mindfulness

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage      And then is heard no more: it is a tale   Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing. Macbeth is sad in the end of Shakespeare's tragedy. In the beginning he has been fooled by the witches. They promised him that he should become the king of Scotland, and he then figured out how to let it be a reality.  But all in vain - in the end Lady Macbeth has killed herself. Shakespeare himself lived another life. When he got older he moved back to Stratford upon Avon, the little town where  he was born. Away from the busy London, away from fame and the pleasures of a big city. Maybe he was fed up with this. His circle was completed and soon after he died. I will hope his last years were good ones. He had seen many famous people fall, even kings. Even today people struggle and fall, but if you don't look for success you do...

Aren't we all looking for answers? Some of us think we have them. Some of us are not so sure. Perhaps it's better to search for a simple life and to avoid suffering as much as possible, both for yourself and others. Unfortunately you will not completely succeed. But it worth trying. Perhaps you then should have some distance to the common, busy life. But you don't have to move to a monastery. Epicurus tried another way. The old Greek philosopher is falsely identified with   a lust for sex and wine. The world Epicure comes from this. He searched for pleasure, but in another way... His ideal was friendship and simple food as bread, cheese, vegetables and water. Meat was not necessary at all. At 306 b.c. he moved so a house outside of Athens with some friends. They had separate rooms but common places for meals and conversation. They accepted a simpler and cheap lifestyle as they didn't want to share the business life in Athens. They grow their own vegetable...

Kenneth Taylor at Stanford University has an interesting lecture  where he talks about the self. He comes to the same conclusion as many others do; we construct our selves with our stories about our life. But he adds, like a mindful person should, we also includes other people in our story and we tell their stories too. We have to, but perhaps we should be careful - we should know that it just are our stories about others.   ( the full lecture here:  http://vimeo.com/22352839   ) The stories may not be exactly true, but it is anyway important to tell your own story. Jackson has the perspective of black people in America in mind. He cites from "Song of Solomon", a novel by Toni Morrison: "She threw away every assumption that she had learned and bean at zero.... Then she tackled the problem of trying to decide how she wanted to live and what was valuable to her. When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to stay alive? What ...

She really was a pioneer in abstract painting. Ahead of names like Klee and Kandinsky. But she was a woman active in the early 20th-century. And women  then were not supposed to be ahead of men. Even not in Sweden, where she lived. Furthermore she  painted in a spiritualistic and some kind of automatic way, at least in the beginning. And at least in the context of that time. She had a long and healthy life, was a pioneer also in her vegetarian diet. The only one she showed her paintings to, outside the little circle of friends, was Rudolf Steiner, the grounder of Anthroposophy. And he rejected them. So it's not until now they are really known, and shown in Europe and the USA. They all have titles, but nobody can totally say what they mean, not even Hilma of Klint could. But one theme is for certain the combination and unity of female and male energies. This painting is an example of that: The black swan stands for masculinity and the white for femininity. The...

What does it mean to be an individual? What is the story of your life made of? What material? Perhaps you say that you are born in a certain country. But  what does it mean to be, for instance, Swedish? Are you very different from people from other nations? Is there really anything typically Swedish. Isn't everything imported and changing?  Of course we to some degree are shaped by our upbringing and our culture. We are not totally free... But when we are aware of our thought patterns, we can choose what thoughts to follow and what to leave... You will have more freedom, but you will also probably be a little more silent... It is often more important to show a smile or to lay your hand on someones shoulder, than to say something. You can see those actions as your karma, they will proceed in the people you meet, perhaps you can change them a bit - and then a part of you is in them. You have transformed... If you influence a young person you will live a long time in h...

Again and again I listen to the Mass i B-minor. It rises like a cathedral. It feels as if you for every time gets a little bit wiser. Not smarter and your English grammar will be as bad as ever... But your soul deepens, your ears becomes more open and sensible. You have to sens all the voices in the choir, like in life it's a complicated polyphony. I don't believe in a God, but Bach did and his beliefs led to this music. So much gladness in this performance - for instance after 28.34 minutes, the sitting singer to the right has to smile... It seems that the belief in that there are something bigger than mankind is necessary for a kind of art like this. Something higher is leading us. You just have to follow it. I don't know -  perhaps it is so - though I prefer to call it life-force, destiny or why not Tao. One thing is for certain - Bach is still with us - Where, O death, is Thy Sting ...