Category Archives: Philosophy

Five Wise Lines from Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore

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In the drowsy dark caves of the mind / dreams build their nest with fragments / dropped from day’s caravan.

From the solemn gloom of the temple / children run out to sit in the dust, / God watches them play / and forgets the priest.

The wind tries to take the flame by storm / only to blow it out.

The same sun is newly born in new lands / in a ring of endless dawns.

When death comes and whispers to me, / “Thy days are ended.” / let me say to him, “I have lived in love / and not in mere time.” / He will ask, “Will thy songs remain?” / I shall say, “I know not, but this I know / that often when I sang I found my eternity.

Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore is in the public domain and can be read at sites such as:

Fireflies is available at PoetryVerse

PROMPT: Peace

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What brings you peace?

Being in the now, and feeling – but not feeding – emotional sensations.

PROMPT: Curiosity

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What are you curious about?

Everything. But I have learned to be less obsessed with the grand metaphysical questions for which no one has any defensible answers – just rank speculation. Socrates convinced me it’s not worth worrying about abstractions while one is still struggling with fundamental questions of how to be human.

Flat Fog [Free Verse]

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Stationed in East Anglia,
   I remember layered fog,
     fog so thick one couldn't
     see past the hood's end,

but, given a slight rise, 
   one could see all the way
   down the runway -- as if
   it was a cloudless full moon eve.

As one might expect of an airbase,
   (having been built around a flat runway)
   there wasn't much topography.

But sometimes life is like that:
   a tiny rise in perspective 
   allows one to see the world clearly,
 
but a minor dip puts one in a
   soup of unfathomability.

PROMPT: Certainty

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Daily writing prompt
List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain.
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Every source of information is flawed and / or of limited value as a source of truth.

There is beauty everywhere (but to see it one has to let go of one’s compulsion to attach value judgements to everything.)

People who know more things for certain are wrong about more things.

A better life comes of being content with less than of having more.

There is a force, we’ll call it gravity, that keeps my feet to the floor (or insists that I either fall or expend energy to break the surly bonds.)

With respect to that which one can’t know for certain, it’s closer to truth to remain ignorant than to be deluded.

The world that I perceive isn’t the world, itself.

All else being equal, a diverse group of people is stronger, smarter, better looking, and more effective than a homogenous one.

If the same level of effort were put into fostering emotional intelligence as is put into mental intelligence… what a wonderful world it would be.

One who hands you knowledge but tells you to drop it like a hot rock if it doesn’t stand up to your own experience and rationality is more trustworthy than one who hands you knowledge and insists you hold onto it with white-knuckled intensity.

PROMPT: Security or Adventure?

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Daily writing prompt
Are you seeking security or adventure?
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Uh, we are all seeking both. That is the fundamental strain of being human — the struggle between a need for novelty and a need for familiarity. We are all both tribesman and traveler — though in varied proportion. I love the traveler more in my own particular self.

PROMPT: Comfort

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What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?

I don’t, but I have a lot of strategies for being more content in the face of various situations and environments — including uncomfortable ones. These include the yogic practice of dispassionate witnessing, minimalism, travel (and specifically minimalist travel to places – the less familiar the better,) and intense physical activity.

I think comfort as a major objective in life is overrated, and virtually insures a discontented life. A life in which one can be content, whatever may come along, is a happy life.

Solid Ground [Free Verse]

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sole to cold earth:

it's the only way i know
 the limits of this world.

feet pressing into this globe
 are my tether to reality.

any other way, and the world
  could stretch forever.

the feel of my weight,
 popping to heel or ball:
  pronating & supinating,
  rolling & reaching,
   in dance or destruction --

 feet leaving the cold earth
  always reorient to the planet.

Five Wise Lines from Shakespeare’s Hamlet

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We fat all creatures else to fat us and we fat ourselves for maggots… a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.”

HamLet to Claudius in Act IV, Sc. 3

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

Hamlet to Queen Gertrude in Act I, Sc. 5

I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Hamlet to rosencrantz & Guildenstern in Act I, sc. 2

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Polonius to claudius & gertrude in act II, sc. 2

A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

hamlet to rosencrantz in act IV, Sc. 2

The Abyss [Free Verse]

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Nietzsche said:

“And if thou gaze long
   into an abyss,
  the abyss will also
    gaze into thee.”


I must admit
   the first several times
    that I read this quote,
  I couldn’t tell if it was wise,
    or just had the patina of
     wisdom that comes from 
     parallel sentence structure.

Crisscrossing subject and object
    lends a ring of sagacity.

“If you can’t take 
    Mohammad to the mountain,
  the mountain must come to
    Mohammad.”


“Ask not what your country 
    can do for you,
  but what you can do 
     for your country.”


“If you can’t get the carrots 
    out of the refrigerator,
  get the refrigerator 
     out of the carrots.”


Yes, that last one is nonsense, 
    but it’s not nonsense like:

“The banana pirouetted fuchsia
     all over the underside of
      an A-sharp chord.”

The carrot quote probably took
     your mind some time —
      if only milliseconds —
       to relegate to the
        trash heap. 

That’s why this sentence structure 
     is beloved by godmen &
      politicians: because you can 
       sound wise even if you’re 
       kind of an idiot.

So, I was ready to classify Nietzsche’s 
     quote pseudo-wisdom when I realized 
      that my smartphone was the Abyss, 
       and it was certainly staring back at me.

  It stared through all the data collection &
     neuroscientific and psychological
      research designed to keep 
       a person scrolling.

Maybe Nietzsche was on to something
    that even he didn't fully understand.