on all sides, exhausted, and we are not quite sure whether we are enjoying life or life is enjoying us. But it goes on and on all the same. And through it all, there is something that goes up and down, rushes and rushes, and sometimes, for a second, there is a sort of little cry inside: Who am I? Who am I? Where is me? Where am I?
--
Then the Question sinks a little deeper. In fact, it is not that it sinks or intensifies; it is as if a first breath of air enabled us to appreciate better the daily suffocation we live in and revealed deeper layers to our eyes, other, subtler coverings. We are indeed Bill Smith, a legal and national artifice, a little mechanized cog that would like to get out of the machine. But what is behind Bill Smith? There is a man walking a boulevard, going up and down the great mental roller coaster, humming with a thousand thoughts, of which none truly matters, none remedies his sorrow or desire; there is what the latest book thinks, what that billboard or those headlines scream, what the professor or schoolmaster or friend or colleague or neighbor said a thousand passersby milling in the inner street but where is the one who does not pass, the lodger of the dwelling? There is yesterday's experience, which ties in with the accident of the day before, which ties in with... a gigantic telephone network, with switches, relays and instant communications, but which really communicates nothing, except the same rehashed and self-contained story, which keeps swelling up and swelling up and curling back onto itself and unrolling a sum of past that never makes a true present, or a future that is but the sum of a million acts adding up to zero where is the act, where? Where is the self of that addition, the minute of being that is not the result of the past, the pure touch of sunlight that escapes that machinery, even more merciless than the other one? There is what our fathers and mothers have put into us, and books, priests, partisans, grandfa ther's cancer, great-uncle's lust, the good of this one, the less good of that one; there are the Tables of the Law of iron, the thou-cannots, thou-should-nots, Newton and the churches, Mendel and the law of gestation of germ cells but what germinates in all that? Where is the Germ, the pure unexpected seed suddenly bursting open, the Thou-Can like a stroke of grace in this implacable round conditioned by the fathers of our fathers inside the mental fortress? There is this little man walking along a boulevard, going up and down the same avenue a thousand times; inside, outside, it's all the same, like nothing walking in nothing, anybody inside anything, John or Peter with only different neckties: between this lamppost and that one nothing has happened. There was nothing, not a single second of being!
But, suddenly, on this boulevard, there is a sort of second-degree suffocation. We stop and stare. What do we stare at? We don't know, but we stare. All of a sudden we are no longer in the machine; we are no longer in it, we never were! We are no longer Bill Smith or American or New Yorker, the son of our father or the father of our son, our thought, or heart or feelings, or yesterday or tomorrow, or male or female or anything of the kind we are something else altogether. We don't know what, but it stares. We are like a window opening.
--
So Bill Smith who is no longer anything really, who is less and less something, who escapes through all the pores of his skin stops again, stops more and more often in the midst of the great bustle, and he does not even ask a question anymore, he does not even expect an answer: he has become the Question, a living fire of nothing, a pure, pounding question, a growing absence, so poignant it is almost like a presence. He stops here, stops there, raises unseeing eyes to this street poster, that man dressed in brown, those millions of shadowy humans; he is no longer even a thought, not even a feeling: he is one step removed from himself, from the something that stirs, goes up and down, relays thoughts and feelings and memories and desires, and runs like a well-oiled clock wound up since when? unwinding and unwinding, inside, outside, it is all the same. He is that site of sudden stillness, that cry of suffocation, that blind stare of a newborn from a world yet to be, it seems, but which beats as the only existing thing in this nonexistence. He is in a no-man's land of being, at times a tearing state of nonself, so tearing it seems that tear is the only measure of being in him.
Now the waste-land, now the silence
1.03 - The Syzygy - Anima and Animus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
With them the Question becomes one of personal vanity and
touchiness (as if they were females); with women it is a question
1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:But the worlds are only frames for our experience, the senses only instruments of experience and conveniences. Consciousness is the great underlying fact, the universal witness for whom the world is a field, the senses instruments. To that witness the worlds and their objects appeal for their reality and for the one world or the many, for the physical equally with the supraphysical we have no other evidence that they exist. It has been argued that this is no relation peculiar to the constitution of humanity and its outlook upon an objective world, but the very nature of existence itself; all phenomenal existence consists of an observing consciousness and an active objectivity, and the Action cannot proceed without the Witness because the universe exists only in or for the consciousness that observes and has no independent reality. It has been argued in reply that the material universe enjoys an eternal self-existence: it was here before life and mind made their appearance; it will survive after they have disappeared and no longer trouble with their transient strivings and limited thoughts the eternal and inconscient rhythm of the suns. The difference, so metaphysical in appearance, is yet of the utmost practical import, for it determines the whole outlook of man upon life, the goal that he shall assign for his efforts and the field in which he shall circumscribe his energies. For it raises the Question of the reality of cosmic existence and, more important still, the Question of the value of human life.
9:If we push the materialist conclusion far enough, we arrive at an insignificance and unreality in the life of the individual and the race which leaves us, logically, the option between either a feverish effort of the individual to snatch what he may from a transient existence, to "live his life", as it is said, or a dispassionate and objectless service of the race and the individual, knowing well that the latter is a transient fiction of the nervous mentality and the former only a little more long-lived collective form of the same regular nervous spasm of Matter. We work or enjoy under the impulsion of a material energy which deceives us with the brief delusion of life or with the nobler delusion of an ethical aim and a mental consummation. Materialism like spiritual Monism arrives at a Maya that is and yet is not, - is, for it is present and compelling, is not, for it is phenomenal and transitory in its works. At the other end, if we stress too much the unreality of the objective world, we arrive by a different road at similar but still more trenchant conclusions, - the fictitious character of the individual ego, the unreality and purposelessness of human existence, the return into the Non-Being or the relationless Absolute as the sole rational escape from the meaningless tangle of phenomenal life.
10:And yet the Question cannot be solved by logic arguing on the data of our ordinary physical existence; for in those data there is always a hiatus of experience which renders all argument inconclusive. We have, normally, neither any definitive experience of a cosmic mind or supermind not bound up with the life of the individual body, nor, on the other hand, any firm limit of experience which would justify us in supposing that our subjective self really depends upon the physical frame and can neither survive it nor enlarge itself beyond the individual body. Only by an extension of the field of our consciousness or an unhoped-for increase in our instruments of knowledge can the ancient quarrel be decided.
11:The extension of our consciousness, to be satisfying, must necessarily be an inner enlargement from the individual into the cosmic existence. For the Witness, if he exists, is not the individual embodied mind born in the world, but that cosmic Consciousness embracing the universe and appearing as an immanent Intelligence in all its works to which either world subsists eternally and really as Its own active existence or else from which it is born and into which it disappears by an act of knowledge or by an act of conscious power. Not organised mind, but that which, calm and eternal, broods equally in the living earth and the living human body and to which mind and senses are dispensable instruments, is the Witness of cosmic existence and its Lord.
--
15:But this conscious Being which is the truth of the infinite supermind, is more than the universe and lives independently in Its own inexpressible infinity as well as in the cosmic harmonies. World lives by That; That does not live by the world. And as we can enter into the cosmic consciousness and be one with all cosmic existence, so we can enter into the world-transcending consciousness and become superior to all cosmic existence. And then arises the Question which first occurred to us, whether this transcendence is necessarily also a rejection. What relation has this universe to the Beyond?
16:For at the gates of the Transcendent stands that mere and perfect Spirit described in the Upanishads, luminous, pure, sustaining the world but inactive in it, without sinews of energy, without flaw of duality, without scar of division, unique, identical, free from all appearance of relation and of multiplicity, - the pure Self of the Adwaitins,3 the inactive Brahman, the transcendent Silence. And the mind when it passes those gates suddenly, without intermediate transitions, receives a sense of the unreality of the world and the sole reality of the Silence which is one of the most powerful and convincing experiences of which the human mind is capable. Here, in the perception of this pure Self or of the Non-Being behind it, we have the startingpoint for a second negation, - parallel at the other pole to the materialistic, but more complete, more final, more perilous in its effects on the individuals or collectivities that hear its potent call to the wilderness, - the refusal of the ascetic.
1.045 - Piercing the Structure of the Object, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Whatever be our effort in meditation, the conviction that things are outside us and that they are completely out of our control will repeat itself so vehemently and forcefully that we will be unhappy. Doubts will arise in the mind. "After all, am I going to succeed? How can I control this mountain? What right have I over this mountain?" But we will realise, after repeated practise, that we have some say in the matter of the existence of even a mountain, though it may look that it is irrelevant to the Question at hand. Ultimately there is nothing that is disconnected from us and, therefore, there is nothing which cannot be converted into an object of meditation. In fact there is nothing, anywhere in this world, which cannot become an avenue for the entry of consciousness into the Universal Reality. Any object, for the matter of that, can be taken as a suitable object for the purpose of meditation, because prakriti is permanently present, pervading everything in one form or the other, and so whatever be the object that we take for meditation, it is a form of prakriti, this pradhana of the Samkhya. So, there is no need to worry oneself about the choice of the object of meditation. It depends upon the predilection of the mind, the tendency of the mind, and the suitability of the relationship one has with the object that has been chosen.
But once the object has been chosen, the advice given here is that we must persist through that object, and that there should be no change of the object. Otherwise, if we change the object, our efforts will not bring success. Whatever be the object that has been chosen, during the time one engages oneself in meditation upon it there should be a persistent effort to bring that object nearer and nearer to one's own self, though, in the beginning, it may appear to be far off or remote from oneself. There are various factors involved in object-consciousness. One thing is that it is far away from us. The second thing is that it is material in nature, while the meditating consciousness is not material. Another thing is that, because of the remoteness of the object and the isolation of the object from consciousness, one seems to have no control over the object. With all of these factors, there is a desire for the object. This is the essence of samsara. We desire a thing over which we have no control and which we perhaps cannot get with all of our efforts, and yet we need it and we cannot live without it. This is the essence of suffering. But all this suffering can be obviated and eliminated if, through philosophical analysis and repeated meditation, the nature of the object is gradually made a part and parcel of the nature of one's own self.
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Looking backwards across the carnage and the devastation, we can see that Vigny was perfectly right. None of those gay travellers, of whom Victor Hugo was the most vociferously eloquent, had the faintest notion where that first, funny little Puffing Billy was taking them. Or rather they had a very clear notion, but it happened to be entirely false. For they were convinced that Puffing Billy was hauling them at full speed towards universal peace and the brotherhood of man; while the newspapers which they were so proud of being able to read, as the train rumbled along towards its Utopian destination not more than fifty years or so away, were the guarantee that liberty and reason would soon be everywhere triumphant. Puffing Billy has now turned into a four-motored bomber loaded with white phosphorus and high explosives, and the free press is everywhere the servant of its advertisers, of a pressure group, or of the government. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, the travellers (now far from gay) still hold fast to the religion of Inevitable Progresswhich is, in the last analysis, the hope and faith (in the teeth of all human experience) that one can get something for nothing. How much saner and more realistic is the Greek view that every victory has to be paid for, and that, for some victories, the price exacted is so high Uiat it outweighs any advantage that may be obtained! Modern man no longer regards Nature as being in any sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave towards her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant. The spoils of recent technological imperialism have been enormous; but meanwhile nemesis has seen to it that we get our kicks as well as halfpence. For example, has the ability to travel in twelve hours from New York to Los Angeles given more pleasure to the human race than the dropping of bombs and fire has given pain? There is no known method of computing the amount of felicity or goodness in the world at large. What is obvious, however, is that the advantages accruing from recent technological advancesor, in Greek phraseology, from recent acts of hubris directed against Natureare generally accompanied by corresponding disadvantages, that gains in one direction entail losses in other directions, and that we never get something except for something. Whether the net result of these elaborate credit and debit operations is a genuine Progress in virtue, happiness, charity and intelligence is something we can never definitely determine. It is because the reality of Progress can never be determined that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have had to treat it as an article of religious faith. To the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, the Question whether Progress is inevitable or even real is not a matter of primary importance. For them, the important thing is that individual men and women should come to the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, and what interests them in regard to the social environment is not its progressiveness or non-progressiveness (whatever those terms may mean), but the degree to which it helps or hinders individuals in their advance towards mans final end.
next chapter: 1.05 - CHARITY
1.04 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
There was the man who received an order, but on seeing the intention of the person who gave it, namely that the fulfilment of the order would not give him pleasure, asked to be excused. And another saw this, but unhesitatingly obeyed. the Question is: which of them acted more piously?
It is impossible that the devil should act contrary to his own will. Let those living an easy-going life, whether persevering in one solitary place or in a community, convince you of this. Let the temptation to retire from our place be a proof for us that our life there is pleasing to God. For being warred against is a sign that we are making war.
1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The doctors of the law have not commented upon these topics to the people in general. But this is not to be wondered at, when we consider that the mass of the people regard themselves as fixed in their character and position, and not as pilgrims and travellers to a higher state. There is no possibility of unveiling the things of truth, to those who settle down without desiring to make any progress, and who are contented with the first stages and degrees of the sensible world and of the world of fancy. They can neither attain to a spiritual state, nor understand spiritual laws and precepts. We have ventured, however, to unveil a little of the mysteries, as a type of the knowledge belonging to the future state, so that men might be prepared to understand the Questions and affairs relating to that state. But if we had entered into any farther developments, they would not have been able to understand us, for none but those who are endowed with penetration and experience can by any possibility understand the topics to which we have alluded.
There is a class of foolish people, O inquirer after the divine mysteries, who have neither capacity for knowledge, or sound judgment to be able to understand anything of themselves, and who have remained doubting and speculating about the nature of the future state, till they have become bewildered. Finally, as the lusts of the world harmonized with their natures, they have yielded to the whisperings of Satan, and deny that there is any future state. They pretend that the only need there is of speaking of heaven and hell, is for the sake of correcting and guiding the conduct of the people, and they regard as folly the course of those who follow the law and are constant in their devotions.
1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
is far more the Question of how long this progress can continue, at
the speed at which it is going, without Life blowing up upon itself
1.04 - The Aims of Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
treatment. But when we come to the Question of the structure of the
neuroses and the principles of therapy, all agreement ends, and we have to
--
Coming back to the Question of my technique, I ask myself how far I
am indebted to Freud for its existence. At all events I learned it from
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
I tried to answer them. the Questions seemed to be such foolish, simple, childish questions. But as soon
as I laid my hands on them and tried to resolve them, I was immediately convinced, first of all, that they
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Next in magnitude comes the Press. Today the Ashram Printing Press holds a premier place in India. That is because the Mother set from the very start the ideal of perfection before her and exacted from the workers that ideal. Kinds of business run on a commercial basis there are many outside, but here the ideal is quite different, as I have stated. This is what the Mother recently told the manager of the Press, "If any part of the world makes a demand for perfection in printing, it should be able to say to itself, The Pondicherry Ashram Press fulfils the ideal." Yet this Press began as some big establishments have done, in a very humble way; I don't know how the proposal was mooted that we must have a Press of our own to publish mainly Sri Aurobindo's books. The Mother caught the idea at once. But how to start, was the Question. It was not so much the money that was wanting, as men of knowledge and experience in this field. She would not engage workers from outside; it must be run by the Ashram inmates. We had at that time made some connection with the Hyderabad Government through Sir Akbar Hydari who was instrumental in, procuring a donation from the Nizam's Government for Golconde, hence the name[3]. This connection opened the channel for an experienced officer of the Government to come and give a start to our Press. As soon as things began moving, the Mother put all her available force into it and bundled off sadhaks and sadhikas old and young, philosopher, scholar, professor, whoever was at hand, to the Press. Naturally, many difficulties cropped up; quarrels, disharmony, complaints human conflicts instead of natural calamities. The Mother was certainly prepared for them, for she knows our human nature, also that it is through work that it has to be changed, not through the escape-gate of inaction. We heard from time to time the Mother reporting about these troubles to Sri Aurobindo. With his silent Purusha-like support, and her regular visits to the Press, the initial difficulties were gradually overcome and a modicum of harmony established. One after another, Sri Aurobindo's books began to come out. Thus with our raw but energetic young band and a handful of trained paid workers, this institution was built up piecemeal, illustrating the Mother's method of working, the ideal to be achieved, and Sri Aurobindo's dictum that things must grow out of life itself, not according to a set mental pattern. In our case, of course, the process was sustained by a directly acting Divine Force. "All can be done if the God-touch is there." In fact all our institutions, the Ashram itself, have grown up in this way, from scratch, and Auroville is the latest example. We must remember, however, that activity by itself, of whatever kind, is of secondary importance, but "taken as pan of the sadhana offered to the Divine or done with the consciousness or faith that it is done by the Divine Power" that is the important point.
Now we come to a different field of activity altogether, one whose place in Yoga will be strongly challenged, especially when the Mother herself used it as a means of sadhana: her playing tennis. I won't discuss the issue, for the quotation cited above gives the answer. Before she started playing tennis the Mother joined our young group in playing table-tennis. When a young boy asked her if he could install a table in his house for the game, the Mother replied, "Why not at Nanteuil?[4] then I can come and play too." He was much surprised and delighted at the divine proposal! She must have found it a good light exercise as well as an admirable means of contact with the young set which was gradually increasing; it was perhaps also her yogic means of action upon them. After a year or so the Mother decided to have a tennis court. She might have felt that she needed some more brisk exercise in the open air. She often talked of her project to Sri Aurobindo. One day we heard that the entire wasteland along the north-eastern seaside was taken on a long lease from the Government and a part of it would be made into tennis courts and the rest into a playground. One cannot imagine now what this place was like before. It was one of the filthiest spots of Pondicherry, full of thistles and wild undergrowth, an open place for committing nuisance as well as a pasture for pigs! The stink and the loathsome sight made the place a Stygian sore and a black spot on the colonial Government. The Mother changed this savage wasteland into a heavenly playground, almost a supramental transformation of Matter. The sea-front was clothed in a vision of beauty and delight. If for nothing else, for this transformation at least, Pondicherry should be eternally grateful to the Mother. But who remembers the past? Gratitude is a rare human virtue. I was particularly very happy, first, because I was fond of tennis; secondly, I fancied that Yoga would be now made easy. Who could ever think of tennis in Yoga! But woe to me, how it completely upset my balance!
All this, however, is by the way. My point was to demonstrate the Mother's method of working. As soon as the plot was acquired, she went about the work in her usual one-pointed manner. And what a job it was! To build a long rampart against the surges of the sea was itself a gigantic enterprise for a private institution like our Ashram without any income of its own. But I shall confine myself to the construction of the tennis courts only. She did not count the expense; men and money were freely employed, for the courts had to be made ready within a minimum period of time. We have observed that when the Mother feels the need for a work to be done, she goes ahead, confident that the required resources will come. In the present case, there was also the Question of the right worker to see the project through. The Mother said to Sri Aurobindo, "I know there is one man who can do it." It was Monoranjan Ganguli, a sadhak. I saw him at this work and was really amazed at his wonderful devotion to the Mother, his determination to fulfil the trust she had placed in him. He supervised the operation with unfailing love and duty and cool temper, making the tennis ground his home and passing many sleepless nights sitting on a stool. When I asked him why he should be in such a hurry, he replied, "Mother wants it so. I must finish it within the appointed time." "Is it possible? Only a few days are left!" I voiced my doubt. "Oh, I must!" and he did. A singular feat indeed, and again the Mother's right choice.
When the courts were ready, there followed a change in our programme. Henceforth Sri Aurobindo's noon meal was served earlier so that the Mother could go out by 5.00 p.m. She would come to Sri Aurobindo's room dressed in her specially designed tennis costume. She played for about an hour with a number of young people in turn, even took part in tournaments. From there she came to the Playground and, after another bout of crowded activities, returned to the Ashram at about 8.00 or 9.00 p.m.
--
After a long and strenuous vigil, the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's unflagging concentration, daily reports of the progress, the homeopath's blunders and effective medicines, the patient recovered. I did not know really to whom the credit went to the Force or the homeopath. There was a supposition also that the patient's complete surrender to the Mother had made this miracle possible. I had given up all hope of recovery when I saw him vomiting such a lot of blood. Surgical intervention was out of the Question, for the local hospital surgeon was not very competent. Sri Aurobindo suggested it by way of keeping ourselves on the safe side of the law, since we had no legal authority to practise. Neither had I much faith in the homeopath when the case was handed over to him, though he had made a big name in the town. One thing I must say in favour of the patient, that he never lost hope and was throughout conscious. If I was in an anxiety he would give me hope saying, "Doctor, don't think that I am going to die." Sri Aurobindo wrote to me, "The man has a belief in yoga-force and that helps." In this predicament I wanted a straight answer from Sri Aurobindo as to which factor played the dominant part in the cure the Force or the doctor. I was doubtful about the latter because he had committed many blunders which were recognised by Sri Aurobindo and they had to be counter acted by the Force. The illuminating answer I received from him is as follows, "It was only when the heart began to misbehave seriously, that, as often happens, in response to the danger a big Force began to come down and S's body also responded it was that response that saved him, not any surrender... I think the Force can take more credit than R's medicines, although the latter were very useful, one might say an indispensable assistance. Yet it was whenever a big Force came in that S made a bound forward and each time on the lines indicated by the Force, first the heart's recovery, next the deliverance of the liver, third the overcoming of the hyperacid excesses. R was an obstacle as well as a help, twice. First, in his confounded decision to encourage 'yellow fever' the bile had to be cleared out of course, but not in that dangerous way; next in his "lime juice" excesses, the orange-juice was useful, but frantically overdone. As soon as he dropped his first mistake, the bile set itself right as soon as he dropped his second to some extent and administered orange juice + medicine reasonably, the rest ameliorated.... If so, it was because the Force got a chance to work straight helped and not impeded."
This then is one case among many others which I have followed step by step, and have Sri Aurobindo's own words to vouch for the cure of the case by his Force.
--
It was a new experience indeed, for till then our approach to her was individual and restricted mostly to practical guidance; there was no intellectual communication and the Mother would always discourage intellectual questions. This was the first time she became collectively expansive and was ready to respond to intellectual seekings, but mainly on spiritual matters. These talks naturally reminded me of Sri Aurobindo's talks for their vivid contrast and I could not but make a mental comparison between them; they sharply bring out the characteristics of two different personalities though their consciousness is one. Here the Mother's personality dominated the whole atmosphere; her tone, mood and manner were stamped with a seriousness, energy and force that demanded close attention. Humour did not play a conspicuous role, but there were flashes of wit. Her eyes were on everybody, her answers, though meant for the Questioner, were directed towards all so that there was no room for being inattentive or indifferent. When a play by the Mother was staged by our students, she strictly enjoined on the young children to keep complete silence. The striking difference with Sri Aurobindo, as I have pointed out, was his impersonality. He asked questions or answered them without looking at the Questioner. He spoke slowly in a subdued voice with no stress in it. There was no constraint upon you, you were having a talk with a friend, and in friendship, levity, gravity, all were in order. Still, Sri Aurobindo remained Sri Aurobindo to us; there was no loss of reverence. Some of us had hotly discussed topics even to the point of losing our temper before his Witness-Purusha consciousness. That would be very unusual before the Mother. To put a homely simile, they were like a father and mother, both loving but one indulgent, liberal, large, the other a firm though not inconsiderate disciplinarian. Both are aspects of the one Divine Impersonal and Personal, Purusha and Prakriti and both have their ineffable charm. Though all were free to ask her questions, it was not always easy to ask them, as the answers instead of having a direct bearing on the Questions were sometimes directed against the consciousness of the person involved; for to her, it was that which was more important, and our consciousness was an open book to her inner sight. These talks continued for quite a long time; the hall used to be packed. Unfortunately no regular record has been kept, first because they flowed very fast and secondly, there were only a few who understood French well. In later days, some talks were held in English out of a special consideration for a few people. I shall quote one or two of them from my scanty records.
Q: What is the origin of anger and how to get rid of it?
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
These are negative and a priori considerations, but they are supported by more positive indications. The other Aryan religions which are most akin in conception to the Vedic and seem originally to have used the same names for their deities, present themselves to us even at their earliest vaguely historic stage as moralised religions. Their gods had not only distinct moral attri butes, but represented moral & subjective functions. Apollo is not only the god of the sun or of pestilencein Homer indeed Haelios (Saurya) & not Apollo is the Sun God but the divine master of prophecy and poetry; Athene has lost any naturalistic significance she may ever have had and is a pure moral force, the goddess of strong intelligence, force guided by brain; Ares is the lord of battles, not a storm wind; Artemis, if she is the Moon, is also goddess of the free hunting life and of virginity; Aphrodite is only the goddess of Love & Beauty There is therefore a strong moral element in the cult & there are clear subjective notions attached to the divine personalities. But this is not all. There was not only a moral element in the Greek religion as known & practised by the layman, there was also a mystic element and an esoteric belief & practice practised by the initiated. The mysteries of Eleusis, the Thracian rites connected with the name of Orpheus, the Phrygian worship of Cybele, even the Bacchic rites rested on a mystic symbolism which gave a deep internal meaning to the exterior circumstances of creed & cult. Nor was this a modern excrescence; for its origins were lost to the Greeks in a legendary antiquity. Indeed, if we took the trouble to understand alien & primitive mentalities instead of judging & interpreting them by our own standards, I think we should find an element of mysticism even in savage rites & beliefs. the Question at any rate may fairly be put, Were the Vedic Rishis, thinkers of a race which has shown itself otherwise the greatest & earliest mystics & moralisers in historical times, the most obstinately spiritual, theosophic & metaphysical of nations, so far behind the Orphic & Homeric Greeks as to be wholly Pagan & naturalistic in their creed, or was their religion too moralised & subjective, were their ceremonies too supported by an esoteric symbolism?
The immediate or at any rate the earliest known successors of the Rishis, the compilers of the Brahmanas, the writers of theUpanishads give a clear & definite answer to this question.The Upanishads everywhere rest their highly spiritual & deeply mystic doctrines on the Veda.We read in the Isha Upanishad of Surya as the Sun God, but it is the Sun of spiritual illumination, of Agni as the Fire, but it is the inner fire that burns up all sin & crookedness. In the Kena Indra, Agni & Vayu seek to know the supreme Brahman and their greatness is estimated by the nearness with which they touched him,nedistham pasparsha. Uma the daughter of Himavan, the Woman, who reveals the truth to them is clearly enough no natural phenomenon. In the Brihadaranyaka, the most profound, subtle & mystical of human scriptures, the gods & Titans are the masters, respectively, of good and of evil. In the Upanishads generally the word devah is used as almost synonymous with the forces & functions of sense, mind & intellect. The element of symbolism is equally clear. To the terms of the Vedic ritual, to their very syllables a profound significance is everywhere attached; several incidents related in the Upanishads show the deep sense then & before entertained that the sacrifices had a spiritual meaning which must be known if they were to be conducted with full profit or even with perfect safety. The Brahmanas everywhere are at pains to bring out a minute symbolism in the least circumstances of the ritual, in the clarified butter, the sacred grass, the dish, the ladle. Moreover, we see even in the earliest Upanishads already developed the firm outlines and minute details of an extraordinary psychology, physics, cosmology which demand an ancient development and centuries of Yogic practice and mystic speculation to account for their perfect form & clearness. This psychology, this physics, this cosmology persist almost unchanged through the whole history of Hinduism. We meet them in the Puranas; they are the foundation of the Tantra; they are still obscurely practised in various systems of Yoga. And throughout, they have rested on a declared Vedic foundation. The Pranava, the Gayatri, the three Vyahritis, the five sheaths, the five (or seven) psychological strata, (bhumi, kshiti of the Vedas), the worlds that await us, the gods who help & the demons who hinder go back to Vedic origins.All this may be a later mystic misconception of the hymns & their ritual, but the other hypothesis of direct & genuine derivation is also possible. If there was no common origin, if Greek & Indian separated during the naturalistic period of the common religion supposed to be recorded in the Vedas it is surprising that even the little we know of Greek rites & mysteries should show us ideas coincident with those of Indian Tantra & Yoga.
1.04 - The Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
43 We shall now turn to the Question of whether the increase
in self-knowledge resulting from the withdrawal of impersonal
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo touches here upon the Question that has
been on the mind of all humans since their appearance on
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
asked the Question; Giordano Bruno answered it positively,
and so did Fontenelle, in his Entretiens sur la pluralit des
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have now at their disposal. Yet, the Question is whether
life will be found on one or some of them. Experts have
1.052 - Yoga Practice - A Series of Positive Steps, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Attachment, or affection, is a peculiar double attitude of consciousness. It is simultaneously working like a double-edged sword when it is attached to any particular object. It has a feeling that the things which it loves, or to which it is attached, are not really a part of its being because if a thing is a part of our own being, the Question of desiring it will not arise. There is no need to love something which is a part of our being, so we have a subtle feeling that it is not a part of us. The members of the family do not belong to us, really speaking. We know it very well. Therefore, we create an artificial identification of their being with our being by means of a psychological movement or a function known as affection, love or attachment. We create a world of our own which may be called a fools paradise.
This is the paradise in which the head of the family lives. Oh, how beautiful it is. I have got a large family. He does not know what it actually means. Also, it is very dangerous to know what it is because if we know what it really is, we will be horrified immediately, to the shock of our nerves. But an artificial circumstance is always created by us for the sake of a temporary satisfaction, and all our satisfactions are temporary and artificial. They are artificial because they are created out of a circumstance which is subject to change at any moment, and because the relationship that is established is not true. It is a false relationship which cannot really exist.
1.057 - The Four Manifestations of Ignorance, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The demands that follow from this ignorance have already been mentioned raga, dvesha, abhinivesha, etc. Because of the fact that the mind is completely involved, root and branch, in this mix-up of values, it is unable to concentrate itself on any given point. How is it possible for the mind to meditate? It is simply out of the Question. It is a slave of slaves dasa se dasaha and such a slave cannot have any independence of its own. Where there is no independence, how can there be deliberate action? the Question of the practice of yoga does not arise. It is gone, if this is to be the case.
But this is precisely what has happened. All our so-called endeavours are backed up by a misconception. Because of the misconception, there is erroneous movement of the mind in its activities. Therefore, the expected results do not follow. It does not matter if we sit for meditation for hours together nothing will happen. No fruit is going to drop from the trees, because this meditation may be like the meditation of the crane for catching fish. That is also meditation. The crane keeps quiet for hours together, without doing anything, and we call it meditation. We call it bahula dhyana in Hindi. Bahula dhyana is a peculiar kind of meditation practised by the crane. It stands on one leg. It is also a great tapasvi and does not budge an inch from that place. We think that the crane is a great yogi but its mind is on the fish. It wants to see where the fish comes up, and then darts upon it immediately and catches it.
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It is not possible to deny all relationship, because of the fact of perception. If I am completely oblivious of the existence of people outside, of things outside, of the world around me, then of course the Question may not arise. But I see the world, I see people, I see things as completely different from me. So I feel a necessity to conduct myself in a particular manner in respect of these existences outside me. This manner is raga-dvesa like and dislike a peculiar, subtle relationship that we project for the purpose of stabilising this individuality and keeping it secure in the light of the presence of other individuals also. Here begins what is called social life.
Social life is nothing but a set-up of living which has been agreed upon by different individuals in a group for the purpose of mutual sustenance, coordination and security, as no individual can be secure by itself in the light of the presence of other individuals because each individual is a centre of egoism, a principle of intense self-affirmation which denies the reality of every other individual. The meaning of individuality or egoism is the denial of value to others, and sometimes the force of denial becomes so intense that it comes to the surface as conflict, as warfare. Whether it is through words or actually in fight, internally there is a feeling of irreconcilability among individuals. They are not really friends, because their very existence is an irreconcilability; it is an untenability; it is a denial of the truths which prevail in the midst of this apparent diversity.
1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
stopping to discuss the Question of whether this exacerbation of
the opposites, much as it increases suffering, may not after all
1.05 - Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
overhanging Buddha's head.) The detailed features of these centers are of interest only to professional clairvoyants; we will discuss later some details of general interest. A complete study on the Question can be found in the remarkable work of Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), The Serpent Power (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1913).
We will not dwell here on the description of these centers as tradition refers to them, for it is better to experience things oneself rather than to talk about them, nor will we discuss their positions in the body; the seeker will feel them himself without any difficulty as soon as he becomes a little clear. Suffice it to say that these centers (called Chakras in India) are not located in our physical body but in another dimension, though their concentration may at times become so intense that we have an acute, localized physical sensation. Some of them, though not all, are in fact quite close to the body's nervous plexuses. Roughly speaking, there are seven centers distributed in four zones: (1) The Superconscient, with one center slightly above the top of the head,44 which controls our thinking mind and communicates with higher mental realms: illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind,
1.05 - Knowledge by Aquaintance and Knowledge by Description, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
_self_: it is consciousness of particular thoughts and feelings. the Question whether we are also acquainted with our bare selves, as opposed to particular thoughts and feelings, is a very difficult one, upon which it would be rash to speak positively. When we try to look into ourselves we always seem to come upon some particular thought or feeling, and not upon the 'I' which has the thought or feeling. Nevertheless there are some reasons for thinking that we are acquainted with the 'I', though the acquaintance is hard to disentangle from other things. To make clear what sort of reason there is, let us consider for a moment what our acquaintance with particular thoughts really involves.
When I am acquainted with 'my seeing the sun', it seems plain that I am acquainted with two different things in relation to each other. On the one hand there is the sense-datum which represents the sun to me, on the other hand there is that which sees this sense-datum. All acquaintance, such as my acquaintance with the sense-datum which represents the sun, seems obviously a relation between the person acquainted and the object with which the person is acquainted. When a case of acquaintance is one with which I can be acquainted (as I am acquainted with my acquaintance with the sense-datum representing the sun), it is plain that the person acquainted is myself. Thus, when I am acquainted with my seeing the sun, the whole fact with which I am acquainted is
--
It does not seem necessary to suppose that we are acquainted with a more or less permanent person, the same to-day as yesterday, but it does seem as though we must be acquainted with that thing, whatever its nature, which sees the sun and has acquaintance with sense-data. Thus, in some sense it would seem we must be acquainted with our Selves as opposed to our particular experiences. But the Question is difficult, and complicated arguments can be adduced on either side. Hence, although acquaintance with ourselves seems _probably_ to occur, it is not wise to assert that it undoubtedly does occur.
We may therefore sum up as follows what has been said concerning acquaintance with things that exist. We have acquaintance in sensation with the data of the outer senses, and in introspection with the data of what may be called the inner sense--thoughts, feelings, desires, etc.; we have acquaintance in memory with things which have been data either of the outer senses or of the inner sense. Further, it is probable, though not certain, that we have acquaintance with Self, as that which is aware of things or has desires towards things.
1.05 - Mental Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the Question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
1.05 - MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
after all but the symptom of a definite kind of life: the Question as
to whether the condemnation is justified or the reverse is not even
1.05 - Problems of Modern Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
us nothing about it. Hence the Question arises of how this new difficulty is
to be met. Obviously we are dealing with a neurotic formation, a new
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be found the Question must be repressed again.
[171]
1.05 - Qualifications of the Aspirant and the Teacher, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
The second condition necessary in the teacher is sinlessness. the Question is often asked,
"Why should we look into the character and personality of a teacher? We have only to judge of what he says, and take that up." This is not right. If a man wants to teach me something of dynamics, or chemistry, or any other physical science, he may be anything he likes, because what the physical sciences require is merely an intellectual equipment; but in the spiritual sciences it is impossible from first to last that there can be any spiritual light in the soul that is impure. What religion can an impure man teach? The sine qua non of acquiring spiritual truth for one's self or for imparting it to others is the purity of heart and soul. A vision of God or a glimpse of the beyond never comes until the soul is pure.
1.05 - The Creative Principle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
By their mutual ignorance the various theories of the beginning of things only reveal their fundamental ignorance of the causes of existence. And one may class among these theories even those speculations which under the philosophic name of Agnosticism avow their ignorance and affirm it expressly as their point of departure. For if they do not pose the Question of the wherefore of the worlds, it is because in reality they hold it to be solved. Under their Agnosticism their lurks, tacitly and ill-disguised, the postulate of an unknown First Principle. Some, even, perceive clearly that it is impossible to escape from the necessity of this postulate and affirm under the name of the Unknowable such a First Principle. But even those which confine themselves to the assertion of the empirical fact of evolution, those in whose view the universe is nothing but a perpetual motion without cause or finality, will be found always ready to assert that this motion reposes on the existence of an eternal force or an eternal substance. For many physicists nowadays the notion of ether as an absolute substratum of all phenomena takes the place of a creative Deity.
And, on the other hand, is not this formula of a creative God, which is the conclusion of the majority of the other theories, itself the most supremely agnostic of all formulas? Does it not unconsciously disguise in its appeal to the miracle, the mystery of the primal act, the very ignorance that the partisans of the Unknowable avow? Does not the affirmation of an eternal Being, creator of things, amount in fact to the statement of a principle of uncreated force or substance from which things must have arisen?
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Whether we consider the creator to be immanent or transcendent, alien to the world or one with it, whether we confound the idea of God with that of the universe, as in Pantheism, or identify the universe with the thought of God, as in Idealism, the Question of the creator remains that of the creation itself. And the problem remains the same, whether it be of a first Being or of a first Thing. How could this being, if it is relative, rise out of the Absolute? And how if it is absolute, could it create the relative? Can the Absolute create anything that does not already exist? And if anything in the Absolute can create itself other than it is, how in so creating itself does it become the relative? Or more simply, how, by what mystery of evolution does it become?
***
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
noted previously463 that the answer to the Question what is the good? must in fact be sought in the metadomain, so to speak: the more fundamental mystery given the context-dependent nature of the good is
how are answers to the Question what is the good? endlessly and appropriately generated? The good,
then, becomes the set of circumstances that allow the process of moral construction to flourish or
--
determine what sort of relation they had with the Question that had led me to despair.
And this is what I found among people whose circumstances were precisely the same as mine with
--
player now tries to win, and all, therefore, begin to concern themselves with the Question of mutual
control and of unification of the rules. But while a certain agreement may be reached in the course of
--
to the Question what is the good? determined?); (2) the structure of their attendant resolutions; and (3)
the manner in which the meta-problem and its solution follow in the course of historical development from
--
traditionalists assume that the answer to the Question what is the good? can be has been answered
permanently, and concretely, with the list of laws. Such a list is always insufficient, however, for the
--
representative of molecular and atomic structure a part like the whole. the Question might be more
accurately presented what is an iron block not, for man? The pre-experimental mind of the alchemist,
--
functions)]. the Question in mind, implicit or explicitly formulated, determines in part the answer given
by the object. The object is always capable of superseding the constraint, in some unpredictable fashion.
--
still the Question lingers why should things, even loved things, exist at all, if their necessary limitations
cause such suffering?
Perhaps we could reserve answer to the Question of Gods nature, his responsibility for the presence of
the evil in creation, until we have solved the problem of our own. Perhaps we could tolerate the horrors of
--
other: is it not permitted to make the experiment and to ask the Question whether this given would not be sufficient
for also understanding on the basis of this kind of thing the so-called mechanistic or (material) world? I mean, not
1.05 - The New Consciousness, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But at the beginning this functioning is still unsure. We are constantly snatched back by the old machinery, the habit of mulling over thoughts, judging, deducing, calculating, and immediately it is as if a veil fell, a screen came between the quiet clarity behind and the arduous whirlwind here: communications are jammed. Again we have to take a step back and find the comfortable expanse and it is irritating, uncommunicative and apparently indifferent to our fate, opposing a neutral silence, an unrelieved blankness to the Question we send it and which would yet call for an immediate answer. So we yield once more; we start up the machine again only to realize that everything was blank behind so we would not move in front, and that the time for an answer had not yet come. We keep stumbling along and persisting, trustful but awkward outwardly (or in front), when circumstances would call for swiftness and efficiency, and those who work with the old reason may scoff, as perhaps the old veteran anthropoid scoffed at the clumsiness of the apprentice man: we miss the branch. We fall and pick ourselves up. We go on. But gradually, as our demechanization gains ground, grows sure-footed and more perfect, the communications become clearer, the perceptions more accurate and precise. We begin to unravel a whole jumbled network that had previously seemed like logic itself. From within the tranquil clarity, we notice a multitude of movements rising from below, from outside, from others; it is a mixture of vibrations, a cacophony of minuscule impulses, a battlefield, an arena filled with obscure contenders, blind drives, dark flashes, microscopic and stubborn wills. And all of a sudden, in all that muddle falls a tiny little drop from our quiet river without our wanting it or trying or even asking for it and everything loosens up, smoothes out, disappears, dissolves. That face there in front of us, this grating little circumstance, that knot of difficulty, this stubborn resistance vanishes, melts away, smoothes out, opens up as if by magic. We begin to enter mastery.
But it is a curious sort of mastery it does not obey us at all! On the contrary, the minute we try to use it, it eludes us completely, slips through our fingers, pokes fun at us and leaves us looking foolish, like an apprentice sculptor trying to imitate the stroke of the Master: our stroke misses. We even hit our fingers. And we learn. Perhaps we learn not to want anything. But it is a little more complicated than that complicated from our standpoint, of course, because everything is complicated on this side; it is complexity itself. In fact, it is simple. We are learning the law of rhythm. Because Truth is a rhythm.
1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Sometimes, a great Father and Mother crystallize out of some huge cloudy confusion of "Elements"and so on. But nobody answers the Question; at least, none of these God-inventing mules, with their incurably commonplace minds.
H. Serious philosophy has always begun by discarding all these puerilities. It has of necessity been divided into these schools: the Nihilist, the Monist, and the Dualist.
--
K. The Monists perceive quite clearly and correctly that it is absurd to answer the Question "How came these Many things (of which we are aware) to be?" by saying that they came from Many; and "Many" in this connection includes Two. The Universe must therefore be a single phenomenon: make it eternal and all the rest of it i.e. remove all limit of any kind and the Universe explains itself. How then can Opposites exist, as we observe them to do? Is it not the very essence of our original Sorites that the Many must be reducible to the One? They see how awkward this is; so the "devil" of the Dualist is emulsified and evaporated into "illusion;" what they call "Maya" or some equivalent term.
"Reality" for them consists solely of Brahman, the supreme Being "without quantity or quality." They are compelled to deny him all attributes, even that of Existence; for to do so would instantly limit them, and so hurl them headlong back in to Dualism. All that of which we are aware must obviously possess limits, or it could have no intelligible meaning for us; if we want "pork," we must specify its qualities and quantities; at the very least, we must be able to distinguish it from "that-which-is-not-pork."
1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
"P reported to the Mother my reactions to Sri Aurobindo's recent contribution to the War Fund. I did not know about it. Suddenly I saw the Mother quite unmindful of me, I thought it might be because She was very busy in those days. But I observed Her for three days, and was convinced that something was amiss. I approached Her and asked, 'Why are you ignoring me?' She said, 'You know it very well.' But I was puzzled. I guessed every other reason than the true one, which according to Her was serious. I did not think that P would report to Her my talks with him. So I begged her to tell me what I had done, because I was sure to rectify my grave error. To this She said, with severity, 'There are things that were settled long before you were even born. We have been working on them for a long time. Now you with your infinitesimally small mind believe that all that is nothing, that Sri Aurobindo and I are wrong, and that you are right in your judgment!' I was taken aback; it flashed before me, 'What could be the reason?' Being nonplussed, I expressed my surprise, 'Is it something about the War that I spoke to P?' The Mother made the sign of Yes. I felt relieved and said, 'Oh, it was nothing. I just spoke to him casually; it was not at all serious.' But the Mother's face was stern and She said, 'Not serious? It was almost unbelievable that you of all persons could speak like that about Sri Aurobindo! Haven't you read all that He has given out to the Press?' I said, 'Yes, Mother, I have. But have not the British done anything wrong to India?' The Mother replied, 'We never said that they had not, nor do we say that in the future they will not do so any more. But today the Question is not that; don't you understand it? When you see your neighbour's house on fire, and yet you do not go to help to put it out because he has done wrong to you, you risk the burning of your own house and the loss of your own life. Do you not see the difference between the forces that are fighting for the Divine and those for the Asuras?' I said, 'Yes, Mother, I do see; only what baffles me is that Churchill, whom you and Sri Aurobindo have chosen as your direct instrument, wants today India's help for his own country's existence; and yet says that His Majesty's government has no intention of liquidating its Empire!' The Mother said, 'But leave all that to the Divine. Churchill is a human being. He is not a yogi aspiring to transform his nature, Today he represents the Soul of the Nation that is fighting against the Asuras. He is being guided by the Divine directly and his soul is responding magnificently. All concentration must be now to help the Allies for the victory that is ultimately assured, but there must be no looseness, not the slightest opening to the Asuras. After the battle is won, if Churchill's soul can remain still in front and he continues to be guided by the Divine, he will go very fast in the line of evolution. But generally on earth it doesn't happen like that. His human mind and vital will take the lead after the crisis is over, and then he will come down to the level of the ordinary human being, though of a higher order.'"
When Dr. Rao, one of the consultant physicians attending on Sri Aurobindo, said that a lot of people in Madras were wondering how Sri Aurobindo, who had been so anti-British, could contribute to the War Fund, the Master explained to him at great length why he had taken that step. His intention was that Dr. Rao should speak about it to others when the occasion arose. Among the points already known, Sri Aurobindo disclosed his own occult action in the War. He said, "Do you know that Hitler is trying to get a foothold in South America and doing extensive propaganda there? It can lead to an attack against the U.S.A. He is now practically master of Europe. If he had invaded England after the collapse of France, he could have been in Asia by this time.... Now another force has been set up against his. Still the danger has not passed. He has a 50% chance of success. Up to the time when France collapsed, he was remarkably successful because he had behind him an Asuric Power which guided him; from that Power he received remarkably correct messages."
--
In a talk in 1940, Sri Aurobindo said: "There are forces which are trying to destroy the British and their empire forces above and here in this world, I mean inner forces. I myself had wished for its destruction; but at that time I did not know such forces would arise. These forces are working for the evolution of a new world-order which would come following upon the liquidation of the Empire. But, for the advent of this new arrangement, the Empire needn't be destroyed. The new arrangement can be achieved more quietly by a change in the balance of forces, without much destruction. Had it not been for Hitler, I wouldn't have cared what power remained or went down. Now the Question is whether the new world-order is to come after much suffering and destruction or with as little of it as possible. Destruction of England would mean victory for Hitler and in that case, perhaps after a great deal of suffering and oppression, and reaction to them, that world-order may come or may not, or it may come only after pralaya! Of course the issue has been decided by the Divine Vision and there can be no change. But nobody knows what the decision is."
These two long extracts are enoughto show clearly Sri Aurobindo's vision of the play of forces, how they try through the use of human instruments to fulfil their purpose and also what Sri Aurobindo's part was in this mysterious play. I shall now give some extracts from our talks to demonstrate Sri Aurobindo's close watch on the trend of the War, his comments on the military movements of the contending parties, sometimes his anticipation of their strategic moves and the consequences that would ensue, or his own suggestions about the courses that could be followed. And all this came enlivened with a sense of quiet humour that made the grimness of the War itself appear light, even an enjoyable game of forces.
--
Our Ashram came in for a good deal of suffering and inconvenience in the wake of the War: the wrath and abuse of our countrymen, the resentment of a number of our own inmates for our support of the War and the loss of some other valiant sons in the great holocaust. It had to open its doors to the children of all disciples who were in the danger zone, so we were all of a sudden changed into a large community without sufficient means to maintain ourselves. And due to the general embargoes and restrictions imposed by the Government the most necessary food supply was either cut off or reduced to a minimum. Last of all, and the greatest irony of fate, the Ashram in spite of all our help was suspected of being a nest of spies or enemy agents. Police search was apprehended and even the Question of disbanding the Ashram was in the air. Perhaps the British Government had never entirely believed that Sri Aurobindo, once the most dangerous enemy of the British Empire, could really become their ally. Was he not still engaged in secret revolutionary activities, his war-contribution serving just as a smoke-screen? Unfortunately, in the Ashram itself there were some who wished for Hitler's victory, not for love of Hitler but because of their hatred of British domination. Sri Aurobindo conveyed through us a stern message to them: "If these people want that the Ashram should be dissolved, they can come and tell me and I will dissolve it instead of the police doing it.... Hitlerism is the greatest menace that the world has ever met."
Another inconvenience, but of short duration, that we had to pass through was the threat of bombing by the Japanese Air Force. As soon as the alert for a blackout was given, all lights in the Ashram had to go off. Sri Aurobindo sat up in bed, the Mother on a chair in Sri Aurobindo's room; the two of us who were on duty at the time also sat there, Champaklal very near the Mother.... After a short while when the all-clear signal was given, we would revert to our duty. One day, putting a dark shade over Sri Aurobindo's table lamp, the Mother said with a smile, "Your lamp lights up three streets, Lord." "So I should be darkened?" he asked smiling. In truth, I do not think that any Japanese aeroplane flew over Pondicherry. I was very much amused at the sight of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo taking this human precaution against any possible threat. But that is their way. Because they are Divine and possess a great occult power, one would suppose that all the human measures were otiose or a mere show as I thought in my callow days. But I saw in this case and in many others that the Mother was in grim earnest. Even if Sri Aurobindo and she were sure of an eventual success, they would keep applying the pressure of their Force till the issue was decided beyond any question.
--
It will be very pertinent indeed to ask oneself how this identification took place, how and why this date was selected, what the reason behind it was. Surely, there must have been a process or occasion which led to the selection of this date. It may not have been very important to the general public, but it was of great importance to us, the disciples of Sri Aurobindo. Most accidentally I found the answer though the fact was well-known, perhaps, to the historians of India's freedom movement. The occasion has been mentioned in the book Freedom at Midnight.[8] "Partition of India had been decided upon by Lord Mountbatten the Viceroy of India and the Indian leaders had agreed to it. Now the Question that remained to be decided was the Transfer of Power: on which date should it be done? A Press Conference was called by the Viceroy. Three hundred journalists from various countries had gathered. When he had concluded his talk, it was followed by a burst of applause....
"Suddenly... the anonymous voice of an Indian newsman cut across the chamber. His was the last question awaiting an answer.
--
"'And if you have chosen a date, Sir, what then is that date?' pressed the Questioner.
"A number of rapid calculations went whirring through the Viceroy's mind as he listened to those questions. He had not, in fact, picked a date. But he was convinced it had to be very soon....
1.05 - Yoga and Hypnotism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yo yacchraddha sa eva sa. According as is a mans fixed and complete belief, that he is,not immediately always but sooner or later, by the law that makes the psychical tend inevitably to express itself in the material. The will is the agent by which all these changes are made and old saskras replaced by new, and the will cannot act without faith. the Question then arises whether mind is the ultimate force or there is another which communicates with the outside world through the mind. Is the mind the agent or simply the instrument? If the mind be all, then it is only animals that can have the power to evolve; but this does not accord with the laws of the world as we know them. The tree evolves, the clod evolves, everything evolves Even in animals it is evident that mind is not all in the sense of being the ultimate expression of existence or the ultimate force in Nature. It seems to be all only because that which is all expresses itself in the mind and passes everything through it for the sake of manifestation. That which we call mind is a medium which pervades the world. Otherwise we could not have that instantaneous and electrical action of mind upon mind of which human experience is full and of which the new phenomena of hypnotism, telepathy etc. are only fresh proofs. There must be contact, there must be interpenetration if we are to account for these phenomena on any reasonable theory. Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument. There is an ulterior force which works through this subtle medium called mind. An animal species develops, according to the modern theory, under the subtle influence of the environment. The environment supplies a need and those who satisfy the need develop a new species which survives because it is more fit. This is not the result of any intellectual perception of the need nor of a resolve to develop the necessary changes, but of a desire, often though not always a mute, inarticulate and unthought desire. That desire attracts a force which satisfies it What is that force? The tendency of the psychical desire to manifest in the material change is one term in the equation; the force which develops the change in response to the desire is another. We have a will beyond mind which dictates the change, we have a force beyond mind which effects it. According to Hindu philosophy the will is the Jiva, the Purusha, the self in the nandakoa acting through vijna, universal or transcendental mind; this is what we call spirit. The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action. Behind both is the single Self of the universe which contains both Jiva and Prakriti, spirit and material energy. Yoga puts these ultimate existences within us in touch with each other and by stilling the activity of the saskras or associations in mind and body enables them to act swiftly, victoriously, and as the world calls it, miraculously. In reality there is no such thing as a miracle; there are only laws and processes which are not yet understood.
Yoga is therefore no dream, no illusion of mystics. It is known that we can alter the associations of mind and body temporarily and that the mind can alter the conditions of the body partially. Yoga asserts that these things can be done permanently and completely. For the body conquest of disease, pain and material obstructions, for the mind liberation from bondage to past experience and the heavier limitations of space and time, for the heart victory over sin and grief and fear, for the spirit unclouded bliss, strength and illumination, this is the gospel of Yoga, is the goal to which Hinduism points humanity.
1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
the animals? But then there is also the Question: what is a
human being, and what kind of human being is Science
1.06 - On Induction, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
It must be known to us that the existence of some one sort of thing, A, is a sign of the existence of some other sort of thing, B, either at the same time as A or at some earlier or later time, as, for example, thunder is a sign of the earlier existence of lightning. If this were not known to us, we could never extend our knowledge beyond the sphere of our private experience; and this sphere, as we have seen, is exceedingly limited. the Question we have now to consider is whether such an extension is possible, and if so, how it is effected.
Let us take as an illustration a matter about which none of us, in fact, feel the slightest doubt. We are all convinced that the sun will rise to-morrow. Why? Is this belief a mere blind outcome of past experience, or can it be justified as a reasonable belief? It is not easy to find a test by which to judge whether a belief of this kind is reasonable or not, but we can at least ascertain what sort of general beliefs would suffice, if true, to justify the judgement that the sun will rise to-morrow, and the many other similar judgements upon which our actions are based.
--
But in spite of the misleadingness of such expectations, they nevertheless exist. The mere fact that something has happened a certain number of times causes animals and men to expect that it will happen again. Thus our instincts certainly cause us to believe that the sun will rise to-morrow, but we may be in no better a position than the chicken which unexpectedly has its neck wrung. We have therefore to distinguish the fact that past uniformities _cause_ expectations as to the future, from the Question whether there is any reasonable ground for giving weight to such expectations after the Question of their validity has been raised.
The problem we have to discuss is whether there is any reason for believing in what is called 'the uniformity of nature'. The belief in the uniformity of nature is the belief that everything that has happened or will happen is an instance of some general law to which there are no exceptions. The crude expectations which we have been considering are all subject to exceptions, and therefore liable to disappoint those who entertain them. But science habitually assumes, at least as a working hypothesis, that general rules which have exceptions can be replaced by general rules which have no exceptions. 'Unsupported bodies in air fall' is a general rule to which balloons and aeroplanes are exceptions. But the laws of motion and the law of gravitation, which account for the fact that most bodies fall, also account for the fact that balloons and aeroplanes can rise; thus the laws of motion and the law of gravitation are not subject to these exceptions.
--
In this search science has been remarkably successful, and it may be conceded that such uniformities have held hitherto. This brings us back to the Question: Have we any reason, assuming that they have always held in the past, to suppose that they will hold in the future?
It has been argued that we have reason to know that the future will resemble the past, because what was the future has constantly become the past, and has always been found to resemble the past, so that we really have experience of the future, namely of times which were formerly future, which we may call past futures. But such an argument really begs the very question at issue. We have experience of past futures, but not of future futures, and the Question is: Will future futures resemble past futures? This question is not to be answered by an argument which starts from past futures alone. We have therefore still to seek for some principle which shall enable us to know that the future will follow the same laws as the past.
The reference to the future in this question is not essential. The same question arises when we apply the laws that work in our experience to past things of which we have no experience--as, for example, in geology, or in theories as to the origin of the Solar System. the Question we really have to ask is: 'When two things have been found to be often associated, and no instance is known of the one occurring without the other, does the occurrence of one of the two, in a fresh instance, give any good ground for expecting the other?' On our answer to this question must depend the validity of the whole of our expectations as to the future, the whole of the results obtained by induction, and in fact practically all the beliefs upon which our daily life is based.
It must be conceded, to begin with, that the fact that two things have been found often together and never apart does not, by itself, suffice to _prove_ demonstratively that they will be found together in the next case we examine. The most we can hope is that the oftener things are found together, the more probable it becomes that they will be found together another time, and that, if they have been found together often enough, the probability will amount _almost_ to certainty. It can never quite reach certainty, because we know that in spite of frequent repetitions there sometimes is a failure at the last, as in the case of the chicken whose neck is wrung. Thus probability is all we ought to seek.
--
The inductive principle, however, is equally incapable of being _proved_ by an appeal to experience. Experience might conceivably confirm the inductive principle as regards the cases that have been already examined; but as regards unexamined cases, it is the inductive principle alone that can justify any inference from what has been examined to what has not been examined. All arguments which, on the basis of experience, argue as to the future or the unexperienced parts of the past or present, assume the inductive principle; hence we can never use experience to prove the inductive principle without begging the Question. Thus we must either accept the inductive principle on the ground of its intrinsic evidence, or forgo all justification of our expectations about the future. If the principle is unsound, we have no reason to expect the sun to rise to-morrow, to expect bread to be more nourishing than a stone, or to expect that if we throw ourselves off the roof we shall fall. When we see what looks like our best friend approaching us, we shall have no reason to suppose that his body is not inhabited by the mind of our worst enemy or of some total stranger. All our conduct is based upon associations which have worked in the past, and which we therefore regard as likely to work in the future; and this likelihood is dependent for its validity upon the inductive principle.
The general principles of science, such as the belief in the reign of law, and the belief that every event must have a cause, are as completely dependent upon the inductive principle as are the beliefs of daily life All such general principles are believed because mankind have found innumerable instances of their truth and no instances of their falsehood. But this affords no evidence for their truth in the future, unless the inductive principle is assumed.
1.06 - Psychic Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When a child asks a question, he should not be answered by saying that it is stupid or foolish, or that the answer will not be understood by him. Curiosity cannot be postponed, and effort should be made to answer the Question truthfully and in such a way as to make the answer accessible to the brain of the hearer.
With the growing awareness, the child should be taught to concentrate on the inner psychic presence and make it more and more a living reality.
1.06 - Psycho therapy and a Philosophy of Life, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
principles. the Question of the measuring rod with which to measure, of
the ethical criteria which are to determine our actions, must be answered
--
resists a collective solution. the Question then arises whether the therapist
is prepared to risk having his convictions dashed and shattered against the
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The nature of the integral Yoga so conceived, so conditioned, progressing by these spiritual means, turning upon this integral transformation of the nature, determines of itself its answer to the Question of the ordinary activities of life and their place in the Yoga.
There is not and cannot be here any ascetic or contemplative or mystic abandonment of works and life altogether, any gospel of an absorbed meditation and inactivity, any cutting away or condemnation of the Life-Force and its activities, any rejection of the manifestation in the earth-nature. It may be necessary for the seeker at any period to withdraw into himself, to remain plunged in his inner being, to shut out from him the noise and turmoil of the life of the Ignorance until a certain inner change has been accomplished or something achieved without which a further effective action on life has become difficult or impossible.
1.06 - The Breaking of the Limits, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
We had set out in search of a self amid all this inner and outer machinery; we so much needed something other than this generic sum, this legal fiction, this curriculum vitae which is like a curriculum of death, this sum of actions and daily gestures adding up to zero or perpetually in hope of an inscrutable and elusive something, this crest of existence forever slipping away from under our feet and receding into the distance, toward another wave, the more or less happy repetition of the same old story, of the same program stored in the computer with our parents' chromosomes, our studies, our formative and deformative years; something that was not the attach case we lug around everywhere, nor the stethoscope, nor the pen, not the sum of our feelings nor the sum of our changeless thoughts that leave us forever the same and alone in our little island of self which is not self, which is millions of things crammed into us from the outside, from around and above and below us, from life, from the world, from other beings where is the self? What is me in all that? Where am I? the Question had become so unbearable that one day we stepped outside stepped into nothing, which was perhaps something, but it was everything, the only way out of the leaden island. Then, little by little, in the tiny empty interval between this shadow of mechanical self and that something, or nothing, which watches it all, we saw a flame of need grow in us, a need that became more and more intense and burning as the darkness grew thicker in and around us, an inexplicable flame leaping in that stifling nothingness. And slowly, very slowly, like a vague dawn emerging from under the night, like a faraway city wrapped in fog, we saw twinkling little lights start to appear, faint signs, so faint they looked like lights floating on a dark sea, which could have been ten feet or ten miles away, unless they were the reflection of stars or the phosphorescence of noctilucas beneath the waves. But even that nothing was already something in a world filled with such unsurpassed nothingness. So we persevered. The little flame of need settled in us (or was it outside us, or in our stead?); it became our companion, our presence amid an absence of everything, our gauge, our ever-burning intimacy. And the more it grew, calling out from within us, calling so desperately in this empty and suffocating nothing, the brighter the signs grew, twinkled a little everywhere beneath our steps, as if to say, See? See?, as if calling the new world brought it to birth, as if something answered, became steadier, formed into lines, coordinates, channels, and we began to enter another country, another consciousness, another way of being but where is me in all this, the one who directs and owns, that singular traveler, the center that is neither of the ape nor of man?
So we looked intently right and left: where is me, who is me?... There is no me! Not a trace, not a single ripple of it. What is the use? There is this little shadow in front, which appropriated and piled up feelings, thoughts, powers, plans, like a beggar afraid of being robbed, afraid of destitution; it hoarded desperately on its island, yet kept dying of thirst, a perpetual thirst in the middle of the lovely sheet of water; it kept building lines of defense and fortresses against that overwhelming vastness. But we left the leaden island; we let the stronghold fall, which was not so strong as all that. We entered another current that seemed inexhaustible, a treasure giving itself unsparingly: why should we hold back anything from the present minute when at the next one there were yet other riches? Why should we think or plan anything when life organized itself according to another plan, which foiled all the old plans and, sometimes, for a second, in a sort of ripple of laughter, let us catch a glimpse of an unexpected marvel, a sudden freedom, a complete disengagement from the old program, a light and unfettered little law that opened all doors, toppled the ineluctable consequences and all the old iron laws with the flick of a finger, and left us stunned for a minute, on the threshold of an inconceivable expanse of sunlight, as though we had stepped into another solar system which is perhaps not a system at all as if breaking the mechanical limits inside had caused the same breaking of the mechanical limits outside. Maybe because the Machinery we are facing is one and the same: The world of man is what he thinks it; its laws are the result of his own constraint.
Wikipedia - Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?
Wikipedia - Aristotelian ethics -- Attempt to offer a rational response to the question of how humans should best live
Wikipedia - A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility
Wikipedia - Begging the question -- Type of fallacy, where a proposition is assumed as a premise, which itself needs proof and directly entails the conclusion
Wikipedia - Begs the question
Wikipedia - Beg the question
Wikipedia - Direct examination -- The questioning of a witness in a trial by the party who called the witness
Wikipedia - Great Rationality Debate -- The question of whether humans are rational or not
Wikipedia - Palestine and the United Nations -- UN and the Question of Palestine
Wikipedia - Problem of evil -- The question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with a benevolent God
Wikipedia - Raven paradox -- A paradox arising from the question of what constitutes evidence for a statement
Wikipedia - The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other -- Book by Tzvetan Todorov
Wikipedia - The Question Concerning Technology -- 1954 book by Martin Heidegger
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Wikipedia - The Question of Lay Analysis
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/676823.Beg_the_Question
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6771658-an-answer-to-the-question
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6778111-for-us-surrender-is-out-of-the-question
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7159609-the-question
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/763623.The_question_of_government_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81051.The_True_and_the_Questions
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/950123.The_Question_Of_Freemasonry_
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Forum:Proposed_change_to_name/date_convention_so_as_to_eliminate_the_question-mark
Integral World - Who Defines the Question? Andreas Freund
Integral World - The Corona Conspiracy, Part 13: To Test or Not to Test, That's the Question, Frank Visser
Remote Control (1987 - 1990) - Remote Control was a game show about television and aired on MTV. Many of the questions revolved around old television shows. Other popular segments include "Sing Along With Colin," where contestants were charged with identifying and/or finishing songs sung by Colin Quinn.
The Question of God (1999 - 2000) - God has made a bet with the Devil: if one human of the Devil's choosing can't prove that humanity is decent, God will scrap all of creation and start over. The Devil chooses Detroit car assembly line worker Bob Alman. Now Bob has to live a decent life with no hints from God and constant temptation f...
Tattletales (1974 - 1984) - In round one while the husbands (sometimes the wives) are isolated, their wives were asked two questions (usually they start with It happened at..., and then Convy would complete the question). On each question after it was read, a wive would buzz-in to answer the question. Then after answering the...
Independence Day(1996) - Finally, the question "are we alone in the universe" has been answered. People react with fear, wonder, and excitement while dozens of fifteen mile long ships silently take up positions over cities across the globe. When MIT graduate turned satallite repair man David Levinson discovers a hidden si...
Plan 9 from Outer Space(1959) - "Can your heart stand the shocking facts about Graverobbers from Outer Space?" That's the question on the lips of the narrator of this tale about flying saucers, zombies and cardboard tombstones. A laughable Sci-fi/ Horror film about a pair of aliens, angered by the "stupid minds" of planet Earth, s...
I Love You to Death(1990) - Joey works with Rosalie in their pizza parlor. She is convinced that he works all of the time for them and her world dissolves when she finds that he has been fooling around for years. Being Catholic, divorce is out of the question, so she and her mother and her best friend decide to kill him. Hopel...
Happily Ever After (2004) ::: 6.5/10 -- Ils se marirent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants (original title) -- Happily Ever After Poster Is the love compatible with coupledom? And what of freedom and fidelity? These are some of the questions facing two married men. Director: Yvan Attal Writer: Yvan Attal Stars:
I May Destroy You ::: TV-MA | 30min | Drama | TV Series (2020 ) -- The question of sexual consent in contemporary life and how, in the new landscape of dating and relationships, we make the distinction between liberation and exploitation. Creator:
Margaret (2011) ::: 6.5/10 -- R | 2h 30min | Drama | 1 June 2012 (Italy) -- A young woman witnesses a bus accident, and is caught up in the aftermath, where the question of whether or not it was intentional affects many people's lives. Director: Kenneth Lonergan Writer:
Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge (2011) ::: 6.9/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 46min | Comedy, Romance | 14 October 2011 (India) -- When you can't make it on your own, the best thing to do is to fake it. But, the question remains, how long can you fake true love? Director: Nupur Asthana Writers: Pooja Desai (story), Anvita Dutt (additional dialogue) | 4 more
O Maidens in Your Savage Season ::: TV-14 | 24min | Animation, Comedy, Drama | TV Series (2019- ) Episode Guide 12 episodes O Maidens in Your Savage Season Poster The girls in a high school literature club do a little icebreaker to get to know each other: answering the question, "What's one thing you want to do before you die?" One of the girls ... S Stars: Elissa Cuellar, Blake Jackson, Brittney Karbowski
Through the Wormhole ::: TV-PG | 1h | Documentary | TV Series (2010-2017) Episode Guide 63 episodes Through the Wormhole Poster -- Hosted by Morgan Freeman, Through the Wormhole will explore the deepest mysteries of existence - the questions that have puzzled mankind for eternity. What are we made of? What was there ... S Stars:
Through the Wormhole ::: TV-PG | 1h | Documentary | TV Series (20102017) -- Hosted by Morgan Freeman, Through the Wormhole will explore the deepest mysteries of existence - the questions that have puzzled mankind for eternity. What are we made of? What was there ... S Stars:
https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/The_Question_(Renee_Montoya)
https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/The_Question_(Vic_Sage)
https://blackish.fandom.com/wiki/Pops_the_Question
https://characters.fandom.com/wiki/The_Question
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Question
Aoi Bungaku Series -- -- Madhouse -- 12 eps -- Novel -- Drama Historical Psychological Seinen Thriller -- Aoi Bungaku Series Aoi Bungaku Series -- Ningen Shikkaku -- A high school student seeks solace in narcotics to escape the dispiritedness that has come over his life. As he goes through the different stages of his life, it culminates in the questioning of his existence in the world. -- -- Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita -- The adaptation of Ango Sakaguchi's literary work deals with the love story of a woman abducted by a mountain bandit. -- -- Kokoro -- While trying to fill the void in his life, a university student in Tokyo encounters a charismatic older man, whom he addresses as "Sensei," who offers him advice on life. However, the man is apprehensive to share his life experience, deepening the student's curiosity. Through this peculiar relationship, the student comes to ponder about the distance between him and his family and the growing desolation in his heart filled with ego and guilt. -- -- Hashire, Melos! -- The story portrays the unbreakable bond between two friends, Melos and Selinuntius, and their faith in protecting each other, all while dangling on a thread which hovers over death and misery. -- -- Kumo no Ito -- Kandata is a coldhearted criminal who, while being punished in Hell for his misdeeds, is noticed by the Buddha Shakyamuni. Despite maintaining a record of committing ruthless atrocities, Kandata had once shown mercy to a spider he encountered in the forest by letting it live. Moved by this, Shakyamuni offers him redemption by dropping a spider's thread into the searing pits of Hell, and it is up to Kandata to seize the opportunity. -- -- Jigokuhen -- Yoshihide is a great painter in the land ruled by Horikawa, a tyrant. Offered a commission to paint the "Buddhist Hell" by the lord, Yoshihide declines, as he cannot paint anything he has not witnessed himself. In an attempt to make Yoshihide understand the magnitude of his request, the lord tortures his subjects to provide inspiration for the artist, descending his domain into utter despair and darkness. -- -- TV - Oct 11, 2009 -- 174,861 7.74
iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia -- -- Sunrise -- 26 eps -- Original -- Action Comedy Mecha Sci-Fi -- iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia -- 107 years ago, the Moon was destroyed in a massive cataclysm that shattered Earth's former satellite into 81 quintillion tons of orbital debris. However, thanks to super-science, the Earth itself was saved and today no one really thinks much about that century-past disaster. Which is why when teenage Haruka Amami auditions for something called the Idolmaster Project, she THINKS she's trying out to be a singing idol. Instead, Haruka finds herself at a secret school run by the Mondenkind Agency, living with a group of other girls who have also been selected as candidates to pilot an iDOL - an advanced robot specifically designed to intercept falling chunks of moon rock. Except, the people who run the Mondenkind Agency aren't exactly knights in shining armor. And then there's the question of whether the iDOLs are really JUST robots. Because from almost the first moment, Haruka starts to feel emotions resonating from within the iDOL called Imber. -- -- (Source: Sentai Filmworks) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 20,356 6.51
Love Live! School Idol Project 2nd Season -- -- Sunrise -- 13 eps -- Other -- Music Slice of Life School -- Love Live! School Idol Project 2nd Season Love Live! School Idol Project 2nd Season -- Otonokizaka High School has been saved! Despite having to withdraw from the Love Live!, the efforts of μ's were able to garner enough interest in their school to prevent it from being shut down. What more, following the conclusion of the first, a second Love Live! is announced, this time on an even larger stage than before. Given a chance for redemption, the nine girls come together once more to sing their hearts out and claim victory. -- -- However, with the end of the school year approaching, the graduation of the third years draws near. As they attempt to reach the top of the Love Live!, they must also consider their future and choose what path the group will take. Though the question of whether to continue without the third years or disband weighs heavily on the minds of its members, μ's must quickly come to an answer with graduation right around the corner. -- -- Love Live! School Idol Project 2nd Season continues the story of the girls as they laugh, cry, sing, and dance in their journey to determine the future of their group and conquer the Love Live! in their last chance to win with all nine girls together. -- -- 210,902 7.79
Mushishi -- -- Artland -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Slice of Life Mystery Historical Supernatural Fantasy Seinen -- Mushishi Mushishi -- "Mushi": the most basic forms of life in the world. They exist without any goals or purposes aside from simply "being." They are beyond the shackles of the words "good" and "evil." Mushi can exist in countless forms and are capable of mimicking things from the natural world such as plants, diseases, and even phenomena like rainbows. -- -- This is, however, just a vague definition of these entities that inhabit the vibrant world of Mushishi, as to even call them a form of life would be an oversimplification. Detailed information on Mushi is scarce because the majority of humans are unaware of their existence. -- -- So what are Mushi and why do they exist? This is the question that a "Mushishi," Ginko, ponders constantly. Mushishi are those who research Mushi in hopes of understanding their place in the world's hierarchy of life. -- -- Ginko chases rumors of occurrences that could be tied to Mushi, all for the sake of finding an answer. -- -- It could, after all, lead to the meaning of life itself. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 641,581 8.69
Mushishi Zoku Shou -- -- Artland -- 10 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Slice of Life Mystery Historical Supernatural Fantasy Seinen -- Mushishi Zoku Shou Mushishi Zoku Shou -- Perceived as strange and feared by man, over time the misshapen ones came to be known as Mushi. Although they harbor no ill intentions towards humans, many suffer from the side effects of their existence and strange nature; exploiting the Mushi without understanding them, even unintentionally, can lead to disaster and strife for any involved. Mushishi Zoku Shou continues the story of Mushishi Ginko on his journey to help the visible world to coexist with the Mushi. -- -- During his travels, Ginko discovers various gifted individuals—those cursed by circumstance and those maintaining a fragile symbiosis with the Mushi—inevitably confronting the question of whether humanity, talented and tortured alike, can manage the responsibility of the unseen. Moreover, as a Mushishi, Ginko must learn more about these strange beings and decide if he has the right to interfere with the complex relationships between Mushi and mankind. -- -- 235,521 8.72
Mushishi Zoku Shou -- -- Artland -- 10 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Slice of Life Mystery Historical Supernatural Fantasy Seinen -- Mushishi Zoku Shou Mushishi Zoku Shou -- Perceived as strange and feared by man, over time the misshapen ones came to be known as Mushi. Although they harbor no ill intentions towards humans, many suffer from the side effects of their existence and strange nature; exploiting the Mushi without understanding them, even unintentionally, can lead to disaster and strife for any involved. Mushishi Zoku Shou continues the story of Mushishi Ginko on his journey to help the visible world to coexist with the Mushi. -- -- During his travels, Ginko discovers various gifted individuals—those cursed by circumstance and those maintaining a fragile symbiosis with the Mushi—inevitably confronting the question of whether humanity, talented and tortured alike, can manage the responsibility of the unseen. Moreover, as a Mushishi, Ginko must learn more about these strange beings and decide if he has the right to interfere with the complex relationships between Mushi and mankind. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 235,521 8.72
Psycho-Pass -- -- Production I.G -- 22 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Police Psychological -- Psycho-Pass Psycho-Pass -- Justice, and the enforcement of it, has changed. In the 22nd century, Japan enforces the Sibyl System, an objective means of determining the threat level of each citizen by examining their mental state for signs of criminal intent, known as their Psycho-Pass. Inspectors uphold the law by subjugating, often with lethal force, anyone harboring the slightest ill-will; alongside them are Enforcers, jaded Inspectors that have become latent criminals, granted relative freedom in exchange for carrying out the Inspectors' dirty work. -- -- Into this world steps Akane Tsunemori, a young woman with an honest desire to uphold justice. However, as she works alongside veteran Enforcer Shinya Kougami, she soon learns that the Sibyl System's judgments are not as perfect as her fellow Inspectors assume. With everything she has known turned on its head, Akane wrestles with the question of what justice truly is, and whether it can be upheld through the use of a system that may already be corrupt. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 1,266,562 8.37
Sayonara Watashi no Cramer -- -- LIDENFILMS -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Sports Drama Shounen -- Sayonara Watashi no Cramer Sayonara Watashi no Cramer -- With no soccer accomplishments to speak of during the entirety of Sumire Suou's junior high school years, the young wing gets an odd offer. Suou's main rival, Midori Soshizaki, invites her to join up on the same team in high school, with a promise that she'll never let Suou "play alone." It's an earnest offer, but the question is whether Suou will take her up on it. Thus the curtain opens on a story that collects an enormous cast of individual soccer-playing personalities! -- -- (Source: Kodansha Comics) -- 26,566 6.12
Shion no Ou -- -- Studio Deen -- 22 eps -- Manga -- Drama Game Mystery Thriller -- Shion no Ou Shion no Ou -- Shion no Ou follows the story of Yasuoka Shion, a 13-year-old Shougi player with a past of tragedy. Shion's parents were brutally murdered in front of her when she was 5 years old. The murderer sat down with her and challenged her to a game of Shougi, after telling her that if she wanted to stay alive she should forget how to speak, and forget what happened that night. -- -- Now Shion has entered the realm of female pro Kishi, mute but strong. As her playing gathers more and more attention, so do the questions about her past and the brutal murder she witnessed. Shion's memories slowly come back, and the mystery begins to unravel, thread by thread. -- TV - Oct 14, 2007 -- 28,400 7.55
Tenchi Muyou! Ryououki 3rd Season: Tenchi Seirou naredo Namitakashi? -- -- AIC -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Harem Space Comedy Shounen -- Tenchi Muyou! Ryououki 3rd Season: Tenchi Seirou naredo Namitakashi? Tenchi Muyou! Ryououki 3rd Season: Tenchi Seirou naredo Namitakashi? -- After a 'modified' ending to the Choubimaru incident, the punishments for the offending parties is metted-out, as well as a surprise marriage proposal by Misao to Mashisu. It almost didn't happen... until Mihoshi and Misao's mother Mitoto steps in and gives her and her family's approval, much to the dismay of FORMER G.P. Marshall Minami Kuramitsu. Otherwise, life goes on as usual for the Masaki clan. But soon when the question of how Tenchi's mother had died is presented, the answer nearly causes a rift between Tenchi, his father and his grandfather, for which only Tenchi's future mother-in-law Rea can solve... as well as the resolution of Noike's unusual secret. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- OVA - Sep 14, 2005 -- 10,162 7.25
White Album -- -- Seven Arcs -- 13 eps -- Visual novel -- Drama Harem Music Romance -- White Album White Album -- Can a relationship between a regular college student and an idol singer survive? That is the question that White Album tries to answer. Touya Fujii is a normal college student with normal worries—namely balancing his classes and his job he works to pay for school. He is also concerned about the amount of time he has to spend with Yuki Morikawa, or rather, the lack of it. -- -- Being an up and coming idol singer, Yuki has concerns of her own. Even though she's not yet as popular as experienced veteran Rina Ogata, Yuki is turning heads and landing interviews on television. This should be a good thing, but not everyone is happy about the attention she receives from the media and from Rina. The idol industry is surprisingly cutthroat, and rival singers have their eyes on Yuki. -- -- While it may seem exciting to watch your girlfriend on television, how does Touya really feel about all this? Between the challenges associated with Yuki's career and other people that Touya meets at his university, their relationship may not last… -- 97,888 6.54
Yosuga no Sora: In Solitude, Where We Are Least Alone. -- -- feel. -- 12 eps -- Visual novel -- Drama Ecchi Harem Romance -- Yosuga no Sora: In Solitude, Where We Are Least Alone. Yosuga no Sora: In Solitude, Where We Are Least Alone. -- Haruka and Sora Kasugano are coming home, to a place filled with memories. -- -- Having lost their parents in a tragic car accident, the twins resolve to return to the countryside and start life anew at their grandfather's house, the haunt a constant reminder of moments from their past. Greeting them are childhood friends Nao Yorihime and Akira Amatsume, and newcomer Kazuha Migiwa. It is a warm welcome, symbolic of the days that should come. -- -- Their peace is merely ephemeral, however, as suppressed emotions, born from vows both newfound and forgotten, start exerting their influence on the twins' new lives. And deep down, a dark secret, only known to them, begins to unshackle. -- -- Based on the visual novel by Sphere, Yosuga no Sora not only explores the power of lost memories and true love when the bonds of many become intertwined, but also raises the questions of morality and social acceptance. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Media Blasters -- 373,767 6.22
Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters -- -- Gallop -- 224 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Game Shounen -- Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters -- Legend says that the enigmatic Millennium Puzzle will grant one wish to whoever deciphers its ancient secrets. Upon solving it, high school student Yuugi Mutou unleashes "another Yuugi," a peculiar presence contained inside. Now, whenever he is faced with a dilemma, this mysterious alter ego makes an appearance and aids him in his troubles. -- -- Wishing to unravel the mystery behind this strange spirit, Yuugi and his companions find themselves competing with several opponents in "Duel Monsters," a challenging card game used by people seeking to steal the Millennium Puzzle in a desperate attempt to harness the great power within. As the questions pile on, it is not long before they figure out that there is more than pride on the line in these duels. -- -- -- Licensor: -- 4Kids Entertainment, Flatiron Film Company -- TV - Apr 18, 2000 -- 305,061 7.46
Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters -- -- Gallop -- 224 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Game Shounen -- Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Duel Monsters -- Legend says that the enigmatic Millennium Puzzle will grant one wish to whoever deciphers its ancient secrets. Upon solving it, high school student Yuugi Mutou unleashes "another Yuugi," a peculiar presence contained inside. Now, whenever he is faced with a dilemma, this mysterious alter ego makes an appearance and aids him in his troubles. -- -- Wishing to unravel the mystery behind this strange spirit, Yuugi and his companions find themselves competing with several opponents in "Duel Monsters," a challenging card game used by people seeking to steal the Millennium Puzzle in a desperate attempt to harness the great power within. As the questions pile on, it is not long before they figure out that there is more than pride on the line in these duels. -- -- TV - Apr 18, 2000 -- 305,061 7.46
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Living_the_Questions_Session,_St._Luke's_Anglican.JPG
Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?
Begging the question
Joint Declaration on the Question of Macau
Out of the Question
Root Supposed He Was Out Of The Question...
That's the Question
That's the Question (British game show)
The Answer to the Question
The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other
The Question Concerning Technology
The Question Is What Is the Question?
The Questionnaire (Grua novel)
The Questionnaire (von Salomon novel)
The Questions (album)
The Question (Steven Universe)
The Questions We Ask at Night
United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine
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