Hermann Hesse - Happiness
If luck you chase, you have not grown
enough for happiness to stay,
not even if you get your way.
If, what you lost, you still bemoan,
and grasp at tasks, and dash and dart,
you have not known true peace of heart.
But if no wishes are your own,
and you don’t try to win the game,
and Lady Luck is just a name,
then tides of life won’t reach your breast
and all your strife
and all your soul will rest.
we’re all here…
'cause we’re not all there
…
Be clear like a mirror
reflecting nothing.
Be clean of pictures and the worry
that comes with images.
Gaze into what is not ashamed
or afraid of any truth.
Contain all human faces in your own
without any judgement of them.
Be pure emptiness.
What is inside that? you ask.
Silence is all I can say.
…
Rumi
“She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
Of her life, and weaves them gratefully
Into a single cloth –
It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
And clears it for a different celebration.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
Few minds are spacious; few even have an empty place in them or can offer vacant point. Almost all have narrow capacities and are filled by some knowledge that blocks them up. What a torture to talk to filled heads, that allow nothing from the outside to enter them! A good mind, in order to enjoy itself and allow itself to enjoy others, always keeps itself larger then its own thoughts. And in order to do this these thoughts must be given a pliant form, must be easily folded and unfolded, so that they are capable , finally, of maintaining a natural flexibility.
All those short-sighted minds see clearly within their little ideas and see nothing in those of others; they are like those bad eyes that see from close range what is absure, and cannot perceive what is clear from afar. Night minds, minds of darkness.
Joubert
A summary of AN3.65 in one verse:
purāṇamityeva na sādhu sarvaṃ
na cāpi kāvyaṃ navamityavadyam.
santaḥ parīkṣyānyatarad bhajante
mūḍhaḥ para-pratyaya-neya-buddhiḥ.
[Kālidāsa in Mālavikāgnimitram]
Splitting the Sandhi and meaning of the above verse:
purāṇam iti eva na sādhu sarvaṃ: Not everything is good just because it is old.
na ca api kāvyaṃ navam iti avadyam: nor is a new poem blameworthy (or bad) just because it is not from a bygone classic.
santaḥ parīkṣya anyatarat bhajante: The wise personally examine both carefully and accept whichever the better one is.
mūḍhaḥ para-pratyaya-neya-buddhiḥ: while a fool allows their mind to be led by other people’s opinions.
The verse is often used to advocate for critical thinking and discernment, teaching that true wisdom requires evaluating things on their actual merit rather than simply judging them by their age, novelty, or what others tell you to think.
“Just because you talk to yourself in your head, doesn’t mean that you think, only that you speak”
I saw that on a sticker someone was giving out at the 29c3 conference in Hamburg in December 2012. For what it’s worth.
Once upon a time there was a man who strayed, from his own country, into the world known as the Land of Fools.
He soon saw a number of people flying in terror from a field where they had been trying to reap wheat. ‘There is a monster in that field,’ they told him. He looked, and saw that it was a water-melon.
He offered to kill the ‘monster’ for them. When he had cut the melon from its stalk, he took a slice and began to eat it. The people became even more terrified of him than they had been of the melon. They drove him away with pitchforks, crying: ‘He will kill us next, unless we get rid of him.’
It so happened that at another time another man also strayed into the Land of Fools, and the same thing started to happen to him. But, instead of offering to help them with the ‘monster’, he agreed with them that it must be dangerous, and by tiptoeing away from it with them he gained their confidence. He spent a long time with them in their houses until he could teach them, little by little, the basic facts which would enable them not only to lose their fear of melons, but even to cultivate them themselves.
The water melon hunters - Idries shah way of the sufis
“Why Is Wet Not Dry? from “The Wisdom of the Idiots” - Idries Shah
FOR THOUSANDS OF years before he was known to people at large, Khidr traveled the earth looking for those whom he could teach.
When he found suitable students, he gave them truths and useful arts. But as often as he introduced new learning, it was appropriated and misused.
People cared only about the application of ability and laws, and not about understanding in depth, so knowledge could not develop as a whole.
So one day Khidr decided to apply a different means of learning. He made many things into their opposites. He made, for instance, what used to be wet into dry, and he made dry into wet.
People soon became used to this, and simply adjusted themselves to regarding wet as dry and dry as wet.
Having reversed an enormous number of things, Khidr will come back one day to show which is which again.
Until he does that, only a few will be able to benefit from Khidr’s work. Those who do not are those who like to say: “I knew that already,” when they did not.”
"People cared only about the application of ability and laws” reminds me Bhante Sujato some talks on anapana (to not instrumentalise meditation) or of Hannah Arendt “The Human Condition” talking about Elon Musk & Generative AI in the year 1957…
wait… “huh?” 
Advice
By Langston Hughes
Folks, I’m telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean -
so get yourself
a little loving
in between.
“I’m not bad…I’m just drawn that way.” - Jessica Rabbit - “Who framed Roger Rabbit”
Maybe I should clarify. Thoughts on perception, conditioning and self.
“The world is a vampire / set to drain.”
Smashing Pumpkins, “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”
Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage 
“And am I born to die
To lay this body down
And as my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown”
Of course, I should have provided a sutta reference for:
“The world is a vampire…”
Try sn35.68:
Samiddhi, where there is the eye, sights, eye consciousness, and things knowable by eye consciousness, there is the world or what is known as the world. Where there is the ear… nose… tongue… body… Where there is the mind, ideas, mind consciousness, and things knowable by mind consciousness, there is the world or what is known as the world.
And then sn35.65 gives appropriate context:
Samiddhi, where there is the eye, sights, eye consciousness, and things knowable by eye consciousness, there is Māra or what is known as Māra.
Where there is the ear, sounds, ear consciousness, and things knowable by ear consciousness, there is Māra or what is known as Māra.
Where there is the nose, smells, nose consciousness, and things knowable by nose consciousness, there is Māra or what is known as Māra.
Where there is the tongue, tastes, tongue consciousness, and things knowable by tongue consciousness, there is Māra or what is known as Māra.
Where there is the body, touches, body consciousness, and things knowable by body consciousness, there is Māra or what is known as Māra.
Where there is the mind, ideas, mind consciousness, and things knowable by mind consciousness, there is Māra or what is known as Māra.
Where there is no eye, no sights, no eye consciousness, and no things knowable by eye consciousness, there is no Māra or what is known as Māra.
Where there is no ear … no nose … no tongue … no body …
Where there is no mind, no ideas, no mind consciousness, and no things knowable by mind consciousness, there is no Māra or what is known as Māra.
