Om

Some quotes of Watts, da Vinci, Jung and Ram Dass, born in England, Republic of Florence, Switzerland, and America, respectively. :)

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

"And many make a trade deceiving the foolish multitude, and if no one comes to unmask their deceits, they punish it."
-Leonardo da Vinci

"A broken vase of clay can be remodelled, but this is no longer possible when it has been baked."

{41}

"I do not yield to obstacles."

"Every obstacle is overcome by resolve."

"He who is chained to a star does not change."

{44}

-- Leonardo da Vinci

([url]http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29904/29904-h/29904-h.htm[/url])

“To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.”

“Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”

“The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.”

-C. Jung

“I can do nothing for you but work on myself...you can do nothing for me but work on yourself!”

-Ram Dass

“I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken.”

“By acting compassionately, by helping to restore justice and to encourage peace, we are acknowledging that we are all part of one another.”
― Ram Dass

“We're all just walking each other home.”

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”

“We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”
― Ram Dass

“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.”
― Ram Dass


"In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes. . ."


On Love, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

What is love? Ask him who lives, what is life? ask him who adores, what is God?

I know not the internal constitution of other men, nor even thine, whom I now address. I see that in some external attributes they resemble me, but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought to appeal to something in common, and unburthen my inmost soul to them, I have found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage land. The more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a spirit ill fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought sympathy and have found only repulse and disappointment.

Thou demandest what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and the sanction which connects not only man with man, but with everything which exists. We are born into the world, and there is something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness. It is probably in correspondence with this law that the infant drains milk from the bosom of its mother; this propensity develops itself with the development of our nature. We dimly see within our intellectual nature a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise, the ideal prototype of everything excellent or lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is composed;[Footnote: These words are ineffectual and metaphorical. Most words are so—No help!] a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness; a soul within our soul that describes a circle around its proper paradise, which pain, and sorrow, and evil dare not overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should resemble or correspond with it. The discovery of its antitype; the meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own; an imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret; with a frame whose nerves, like the chords of two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and of a combination of all these in such proportion as the type within demands; this is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends; and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of that, without the possession of which there is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says that, if he were in a desert, he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was.

[1815; publ. 1840]

"Seeing you before me brings memories so beautiful, so bittersweet
A flood of high emotion, cascading, like a waterfall."
-Bert Jansch

When I was posting the quotes, my thoughts drifted over to Goethe, and I recalled a memory of my first book of his. I hadn't thought of it for some years, but my first introduction to his writings was [I]Maxims and Reflections,[/I] and not [I]Werther[/I]. . I know this may not be of interest to so many others, but I found it so because I had forgotten about it for so long. It was a very pleasant discovery :) . . realizing an old friend has been around for longer than I had remembered.

Goethe is above all one of the most exceptional geniuses. . Even though I have known about him since I was young, he always seemed somewhat remote; now I have a different view. My picture of him now is of one whose spirit truly encompassed all, and I don't know of hardly any who gives me this feeling, of one who knew nature, knew the human heart and spirit, so wholly and completely, as he. I don't know if there's anyone so beautiful as one who knows, one who understands. The only modern person living today I think of as equal, in terms of encompassing and depth of spirit, is Thich Nhat Hanh. In him I find a brilliant teacher, an excellent leader, and an example of life at its most beautiful.

[I]The Sorrows of Young Werther[/I] was Goethe's first novel, and truly one of the most beautiful written, especially by one so young. Napoleon loved it so much he carried it with him on his campaign in Russia, and wrote a book of his own called "The Joys of Young Werther," which I would like to read someday. I've got to mention the name of Burton Pike, whose translation I read, which was wonderful. . . Wow, he's 84 now. That's got to be close Thay's age. Okay, he's 88. [I]Werther[/I] was beautiful; later on I read [I]Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship[/I] and this book, is truly transcendental and remarkable. Schopenhaeur called it one of the four greatest books ever written. I would say it still is. :)

Recently I had occasion to get back into my digital library. . . about three years ago, I downloaded a lot of books online, as well as essays by Emerson, Vivekananda and others. I wanted to find the most beautiful and brilliant writers. . . It was one of the best ideas I've had. :) I recommend it to everyone. If you haven't heard of it, Gutenberg.org is a place where you can download lots of books for free - 46,000 or so! As I understand it, any book in the public domain is eligible; and that is usually any book over 50 years old - the exceptions being if the author, or family with rights to the title, have renewed the copyright. Whitman, Shelley, Emerson, da Vinci, William James, Plato, Machiavelli (Titus Livius; it's not like you'd think), Franklin, Hesse, as well as Sallust, Plato, Einstein, and random things like Novalis, Caesar, Tesla and Laoze were very rewarding to read. It's also where I first began to read Faust.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this; these were some of the people I consider to be most amazing; and seeking them out and learning from them has proved to be immensely rewarding and beneficial. One thing you'll find is that these brilliant thinkers had so much in common; and many of their ideas were so similar. I've known this for some time; but it just a passing thought with them as well. . . Ever since I saw how related Black Elk could be to Swami Vivekananda and Laoze, a long time ago. . .


Returning to Goethe. . . (Ram Dass and Thay would say, be here now ;))
it is interesting. . . that now, some of the things I read of his, sort of make my heart flutter almost, this one did anyway:

Do you wish to roam farther and farther?
See the good that lies so near.
Just learn how to capture your luck,
for your luck is always there.

and then this was nice,

Who wants to understand the poem
Must go to the land of poetry;
Who wishes to understand the poet
Must go to the poet's land.

and of course this is true :) and struck me,

Nothing venture, nothing gain.
Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate,
Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours
Weeping upon his bed has sate,
He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers.

and a good example of how good minds think alike; you'll find the same thought, or very similar, in many others. . .

These were all from Wikiquote, at [url]http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe[/url]
and by the by, [I]Maxims and Reflections[/I] is online here- [url]http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33670/33670-h/33670-h.htm[/url]

"And if I gain, — oh, gun at sea,
Oh, bells that in the steeples be,
At first repeat it slow!
For heaven is a different thing
Conjectured, and waked sudden in,
And might o'erwhelm me so!"
-Emily Dickinson


I wanted to share some poetry I love - all these are by Goethe. The Erlking is especially beautiful


The Traveller’s Night Song I

You who are from Heaven above
Calming all our pain and sorrow,
Him who’s spirit’s doubly hurt,
Renewing, with a double measure.
Oh, I’m weary of life’s urging!
Why, now, all this joy and pain?
Sweetest Peace,
Flood: oh flood my heart again!


‘Heiss mich nicht redden,’

Bid me be silent, bid me not speak,
Secrecy is a duty to me:
I could reveal my heart compete,
But Fate doesn’t wish it to be.

In due season, the sun’s bright path
Drives the night away, the light must shine:
The hard stone opens its breast at last
And yields Earth water from hidden mines.

Every man seeks rest in a dear friend’s arms,
Where the heart can express its inner pain:
But my lips are sealed by secret charms
And none but a god can part them again.


The ErlKing

Who rides so late through the wind and night?
It’s a father with his child so light:
He clasps the boy close in his arms,
Holds him fast, and keeps him warm.

‘My son, why hide your face, all scared? –
‘Don’t you see, Father, the Erlking’s there,
The Alder-King with his crown and robe?’ –
‘My son, it’s the trail of mist that flows’. –

‘Come, dear child, come along with me!
The games we’ll play will be fine and lovely:
There’s many a bright flower by the water,
Many gold garments has my Mother.’

‘And Father, my Father, can’t you hear
What the Erlking’s whispering in my ear?’ –
‘Peace, peace, my child, you’re listening
To those dry leaves rustling in the wind.’-

‘Fine lad, won’t you come along with me?
My lovely daughters your slaves shall be:
My daughters dance every night, and they
Will rock you, sing you, dance you away.’

‘And Father, my Father, can’t you see where
The Erlking’s daughters stand shadowy there? –
‘My Son, my Son, I can see them plain:
It’s the ancient Willow-trees shining grey.’

‘I love you, I’m charmed by your lovely form:
And if you’re not willing, I’ll have to use force.’
‘Father, my Father, he’s gripped me at last!
The Erlking’s hurting me, holding me fast! –

The Father shudders, faster he rides,
Holding the moaning child so tight,
Reaching the house, in fear and dread:
But in his arms the child lies dead.



some more are here [url]http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Goethepoems.htm[/url]