Nostalgia

"What was her name? Do you remember it?" asked Papan. "I don't remember well, and in fact I know nothing, absolutely nothing at all, about the women I have loved." "That simply means you have never loved," answered Papan. "You simply have no idea of love as an absolute concept. Loving is knowing. It is also like a crime since it involves death, burial, and resurrection. For how otherwise can one possess the body of a woman? One cannot penetrate the walled city without first subduing its inhabitants. Thus, love is something that is very serious. Today it is completely forgotten, but once, in the city of Nandur it was known and understood. It involves Three-Eyed One and the Green God, and also the year of Orur. The tiger lilies grow in silence on the white mountain peaks. Love in fact is a strange and secret chemistry, in which the androgynous is born. This is true and complete love; everything else is different. Have you ever noticed how imposs...

"Chapter VIII - The Thousands Even though a speech be composed of a thousand words, but words without sense, one word of sense is better, which if a man hears he becomes quiet. Even though a stanza be composed of a thousand words but words without sense, one word of a stanza is better which if a man hears, he becomes quiet. Though a man recite a hundred stanzas made up of senseless words, one word of the Law is better, which if a man hears, he becomes quiet. If one man conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand men, and if another conquers himself, he is the greatest of conquerors. One's own self conquered is better than the conquest of all other people; not even a god or a demi-god or Mara with Brahma can change into defeat the victory of a man who has vanquished himself. If a man for a hundred years sacrifice month after month at the cost of a thousand pieces of money, and if he but for one moment pay homage to a man whose soul is grounded in true knowledge, better...

"Know the Self as lord of the chariot, The body as the chariot itself, The discriminating intellect as The charioteer, and the mind as reins. The senses, say the wise, are the horses; Selfish desires are the roads they travel. When the Self is confused with the body, Mind, and senses, they point out, he seems To enjoy pleasure and suffer sorrow. When a person lacks discrimination And his mind is undisciplined, the senses Run hither and thither like wild horses. But they obey the rein like trained horses When one has discrimination and Has made his mind one-pointed. Those who lack Discrimination, with little control Over their thoughts and far from pure, Reach not the pure state of immortality But wander from death to death; but those Who have discrimination, with a still mind And a pure heart, reach journey's end, Never again to fall into the jaws of death. With a discriminating intellect As charioteer and a trained mind as reins, They attain to the...

1 You said 'The world is going back to Paganism'. Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes,  And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes, Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses To pay where due the glory of their latest theorem. Hestia's fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands Tended it By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother Domum servabat, lanam faciebat. at the hour Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush Arose (it is the mark of freemen's children) as they trooped, Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance. Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods, Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men, Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence fo...

"Then a recent king of Texcoco, the long-reigning poet Nezahualcoyotl, with a group of cultivated courtiers, had apparently been drawn to the potentially explosive idea of a single 'Unknown God', Ipalnemoani, a deity who was never seen and who was never represented by portraits: 'My house is hung with pictures. So is yours, one and only God,' Nezahualcoyotl had written, in one of his many moving poems. This poet-king's eloquent devotion to the god Tezcatlipoca, 'smoking mirror,' might seem to foreshadow the coming of a single inspiration: 'O lord, lord of the night, lord of the near, the night and the wind,' Mexicans would often pray, as if, in moments of perplexity, they required a unique recipient of supplication. Even if Nezahualcoyotl's poems are dismissed (as they sometimes are) as the skillful embroideries of his descendants, the Mexica plainly accepted that there was a grand supernatural force, of which all other gods were the expre...

"This original state of being can be likened to a primordial, or cosmic, mirror. By primordial we mean unconditioned, not caused by any circumstances. Something primordial is not a reaction for or against any situation. All conditionality comes from unconditionality. Anything that is made has to come from what was unmade, to begin with. If something is conditioned, it has been created or formed. In the English language, we speak of formulating ideas or plans, or we may say, "How should we form our organization?" or we may talk about the formation of a cloud. In contrast to that, the unconditioned is free from being formed, free from creation. This unconditioned state is likened to a primordial mirror because, like a mirror, it is willing to reflect anything, from the gross level up to the refined level, and it still remains as it is. The basic frame of reference of the cosmic mirror is quite vast, and it is free from any bias: kill or cure, hope or fear. The way to loo...

"For the Egyptians, however, it was not so simple, for as we have seen, their conception of death was not simply temporal; it was also spatial. Death was a realm - not a physical realm but a subtle realm that they referred to as the Dwat. Furthermore, the realm of the dead was for them an ever-present factor of life, interpenetrating the world of the living. In the realm of the dead, invisible forces, powers, and energies - gods and demons as well as the spirits of the dead - are active, and their activity impinges directly on the world of the living. The Egyptians were intensely aware that the world they lived in was more than just the world perceptible to the senses. It included a vast and complex supersensible component as well. It would be a mistake, then, to regard the Dwat as simply the realm of the dead. It is the habitation of spirits, of beings that are capable of existing nonphysically. These include the essential spiritual energy of those beings and creatures that we s...

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have. Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world. Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world.  Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world. They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself. They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments. They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself. They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself...