The Sadhu sits upon the ghat, so free from suffering. Like butterflies in still moments with wings not fluttering. There's no living and no dying, just a rare kind of dead, in which bodies move, but minds don't, and worlds are gently tread.
Genius: A Very Short Introduction by Andrew Robinson
nestled between rocks the smooth-worn driftwood roots assume the form of a pile of writhing snakes, 'til the mind untangles truth
Ashtavakra Gita: by Bart Marshall
If you’re looking to attain Enlightenment, you may have turned to someone like the Buddha or Epictetus for inspiration. But I’m here to tell you, if you can put these four pieces of Shakespearean wisdom into practice, you’ll have all you need to uplift your mind.
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
william Shakespeare, Hamlet
Through Yoga, practitioners learn to cultivate their inner “dispassionate witness.” In our daily lives, we’re constantly attaching value judgements and labels to everything with which we come into contact (not to mention the things that we merely imagine.) As a result, we tend to see the world not as it is, but in an illusory form.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
William shakespeare, julius caesar
In Psychology class, you may remember learning about the self-serving bias, a warped way of seeing the world in which one attributes difficulties and failures to external factors, while attributing successes and other positive outcomes to one’s own winning characteristics. Like Brutus, we need to learn to stop thinking of our experience of life as the sum of external events foisted upon us, and to realize that our experience is rooted in our minds and how we perceive and react to events.
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
william shakespeare, as you like it
A quote from Hamlet also conveys the idea, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” If you grasp this idea, you may become both humbler and more readily capable of discarding bad ideas in favor of good. It’s common to want to think of yourself as a master, but this leads only to arrogance and to being overly attached to ineffective ideas. Be like Socrates.
Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.
william shakespeare, julius caesar
Fears and anxieties lead people into lopsided calculations in which a risky decision is rated all downside. Those who see the world this way may end up living a milquetoast existence that’s loaded with regrets. No one is saying one should ignore all risks and always throw caution to the wind, but our emotions make better servants than masters. One needs to realize that giving into one’s anxieties has a cost, and that that cost should be weighed against what one will get out of an experience.
There it is: Enlightenment in four bits of Shakespearean wisdom.
He sat and stilled his weary mind, and his thoughts slowed their flow. Until he was a ceaseless void with nowhere left to go.
hot-injected molecule - squeezed into my bloodstream, shooting me into bliss & i ride that tide, rising & rising on the swell breath jagged, mind rapt with nothingness, & brain firing in electric tangles i'm seeing, but not attaching i'm being, but nothing in particular in time, my ride will be at an end, and I'll be back to the world of strange disasters
Walking Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh
the algae pond - dappled with leafy fractals, patterns shift. what moves: water or branch? or, perhaps, just my mind
in quiet moments of Buddha time i watch the world like a man who's blind i sing my songs like a drunken sage and offer curses as though free of rage
the !n(tro)verted yogi 