Reflections

Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace. - The dhammapada

If you abandon one thing just to cling to another you’ll never free yourself.
You’re like a monkey letting go of one branch, grasping another.  -  Sutta nipata

If ascetics or other folk annoy you, don’t answer back.
Good people don’t retaliate. -  Sutta nipata

Biking

distance:21.770km
Time: 1h06m25s
Maximum speed: 40.0km/h
Average speed: 19.7km/h

Dhammapada

Choices

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.
“Look how he abused me and hurt me,
How he threw me down and robbed me.”
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
“Look how he abused me and hurt me,
How he threw me down and robbed me.”
Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.
You too shall pass away.
Knowing this, how can you quarrel?
How easily the wind overturns a frail tree.
Seek happiness in the senses,
Indulge in food and sleep,
And you too will be uprooted.
The wind cannot overturn a mountain.
Temptation cannot touch the man
Who is awake, strong and humble,
Who masters himself and minds the dharma.
If a man’s thoughts are muddy,
If he is reckless and full of deceit,
How can he wear the yellow robe?
Whoever is master of his own nature,
Bright, clear and true,
He may indeed wear the yellow robe.
Mistaking the false for the true,
And the true for the false,
You overlook the heart
And fill yourself with desire.
See the false as false,
The true as true.
Look into your heart.
Follow your nature.
An unreflecting mind is a poor roof.
Passion, like the rain, floods the house.
But if the roof is strong, there is shelter.
Whoever follows impure thoughts
Suffers in this world and the next.
In both worlds he suffers
And how greatly
When he sees the wrong he has done.
But whoever follows the dharma
Is joyful here and joyful there.
In both worlds he rejoices
And how greatly
When he sees the good he has done.
For great is the harvest in this world,
And greater still in the next.
However many holy words you read,
However many you speak,
What good will they do you
If you do not act upon them?
Are you a shepherd
Who counts another man’s sheep,
Never sharing the way?
Read as few words as you like,
And speak fewer.
But act upon the dharma.
Give up the old ways -
Passion, enmity, folly.
Know the truth and find peace.
Share the way.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

I can’t say how much of a disappointment that movie was. Too predictable and boring.

Why would I pay to get a relationship erased from my mind if it were still possible to fall in love with the same person and get shafted by the same person all over again when I got it for free?

Favourite movies

I have been asked to pick my favourite movie so that it can be viewed at the office get together over the weekend.  This, for me, is as hard as picking a favourite child.  Depending on my mood, on whom I am with, I will always pick a different movie.

Some movies, like “Garden State” or “Requiem for a dream”, require the presence of someone very dear to you.  Others, like “elephant man” are, for me, such emotional drain that I require absolute solitude to watch them.  Since this is a work thing,  anything x-rated is, of course,  out of the question.  I also decided to stay away from anything with subtitles.  Alas, Ran and The seventh seal, I  shall not watch thee.  After spending an hour in front of my dvd racks, I managed to narrow it down to seven movies: Snatch,  A scanner darkly, Blade Runner, The usual suspects, The prestige, Memento, The professional. I will let the others pick the one they want to watch.

Biking

distance:15.412km
Time: 0h47m49s
Maximum speed: 43.2km/h
Average speed: 19.3km/h

Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2

Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann’d,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i’ the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
‘Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon’t! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim’d their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I’ll observe his looks;
I’ll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I’ll have grounds
More relative than this: the play ’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

Always on my mind

These are important to me:

My nephew,  my sister, my mother, my father.  My friends. Most of my coworkers. People that have faith in me. The effort I put into my work. Honesty. Trust. Inner peace. Solitude. A sense of hope. Burning myself out on my bike. Snow. Humour. Sillyness. The local landscape. Books. Cats. Fall. Spring. Winter. Summer. Darkness. Crickets.

Also, the feeling I sometimes have of being one with everthing that ever was, ever is and ever will be a.k.a. the occasional mini stroke.

These I could live without:

Secrecy. Lies. Dishonesty. Ambition. Greed. Lawnmowers. Stupidity. The culture of fear. Network news. High gas prices. Injustice. Double standards. Asphalt. Heat. Traffic. Intolerance. Politicians. Celebrities. Dogs. Taxes. Crowds. Humidity. Cigarettes. The myriads of masks that (I) people wear to protect (myself) themselves or keep others at a distance. “Reality”.  Anger.

Morgan Freeman

DON’T YOU DARE DIE!

This is all.

Biking

distance:17.942km
Time: 1h02m02s
Maximum speed: 56.2km/h
Average speed: 17.4km/h

I bought a punching bag.  Quite a workout.  My arms and hands hurt. I need to tape properly next time.