| Water is the softest and most yielding substance.
Yet nothing is better than water,
for overcoming the hard and rigid,
because nothing can compete with it.
Everyone knows that the soft and yielding
overcomes the rigid and hard,
but few can put this knowledge into practice. |
| Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We
strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is
the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead
there comes no word; but in the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening
love can hear the rustle of a wing. |
| In all ages man has tried to account for himself and his surroundings. He did the best he could. He wondered why the water ran, why the trees grew, why the clouds floated, why the stars shone, why the sun and moon journeyed through the heavens. He was troubled about life and death, about darkness and dreams. The seas, the volcanoes, the lightning and thunder, the earthquake and cyclone, filled him with fear. Behind all life and growth and motion, and even inanimate things, he placed a spirit -- an intelligent being -- a fetich, person, something like himself -- a god, controlled by love and hate. To him causes and effects became gods -- supernatural beings. The Dawn was a maiden, wondrously fair, the Sun, a warrior and lover; the Night, a serpent, a wolf -- the Wind, a musician; Winter, a wild beast; Autumn, Proserpine gathering flowers.
Poets were the makers of these myths. They were the first to account for what they saw and felt. The great multitude mistook these fancies for facts. Myths strangely alike, were produced by most nations, and gradually took possession of the world. |
| It is impossible to understand a myth as a continuous sequence. This is why we
should be aware that if we try to read a myth as we read a novel or from left
to right, we don't understand the myth, because we have to apprehend it as a
totality and discover that the basic meaning of the myth is not conveyed by
sequence of events . . . but . . . by bundles of events even though these
events appear at different moments in the story. Therefore we have to read the
myth more or less as we would read an orchestral score . . . And it is only by
treating the myth as if it were an orchestral score, written stave after stave,
that we can understand it as a totality, that we can extract meaning out of the
myth. |
| Every positive statement about ultimate things must be made in the suggestive form of myth, of poetry. For in this realm the direct and indicative forms of speech can only say "neti, neti" (Sanskrit for "no, no"), since what can be described and categorized must always belong to the conventional realm. Mythis a symbolic story which demonstrates the inner meaning of the universe and of human life. |
| Thirty spokes are joined together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that allows the wheel to function.
We mold clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes the vessel useful.
We fashion wood for a house,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes it livable.
We work with the substantial,
but the emptiness is what we use |
| What is the difference
between gods and humans?
That many waves before each
from an eternal stream
The waves lift us up;
the waves overcome us,
and we are swept away. |
| And I have felt . . . a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round of ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. |
