Woetoe > Recent Status Updates

‘Modern industrial society is a fanatical religion. We are demolishing, poisoning, destroying all life-systems on the planet. We are signing bills our children will not he able to pay. We are acting as if we were the last generation on the planet. Without a radical change in heart, in mind, in vision, the earth will end up like Venus, charred and dead.’

‘The disastrous effects of the denial of death go far beyond the individual: They affect the whole planet. Believing fundamentally that this life is the only one, modern people have developed no long-term vision. So there is nothing to restrain them from plundering the planet for their own immediate ends from living in a selfish way that could prove fatal for the future.’

‘One views death as something to scurry away from and the other as something that will just take care of itself. How far they both are from understanding death’s true significance!’

‘La Gen, we are travelers. We’re pilgrims. We don’t have the time to wait that long. Come on, I’ll guide you.’ Transfixed, I watched what happened next, and if I hadn’t seen it myself I would never have believed it. Lama Tseten came back to life. Then my master sat by his side and took him through the phowa, the practice for guiding the consciousness at the moment before death.’

‘Immediately she turned to run out of the tent, but he caught her by the sleeve. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘I’m going to call Rinpoche,’ she replied. ‘Don’t bother him, there’s no need,’ he smiled. ‘With the master, there’s no such thing as distance.’ With that, he just gazed up into the sky and passed away.’

‘Practice had given Samten an acceptance of death, as well as a clear understanding that suffering and pain can be part of a deep, natural process of purification.’

‘Until suddenly, a carnation drops from behind an ear, for a knife has plunged into a man, whose horizontal dying brings the dance without music to its end.’

‘But the battle did not begin. The sun peacefully rose and without haste set again into the quivering reeds. The men and the arms watched, and waited. The noontimes were more powerful than they and the siestas were infinite.’

‘He went out for a walk in the decorous streets of London, in search of inspiration. It was just evening; Bogle wandered about until a honey colored moon was mirrored in the rectangular waters of the public fountains. And then he was visited by his god.’

‘The learned doctors of the Great Vehicle teach us that the essential characteristic of the universe is its emptiness.’ J. L. B.

‘I sometimes think that good readers are poets as singular, and as awesome, as great authors themselves. Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing — more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.’ J. L. B.

Buenos Aires May 27, 1935

“What was even more crazy, says Able, “was that his picking hand was above the covers, and the finger that he wore the mizrab on was moving as if he was playing or practicing. I felt bad about complaining now — he was on another level! It wasn’t twitching. His whole hand was moving. He was playing in his sleep.”

‘To exist is not enough, we desire to live intelligently. But to live we must know, and to know we must study; and here is a vast field open before us, if we will only enter upon it and gather thence the fruits of enlightenment. Let us, then, waste no more time in the dark dungeons of ignorance, but come forth boldly into the glorious sunshine of that divine wisdom which in these modern days men call Theosophy.’

‘It is well for us ever to bear in mind that there is a hidden side to life — that each act and word and thought has its consequence in the unseen world which is always so near to us, and that usually these unseen results are of infinitely greater importance than those which are visible to all upon the physical plane’.

‘Ravi was keen to train audiences as well as his students. In a program essay entitled “Good Listening” he appealed for all to be seated on time at Kinnara concerts, “relaxed and receptive”. It was announced beforehand that the doors would be closed precisely on 8:30 p.m. and reopened only between numbers.’

‘Coltrane talked only a little about his own music and had not brought his saxophone, preferring to ask Ravi questions about Indian music. The American was profoundly moved, and Ravi’s exquisite demonstrations on sitar brought him to tears.’

‘And if the music be good, the effect of those vibrations cannot but be uplifting to every man upon whose vehicles they play. Thus the community owes a very real debt of gratitude towards the musician who pours forth such helpful influences, for he may affect for good hundreds whom he never saw and will never know upon the physical plane.’

We have at our command a never-failing criterion; we can never misuse this mighty power of thought if we employ it always in unison with the great devine scheme of evolution, and for the uplifting of our fellow-man.’

‘It is sadly true that there are many men who are unconsciously using their thought-power chiefly or evil, yet this only makes it all the more necessary that those who are beginning to understand life a little should use it consciously, and use it for good.’