Sugar Cubes

Once upon a time in a land far away, a woman named, Neru set off on a journey to a village many miles from her home. She left in search of a particular Sufi renowned for his wisdom.

Upon reaching the village, Neru was told that the Sufi lived on a nearby mountainside. Although darkness was falling, she set off up the mountain towards a bright light, certain that it was there she would find the Sufi.

When she reached the source of the light she was surprised to find nothing but an oil-lamp with moths fluttering around it. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, Neru noticed a dim glow a short way off. Walking over to it, she discovered the Sufi reading by the light of a candle.

Neru greeted him and then asked, “Why are sitting here in the near-darkness when there is a much brighter light over there?”

“As you can see, the bright light is for the moths, leaving me here in peace to study by the light of my candle,” replied the Sufi. *

*Often sufi stories (just like zen stories), present very deep philosophical insights on life. What hints to do you get from this story? What is your enlightenment from this? There are certain symbolism here for the bigger and smaller lights, moths. God Willing, I will post my own realization from it soon.

[Via Inspirations and Creative Thoughts]

To me, it is hurtful to have to deal with people whom you would like to teach when — pretending to themselves that they seek knowledge — they only want a social community, friendship, ‘togetherness’, attention and the like.

All these things are delightful: and all the more delightful when consciously indulged in, rather than found by means of deception. Deception in this case is pretending to oneself that one is studying when one is seeking stimuli.

Such people may have the capacity to learn. But they overlay it with shallow aims. They may have been trained to seek smaller satisfactions and to give them grand names. They may, on the other hand, simply be carrying on the demands of babyhood. Rumi said: ‘When will you cease coveting nuts and raisins?’

The condition can be so well established that people are to all intents and purposes unconscious of its presence.

Sufis jolt people from this ’sleep’. Such shocks are often experienced as hurtful - until they take effect, when we are always grateful that we have been allowed to encounter them. What is in fact hurtful to humanity does not necessarily feel hurtful at the time. Self-deception is the chief of these.

The Awakening is a highly powerful and original work by Kim Hoa Tram. It deals with the Buddhist concept of spiritual awakening to the impermanence of life, and death itself.

A living bird and a dead bird are repeated in a sequence as the narrative unfolds in four panels that are read from right to left. It progresses upward in crescendo from a baby bird crying helplessly beside a dead bird; a young bird shouting or screaming in shock; an older bird staring at the dead bird, as if coming to some kind of realization. Finally in the last panel, the wise old bird is perched on a branch near the top of the painting, with an enigmatic expression of acceptance.

The silence that is conveyed by the void in the fourth panel is as emotionally intense as the scream in the second panel. The bird has been used as a vehicle to express human emotions in the confrontation of ‘death’. The images express what is beyond words.

[Source]

“I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life… to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. “-Henry David Thoreau

Who came first, the chicken or the egg? :

Ethical challenges are anterior to problem solving. When we resort to problem solving we are no longer attentive to the ethical challenge facing us. Ethical challenge perturbs our dormant reflection regarding problem construction.

As the Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida has taught us, it is in problem construction, when we are no longer so sure what the problem is, in this un-decidable moment of suspension of the given argumentative oppositions that already define the problem, that we are ethical. Of course, once a new problem is constructed, we will be trapped again in subsequent problem solving discussion and may well miss the point in the process. However, we must never neutralise the problem and keep ongoing the process of facing un-decidability.

It is in facing the challenge of problem construction, a very anxious moment indeed, that we are able to deconstruct the identifications that make our identity stagnant and deaf to the richness of actuality. Only in moments of un-decidability do we critically interpret our own “story” and expose its contingency and arbitrariness. Ethical, and in turn, legal challenges come always as a surplus that is not yet conceptualized, as a residual imperative that demands us to face, and demolish the walls of the given.The ethical challenge does not stop, does not have walls and boundaries. No government and Parliaments are immune from that challenge however democratically elected. Nor should international bodies such as the UN and their pronouncements be immune from such challenge. Dare I say, even what we take as a justified representation of the very ethical standards we rely upon is constantly subjected to interpretative challenges.

If you’ve read all above thats it, you can take five now or continue to test your comprehension read full article:The Ethical and Legal Challenges Facing Palestine, by Oren Ben-Dor*.

*Dr. Oren Ben-Dor grew up in Israel. He teaches Legal and Political Philosophy at the School of Law Southampton University, United Kingdom.