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Friday, October 29, 2010

Laughter


Laughter


Philip Roth: In your last book, though, something else is involved. In a little parable you compare the laughter of angels with the laughter of the devil.

The devil laughs because God's world seems senseless to him; the angels laugh with joy because everything in God's world has its meaning. 


Milan Kundera: Yes, man uses the same physiologic manifestations- laughter- to express two different metaphysical attitudes.

Someone's hat drops on a coffin in a freshly dug grave, the funeral loses its meaning and laughter is born.

Two lovers race through the meadow, holding hands, laughing. Their laughter has nothing to do with jokes or humor, it is the serious laughter of angels expressing their joy of being.

Both kinds of laughter belong among life's pleasures, but when it also denotes a dual apocalypse:

the enthusiastic laughter of angel-fanatics, who are so convinced of their world's significance that they are ready to hang anyone not sharing their joy.

And the other laughter, sounding from the opposite side, which proclaims that everything has become meaningless, that even funerals are ridiculous and group sex a mere comical pantomime.

Human life is bounded by two chasms: fanaticism on one side, absolute skepticism on the other.



The Most Original Book of the Season
Philip Roth interviews Milan Kundera (30/11/1980)

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Belief


Belief


Protean, my heart henceforth assumes all forms: at once

Meadow of gazelles and cloister of the Christians monk

Temple of idols and the pilgrim's Kaaba

The Thora's tablets tantamount

To the Holy Koran's leaves

Religion of love, my allegiance

Wherever its caravans may lead

Just as love is my final faith



Ibn Arabi
Ibn 'Arabī (Arabic: ابن عربي‎) (July 28, 1165 – November 10, 1240) was an Andalusian [Moorish]] Sufi
mystic and philosopher. His full name was Abū 'Abdullāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-`Arabī ('أبو عبد الله محمد بن علي بن محمد بن عربي ).

Born in the Spanish township of Murcia on 17th of Ramaḍān 561 AH (27th or 28 July 1165 AD) with respectable family roots, this unique MOORISH mystic, Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-'Arabī is universally known as al-Shaykh al-Akbar (The Greatest Master OT DOCTORUS MAXIMUS in medieval europe). According to some other sources, his birthday was cited as 27th of Ramadan 560 (AH) or in other words August 7, 1165.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

People identity


People identity


Most people are other people.
Their thoughts are someone else's opinions,
their lives a mimicry,
their passions a quotation.


De Profundis
Oscar Wilde


Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete; who, after writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the tragedy of his imprisonment and early death.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

The Dream Contract



68
THE DREAM CONTRACT


Nasruddin was fast asleep at nine in the morning.
The sun was in the sky, the birds were singing in the trees and his breakfast was getting cold.
So his wife decided to wake him.
He woke up in a rage.
"Why did you wake me up just now?" he yelled.
"The sun has risen in the sky," said she,
"the birds are singing in the trees and your breakfast is getting cold."
"Breakfast be damned," he said,
"I was about to sign a contract worth a million grammes of gold!"
With that he closed his eyes to recapture his shattered dream and those million grammes of gold.


Now Nasruddin was cheating in that contract and his business partner was a tyrant.
If, on recapturing the dream, he stops his cheating, he will become a saint.
If he struggles to free the people from the oppression of the tyrant he will be a freedom fighter.
If, in the middle of it all,
he suddenly realizes he is dreaming,
he will become Awakened. Enlightened.


What kind of saint or freedom fighter are you if you are still asleep?


THE SONG OF THE BIRD
Anthony de Mello

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Ignorance


Speaking to ignorant people


Once Nasreddin was invited to deliver a sermon.

When he got on the pulpit, he asked,

"Do you know what I am going to say?"

The audience replied "no",

so he announced,

"I have no desire to speak to people who don't even know what I will be talking about!"

And left.

The people felt embarrassed and called him back again the next day.

This time, when he asked the same question, the people replied "yes".

So Nasreddin said, "Well, since you already know what I am going to say, I won't waste any more of your time!" and left.

Now the people were really perplexed.

They decided to try one more time and once again invited the Mullah to speak the following week.

Once again he asked the same question –

"Do you know what I am going to say?"

Now the people were prepared and so half of them answered "yes" while the other half replied "no".

So Nasreddin said "Let the half who know what I am going to say, tell it to the half who don't," and left.