entangled voices

[acaryadasa]

My father's brother has a farm in the forest. I often go there, to those quiet places, To rid myself of the ugly urgent things That torture men. Green turf amid silent trees and soft light airs And a spring of running water in the grass, They freshen a jaded mind, they give me back to myself, They make me abide in myself. For is there any man can live in a town, Harried and always at white heat with some fresh disturbance and racket, And not be dragged outside himself, Not waste his time on emptiness, No longer privy to his own thoughts? Love, Hate, Desire, Fear, These are the Masters, Differing among themselves, but alike in this, Their power to subjugate the ignorant mind By a lie... How short a while we live: the image of death Hath swallowed up the hours of our past lives, And that same image holds the hours to come. This little little space, this span of time Thou liv'st in now, it is already gone, The present in the past. These things and others like them, There's time and will to think on In the trees' shadow of my uncle's farm.

Marbod of Rennes (1035-1123) translated from the Latin by Helen Waddell

[acaryadasa]

Yoshijiro Urushibara

[acaryadasa]

[apurvaracana]

Abhinavasubhāṣita of Ānanda 1.42

svādhyāyasya phalaṃ kiṃ ced akṣarāvāptimātratā | arthajñānaphalatve ‘py arthaśūnyaṃ tad eva hi ||

What is one to gain from study? Just some words you can recite. Surely one must learn their meaning! With no money, it’s meaningless.

The Great Shame of Our Profession

[acaryadasa]

Reading highlights of 2016.

[acaryadasa]

[acaryadasa]

One who gives personal instruction to each and everyone does more for others than the platform speakers do. Generally,  whatever platform speakers say cannot solve the problems of everyone in the audience, nor can it always benefit every individual. A person’s defects are better rectified in a private tutorial class or private coaching than in hearing lectures in a school or college. Therefore, those who instruct particular persons separately can award them something more permanent.

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, Amrta Vani 18.14, Compiled in Bengali by Sri Bhakti Bhagavat Mayukha Maharaja. Adapted and translated into  English by Bhumipati Das and Isvara Das. Touchstone Media. Mumbai.  2004. (cited the latest Sri Krishna Kathamrita Bindu, no. 387)

[acaryadasa]

Caitanya Vaisnava Philosophy (Ashgate, 2014) is now available in paperback.

[settledthingsstrange]

If, wishing to correct another, you are moved to anger, you gratify your own passion. Do not lose yourself in order to save another.

Abbot Macarius, The Wisdom of the Desert, XVIII (via settledthingsstrange)

[acaryadasa]

[acaryadasa]

Such people think that to organize elementary passions into sentiments is simply to tell lies about them. The mere stream of consciousness is for them the reality, and it is the special function of poetry to remove the elaborations of civility and get at 'life' in the raw. Hence (in part) the popularity of such a work as Ulysses. In my opinion this whole type of criticism is based on an error. The disorganized consciousness which it regards as specially real is in fact highly artificial. It is discovered by introspection--that is, by artificially suspending all the normal and outgoing activities of the mind and then attending to what is left. In that residuum it discovers no concentrated will, no logical thought, no morals, no stable sentiments, and (in a word) no mental hierarchy. Of course not; for we have deliberately stopped all these things in order to introspect. The poet who finds by introspection that the soul is mere chaos is like a policeman who, having stopped all the traffic in a certain street, should then solemnly write down in his notebook "The stillness in this street is highly suspicious." It can very easily be shown that the unselective chaos of images and momentary desires which introspection discovers is not the essential characteristic of consciousness. For consciousness is, from the outset, selective, and ceases when selection ceases. Not to prefer any one datum before another, not to attend to one part of our experience at the expense of the rest, is to be asleep: the process of waking, and after that of coming fully awake, consists in bringing selected elements into focus. When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, your memory of last night, and the noises from the road, you are falling asleep. The highly selective consciousness enjoyed by fully alert men, with all its builded sentiments and consecrated ideals, has as much claim to be called real as the drowsy chaos, and more.

C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford, 1942), pp. 131-32.

[acaryadasa]

[acaryadasa]

“A member of the Indian company Margi Kathakali theatre performs during "Kijote Kathakali", a Kathakali recital based on the Spanish classic "Don Quixote", at the Niemeyer Center in Aviles, Spain, on July 29, 2016.” (source)

See the actors in action here.

[acaryadasa]

The principles behind Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati’s Gaudiya Math and Mission.

[acaryadasa]

pustakaṃ harate yas tu kāṇo duḥkhī bhaven naraḥ mṛtaḥ svargaṃ na gacchet sa pitaraṃ narakaṃ nayet

May he who steals this book become one-eyed and suffer. When he is dead, may he not attain heaven. May he lead his father to hell.

(Another warning, this time from a scribe of the Abhinava-gīta-govinda, cited in B. Panda’s edition, p. 95)

[acaryadasa]

(source)

[acaryadasa]

Carved siltstone figure, inlaid with shell ting-beads. Just 8.2cm tall. From a grave at Naqada. c. 3600-3500 BC. (at the Ashmolean)