Moving toward Perfection
When Turgenev pleaded with him to return to the literary art that had first won him fame, he did not understand that for Tolstoy the measure of true greatness was not what we were but…
Tag: Mohandas Gandhi
Reminders
Whereas, Sir, you know courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.—Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel…
Encouragement
You will have to go on discriminating and make a sustained effort to convince your mind of the fact that japa, meditation, and all other spiritual exercises, have for purpose your awakening. On this pilgrimage…
Merton’s Journal
Calcutta is shocking because it is all of a sudden a totally different kind of madness, the reverse of that other madness, the mad rationality of affluence and overpopulation. America seems to make sense,…
Prevailing in This Epic Struggle: A Finkelstein Collage
Regarding [Israel’s] methodical breaking of Palestinian bones, Wiesel courageously chose silence: ‘I refuse to see myself in the role of judge over Israel. The role of the Jew is to bear witness; not pass judgment.’ …
Joy
1. Always maintain only a joyful mind. —Mind-training slogan, Pema Chödrön, Always Maintain a Joyful Mind 2. The effect of wisdom is continuous joy… and only the strong, the just, and the temperate can possess…
Victorious without Vanquishing
Norman Finkelstein, What Gandhi Says About Nonviolence, Resistance, and Courage OR Books, 2012 Norman Finkelstein is working on a new book on the subject of “cancel culture.” Long before the phrase attained recent prominence, Finkelstein…
Never Undemanding of Ourselves
John Garrard and Carol Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman Wednesday 1 August 2012 Vasily Grossman represents an inspiring figure of engagement, and old fashioned Russian insistence on telling…
First Things First
It is not for us to find fault with anyone else and sit in judgment over him. We should be exhausted judging ourselves only, and so long as we notice a single fault in ourselves…
Radiant Bliss
1. Recently ten of us became acquainted with Japanese-American Mayumi Oda in the Writing Our Own History class. Here autobiography had just been published, Sarasvati’s Gift. As an artist Oda had a breakthrough when she…