 Return
to
Home Page
|
Education Support Services
Thought of the Week
March 1999
March 1
Writing bridges the inner and outer worlds and connects the paths of action
and reflection. We sit down, face the receptive blankness of a piece of
paper or a computer screen, pull our thoughts together, and begin to write.
Writing is sorting. Writing down the stream of consciousness gives us
a way to respect the mind, to choose among and harness thoughts, to interact
with and change the contents of who we think we are. And that is what
the spiritual journey is: a major change, over time, in who we think we
are, followed by a corresponding change in what we believe ourselves capable
of doing.
Christine Baldwin
Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest
-
March 8
The answers to our problems surround us in the many voices of enchanted
nature and in the haunting words and images of our artists and religious
visionaries. All the insight we need could be found in a library, in the
great literature of the arts, humanities, and religions, or in meditation
on a single flower in a tiny garden outside the most ordinary house, because
nature, as the medieval monks taught, is a book too, teaching those who
are willing to be its pupils.
The world is shouting at us, offering us guidance, but when we're too
busy making up our inadequate answers, we can't hear its voice. We have
to become as children, as Jesus taught without any sentimentality when
he said, "Whoever among you becomes as a child shall know the Kingdom,"
or as Zen master Shunryu Suzuki advised when he wrote: "How important
it is to resume our boundless original mind. Then we are always true to
ourselves, in sympathy with all beings."
There is a sophistication prior to adult learning and modern development
of culture, an appreciation for the interiority of nature and the hidden
power of persons and places. It's a sophistication that can be lost behind
the illusion that our own developed intentions, observations, and values
are supreme. The first step in enchantement, then, is to recover a beginner's
mind and a child's wonder, to forget some of the things we have learned
and to which we are attached. As we empty ourselves of disenchanted values,
a fresh, paradisical spirit may pour in, and then we may discover the
nature of the soul and the pleasure of being a participant, and not a
master, in the extravagance of life.
Thomas Moore
The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life
March 15
Nietzsche was one of the few Western thinkers to question the self-proclaimed
importance of the human species. Characteristically, he not only suspected
that man's role in history is temporary but called for it to end as soon
as possible.
Man is something that must be overcome. Man is a bridge and not an
end.
Nietzsche longed for detachment from his emotinal responses to the world.
If he had been able to meet with Chuang Tzu, he mnight have come up with
a slightly different version of the new human species that he called for.
He might also have found a way to live in closer harmony with his own
understanding.
The advantages of our times: nothing is true, everything is permitted.
At the end of the trail of Western philosophy, we have found some crazy
wisdom. However, it remains within the context of the game of reason.
Existentialists may have rejected Platonic certainty, but they could not
seem to let go of their desire for intellectual salvation. The few how
sensed another approach to life were unable to find the Taoist and Zen
master' state ograce. In the end, Jean-Paul Sartre may have best summarized
the difficult existential position, as well as the previous two millennia
of Western philosophy, with this simple assertion:
Being has not been given its due.
- Wes "Scoop" Nisker
- Crazy Wisdom
- [Note: This book is a joy to read. Irreverent, paradoxical, and
so, so true. -- R.H.]
March 22
Climbing the holy mountain, traversing the seven valleys, wandering in
the wilderness, finding and exploring the interior castle, tracing the
maze or laybrinth--each of these metaphors points to a change in point
of view, a reorientation of awareness, a new sense of direction, as the
crucial shift that takes place in the process of transformation. Through
such changes of consciousness we learn to excape from the cycles of meaninglessness
and the wastelands of hopelessness. When this shift occurs, we recognize
that we are not the victims of the effects of uncontrollable external
circumstances: the journey of transformation is within us. Therefore,
we choose the destination; intention guides us to our destiny.
- Ralph Metzner, The Unfolding Self
March 29
When function is all-important, life becomes dull and boring, a mechanical
and sterile routine from which we escape into every kind of distraction.
The accumulation of facts and the development of capacity, which we call
education, has deprived us of the fulness of integrated life and action.
It is because we do not understand the total process of life that we cling
to capacity and efficiency, which thus assume overwhelming importance. But
the whole cannot be understood through the part; it can be understood only
through action and experience.
...
The right kind of education, while encouraging the learning of a technique,
should accomplish something which is of far greater importance: it should
help man to experience the integrated process of life. It is this experiencing
that will put capacity and technique in their right place. If one really
has something to say, the very saying of it creates its own style; but learning
a style without inward experiencing can only lead to superficiality.
J. Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life
|
