READER: 'Tao Te Ching' by Lao Tzu

After many years, I started reading Tao Te Ching (the translation by R B Blakney) again and realize again that the real great books always gives deeper insight, every time you read it. The book “Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu is the most translated book in the world after Bible and reading these books, actually can transport one to the ancient times and align with the thought processes that started thousands of years back and still survive the test of living mankind’s journey across time. To understand the early history of human lives and its meaning, the old books are far better than the archeological remains. Just like the Veda’s for Hindus, perhaps to know more about those ancient civilization, books like “Tao Te Ching” gives a better perspective and insight.

Book at Amazon

It’s not known who composed the chapters of Tao Te Ching, because though authorship of many other kind of writing is lost by accident, but mysticism is often given anonymously, by principle. All that can be guessed about the authorship of these poems is that the main threads of their argument originated among recluse in remote valleys before Confucius time and that the result too form late in the 3^rd Century B.C. Where there is no author, however, it is necessary to invent one; and by the time the Tao Te Ching had been put in form, legend had supplied Lao Tzu and Ssu-ma Ch’ien incorporated the legend in his notable Historical Records (Chap 63).

It presents Lao Tzu correctly enough as one who has given up civilized living and is impatient with Confucian ideas. Lao Tzu practiced the Way and its virtue. He learned to do his work in self effacement and anonymity. For a long time he lived in Chou, and then he saw that it was breaking up, he left. At the frontier, the official Yin His said: ‘Since, sir, you are retiring, I urge you to write me a book.’ “So Lao Tzu wrote a book in two parts, explaining the Way and its virtue in something over 5000 words. Then he went away. No one knows where he died.

From 3^rd century A.D. on, the subsequent story of Taoism is mainly concerned with the rivalry of Buddhism. The two religions were much alike, except that Buddhism barred sexual practices, and its priests, for the most part were celibate. Buddhism was, possibly more popular among the” hundred Clans,” that is, the people; Taoism succeeded somewhat better among the ruling classes. It suffered at least a partial eclipse under the Mongols, who favored Buddhism.

The Tao Te Ching through the centuries has never been without admiring readers among the Chinese, although  its reading public has been small compared to Confucian books.

Now before I share some interesting thoughts from the book Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, let me give you the meaning of the key word “Tao” here, as translated by R B Blakney.

TAO: A Road, A Path, the way by which people travel, the way of nature and finally the ultimate Reality. To the Chinese mystics, it came not only to refer to the way the whole world of nature operates but to signify the riginal undifferentiated Reality from which the universe is evolved.

From Wikipedia:

"The Way that can be told of is not an unvarying way;

The names that can be named are not unvarying names.

It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;

The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind."

These famous first lines of the Tao Te Ching state that the Tao is ineffable, i.e., the Tao is nameless, goes beyond distinctions, and transcends language. However this first verse does not occur in the earliest known version from the Guodian Chu Slips and there is speculation that it may have been added by later commentators. In Laozi's Qingjing Jing (verse 1-8) he clarified the term Tao was nominated as he was trying to describe a state of existence before it happened and before time or space. Way or path happened to be the side meaning of Tao, ineffability would be just poetic. This is the Chinese creation myth from the primordial Tao.

Now here are some of the thoughts from the book that made a deep impression ….

Image Curtsy Wikipedia

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Those who are bound by desire / See only the outward container.

The Way is a void / Used but never filled:

Wealth, power and pride / Bequeath their own doom.

I suffer most because / Of me and selfishness.

If you trust people less than enough / Some of them never trust you.

Your boasting will mean you have failed;

A good knot is tied without rope and can not be loosed.

For the world is a sacred vessel / Not made to be altered by man.

A block of wood untooled, though small, / May still excel the world.

It is wisdom to know others; / It is enlightenment to know one’s self.

The Way is always still, at rest, / And yet does everything that’s done.

“When going looks like coming back, / The clearest road is mighty dark.

So a loss sometimes benefits one / Or a benefit proves to be loss.

The softest of stuff in the world / Penetrates quickly the hardest;

No calamity is worse / Than to be discontented.

The further you go, / The less you will know

By letting go, it all gets done; / The world is won by those who let it go!

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Shashi

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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FEATURE: Letters To A Young Poet - Amazing Voice Of Solitude, RILKE

“When a truly great and unique spirit speaks, the lesser ones must be silent”

Rainer Rilke's Classic Book

As I keep repeating, sometimes the book chooses you rather than you choosing the book. When the time is right, suddenly a book drops into your lap like a blessing and leaves an eternal. This book “The Letters To A Young Poet” is one such book that has left me immersed in my own solitude without the fear of being alone and changed the way I look at my own doubts.

The “Letters To A Young Poet” is a deceptively simple book. The letters were originally written to Franz Kappus, a 19-year-old officer cadet at the Vienna Military Academy, of which Rainer Maria Rilke was an alumnus. Discouraged by the prospect of life in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Kappus began to send his poetry to the 27-year-old Rilke, seeking both literary criticism and career advice. Their correspondence lasted from 1902 to 1908. In 1929, three years after Rilke's death, Kappus assembled and published the ten letters.

Franz in his introduction says, “Important alone are the ten letters – important for the understanding of the world in which Rainer Maria Rilke lived and worked, important also for the many who are growing and evolving now and shall in the future. When a truly great and unique spirit speaks, the lesser ones must be silent”

Through his letters, Rilke guides the young boy, Franz, out of the labyrinths of doubts, answering his questions about life, love, loneliness, passion and sex as well about God. An amazing book which in my opinion needs to be read by every aspiring artist, young people and anyone is afraid to be alone in one’s own solitude.

BRIEF NOTE ON THE GREAT POET RAINER MARIA RILKE

Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian-Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose. Among English-language readers, his best-known work is the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works are the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. He also wrote more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to his homeland of choice, the canton of Valais in Switzerland.

TEXT AND IMAGE CURTSY : Wikipedia 

THOUGHTS FROM “LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET”

Foreword:

“All of us who labor in the arts know that it can be a lonely existence. We often find ourselves living a life of solitary dreams, disconnected from others, and driven by a vision that no one else seems to value or share. On some days, this can becomes overwhelming. We then thirst for a single voice of understanding that will reach into our solitary lives and reassure us that the path we have chosen is worthy, and that the rewards it offers are worth the loneliness it entails.” – By Kent Nerburn

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For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task of all, the epitome, the ultimate test. It is that striving for which all other striving is merely a preparation.

The Walk by Rainer Rilke

Put it (The need to write) to this test: does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, “I must,” then build your life upon it.

Do not write love poems, at least at first; they present the greatest challenge. It requires great, fully ripened power to produce something personal, something unique, when there are so many good and sometimes even brilliant renditions in great numbers.

If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself. 

Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth. For the creative artist there is no poverty – nothing is insignificant or unimportant.

A piece of art is good if it is born of necessity. This, its source, is its criterion; there is no other.

To feel that one could live without writing is enough indication that, in fact, one should not.

We are unutterably alone, essentially, especially in the things most intimate and most important to us.

Scale the depths of things; irony will never descend there.

Portrait of Rilke
by Paula Modersohn Becker
c1900

To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no feat that summer might not follow.

Actually the creative experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, close to its pain and its pleasure, that both phenomena are only different forms of the same longing and bliss.

To cope with sexuality is difficult. Yes, but everything assigned to us is a challenge; nearly everything that matters is a challenge, and everything matters.

Spiritual creativity originates from the physical. They are of the same essence - only spiritual creativity is a gentler, more blissful, and more enduring repetition of physical desire and satisfaction.

Reflect on the world that you carry within yourself. And name this thinking what you wish… Your innermost happening is worth all your love.

For what would aloneness be, you ask yourself if it did not possess greatness? There exists only one aloneness, and it is great, and it is not easy to bear.

Your innermost happening is worth all you love. You must somehow work on that.

Why don’t you think of Him (God) as the coming one, who has been at hand since eternity, the future one, the final fruit of tree, with us as its leaves?

Don’t you see that everything that happens becomes a beginning again and again? Could it not be His beginning, since a beginning is in itself is always so beautiful?

…we must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance.

To love is also good, for love is difficult. For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task of all, the epitome, the ultimate test. It is that string for which all other striving is merely preparation.

However the process of learning always involves time set aside for solitude. Thus to love constantly and far into a lifespan is indeed aloneness, heightened and deepened aloneness for one who loves.

Love does not at first have nothing to do with arousal, surrender, and uniting with another being – for what union can be built upon uncertainty, immaturity, and lack of coherence?

Young people often err, and that intensely so, in the way, since it is their nature to be impatient: The throw themselves at each other when love comes upon them. They fragment themselves, just as they are, in all of their disarray and confusion. But what is to follow? What should fate do if this takes root, this heap of half-broken things that they call togetherness and that they would like to call their happiness?

Don’t believe that this idea of a great love, which, when you were a boy, was imposed upon you, has been lost… I believe that this idea of love remains so strong and mighty in your memory because it was your first deep experience of aloneness and the first inner work that you have done on your life.

Perhaps all dragons in our lives are really princesses just waiting to see us just once being beautiful and courageous. Perhaps everything fearful is basically helplessness that seeks our help.

It’s often the name of the crime upon which a life shatters, not the nameless and personal act itself at all.

Allow life to happen to you. Believe me, life is right in all cases.

All feelings that integrate and inspire are pure. Impure is the feeling that touches only one side of your being and is tearing you up so.

Act with alertness (on your doubts) and responsibility, each and every time, and the day will come when doubt will change from a destroyer to become one of your best fellow-workers, perhaps the wisest of all that have a part in building your life.

Rose, oh pure contradiction, delight
of being no one's sleep under so
many lids.
-Epitaph on the grave of Rainer Rilke in Geneva, chosen by himself

Art also is only a way of life, and we can, no matter how we live, and without knowing it, prepare ourselves for it.

____________

Hope you have liked this feature, please do leave your comment and thoughts below.

______
ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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Kahlil Gibran - The Poet of Spiritual Love

THE READER: Featuring Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran – The Poet Of Spiritual Love, was born on this day i.e. 6^th January in 1883. To celebrate his birthday, I am featuring in this section of my Blog – “The Reader” his most beautiful and lovely book “The Prophet”. Published in 1923, it became extremely popular in the 1960s counterculture. Kahlil Gibran is the third best selling poet (after Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu) in the world. But before I share his profound thoughts from the book “The Prophet” on many different aspects of life, love and living, let me give you a brief note about the poet.

Brief Biography

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Khalil Gibran, Photograph by Fred Holland Day,
c. 1898

Khalil Gibran born Gubran Khalil Gubran, (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer. Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of the Ottoman Mount Lebanon mutasarrifate), as a young man he emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career. He is chiefly known in the English speaking world for his 1923 book The Prophet, an early example of inspirational fiction including a series of philosophical essays written in poetic English prose. Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.

Gibran held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day's studio. During this exhibition, Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, a respected headmistress ten years his senior. The two formed an important friendship that lasted the rest of Gibran’s life. Though publicly discreet, their correspondence reveals an exalted intimacy. Haskell influenced not only Gibran’s personal life, but also his career. In 1908, Gibran went to study art in Paris for two years. While there he met his art study partner and lifelong friend Youssef Howayek. While most of Gibran's early writings were in Arabic, most of his work published after 1918 was in English. His first book in 1918 was The Madman, a slim volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry and prose.

Khalil Gibran

Much of Gibran's writings deal with Christianity, especially on the topic of spiritual love. But his mysticism is a convergence of several different influences: Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Hinduism and theosophy.

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TEXT AND IMAGES FROM WIKIPEDIA

Click here to read full biography

Now coming back to the book...

The Prophet, is a book composed of twenty-six poetic essays. The book became especially popular during the 1960s with the American counterculture and New Age  movements. Since it was first published in 1923, The Prophet has never been out of print. Having been translated into more than forty languages, it was one of the bestselling books of the twentieth century in the United States.

In the book, the Prophet of God after spending his years with people of  Orphalese, is planning to leave for a journey deep into the ocean, from where he may or may not come. The people then gather around and as him questions about life, living, love, work etc and he replies them in kind of poetic essays. While reading this book of poetic essays, I have had noted down a lot of his thoughts that invoked a deep sense of understanding within me. Only some of them I am reproducing here... 

(To read my full selection, click here...)

The Prophet

written by

 Kahlil Gibran

The Coming of the Ship 

And she hailed him, saying:

The Prophet By Kahlil Gibran
IMG Curtsey Itunes

Prophet of God, in quest for the uttermost, long have you searched the distances for your ship.

And now your ship has come, and you must needs go.

And he answered,

People of Orphalese, of what can I speak save of that which is even now moving within your souls?

On Love

·         When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

·        Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

On Marriage 

Gibran's home in Bsharri

·         You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

·         Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

·         And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

On Children

·         Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

·         You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

On Work

·         You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

·         Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

On Joy and Sorrow

Khalil Gibran memorial in Boston, Massachusetts.

·         Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

·         The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

On Freedom

·         And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment. You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,

On Reason and Passion

·         Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.

·         Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.

·         For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion; that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes. And since you are a breath In God's sphere, and a leaf in God's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.

On Pain 

Khalil Gibran memorial in Washington, D.C.

·         Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

·         Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

    On Friendship

·         Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

·         For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

·         And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

·         For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

On Prayer 

·         You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether?

·         When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet. Therefore let your visit to that temple invisible be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion. For if you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking you shall not receive.

·     God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.

On Beauty 

·         Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?

·         And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.

·         Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror

On Religion 

The Gibran Museum and Gibran's final resting place,
in Bsharri, Lebanon.

·         Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,

·         Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.

The Farewell 

And now it was evening.

And Almitra the seeress said, "Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken."

And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener?

Then he descended the steps of the Temple ...

_________

As the book was so full of profound thinking, I could not post all that I liked here, as it was getting to be a large post. But in case you would like to read my full selection of thoughts from the book, click here...

TEXT OF THE BOOK FROM http://wikilivres.info/wiki/The_Prophet

______

Shashi

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche

FEATURE : Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche

For me, to start reading a book, is always driven by the way the book reaches me. I usually not read the books that are talked about, discussed in parties or are on top of the charts. I end up reading a book, if it comes to me on its own... like a divine grace; then only I know that I am ready for the book. As for me each book has a spirit that has something, to connect with me, to add to my inner self, to make ‘be’ what I have to be. I had heard about this famous book since my school days, people talked about the ideas in our discussion in college days and some even thrashed its “God is Dead” idea to its threadbare soul, but never thought of reading it. Then the other day, I was searching for a particular book, in poetry section of Landmark – The book shop and it was there on the top of the shelf and I felt the desire to pick it up. And below is the result...

Its a very interesting and engrossing book which talks about the man and his emotions... in the words of Zarathustra; some times teaching, some times scolding, some times just feeling sad the way the man has belittled himself... He, is in the book, talks about the higher man... which to my thought is not very different than the commonly perceived ‘God’... and that is the irony I find in this book. I have loved reading this book and below I have posted some of the interesting thoughts from the book that has captured my imagination and I could relate with.... But before that, as usual let me give you a brief about the book and Nietzsche’s biography.

Brief Note

The book

Cover to the first edition of the first part.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen) is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science.  

Described by Nietzsche himself as "the deepest ever written," the book is a dense and esoteric treatise on philosophy and morality, featuring as protagonist a fictionalized prophet descending from his mountain retreat to mankind, Zarathustra. A central irony of the text is that Nietzsche mimics the style of the Bible in order to present ideas which fundamentally oppose Christian and Jewish morality and tradition.

Text and Image source: Wikipedia

The Author

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism.

Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism, nihilism and postmodernism. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental tradition. His key ideas include the death of God, perspectivism, the Übermensch, the eternal recurrence, and the will to power. Central to his philosophy is the idea of "life-affirmation", which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be.

Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. At the age of 24 he was appointed to the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel (the youngest individual to have held this position), but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life. In 1889 he became mentally ill, possibly due to atypical general paresis attributed to tertiary syphilis. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, then under the care of his sister until his death in 1900.

Text and Image source: Wikipedia

Some of the thoughts from the book that has touched me deeply... 

Peter Gast would "correct" Nietzsche's writings even after
the philosopher's breakdown and did so
without his approval—an action severely criticized
by contemporary Nietzsche scholars.

Zarathustra’s Prologue

One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure. 

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: 

Must one first batter their ears that they may learn to hear with their eyes?

A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. 

One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. 

How can I help it, if power likes to walk on crooked legs? 

The Despisers of the Body

"I," say you, and are proud of that word.  But the greater thing - in which you are unwilling to believe - is your body with its great intelligence; which does not say "I," but performs it. 

The Pale Criminal 

I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me may grasp me!  Your crutch, however, I am not.  

Reading and Writing

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his blood.  Write with blood, and you will find that blood is spirit. 

In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route you must have long legs. 

Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive - so wisdom wishes us; she is a woman, and ever loves only a warrior. 

We are all of us fine asses and assesses of burden.  What have we in common with the rose bud, which trembles because a drop of dew has formed upon it?  It is true we love life; not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving.  There is always some madness in love.  But there is always, also, some method in madness. 

The Tree on the Hill

"If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to do so.  But the wind, which we see not, troubles and bends it as it wishes.  We are sore bent and troubled by invisible hands”

Zarathustra answered: "Why are you frightened on that account?  - But it is the same with man as with the tree.  The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep - into the evil”

War and Warriors

By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart. 

I say to you: it is the good war which hallows every cause.  War and courage have done more great things than charity.  Not your sympathy, but your bravery has hitherto saved the victims.

The New Idol

Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.  

The house Nietzsche stayed in while in Turin
(background, right), as seen from
across Piazza Carlo Alberto,
where he is said to have had his breakdown.
To the left is the rear façade of the Palazzo Carignano.

The Flies in the Market-Place

Resemble again the tree which you love, the broad branched one - silently and attentively it overhangs the sea. 

In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men.  Little do the people understand what is great - that is to say, the creating agency.  But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great things

Chastity

Do I counsel you to chastity?  Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many it is almost a vice.

The Friend

In your friend one shall have your best enemy.  You shall be closest to him with your heart when you oppose him.  You would go naked before your friend?  It is in honour of your friend that you show yourself to him as you are? 

O my friend, man is something that has to be surpassed.  In conjecture and keeping silence shall the friend be a master:

Are you a slave?  Then you cannot be a friend.  Are you a tyrant?  Then you cannot have friends.  Far too long has there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman.  On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.  In woman's love there is injustice and blindness to all she does not love.  And even in woman's conscious love, there is still always surprise and lightning and night, along with the light.

As yet woman is not capable of friendship.  But tell me, you men, who of you are capable of friendship?

Love of One's Neighbour

Thus says the fool: "Association with men ruins the character, especially when one has none”.

The Way of the Creator

Today you still suffer from the multitude, you individual; today you still have your courage undimmed, and your hopes.  But one day will solitude weary you; one day will your pride yield and your courage fail.  You will one day cry: "I am alone”!  One day will you see no longer your loftiness, and see too closely your lowliness; your sublimity itself will frighten you, like a phantom.  You will one day cry: "Everything is false”!  There are feelings which seek to kill the solitary man; if they do not succeed, then they must themselves die!  But Are you capable of it - to be a murderer?

Old and Young Women

Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman has one solution - it is called pregnancy.  Man is for woman a means: the end is always the child.  But what is woman for man?  The true man wants two different things: danger and play.  Therefore wants he woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

Marriage and Children

Marriage: so call I the will of the two to create one that is greater than those who created it.  The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage.  Let this be the significance and the truth of your marriage.

Lou Salomé, Paul Ree
and Friedrich Nietzsche (1882)

The Bestowing Virtue

When your heart overflows broad and full like the river, a blessing and a danger to the lowlanders: there is the origin of your virtue.  When you are exalted above praise and blame, and your will would command all things, as a loving your will: there is the origin of your virtue.

The Child with the Mirror

Too long have I longed and looked into the distance.  Too long has solitude possessed me: thus have I forgotten how to keep silence.

On the Blissful Islands

But that I may reveal my heart entirely to you, my friends: if there were gods, how could I endure not to be a God!  Therefore there are no Gods.  Yes, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, does it draw me.  - God is a supposition: but who could drink all the bitterness of this supposition without dying? 

Creating - that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation.  But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.  Yes, much bitter dying must there be in your life, you creators!

The Compassionate 

If, however, you have a suffering friend, then be a resting place for his suffering; like a hard bed, however, a camp bed: thus will you serve him best.  And if a friend does you wrong, then say: "I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to yourself, however - how could I forgive that”!  Thus speaks all great love: it overcomes even forgiveness and pity.  

Thus spoke the devil to me, once on a time: "Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man”.  And lately, did I hear him say these words: "God is dead: God has died of his pity for man”.  So be warned again pity: 

Self-Overcoming 

It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and evil, you wise ones: but that Will itself, the Will to Power - the un-exhausted, procreating life will.

To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous. 

The Sublime Men

When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible - I call such condescension, beauty. 

Truly, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because they have crippled paws!

The Wanderer  

love is the danger of the solitary , love to anything, if it only live!  Laughable, truly, is my folly and my modesty in love!  - Thus spoke Zarathustra

Before Sunrise 

And all my wandering and mountain climbing: a necessity was it merely, and a makeshift of the unhandy one: - to fly only, wants my entire will, to fly into you!

 And "he who cannot bless shall learn to curse”!  - this clear teaching dropped to me from the clear heaven; this star stands in my heaven even in dark nights. 

 "In everything there is one thing impossible - rationality”!

The Nietzsche Archives in Weimar, Germany.

Virtue That Makes Small

For only he who is man enough, will - save the woman in woman.

I am Zarathustra the godless, who says: "Who is more godless than I, that I may enjoy his teaching”? 

You ever become smaller, you small people!  You crumble away, you comfortable ones!  You will yet perish - - By your many small virtues, by your many small omissions, and by your many small submissions!  Too tender, too yielding: so is your soil!  But for a tree to become great, it seeks to twine hard roots around hard rocks!  Also what you omit weaves at the web of all the human future; even your nothing is a cobweb, and a spider that lives on the blood of the future.

Passing By

This precept, however, give I to you, in parting, you fool: Where one can no longer love, there should one - pass bye!  

The Three Evil Things

These will I put on the scales.  Voluptuousness, passion for power, and selfishness: these three things have hitherto been be cursed, and have been in worst and falsest repute - these three things will I weigh humanly well. 

Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the garden happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks overflow to the present.  

Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion willed, however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines.  

Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope.  For to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage - To many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman: - and who has fully understood how unknown to each other are man and woman!

The Spirit of Gravity

And we - we bear loyally what is apportioned to us, on hard shoulders, over rugged mountains!  And when we sweat, then do people say to us: "Yes, life is hard to bear”!  But man himself only is hard to bear!  The reason is that he carries too many extraneous things on his shoulders.  Like the camel he kneels down, and lets himself be well laden.  Especially the strong load bearing man in whom reverence resides.  Too many extraneous heavy words and worth’s does he load upon himself - then seems life to him a desert!

This however is my teaching: he who wishes one day to fly, must first learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing: - one does not fly into flying!

The Old and New Law-Tables

One should not wish to enjoy where one does not contribute to the enjoyment.  And one should not wish to enjoy!  For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things.  Neither like to be sought for.  One should have them - but one should rather seek for guilt and pain!  

"That is just divinity, that there are Gods, but no God”!

To your children shall you make amends for being the children of your fathers: all the past shall you thus redeem! 

On that account want I the honest men to say to one another: "We love each other: let us see to it that we maintain our love!  Or shall our pledging be blundering”?

Not only to propagate yourselves onwards but upwards - thereto, O my brothers, may the garden of marriage help you!

The good - they have always been the beginning of the end.

The Convalescent

To each soul belongs another world; to each soul is every other soul a back world.  Among the most alike does semblance deceive most delightfully: for the smallest gap is most difficult to bridge over.  For me - how could there be an outside of me?  There is no outside!  But this we forget on hearing tones; how delightful it is that we forget!  Have not names and tones been given to things that man may refresh himself with them?  It is a beautiful folly, speaking; there with dances man over everything.  How lovely is all speech and all falsehoods of tones!  With tones dances our love on variegated rainbows

The Higher Man

And truly, I love you, because you know not today how to live, you higher men!  For thus do you live - best!

He has heart who knows fear, but masters it; who sees the abyss, but with pride.

My wisdom has accumulated long like a cloud, it becomes stiller and darker.  So does all wisdom which shall one day bear lightning.

If you would go up high, then use your own legs!  Do not get yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads!

Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is also your entire virtue!

Be not virtuous beyond your powers!  And seek nothing from yourselves that is improbable! 

All good things approach their goal on a crooked path.  Like cats they curve their backs, they purr inwardly with their approaching happiness - all good things laugh.  His step betrays whether a person already walks on his own path: Just see me walk!  He, however, who comes near to his goal, dances.

____________
ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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The Secret Path                                            The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran