Question of the day

What would bring you pleasure today?

P.S. I told you I was reading the Eat, Pray, Love book.
For full reference see p. 66 of the said book, 2010 paperback edition :)

The Joy of Being

http://www.eckharttolle.com/beta/home/

You can't invent the truth and put it in a book. You can, however, point to it in a book. As Tolle does in A New Earth. This book shook me. Not because it tugs at my heart strings. It tugs at my very being. How? Here's a taster:

Through enthusiasm you enter into full alighnment with the outgoing principle of the universe ...

Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.It isn't the action you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows into it. That aliveness is one with who you are.

'The joy of Being cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person or event -- through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you -- ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.'

'What the world doesn't tell you ... is that you cannot become successful. You can only BE successful. Don't let a mad world tell you that success is anything than a successful present moment. And what is that? There is a sense of quality in what you do, even the most simple action.

Wnen doing becomes infused with the timeless quality of Being, that is success. Unless Being flows into doing, unless you are present, you lose yourself in whatever you do. You also lose yourself in thinking, as well as in your reactions to what happens externally.

The "waiting to start living" syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state.

... realizing that your entire life journey ultimately consists of the step you are taking at this moment. There is always only this one step so you give it your fullest attention. This doesn't mean you don't know where you are going; it just means this step is primary, the destination secondary... What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.

Presence is a state of inner spaciousness.

For happiness, how little suffices for happiness! .. the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a wisk, an eye glance -- little maketh up the best happiness. Be
still. (Nietsche)

Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it because seeking is
the antithesis of happiness.

There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. (Shakespeare)

Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.

One with Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize you don't live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.

Knowing the oneness of yourself and the other is true love, true care, true compassion.

This, too, will pass.

Fulfil me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self-created suffering comes to an end. All such suffering is due to ... an unawareness of the dimension of inner space.

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.

When you react against the form that life takes at this moment, when you treat the Now as a means, an obstacle or an enemy, you strengthen your own form identity, the ego.

The foundation for greatness is honouring the small things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness. Greatness is a mental abstraction and a favourite fantasy of the ego.

When you look upon what you do or where you are as the main purpose of your life, you negate time...The negation of time in what you do also provides the link between your inner and outer purposes, between Being an doing... Whatever you do, you will be doing extraordinarily well, because the doing is the focal point of you attention. Your doing becomes a channel through which consciousness enters this world.

But the true or primary purpose of your life cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do, but what you are -- that is to say, your state of conscousness.

Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that.

Your outer purpose can change over time. .. Finding and living in alignment with the inner purpose is the foundation for fulfilling you outer purpose. It is the basis for true success.

You need to lose yourself to find yourself.

You cannot receive what you don't give. Outflow determines inflow.

Knowing yourself is being yourself and being yourself is ceasing to identify with content.

Being must be felt. It can't be thought.

If the shutters are closed, the light cannot come in.

Love and do what you will.

You can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.

Knowing yourself is to be rooted in being instead of lost in your mind.

To forgive is to overlook or rather, look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his/her essence.

Read it.

The Golden Knife*

* No, I didn't mess up the title of the book; it's just that I'd probably draw on both The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife in this post.

SPOILER WARNING!

I suppose the first time I've heard about Philip Pullman and His Dark Materials was on one of the Pottercast's episodes, the Leaky Cauldron's weekly podcast. Somebody mentioned something about other worlds and a girl on a journey. Yeah, that was a long time ago. I don't remember if I even linked it to The Golden Compass film of 2007.

I have all but forgotten it until this summer. I saw it in the bookshops on the Gatwick airport and in Dublin. I didn't buy it, though; those were the times of Twilight and getting the Meyer's series topped my booklist and filled my suitcase close to a bursting point. (Breaking Dawn is the size of a brick, after all). So Lyra's story had to wait until my January visit to Cologne.

I'm now through the first instalment, the Golden Compass (or Northern Lights as it was originally called). I've seen the film, of course, but I was surprised to find out that it didn't cover the whole of the first book at all. It stops after Lyra, Iorek and the gyptians saved the children from Bolvangar. And that's roughly three fourths into the book.

Frankly, I find what's going on from then on and into The Subtle Knife much more interesting.

Shortly after that, Lyra is captured alone in Svalbard (ruled by severe armoured bears) where she has to fend for herself. I know I've said I didn't like her much, but she's started to grow on me: her character develops and displays more nuances than the original, headstrong haughty child we started out with. But she's been a survivor all the way through and I guess she'll make it till the end of the series. What's a bit worrying is that there's been a prophesy about her for centuries, a prophesy known to witches which says that a child would come and have a profound change on all worlds and would have to do things in her innocence, without knowing their full significance. Such characters usually have to pay a big price for such doings in books, I hope she survives.

Anyway, I've had doubts not only about liking Lyra, but liking the series as a whole. While ploughing through The Golden Compass, I've had the sense of reading a science fiction book rather than a fantasy one for all the witches and talking bears and people with daemons. After all, everyone is preoccupied with dust coming from the sky, with the aurora revealing a city from another world, etc. The plot's becoming exceeding interesting, however. As far as I can gather from Lord Asriel's explanations, it seems that Dust is seen as the physical expression of original sin. Yes, the one in the Bible. It's attracted to adults and not to children, presumambly because they are still innocent. Dust is feared by the Church and all researchers in the field are persecuted.

Mrs Coulter also explains that if daemons are cut drom their humans while still children, Dust won't cling to them when they grow up and they would be happy and safe. But as Lyra discovers, all those who went through such an intercision either cannot survive the loss of their daemon, who is in fact a part of, if not their whole soul, or if they do, they are like sleepwlakers, without free will or sense of self. They can do as they are told and that's all. Incidentally, it's been satisfying to build more experience with daemons: they are not, as the name suggests, necessarily our secret, evil nature. They are part of people, part of their soul, when a human dies, his/her daemon disappears, and vice versa. They cannot be more that a few yards physically apart from each other. They share their thoughts and senses. If someone touches your daemon, you feel it.

I'm almost half-through The Subtle Knife, a book about Lyra's own journey in search for the nature of Dust -- a journey that leads her through other worlds, including into our own and more or less into our own time. So there's still a lot to discover about Dust (known as dark matter in our own world).

What I find curious is this: at a period when I'm coming across and been told about various spiritual writings on how the earth's energy and magnetic field is changing and thus causing changes in mankind, which will slowly lead to an altered consciousness and a move into another age, even another dimension, I start reading this novel, a book of fiction through and through, on paralel universes with windows between them, some people crossing from one to the other, etc. Coincidences are meaningful, right.

No doubt, I'll finish His Dark Materials soon, I find them compelling and I'm curious to see what explanation Puulman would pull through regarding Dust, sin and religion on the whole. I wonder if he would stick to universal moral values such as love and compassion or ...

First Thoughts on Hopping Pots, Hairy Hearts and Death

http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Beedle-Bard-Standard/dp/0545128285/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232712855&sr=8-1

SPOILER WARNING!

Death has always been a major theme with JK Rowling, both in her personal life (her mother's) and in her Harry Potter series (the death of Harry's parents).

And so it is in Tales of Beadle the Bard, her collection of fairy tales for the wizarding children. My favourites are the Fountain of Fair Fortune and the Tale of the Three Brothers /familiar from the Deathly Hallows, but as good as ever/.

The Fountain deals with the perennial quest of happiness and the mistaken idea that it comes from the outside and not from one's inner self and that there's a panaecea that can solve all your problems.

The Three Brothers is a tale of escaping death. The morale is that it can't be escaped, let alone be outwitted; the best one can hope for is to delay it as long as possible so as to have time to lead a rich and fulfiling life.

This story isn't as scary as it sounds, though. The most scary for me was the one about the Warlock's Hairy Heart. The images are pretty gruesome; cutting out heats, shrivelling hearts, etc. Hardly looks like a children's story, but then JK Rowling's belief is that children should meet serious stuff as early as possible in books so that they are prepared for it in real life.

The best thing about the book is Dumbledore's commentary. I expected less but they are quite detailed covering the possible origins of the tales, their morale, various historical notes, etc. Some are quite fun, the quirkiness of Dumbledore shines through:)

Got it!

Finally laid my hands on Beadle the Bard, the fairy tales of J K Rowling's wizarding world!

Now ... to reading:)

Three Men in a Boat

http://www.amazon.com/

What can you possibly expect from three men in a boat with a dog of the same gender?

Lazy hours of pipe-smoking and whisky-drinking? No cooking or at least no edible result of it? Mysterious loss of anything essential for the trip? Occassional commotion over who is supposed to do what? The gloss of humour glinting off whatever trouble they get themsleves in?

Surely, you don't expect anything contemplative or poetic as the following. At least I didn't.

And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night. In its great presence, our sorrows creep away, ashamed. The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head ... and the pain is gone.

Sometimes our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night's heart is full of pity for us ... she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.

Simply loved it.

Occassionaly, there's the odd passage like the one above; otherwise the book centers mostly on the experience of the four characters I already mentioned and their adventures on a boat trip along the Thames. It's full of humour and irony for classic stereotypes like fishermen, barmen, landlords and situations like packing, shopping, putting up a tent, playing a musical instrument, eating even.

Reflections on peeling potatoes, boiling water for tea and working in general are such joy to read!

I must say that this book surpassed my expectations. Generally I don't fall for an episodic, sketch-like of novels, I mean the Tristram Shandy kind of novel. I like continuos plots and characters I can love/identify with/learn something from, ie. anything to catch my eye and hold my emotions. Three Men in a Boat is funny and thoughtlful at the same time; definitely gives me something to take away with me.

The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas

I go for novels whenever I can; that is, when I read fiction.

Novels are the best place for developing characters and putting them in plausible circumstances ... and submerging oneself in them ...

Anyway, along with buying the Twilight series (naturally), I grabbed a copy of The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas, something I would probably not have done were it not for the cover.

Yes, I know you can't judge a book by its cover, but my film fan self could not resist. The Letters has Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley on the cover. I love Keira's films (not that I've seen them all, but Pride & Prejudice, Pirates of the Caribbean are among my favourites) and I vaguely remember reading about a film based on Dylan Thomas' letters.

So I got it and I read it.

To be honest, I found it a bit difficult at first, because I was not familiar with his style and it's rather strange to read a real person's letters ...

For one thing, you don't get the addressee's responses, you don't get previous correspondence ...

Thomas writes to various women, so it's not a continuous narrative and it's hard to piece things together. And there's something to be said about reading personal correspondence--there's definitely a very different feel to it when you know that these letters were really written to one person and supposed to be read only by them ...

Dylan Thomas writes mostly to his wife and you can tell that he loved her immensely, but judging by the other letters as well, it seems to me that he had a great capacity to love, but he also hinted he had a bit of temper. In any case, alothough you can draw a lot from these letters, you can't get to know him fully. That's what he says a letter is:

What's a good letter anyway? To put down a bit of oneself to send to someone who
misses it? To be funny and sefconscious or selfconsciously formal, or so very
natural that even the words blush and stammer?

His letters are often rambling, almost stream-of-conscousness, but he has an ironic sense of humour, which is very endearing because he often directs it at himself. It seems a bit ironic that his letters have been turned into a film when in one of them he says:

I hate film studios. I hate film workers. I hate films. There is nothing but glibly naive insecurity in this huge tinroofed box of tricks.

Of course, I cannot agree with that, but I do hope that The Edge of Love film does him justice.

P.S. His comments on America are quite insightful.

Rereads

It occurred to me that it may seem a bit odd to finish Bridget Jones and not follow it up with the sequel immediately. The reason is that I read both books some time ago and this was a reread. And since I have a lot of unread books clamouring for my attention at home, I prefer to leave the sequel for later:)
Perhaps I should also explain that I like to go back to books I've enjoyed; not just because I've enjoyed it them, but because each time I find something I haven't noticed before; or I have changed in the period between the two readings and the book seems different each time. I simply see it from new angle.

P.S. Dylan Thomas's Letters would definitely need a reread. They deserve their own post, though. Once I get round to it. Better finish the Letters first.

Bridget's here at last

It's been a couple of weeks now, I mean, since I finished Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary.
I've been on holiday and that delayed this post. Anyway, let's get down to it now.
Bridget Jones's Diary has a lot to do with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and in many ways for me it reads like a Pride and Prejudice from the 20th century. Both books even share a character with the same name, Mark Darcy. Both take up the point of view of a spontaneous woman, who, despite her own claims for being open minded and unconventional, turns out to be prejudiced and has to go through a number of obstacles to finally end up with Darcy. Elizabeth and Bridget both have dysfunctional families and impossible mothers who never tire of trying to marry them for the richest man in sight.
Fielding's chosen diary form achieves a very honest tone and despite the absurdities of Bridget's life a lot of it actually rings true: think of the busy city life she lives, her work and relationship problems, for example. By means of a hilariously funny and fresh style, Fielding pokes fun at all modern city obessions like the stressful Christmas shopping, the mania for self-help books, the feminist theories, the eternal pursuit of the perfect figure, which results in the almost inborn memory for calory amounts; it's like knowing the times table, Bridget says at one point. Bridget lives alone and is much closer to her friends Sharon, Jude and Tom than to her own family; she is a modern city girl through and through, complete with her inability to cook anything or to keep her flat in order. Her attempts to convince herself that singletons rule is put under merciless pressure from the smug marrieds. Her frank indignation at the commercial and manipulative nature of occassions such as St. Valentine's Day and Christmas is quite endearing: "The whole thing is ridiculous and meaningless. Complete commercial exploitation." Yet she admits being quite excited about 14 February and such polarizing atttitudes go through the entire novel giving lending a lot of length and breadth to Bridget's character.
Despite the fact that she doesn't get on well with her family, it is her mother's involvement with a conman that brings Bridget together with Mark in the same way that Lydia's elopement brings together Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
After all her worries and troubles, Bridget deservedly gets her happy ending just as Elizabeth does, but not without admitting a truth universally known (even though uttered by an "adulteress, criminal's accomplice and G-list celebrity, ie her mother): "Don't say 'what', say 'pardon', darling, and do as your mother tells you."
All in all, a book worth reading and rereading both for its fun and refreshingly honest look on modern working women.

Bridget Jones's Diary

12 August. Oh, goody. I'm so excited about reading Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, it's so much fun!
But better not spoil this post by rushing through it in a manner of a drunk behind the wheel. Yes, it's much better to listen to calm and inspirational music to instill zen-like awareness of self and come up with a brilliant post afterwards.