| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: sight of Smith's lunatic digging in Swaffer's kitch-
en garden. They had found out he could use a
spade. He dug barefooted.
"His black hair flowed over his shoulders. I
suppose it was Swaffer who had given him the
striped old cotton shirt; but he wore still the na-
tional brown cloth trousers (in which he had been
washed ashore) fitting to the leg almost like
tights; was belted with a broad leathern belt stud-
ded with little brass discs; and had never yet ven-
tured into the village. The land he looked upon
Amy Foster |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: empty.
The animals crowded round the van. "Good-bye, Boxer!" they chorused,
"good-bye!"
"Fools! Fools!" shouted Benjamin, prancing round them and stamping the
earth with his small hoofs. "Fools! Do you not see what is written on the
side of that van?"
That gave the animals pause, and there was a hush. Muriel began to spell
out the words. But Benjamin pushed her aside and in the midst of a deadly
silence he read:
"'Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer
in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied.' Do you not understand what that
Animal Farm |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them
from presuming to act (on it). When there is this abstinence from
action, good order is universal.
4. 1. The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our
employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness. How
deep and unfathomable it is, as if it were the Honoured Ancestor of
all things!
2. We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of
things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into
agreement with the obscurity of others. How pure and still the Tao
is, as if it would ever so continue!
|
