| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: strict conformity with the spirit of his world. For the doctrine of
pessimism had already been preached. It underlay the whole Brahman
philosophy, and everybody believed it implicitly. Already the East
looked at this life as an evil, and had affirmed for the individual
spirit extinction to be happier than existence. The wish for an end
to the ego, the hope to be eventually nothing, Gautama accepted for
a truism as undeniably as the Brahmans did. What he pronounced
false was the Brahman prospectus of the way to reach this desirable
impersonal state. Their road, be said, could not possibly land the
traveller where it professed, since it began wrong, and ended
nowhere. The way, he asserted, is within a man. He has but to
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: would break off the treaty, to her great personal shame and
dishonour. She therefore resolved that, if Lucy continued
passive, the marriage should take place upon the day that had
been previously fixed, trusting that a change of place, of
situation, and of character would operate a more speedy and
effectual cure upon the unsettled spirits of her daughter than
could be attained by the slow measures which the medical men
recommended. Sir William Ashton's views of family
aggrandisement, and his desire to strengthen himself against the
measures of the Marquis of A----, readily induced him to
acquiesce in what he could not have perhaps resisted if willing
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: late.
We buried poor Nombe decently in her own little hut where she
used to practise her incantations. Zikali and his people wished
apparently to throw her to the vultures for some secret reason
that had to do with their superstitions. But Heda, who, now that
Nombe was dead, developed a great affection for her not unmixed
with a certain amount of compunction for which really she had no
cause, withstood him to his face and insisted upon a decent
interment. So she was laid to earth still plastered with the
white pigment and wrapped in the bloodstained feather robe. I
may add that on the following morning one of Zikali's servants
|
