Leonardo left behind only a handful of paintings—fewer than twenty, with some badly damaged or incomplete. His sculptures were either unfinished or later destroyed. What we seem to have in abundance are his notebooks—some 13,000 pages—and experts believe many more notes have been lost. Even...
Man as he is is utterly unconscious. He is nothing but his habits, the sum total of his habits. Man is a robot. Man is not yet man. Unless consciousness enters into your being, you will remain a machine. That's why the Sufis say man is a machine....
A monkey, whilst munching a ripe pear, was pestered by the bare-faced importuni ties of a wasp, who, nolens volens, would have a part. After threatening the monkey with his anger if he further hesitated to submit to his demand, he settled on the fruit,...
Fully functioning persons recognize their need for others. They do not see this need for love and intimacy as demanding that they be less than they are, but rather as a means for reflecting their vast potentials and sharing them with others. They do not...
It is easy to understand the motivation to get along with others. For starters, humans are incredibly social beings who need positive relationships. In fact, there really would be no chance of society existing if people did not, by and large, cooperate with each other...
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743[a] – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the second vice president under John Adams and...
Who among us has not known someone (including, perhaps, ourselves) so outwardly directed, so concerned about accumulating possessions or about what others think, as to lose all sense of self? Such a person, when posed a question, searches outward rather than inward for the answer;...
Once upon a time, two men got into a boat and went out into the ocean. Suddenly, one of them began to dig a hole in the bottom of the boat, and the other man, amazed as he was, shouted at him: “What are you doing?...
We come with empty hands and we will go with empty hands, so what is the point of claiming so much in the meantime? But this is what we know, what the world tells us: Possess, dominate, have more than others have. It may be...
Tsai Wo asked: "If you tell a jen man that there is jen at the bottom of the well, will he climb into it?" Confucius said, "Are you kidding? The Superior Man will go to the well but not fall into it. He can be deceived,...
