Dia de los Muertos, Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Invite a kind of death, rebirth, renewal,
change. In much of our dying we live.
In much of death we renew ourselves.
Are we not a part
of something else, that also needs to
live, to die, to change?
Statue of Shiva at the Ganga Aarti ceremony in Haridwar, Uttarakhand.
God is a humanly created symbol
of life.
He has been known in many images,
and ardently worshiped as a
creator of life.
Many philosophies of living
have been formed
in his name.
There have been many interpretations
of this universal image–
some wild and distorted,
but the symbol of God
is valid.
It is born out of necessity
and is representative
of many extraordinary
experiences and desires.
We must have the courage
not to overly distort it
for we are very much a part
of this God…
A high peak of being is to be able to
rediscover and to return to one’s
inviolate self: removed from all
that one has absorbed or inhibited,
cleansed, so to speak, and purified;
all things set off.
There need be no denial
or renunciation of anything vital,
beautiful, true or rewarding; only
a return to a full possession of
one’s self, completely free of
all things.
Each man’s life is an edifice
of realities to which he
adds or subtracts from.
All of these
realities exist in the
framework of many values:
imaginary and real, definite
and indefinite, that he has
bestowed on them according
to his experiences, training,
environment, discipline,
education or need.
First you learn from yourself
and then you learn from
others… if necessary.
In human life it
is usually the other way
around. First you learn
from others and then,
hopefully, through the
whole maze of mislearning,
you try to finally learn
from yourself… if it is
still possible.
When a way of
life you have been schooled
in, or a state you have
lived in, falls apart, you
are on your own–very much
on your own.
And your lifetime
could almost be over
by the time you realize
how it should have been
in the first place.
Far Beyond Words 