Structures and Foundations

....excerpts from books ( apply these quotes anyway you like )... most of them you can get from gutenberg.org

while reading you can listen to this new song from new album Schemata

0916 - Firstly.mp3


the Great Wild Minds of Ours




sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.
Those who are skilled (in the Tao) do not dispute (about it); the disputatious are not skilled in it. Those who know (the Tao) are not extensively learned; the extensively learned do not know it.


The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of
study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all
work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child
of practice and theory. Practice is the continuous and regular exercise
of employment where manual work is done with any necessary material
according to the design of a drawing. Theory, on the other hand, is the
ability to demonstrate and explain the productions of dexterity on the
principles of proportion.


When things have attained their strong maturity they become old.
This may be said to be not in accordance with the Tao: and what is not
in accordance with it soon comes to an end.


Fishes should not be taken from the deep; instruments for the
profit of a state should not be shown to the people. confucious .


If I were suddenly to become known, and (put into a position
to) conduct (a government) according to the Great Tao, what I should
be most afraid of would be a boastful display.


Why is one born intelligent and another idiotic? If God out of His own
will made all these inequalities, or, in other words, if God created
one man to suffer and another to enjoy, then how partial and unjust
must He be! He must be worse than a tyrant. How can we worship Him,
how call Him just and merciful?

Some people try to save God from this charge of partiality and
injustice by saying that all good things of this universe are the work
of God, and all evil things are the work of a demon or Satan. God
created everything good, but it was Satan who brought evil into this
world and made everything bad. Now let us see how far such a statement
is logically correct. Good and evil are two relative terms; the
existence of one depends upon that of the other. Good cannot exist
without evil, and evil cannot exist without being related to
good. When God created what we call good, He must have created evil at
the same time, otherwise He could not create good alone. If the
creator of evil, call him by whatever name you like, had brought evil
into this world, he must have created it simultaneously with God;
otherwise it would have been impossible for God to create good, which
can exist only as related to evil. As such they will have to admit
that the Creators of good and evil sat together at the same time to
create this world, which is a mixture of good and evil. Consequently,
both of them are equally powerful, and limited by each other.
Therefore neither of them is infinite in powers or omnipotent. So we
cannot say that the Almighty God of the universe created good alone
and not the evil.


Talents for eloquence, music, painting, and uncommon
ingenuity in several mechanical arts, traces of which were never found
in the ordinary normal condition, are often evolved in the state of
madness.


The craving for infinitude is latent in love; its essence is the longing
to reach beyond the attainable, to find the meaning of the world in
ecstasy. The great erotic is a man whose inward being rests on emotion,
who must bring this emotion to its climax--and who is wrecked on the
incompleteness of human feeling. We recognise in him one of the tragic
figures at the confines of humanity. For it is the final tragedy of a
soul impelled by the inexorable will to self-realisation, to be broken
on the wheel of human limitations.

The great artist creates a
masterpiece; his heart is aglow with the ideal of perfect beauty beheld
by none but him, but his ideal eternally eludes him; the saint has
achieved perfection as far as perfection is possible to humanity, and
stands aghast at the burden of insufficiency which weighs down mankind;
the great erotic is the hero in the world of feeling, his soul yearns
for the consummation of his love--and already he has reached the
confines of life.


The true erotic, once he has found his complementary being, is
overwhelmed by the will to the perfect realisation of his passion. It
appears with the unanswerable logic of the unique and final, carrying in
its train supreme happiness and infinite sorrow. A love able to deliver
a soul from its solitude is rare; once there, the whole world is as
nothing to it. All life is embraced and brought under its spell. (In
this connection I need only mention Michelangelo.) A lover of this type
surrenders himself to love unconditionally--love shall completely
annihilate, completely renew him. (emil lucka)


Swear not by God, when ye make oath, that ye will be virtuous and "fear"(?) God,
and promote peace among men; for God is He who Heareth, Knoweth.
(Quran)


The error made by pedantic teachers is to demand _too much_ Form; to
insist that a piece of music shall be a model of arithmetical
adjustment. This is probably a graver error than apparent
formlessness. Design and logic and unity there must surely be; but any
_obtrusive_ evidence of mathematical calculation must degrade music to
the level of a mere handicraft.


To the last class of scholars belonged Chwen Hih (Hu dai shi), known as Chwen the Great. He is said to have been accustomed to wear a Confucianist hat, a Buddhist robe, and Taoist shoes. It was in A.D. 534 that he presented a memorial to the Emperor Wu, in which he explained the three grades of good. "The Highest Good consists," says he, "in the
emptiness of mind and non-attachment. Transcendence is its cause,
and Nirvana is its result. The Middle Good consists in morality and
good administration. It results in a peaceful and happy life in
Heaven and in Earth. The Lowest Good consists in love and protection
of sentient beings.


"I have come here, my brother, not for the sake of this robe, but for the
sake of the Law. Grant my hearty desire of getting Enlightened."
"If you have come for the Law," replied Hwui Nang, "you must put an
end to all your struggles and longings. Think neither of good nor of
evil (make your mind pure from all idle thoughts), then see how is,
Hwui Ming, your original (mental) physiognomy!" Being thus
questioned, Ming found in an instant the Divine Light of Buddha
within himself, and became a disciple of the Sixth Patriarch.


Everything alive has a strong innate tendency to preserve itself, to
assert itself, to push itself forward, and to act on its environment,
consciously or unconsciously. The innate, strong tendency of the
living is an undeveloped, but fundamental, nature of Spirit or Mind.
It shows itself first in inert matter as impenetrability, or
affinity, or mechanical force. Rock has a powerful tendency to
preserve itself. And it is hard to crush it. Diamond has a robust
tendency to assert itself. And it permits nothing to destroy it.
Salt has the same strong tendency, for its particles act and react by
themselves, and never cease till its crystals are formed. Steam,
too, should have the same, because it pushes aside everything in its
way and goes where it will.
Zen.




God appeared to man, then, as a me, as a pure and permanent
essence, placing himself before him as a monarch before his
servant, and expressing himself now through the mouth of poets,
legislators, and soothsayers, musa, nomos, numen; now through the
popular voice, vox populi vox Dei. This may serve, among other
things, to explain the existence of true and false oracles; why
individuals secluded from birth do not attain of themselves to
the idea of God, while they eagerly grasp it as soon as it is
presented to them by the collective mind; why, finally,
stationary races, like the Chinese, end by losing it.

The Chinese have preserved in their traditions the
remembrance of a religion which had ceased to exist among them
five or six centuries before our era.

Thus, without a God or master-builder, the universe and man
would not exist: such is the social profession of faith. But
also without man God would not be thought, or--to clear the
interval--God would be nothing.


The gods have gone: there is nothing left for man but to grow weary and die in his egoism.
What frightful solitude extends around me, and
forces its way to the bottom of my soul! My exaltation resembles
annihilation; and, since I made myself a God, I seem but a
shadow. It is possible that I am still a ME, but it is very
difficult to regard myself as the absolute; and, if I am not the
absolute, I am only half of an idea.

"True practitioners do not see the faults in others"


'If they be led by virtue, and uniformity sought to be given
them by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame,
and moreover will become good.'confucius


When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.'


'What should be done
in order to secure the submission of the people?' Confucius replied,
'Advance the upright and set aside the crooked, then the people
will submit. Advance the crooked and set aside the upright, then
the people will not submit.'


Tsze-chang asked what were the characteristics of the GOOD man. The Master said, 'He does not tread in the footsteps
of others, but moreover, he does not enter the chamber of the sage.


Music, also, the architect ought to understand so that he may have
knowledge of the canonical and mathematical theory, and besides be able
to tune ballistae, catapultae, and scorpiones to the proper key. For to
the right and left in the beams are the holes in the frames through
which the strings of twisted sinew are stretched by means of windlasses
and bars, and these strings must not be clamped and made fast until they
give the same correct note to the ear of the skilled workman. For the
arms thrust through those stretched strings must, on being let go,
strike their blow together at the same moment; but if they are not in
unison, they will prevent the course of projectiles from being straight.


That _pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement _of the soul, _which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction ofthe Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart. I make Beauty, therefore--using the word as inclusive of the sublime -- I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes: -- no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least _most readily _attainable in the poem. It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion' or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work: but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that _Beauty _which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem.



for he who thinks must feel before he can execute. And
the highest thoughts, when they become familiarized to us, are always
tending to pass into the form of feeling.
plato.


'Can a nation, like an individual, have a conscience?' We hesitate to say that the characters of nations are nothing more than the sum of the characters of the individuals who compose them; because there may be tendencies in individuals which react upon one another. plato.


the child is to be taught first simple religious truths, and then simple moral truths, and insensibly to learn the lesson of good manners and good taste. He would make an entire reformation of the old mythology; like Xenophanes and Heracleitus he is sensible of the deep chasm which separates his own age from Homer and Hesiod, whom he quotes and
invests with an imaginary authority, but only for his own purposes. The
lusts and treacheries of the gods are to be banished; the terrors of the
world below are to be dispelled; the misbehaviour of the Homeric heroes is
not to be a model for youth. plato. The principles on
which religion is to be based are two only: first, that God is true;
secondly, that he is good.

Buddhists regard Buddha Shakyamuni as our "Original Teacher." Buddhism is an educational system, for the title of teacher is not found in religions, only in education.

Severing one's wandering thoughts and attachments will enable one to attain the wonderful reality of truth. This representation is within the sixth phase "Attaining Enlightenment. "


One who regards others as Buddhas, is a Buddha, while an ordinary person would regard the Buddha as ordinary. In other words, a bad person would regard all as bad, whereas, a virtuous person would regard all as kind and virtuous. In reality, there is no good or bad, beautiful or ugly in the world but just reflections from our mind. The outside environment changes according to one's state of mind.




It was necessary that I should acquit myself as a priest of my
ministry, but how often have I not suffered within myself when I was
forced to preach to you those pious lies which I despised in my heart.
-meslier.


The invincible ignorance in which they are kept in this respect, far from
discouraging them, does but excite their curiosity; instead of putting
them on guard against their imagination, this ignorance makes them
positive, dogmatic, imperious, and causes them to quarrel with all those
who oppose doubts to the reveries which their brains have brought forth.
What perplexity, when we attempt to solve an unsolvable problem! Anxious
meditations upon an object impossible to grasp, and which, however, is
supposed to be very important to him, can but put a man into bad humor,
and produce in his brain dangerous transports. When interest, vanity,
and ambition are joined to such a morose disposition, society
necessarily becomes troubled. This is why so many nations have often
become the theaters of extravagances caused by nonsensical visionists,
who, publishing their shallow speculations for the eternal truth, have
kindled the enthusiasm of princes and of people, and have prepared them
for opinions which they represented as essential to the glory of
divinity and to the happiness of empires. We have seen, a thousand
times, in all parts of our globe, infuriated fanatics slaughtering each
other, lighting the funeral piles, committing without scruple, as a
matter of duty, the greatest crimes. Why? To maintain or to propagate
the impertinent conjectures of enthusiasts, or to sanction the knaveries
of impostors on account of a being who exists only in their imagination,
and who is known only by the ravages, the disputes, and the follies
which he has caused upon the earth.-meslier

we are all ghosts . suresh .

Does it require more than common sense to feel that
there is at least delirium and frenzy in hating and tormenting each
other for unintelligible opinions of a being of this kind? Finally, does
it not all prove that morality and virtue are totally incompatible with
the idea of a God, whose ministers and interpreters have painted him in
all countries as the most fantastic, the most unjust, and the most cruel
of tyrants, whose pretended wishes are to serve as rules and laws for
the inhabitants of the earth? To discover the true principles of
morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of Gods; they
need but common sense; they have only to look within themselves, to
reflect upon their own nature, to consult their obvious interests, to
consider the object of society and of each of the members who compose
it, and they will easily understand that virtue is an advantage, and
that vice is an injury to beings of their species. - meslier



If God by Himself is infinitely happy and is sufficient unto Himself,
why does He need the homage of His feeble creatures? - meslier


A GOD WHO PUNISHES THE FAULTS WHICH HE COULD HAVE PREVENTED, IS A FOOL,
WHO ADDS INJUSTICE TO FOOLISHNESS. meslier


Nothing appears more ridiculous in the eyes of a sensible man than for
one denomination to criticize another whose creed is equally foolish. A
Christian thinks that the Koran, the Divine revelation announced by
Mohammed, is but a tissue of impertinent dreams and impostures injurious
to Divinity. The Mohammedan, on his side, treats the Christian as an
idolater and a dog; he sees but absurdities in his religion; he imagines
he has the right to conquer his country and force him, sword in hand, to
accept the faith of his Divine prophet; he believes especially that
nothing is more impious or more unreasonable than to worship a man or to
believe in the Trinity. The Protestant Christian, who without scruple
worships a man, and who believes firmly in the inconceivable mystery of
the Trinity, ridicules the Catholic Christian because the latter
believes in the mystery of the transubstantiation. He treats him as a
fool, as ungodly and idolatrous, because he kneels to worship the bread
in which he believes he sees the God of the universe. All the Christian
denominations agree in considering as folly the incarnation of the God
of the Indies, Vishnu. They contend that the only true incarnation is
that of Jesus, Son of the God of the universe and of the wife of a
carpenter. The theist, who calls himself a votary of natural religion,
is satisfied to acknowledge a God of whom he has no conception; indulges
himself in jesting upon other mysteries taught by all the religions of
the world.meslier

I know one who, in the cause of God,
would be ready to draw sword, and, like Robespierre, use the
guillotine until the last atheist should be destroyed, not
dreaming that that atheist would be himself. proudhon


I think that if our rulers and their auxiliaries are to be worthy of
the name which they bear, there must be willingness to obey in the one and
the power of command in the other; the guardians must themselves obey the laws, and they must also imitate the spirit of them in any details which
are entrusted to their care. plato



All the Gods worshiped by men have a barbarous origin; they were visibly
imagined by stupid nations, or were presented by ambitious and cunning
legislators to simple and benighted people, who had neither the capacity
nor the courage to examine properly the object which, by means of
terrors, they were made to worship. In examining closely the God which
we see adored still in our days by the most civilized nations, we are
compelled to acknowledge that He has evidently barbarous features. To be
barbarous is to recognize no right but force; it is being cruel to
excess; it is but following one's own caprice; it is a lack of
foresight, of prudence, and reason.
-------


Every barbarian is a child thirsting for the wonderful,
which he imbibes with pleasure, and who never reasons upon that which he
finds proper to excite his imagination; his ignorance of the ways of
nature makes him attribute to spirits, to enchantments, to magic, all
that appears to him extraordinary; in his eyes his priests are
sorcerers, in whom he supposes an Almighty power; before whom his
confused reason humiliates itself, whose oracles are for him infallible
decrees, to contradict which would be dangerous. meslier


Superstition is never to be feared except when it has the support of princes and soldiers;
it is only then that it becomes cruel and sanguinary.


Fear makes but slaves, and slaves are cowardly, low,
cruel, and think they have a right to do anything when it is the
question of gaining the good-will or of escaping the punishments of the
master whom they fear. Liberty of thought can alone give to men humanity and grandeur of soul. The notion of a tyrant God can create but abject, angry, quarrelsome, intolerant slaves. meslier


The combined experience of humanity, so far as its earliest records go, has been
limited by laws, the nature of which have been ascertained: it is
impossible that it should be transcended without violation of the
conclusions arrived at by positive science. oliphant.


_Mr Coldwaite_. Excuse me; but in discussions of this sort, I think it
is most important that we should clearly understand the meanings of the
terms we employ. Now I deny that any difference subsists between
religion and morality. That any such distinction should exist in men's
minds is due to the fact that dogma is inseparably connected with
religion. If you eliminate dogma, what does religion consist of but
morality? Substitute the love of Humanity for the love of the
Unknowable--which is the subject of worship of Mr Germsell; or of the
Deity, who is the object of worship of the majority of mankind--and you
obtain a stimulus to morality which will suffice for all human need. It
is in this great emotion, as it seems to me, that you will find at once
the religion and the morality of the future. oliphant .
?

Have you really been experimentalising on your own moral organism?


Christianity seems a failure because Christians have failed--have failed to understand its application to everyday life, have failed to embody it in practice, and have sought an
escape from the apparent impossibility of doing so, by smothering it with
dogmas, and diverting its scope from this world to the next. It will be
time to look for a new religion, when we have succeeded in the literal
application of the ethics of the one we have got to the social and
economic problems of daily life. It is not by any intellectual effort or
scientific process that the discovery will be made of how this is to be
done, but by the introduction into the organism of new and unsuspected
potencies of moral force which have hitherto lain dormant in nature,
waiting for the great invocation of wearied and distressed humanity.


I have the need. A strong need to feel validated . Validated by the One that is Approving of me. that is , by no other understanding, 'we are slaved'. that need, made me a slave. now what then if i ignore that need , vanquish that need to feel validated. the validation come from then, only from myself, with the guidance of the simple notion that is everything somehow will be alright? that is not that difficult, ain't it? .zuhal.


if he cannot discover the agents by whom he suffers, if he cannot find to what
account to place the confusion he experiences, his inquietude augments; his fears
redouble; his imagination leads him astray; it exaggerates his evil;
paints in a disorderly manner these unknown objects of his terror;
magnifies their powers; then making an analogy between them and those
terrific objects, with whom he is already acquainted, he suggests to
himself the means he usually takes to mitigate their anger; to
conciliate their kindness; he employs similar measures to soften the
anger, to disarm the power, to avert the effects of the concealed cause
which gives birth to his inquietudes, which fills him with anxiety,
which alarms his fears. It is thus his weakness, aided by ignorance,
renders him superstitious. holbach.

i woke up and understood most. most that begins with nothing. zuhal.

A sound and rational self-love ought to lead us to seek our own true
happiness, and should prove a check upon those appetites and passions
which interfere with this; for many of them, it must be allowed, may be
not less adverse to our own real interest and comfort, than they are to
our duty to other men. It should lead us, therefore, to avoid every
thing, not only that is opposed to our interest, but that is calculated
to impair our peace of mind, and that harmony of the moral feelings
without which there can be no real happiness.



The principle of Habit, therefore, holds a most important place in the
moral condition of every man; and it applies equally to any species of
conduct, or any train of mental operations, which, by frequent
repetition, have become so familiar, as not to be accompanied by a
recognition of the principles in which they originated. In this manner
good habits are continued without any immediate sense of the right
principles by which they were formed; but they arose from a frequent
and uniform acting upon these principles, and on this is founded the
moral approbation which we attach to habits of this description. In the
same manner, habits of vice, and habits of inattention to any class of
duties, are perpetuated without a sense of the principles and affections
which they violate; but this arose from a frequent violation of these
principles, and a frequent repulsion of these affections, until they
gradually lost their power over the conduct; and in this consists the
guilt of habits. Thus, one person acquires habits of benevolence,
veracity, and kindness,--of minute attention to his various duties,--of
correct mental discipline,--and active direction of his thoughts to all
those objects of attention which ought to engage a well regulated
mind: abercrombie .

True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true
morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the
judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the
intellect. pascal .


Do you wish people to believe good of you? Don't speak. . pascal .


St. Teresa found happiness only in "shutting herself up within herself."
Vocal prayer could not satisfy her, and she adopted mental
prayer. The four stages of her experience--which she named
"recollectedness," "quietude" (listening rather than speaking),
"union" (blissful sleep with the faculties of the mind still),
"ecstasy or rapture"--are but progressive steps in the sealing
of the senses. The yoga of the Brahmins, which is the same as
the "union" of the Cabalists, is made to depend upon the same
conditions,--passivity, perseverance, solitude. The novice
must arrest his breathing, and may meditate on mystic symbols
alone, by way of reaching the formless, ineffable Buddha.


Meditation is when one is not tempted by the exterior factors of reputation, power, prestige, wealth, the five desires (wealth, lust, food/drink, fame and sleep) and impurities in the six senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and idea). Concentration is when no afflictions arise from within.



'Fine words and an insinuating
appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.' confucian

In loving the people and ruling the state, cannot he proceed
without any (purpose of) action? In the opening and shutting of his
gates of heaven, cannot he do so as a female bird? While his
intelligence reaches in every direction, cannot he (appear to) be
without knowledge? tao

positivity! fuckhead!!! . zuhal.


Simplicity without a name
Is free from all external aim.
With no desire, at rest and still,
All things go right as of their will.


The people do not fear death; to what purpose is it to (try to)
frighten them with death? If the people were always in awe of death,
and I could always seize those who do wrong, and put them to death,
who would dare to do wrong? tao

Better to live on beggar's bread
With those we love alive,
Than taste their blood in rich feasts spread,
And guiltily survive!
bhagavad gita.


He
pretended to no details, nor claimed distinguished ancestry, for he
realised his past must have been utterly commonplace and insignificant
to have produced his present; but he was just as sure he had been at
this weary game for ages as that he breathed, and it never occurred to
him to argue, to doubt, or to ask questions. And one result of this
belief was that his thoughts dwelt upon the past rather than upon the
future; that he read much history, and felt specially drawn to certain
periods whose spirit he understood instinctively as though he had lived
in them; and that he found all religions uninteresting because, almost
without exception, they start from the present and speculate ahead as to
what men shall become, instead of looking back and speculating why men
have got here as they are. blackwood .

Hatred of enemies is easier
and more intense than love of friends. b russell.


Buddhist denominations, like non-Buddhist religions, lay
stress on scriptural authority; but Zen denounces it on the ground
that words or characters can never adequately express religious
truth, which can only be realized by mind; consequently it claims
that the religious truth attained by Shakya Muni in his Enlightenment
has been handed down neither by word of mouth nor by the letters of
scriptures, but from teacher's mind to disciple's through the line of
transmission until the present day. religion of samurai .

Cruelty lurks in our instincts, and
fanaticism is a camouflage for cruelty. Fanatics are seldom genuinely
humane, and those who sincerely dread cruelty will be slow to adopt a
fanatical creed. b russell.


Every action of body or mind which we do, every thought which we
think, becomes fine, and is stored up in the form of a _Samskâra_
or impression in our minds. It remains latent for some time, and then
it rises up in the form of a mental wave and produces new
desires. These desires are called in Vedanta, _Vâsanâs_. Vâsanâs
or strong desires are the manufacturers of new bodies. If Vâsanâ or
longing for worldly pleasures and objects remains in anybody, even
after hundreds of births, that person will be born again. Nothing can
prevent the course of strong desires. Desires must be fulfilled sooner
or later. swami abhenanda .


Passive resistance is often the strongest form of
resistance. swami pachadasi .

To suppose God, it will be said, is to deny him. Why do you not
affirm him?
Is it my fault if belief in Divinity has become a suspected
opinion; if the bare suspicion of a Supreme Being is already
noted as evidence of a weak mind; and if, of all philosophical
Utopias, this is the only one which the world no longer
tolerates? Is it my fault if hypocrisy and imbecility everywhere
hide behind this holy formula? proudhon .