Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Meaning

Don't search for the meaning of life - there is none.

The question is - what is the meaning of your life?
What is it that you really want to do with your life?


If you find the answer
you have found the meaning.

Monday, September 29, 2014

How do you spend your time

Eulogy:

 [yoo-luh-jee] nounplural eulogies:

"..a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, 
especially a setoration in honor of a deceased person."

From Late Latin eulogia, from Greek: praise, from eu- -logy ;
influenced by Latin ēlogium - short saying, inscription;
also called (archaic) eulogium (juːˈləʊdʒɪəm).

**
"Have you noticed that when people die,
 their eulogies celebrate life very differently
 from the way we define success in our everyday existence?

No matter how much a person spends his or her life burning the candle at both ends, chasing a toxic definition of success and generally missing out on life, the eulogy is always about the other stuff: what they gave, how they connected, how much they meant to the lives of the real people around them, small kindnesses, lifelong passions and what made them laugh. 
So the question is: 
Why do we spend so much time on what our eulogy is not going to be?"

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Try impossible

Achieving all kinds of things 
which you first considered impossible
begin from the first try 
and the iron motivation
to never give up.
It always seems impossible
until it's done!

The difference between the possible
 and impossible 
lies in a person's determination.

What impossible thing have you tried today?

Friday, September 26, 2014

Balance

There is peace in balance.
Create room for it.

Absence

“Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; 
they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. 
We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.
 We feel that someone else knows what is going on, 
but that there is something missing in us, 
and therefore something is lacking in our world.” 

- Pema Chödrön



Monday, September 22, 2014

The word

 "I need a new word for „love“. This one doesn’t begin to cover all that I want to say.
 It feels raw and overused. It rings back slightly hollow. And I want to say something so tender it almost breaks your heart, and something so strong that would make you physically shake, and something so timeless that you would learn to know everyhting that ever existed and then forget all about it again with a blink of an eye... I need something that would squeeze you like hugs and make you feel safe, and burn you like desperate kisses of a last goodbye... something that would drift you away, somewhere where you would find me, always..until the end of time, we’d have a place for us.

...but, for now, we have the word for it. Love. The secret code of all lovers who have vowed the word to each other countless times, since the beginning of all beginnings. The word which has promised so much, to so many. The word which embodies all hopes and dreams. The word. The word which wouldn’t have any meaning, if there wasn’t anybody who could fill those four letters with all the happiness of the universe.



 We do share the code. But it’s not in the word. 
It’s in what we see when we are together, and in what we feel when the whole world around us
 has disappeared."


On stargazing

"Stargazing is one of the most profoundly human things one can do, 
but perhaps, we must more frequently tear ourselves away 
of the mistery and the beauty of the starry heavens above 
and rather inspect, admire and foster what's within"
*
...just a thought.
                                                                                                        -Jack Gleeson

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Phantom limbs of superpower

"In the area of design we still don't understand how to attach devices to the body mechanically. It's extrordinary that in this day and age one of the oldest, mature technologies in human timeline - the shoe - still gives us blisters! How can this be? We have no idea how to attach things to our bodies!

Imagine if our clothes and shoes were not designed and manufactured using artists and strategy, but rather data driven quantitative framefronts - in that future our shoes would no longer give us blisters. If we designed our clothing to be stiff and soft whereever needed, whenever needed, our clothing would be not only aesthetic covering but would support our abilitites and disabilities. We're beginning an age in which machines attached to our bodies will make us stronger and faster and more efficient. Imagine if what you wore could mirror YOUR body tissue perfectly - you would never feel dicomfort again. And that would be only the beginning."

What is beauty?

Beauty is everchanging. There is no one answer to defining beauty. It's inifinte. It's unreachable. And just when we have started to believe that we have the answer to it - it slips from our fingers. Beauty is a tease. It laughs at you playfully as you admire and desire it from afar, mesmerized, trying to grasp it, to own it. Beauty is rare, yet it's everywhere. You can never get used to it - or it loses it's essence. Beauty needs to stay mysterious. It has a life of it's own, always one step ahead of us.
The standard of beauty has been defined differently throughout history - from Willendorf's lushy Venus, to small-chested delicate ladies of early renaissance, to pin-up  boom of the last century. Beauty has been made a question of fashion. Not a quality that shines from within, rather a social standard that we must keep up with.


Everybody wants to be accepted, everybody want to be admired, everybody wants to be desired. It's basic human nature to follow the social conducts created before us - after all people are social creatures. But something is essentially wrong here. We, normal people, are pushed to an endless chase of an illusion. When the standards of beauty come from outside of us, we can never reach "there". We are always going to be chasing, always going to be trying, making our best effort to match our selves with the standard of the collective illusion... As social creatures we do need this form of communication that our bodies as physical image allows and enables, but it's absurdly misleading how much stress we put on it.

"For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; 
for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness;
 and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone."

Audrey said that. 
She's still considered to be among the most beautiful women in our history. 
And, yet, she was on to something. Something that should echo much louder in our consumption centered cosmo culture. It is a cliche to repeat that..

"Beauty comes from within

..but until we have failed to realize the real meaning of these words, 
I think it's worth mentioning again. And again. ..And.. again!
 Not to say that the physical side is not important, because it it - it is fun and aesthetically pleasing and informatively functioning. But putting too much attention and pressure into it, we are living in a society with a limping foot, a box with a pretty wraping and hollow insides. 


We can catch beauty if we create it from inside out. 
We create it with our eyes and our minds. 
And it never leaves from within you.
True beauty only creates more beauty.


Saturday, September 20, 2014

What kind of a difference do you want to make?

"This is where science has gone wrong - 
they have this coldness, this lack of empathy, that enables 
some scientists to do unethical behaviour. 
I think empathy is really important. 
 Only when our clever brain 
and our human heart 
work together in harmony 
can we achieve our full potential."

"Only if we understand can we care.
 The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
 What you do makes a difference 
and you have to decide
 what kind of difference you want to make."

"Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people
 who are doing something you don't believe is right. We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place... or not to bother. "

"One of the mosts important things - sometimes the hardest thing - is to have an open mind."

- Jane Goodall

Friday, September 19, 2014

I am not the same I was yesterday, neither am I now who I will be tomorrow.

'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I — I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'
'What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. 'Explain yourself!'
'I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, 'because I'm not myself, you see.'
'I don't see,' said the Caterpillar.
'I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely, 'for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.'
'It isn't,' said the Caterpillar.
'Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet,' said Alice; 'but when you have to turn into a chrysalis — you will some day, you know — and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little queer, won't you?'
'Not a bit,' said the Caterpillar.
'Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,' said Alice; 'all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.'
'You!' said the Caterpillar contemptuously. 'Who are you?'
Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar's making such very short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, 'I think, you out to tell me who you are, first.'
'Why?' said the Caterpillar.
Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a very unpleasant state of mind, she turned away.
'Come back!' the Caterpillar called after her. 'I've something important to say!'
This sounded promising, certainly: Alice turned and came back again.
'Keep your temper,' said the Caterpillar.
'Is that all?' said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she could.
'No,' said the Caterpillar.
Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else to do, and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth hearing. For some minutes it puffed away without speaking, but at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, 'So you think you're changed, do you?'
'I'm afraid I am, sir,' said Alice.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

The Invitation


..::The Invitation::..

"It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know 
if you will risk 
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are 
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you 
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know 
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone 
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.."

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Walking your mind off

Stop thinking. Empty your brain and just pay attention. Try it! See what happens!

Try walking. Without a direction. Just go. Walking clears your mind.


Most likely your senses are gonna start picking up lots of things 
and you are gonna feel your body, somehow, just moving through space. 
The whole reality around you will shift. 
You don't know what to expect and you have no expectations.

People passing by; the whole spectrum of a lifetime - happy people, crying people, fashionable people, young people, kissing people, old people, sick people, family people, laughing people...
Everybody is there. 
Just like you.
Walking
their lives.


 Most likely,
sooner or later,
 you are gonna stop to stare at something
 and your inner you
just can't help being all:
 "Ah!! That is really-really fantastic! I've never noticed this before!". 

It's for moments like this. 
To have them more often in our lives. 
Shut down your brain. 
For now.
And see what happens.
...



Have a glass

"Meditation is like a glass of juice.
 I can describe the glass of juice to you.
 But you're not going to know the glass of juice until you taste it."



Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Fairytale realities

Fairytales are mental cultural realities. 
Their structures and identities only exist in the consciousness 
of a person, and reflect the paradigms that rule us as a whole. 


In every day life
 we move around and gather information relying on our senses,
 after which the collected data travels to our brain
 and gets "translated" in the frames 
of existing knowledge and experience available to us at that moment.
Everything we see or know or experience is a result of a social package 
and always an interpretation (!) of reality.
There are millions and millions of realities out there,
 each and every one of them a construction
 built in the patterns already set ahead by those who came before us.


It's what you know and choose to see 
that builds your reality
that is uniquely your own.

Compassion

"I have a doctorate in Buddhist philosophy. Now I want to learn as many languages as possible so I can teach as many people as possible."

"What do you think is the most important thing that people can learn from Buddhism?"

"Compassion. 
Everyone suffers and 
everyone needs happiness."
***

Dharamshala, India.
From "Humans of New York" project.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Weaving the colors of your reality

"The mind
 is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors 
are distilled from the experiences of the senses, 
and the design
 drawn from the convolutions
of the intellect."
s
Carson McCuller

Sunday, September 14, 2014

The unbearable lightness of being

Nietzsche was wrong - there is no eternal return; 
our lives occur only once,
 and that makes them light.
*
Parmenides was wrong - such lightness is not sweet,
 it is unbearable.


"It's scary, almost paralyzing, to think about eternal return. But on the other hand, it means our lives have meaning, significance, weight. And we can learn to love that. Conversely, lightness may seem at first to be a sweet deal – no responsibility, no judgment, no meaning. Sounds like fun – at first. But eventually, we would like for our lives to mean something. We want them to have weight and significance, because we want them to matter.
The problem is, try as we might to give our lives weight…we cannot. Our lives are fundamentally light precisely because they occur only once. "

 *
Einmal ist keinmal
*
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; 
pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts...
There’s fennel for you, and columbines; there’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; 
we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. 
There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father died. They say he made a good end,— [Sings.]“For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
She is not someone you understand. She is someone you watch, someone you use, someone you mourn. She is made for love but love is not made for her. Everything about her runs deeper than in you; her madness is truer, her mind brighter and better broken, and her anguish is in her bones, not her blood. You will never forgive her for dying, but she will aways be dead forever, and your horror means nothing to her anymore. That, more than anything is why you still dream about her and her flowers thrown like curses. She has made herself no longer yours to dream of, choking on her water, crawling through her weeds, living beneath the world; her body inviolate and violable no more, there in her resting place where no man rules.” 

Ophelia.
*

Friday, September 12, 2014

Life is a rabbit

“A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit's fine hairs. where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves even deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of the fall off, but other cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' but none of the people down there care.
'What a bunch of troublemakers!' they say. And they keep on chatting: Would you pass the butter, please? How much have our stocks risen today? What is the price of tomatoes? Have you heard that Princes Di is expecting again?”