26th Edition of Shadow Dancing With Mind - Celebrating Two Hundred Thousand hits...

Welcome to 26^th Edition of “Shadow Dancing With Mind” and celebrating 200K Plus hits at my blog...

Its been a pleasurable journey of blogging, from the days of 2004, when I used to write only for myself to this day, when friends and bloggers visiting my blog, give me immense satisfaction. This is a journey of my thoughts, poetry, spiritual and creative pursuits, which not only made me more aware about me and the universal nature but also connected me to 1000+ Google Plussers and more the 350 followers... All amazing personalities and from each one of them I learned a lot. Thank you all for making this journey a hugely successful one and greatly satisfying.

In this edition, you will find some of the amazing books by Rilke and Tolstoy; A unique design installation, A very interesting contest on writing poetry (Haiku) to WIN ALL EXPENSE PAID WEEK LONG RETREAT in India as well as some of my Haiku and Poetry, as listed below...

THE READER – The books that I have read...

An amazing "Confession" by Leo Tolstoy

“Faith is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in something.”

Reading a beautiful book “Confession” first published in Russia (1882), which was removed by Orthodox Church censorship and later published in Geneva (1884). In his “Confession”, Leo Tolstoy confronted his own reflections about the will to live, when in the end, it’s all about nothing.  Every moment is a step closer to dying, then why this whole life’s attempt to gain fame, family, friends and power.

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

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

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.

DESIGN STREET – A collection on design

First Chennai Urban Art Installation – commemorating the Child in You

During my travels, whenever I saw the creative of use of public space, like 'The Morning Line' below in Vienna, I used to wonder, why such activity does not happen in our own city. Yes there are installations… permanent political and religious Statues or in some small corner an Art Installation like the one at the corner of Harrington road, which sadly no one notices anymore.

ITC Grand Chola Hotel – A Sustainable Design and Hospitality with Smile

Last Saturday, I was invited by the Indiblogger team to preview The ITC Grand Chola Hotel. This is one of the latest Grand additions to the hospitality sector of fast developing Chennai, which was inaugurated by Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu few months ago. Being in the profession of Interior Designs and Projects, It was a pleasure to spend a day in this beautifully crafted hotel, with exquisite artefacts and accessories highlighting the vast expanse of its interiors.

UP, CLOSE & PERSONAL – Some personal insights and experiences

Felix Dennis – A live tapestry of Pills, Publishing & Poetry

A very interesting and, in my opinion, quite truthful verse about poets by Felix Dennis which caught my attention, few days back. I started to do a little research about the poet and it turned out to be quite an epic story in itself. As I got to know more about the Poet Felix Dennis, who is in fact a publishing Giant with flagship brand like THE WEEK, got me thinking more and more about how writing poetry affects people from different fields and class... but before that, here is the verse...

Winter Spiritual Retreat by an unique Community Paras Dharma Ashram

The bi-annual Winter and Summer Spiritual Retreats is organized, for a limited group of only 25 ‘preselected’ participants, by a unique community and Non-Profit Organization and Trust “Paras Dharma Ashram” which is based out of Kushinagar.

WHISPERS – The poetry Section

Write a Haiku and WIN

Write a Haiku on "Spirituality" on or before 31st March 2013, and win a chance to be one of the 7 WRITERS who will be offered an all expense paid week long stay in spiritual retreats in Rishikesh, Himalaya and in Kushinagar (A place where Buddha attained nirvana)

Love, Destiny and Death

A lot of pent-up emotions are here to explode and now all those thoughts and feelings are rushing back to surface... hope you could relate to it all.

An Apology To The Delhi Gang Rape Victim

Today, a sad day indeed for the common people, who are feeling helpless and were looking forward to a bigger fight along with the brave heart girl, who fought and fought... Shame on all of us, if we let her fighting spirit die. Let’s all fight to bring back the dignity that India has within, which it lost in a senseless act of lust and drunken criminality of psychopaths...

STILL LIFE – A journey through images

A South Indian Marriage in North Indian Style

It was one of the most beautiful five days of ceremony and fun. I enjoyed it thoroughly as guests from across the world gathered and graced the occasion. So here is a small journey of still life for your pleasure....

Falling In Love with 'Namma' Chennai.... A North Indian affair

Living in a place, lovingly called 'Namma Chennai'...

It was a different world from Delhi, when I came to Chennai in 1994 - different culture, outlook and life style. But over the year Chennai’s beautiful sensibility and style seeped into me and now it’s ‘Namma Chennai”. Here is ‘what makes me, love Chennai’ through the lens of my camera...

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Hope you will enjoy this edition... look forward to your comments and visit to the next Edition... please click on the “Join this Site” button on the right hand side top corner to follow my posts on this blog... I will be grateful.

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Shashi
ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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25^th Edition

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.

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

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ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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Understanding Haiku - A beginner's Guide

UP, CLOSE & PERSONAL: Lou Andreas-Salomé Birthday (12th Feb) - Love Interest of German Philosopher Nietzsche

UP, CLOSE & PERSONAL: Happy Birthday to Lou Andreas-Salomé (12 February 1861 – 5 January 1937)

Today is the birthday of a very interesting character from 20th Centuary "Lou Andreas- Salomé" 
I rediscovered her while watching the movie "When Nietzsche Wept" few days back recommended by one of my friend. I had read about her while doing a little research on Nietzsche and found her to be a very interesting character in real life too. Her relationship with distinguished western luminaries, like Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and Rilke, got me thinking about what actually made her out to be, what kind of person she was... 

Lou Andreas-Salomé

Personally speaking, I thought she lacked a companion / Lover who would leave his foot prints along with her's on the beach…. Who would be besides her in times of her need and then no need. But then one person, in my opinion, who loved her deeply, she decided to throw… Personally, I think if she would have been with Nietzsche, they would have achieved much more together then they individually they did on their own. Because, I believe, love actually brings out the best version of the person one loves….. 


(So please go ahead and love some one to bring out the best this Valentine's day and actualize the potential you can bring about in him or her … :-) Cheers!!!)

A Brief Note…

Lou Andreas-Salomé (born Louise von Salomé or Luíza Gustavovna Salomé, 12 February 1861 – 5 January 1937) was a Russian-born psychoanalyst and author.

When Salomé was 21, at a literary salon in Rome, she became acquainted with Paul Rée, an author and compulsive gambler with whom she proposed living in an academic commune. After two months, the two became partners. On 13 May 1882, Rée's friend Friedrich Nietzsche joined the duo. In Leipzig,Germany in October, 1882, Salomé and Rée separated from Nietzsche after a falling-out between Nietzsche and Salomé, in which Salomé believed that Nietzsche was desperately in love with her.

Left to right, Andreas-Salomé, Rée and
Nietzsche (1882)

Salomé and Rée moved to Berlin and lived together until a few years before her celibate marriage to linguistics scholar Friedrich Carl Andreas. Despite her opposition to marriage and her open relationships with other men, Salomé and Andreas remained married from 1887 until his death in 1930. The distress caused by Salomé's co-habitation with Andreas caused the morose Rée to fade from Salomé's life despite her assurances. Throughout her married life, she engaged in affairs or/and correspondence with the German journalist Georg Lebedour, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, on whom she wrote an analytical memoir, the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Viktor Tausk, among others. Accounts of many of these are given in her volume Lebensrückblick.

Her relationship with Rilke was particularly close. Salomé was fifteen years his senior. They met when he was 21, were lovers for several years and correspondents until Rilke's death; it was Salome who began calling him Rainer rather than René.

In her memoirs, which were first published in their original German in 1951, she goes into depth about matters of her faith and her relationships. She says, and I quote..

“Whoever reaches into a rosebush may seize a handful of flowers; but no matter how many one holds, it's only a small portion of the whole. Nevertheless, a handful is enough to experience the nature of the flowers. Only if we refuse to reach into the bush, because we can't possibly seize all the flowers at once, or if we spread out our handful of roses as if it were the whole of the bush itself—only then does it bloom apart from us, unknown to us, and we are left alone.”

Salomé is said to have remarked in her last days, "I have really done nothing but work all my life, work ... why?" And in her last hours, as if talking to herself, she is reported to have said, "If I let my thoughts roam I find no one. The best, after all, is death."

It was believed that Nietzsche was a reclusive solitary man but I feel that among all the famous lovers around her, Andreas-Salomé was the loneliest... And I quote Nietzsche here from his book "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"

"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”!"

Here is movie that was recommended to me by a friend to see and I actually love it as it gives a real life back ground to who she was and how in life things like this happen and leave a deep impression that changes you completely. (I am sorry, this is only one part as I could not find on the You Tube the whole movie link), and you actually need to see all the parts to complete the picture.) 
(Thank you my friend)

(Movie Curtsy You Tube)

The movie starts with Lou Andreas-Salomé asking Dr. Breuer to treat Nietzsche to cure of his depression because she has refused to marry Nietzsche when he supposedly proposed to her. Though I have read Nietzsche a lot and liked his thought very much, which is the underlying theme of the movie, as well there is Sigmund Freud thrown along the sidelines, what interested me a lot was the character Lou Andreas-Salomé.

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TEXT and Image Curtsy:
WIKIPEDIA Click here to read more…  

To read more about Nietzsche and his wonderful thoughts from “Thus Spoke Zarathustra" check my blog post … Click here

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ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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"Damanhur Temples Of Humankind"