The Soul’s Secret

For a moment this sense of [Sofya Levinton’s]  past blotted out everything present, blotted out the abyss. It was the very strangest of feelings, something you could never share with any other person—not even your…

Blake and Dostoevsky

“The Divine Image” To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and LoveAll pray in their distress;And to these virtues of delightReturn their thankfulness. For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and LoveIs God, our father dear,And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and LoveIs…

Remember to Remember

The following is the conclusion to Leo Tolstoy’s short story “Three Questions”— Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have…

Be a Light

Then coming to this pass [Ryōkan] found only one way to go: he made up his mind, to go his own way, that is to say, to pursue the way of truth—the only way a…

Here and Now, This Is It

In another passage of the letter to his ­brother, he defines the ecstatic sense of life that he felt on being pardoned: “Life is a gift, life is happiness, e­very minute could be a lifetime…

La Rochefoucauld Nailed It

Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixement.  –Duc François De La RochefoucauldNeither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.–Leonard TancockMaxim #26

Fading, Vanishing

All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble… They can never be solved, but only outgrown.  This “outgrowing” proved on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness.  Some higher…

Carry on, Regardless

A man accustomed to vicissitudes is not easily dejected. —Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia Men seldom give pleasure, where they are not pleased themselves; it is necessary, therefore, to cultivate an habitual…