| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: to see that in like manner his appetites, ambitions, hopes, are
really extrinsic to the spirit proper. Neither heart nor head is
truly the man, for he is conscious of something that stands behind
both. Behind desire, behind even the will, lies the soul, the same
for all men, one with the soul of the universe. When he has once
realized this eternal truth, the man has entered Nirvana. For
Nirvana is not an absorption of the individual soul into the soul of
all things, since the one has always been a part of the other.
Still less is it utter annihilation. It is simply the recognition
of the eternal oneness of the two, back through an everlasting past
on through an everlasting future.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: hearted; I bounded like a pebble rolling down a rapid slope. When she
saw me, she said,--
"What is it?"
I did not answer; my eyes were moist. The night before, Pauline had
understood my sorrows, as she now understood my joy, with the magical
sensitiveness of a harp that obeys the variations of the atmosphere.
Human life has glorious moments. Together we walked in silence along
the beach. The sky was cloudless, the sea without a ripple; others
might have thought them merely two blue surfaces, the one above the
other, but we--we who heard without the need of words, we who could
evoke between these two infinitudes the illusions that nourish youth,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: door of the store-shed with her horn and all the animals began to help
themselves from the bins. It was just then that Mr. Jones woke up. The
next moment he and his four men were in the store-shed with whips in their
hands, lashing out in all directions. This was more than the hungry
animals could bear. With one accord, though nothing of the kind had been
planned beforehand, they flung themselves upon their tormentors. Jones and
his men suddenly found themselves being butted and kicked from all sides.
The situation was quite out of their control. They had never seen animals
behave like this before, and this sudden uprising of creatures whom they
were used to thrashing and maltreating just as they chose, frightened them
almost out of their wits. After only a moment or two they gave up trying
Animal Farm |
