Silence

"...He waved us away, shaking his heid and screwing his eyes up. Ah sais nae mair. Whin ye feel like he did, ye dinnae want tae talk or be talked at. Ye dinnae want any f... fuss at aw. A didnae either. Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence."

Page 7, Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh

Hana-bi

The Japanese are the masters of understatement. Watch Hana-bi by Takeshi Kitano - ruthless, violent, yet poetic, minimalist, lyrical. Such style, such elegance. Not one extra gesture, not one unnecessary word.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hana-bi

Class, the Japanese way. And what a guy, Kitano - director, actor, stunning painter.

This one won the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival.

Nachiketa

Nachiketa is the main character of the Katha Upanishad.

Once when his father Vajasravasa was donating cows to gain religious merit, Nachiketa, who was just a teenage boy, asks him - "What merit can one obtain by giving away cows that are too old to give milk?" His father does not pay heed to his questions, and is irritated that his young son is seeing through his hypocrisy, and spelling it out too. To make his father realize the meaninglessness of this false ritual, he asks, "To whom will you offer me?" He asks this again and again. Angered, his father blurts out ,"To death I give you!"

So the obedient Nachiketa goes to meet Yama, the God of Death, and waits until he gets an audience with him. All of Katha Upanishad is the dialogue between Yama and Nachiketa - the latter answering the questions on life and death, posed by the young, respectful, but clear-thinking, intelligent young boy.

Read it in Eknath Eswaran's words - " ...As for the student, we can only pause in admiration of this ancient civilization whose hero is a teenager who has not learned the rudimentary grace of civilized existence - to hold his peace in the presence of hypocrisy. Nachiketa is an attractive character who cannot go along with sham; but he is not an obstreperous rebel: he is more sincere about convention than his father (including the convention of obedience to a father, even when the latter has lost his temper) and his first wish [Yama grants him 3 boons] is for reconciliation with him.

At no point does he lack respect. But that is just the point; he forces the issue by taking the demands of religion seriously when the majority have long since allowed external observance to paper it over, making of it a dead letter that no longer communicates anything about personal struggle. But by poking holes in society's shroud of complacency, he represents, again, what it would take to awaken any and all of us.

..........Then follows the encounter of Nachiketa with Death, and its dramatic reversal when he passes Death's severe test and changes him from a gruff and off-putting deity to a delighted teacher." *

* 'The Upanishads', by Eknath Eswaran, Penguin Books

The Five Hundred Gold Pieces

One of Junaid's followers came to him with a purse containing five hundred gold pieces.

"Have you any more money than this?", asked the Sufi.
"Yes, I have."
"Do you desire more?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then you must keep it, for you are more in need than I; for I have nothing and desire nothing. You have a great deal and still want more."

Page 72. Chapter: Attar of Nisharpur.
'The Way of the Sufi' by Idries Shah

Madras Central

The black train pulls in at the platform,
Hissing into silence like hot steel in water.
Tell the porters not to be so precipitate-
It is good, after a desperate journey,
To rest a moment with your perils upon you.

The long rails recline into a distance
Where tomorrow will come before I know it.
I cannot be in two places at once:
That is axiomatic. Come, we will go and drink
A filthy cup of tea in a filthy restaurant.

It is difficult to relax. But my head spins
Slower and slower as the journey recedes.
I do not think I shall smoke a cigarette now.
Time enough for that. Let me make sure first
For the hundredth time, that everything's complete.

My wallet's in my pocket; the white nylon bag
With the papers safe in its lining-fine;
The book and my notes are in the outside pocket;
The brown case is here with all its straps secure.

I have everything I began the journey with,
And also a memory of my setting out
When I was confused, so confused. Terrifying
To think we have such power to alter our states,
Order comings and goings: know where we're not wanted
And carry our unwantedness somewhere else.

Vijay Nambisan

Going to take betel nut

“The basic concept of [the Khasi] religion rests mainly on the three doctrines: ban Tip Briew Tip Blei, ban Tip Kur Tip Kha and ban Kamai ia ka Hok: to know Man, to know God, to know the maternal and paternal relations and to earn righteousness.

...It follows from this, therefore, that Man lives in the world to earn righteousness and having so earned it, he then returns to his Maker when he dies. The Khasis call this return "leit bam kwai sha iing U Blei" - going to take betel nut in the House of God."

‘Around the Hearth - Khasi Legends’ , by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih
Penguin Books. Folktales of India series

Everything is really FINE!

So Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise have hitched this ride East from San Francisco with a "tall, thin fag who drove with extreme care" in a car that Dean called "a 'fag Plymouth'; it had no pickup and no real power". In the front seat are this couple, and in the back seat Dean and Sal are having this crazy conversation full of real and imagined stories and laughing like hyenas....

"...We were telling these things and both sweating. We had completely forgotten the people up front who had begun to wonder what was going on in the back seat. At one point the driver said, "For God's sakes, you're rocking the boat back there." Actually we were; the car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives.

"Oh, man! man! man!" moaned Dean. "And it's not even the beginning of it - and now we are at last going east together, we've never gone east together, Sal, think of it, we'll dig Denver together and see what everybody's doing although that matters little to us, the point being that we know what IT is and we know TIME and we know that everything is really FINE".

Then he whispered, clutching my sleeve, sweating, "Now you just dig them in front. They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see. But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end."......

"Man, you dig all this." He was poking me furiously in the ribs to understand. I tried my wildest best. Bing, bang, it was all Yes! Yes! Yes! in the back seat and the people up front were mopping their brows with fright and wishing they'd never picked us up at the travel bureau. It was only the beginning, too.

...It was with a great deal of silly relief that these people let us off the car at the corner of 27th and Federal. Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."

Page 194, "On the Road" Jack Kerouac

Well I've been...

"...Well I've been to the mountain
And I've been in the wind
I've been in and out of happiness
I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings
And I've never been too impressed..."

Bob Dylan

Pratchett Speak :)

"Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn't have been bothering you with in the first place."

................................................................

Tortoise: "How many talking tortoises have you met?"
Brutha: "I don't know." Tortoise: "What d'you mean, you don't know?"
Brutha: "Well, they might all talk. They just might not say anything when I'm there."

Terry Pratchett

Liberation

"...There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:

Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons;
and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle.

This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past..."

T.S. Eliot
Little Gidding. The Four Quartets

On Defining Oneself

Michael Crichton climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. And says:“…..

What I learned was this: that I had defined myself as a person who didn't like heights or cold, a person who didn't like to be dirty, a person who didn't like physical exertion or discomfort. And here I had spent five days cold, dirty, and exhausted; I had lost twenty pounds; and I had had a wonderful experience.

I realized that I had defined myself too narrowly.

The experience of climbing Kilimanjaro affected me so powerfully that, for a long time afterward, if I caught myself saying, “I am not a person who likes to do that activity, eat that food, listen to that music, " I would automatically go out and do what I imagined I didn't like. Generally I found I was wrong about myself-I liked what I thought I wouldn't like. And even if I didn't like the particular experience, I learned I liked having new experiences.”

Chapter: Kilimanjaro
from'Travels' by Michael Crichton

Suicide and Murder

"Views concerning the main causes of suicide have differed widely, but hardly anyone denies that re-directed aggression is a major factor. ..

There is a lower rate of suicide during times of war. The suicide curves for the present century show two huge dips during the periods of the two world wars. In other words, why kill yourself if you can kill someone else? It is the inhibitions about killing the people who are dominating and frustrating the potential suicide that force him to re-direct his violence. He has the choice of killing a less daunting scapegoat, or himself. In peace-time, inhibitions about killing make him turn most often towards himself, but during war-time he is ordered to kill, and the suicide rate goes down.

The relationship between suicide and murder is a close one. To a certain extent they are two sides of the same coin. Countries with a high murder rate tend to have a low suicide rate, and vice versa. It is as if there is just so much intense aggression to be let loose, and if it does not take the one form it will take the other. Which way it goes will depend on how inhibited a particular community is about committing murder. If the inhibitions are weak, then the suicide rate goes down. It is similar to the war-time situation, where inhibitions against killing were actively and purposely reduced."

Page 40, 41. "The Human Zoo", by Desmond Morris

Happiness

"Will and I could hardly wait for the morning to come, to get at something that interested us. That's happiness."
-- Orville Wright, co-inventor of the airplane

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost
From "New Hampshire", 1923

Globalization and the Loss of Identity

"...The sobering lesson to be learnt from all this is that the ancient biological need of the human species for a distinct tribal identity is a powerful force that cannot be subdued. As fast as one super-tribal split is visibly mended, another one appears. Well-meaning authorities talk airily about 'hopes for a global society'. They see clearly the technical possibility of such a development, given the marvels of modern communication, but they stubbornly overlook the biological difficulties.

...Theoretically there is no good reason why small groupings, satisfying the requirements of tribal identity, should not be constructively interrelated inside thriving super-tribes, which, in turn, constructively interact to form a massive, global mega-tribe.

Failures to date have largely been due to attempts to suppress the existing differences between the various groups, rather than to improve the nature of these differences by converting them into more rewarding and peaceful forms of competitive social interaction.

Attempts to iron out the whole world into one great expanse of uniform monotony are doomed to disaster. This applies at all levels, from breakaway nations to tearaway gangs. When the sense of social identity is threatened, it fights back."

Page 34, Status and Super-Status, "The Human Zoo". by Desmond Morris