The existence of the seen is only for the sake of the seer.
Patañjala Yoga Sutra II,21
Man’s use and function . . . are, to be the witness of the glory of God, and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience and resultant happiness.
John Ruskin
Igor Modic
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Jens Nieth
This ordered universe, which is the same for all, was not created by any one of the gods or of mankind, but it was ever and is and shall be ever-living fire, kindled in measure and quenched in measure.
Heraclitus
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted—”Open then the Door.
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.”
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
Omar Khayyam
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Paul Gallagher
In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
Seamus Heany
unknown
Old Europe
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The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
The Radio Show was an enormous hit. The sound effects – surging water from a paddle wheel, clatter of the gangplank – and acting were so convincing that many listeners believed the boat truly existed. Two thousand people waited in vain on the docks of New Orleans when the show’s script was set there. The week before “Show Boat” supposedly played Pittsburgh a young General Foods Salesman urgently requested tickets and received a return telegram: “SHOW BOAT MYTHICAL. NO TICKETS AVAILABLE.”The frustrated salesman called his district manager. “Look,” he said, “I don’t know about that damn ‘mythical’ stuff. I’ve got seventy people coming, and I’ve got to have those tickets!”
Mark Pendergrast “Uncommon Grounds”
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Henri Cartier Bresson
I beseech you by our friendship to let nothing be more important to you than life and health. If you can keep your fortune without loss of health, do so by all means; if not, you lose more than you gain, when you save your fortune by risking your health or quiet.
Desiderius Erasmus (letter to Peter Gillis)
Yayoi Kusama Fireflies on Water
Firefly Song
Flitting white-fire insects!
Wandering small-fire beasts!
Wave little stars about my bed!
Weave little stars into my sleep!
Come, little dancing white-fire bug,
Come, little flitting white-fire beast!
Light me with your white-flame magic,
Your little star torch.
Trad. Ojibwe
The Fireflies
At Wu Shan, of an autumn night,
The fireflies come flitting
Through the curtains
Into my room,
And flutter on my garments.
So warm they seem
That my lute and book
Are chill to my touch
In the dark.
They settle on the walls and eaves,
And my room is agleam with stars.
They circle round the courtyard,
And, in clusters,
Cling to the old stone well curb.
They enter the flowers
And make of each a tiny, glowing jewel.
I stand, an old, white-haired man,
By the broad Yang Tze,
And watch you, little fireflies,
And wonder if, when next year comes,
I shall be here to greet you.
Du Fu
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God, who is all fullness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His exterior works: which praise seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him, forasmuch as He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name, which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that to God alone glory and honor appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having continual need of amelioration, ’tis to that we ought to employ all our endeavor. We are all hollow and empty; ’tis not with wind and voice that we are to fill ourselves; we want a more solid substance to repair us: a man starving with hunger would be very simple to seek rather to provide himself with a gay garment than with a good meal: we are to look after that whereof we have most need. As we have it in our ordinary prayers, “Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus.” We are in want of beauty, health, wisdom, virtue, and such like essential qualities: exterior ornaments should be looked after when we have made provision for necessary things.
Michel de Montaigne
Tom Pilston
If I had everything that I could desire, and my finger ached, I should not have everything, for I should have a pain in my finger, and so long as that remained, I should not enjoy full comfort. Bread is comfortable for men, when they are hungry; but when they are thirsty, they find no more comfort in bread than in stone. So it is with clothes, they are welcome to men, when they are cold; but when they are too hot, clothes give them no comfort. And so it is with all the creatures. The comfort which they promise is only on the surface, like froth, and it always carries with it a want. But God’s comfort is clear and has nothing wanting: it is full and complete, and God is constrained to give it thee, for He cannot cease till He has given thee Himself.
Meister Eckhart
Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, c. 1949: Outback Outlaw
December 26, 2004
By SUKETU MEHTA
Koose Muniswamy Veerappan was a bandit in the forests of
South India with the world’s most dangerous facial hair.
His popularity as a poacher and sandalwood smuggler rested
on the myth that he stole from the forest and gave to the
forest dwellers. Their support helped him evade an
extensive police manhunt for the better part of two
decades, and 20,000 people showed up for his funeral.
The local papers referred to him, in inimitable Indian
journalese, as the ”forest brigand” Veerappan. His age,
when he was shot dead, was anywhere between 50 and 60. He
wore green army fatigues and his eyes were as bloodshot as
his life. He could reproduce a range of sounds of the
beasts and birds of the jungle — 2,300 square miles of
wilderness between the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and
Kerala; a hilly wonderland of evergreen and deciduous
trees, medicinal plants and clear rivers, filled with
elephants, tigers and the occasional leopard. But during
his four-decade criminal career, he killed at least 120
forest officials, policemen and villagers who informed on
him; 200 elephants; and hundreds of thousands of sandalwood
trees.
Veerappan’s whiskers, a sign of virility in India, struck
fear into the hearts of the hairless. His mustache lavishly
covered his mouth and jaws; it looked like a small furry
animal had died there. In 2000, he kidnapped a 71-year-old
film actor, Rajkumar, a demigod in South India. The hostage
and the kidnapper held lengthy discussions on religious
scripture. It had a therapeutic effect on the thespian.
”My time was all my own,” Rajkumar later said. ”I prayed
to God, conversed with my inner self and marveled at
natural phenomena like day and night.” The brigand would
twirl and flourish his whiskers and ask his captive his
opinion. ”He used to smear all sorts of oils and herbs on
it,” the actor recalled. ”He used to comb it every day
and keep it very clean. He also used to take great pains to
dye it black.”
After 108 days — a mythic number in Hinduism,
corresponding to the names of God — Veerappan let the
actor go, supposedly after payment of a large ransom.
Rajkumar, unable to shave during his captivity, grew a
mustache and beard; during the same period, his three sons,
along with much of the Kannada film industry, vowed not to
shave until his release. Veerappan’s whiskers spread on
vast numbers of cheeks. When photographs of his dead body
were published, many newspapers were initially suspicious
that it was the real brigand, because his face was adorned
with only a small mustache, barely a quarter of a foot
long.
…
But for all his ideological bombast, his crimes could be
downright macabre: he would order his victims’ limbs to be
severed and chop their bodies into small bits. He once
called a forest official to his hideout for a one-on-one
meeting, offering to surrender, and later returned him –
without his head. He disposed of two other forest officials
by boiling them alive in a vessel used to brew moonshine.
…
He regularly offered to surrender,
but his terms went beyond an amnesty. One was that his life
should be made into a major motion picture.
…
During the latter years of the brigand’s reign, the animals
and trees in Veerappan’s terrain were, perversely, safer
than ever before. With 1,500 armed policemen as well as
Veerappan’s gang roaming through the jungle, all other
poachers and tree fellers stayed out. A policeman in charge
of one of the task forces estimated that the percentage of
wildlife in the area had gone up 10 to 15 percent in the
previous decade. In the week after Veerappan’s death,
scores of other poachers re-entered the jungles, and the
forest department hired men with drums to go around the
villages announcing a ban on outsiders coming into the
area.
In death, Veerappan was successful in at least one of his
goals. Immediately after his demise, two filmmakers in
Bollywood rushed to finish films on the forest brigand. The
name of one was changed from ”Let’s Get Veerappan” to
”Let’s Kill Veerappan.”
Songs are thoughts, sung out with the breath when people are moved by great forces and ordinary speech no longer suffices. Man is moved just like the ice floe sailing here and there out in the current. His thoughts are driven by a flowing force when he feels joy, when he feels fear, when he feels sorrow. Thoughts can wash over him like a flood, making his breath come in gasps and his heart throb. Something, like an abatement in the weather, will keep him thawed up. And then it will happen that we, who always think we are small, will feel still smaller. And we will fear to use words. But it will happen that the words we need will come of themselves. When the words we want to use shoot up of themselves—we get a new song.
Orpingalik, Netsilik Eskimo
Yesterday was national pig day
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Henri Cartier Bresson
B.K.S. Iyengar will be visiting the United States in September & October of this year to coincide with the release of his new book Light on Life. He will be attending the Yoga Journal conference at Estes Park, Colorado.
This will most likely be his last visit to the United States. The YJ conference is sold out but there will be events held in Los Angeles, San Francisco and the East Coast. Stay tuned.