I'm a mathematician, basically. What I do is look around for problems where I can find useful applications for mathematics. All I do, really, is the math, and other people have the ideas.
I went to a very academic school that actually - when I got to the point of wanting to pursue acting, they just had no idea how to do that, because all of their contacts were very academic.
Indeed, whenever a new idea is developed, as for example ballooning, warfare immediately takes possession.
To read the report of a discussion in which arguments for and against are presented, in which a subject has been covered from different points of view, with new ideas advanced - this is far more instructive than to read a brief account of the resolution passed on the matter.
There's a literal track: who says what to whom, what are people wearing, etcetera. And there's the abstract track: what ideas are suggested by the literal. And the real movie takes place in the relationship between the literal and the abstract.
Ideas and art are the possibility of an answer tomorrow.
The trouble is that you won't get the scientists to agree on a course of action. It is almost instinctive in science to accept contrary views, because disagreeing gives you guidance to experimental tests of ideas - your own and those offered by others...
God is Godless. God is an idea that we have, another construct, a prop, which doesn't suggest that God doesn't exist. God is existence. But your idea of God and existence are two different things at the moment.
Feel eternity around you. Not as an idea, not as a nice intellectualization, but to really feel it; not to be some religious fanatic who's strung out on some weird idea of salvation to the exclusion of common sense.
The idea is that the savior came, and simply by the coming of the savior you're saved. Nonsense, human beings wish! If that were the case, we'd live in a perfect world.
We aren't anything in particular. There is no self. There are only ideas and states of mind.
The ego is a false perception of self. It's an idea, a transitory identity that we've picked up.
The Self is infinite. The Self is eternal. You are that Self. Beyond words, thoughts, ideas, forms and belief systems. There is nothing but the Self.
Naturally, to follow dharma, we have to find out what it is. You have to struggle with it. The answer will not come easily. You will be swayed by your desires, conditioning, and those around you who have ideas about what you should do, what is proper, what is improper.
It's up to you to avail yourself to knowledge. Knowledge doesn't need you. The idea of a compassionate God was formulated, obviously, by someone who didn't want to do any work.
It's a good idea to be in the physical presence of the enlightened teacher because it's not physical. You can hear the ocean from quite a ways away, but if you're standing right in front of it, it's easier.
What is perfection anyway in the physical? It is an idea we have. When it doesn't happen we get all bent out of shape and frustrated and angry and then unhappy, we take it out on everybody.
You will have to put aside some things in your life, habits, ideas, ways of seeing life. You will have to learn new things, and then new things and then new things - forever.
It's easy to tell the evolutionary level of a group of beings, or an individual being, simply by examining their behavior, their art, their psychology, their thought forms, their lingual structures, their history, their present moment, their future ideas, and the quality of their emotions.
Everything is stuck together. People are stuck together. They can't change. Ideas are stuck together - they're irrevocable. We think that the end of the universe is as far as the telescope can see.
To go within doesn't mean to become enraptured with who you are, or to become enraptured with ideas of who you are.
It is better to agree with a "wrong" idea than to press a "right" idea on other people.
You have no idea of how many people have control of your life. Make lists of people you trust and love and constantly examine the people in your life.
You should always feel, no matter how many times you've meditated before, that this is your first meditation. You have no idea what will happen or what won't happen.
After meditation, it is a good idea to bow and offer your meditation to god, to that stillness and perfection that is existence. Feel that you are giving your meditation away.
