A company of a grammarian's pupils are bearing their master's coffin for burial at the summit of a mountain. One of them tells his story and dilates on the praises of the departed scholar. They cannot fittingly bury their master on the plain with the common folk. He shall rest on a peak whose height... Sign in to see full entry.
I have often been accused of provocation and I admit that I love to provoke - provoke you into an inquiry, not into faith. The real search into the mysteries of life come not so much through faith as from skepticism. When something becomes an experience, you don't require faith to believe it; you... Sign in to see full entry.
Three nuns were returning to their monastery in the evening through a lonely path. They heard footsteps behind them and a man's voice shouting at them to stop. The nuns were sure that the person following them had bad intent. The nuns whispered to each other, and one nun veered off to the left, and... Sign in to see full entry.
It is difficult to translate the Sanskrit word ajnana (ignorance) for a lack of its English equivalent, hence the ambivalence.To the Western way of thinking the word 'ignorance' conveys a state of stupor or a "blanking out of the mind". But it is not so. All knowledge is of the mind - accumulation... Sign in to see full entry.
Byzantium (that is, Constantinople or Istambul) was the capital of Eastern Roman Empire, an empire of Hellenic Christian culture which lasted from the third century A.D. to the fifteenth. Yeats knew of the Byzantine civilization mainly through reading. In the poem Sailing to Byzantium, Byzantium... Sign in to see full entry.
Buddha, his childhood name was Gautama, was born in 536 BC. His father, the king of Kapilavastu, India (now known as Nepal) wished to learn the future of the boy, and an assemblage of seven great astrologers of the age sat to discuss mutually and make a correct foretelling. Six of them raised their... Sign in to see full entry.
In one of the stories by Leo Tolstoy 'What Men Live By', an angel is sent to the earth by God to learn some important lessons in life, one of which is: "What is not given to man?" Through his experiences on earth, the angel learns that 'It is not given to man to know his own needs'. Explaining the... Sign in to see full entry.
Three sons were born to a king as triplets. When it came to choose a successor the king was in difficulty because everything about them was so similar. So he went to a wise old man who suggested that he give his sons a fixed amount with which they were to fill their houses with something that the... Sign in to see full entry.
Wordsworth believed that it was to Nature that he owed most in the formation of his mind and character. The Prelude is actually his autobiography in verse, and Books I and II deals with Nature as nurse, guide and guardian to Wordsworth in his early years. Wordsworth points to three stages in their... Sign in to see full entry.
A despondent fellow once went to a city's most famous psychiatrist for advice. "You have acute melancholia," the analyst informed him. "The circus is in town for the week. Go to it. It may pep you up and give you some laughs". "Your advice is worthless," mourned the fellow. "I am the top clown... Sign in to see full entry.