“Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It” Reinhold Niebuhr, American social philosopher and theologian (1892-1971), Christian realist NOW YOU TELL ME! This is the one that prompted me to close the book on “Pithies” in my midthirties. The whole enterprise struck me as naïve and futile. Enough already. But...
The ethical principle known as the golden rule is captured in the familiar saying ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Although the name itself seems not to have been used before the 18th century, the underlying idea – or rather...
The stupid people are not bored. They are perfectly happy doing their jobs, earning money, making a bigger bank balance, raising their children, reproducing, eating, sitting in the movie, going to the hotel, participating in this and that. They are enjoying! They are not bored....
If happiness is what we hope to achieve in our lives, shouldn’t we put more effort into cultivating good relationships with the people around us? In my twenties, I went on a two-week backpacking trip in Europe with a close friend from my monastery. When we...
Steppenwolf threw me quite a quick look, a look critical of these words and the whole person of the speaker, oh, an unforgettable and terrible look. about which a whole book could he written! The look criticized not only the speaker and annihilated the celebrated...
We see things, not as they are, but as we are. Therefore, when a vision is hindered, it is usually a people problem. There are ten types of people who usually hinder the vision of the organization. 1. LIMITED LEADERS Everything rises and falls on leadership. That...
And in this connection let me utter a word of protest against any and every form of affectation. It always arouses contempt; in the first place, because it argues deception, and the deception is cowardly, for it is based on fear; and, secondly, it argues...
Burton is a standing refutation, then, to those who imagine that prejudice derives only from ignorance, that intimacy must breed amity. You can be genuinely engaged with the ways of other societies without approving, let alone adopting, them. And though his Kasidah endorsed the kind...
The summer would like to make its warm days last forever, because it believes that warmth is good for the Earth. But, in the end, it has to accept the arrival of autumn, which will allow the Earth to rest. The gazelle eats the grass and...
Intellectuality is not intelligence. To be intellectual is to be phony; it is a pretending intelligence. It is not real because it is not yours; it is borrowed. Intelligence is the growth of inner consciousness. It has nothing to do with knowledge, it has something to...
