What's all this then?: May 2009

Friday, 29 May 2009

The Middle Kingdom

I was fortunate enough to go to China for the past few weeks (hence no recent posts). Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai, and some points in between. Far from being an easy confirmation of my expectations, I am still working on a summary that captures the contradictions. It's big and friendly, dirty and orderly, exasperating and rewarding, rich and poor, etc....

But that barely scratches the surface. Eating skewers in dingy alleyways ("hutongs"), sleeping on open carriage night trains with 75 Chinese, The Great Wall, drastic and unavoidable differences between urban and rural existence, the tallest building one can walk on, daredevil Chinese driving, train ticket lines, ....

As I took 1,350 pictures, I'll be whittling them down to a manageable 250 or so and adding a link here but for now:

Strange in a strange way

Yeah, I know. It's weird....

I'd rather be riding

International Philosophy Football Match

Football Commentator: Archimedes out to Socrates, Socrates back to Archimedes, Archimedes out to Heraclitus, he beats Hegel. Heraclitus a little flick, here he comes on the far post, Socrates is there, Socrates heads it in! Socrates has scored!

The Greeks are going mad, the Greeks are going mad. Socrates scores, got a beautiful cross from Archimedes.

The Germans are disputing it. Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside.

Collected Ideas

I made the wrong mistakes. - Thelonious Monk

For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself. From within, I couldn’t decide what to do. Unable to see, I heard my name being called. Then I walked outside.- Jelaluddin Rumi

If you want to be happy, be. - Leo Tolstoy

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.- Ludwig Borne

It is the friends you can call up at 4am that matter.

Entering the forest without moving the grass; entering the water without raising a ripple.- Zen saying

Don’t listen to those who say, “It’s not done that way.”…Don’t listen to those who say, “You’re taking too big a chance.” Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today.- Neil Simon

Thinking is greatly under-rated as a form of exercise.- James A. Loveless

Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.- Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain)

It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is.

As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more.- Jules Renard

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving…- Aldous Huxley

You can observe a lot just by watching.

When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough. When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much.- Fen-Yang

What is a rebel? A man who says no.- Albert Camus

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.- Taisen Deshimaru

If you don’t want any to know it, don’t do it.- Chinese proverb

What a wonderful life I’ve had. I only wish I realized it sooner.- Colette

It is usually not considered an adventure when it is happening.- PML

If you wish to know what a man is, place him in authority.- Yugoslav proverb

It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.- Elbert Hubbard

Whatever needs to be maintained by force is doomed.- Henry Miller

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.- Abraham Maslow

As an artist, all I need is my paints and brushes – and someone to drag me away when the canvas is done.- Pablo Picasso

Love…is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.- Iris Murdoch

Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.- Italian proverb

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of other, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.- Katherine Mansfield

Education consists of example and love - and nothing else.Be happy. It is a way of being wise.- Colette

A good education should leave much to be desired.- Alan Gregg

I’m going to memorize your name and throw my head away.- Oscar Levant

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Grub first, then ethics.- Bertolt Brecht

The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are crazy.- Rebecca West

Hell is other people.- Jean-Paul Sartre

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.- Oscar Wilde

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we know what to do with it.- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our life is frittered away by detail…Simplify, simplify, simplify.- Henry David Thoreau

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.- H. L. Mencken

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.- Albert Einstein

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?- Stanislaw Lem

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.- Abraham Lincoln

Two monologues do not make a dialogue.

The difficulty in life is the choice.- George Moore

Not every end is a goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal. A parable.- Friedrich Nietzsche

We are like someone immersed in water, who complains of nothing to drink.- Hsueh-Feng

To be uncertain is uncomfortable, but to be certain is ridiculous.- Chinese proverb

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.- Sir Winston Churchill

Life is a great bundle of little things.- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.- Aristotle

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.- Alan Watts

For this is the journey that men make: to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn’t matter much what else they find.- James A. Michener

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.- Oscar Wilde

Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.- Dogen

It’s taken me all my life to understand that it is not necessary to understand everything.- René Coty

Nothing is so simple that it cannot be misunderstood.- Freeman Teague

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.- Robert Green Ingersoll

He who knows speaks not; he who speaks, knows not.- Lao-Tzu

Sometimes it proves the highest understanding not to understand.- Gracian

Have more than thou showest; speak less than thou knowest.- William Shakespeare

I am still learning.- Michelangelo

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.- John Wooden

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.- Chinese proverb

Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them … there is nothing.- Jean-Paul Sartre

It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.- P. D. Ouspensky

Great things are done when men and mountains meet; this is not done by jostling in the street.- William Blake

I have realized that the past and the future are real illusion, that they exist only in the present, which is what there is and all that there is.- Alan Watts

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.- Shunryu Suzuki

A wise man’s question contains half the answer.- Ibn Gabirol

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.- André Gide

Each day a day goes by.- Carlo Goldoni

Forever is composed of nows.- Emily Dickinson

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where do you expect to find it?- Dogen

Don’t listen to what they say. Go see.- Chinese proverb

No one shows a child the sky.- African proverb

Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists of putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.- Hermann Hesse

The truth is generally seen, rarely heard.- Gracian

Things are not what they seem to be, nor are they otherwise.- The Lankavatara Sutra

Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass.- Hermann Melville

The things we know best are the things we haven’t been taught.- Luc de Clapiers de Vauvenargues

You cannot enter a place you never left.- Zen saying

Osborn’s Law: Variables won’t; constants aren’t.

The quest for certainty blocks the quest for meaning.- Erich Fromm

Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.- Woody Allen

A fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees.- William Blake

Through the bamboo forest is dense, water flows through it freely.- Zen saying

All religions pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking into the distance.- V. V. Rozanov

No answer is also an answer.- German proverb

Just get rid of the false and you will automatically realize the true.- Ho-Shan

Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be.- Aldous Huxley

I don’t know. I don’t care. And it doesn’t make any difference.- Jack Kerouac

The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another.- Frank J. Dobie

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.- Joseph Heller

Other than to amuse himself, why should a man pretend to know where he’s going or to understand what he sees?- William Least Heat-Moon

We spend our lived telling ourselves the story of past and future, while the reality of the present goes largely unexplored.

I want to make my own mistakes, not other people’s.- John Cleese

Make time to for what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life. By this I mean the thing that lies behind all great careers, from Shakespeare to Abraham Lincoln’s, and as far back as there are books to read – the sense that life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat, and that the redeeming things are not ‘happiness’ and ‘pleasure’ but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything for anything you want to do.
- Jean Paul Sartre

The ordinary man looks outward.
- Zen saying

Each day should be passed as though it were our last.
- Publilius Syrus

It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
- W. Somerset Maugham

You must be the change you wish to see in the world
- Mahatma Gandhi

Man’s most serious activity is play.
- George Santayana

Measure a thousand times and cut once.
- Turkish proverb

The sinning is the best part of repentance.
- Arabic proverb

If we did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
- Thomas Edison

He has half the deed done, who has made a beginning.
- Horace

How many cares once loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.
- Hermann Hesse

Just as greed for worldly things is inhibiting and self-defeating, so also craving for other-worldly things prevents the opening of the mind
- Muso Kokushi

A superior vessel takes a long time to complete.
- Zen proverb

One may go a long way after one is tired.
- French proverb

I have a simple philosophy. Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. And scratch where it itches.
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
- Abraham Lincoln

Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
- Sir Winston Churchill

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
- Indira Gandhi

No call alligator long-mouth until you pass him by.
- Jamaican proverb

A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
- William Blake

Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent, not an object.
- Hermann Hesse

It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too.
- Henry W. Shaw

Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?
- Benjamin Franklin

May you live all the days of your life.
- Jonathon Swift

Love does not consist on gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Nothing prevents our being natural so much as the desire to appear so.
- La Rochefoucauld

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Always carry a flagon of whiskey on case of snakebite, and furthermore always carry a small snake.
- W. C. Fields

I used to think that anyone doing anything weird was weird. I suddenly realized that anyone doing anything weird wasn’t weird at all and that it was the people saying they were weird that were weird.
- Paul McCartney

Expenditure rises to meet income.
- C. Northcote Parkinson

Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
- Sydney Smith

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
- Jerome K. Jerome

The wealthy man is the man who is much, not the man who has much.
- Karl Marx

Humor is the poetry of ideas that do not match.

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.
- Christopher Morley

He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh.
- The Koran

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
- Lin Yutang

When you win, nothing hurts.
- Joe Namath

In Maine we have a saying that there’s no point in speaking unless you can improve on silence.
- Edmund Muskie

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
- Logan Pearsall Smith

Act without doing, work without effort.
- Tao Te Ching

The greatest thing in the world is to know hoe to be one’s own self.
- Montaigne

People wish to be settled. Only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

How refreshing the whinny of a packhorse unloaded of everything.
- Zen saying

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
- Alfred North Whitehead

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
- William James

To know her is to love her.
- Samuel Rogers

When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.
- Shunryu Suzuki

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
- Oscar Wilde

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
- Seneca

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

What, at this moment, is lacking?
- Lin-Chi

A good meal ought to being with hunger.
- French proverb

Better bend than break.

The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one’s whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.
- C. G. Jung

Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.
- Eddie Rickenbacker

Think enough and you won’t know anything.
- Kenneth Patchen

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.
- Tao Te Ching

Think with the whole body.
- Taisen Deshimaru

1. Out of clutter, find simplicity.
2. From discord, find harmony.
3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
- Albert Einstein

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one else can spare us…
- Marcel Proust

What you must dare is to be yourself.
- Dag Hammarskjöld

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
- Henry Miller

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.
- Jesus

Look within, thou art the Buddha.
- The Buddha

Dare to be naïve.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Don’t Compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.
- Janis Joplin

No man is a failure who is enjoying life.

Catch the vigorous horse of your mind.
- Zen saying

There are moments when everything goes well; don’t be frightened, it won’t last.
- Jules Renard

Fools look to tomorrow, wise men use tonight.
- Scottish proverb

See as if for the first time a beautiful person or an ordinary object.
- Shiva

I have learned silence from the talkative; tolerance from the intolerant; and kindness from the unkind.
- Kahlil Gibran

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them.
- Evelyn Waugh

True strength is delicate.

You never really lose until you quit trying.
- Mike Ditka

The true leader is always led.
- C. G. Jung

For others to approve me is easy; for me to approve myself is hard.
- Zen saying

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength.

The sun will set without thy assistance.
- The Talmud

Sooner or later, you’ve heard about all that your bests friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.

Work before play, but always play.
- PML

Circumstances are the creators of most men’s opinions.

Don’t confuse conceit for pride.
Don’t confuse knowledge with wisdom.
Don’t confuse talking with conversation.
Don’t confuse feelings for truth.
Don’t confuse movement with progress.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when it came to die, discover that I had not lived.
- Henry David Thoreau

Some are born to move the world to live their fantasies; most of us just dream about the things we’d like to be.
- Neil Peart

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
- William James

The aim of living is life itself.
- Goethe

The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
- Aart van der Leeuw

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life…I think that what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually dell the rapture of being alive.
- Joseph Campbell

Friday, 29 May 2009

The Middle Kingdom

Strange in a strange way

I'd rather be riding

Other places to go...

Currently Employed

International Philosophy Football Match

Collected Ideas

Bill Hicks suggests....

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