Monday, October 10, 2011
Steve Jobs at Stanford
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Jiddu Krishnamurti - Speech during the Dissolution of the Order of the Star of the
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If an organisation be created for this purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned Truth. So that is another reason why I have decided, as I happen to be the Head of the Order, to dissolve it.
This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. Then you will naturally ask me why I go the world over, continually speaking. I will tell you for what reason I do this; not because I desire a following, not because I desire a special group of special disciples. (How men love to be different from their fellow-men, however ridiculous, absurd and trivial their distinctions, may be! I do not want to encourage that absurdity.) I have no disciples, no apostles, either on earth or in the realm of spirituality.
Nor is it the lure of money, nor the desire to live a comfortable life, which attracts me. If I wanted to lead a comfortable life I would not come to a Camp or live in a damp country! I am speaking frankly because I want this settled once and for all. I do not want these childish discussion year after year.
A newspaper reporter, who interviewed me, considered it a magnificent act to dissolve an organisation in which there were thousands and thousands of members. To him it was a great act because he said: "What will you do afterwards, how will you live? You will have no following, people will no longer listen to you." If there are only five people who will listen, who will live, who have their faces turned towards eternity, it will be sufficient. Of what use is it to have thousands who do not understand, who are fully embalmed in prejudice, who do not want the new, but would rather translate the new to suit their own sterile, stagnant selves?...
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You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else.... when I say look within yourselves for the enlightenment, for the glory, for the purification, and for the incorruptibility of the self, not one of you is willing to do it. There may be a few, but very, very few. So why have an organisation?...
No man from outside can make you free; nor can organised worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organisation, nor throwing yourselves into work, make you free. You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an alter and worship it. But that is what you are doing when organisations become your chief concern. "How many members are there in it?" That is the first question I am asked by all newspaper reporters. "How many followers have you? By their number we shall judge whether what you say is true or false." I do not know how many there are. I am not concerned with that. If there were even one man who had been set free, that were enough....
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
J. K. Rowling at Harvard
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An
exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really
succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose
value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Fit of laughter :-D
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Food for thought...
- "Where horrendous evils are concerned, not only do we not know God's actual reason for permitting them; we cannot even conceive of any plausible candidate sort of reason consistent with worthwhile lives for human participants in them."-Marilyn McCord Adams
- Can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it? An omnipotent being must be able to create such a rock, but doing so negates the omnipotence.- George Carlin
- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting – Aristotle
- The unexamined life is not worth living.
- Socrates - The question is not who would let me, its who would stop me. - Ayn Rand
- If someone feels that they had never made a mistake in their life, then it means they had never tried a new thing in their life.-Einstein
- A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.-George Bernard Shaw
- Don’t go about saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. - Mark Twain
- An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. - Gandhi
- There are two great days in a person’s life:- The day we are born and the day we discover why we are born - Winston Churchill
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
कणा - कुसुमाग्रज
Friday, April 1, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Thursday, January 27, 2011
तकदीर
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Love - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Troy
I present one of the best movies I have seen in the form of its script. Here's coming 1o best dialogues in the movie - Troy!
1. Achilles’ entry - an elegant way of portraying the arrogant mindset! What follows is the first duel scene of the movie. This scene surely promises a solid 2 hours 30 minutes full of awe and perfection!
Achilles: I was having a good dream, very good dream…
Messenger boy: King Agamemnon sent me. He needs you…
Achilles: I’ll speak to your King in the morning.
Messenger boy: My Lord, it is morning! They are waiting for you. (A long pause) Are the stories about you true? They say your mother is an immortal goddess. They say you can’t be killed!
Achilles: I wouldn’t be bothering with the shield then, would I?
Messenger boy: The Thessalonian you are fighting, he is the biggest man I have ever seen! I wouldn’t want to fight him.
Achilles: That’s why no one will remember your name!
2. Discussion between Hector and Paris when Hector comes to know that Helen (Queen of Sparta) is on the ship! Trojan’s are returning to their land after the signing of Peace Treaty between Troy and Sparta.
Hector: You fool; do you know what you have done? Do you know how many years our father worked for peace?
Paris: I love her!
Hector: Ahh! It’s all a game to you, isn’t it? You roam from town to town betting merchant’s wives and temple maids, and you think you know something about love? What about your father’s love? You spat on him when you brought her on the ship! What about the love for your country? You’d let Troy burn for this woman? I won’t let you start a war for her!
Paris: May I speak? What you are saying is true! I have wronged you, I have wronged our father! If you want to take Helen back to Sparta, so be it. But I go with her!
Hector: To Sparta, they’ll kill you!
Paris: Then I’ll die fighting.
Hector: Oh well, that sounds heroic to you, doesn’t it? To die fighting, tell me little brother – have you ever killed a man?
Paris: No.
Hector: Have you seen a man die in a combat?
Paris: No.
Hector: I have killed men, and I have heard them dying and I have watched them dying and there is nothing glorious about it! Nothing poetic! You say you want to die for love, but you know nothing about dying and you know nothing about love!
Paris: All the same! I go with her. I won’t ask you to fight my war.
Hector: (A helpless pause) You already have!
3. King Odysseus convincing Achilles to fight for the Greeks.
Achilles: Are you here with Agamemnon’s bidding?
Odysseus: We need to talk.
Achilles: I will not fight for him.
Odysseus: I am not asking you to fight for him. I am asking you to fight for the Greeks.
Achilles: Why? Are the Greeks tiered of fighting each other?
Odysseus: For now.
Achilles: The Trojan’s never harmed me!
Odysseus: They insulted Greece!
Achilles: They insulted one Greek, a man who couldn’t hold on to his wife, what business is that of mine?
Odysseus: Your business is war my friend!
Achilles: Is it? The man has no honor.
Odysseus: Let Achilles fight for honor, let Agamemnon fight for power and let the God’s decide which man to glorify! ----- This war will never be forgotten, nor will the heroes who are fighting it!
4. First confrontation of Prince Hector and Achilles. Achilles’ army has just conquered a Trojan Temple.
Achilles: You are very brave or very stupid to come after me alone! You must be Hector. Do you know who I am?
Hector: These priests weren’t armed! (Swinging his sword) Fight me!
Achilles: (A pause with a sarcastic smile) Why kill you now Prince of Troy, with no one here to see you fall?
Hector: Why did you come here?
Achilles: They will be talking about this war for thousand years!
Hector: In a thousand years, the dust from our bones would be gone.
Achilles: Yes Prince, but our names will remain. Go home Prince, drink some wine, and make love to your wife. Tomorrow we’ll have our war!
Hector: You speak of war, is it for the game? But how many wives waited those give their husbands would never see them again?
Achilles: Perhaps you brother might comfort them. I hear he is good at charming other men’s wives!
5. Conversation between King Agamemnon and Achilles after capturing the Trojan beach.
Achilles: Apparently you won some great victory!
Agamemnon: Ah! Perhaps you didn’t notice, the Trojan beach belonged to Priam in the morning, it belongs to Agamemnon in the afternoon.
Achilles: You can have the beach; I didn’t come here for the sand.
Agamemnon: No, you came here because you want your name to last through the edges! A great victory was won today. But that victory is not yours. Kings did not kneel to Achilles. Kings did not pay homage to Achilles.
Achilles: Perhaps the Kings were far behind in the sea. The soldiers won the battle!
Agamemnon: History remembers Kings, not soldiers. Tomorrow we’ll batter down the gates of Troy. I’ll build monuments of victory on every islands of Greece. I’ll carve Agamemnon in the stone!
Achilles: Be careful King of Kings, first you need the victory.
6. Conversation between Priam and Paris after Paris commits to fight against King Menelaus (Helen’s husband)
Paris: Father, I am sorry for the pain I have caused you.
Priam: Do you love her?
Paris: You are a great King, because you love your country so much. Every plaid of grass, every grain of sand, every rock in the river; you love all of Troy. That is the way I love Helen.
Priam: I have fought many wars in my time. Some were for the land, some for power and some for glory. I suppose fighting for love makes more sense than all the rest. But I won’t be the one fighting. (Hands him the Sword of Troy)
7. Greek Kings and Princes of Troy face to face before the first battle!
Agamemnon: I see you not hiding behind your high walls. Valiant of you, ill-advised but valiant!
Hector: You come here uninvited. Go back to your ships and go home.
Agamemnon: We’ve come to far Prince Hector.
Menelaus: Prince, what Prince? What son of a King would accept a man’s hospitality, eat his food, drink his wine, embrace him in friendship and then steal his wife in the middle of the night?
Paris: The sun was shining when your wife left you!
Menelaus: (Pointing his sword at Paris) She is up there watching, isn’t she? Good. I want her to watch you die.
Agamemnon: Not yet brother. (Lowering Menelaus’ sword) Look around you Hector. I brought all the warriors of Greece to your shores; you can still save Troy young Prince. I have two wishes, if you grant them; no more of your people need to die. First – you must give Helen back to my brother; second – Troy must submit to my command, to fight for me whenever I call.
Hector: You want me to look upon your army and tremble? When I see them, I see fifty thousand men brought here to fight for one man’s greed!
Agamemnon: Careful boy. My mercy has limits.
Hector: And I have seen the limits of your mercy! And I tell you now, no son of Troy will ever submit to a foreign ruler!
Agamemnon: Then every son of Troy shall die. (Starts going back to his chariot)
Paris: There is another way. I love Helen. I won’t give her up and neither will you. So let us fight our own battle. The winner takes Helen home. And let that be the end of it.
Agamemnon: A brave offer, but not enough.
8. Briseis the Royalty from Trojan Kingdom held as a captive is just been saved by Achilles from Greek warriors. This conversation suggests that Achilles might be an atheist!
Briseis: I have known men like you my whole life.
Achilles: No you haven’t!
Briseis: You think you are so different than the thousand others? All those who understand nothing but war? Peace confuses them.
Achilles: And you hate these soldiers?
Briseis: I pity them.
Achilles: Trojan soldiers died trying to protect you. Perhaps they deserve more than your pity.
Briseis: Why did you choose this life?
Achilles: What life?
Briseis: To be a great warrior?
Achilles: I chose nothing. I was born and this is what I am. And you? Why did you choose to live a guard? Think you will find the romance one sided?
Briseis: Do you enjoy provoking me?
Achilles: You dedicated your life to the Gods. Zeus - God of Thunder, Athena - Goddess of Wisdom; you serve them?
Briseis: Yes of course.
Achilles: And Aris - God of War, the blanket he wears, with the men he has killed for the skin?
Briseis: All the Gods are to be feared and respected.
Achilles: I’ll tell you a secret. Something they don’t teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us! They envy us because we are mortal; because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed! You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
9. Achilles filled with rage knowing that Hector killed his cousin – Patroclus. One of the best duels ever featured follows this powerful dialogue!
Achilles: HECTOR… (Keeps on shouting his name till Hector comes in front of him)
Hector: I have seen this moment in my dreams. I’ll make a pact with you. With the Gods’ eye witnesses; let us pledge that the winner will allow the looser all the proper funeral rituals.
Achilles: There are no pacts between lions and men. (Takes his head gear off) Now you know who you are fighting.
Hector: (Takes off his head gear) I thought it was you I was fighting yesterday. And I wish it had been you! But I gave the dead boy the honor he deserved…
Achilles: You gave him the honor of your sword. You won’t have eyes tonight; you won’t have ears or a tongue. You will wander the underworld blind, deaf and dumb and all the dead will know - this is Hector, the fool who thought he killed Achilles!
10. Priam in Achilles’ marquee for convincing him to give back the body of Hector for the funeral. Achilles had dragged Hector’s body behind his chariot after defeating him.
(Priam enters Achilles’ marquee, kneels down on his knees and kisses Achilles’ hands)
Achilles: Who are you?
Priam: I have endured what no one on earth has endured before. I kissed the hands of the man who killed my son!
Achilles: Priam? (Priam nods) How did you get in here?
Priam: I know my own country better than the Greeks I think.
Achilles: You are a brave man! (Helps Priam get up and sit) I could have your head on a spit in a blink of an eye.
Priam: You really think death frightens me now? I watched my eldest son die. Watched you drag his body behind your chariot. Give him back to me. He deserves the honor of a proper burial, you know that! Give him to me.
Achilles: He killed my cousin!
Priam: He thought he was you! How many cousins have you killed? How many sons and fathers and brothers and husbands, how many brave Achilles? I knew your father. He died before his time. But he was lucky not to live long enough to see his son fall. You have taken everything from me. My eldest son, heir to my thorn, defender of my kingdom; I cannot change what happened it is the will of the Gods. But give me this small mercy. I loved my boy from the moment he opened his eyes till the moment you closed them. Let me wash his body, let me say the prayers; let me place two coins on his eyes for the boatman.
Achilles: If I let you walk out of here, if I let you take him; it doesn’t change anything. You are still my enemy in the morning.
Priam: You are still my enemy tonight! But even enemies can show respect.
Achilles: I admire your courage! Meet me outside in a moment. (He wraps Hector’s body and mounts it on the Chariot for Priam) Your son was the best I fought. In my country the funeral games last for 12 days.
Priam: It is the same in my country.
Achilles: Then the Prince will have that honor. No Greek will attack Troy for 12 days. (Priam nods)… Go, no one will stop you. You have my word. You are a far better King than the one leading this army!
भगवानदास माहौर (स्मृतिदिन १२ मार्च १९७९)
में विद्रोही हूँ उत्पीड़क सत्ता को ललकार रहा हूँ खूब समझता हूँ में खुद ही अपनी मौत पुकार रहा हूँ मेरे शोणितकी लालीसे कुछ तो लाल धरा हो...
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