Ist das Kunst? – Wirklichkeit schaffen

„When we dote upon the perfections and beauties of some one creature, we do not love that too much, but other things too little. (…) We are all prone to love, but the art lies in managing our love: to make it truly amiable and proportionable.“
(T. Traherne, „Centuries of Meditation“)

„Und wenns der Lachesis gebricht des Leines,
Macht sich die Seele frei und trägt von hinnen
Im Keim Derbmenschliches und Göttlichreines.
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Gedächtnis, Wille und Verstand gewinnen
An Kraft und Schärfe jetzt in höherm Grade,
Indes die niedern Kräfte stumm verrinnen;
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Und ohne Rast an eines der Gestade
Fällt wunderbar von selbst die Seele nieder,
Und dort erst wird sie kundig ihrer Pfade.
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Hält sie die Grenze eines Ortes wieder,
Dann strahlt die Bildungskraft neu um sie her
Nach Art und Weise der lebendigen Glieder.
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Denn wie am Horizont, vom Regen schwer,
Im Sonnenwiderschein sich wölbt der Bogen,
Der siebenfarbge, durch der Lüfte Meer,
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So nimmt des Äthers nachbarliches Wogen
Die Form an, die auf sie die Seele prägt
Durch innre Kraft, dort, wo sie hingezogen.
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Und wie den Brandherd, den man weiterträgt,
Die Einzelflamme folgt, wird nie sich trennen
Die Form vom Geist, der sie in Bande schlägt.
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Drum wird die Seele sichtbar – und wir nennen
Sie Schatten – und so bilden sich in ihr
Organe, die das Auge kann erkennen.
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Und darum sprechen, darum lachen wir,
Daher entstehen die Tränen hier und klagen,
Die du wohl hörtest längs dem Berge hier.
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Und je nachdem wir Lust und Unlust tragen,
Abscheu und Sehnsucht, formt sich unser Schatten –
Nun wirst du deines Zweifels dich entschlagen.“
(Dante, „Die göttliche Komödie“)

„Wenn wir uns als die alleinigen Erben des Weltalls fühlen, wenn‚ das Meer in unseren Adern fließt … und die Sterne unsere Schmuckstücke sind‘, wenn alle Dinge als unendlich und heilig wahrgenommen werden, welchen Beweggrund können wir da haben, der Begehrlichkeit oder der Selbstüberhöhung nachzugeben, nach Macht zu streben oder der Sucht nach Vergnügungen zu erliegen?“
(A. Huxley, „Die Pforten der Wahrnehmung“)

„If man’s heart be a rock of stone, these things ought to be engraven in it with a pen of a diamond, and every letter to be filled up with gold that it may eternally shine in Him and before Him! Wherever we are living, whatever we are doing, these things ought always to be felt within him. Above all trades, above all occupations this is most sublime. This is the greatest of all affairs. Whatever else we do, it is only in order to this end that we may live conveniently to enjoy the world, and God within it; which is the sovereign employment including and crowning all: the celestial life of a glorious creature, without which all other estates are servile and impertinent.“
(T. Traherne, „Centuries of Meditation“)

„(…) and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he’s likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his Quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others too because the Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn’t think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going.
My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all. God, I don’t want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There’s a place for them but they’ve got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved.“
(R.M. Pirsig, „Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“)

„Davon kann nicht die Rede sein, daß man im Stande der Gnade quietistisch sich alles Wirkens entledigen dürfe; vielmehr, sind wir durch die Wiedergeburt Gottes Sohn geworden, so wird auch all unser Leben göttlich, und das uns eingepflanzte göttliche Prinzip wirkt sich in Werken der Liebe und Gerechtigkeit aus.“
(Meister Eckhart; In: „Die Bhagavad Gita“)

„Das Wort Gottesdienst sollte verlegt, und nicht mehr vom Kirchengehen, sondern bloß von guten Handlungen gebraucht werden.“
(Schopenhauer, „Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit“)

„I think when this concept of peace of mind is introduced and made central to the act of technical work, a fusion of classic and romantic quality can take place at a basic level within a practical working context. I’ve said you can actually see this fusion in skilled mechanics and machinists of a certain sort, and you can see it in the work they do. To say that they are not artists is to misunderstand the nature of art. They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they’re doing, but more than this – there’s a kind of inner peace of mind that isn’t contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there’s no leader and no follower. (…)
One says of him that he is ’interested’ in what he’s doing, that he’s ’involved’ in his work. What produces this involvement is, at the cutting edge of consciousness, an absence of any sense of separateness of subject and object. ’Being with it’, ’being a natural’, ’taking hold’ – there are a lot of – idiomatic expressions for what I mean by this absence of subject-object duality, (…)
What I’m talking about here in motorcycle maintenance is ’just fixing,’ in which the idea of a duality of self and object doesn’t dominate one’s consciousness. When one isn’t dominated by feelings of separateness from what he’s working on, then one can be said to ’care’ about what he’s doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one’s doing. (…)
So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all. (…)
I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. (…) Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.“
(R.M. Pirsig, „Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“)

„(…); but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! – it seems to say – there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realise will be the transformation of genius into practical power.“
(R.W. Emerson, „Essays and other Writings“)

„And this Love is your true self when you are in act what you are in power: the great Daemon of the world, the End of all things, the desire of Angels and of all nations.“
(T. Traherne, „Centuries of Meditation“)