Where there is indifference and apathy, there too is ataraxia, the perfect and unruffled serenity of the mind, If in act, word, and thought an entire suspension of judgment be maintained, then do wre possess an independent freedom, an unroutable calm.
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“Live so simply that pleasure when it come may seem even more exquisite than it is.” Epicurus.
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As for ambition, what is it but a desire for an existence in the minds of other people a desire which when fulfilled is a mockery and unfulfilled a tomb? And besides to what does success lead? To honour, glory, and wealth? But these things are sepulchres, not happiness.
In the animal and lower human world and wherever the creature is incapable of realizing the perfect love (which indeed transforms into God) – Nature in the purely physical instincts does the next best thing, that is, she effects a corporeal union, and so generates another creature who by the very process of his generation shall be one step nearer to the universal soul and the realization of the desired end. And nevertheless the moment the other love and all that goes with it is realized the natural sexual love has to fall into a secondary place – the lover must stand on his feet and not on his head – or else the most dire confusions ensue, and torments a union.
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Taking all together it may be fairly said that the prime object of sex is realization of unity, the physical union as the allegory and expression of the real union, and that generation is a secondary object or result of this union. From the protozoic cells to the very highest expression of sex, we find that Love takes the form chiefly and before all else of a desire for union, and only in lesser degree of a desire for race-propagation.
Thus propagation of species is not the primary object of Nature.
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Man as described by Quotrefages, is a “religious animal.”
Familiarly Brahma is the spider drawing from his breast the threads of existence.
Emblematically a triangle inscribed in a circle.
Poetically the self-existing supremacy that is enthroned on a lotus of azure and gold; and Theologically the one really existing essence, the eternal germ from which all things issue and to which all things at last return.
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Revolutions are created not by the strength of an idea but by the intensity of a sentiment.
By the very necessity of the case nobody can live without activity or work. A child has no motives and objects and purposes to accomplish, yet it is never at rest, is all the time up to something.
So, work you must do, but Vedanta requires of you to look upon all work as mere play, nothing serious or important about it.
Hit hard, play your part manfully, but wait not for the event or end to bring you joy, satisfaction, let every stroke and blow be happiness personified or a messenger of Divine bliss.
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If putting aside for a moment all convention and custom, one looks quietly within himself, he will perceive that there are most distinct and inviolable inner forces binding him by different ties to different people, and with different and inevitable results that there is in fact in that world of the heart a kind of cosmical harmony and variety and an order almost astronomical. This is noticeably true of what may be called the planetary law of distances in the relation of people to one another. For of some of the circle of one’s acquaintance it may be said that one loves them cordially at a hundred miles’ distance; of others that they are dear friends at a mile; while others again are indispensable far nearer than that. If by any chance the friend whose planetary distance is a mile, is forced into closer quarters, the only result is a violent development of repulsion and centrifugal force, by which probably he is carried even beyond his normal distance, till such time as he settles down into his right place; while on the other hand if we were separated for a season from one who by right is very near and who Ave know belongs to us, Ave can bide our time, knowing that the forces of return will increase with the separation.
So marked indeed are these and other such laws that they sometimes suggest that there really is a cosmic world of souls, to which Ave all belong and that our terrestrial relations are merely the working out and expression of far antecedent and unmodifiable facts an idea which for many people is corroborated by the curious way in which often at the very first sight they become aware of their exact relation to a new-comer. In some cases it brings with it a strange sense of previous intimacy, hard to explain; and in other cases, not so intimate, it still will seem to fix almost instantaneously the exact propinquity of the relation.
Yet this mean distance does not vary during the whole time, so to speak, by a single hair’s breadth.