A timeless time will come to be, when all is uniform. And nothing 's hot & nothing 's cold, but all is just lukewarm. So thank your lucky stars you've lived in this age of bedlam: when stars can shine and buildings rise and we've cerebellums.
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.
Emerson said, "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string." REM said, "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" Will Kenneth's waves propagate down the line? If so, would they add to, or cancel out, the waves of others? That depends on the frequency, Kenneth! I guess that's why Michael Stipe took such an impassioned interest in the question. Is it even a good thing if one's waves add to those of another? Might it not become disharmonious, like a runaway washing machine, shaking violently, parts flying through the air in smooth ballistic arcs only to bounce and clatter in dull discordance. Does one's iron string even need to come into contact with Kenneth's? Might not the wave energy passing through the air stir up a resonance in one's bones? Questions, such as these, haunt me -- not to mention: Who, exactly, is Kenneth?
People sometimes tell me they have trouble understanding poetry. That's because they consume it as they would a banana, starting at one end and chomping down to the other. Poetry has to be consumed like corn on the cob. One should start at one end and work down to the other, but then one has to go back to the beginning -- change one's angle of perspective -- and - again - go from one end to the other. I can't emphasize this point about changing one's angle of perspective enough. There is a difference: with corn on the cob, one rotates the corn, but, with poetry, one has to rotate something within the reader. Otherwise, one is just chomping into an empty rut - a track devoid of sustenance. Then, one has to repeat the process until every last morsel has been consumed. That's how one ingests poetry.
Human nature is a raging river which a few shitty sandbags of common sense will not detour. Some people stand on the bank and shout at the river. I will admit, I've done the same. But those words neither soak in nor bounce off that raging river -- they're made silent, dying in air. Some people try to steer the river by splashing at the lapping waters near its edge, But none of them is Moses, not one can dam a river by force of will. And - even if one could -- eventually, that person would have to let go, leaving a backed up and angry river to rage onward.
One burning moment -- taffy-stretched to the edge of reason: stretched so broadly that one can't fathom escape - like Monkey on the Buddha's palm One burning idea -- cloned, and then carved to make infinite variants, and painted infinite shades: the dark tone of each darker than the last Burning ideas populating the vast expanse of a burning moment, until the urge to escape insists that one carve a hatch into living tissue But what is it that does the stretching of the burning moment & the cloning of the burning idea? Can't that stretcher and cloner be wound back, scaling all to proper proportions? And can't it be done before that terminal instant is carved in jagged stone?
The other day I read that a man had pushed a person onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train. The week before that, I'd read in a book by Robin Ince that a person who -- having had a baby thrust into his hands -- has intrusive thoughts of throwing said baby out of the nearest window is [believe it, or not] the best person to ask to hold one's baby. The argument goes like this, the person having these intrusive thoughts is being intensely reminded by his or her unconscious mind that under no circumstances -- no matter what unexpected or unusual events should transpire -- is he to throw the baby out the window (or otherwise do anything injurious.) I've heard that, at some point, virtually everyone has some type of awkward intrusive thought such as the thought of pushing a stranger in front of a train. Most never do it, nor truly want to do it. Then this one time... someone did.
People pray for blinding, deafening magic. Instead, they should make themselves keen observers of the mundane miracles. Those little magic moments like seeing a baby's smile or crossing over a green ridge to face a snow-capped mountain. Feel these rare moments to their fullest, rather than wishing to be dazzled by grand displays of the supernatural. Those loud miracles will probably never happen, and - if they do - one who hasn't become attuned to hearing the quiet moments of glorious perfection might still miss them.
Three Japanese Buddhist Monks by Saigyō
We laud our rational side - The Thinking Man - But we're emotional beasts to the core. To use that old [and disparately applied] chestnut: Of emotions, better master than servant. Poetry is a conduit to emotional savvy. That's part of the reason Plato urged poetic restraint; he found the emotional inferior to the rational, and thought most youngsters couldn't behave responsibly in the face of poetry's emotional power. It's also where Aristotle found virtue in poetry, its ability to induce catharsis. Could they both be right?
Tiger Riding for Beginners 