Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity. J. Krishnamurt
Birth and Rebirth: The Awakening of a Dormant Spirit, By John Stanley Mackow
The ancient Vedic scriptures declare that the physical world operates under one fundamental law of maya, the principle of relativity and duality. Maya is the distraction that keeps us constantly in search of truth. Maya is a kind of magic wielded by God to create out of Infinity the finite, and to make the Infinite appear and work as if it were finite. The word 'maya', correctly understood as "measurement", and from this we get the terms matter, meter, mother, mata, matrix, matrika, music and myth itself. Myth is the womb of creation. In the words mentioned above, one can see the unfolding of civilisation because these words symbolise the finite against the infinity of moksha (consciousness as the stuff from which all reality is created).
Now, how does the idea of measure fit in? It fits into the concept through the principle of limit (niyati); for to be measurable is to be limited. Maya divides, measures out, the Undefined Infinite into finite forms and forces. The colossal dramas of creation and dissolution of planets and galaxies; the birth, growth, and decline of empires and civilizations; the countless miniature plays of individual lives with their subplots of health and sickness, riches and poverty, life and death—all are happening in God as the One Dreamer-Creator, a chimerical perception of change within the Eternally Changeless. Thanks to Life itself…it does not matter whether you are invoked through the name of Nature, God, Science, Shiva, Love, Buddha, Truth, Allah or The Force – you are the source of everything. Without you, none of this would have been possible. Maya conceal from us the fundamental oneness of everything and everyone in the universe.
Right now, we happen to be in a cycle where matter, money, and measurement count more than the infinite. The world is homesick for a return to the soul. As modern people we are tempted to shun this identity. Myths hurt us when they betray the soul journey...
In the heavens words flow through me Hollowed by the bellowed echoes from within my soul That are shouted to the blurred figure of your faded shadow As it rises to the greater waters While you seek to cleanse your soul
Where I seek to join the oceans which inspired inside me a sense of life That I had cherished from a time long forgotten But remembered from the time of your arrival To this land of light
Though lately I admit that heaven has crashed Before these praising eyes Leaving but the shadow of your soul upon them As they await a miracle to befall them as loudly as they cry
Yet hearts aren't tamed so easily When owners are angels from exotic lands where one roams free Though hope is strong and time takes its toll I find that their grip falls to pieces As it may seek to keep it whole Withering to a new love. S.Tafur
The Echoes of My Soul
"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 noble hearts: those that I hold dear, and the world to which my heart goes out. Not the common world do I mean of those who cannot bear grief, and desire to bathe in bliss. Their world and manner of life my tale does not regard: its life and mine lie 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
Ask Me - William Stafford Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
This poem reflects how life course is like the river, picking up and leaving what is needed or not, how to be true to your path is what will keep you true. Until when the time is right and all of the necessary conditions exist, the questions are unanswerable. Life, like the river is too fluid, active and full of uncertainty to allow for any conjecture about cause and effect, what has been or what will be. The river is flowing from somewhere to somewhere without any necessity to think through or analyze the process. No doubt there are elements that have influenced its current condition. The essence of the river is its motion, its surge of energy from where it comes to where it goes by whatever route it takes to get there.
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. Frédéric Chopin
Dvorak Cello Concerto
The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life.” Hugh Walpole
Peter Matthiessen, a man of many parts: littérateur, journalist, environmentalist, explorer, Zen Buddhist..
When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions - such as merit, such as past, present, and future - our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment.
Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers. Peter Matthiessen, a man of many parts: littérateur, journalist, environmentalist, explorer, Zen Buddhist..
"There's an elegiac quality in watching (American wilderness) go, because it's our own myth... that's deteriorating before our eyes. I feel a deep sorrow that my kids will never get to see what I've seen, and their kids will see nothing; there's a deep sadness whenever I look at nature now." The Birds of Heaven by Peter Matthiessen
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? Edgar Allan Poe
Dream within a dream? Edgar Allan Poe I have been happy, tho' in a dream. I have been happy- and I love the theme: Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life, As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife Of semblance with reality, which brings To the delirious eye, more lovely things Of Paradise and Love- and all our own! Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known
Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Over-Soul
The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart, of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his character, and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand, and become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by the vision of that Wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be read, and by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man, we can know what it saith.
Tat Tvam Asi or "You are that," is the relationship between the individual and the Absolute: that the Self - in its original, pure, primordial state - is wholly or partially identifiable or identical with the Ultimate Reality that is the ground and origin of all phenomena. In other words that Brahman, which is the common Reality behind everything in the cosmos, is the same as the essential Divinity, namely the Atman (the innermost Self, stripped of all egoistic tendencies), within you.
Miserere mei, Deus, Have Mercy on Me - Psalm 51 by Gregorio Allegri
“The sculpting of our self is a never ending process. You decide what you want to look like by chiselling, moulding and trimming your shape, your personality – your Tree of Life. You have the power to add or subtract the traits you like anddislike. It is a process of moulding and carving the soul seed which you are to your liking. This seed grows to be the big you. You water the seed with knowledge as it grows, it takes years and years to get big, we all have to start as a seed, then turn into a seedling and then into a mighty tree if that’s what you want to be. The wisdom is your fruit which others can live off, and the seed can be replanted to go and bring life about again, a never ending process, the circle of life!” The Master's Sacred Knowledge by Allan Rufus
The entire future begins from the place you’re occupying right now, the position you assume in the wide wild world - the place your assumptions are based, the concentrated point of perspective from which you emanate. If you believe you’re implicitly and implicately connected with everything in an infinite universe, this realisation will almost inevitably lead to an ethos of caring and sharing...Pasts and futures are easily accessed when the need arises, all coexisting in endless, infinite, timeless time with the eternal gift of the present. R. Ayana
You are being encouraged to expand your mind to create a renewed vision for yourself. Tap into your imagination and begin to see that nothing is impossible. You may find yourself with endless possibilities that require you to prioritize them to support your vision. Use your intelligence, your intuition and your imagination to sort through your options. Trust in your inner knowing and believe in yourself. You have what it takes to make your vision a reality. Once you are clear and focused act on it and make it real.
The Master's Sacred Knowledge by Allan Rufus
“Grief is as subject to the forces of time as every other real thing, from love to trees to stones.” How people navigate their anguish, while testifying that “any single truth is itself an act of violence.”? Padma Viswanathan -The Ever After... avoiding cheap sensationalism and easy conclusions and offering instead a solemn meditation on faith and mourning, possibility and consequence.
Planet Earth produced by the BBC Natural History Unit.
Sophocles and Handel are heartbreaking and emotional; they give you the story in extreme closeup, Revealing these people in their most private and psychologically charged moments. These arias capture how people get lost in the labyrinth of their own emotions, how much we’re prisoners of our own imaginations when we’re waiting and longing.
Peter Sellars vision of this enlightenment philosophy in the contemporary world is to illuminate timeless themes and emotions of life and redemption in our collective history and consciousness.
Dejanira, at times joyous, fearful, jealous, revengeful, guilt-stricken, resolvs to recapture her husband’s heart with a magic charm: blood from the centaur Nessus, mortally wounded years earlier by Hercules’s poisoned arrow when the lusty beast got fresh with Dejanira. The dying centaur claimed this tainted blood was so powerful that Hercules would never covet another woman.
At the end by finding the emotional thread and elevating some of these topics we are genuinely struggling with now into the kind of mythic scope of forgiveness and reconciliation to bind the wounds of a stricken community. ‘We’re not going to do what our parents did.’
G.F.Handel - Hercules: based on Sophocles’s The Women of Trachis
The videos in my https://www.youtube.com/user/farhad4art channel consists of stories, places and things as well as true-to-life record of society and culture and of the captivating natural beauty. Even though the stories might be about the past, and the places and things are remnants and remains from past times, the present is always at the centre of my story. It is in the present that we create pictures of the past. The stories are of varying sorts. They unmask the different circumstances in which they have been created, as well as the different reasons for telling them. I have interpreted this as the need of finding and stating an identity, a sense of belonging. Furthermore, I think the reasons behind these stories are to mark differences or similarities, to preserve traditions, or to be unique and create something new.
Day after day, O lord of my life, shall I stand before thee face to face. With folded hands, O lord of all worlds, shall I stand before thee face to face.
Under thy great sky in solitude and silence, with humble heart shall I stand before thee face to face.
In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil and with struggle, among hurrying crowds shall I stand before thee face to face.
And when my work shall be done in this world, O King of kings, alone and speechless shall I stand before thee face to face. By Rabindranath Tagore
My soul, so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an impetuous temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may say that I am free from original qualities, defects, tastes, etc. What is mine I have acquired, or, to speak more exactly, chance bestowed, and still bestows, upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth sheet of wax, bearing no impress, but capable of receiving any; of being moulded into all shapes. A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. George Moore
Face To Face by Rabindranath Tagore
Bach: Keyboard Concerto No.1 in D minor, BWV 1052, 1st movement - Allegro
The Carnival of the Animals - The Aquarium by Camille Saint-Saëns
"What is born each night and dies at dawn?" "Hope!" Nessun dorma! — None shall sleep! from Puccini's Turandot
Jose Feliciano - Windmills of Your Mind Like a clock whose hands are sweeping Past the minutes of it's face And the world is like an apple Whirling silently in space Like the circles that you find In the windmills of your mind !
“I’m putting my artistic chops at the service of the planet... connecting to nature and living better on this planet,” Wakhan - Another Afghanistan by Varial Cedric Houin and Fabrice Nadjani
Sutra means “thread” or "to sew". Instead of joining tissues, sutras join issues. With sutras we weave a tapestry of insight from direct experience and perennial precepts, carrying threads across time and culture, through revolutions of thought, and sentiment, to be woven into new cloth, on new looms, infusing the language with equal measures of tactility, functionality, and poetry.
The Carmina Burana contains numerous poetic descriptions of a raucous medieval paradise to which people from every land and clerics of all rankings were invited. In this parody world, the rules of priesthood include sleeping in, eating heavy food and drinking rich wine, and regularly playing dice games. In this land of cockaigne and reverie of living delights and freedom from moral obligations, greed, simony and other forms of trafficking for money in "spiritual things" becomes the norm particulary with the advent of the monetary economy.
Erik Satie (1866-1925) was an eccentric French composer. His works and his attitude toward music anticipated developments of the next generation of composers. From the beginning Satie had a flair for novel musical ideas, and his first serious compositions reveal this originality. During the Eighties and Nineties he combined piano playing in the bohemian night spots of Montmartre and composing sentimental ballads: The Gymnopédies for piano (1888)
