It is the seeker, who understands there is more than what meets the eye, who is not afraid and makes the choice to go into the unknown. The process of awaking has begun, the discovery is underway.
Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There's nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys; renown, and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.
It is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life, how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbor, your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods-you have nothing but images. The images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships.
We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim - objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.
Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.
For the warrior of light there are no ends, only means. Life carries him from unknown to unknown. Each moment is filled with this thrilling mystery: the warrior does not know where he came from or where he is going.
There is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?
I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean - wherever my imagination ranges.