Hanging Loose

....There are objections to every course in life and action, and the practical wisdom infers an indifferency, from omnipresence of objection. The whole frame of things preaches indifferency. Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere. Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question. Nature hates peeping, and our mothers speak her very sense when they say, "Children, eat your victuals, and say no more of it." To fill the hour — that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval. We live amid surfaces and the true art of life is to skate well on them. Under the oldest mouldiest conventions a man of native force prospers just as well as in the newest world, and that by skill of handling and treatment. He can take hold anywhere. Life itself is a mixture of power and form, and will not bear the least excess of either. To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom....
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Experience," Essays First and Second Series, Second Series, p. 252.

....Then the new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside; it has no inside.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ibid., p. 254.


....A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he give so much as a leg or a finger they will drown him. They wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices. Charity would be wasted on this poor waiting on the symptoms. A wise and hardy physician will say, Come out of that, as the first condition of advice.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ibid., p. 265.


     "Therefore then, O Sariputra, owing to a Bodhisattva's indifference to any kind of personal attainment he dwells as one who has relied solely on the perfection of wisdom. In the absence of an objective support to his thought [in the absence of any thought-coverings (or: "impediments" to thought)] he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, in the end sustained by Nirvana. All those who appear as Buddhas in the three periods of time — through having relied on the perfection of wisdom they fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect enlightenment.
     "Therefore one should know the Prajñaparamita as the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth — for what could go wrong? In the
Prajñaparamita has this spell been uttered. [This spell is joined (or devoted) to the Prajñaparamita .] It runs like this: GONE, GONE, GONE BEYOND, GONE ALTOGETHER BEYOND, O WHAT AN AWAKENING, ALL HAIL! [GATE GATE PARAGATE, PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA] It is thus, O Sariputra, that a Bodhisattva should train himself in the course of the deep perfection of wisdom."
— From The "Heart of Perfect Wisdom" In 25 Lines, in The Short Prajñaparamita Texts, Edward Conze (tr.), p. 141.

     Thereupon the Lord at the time taught the Perfection of Wisdom as follows: "The Bodhhisattva, the great being, should have an even thought, he should have a friendly thought towards all beings, he should be thankful, he should be grateful, and he should desist in his heart from all evil."
     And this Heart of Perfect Wisdom should be repeatedly recited ["You all listen well! I now for your sake teach this mantra of the holy prajñaparamita in a Few Words which is the Mother of the Buddhas."]: HOMAGE TO THE TRIPLE JEWEL! HOMAGE TO SAKYAMUNI, THE TATHAGAT, THE ARHAT, THE FULLY ENLIGHTENED ONE! i.e. OM MUNE MUNE, MAHAMUNAYE SVAHA. [Om, O the Sage, O the Sage! Homage to the great Sage! All Hail!]
— From The Perfection of Wisdom in a Few Words, in The Short Prajñaparamita Texts, Edward Conze (tr.), p. 145.