The identity of future generations is causally dependent, in a very sensitive way, on the actions of the present generations. Would it be irrational to act in ways that we know we would prefer later to undo (because it can detract significantly from our future well-being and goals): consider an aspiring author whose strongest desire is to write an award-winning novel but who, in doing so, suffers from lack of sleep and depression. Derek Parfit constructs the Critical Present Aim Theory to exclude self-interest as our overriding rational concern and to allow the time of action to become critically important. Should thisinclude "to avoid acting wrongly" as our highest concern? Given the choice of surviving without psychological continuity and connectedness or dying but preserving these emotional bonds and connectedness through the future existence of someone else, which would you choose?
My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness... [However] When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.
“I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted, and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity, but I find that thy will knows no end in me, and when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart, and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.” Rabindranath Tagore
"I have undertaken a labor, a labor out of love for the world and to comfort nobel hearts; those that I hold dear, and the world to which my heart goes out. Not the common world of those who can not bear grief, and desire but to bathe in bliss. Their world and manner of life my tale does not regard: its life and mine dwell apart. Another world do I hold in mind, which bears together in one heart its bitter sweet, its dear grief, its heart's delight and its pain of longing, dear life and sorrowful death, its dear death and sorrowful life. In this world let me have my world, to be damned with it, or to be saved." Gottfried von Strassburg
As I remember both the beauty and the poverty I have witnessed in my travels, I bow in gratitude for the good fortune I experience, and to the creators and preservers of culture who continue to inspire our daily living. You can take a look at some sample of my travel documentaries at my YouTube Chanel. It is kind of a journal of my travel footprints.
When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared.
I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.
To Hafiz of Shiraz Thus said the Poet: "When Death comes to you, All ye whose life-sand through the hour-glass slips, He lays two fingers on your ears, and two Upon your eyes he lays, one on your lips, Whispering: Silence!" Although deaf thine ear, Thine eye, my Hafiz, suffer Time's eclipse, The songs thou sangest still all men may hear. Songs of dead laughter, songs of love once hot, Songs of a cup once flushed rose-red with wine, Songs of a rose whose beauty is forgot, A nightingale that piped hushed lays divine: And still a graver music runs beneath The tender love notes of those songs of thine, Oh, Seeker of the keys of Life and Death!
Thought as soon as it functions it offends or reconciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates, unites or reunites; it cannot help but liberate or enslave. Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm, thought, at the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is in itself an action-a perilous act. Michel Foucault - The Order of Things
At every moment the world reveals to us the Dharma, teaching us the truths of the universe. This teaching is silent, yet sometimes it leaves a deeper impression than any verbal teaching ever could. Jing Si Aphorism by Master Cheng Yen
When it comes to the question of what it means to be human and what virtues and actions should guide us as human beings — who could truly help a society have the right goals and direction? Education used to be about striving towards the light of knowledge but this is increasingly less important. When we are explicit about constructing values together and finding shared ground of what it means to be generous, have integrity, etc., this has a significant positive effect on pro-social behaviour, well-being, and academic outcomes. Thomas William Nielsen
Why we happily type our most private thoughts into Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon every day, trading away basic rights for conveniences in the process? Darren Wershler
Out from the cave: have we lost the purpose of education?
Take the Great Vow to help all beings, to suffer with all beings, and to guide all beings to the Realm of Great Joy.
In Celtic spirituality, the anam cara friendship awakens the fullness and mystery of your life. You are joined in an ancient and eternal union with humanity that cuts acrossall barriers of time, convention, philosophy, and definition. When you are blessed with an anam cara, you have arrived at that most sacred place: Home
The path of love expands in ever-widening circles. John O'Donohue
Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen
Is keeping a secret from a spouse always an act of infidelity? And what cost does such a secret exact on a family? The Grief of Others asks how we balance personal autonomy with the intimacy of relationships, how we balance private decisions with the obligations of belonging to a family, and how we take measure of our own sorrows in a world rife with suffering. This novel shows how one family , decent characters who hurt one another and are hurt by forces greater than themselves, when long-suppressed uncertainties about their relationship come roiling to the surface, by finally allowing itself to experience the shared quality of grief, is able to rekindle tenderness and hope.
There are cases when I can make myself better off by restricting my future choices and commit myself to a specific course of action. Richard H. Thale
Michel Foucault - The Culture of the Self (addressing the nature of power and the manner in which it functions, the means by which it controls knowledge and vice versa, and how it is used as a form of social control. In the lecture on The Hermeneutics of the Subject (the art of text interpretation especially texts in the areas of literature, religion and law.)
Foucault encourages a process which he called "transsubjectivation", "conceived as a journey within oneself... the product of a transformation." Foucault used the word ethopoiein from the Greek word ethos to describe the transformation. "Ethopoiein means making ethos, producing ethos, changing, transforming ethos, the individual’s way of being, his mode of existence”.
"There will be moments when the drought of joy seems unending, instances spent pretending that everything is alright when it clearly is not; check your blind spot. See that love is still there, be patient. Every nightmare has a beginning, but every bad day has an end. Ignore what others have called you; I am calling you friend.” Shane Koyczan
Jean-Féry Rebel's Les Élémens is a ten-movement choreographed tone poem depicting the formation of earth's elements (earth, water, fire and air) from cosmic chaos.
According to Rebel, Chaos is "that confusion which reigned among the elements before the moment, when subjected to invariable laws, they took their ordained places in the order of nature." Rebel goes on to describe how he undertook to represent chaos musically: "I dared to undertake to link the idea of the confusion of the elements with that of confusion in harmony. I hazarded to make heard first all sound together or rather all of the notes of the octave united as a single sound." Chaos begins with an unheard of dissonance, sustaining all seven notes of the D minor scale in one harsh chord. After a short silence, one hears the formation of elements pulsating into existence. Each is introduced as melodic themes that are developed together in later movements. The chaos theme returns seven times throughout the movement and each time it appears the struggle between the elements further diminishes in intensity. "Air" appears in a high register wind tone suspended above the chaos. Slow, flowing scales depict the appearance of "Water". "Fire and Earth" enter together at opposite ends of the register: "Fire," the shimmering violins dancing with "Air," float above the rumblings of "Earth's" bass section. As the four elements develop, interweaving throughout their seven appearances, the rhythmic "Chaos" diminishes. Chaos concludes with a perfect consonance : an octave. Throughout the movement each of the elements is represented by a distinct musical idea: Earth by slurred bass notes; Water by ascending and descending flute cascades; Air by long sustained notes at the piccolos that conclude with trills; Fire by bravura violin passages.
In the early stages of Aztec civilization, the people lived in simple democratic harmony, in a society that in economic and political terms did not transcend the village level. But then this Mesoamerican utopia was ruined by the priestly class, “the first professional economists,” who commanded that pyramids be built. Neil Reynolds: preaching the gospel of narrative, a variety of storytelling, journalism. Neil Reynolds
In the Mirror of the Sky: Ali Akbar Moradi - Kayhan Kalhor
Al Andalus - History of Islam in Spain: a documentary reminding us that in Spain, Islam was a culture of phenomenal innovation which continually emphasized the importance of learning. The library in Cordoba, Spain, on the other hand, contained over half a million volumes.
“Even if the world ends, the music will still survive.” Ustad Bismillah Khan - playing Shehnai: He was one of the finest musicians in post-independent Indian classical music and one of the best examples of Hindu-Muslim unity in India. Bismillah Khan like many Indian musicians, regardless of religion, a devotee of Saraswati, the Hindu Goddess of wisdom and arts, and often played at Hindu temples, including the famous Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, on the banks of the river Ganga. Khan was known to be so devoted to his art form that he referred to shehnai as his begum (wife in Urdu) after his wife died. On his death, as an honour, his shehnai was buried with him. He was known for his vision of spreading peace and love through music and believed that music is the supreme form of living.
Write to Reconcile seeks to develop a community of like-minded individuals committed to contributing, through their writing, to the process of peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka; a community of individuals committed to also reflecting the different points of views from the multiple communities that make up Sri Lanka. Project Director Shyam Selvadurai, author of Hungry Ghosts
Write to Reconcile, is a creative writing project that bring together emerging Sri Lankan writers who are interested in writing creative pieces (fiction, memoir or poetry) on the issues of conflict, peace, reconciliation, memory and trauma, as they relate to Sri Lanka.
To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of competition. ... In science, being 'better' than others is of little practical value. Examples of how absurd the idea of scientific competition is are abundant. Expert opinions have a difficulty to go beyond of what they know. We had the freedom to make mistakes. That's something very important... Otherwise, you do the common things. You don't dare to do something beyond what everybody else thinks. Heinrich Rohrer
Franz Liszt - Liebestraum - Love Dream Originally the three Liebesträume (Notturni) were conceived as songs after poems by Ludwig Uhland and Ferdinand Freiligrath. The two poems by Uhland and the one by Freiligrath depict three different forms of love. Uhland's exalted love is saintly, or religious, love: the "martyr" renounces worldly love and "heaven has opened its gates". The second song Holy Death is often known by its first line "I was dead", and evokes erotic love; "dead" could be a metaphor here as "I was dead from love's bliss" . Freiligrath's poem for the famous third Notturno is about unconditional mature love.
When you write the story of two happy lovers, set it on shore of Lake Como. From the house where I live, I feel the ublements of the waves that died breaking against the rocks and i see the last rays of the sun disappeared and gold behind the mountain. How many times i felt the urge to destroy the miserable instruments on which I plaed losing all hope, expressing little small part of what I experienced. Poor artists there will be flashes during which one seems to have intuition of divine things but the moment when wants to give voice to these feelings, to give form to our soul brief flight, they flee, the illusion is cancelled the God vanishes and man remain alone in presence of a work without the life.. Franz List Letter to Louis de Ronchaud , Sep 1837 (The Pilgrimage Years)
Franz Liszt - Liebestraum - Love Dream
Tao Yuan-ming, also known as Tao Chien or Tao Quin, , Poet of Reclusion: Quiet and of few words, he does not desire glory or profit. He delights in study but does not seek abstruse explanations. Whenever there is something of which he apprehends the meaning, then, in his happiness, he forgets to eat...Tao's simple and plain style of expression, reflect his back-to-basics lifestyle: Uneasy was the bird which had lost the flock; In the evening of the day it still flew alone. Uncertain, with no fixed resting place ... Now it has alighted on this solitary pine, Now it has folded its wings and come home from afar.
Far off, I gaze at the white clouds, I think deeply of the ancients ...I think of you, recluses: A thousand years after, I cherish your principles. Searching their essence, I cannot exhaust it. ...That the ancients cannot be with me only I can know how sorely I regret it.
The days and months are not able to linger; The four seasons press upon one another. A cold wind shakes the withered branches; Fallen leaves cover the long road. My feeble constitution declines with the passing of time. The black hair on my temples is early winter: The white sign is now set upon my head. The road before me gradually narrows. My hut is an inn for a traveler, And I am like a guest that must depart. Away, away, to where am I going? On the southern mountains is my old home.
John Williams composed the score for Schindler's List. He played the main theme on piano, and following Spielberg's suggestion, he hired Itzhak Perlman to perform it on the violin.
Franz List - The Pilgrimage Years
As Plato expresses it in Symposium, eros can help the soul to remember beauty in its pure form and it can contribute to an understanding of truth. Its main characteristic is permanent aspiration and desire. Even when it seems to give, eros continues to be a desire to possess, but nevertheless it is different from a purely sensual love in being the love that tends towards the sublime. Eros is thus the way that leads man to divinity. For Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, the metaphor of eros or intimate love provides the closest analogy in human experience for a sense of the movement to transcend oneself — to reach out for a knowledge that always partially evades one’s grasp. From The Song of Songs, and throughout the Bible and its literature of commentary and meditation, this metaphor has held a more or less central place. Issues of longing and loneliness, emptiness and fullness play themselves out here. In her "The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious" she offers insights into the interaction between consciousness and unconsciousnessa and better understanding of the desires and motivations of the men and women whose stories form the basis of the Bible as the foundational text in our quest to understand what it means to be human.
The Faces of Eve
Camille Saint-Saens - Carnival of the Animals (a musical suite of fourteen movements) 1.Introduction & Royal March of the Lion. This section reminds one of the agitation one experiences when something stupendous is about to happen. The pianos play a pair of scales going in opposite directions to conclude the first part of the movement. The pianos then introduce a march theme that they carry through most of the rest of the introduction. The strings provide the melody, with the pianos occasionally taking low runs of octaves or high ostinatos suggesting the roars of the lions.
2. Hens & Roosters. This movement is centered around a pecking theme played in the pianos and strings. In the middle of the section, you can almost see a rooster marching along the rows of hens who nervously run around him.
3. Wild Asses. The animals depicted here are quite obviously running, an image induced by the constant, feverishly fast up-and-down motion of both pianos playing scales in octaves.
4. Tortoises. A slightly satirical movement which opens with a piano playing a pulsing triplet figure in the higher register.
5.The Elephant. Like the previous movement, Saint-Saens moves this to the lowest and heaviest-sounding instrument in the orchestra, the double bass.
6.The Kangaroos. The main figure here is a pattern of "hopping" fifths preceded by grace notes.
7. The Aquarium. The first piano plays a descending ten-on-one ostinato, while the second plays a six-on-one. These figures, plus the occasional glissando from the harmonica are evocative of a peaceful, dimly-lit aquarium.
8. Characters with Long Ears. Here the violins alternate playing high, shrill screeches and low, buzzing notes (in the manner of a donkey's braying "hee-haw" 9.The cuckoo in the depths of the woods Here the clarinet plays a single two-note ostinato, over and over; a C and an A flat, mimicking the call of a cuckoo bird.
10.Aviary . The high strings take on a background role, providing a buzz in the background that is reminiscent of the background noise of a jungle. The flute takes the part of the bird, with a trilling tune that spans much of its range. The pianos provide occasional ping and trills of other birds in the background. The movement ends very quietly after a long ascending scale from the flute.
11. Pianists. This movement is unusual in that the last three blasted chords do not resolve the piece, but rather lead into the next movement.
12.Fossils. Here, Saint-Saens mimics his own Danse Macabre which makes heavy use of the glockenspiel to evoke the image of skeletons playing card games, the bones clacking together to the beat.
13. The Swan. The lushly romantic cello solo, which evokes the swan elegantly gliding over the water, is played over rippling sixteenths in one piano and rolled chords in the other. 14. Final. The finale opens on the same tremolo notes in the pianos as in the introduction. The work ends with a series of six "Hee Haws" from the Jackasses, as if to say that the Jackass has the last laugh, before the final strong group of C major chords.
Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps): first performed in Paris on May 29, 1913. “Very little immediate tradition lies behind Le Sacre du Printemps … I wrote what I heard. I am the vessel through which the Sacre passed.”
Camille Saint-Saens - Carnival of the Animals (a musical suite of fourteen movements)
Oumou Sangaré - Djorolen
Ndidi Onukwulu is a Canadian singer from British Columbia Kissing On A Bridge: If you want to be here then come in
“All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Iyeoka - Simply Falling You have broken into my heart. This time I feel the blues have departed. Nothing can keep me away from this feeling. I know I am simply falling for you
Nasir Khusraw, the Ruby of Badakhshan: A Portrait of the Persian Poet, Traveler and Philosopher By Alice C. Hunsberger
The world is a deep ocean, its water is time; Your body is like a shell, your soul the pearl. If you wish to have the value of a pearl, Raise up the pearl of your soul by learning.
From pulpit-tops they preach to the common folk, Dazzling them about paradise and the food to be had there. They crow and cry in hope of food; Asses always bray when you speak of barley. And By day you fast and moan and finger your rosary, By night you’re enjoying music and wine. You’ve memorized the texts of deception quite smoothly, So now you’re grand mufti of Balkh, Nishapur and Herat.
How can anyone be so stupid as to crave for the world and its trappings? What is all this longing for power and kingdom? It’s nothing but slavery, and whosoever is a slave of the body can never reach the lofty height of a true rulership for to be a king means to give not to take.
Kindle the candle of intellect in your heart and hasten with it to the world of brightness; If you want to light a candle in your heart, make knowledge and goodness its wick and oil.
In the path of the hereafter, one should not walk on foot but with the soul and the intellect, and for provisions, you must fill the tablecloth of your heart with obedience and knowledge.
0 son, your mind is the garden of intellect, turn it not into a furnace with fumes of wine; your heart is the blessed mine of knowledge, why have you planted a perverse hardness in it?
Let your heart become soft because a shirt of dusky soft silk does not befit a heart of stone; cast away ignorance from your mind because celebration does not befit a house of lament. Comprehend well the wise poetry of the hujja, and with the needle of reflection, prick his excellent words in your subtle heart and soul. Nasir Khusrow
My name is Iyeoka. In the Yoruba oral translation, my name means mother who speaks the word. I am fascinated by the subtle influence of the spoken language and our potential access to the bounty of translation and meaning. My name and my journey synergistically encourages me to share the story of the Esan people.
In Celtic spirituality, the anam cara friendship awakens the fullness and mystery of your life. You are joined in an ancient and eternal union with humanity that cuts across all barriers of time, convention, philosophy, and definition. When you are blessed with an anam cara, you have arrived at that most sacred place: Home
Can life actually be more beautiful once your ideals and illusions are shattered and you see the entire picture? Wilde believes it is possible
