A Passage from Chuang Tzu

drawing by marguerita - Divertimento

When Chuang Tzu was going to Ch'u he saw by the roadside a skull, clean and bare,but with every bone in its place. Touching it gently with his chariot-whip he bent over it and asked it saying, " Sir, was it some insatiable ambition that drove you to transgress the law and brought you to this ?Was it it the fall of a kingdom,the blow of an executioner's axe that brought you to this? Or had you done some shameful deed and could not face the the reproaches of father and mother, of wife and child , and so were brought to this? Was it hunger and cold that brought you to this, or was it that the springs and autumns of your span had in due course carried you to this?

Having thus addressed the skull, he put it under his head as a pillow and went to sleep. At midnight the skull appeared to him in a dream and said to him, " All that you said to me- your glib, commonplace chatter- is just what I should expect from a live man, showing as it does in every phrase a mind hampered by trammels from which we dead are entirely free. Would you like to hear a word or two about the dead?

' I certainly should,' said Chuang Tzu.

" Among the dead,'said the skull,' none is king, none is subject, there is no division of the seasons; for us the whole world is spring, the hole world is autumn. No monarch on his throne has joy greater than ours.'

Chuang Tzu did not believe this.'Suppose,' he said, 'I could get the Clerk of Destinies to make your frame anew, to clothe your bones once more with flesh and skin, send you back to father and mother, wife and child, friends and home, I do not think you would refuse.'

A deep frown furrowed the skeleton's brow. 'How can you imagine,' it asked, ' that I would cast away joy greater than that of a king upon his throne, only to go back again to the toils of the living world ?'

from Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China

Arthur Wiley

Pensamentos Noturnos 10 1/2 Larmes et LES VISIONS

aquarelle by marguerita

Je me plais a me rappeler encore, en ce moment le lieu,le jour, l'heure ou je concus soudainement, dans ma pensee, le plan de cette epopee de l'ame, de l'ame suivie par le poete dans les peregrinations sucessives et infinies a travers les echelons des mondes et des existences d'epreuves.

Pensamentos Noturnos 4

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Feelings the oats all around

drawing by marguerita

“Hong Kong has always prospered by being able to reinvent itself,” he wrote, “and we are of no doubt that during this downturn it will do it again.”

Sunday Shitao

collage by marguerita

Note:

Returning Home

As falling leaves descend
with the wind,
I return by the water
through a thinning mist;
I see a tiny hut clinging
to the bank of a green stream,
How soft and fat the white
clouds look in the cold air.

The phrase from which Shitao develops his first line is luo ye gui gen, "fallen leaves returning to the tree root," expressing a person's yearning to return home in his old age. The painter perhaps also feels that his life is like can yan, in line 2, literally "shredded" or "worn-out" mist. (This album was painted late in 1695, when Shitao was on his way back to Yangzhou from a visit to Hunan and Anhui provinces.)

The quality that Shitao wanted to capture in this painting is fei, the "fat" of bai yun fei (literally, "white clouds look fat") in line 4 of the poem. Here he appears to reflect the ideas of Gong Xian (ca. 1618–1689): "In painting a clouded mountain, the cloud must appear thick [hou].. For thirty years I failed to achieve this until I met a master who told me, "If the mountain is thick, the cloud will look thick … This is the painting of no-painting." Shitao's misty and wonderfully translucent landscape is composed of two types of brushstrokes: those forming the pine needles, and the softly rubbed texture strokes forming the mountain. The "fat" white clouds are merely blank spaces: the illusion of "fatness" is created by the misty forms around them. Shitao has transformed this earlier "blank-outline" technique into layers of softly rubbed, transparent brushstrokes. The deep and "fat" quality of the painting results from a subtle intermixing of brushwork and inkwash: different shades of dark and light strokes and textures, solid and void areas interpenetrate one another.

The calligraphy, rendered in Zhong You's (151–230) "regular" script, is also smooth and "fat." The round and three-dimensional individual strokes seem to move and twist gently in space, like the falling leaves of the poem. The mood is serenely reflective.

Shitao probably cut his own seals. The poem is signed "Shitao" ("Stone Wave") and is followed by a square intaglio seal, Shi Yuanji yin ("[disciple of] Shakyamuni Yuanji's seal"). The small rectangular intaglio seals on the painting read Shitao and Yuanji.

Qing dynasty (1644–1911), ca. 1695
Shitao (Zhu Ruoji) (Chinese, 1642–1707)Shitao (Zhu Ruoji): Returning Home (1976.280) | Work of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Thinking of You Between Anima & Spiritus

artbox by marguerita From Soul to Mind


5.1. Meditationes

A notable aspect of the Latin text of the Meditationes in contrast to its accompanying texts-Dedicatory Letter, Praefatio, Synopsis- is the use of vocabulary. Descartes was very deliberate and disciplined in his choice and use of the wide range of Latin words available for naming the non- corporeal aspect of the human being- mens, ingenium, anima, animus, spiritus.


Contributions in concept of mind and body

by Descartes, Rene 1596 -1650 Descartes on the human soul:
philosophy and the demands of Christian doctrine by C.F. Fowler

America,America: On Application of Intellect

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They disdained the ideas of the liberal professoriate, but they did not disdain the idea of a cultivated mind.
The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.Republicans developed their own leadership style. If Democratic leaders prized deliberation and self-examination, then Republicans would govern from the gut.

Bushism:the anti-immigration fervor, the isolationism ....

It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.

Intellect :Definition

1. [noun] knowledge and intellectual ability; "he reads to improve his mind"; "he has a keen intellect"
   Synonyms: mind
   
   
2. [noun] the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination; "we are told that man is endowed with reason and capable of distinguishing good from evil"
   Synonyms: reason, understanding
   
   
3. [noun] a person who uses the mind creatively
   Synonyms: ual

P.S:The smartest young Americans are now educated in an overwhelmingly liberal environment.
Op-Ed Columnist - The Class War Before Palin - NYTimes.com

"I am a worm, and no man"

IV. THE PSALMS IN CONTEMPORARY MONTFORT SPIRITUALITY

Even though the reading of the psalms is necessary for all Christian
spirituality, they hold a special place within the hearts of those
inspired by Saint Louis de Montfort. Although his manner of
interpretation may not be ours, nonetheless, it is evident that he is
totally imbued with both the spirit and words of the psalms. His
contemplative praying of the psalter opened up for him magnificent
vistas not accessible through a cold, academic study of "the psalms as
literature."

Nonetheless, praying the psalms is not always easy. First, the psalms
may appear as strange expressions of centuries ago, hardly relevant in
the third millenium. Life experiences are perhaps necessary to be in
tune with many of the psalms.6 Anguish, joy, praise, victory coupled
with sickness, and lamentable defeat and fear of death all resonate
throughout the psalter. The psalms give words to our innermost feelings.
Like Saint Louis de Montfort, our own life experiences and our own
community events are to interpret the psalms, as the psalms themselves
interpret us.