Shut, lock up; quick, quick: one runs to beg assistance from the sheriff; the others hastily shut up the shop, and bolt and bar the doors inside. The multitudes begin to increase without, and the cries redouble of: bread! bread! open! open!
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha — which is to demean oneself.
A gentleman is someone who is able to describe Sophia Loren without using his hands.
An Italian childhood might not produce adults who are more brilliant or adventurous or thrusting than elsewhere, but it produces people who are marvellously adept at setting up that sympathetic resonance, no matter what situation they find themselves in. Flying in from the cold, this ability arouses our suspicions if not our hackles, all those ready smiles and expansive gestures, all those hearts on sleeves: how can they mean it? How can they be sincere?
After a while, the penny drops and we see that sincerity is beside the point. What matters is to be on the same wavelength as the person in front of you, whether you care for them or not, whether or not you will ever see them again.
It’s just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me… until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short… until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored… until I know his home village, town, or city… until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow… until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated… until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.’ The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.
Do not believe a thing simply because it has been said. Do not put your faith in traditions only because they have been honoured by many generations. Do not believe a thing because the general opinion believes it to be true or because it has been said repeatedly. Do not believe a thing because of the single witness of one of the sages of antiquity. Do not believe a thing because the probabilities are in its favour, or because you are in the habit of believing it to be true. Do not believe in that which comes to your imagination, thinking that it must be the revelation of a superior Being. Believe nothing that binds you to the sole authority of your masters or priests. That which you have tried yourself, which you have experienced, which you have recognized as true, and which will be beneficial to you and to others; believe that, and shape your conduct to it.
The good news is staring us in face and we won’t engage. Carbon zero energy can be produced on the scale needed - advanced geothermal, solar, wind, plutonium-fuelled nuclear reactors – yet we won’t ramp up our investment. Energy use could be reduced by 50%, societies could become more fair and resilient, our cultural lives could become richer, more exciting. Do we really have to wait for some grand reckoning, a human/environmental disaster and loss of much of our biodiversity before we all collectively wise up?
An ethnographer I know who worked among peasant communities in the Amazon found that many of the people he met were obsessed by the idea of moving to the cities. In view of the hellish nature of many Brazilian favelas – especially in the booming Amazonian towns – he wanted to know why. “You have a wonderful life here: the rivers are teeming with fish, your gardens are crammed with food, you work an hour or two a day to meet your needs. You can’t read or write: if you move to the city, you’ll have to beg or steal or sell your body to survive,” he pointed out. “What you say is probably true,” they answered, “but in the city you can dream.”