Author: Mark J. Chmiel

Forgetting the Sufi Three-Gate Rule

Awkward and Embarrassing Things You happen to say something rude about someone, and a child who overhears it repeats your words in front of the person concerned.— Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book, translated by Meredith McKinney…

Both/And

Like other works, [Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets] is concerned with the nature, and, more importantly, the limits of human achievement. It assumes what its surrounding works assume: The continuity and dignity of the…

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….

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…