bella

“In the spring,
Obeying the August spirits
I went to fight the enemy.
In the Fall,
Returning I beg the spirits,
To receive also the enemy.”
― Laurens van der Post, The Seed and the Sower

“What he meant by ‘awareness’ was perhaps a sense of the as yet unimagined wholeness of life; a recognition that one could live freely only on the frontiers of one’s being where the known was still contained in the infinite unknown, and where there could be a continual crossing and re-crossing of tentative borders, like lone hunters returning from perilous sojourns in great forests. It was, to put it pictorially, he said, a way of living not only by moonlight or sunlight, but also by starlight.”
― Laurens van der Post, The Seed and the Sower

“What is firmly established cannot be uprooted.
What is firmly grasped cannot slip away.
It will be honored from generation to generation.

Cultivate Virtue in your self,
And Virtue will be real.
Cultivate it in the family,
And Virtue will abound.
Cultivate it in the village,
And Virtue will grow.
Cultivate it in the nation,
And Virtue will be abundant.
Cultivate it in the universe,
And Virtue will be everywhere.

Therefore look at the body as body;
Look at the family as family;
Look at the village as village;
Look at the nation as nation;
Look at the universe as universe.

How do I know the universe is like this?
By looking!”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Had I not learnt lately that death is not something that happens at the end of our life? It is imprisonment in one moment of time, confinement in one sharp uncompromising deed or aspect or ourselves. Death is exclusion from renewal of our present-day selves.”
― Laurens van der Post, The Seed and the Sower