thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
to remember that it was Rs 22 for a double room, an amazing price for Bombay even in those days. A couple of streets away there was a place that served cheap lunches to local people who were working in the area. It was made of mud and there were no chairs or tables. However, you could get a great lunch there chapattis, dhal, and vegetables for Rs 1.40. I can't remember the exchange rate in those days. I think it may have been about twelve rupees to the dollar. That should give you some idea of the prices. Maharaj would always ask where you were staying when you first went to see him. If you said 'Poornima' he knew you were either short of funds or being very careful about spending them. He clearly approved of people who didn't waste money, and who got good bargains when they went out shopping. He had spent his whole life being a businessman who knew the value of a rupee, and it irked him considerably to see foreigners wasting money or getting cheated. One morning when I was there visitors were offering flowers and sweets to him. People would bring flowers to decorate the portraits for the Guru puja that took place every morning, and some people brought sweets that would be distributed as prasad at the end of it. That day, three foreign women were standing in front of him with flowers that had stems, which meant that they were hoping he would put them in the vases that were kept near him. He asked the first one how much she had paid, and when she told him he was shocked. He got angry with her, said that she had been cheated, and refused to accept the flowers. The second woman suffered the same fate. The third woman's flowers were accepted because she had done a little bargaining and had got the price down to a reasonable amount. Devotion didn't seem to be a factor when it came to getting your flowers accepted. The best way to get your flowers in his vase was to bargain ferociously for them and get a price that would satisfy him. Now the subject of flowers has come up, I have to digress a little mention the bhajan and the Guru puja that took place between the meditation and the question-and-answer session. It was the only occasion when Maharaj would allow people to garland him. After he had been garlanded, he would stand in the middle of the room, banging cymbals to the tune of the bhajan that was being sung. Mostly, his eyes would be closed. At the beginning he would start off with small finger cymbals one or two inches in diameter. As the bhajan hotted up he would move on to bigger and bigger cymbals which would be passed on to him by an attendant. The biggest pair were almost the size of garbage can lids. They were huge and the noise they made was ear-splitting. You could hear them several streets away. When
Maharaj moved on to this biggest set of cymbals, he would already be wearing so many garlands, they would be sticking out in front of him, sometimes to a distance of about two feet. It wasn't possible to bang the biggest cymbals without utterly destroying the garlands. Maharaj would bang away with his eyes closed, and every time the cymbals came together petals would fly off in all directions. By the time it was all over, the floor would be covered with fragments of the flowers he had shattered and sprayed all over the room. It was a beautiful sight and I never got tired of watching him smash his cymbals together and spray flowers in all directions. Let's get back to his parsimonious habits. I stayed at the Poornima on a visit I made in 1979. I was spending two weeks with Maharaj before flying back to England to visit my family for the first time since I had come to India in 1976. My mother had sent me a ticket, feeling, possibly with some reason, that if she didn't pay for my trip, I might never come home again. I had accumulated orders for copies of I am That from friends in England. The British price was about ten times the price of the Bombay price, so all the Maharaj devotees I knew in England had put in orders for cheap copies. I appeared in Maharaj's room with this huge pile of books and asked him to sign them all for the people who were waiting for them in England. He looked at me very suspiciously and said, 'I thought you had no money. How could you afford to buy all these books?' I explained: 'They are not for me. They are for people in England who don't want to pay the British price. They have sent me money to bring them Indian copies.' When I told him the retail price in London he was truly horrified. 'Take as many as you can! No one should pay that price for a book!' He pulled out his pen and happily autographed all the books. Harriet: Did you carry on going to see him until he passed away? Were you there in the final days? David: No, and I didn't want to be. I didn't want sit there watching him slowly die. I wanted to keep my memory of a man who was a perpetual dynamo, an amazingly vital centre of force and energy. I knew that he didn't regard himself as the body, but I didn't want to be there, watching the cancer slowly reduce him to an invalid. I can't remember the date of my last visit, but I do remember that he was still talking without much trouble. I haven't explained how Maharaj kept the traffic flowing through his room. You need to know about this to understand what comes after. Because of the restricted space available, Maharaj would generally only allow people to spend about two weeks with him. New people were coming every day and there simply
wasn't enough room for everyone to sit on the floor. When Maharaj saw that it was getting congested, he would pick out a few of the people who had been there the longest and ask them to leave, saying, 'You can leave now. New people have come and there is no room.' The selected people would then have to leave, but if they were still interested, they could come back after another couple of months and put in another two weeks there. That was the system that many of us followed: two weeks there followed by two or more months somewhere else. Usually, when I arrived, I would tell him that I had a return ticket to Madras in two weeks' time. He trusted me to leave on the appointed day. On my final visit, though, I have a memory that I was trying to stay few days longer than I had originally intended. I do remember that for a couple of days I would sit in a back corner, hoping he wouldn't notice me, because he knew that my time was up. One morning I couldn't get to my corner seat in time because something delayed me. I found myself sitting quite close to him, effectively blocking his view of some of the people who were immediately behind me. I should mention that I am 6'2 and that my back is disproportionately long for my size. I have short legs and a long back, which means that when I sit on the floor with a straight back the top of my head is the same distance from the floor as someone who is about 6'4. Of course, on that particular morning Maharaj wanted to have a conversation with the person who was sitting immediately behind me, someone who was a lot shorter than I was. I tried unsuccessfully to squirm out of the way, and Maharaj tried to peer round me but it was no use because there wasn't any extra floor space for me to manoeuvre in. We were packed in like sardines in a can. Eventually Maharaj looked at me and said, with some irritation, 'Why are you still sitting here taking up floor space? I can't see the people behind you. You are full of the knowledge. You are so full of the knowledge it is coming out of your ears and making a mess on my carpet. You can go now and make space for other people.' That was the last time he spoke to me. I took his irascible remarks to be a blessing and a benediction, a sort of graduation certificate. I left that day and never went back. Over the next few months I kept receiving reports about his failing health but I never felt tempted to go back one more time. That is, until he suddenly appeared in one of my dreams telling me to come and see him. It was such a forceful dream, it woke me up. I lay there in my bed, wondering if it really was him telling me
to come, or whether it was just my subconscious manifesting a secret wish to go and see him one more time. I fell asleep without resolving the issue one way or the other. A few minutes later he reappeared in my next dream, glaring at me: 'I just told you to come. Why didn't you believe me?' I woke up and knew that he wanted me to come. Maybe he wanted one last chance to assault my stubborn ego. I didn't go and I can't give any satisfactory excuses for my refusal to respond to this dream. This was just before he passed away in 1981. I could give any number of reasons, but none of them rings true to me or satisfies me. When I study my memory of this event, I can't find any excuses that will pass muster in my conscience. I didn't go, and to this day I can't remember what stopped me. Harriet: Did the dreams continue? Did he ask you to come again? David: No, it was only on that one night. However, after he did die I started to have vivid and regular dreams in which I was visiting him in his room. I would go up the steps and find him there, sitting in his usual seat, and giving out teachings in his usual way. My dream logic would try to work out why he was still there, still teaching. In the dream one part of me knew that he had died, but another part was witnessing him still alive, still teaching in his usual corner. In these dreams I would sometimes come to the conclusion that he hadn't really died at all, that he had faked his death, waited until all the crowds had left, and then gone back to teaching with a small group of people who were somehow in on the game. My dream brain invented all kinds of stories such as these, but even in the dreams they never really convinced me. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. These dreams went on all through the 1980s and well into the 1990s. The last dream in this sequence was different. I found Maharaj teaching a small group of people inside the main room of the Ramanasramam dispensary. This was unusual because I had never before dreamed of him anywhere outside his room. Also, the people were different. They were not the Indian faces who populated his room in the earlier dreams. They were all foreigners, all people I knew well. This time there was no doubt, no confusion about why or whether he was still alive. I looked at Maharaj, turned to my friends who were sitting on the floor with him and said, with a great feeling of exaltation, 'See! I told you! He's alive! He didn't die at all! He's still alive!' The dream ended and I have never dreamt of him again. Harriet: What did you make of all this? What did it all mean for you? David: I don't
need Freud on this one. He didn't die because he was never born. He is alive as the Self within me. He can't die. He is inside, biding his time, waiting for the words he planted there to destroy me and my little, circumscribed world. I know that he hasn't given up on me, and I also know that one day he will prevail. (Extraido de http://davidgodman.org/interviews/nis1.shtml)
QUANDO SUA MENTE ESTA MAIS DESEQUILIBRADA E QUE VOCE MAIS PRECISA MEDITAR: MEDITANDO COM ALAN WALLACE PUBLICADO EM 4 DE FEVEREIRO DE 2014 POR NANDO PEREIRADurante um retiro realizado em Viamao (RS) na segunda metade de janeiro deste ano, o professor budista americano Alan Wallace deu instrucoes preciosas sobre a pratica da meditacao shamatha, um dos tipos de meditacao budista para o apaziguamento da mente (geralmente atraves da atencao na respiracao), e parte dele foi traduzido e transcrito porJeanne Pilli, que esteve no retiro e mantem o site Equilibrando.Me ela gentilmente permitiu a reproducao do trecho aqui. PhD em Estudos Religiosos na Stanford University (EUA), fundador da Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies (EUA) e autor de livros como A Revolucao da Atencao e Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness, Alan Wallace traz uma abordagem sempre muito clara e detalhada sobre o contato e o trabalho sobre a mente, e esse trecho transmite isso. Na essencia da mensagem, a importancia de meditar quando mais a mente precisa, ou seja, no desequilibrio.Segue abaixo o trecho das instrucoes, com agradecimentos ao professor Alan Wallace e a Jeanne Pilli.//////////Para avaliarmos se estamos fazendo a pratica de shamatha corretamente, ha sempre duas coisas a serem consideradas: o que a sua mente esta trazendo para voce e o que voce esta trazendo para a sua mente. Sao duas coisas bem diferentes.Algumas vezes durante a pratica surgirao muitos pensamentos, nao ha como controlar, nao ha como escolher que isso seja diferente. Entao voce simplesmente repousa: muitos pensamentos vem, muitos pensamentos vao. Voce nao esta fazendo nada de errado; e assim que as coisas sao. Mas se quando surgirem muitos pensamentos voce for carregado por eles, ai sim: isso e distracao, agitacao.Outras vezes, sua mente estara bem quieta, com poucos pensamentos. E isso tambem nao quer dizer que voce esteja fazendo a pratica corretamente. Sua mente esta simplesmente quieta. Neste caso, a mente esta trazendo pouco pra voce.O que nos devemos trazer para a pratica, seja la como estiver a nossa mente, e a habilidade de nao sermos carregados pelos pensamentos, de permitir que a nossa consciencia permaneca em repouso, iluminando o nosso objeto de meditacao, seja a respiracao, seja o espaco da mente e eventos mentais, seja a propria consciencia.Portanto, e importante avaliar a sua pratica em termos do que voce esta trazendo para a pratica e nao com base no que a mente esta trazendo pra voce.Essa distincao e muito importante. Na nossa vida, alguns dias serao piores que outros. Havera dias muito conturbados, com muito trabalho, muitas preocupacoes, dias ruins. A mente estara bastante irritada, toda a nossa energia estara perturbada. Pode ser que voce se sente para praticar e dois minutos depois desista: Esqueca! Hoje nao vai dar pra meditar! E entao se levante, va ver TV, ou va para a internet. Isso e como estar muito doente e pensar: Ah... estou tao doente! Estou muito doente pra tomar remedio! Vou deixar pra quando estiver me sentindo melhor!Nesses dias em que a sua mente estiver verdadeiramente uma confusao, voce pode simplesmente se deitar
na sua cama, com um travesseiro macio sob a sua cabeca e soltar completamente a tensao do corpo, a cada expiracao, relaxar completamente, deixar o corpo respirar sem esforco, em seu ritmo natural. Relaxe ate o finalzinho da expiracao e nesse momento deixe a mente bem quieta, sem nenhum bla, bla, bla. E entao permita que o ar entre novamente, sem puxa-lo, em total quietude.Faca isso por 24 minutos. A mente que voce trouxe para a pratica pode estar completamente perturbada, atirando pensamentos, pedras, lama, tudo o que e tipo de coisa em voce. Nao ha como controlar isso! E o que a mente esta trazendo para voce. Mas o que voce esta trazendo para a sua mente e tao doce, tao suave, tao tranquilizador, que apos 24 minutos sua mente estara mais calma, quieta, equilibrada. E ai sim, no final da sessao avalie: esta foi uma boa sessao ou nao? Talvez uma sessao dificil em termos do que a mente trouxe para voce mas uma boa sessao em termos do que voce trouxe para a mente.E nos momentos em que a sua mente esta mais desequilibrada que voce mais precisa meditar.~ Alan Wallace, Retiro sobre os Seis Bardos em A Essencia Vajra, Viamao, 23 de janeiro de 2014
Em seu ultimo livro, Souci de soi, conscience du monde [Cuidado de si, consciencia do mundo], o sociologo Raphael Lioger defende que a nossa epoca e o cenario de uma transformacao radical do religioso, na qual o sagrado invade todas as esferas da vida social.A reportagem e de Antoine Dhulster, publicada na revista Temoignage Chretien, 23-06-2012. A traducao e de Moises Sbardelotto.Eis a entrevista.Em seu ultimo livro, voce explica que a nossa epoca assiste ao surgimento de uma nova religiao: o individuo-globalismo. Voce nao vai um pouco longe demais ao defini-la como uma religiao?Tudo depende do que se entende por religiao. Para mim, e o ambito das atividades humanas em que se desenvolvem as instituicoes especializadas na producao e na difusao de mitos. Os mitos sao os grandes relatos implicitos, impensados, aos quais todos nos aderimos. Eles estruturam a nossa existencia e lhe dao um sentido. E isso, muito alem da esfera "religiosa" em sentido estrito.Por exemplo, no mundo cristao, a crenca nao se detem nas portas das igrejas. Ela esta difundida em toda a sociedade, ate mesmo nas atividades cotidianas. Eu acredito que o nosso mundo desenvolvido, ou pos-industrial, esta submetido a uma nova tensao mitica, a um novo grande relato. Nesse novo marco, o individuo busca a sua realizacao, a resposta as suas perguntas metafisicas, em um processo que inclui preocupacoes globais: a ecologia, a paz mundial etc. A tensao entre essas duas dimensoes individual e global e o que chamo individuo-globalismo.Em que se baseia essa espiritualidade?Em primeiro lugar, em uma visao moderna do ser humano, radicalmente diferente daquela que dominou durante seculos. Na antiguidade grega, pensava-se o ser humano como uma pessoa que adquiria sua dignidade na participacao na vida da polis. Depois, dependendo dos contextos e das epocas, na vida da trib o, da familia e da nacao. Na epoca moderna, nasce o individuo. O conceito de individuo e a ideia segundo a qual o ser humano se volta a sua subjetividade, que e abissal, e que se torna, ela mesma, uma especie de transcendencia. Segundo elemento: a nossa visao de mundo. Tambem a partir da epoca moderna, se desenvolve uma visao do nosso universo como um conjunto infinito.Ate esse momento, a propria ideia de infinito era muito negativa. Os gregos pensavam o cosmos como algo perfeito, porque finito, determinado. Em pensadores como Kant, no fim do seculo XVIII, ve-se aparecer, portanto, essa dupla nocao de individuo, que conquista a sua subjetividade em um mundo que se pensa ja infinito. A lei moral esta nele, como subjetividade abissal. E, por outro lado, ha o universo infinito, o ceu estrelado acima dele. No seculo XIX, particularmente com o movimento romantico, esse esquema de pensamento supera o quadro da razao e conquista o campo da emocao. Depois, alcanca os nossos modos de viver. Antes marginalmente, em comunidades como a de Monte Verita, na Suica, depois de forma espetacular com a Nova Era nos anos 1960 e com as nossas preocupacoes misticas e ecologicas hoje.Eu tento mostrar que ha uma continuidade entre esse longo processo intelectual a subjetividade do sujeito e
cenario da experiencia espiritual que os cidadaos das sociedades pos-industriais buscam viver. Eles mesmos sa o obrigados a imaginar o que aqueles turistas esperam esteticamente para fazer com que vivam uma experiencia. Senao, perdem a forca de atracao economica. Portanto, ha uma forte pressao ideologica, em que aqueles que jogam esse jogo de papeis (o que eu chamo de "hiperbeduinos" ou "hiperzulus") acabam se afastando do "nucleo" da sua cultura para corresponder as expectativas dos cidadaos das sociedades pos-industriais. Desse ponto de vista, a "valorizacao" do outro, na realidade, contribui para a sua destruicao identitaria. Em escala planetaria, e a uniformizacao. As unicas diferencas que restam sao esteticas, permitem viajar e viver a aventura para progredir interiormente e encontrar a si mesmos.Essa mudanca lhe parece irreversivel?Sim. Ha precisamente a formacao de um fundo mitico comum a toda a humanidade, que corresponde a uma situacao politica, economica, em que todos ja tomaram consciencia da condicao dos outros. Portanto, nao e possivel voltar atras. Quais serao as consequencias dessa revolucao em algumas decadas? Poderao ser positivas ou negativas. Pode-se ate imaginar um integralismo individuo-globalista: seitas de loucos poderiam querer destruir a humanidade ou instaurar uma ditadura anti-humanista por causa das devastacoes causadas pelos seres humanos ao meio ambiente. E possivel. Assim como e possivel um mundo em que a realizacao pessoal se tornara a norma dominante. O roteiro ainda esta para ser escrito.
Por: Colin WilsonColin WilsonOutro dia, no pub local, um estranho me perguntou quantos livros eu tinha escrito. Quando respondi 55, ele pareceu surpreso, e me perguntou se havia algum tema constante que aparecia em todos eles.Deitado de olhos abertos no meio da noite, eu decidi considerar aquilo como um desafio, e tentar resumir o tema basico de toda a minha obra.O resultado - a seguir - e o mais perto que eu consigo fazer em duas mil palavras.Ha cerca de 25 anos, recebi uma carta de um professor americano de psicologia chamado Abraham Maslow. O que ele tinha para dizer me surpreendeu com algo totalmente original. Maslow disse que, como psicologo, ele estava cansado de estudar pessoas doentes, porque elas nunca falavam de outra coisa que nao fosse sua doenca. Entao ele perguntou para os amigos: Quem e a pessoa mais saudavel que voce conhece? E reuniu essas pessoas saudaveis e comecou a fazer perguntas. Ele descobriu imediatamente algo que ninguem tinha percebido antes: que essas pessoas extremamente saudaveis tinham, com frequencia razoavel, o que Maslow chamou de experiencias de pico, momentos de felicidade borbulhante e arrebatadora.Um exemplo tipico. Uma jovem mae estava observando o marido e os filhos tomando o cafe da manha. De repente, um raio de sol entrou pela janela. Ela pensou: Meu Deus, eu tenho muita sorte! - e entrou na experiencia de pico. Quando Maslow falou sobre as experiencias de pico com seus alunos, ele fez outra descoberta importante. Eles comecaram a se lembrar de suas proprias experiencias de pico no passado, que ja estavam quase esquecidas. Ele percebeu que esse era o problema: todos temos experiencias de pico, mas nos as desconsideramos e logo as esquecemos. Mas, no momento em que seus alunos comecaram a se lembrar das experiencias de pico, eles comecaram a ter novas experiencias de pico.Falar e pensar a respeito delas parecia coloca-los na disposicao certa para viver novas experiencias de pico.Esse relato me entusiasmou muito. Porque era obvio que, se a ciencia conseguisse descobrir como induzir as experiencias de pico, a maior parte de nossos piores problemas sociais simplesmente desapareceria.Mesmo naquela epoca, no comeco dos anos 1960, era obvio que a maior parte dos nossos problemas era causada pelo tedio e pela frustracao, e que o alcoolismo, o abuso de drogas, a violencia no futebol, o vandalismo e os crimes sexuais nao passavam de uma busca desajeitada por essas experiencias de pico.Se pudessemos aprender o segredo da experiencia de pico, estariamos muito mais proximos da Utopia moderna de H.G. Wells.Mas quando eu coloquei a questao para Maslow, sua resposta me desapontou. Ele disse que nao achava possivel ter experiencias de pico a vontade. Elas surgiam quando queriam, e nao havia muito o que fazer a respeito. O comentario me pareceu oposto ao otimismo de suas ideias. Eu fiquei determinado a experimentar e tentar descobrir como induzir experiencias de pico.A primeira pista foi o fato de os alunos de Maslow vivenciarem mais experiencias de pico logo que comecaram a lembrar e falar sobre experiencias passadas. O motivo era obvio. Pensar e falar sobre