Look up!
“Do you look at the stars a lot? Do you know them? Plato said that sight is not truly precious unless it helps us to know the stars, the planets, the moon, and the sun….
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
How to Save Energy
But whatever be the motive of insult, it is always best to overlook it, for folly scarcely can deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect. –Samuel Johnson, quoted in Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson and the…
Advice
Avoid gossip. Avoid their feuds. Concentrate on what is essential–contact with Swami, and prayer. Associate with people you can really help in one way or another, and not with those whose curiosity is always offering…
Abandon Any Hope of Fruition
Anyone who wants to know the art of living, who wants to experience this Dhamma, has to understand it clearly. But as long as you are expecting, then it will not happen. –Mirka Knaster, Living…
Thought of the Day
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. –Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, 41
Breakdown Precedes Breakthrough
[Proust] discovered the device, or the design, of what could be called a play outside a play. By seeing his personal situation from outside as if it radiated a larger, more generalized narrative action of…
Regarding the Dreyfus Affair
“It is my duty to speak up; I will not be an accessory to the fact. If I were, my nights would be haunted by the spectre of that innocent man so far away, suffering…
Oy Vey Iz Mir
“If it didn’t work out God mustn’t have wanted it to. You, Tsaytl, just weren’t meant to be a fine lady with a house full of grand things and two parents who could finally enjoy…
Finding Equanimity: Share the Wealth with Andrew Wimmer on Sunday 6 August
At the beginning of this calendar year I undertook to write something more or less daily and to post it to a Substack page. Some political, some personal. I saw it mostly as a way…
The Wonderful Sei Shōnagon
No one had sharper ears than the Minister of the Treasury. He truly could have heard the fall of a mosquito’s eyelash. The mountain dove is a very pure-hearted and touching bird—they say it can…