There is no way that a map can predict all pitfalls & problems or all pleasant surprises. A map is a metaphor that can point to but not capture the actual journey itself. A map is seen through; the journey is lived through.
Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Out here by myself in 2016 at a place almost totally inaccessible to normal people; motorcycle stuck on that hill for several hours. There’s no water! Nowadays I stay home, look at the picture.
He turned to Stephen and said:
—Seriously, Dedalus. I’m stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money.
—That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national library today.
—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.”
Ulysses by James Joyce
GO, and eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, because it is now that God favors your works. Enjoy life with the wife you love, all the days of the vain life granted you under the sun. This is your lot in life for the toil of your labors under the sun.
Anything you can turn your hand to, do with what power you have; for there will be no work, no planning, no knowledge, no wisdom in Sheol where you are going.
Ecclesiastes 9:7-10
Here every step, forward or backward, leads into danger. Escape is out of the question.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Is it worthwhile in any individual case to look for the meaning of a dream, supposing that dreams have any meaning at all and that this meaning can be proved?
The psyche is the most baffling phenomenon with which the scientific mind has ever had to deal. Although we must assume that all psychic phenomena are somehow, in the broadest sense, causally dependent, remember that causality is no more than a statistical truth.
Heaven hovers over. It has lofty qualities, a divine atmosphere. It’s a spiritual shelter of continual security, a state above humanity’s most exalted hopes & desires. But the celestial firmament is not a place of rest. Even the angels work. They have their God-given assignments.
THE WORD (1958) by Edna Sarah Beardsley (re: heaven)
The world of the materialist is a “bubble world”. Its inhabitants live inside a consumer-driven, status-obsessed bubble. Possession is key. Those who can see beyond the walls of the bubble are deemed mad & deluded. A gimpse of the truth will burst the fragile walls.
–The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith
Life is an experiment: we’re all testing hypotheses, learning from outcomes, and iterating as we go. Every choice is a variable, every experience a data point.
–Grok
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. What do you see?–Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.
But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster–tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.
How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive.
Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice.
No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.
And there they stand–miles of them–leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues–north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite.
Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
