O Mendigo e Outros Contos, de Fernando Pessoa "The Beggar and Other Tales, by Fernando Pessoa"

O MENDIGO

-É artista? pintor? poeta? 

-Não; sou simplesmente um atónito.

Ergui a cabeça e olhei-o sem lhe responder.

-Para mim, continuou ele, o facto essencial e pasmoso das coisas é elas realmente serem. O facto de qualquer coisa ser é milagroso. O outro facto milagroso é estar eu aqui, a ter consciência que elas são. Gozo este horror com todas as formas da minha alma. Conheço bem que nem as coisas são o que parecem, nem eu o que me sinto ser. A natureza transcende-se a si própria. Eu sou muito mais do que sou. Se isto lhe parece um paradoxo, a culpa é do Universo, que é paradoxal. -A Natureza é espirito, porque é uma ideia minha. Mas é uma ideia minha de uma realidade de que essa ideia é uma ideia. Por mais ligeira que seja a vista, só vê o lado da realidade que está criado para ela.

...

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THE BEGGAR

-Are you an artist? painter? poet?

-No; I am just an bewildered.

I raised my head and looked at him without replying.

-For me, he continues, the essential and astounding fact of things is they really are. The fact that anything “is” is miraculous. The other miraculous fact is me being here, having conscience that they are. I enjoy this dread whit all the forms of my soul. I know well that not all the things are what they seem to be, nor me what I feel to be. The nature transcends it self. I’m much more than I am. If this seems to be a paradox, it is the fault of the Universe, which is paradoxical. -the Nature is spirit, because it’s my idea. But It’s my idea of a reality that that idea is an idea. No matter how much swift the view is, it only sees the side of reality that is created for it.
...

Being at ease with the mind

Most of us only know how to relax the mind by putting it dormant, or by sleep. Sleep is the most acknowledged way of relaxation.

Through meditation we relax by being at ease with the mind, and awaked.

We seat still and just let the things on the mind (body) be. By that way, standing still, relaxed, and by not taking any action we start to be at ease with our emotions and feelings. Most of our problems are because we repress everything, but in that moment of stillness we are safe, because we are not taking any action.

Because of that we start to acknowledged feelings, and we start to be at ease with them and with our selfs. Then, by being at ease and relax, real relaxation pops up.

Dying Before Death, by Ajahn Sumedho

http://www.amaravati.org/dhamma-books/anthology-vol-2-seeds-of-understanding/

(for me this text came with the revelation of the contemplation of not-knowing, when i contemplate the not-knowing my mind stops the endless speculation).

For those who practise the Dhamma, life is a time for contemplation and reflection on the way things are. Even the death of our loved ones is part of our contemplation. We recognize that having been born means that we’re going to separate from each other, that we’ll see the death of those we know and that we’ll all die eventually. So this involvement with life and death is Dhamma for us. It’s the way things are; there’s nothing wrong with it.

Our society refuses to accept and really contemplate death. We are so involved with life and trying to make everything nice during our lifetime that we tend to ignore the finale of life. So we’re totally unequipped for it. If you think of what the most important events in a human life are, you realize they are birth and death. Well, the idea of birth – of having babies – is dear to the hearts of people, but the idea of death is baffling. What happens when somebody dies? What does it mean?

The very perception of death leaves us in a state of not-knowing exactly what’s happened. What happened to that person we once perceived as being alive? Where did he go? Did he go anywhere, or is death just oblivion? Heaven, hell, oblivion – does anybody know?

What we can know is that we don’t know. We can know that we’re still alive, and we haven’t died yet, and we can know that we don’t know what happens when somebody dies. Now this may not seem like a lot, but it is very important, because most people fail to understand that they don’t know. Instead, some people will believe anything, they’ll settle for anything, any kind of speculation or creepy idea.

The way of meditation is the way to die before your body dies. It’s a way of dying before death and dying to death so that, poetically speaking, death is dead, rather than anything else. By ‘death’, I’m talking about that perception in the mind.

If the perception of death is taken personally, then we become frightened because we think we’re going to die. Our perception of being alive is based on the view that this body is mine and that I am this body – so the perception of death is frightening. We live in a world of anxiety and fear over the death of our bodies, separation from what we love, or the mystery of what happens when we die.

The keeper of flocks

Alberto Caeiro Poetry, heteronym of Fernando Pessoa


There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.

What do I think about the world?
I have no idea what I think about the world!
If I get sick I’ll think about that stuff.

What idea do I have about things?
What opinion do I have about cause and effect?
What have I meditated on God and the soul
And on the creation of the world?
I don’t know. For me thinking about that stuff is shutting my eyes
And not thinking. It’s closing the curtains
(But my window doesn’t have curtains).

The mystery of things? I have no idea what mystery is!
The only mystery is there being someone who thinks about mystery.
When you’re in the sun and shut your eyes,
You start not knowing what the sun is
And you think a lot of things full of heat.
But you open your eyes and look at the sun
And you can’t think about anything anymore,
Because the sun’s light is worth more than the thoughts
Of all philosophers and all poets.
The light of the sun doesn’t know what it’s doing
So it’s never wrong and it’s common and good.

Metaphysics? What metaphysics do those trees have?
Of being green and bushy and having branches
And of giving fruit in their own time, which doesn’t make us think,
To us, who don’t know how to pay attention to them.
But what better metaphysics than theirs,
Which is not knowing what they live for
Not even knowing they don’t know?
“Inner constitution of things...”
“Inner meaning of the Universe...”
All that stuff is false, all that stuff means nothing.
It’s incredible that someone could think about things that way.
It’s like thinking reasons and purposes
When morning starts shining, and by the trees over there
A vague lustrous gold is driving the darkness away.

Thinking about the inner meaning of things
Is doing too much, like thinking about health when you’re healthy,
Or bringing a cup to a spring.

The only inner meaning of things
Is that they have no inner meaning at all.

Emptiness is everywere

Emptiness is everywhere. It surround us. It’s on the things, inside things, outside the things, in-between things. It’s around us. It’s inside us.

Emptiness is not metaphysical, we all can sense it, intuit it. That frustrating feeling that we have, that sense of fear that we have. And because of that we all try, all the time, to fulfill that emptiness. Doing things, acquiring things. Forgetting and denying to ourselves that emptiness cannot be fulfilled.

The only way to fulfill emptiness it’s through unfulfillment.

Only by not trying to fulfill emptiness we will get what really emptiness is. (and lose de fear of it)

But the unfulfillment path it’s a fucking hard path!

Emptiness is everywhere and is in nowhere.

Maybe, only then, thought that path, we will realize what that is.

O vazio está em todo o lado. Envolve-nos. Está nas coisas, dentro das coisas, fora das coisas, por entre as coisas. À nossa volta. Dentro de nós.

O vazio não é metafisico, todos nós o sentimos, o intuímos. Aquele sentimento de frustração que nós temos, aquela sensação de medo que temos. Por causa disso todos nós tentamos, a toda a hora, preencher esse vazio. Fazendo coisas, adquirindo coisas. Esquecendo-nos e negando a nós mesmos que o vazio não pode ser preenchido.

Apenas podemos preencher o vazio através do não-preenchimento.

Apenas através da tentativa de não preencher o vazio podemos compreender o que o vazio realmente é. (e perder o medo dele)

Mas o caminho do não-preenchimento é um caminho fudido!

O vazio está em todo o lado e não está em lado nenhum.

Talvez aí, através desse caminho, realizemos o real significado disso.

O guardador de rebanhos

ALBERTO CAEIRO (um granda prof de meditação 😆)

O meu olhar é nítido como um girassol.
Tenho o costume de andar pelas estradas
Olhando para a direita e para a esquerda,
E de vez em quando olhando para trás...
E o que vejo a cada momento
É aquilo que nunca antes eu tinha visto,
E eu sei dar por isso muito bem...
Sei ter o pasmo essencial
Que tem uma criança se, ao nascer,
Reparasse que nascera deveras...
Sinto-me nascido a cada momento
Para a eterna novidade do mundo...

Creio no mundo como num malmequer,
Porque o vejo. Mas não penso nele
Porque pensar é não compreender...

O Mundo não se fez para pensarmos nele
(Pensar é estar doente dos olhos)
Mas para olharmos para ele e estarmos de acordo...

Eu não tenho filosofia: tenho sentidos...
Se falo na Natureza não é porque saiba o que ela é,

Mas porque a amo, e amo-a por isso,
Porque quem ama nunca sabe o que ama
Nem sabe por que ama, nem o que é amar...

Amar é a eterna inocência,
E a única inocência não pensar...

II

When I look, I see clear as a sunflower.
I’m always walking the roads
Looking right and left,
And sometimes looking behind...
And what I see every second
Is something I’ve never seen before,
And I know how to do this very well...
I know how to have the essential astonishment
That a child would have if it could really see
It was being born when it was being born...
I feel myself being born in each moment,
In the eternal newness of the world...

I believe in the world like I believe in a marigold,
Because I see it. But I don’t think about it
Because to think is to not understand...
The world wasn’t made for us to think about
(To think is to be sick in the eyes)
But for us to see and agree with...

I don’t have a philosophy: I have senses...
If I talk about Nature, it’s not because I know what it is,
But because I love it, and that’s why I love it,
Because when you love you never know what you love,
Or why you love, or what love is...

Loving is eternal innocence,
And the only innocence is not thinking...

Tudo é movimento

Tudo é movimento.

Sinto a energia em mim a tentar-me despertar, a incitar-me a despertar.

Infelizmente os hábitos mentais bloqueiam essa energia. O ego boqueia essa energia, porque o ego pensa que tudo tem inicio nele, que tudo é a sua causa, porque ele quer ser a causa dessa energia.

Mas ela não tem causa egoica. A sua causa é muito mais subtil, ela é só fruto de todas as causas e de todas as circunstâncias: corpo, sentidos, ambiente. Não é somente egoica, e ego egoísta bloqueia o despertar, querendo ser ele a causa única da energia.

Que o lírio nasça no vosso coração, e o seu bálsamo se derrame nele, apaziguando a dor.

(Não sei porquê o lírio, mas foi o que me veio à mente durante a meditação.