“Work, karma is workship. Even when it seems terrible sometimes, there is no sin in doing your karma. Anyone doing his work with all his being is just an instrument. Therefore, his work is an act of complete Yoga, a union with oneself and the universe.”
"We can see the division of the globe into grievable and ungrievable lives from the perspective of those who wage war in order to defend the lives of certain communities, and to defend them against the lives of others — even if it means taking those latter lives."
"but America is like that,
unrelenting, you get what you ask for
in the ring or on the kitchen floor.
Someone always wants you to give up,
shake hands, wipe the blood away and talk
of lighter things. And you do
because you've been fighting long enough
to know there's no one here to save you."
"I cannot write in any other way, and if I have thrown myself into this writing, it was precisely in order to give myself sufficient time to think, to think with time." - from José Saramago's first novel 'Manual of Painting and Calligraphy', translated by Giovanni Pontiero #SundaySentence#BookQuote#quotes#reading@bookstodon
Hey, one of December's guests and I were just talking about Christian Wiman—and there he is in a recent article on, among other things, #poetry and poetic #faith in a dying world. Right now, I'm appreciating this assertion: "There is severe contradiction between our need to speak of ultimate things and the immunity of those things from speech. There is also, sometimes, #hope and rescue."
The whole "bovine" joke in #therestaurantattheendoftheuniverse by #douglasadams was hilarious. It got me thinking: how would I feel if an animal I was about to consume came up to me enthusiastically conveying its consent for being eaten? I will be horrified, just like Arthur! But why?
Will it be better to eat against its consent instead? Why?
Then… what about salad's consent?!🤣
Interesting thought experiment...
"The rich man never sees or notices, he simply looks and lights a cigarette with the air of someone expecting it to arrive already lit." - from 'Manual of Painting and Calligraphy' by José Saramago (tr. Giovanni Pontiero)
A true sense of proportion of the infinity of the universe with respect to humanity fills me with wonder, but may also sometimes lead one to have an existential crisis. I think I would definitely be interested in trying the Total Perspective Vortex!
‘The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
‘“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”
One reason I love #reading the New York Review of Books is that I come across things I never knew would move me. Behold, in Daniel M. Lavery's discussion of a new one from Jacques Pépin was this thought to remember: "'You don't have to try to be different,' Pépin reassures readers... because the great gift of excellence, of following through... and becoming deeply familiar with rules, habits, and best practices, is that individuality will invariably shine through."
An astute judge of human nature ain't he?
"And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people." #SmallGods#terrypratchett#theturtlemoves#discworldquotes@bookstodon#GNUPterry#reading#books#quotes
“Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself. You may not be perfect, but you are all you’ve got to work with. The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.”
― Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English
"So that is why I found myself waiting at a station in a city whose name I could hardly pronounce, and where I did not speak a word of the local language, waiting for someone I would not recognise to take me somewhere I did not know." - from 'Who's Who When Everyone is Someone Else' by C.D. Rose