Life 02 (Nov 08 - May 09)

Re: Life (Nov08 - May09)

Postby winston » Sat May 30, 2009 8:10 am

The Lost Art by Alexander Green, Spiritual Wealth

According to A.C. Nielson Co., the average American watches more than four hours of TV each day. That's two months of nonstop television per year.

In a 65-year life, that person will have spent nine years glued to the tube.

The same study found that the amount of time per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children is 3.5 minutes. The average time children spend watching TV each week? 1,680 minutes.

Parents often wonder how they can better relate to their kids, how they can combat the coarsening effects of modern culture.

May I suggest the off button?

Surrounded by cable television, DVDs, CD players, cell phones, PDAs, iPods, satellite radio, video games and the Internet, a young person might reasonably ask what adults did before the age of electronic media.

In truth, we spent more time visiting friends and neighbors, took long walks, learned musical instruments, gave dinner parties and dances, went fishing, played chess or checkers.

And we read.

We read to become informed. We read to be entertained. We read as a noble intellectual exercise.

And because reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body, we thought better, expressed ourselves more clearly, wrote with greater style and refinement.

This kind of literacy can turn everyday communication into a kind of poetry. (Compare the Lincoln/Douglas debates, for example, to the current quality of political discourse.)

We also engaged in the lost art of conversation. In language filled with wit and intelligence, we spent time talking about our interests, argued the pressing issues of the day, wondered aloud about great mysteries, told each other our dreams, and let those around us know how we felt about them.

As an example of both the higher sentiments and greater literacy of an earlier age, here is a letter from Sullivan Ballou, a 32-year-old soldier in the Union Army, to his 24-year-old wife:

July 14, 1861

Camp Clark, Washington

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days-perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more...

Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battle field.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them for so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood, around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me - perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness...

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights... always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again...

Ballou was killed in the first battle of Bull Run a week later.
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life (Nov08 - May09)

Postby winston » Sat May 30, 2009 10:27 am

To be intimate with sorrow

Sorrow is not to be ended by the action of will. Do please understand this. You cannot “get rid” of it.

Sorrow is something that has to be embraced, lived with, understood; one has to become intimate with sorrow. But you are not intimate with sorrow, are you?

You may say, “I know sorrow”, but do you? Have you lived with it? Or, having felt sorrow, have you run away from it?

Actually, you do not know sorrow. The running away is what you know. You know only the escape from sorrow.

Just as love is not a thing to be cultivated, to be acquired through discipline, so sorrow is not to be ended through any form of escape, through ceremonies or symbols, through the social work of the “do-gooders”, through nationalism, or through any of the ugly things that man has invented. Sorrow has to be understood, and understanding is not of time.

The Collected Works vol XI, p 287

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life (Nov08 - May09)

Postby winston » Sun May 31, 2009 7:26 am

A devotee is like a needle which is always drawn towards the magnet. But the needle has to be near enough and must be clean. If you stay far away and complain that Grace has not come, what can be done? You must scrape off the mud and rust by the process of repentance. Sometimes, you come near for some time and stray way. I do not mean the physical distance. I do not measure distance in miles or meters.

- Divine Discourse, Nov 14, 1975.

Source: radiosai.org
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Life (Nov08 - May09)

Postby helios » Sun May 31, 2009 9:29 am

Life's a beach
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Re: Life (Nov08 - May09)

Postby winston » Sun May 31, 2009 11:44 am

Hold it as a precious jewel

Can one remain with that pain? Can I look at that pain, hold it, hold it as a precious jewel—not escape, not suppress, not rationalize it, not seek the cause of it, but hold it as a vessel holds water?

Hold this thing called sorrow, the pain, that is, I have lost my son and I am lonely, not to escape from that loneliness, not to suppress it, not to intellectually rationalize it, but to look at that loneliness, understand the depth of it, the nature of it.

Mind Without Measure, p 57

Source: jkrisnamurthi.com
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