Showing posts with label Mohandas Ghandi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mohandas Ghandi. Show all posts

30 November 2008

What is the difference?


Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi




To which groups are our identities opposed? Who do we place outside of ourselves so that we may draw a boundary around ourselves and know that boundary to be safe? There is no mystery in ourselves; we know what we are not. I know what I am not--I am not you. At least I am not you. There are five castes.

There are five senses. Everything you perceive must come through one of these or it is a fantasy. There are seven colors in the rainbow. A wave of light stretches from red to violet in six violent jerks as if it is falling down the stairs.




An evicted Roma family (Budapest, 2000)

- Tell me more about the village where your grandmother lives.
- It is a very nice village, 120 kilometers from here. There is a lake on the edge of a forest.
- How many people live there?
- It is a small village, 3,000 people. And no gypsies!




I have been thinking ...
I have been thinking of the difference between water
and the waves on it. Rising,
water's still water, falling back,
it is water, will you give me a hint
how to tell them apart?

Because someone has made up the word
"wave," do I have to distinguish it
from water?

There is a Secret One inside us;
the planets in all the galaxies
pass through his hands like beads.

That is a string of beads one should look at with luminous eyes.

-Kabir, 13th Century