"The doors, the doors, in wisdom let us attend." Shut the doors to the senses. Close them one at a time until you have closed all six. Lock them securely.
Incence is a useless stick until it burns itself away into beautiful fragrance.
Cut off the ego. It is nothingness grasping at everything.
What does it want? It wants to be admired, for everything. It wants to be admired for its looks; for its intelligence; for its talent; for its courage; for its spirituality; for its athleticism.
But what is admiration but a vaprous ghost? What if no one admires me for my looks, my mind, my athletic prowess? What if no one admires me for my courage or my spirituality? What if I never become a great author? What if I have none of these things? What if I am none of these things? What if no one admires me? What then have I lost? Nothing! I have lost nothing because admiration is a thing that no one can possess at all. It is not mine. It is not a part of me.
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What do you look for most in movies or literature?
Whither goest thou, America?
Who are your favorite candidates from each party?
Election 2008: which of the following issues do you consider most important to informing your support of a candidate?
Which of the following are you most concerned about? (I tried to configure this so that you can select multiple answers.)
The good books
- Heart of Darkness
- Christ the Eternal Tao
- Wounded by Love
- Dhamapada
- Visions of Gerard
- Rumi's poetry
- Leaves of Grass
- Batlthazar
- the gospel of John
- Emerson's essays
- Zen and the Birds of Appetite
- Ecclesiastes
- Walden
- Song of Songs
- Tao te Ching
- The Brothers Karamazov
Which of the following have most profoundly affected you? You can choose a couple of answers.
Quotations (feel free to add to this list)
- "Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you." -- William Blake
- "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes." -- Thoreau
- "I don't want to die without any scars." -- Tyler Durden
- "I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough." -- Walt Whitman
- "If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." -- Morpheus
- "My headphones saved my life." -- Bjork
- "Perfect humility dispenses with modesty." -- C.S. Lewis
movies worth watching
- The Painted Veil
- Three Seasons
- Hero
- Othello
- Smoke Signals
- Step Into Liquid
- The Long Hot Summer
- The Matrix
- Cool Hand Luke
- Fight Club
- The Mission
Outside of your own world view, which of the following do find most resonates with you?
Which of the following would you say have been the most influential in forming who you are today?
Sacred Cows: which of the following would you identify as the most sacred of American cows? In other words, which seems to be the most socially unacceptable to question?
About Me
root systems
- http://travel.msn.com//Guides/greenSlideShow.aspx?cp-documentid=385955&imageindex=1
- http://www.littleportion.org/Vocations/index.asp?id=52
- http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/organic-food.htm
- http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/yourchild/tv.htm
- http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/
- http://www.myspace.com/buckcalhoun
- http://www.usnwc.org/
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYzQ_ZpfDLs
- http://www.stherman.com/
- http://www.redwoods-rivers.com/
- http://nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm
5 comments:
Do you mean the desire for love, or the will to love?
Both I suppose. How's that for ambiguous?
Why did you alter your original post?
Well, for a couple of reasons. First, I never really thought that the comments at the end were really part of the original thought; they felt more like an afterthought that was awkwardly stuck onto the end. Second, I thought it sounded a bit preachy and pretentious. What was that warning about too many words?
You have lost nothing because admiration from others does not mean anything. Reading your post reminded me of something I recently read from Fr. Stephen Freeman:
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"God matters and what matters to God matters...There are many things that do not matter - because they do not matter to God. Knowing the difference between the two - what matters to God and what does not requires that we know God."
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I believe that the more we know God (a very slow process), the less our ego will dominate. We know God through prayer and the sacraments and by little acts of kindness and service (ie: choosing to help others when we'd rather be left alone).
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