| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: LO, NOW, MY GUEST
LO, now, my guest, if aught amiss were said,
Forgive it and dismiss it from your head.
For me, for you, for all, to close the date,
Pass now the ev'ning sponge across the slate;
And to that spirit of forgiveness keep
Which is the parent and the child of sleep.
SO LIVE, SO LOVE, SO USE THAT FRAGILE HOUR
SO live, so love, so use that fragile hour,
That when the dark hand of the shining power
Shall one from other, wife or husband, take,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: And my first words were prompted by just that troubled incertitude.
"What's the matter?" I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to the face
upturned exactly under mine.
"Cramp," it answered, no louder. Then slightly anxious, "I say,
no need to call anyone."
"I was not going to," I said.
"Are you alone on deck?"
"Yes."
I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go the ladder
to swim away beyond my ken--mysterious as he came. But, for the moment,
this being appearing as if he had risen from the bottom of the sea
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: a flaw.
2. In loving the people and ruling the state, cannot he proceed
without any (purpose of) action? In the opening and shutting of his
gates of heaven, cannot he do so as a female bird? While his
intelligence reaches in every direction, cannot he (appear to) be
without knowledge?
3. (The Tao) produces (all things) and nourishes them; it produces
them and does not claim them as its own; it does all, and yet does not
boast of it; it presides over all, and yet does not control them.
This is what is called 'The mysterious Quality' (of the Tao).
11. The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty
|
