" MIND "" MIND "The heart is wiser than the intellect.
Your mind is just like an ordinary field of soil. Whatever you plant there, will grow, and multiply! Be careful!! Learn to cultivate. What is it you want to grow??
Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the mind is dyed by the thoughts.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought.....Buddha.
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the
aid of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack
of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without
the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere
aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!
| " The mind goes only to a certain point..... and after that..... can only move in a circle. " |
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of
men, even when nature has long emancipated them from alien guidance nevertheless
gladly remain immature for life. For the same reasons, it is all too easy
for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so convenient
to be immature! If I have a book to have understanding in place of me,
a spiritual adviser to have a conscience for me, a doctor to judge my diet
for me, and so on, I need not make any efforts at all. I need not think,
so long as I can pay; others will soon enough take the tiresome job over
for me. The guardians who have kindly taken upon themselves the work of
supervision will soon see to it that by far the largest part of mankind
(including the entire fair sex) should consider the step forward to maturity
not only as difficult but also as highly dangerous. Having first infatuated
their domesticated animals, and carefully prevented the docile creatures
from daring to take a single step without the leading-strings to which
they are tied, they next show them the danger which threatens them if they
try to walk unaided. Now this danger is not in fact so very great, for
they would certainly learn to walk eventually after they have a few falls.
But an example of this kind is intimidating, and usually frightens them
off from further
attempts.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without necessarily accepting it.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his own intelligence. Albert Einstein.
If you don't believe in something, you'll fall for anything.
Thus it is difficult for each separate individual to work his way out of the immaturity which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown fond of it and is really incapable for the time being of using his own understanding, because he was never allowed to make the attempt. Dogmas and formulas, those mechanical instruments for rational use (or rather misuse) of his natural endowments, are the ball and chain of his permanent immaturity. And if anyone did throw them off, he would still be uncertain about jumping over even the narrowest of trenches, for he would be unaccustomed to free movement of this kind. Thus only a few, by cultivating their own minds, have succeeded in freeing themselves from immaturity and in continuing boldly on their way.
To make a step into the world of thought is now given to but few men;
to make a second step beyond the first, only one in a country can do; but
to carry the thought on to three steps, marks a great teacher.
The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one
in a million is awake enough for effective
intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or
divine life. To be awake is to be alive.
The spiritual measure of inspiration, Do what you know, and perception
is converted into character.
With a certain wariness, but not without a slight shudder at the danger
oftentimes, I perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the
details of some trivial affair, as a case in court; and I am astonished
how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish,....to permit
idle rumors, tales, incidents, even of an insignificant kind, to intrude
upon what should be the sacred ground of the thoughts. Shall the
temple of our thoughts be a public arena where the most trivial affairs
of the market and the gossip of the tea-table is discussed,....a dusty,
noisy, 
trivial place ? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself,
a place consecrated to the service of the gods, a hypaethral temple ?
I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant,
that I hesitate to burden my mind with the most insignificant, which only
a divine mind could illustrate. Such is for the most part, the news,....in
newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's
chastity in this respect. Think of admitting the details of
a single case of the criminal court into the mind, to stalk profanely through
it's very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, aye, for many hours!
to make a bar-room of your mind's inmost apartment, as if for a moment
the dust of the street had occupied you, aye, the very street itself, with
all it's travel, passed through you very mind of minds, your thoughts'
shrine, with all it's filth and bustle! Would it not be intellectual
suicide ? By all manner of boards and traps, threatening the extreme
penalty of the divine law, excluding trespassers from these grounds, it
behooves us to preserve the purity and sanctity of the mind. It is
hard to forget what is worse than useless to remember. If I am to
be a channel or thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain springs,
and not the town sewers,....the Parnassian streams. There is inspiration,
the divine gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the
courts of heaven; there is the profane and stale revelation of the
bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive
both communications. Only the character of the individual determines
to which source chiefly it shall be open and to which closed. I believe
that the mind can be profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things,
so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. They shall
be as dusty stones in the street. Our minds shall be paved and macadamized,
as it were, their foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel
to roll over. If we have thus desecrated ourselves, the remedy will
be, by circumspection and wariness, by our aspiration and devotion, to
consecrate ourselves, to make a fane of the mind. I think we should
treat our minds as innocent and ingenious
children whose guardian we are,....be
careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.
Every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear
it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince
how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we
might well deliberate whether we had better know them. Routine, conventionality,
manners, etc, etc,....how insensibly an undue attention to these dissipates
and impoverishes the mind, robs it of its simplicity and strength, emasculates
it.
I can express adequately only the thought that I love to express.
All faculties in repose but the one you are using, the whole energy concentrated
in that. Be ever so little distracted, your thoughts so little
confused, your engagements so few, your attention so free, your existence
so mundane, that in all places and in all hours you can hear the sound
of crickets in those seasons when they are to be heard. It is a mark
of serenity and health of mind when a person hears this sound much,....in
streets as well as in fields. Some ears never hear this sound; are
called deaf. Is it not because they have so long attended to other
sounds.
The mind is subject to moods, like the shadows that pass over the earth.
Pay not too much heed to them. Let not the traveler stop for them.
A wise man will come at last to watch his moods as carefully as a cat does
a mouse.
Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirthfulness. The most positive life that history notices has been a constant retiring out of life, a wiping one's hands of it, seeing how mean it is, and having nothing to do with it.
He who receives an injury is an accomplice of the wrong doer.
The snow falls on no two trees alike, but the forms it assumes are as
various as those of the twigs and leaves which receive it. They are,
as it were, predetermined by the genius of the tree. So one divine
spirit descends alike on all, but bears a peculiar fruit in each.
For our aspirations there is no expression as yet, but if we obey steadily,
by another year we shall have learned the language of last year's aspirations.
On one side of man is the actual, and on the other the ideal. The former is the province of the reason; it is even a divine light when directed upon it, but it cannot reach forward into the ideal without blindness. The moon was made to rule by night, but the sun to rule by day. Reason will be but a pale cloud, like the moon, when one ray of divine light comes to illumine the soul.
Do what you reprove yourself for not doing. Know
that you are
neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with yourself without reason. Let me
say to you and to myself in one breath, cultivate the tree which you have
found to bear fruit in your soil. Regard not your past failures or
successes. All the past is equally a failure and a success;
it is a success in as much as it offers you the present opportunity.
It is important to observe not only the subject of our pure and unalloyed joys, but also the secret of any dissatisfaction one may feel..
We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding.
Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking. Rumi.
The thinker must learn also to feel his thought, so that, in the highest
degree, he thinks devotedly. It is not enough to think clearly, if
the thinker stands aloof, not giving himself with his thought. The
thinker arrives by surrendering himself to the Truth, claiming for himself
no rights save those that Truth herself bestows upon him. In the
final state of perfection he possesses no longer opinions of his own nor
any private preference. The Truth possesses him, not he, the Truth.
The revelation of thought takes man out of servitude into freedom. So far as a man thinks, he is free.
The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed.
If your eye is on the eternal, your intellect will grow, and your opinions and actions will have a beauty, which no learning or combined advantages of other men can rival.
There is an intimate interdependence of intellect and morals. "The heart
has its arguments, with which the understanding is not acquainted." The
bias of errors of principle, carries away men into perilous courses, as
soon as their will does not control their passion or talent.
The power of mind is not mortification, but life.
Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which a thought issues, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.
I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought.
When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.
It is not enough that the intellect should see the evils, and their remedy. We shall still postpone our existence, nor take the ground to which we are entitled, whilst it is only a thought, and not a spirit that incites us.
Honor truth above all things; for whatever you honor above all things,
that which you so honor, will have dominion over you !!
When we think, we are thought; when we love, we are love. The principle of our being is then active, and the student should habituate himself to being intelligently and consciously ethical at all times, and toward everybody he deals with.
Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind… When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness. Patanjali.
Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles, and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?
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