...it is not necessary to the child to awaken to the sense of the strange and humorous by giving a man a luminous nose...to the child it is sufficiently strange and humorous to have a nose at all.
Our misery comes, not from work, but by our getting attached to something. Take for instance, money: money is a great thing to have, earn it, says Krishna; struggle hard to get money, but don't get attached to it. So with children, with wife, husband, relatives, fame, everything; you have no need to shun them, only don't get attached. There is only one attachment and that belongs to the Lord, and to none other.
All the rich people collect traditional Chinese art. So it's very natural for Chinese families to still see art as the highest human performance and send their children to this field.
Nature knows no political boundaries. She puts living creatures on this globe and watches the free play of forces. She then confers the master's right on her favourite child, the strongest in courage and industry ... The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel.
I think being an only child created in me a degree of self-reliance, which I'm glad of. It made me perfectly happy with my own company and perhaps was good conditioning for the protracted solitude of writing books as slowly as I do.
Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told anyone how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established.
Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?
Whatever discipline you exercise should be based on the goal your child is eventually to reach, namely, freedom and happiness. I would show him towards what he is growing, his ultimate fulfilment, and help him to adapt himself to that. In everything that you do, you should keep the goal in view, and hence your discipline must aim at helping the child to realize that at a certain stage he will be above all discipline.
If you want some additional money for your school, we'll give it to you. But you've got to compete, show us that you're going to reform your education system so that our children are performing better.