Recent Reading

THE COVENANT OF WATER

"[S]ometimes we have to 'live the question,' not push for the answer."

"I have no choice, which is the best kind of choice."

Recent Reading: Island (published 1962), by Aldous Huxley

Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief. (Chapter 7)

If you'd been shown how to do things with the minimum of strain and the maximum of awareness, you'd enjoy even honest toil. (Chapter 9)

[A] talent for manipulating symbols tempts its possessors into habitual symbol manipulation, and habitual symbol manipulation is an obstacle in the way of concrete experiencing and the reception of gratuitous graces. (Chapter 11)

Start by being fully aware of what you think you are. It'll help you to become aware of what you are in fact. (Chapter 14)

Gratitude is heaven itself . . . . Pure gibberish! But now I see that Blake was just recording a simple fact. It is heaven itself. (Chapter 15)

The Highest Happiness

"The highest happiness cannot be won by yielding to the longings of the heart but only by subduing them."

From In the Buddha's Words, edited by Bhikkhu Bodhi.

Enough

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, "Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . enough."

From the book Enough by John C. Bogle published 2009.

華枝春滿，天心月圓

弘一大師圓寂前，自知時至，寄給好友夏丏尊和得意門生劉質平的偈語：
「
君子之交，其淡如水；
執象而求，咫尺千里。
問余何適，廓爾忘言；
華枝春滿，天心月圓。
」

Recent Reading

千年一嘆

余秋雨從 1999 年年底開始實施歷時 4 個月的「千禧之旅」 -- 與鳳凰電視台一行於 1999 年 9 月 27 日啟程，尋訪世界的古老文明。旅程由希臘為起點，探訪雅典、邁錫尼等古城；其次來到埃及，憑弔金字塔和法老王；接著，往以色列、巴勒斯坦、約旦、伊拉克、伊朗等中東地區而去，這些神祕 的國家，人民常年飽受戰爭摧殘；再來，去到人口爆炸的印度，一探菩提樹與洞窟；最後，抵達終點尼泊爾，從此地回到中國。

這是一份真實的考察日記以完成古老的中國文明對世界其他四大文明的世紀拜會。整個活動行程有 3 萬多公里，幾乎囊括了世界所有的古老大河文明，包括了伊斯蘭教、基督教、猶太教、印度教、佛教……等各國宗教文化。

I Had to Go and See the Turquoise Myself

This presentation features more than sixty exceptional objects that large embassies, diplomatic missions, and trade delegations from Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Iran offered to the tsars of Russia. Ranging in date from the early sixteenth to the late seventeenth century, these lavish gifts and tributes include rarely seen arms and armor and jeweled ceremonial vessels and regalia intended for the Russian court or the Orthodox church. Some of the finest pieces are equestrian in nature: stirrups with pearls, golden bridles with turquoises and rubies, and saddles covered with velvet and silk.

"The Tsars And The East: Gifts From Turkey and Iran in the Moscow Kremlin," Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Pictures and Text by the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery