“The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.”
― Alain de Botton, On Love
“I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality
There's a wonderfully elegant and provocative story lurking within Kundera's latest, but it's not that easily accessible. In a metafictional conceit that works, Kundera, at his health club in Paris, sees an aging woman make a graceful but casual gesture of farewell to her swimming instructor. The gesture is seminal for Kundera, who begins to create a part-fictional/part- real existence for this woman whom he calls Agnes. Agnes, still mourning the death of her beloved father, yearns for solitude--for a life alone in the mountains of Switzerland away from, but in contact with, husband Paul an daughter Brigitte. Agnes also has a younger sister, Laura, who, Agnes feels, follows too closely behind her--''She imitated, but at the same time she corrected.'' Laura, who perfectly identifies with her body (unlike Agnes), who sees her body ``as an old factory scheduled for demolition,'' has many affairs--including a torrid one with Bernard, a famous media personality, increasingly uncertain of his worth. As he relates Agnes's story, Kundera also meets with some of the characters involved and--in separate chapters in which he introduces literary greats like Goethe--explores the meaning of immortality, love, fame, and the contemporary preference for images (themes that preoccupy his fictional characters as well). The affair with Bernard ends, Laura is devastated, and Agnes retreats to Switzerland. Driving back, she is killed in a bizarre accident, and Laura, who had long yearned for brother-in-law Paul, finally catches up with her sister by marrying him. And Kundera, again at his club, now sees Paul perform ``that clumsy male imitation of a beautiful female gesture'' and disappear. Agnes and her gesture have inspired a remarkably tender and wise story about love and death, but the novelist Kundera, gifted and original, might consider a separation from the philosopher Kundera, an often banal and intrusive heavy.
Kundera's compact new novel, "Identity," is simple, almost farce-like. While vacationing at a hotel on the Normandy coast, Chantal, who has divorced her husband after the death of their 5-year-old child, is amused to note how all the men she sees "have daddified themselves." She reflects, "They aren't fathers, they're just daddies, which means: fathers without a father's authority." She's sure that if she tried to seduce one, he would hiss, "Leave me alone, I'm busy."
When she is joined at the hotel by her lover, Jean-Marc, who is four years younger, she complains to him half-jokingly, "Men don't turn to look at me anymore." Back at their Paris apartment, Jean-Marc, who has taken Chantal's complaint seriously, decides that because she is obviously feeling older, "what she needs is not a loving gaze but a flood of alien, crude, lustful looks settling on her with no good will, no discrimination, no tenderness or politeness." So he begins to send her anonymous letters describing himself as someone spying on her and finding her "beautiful, very beautiful."
Although the letters at first serve to inflame the couple's lovemaking, ultimately they backfire. Through a complex process, Chantal and Jean-Marc suffer what might be called the shameful objectification that Kundera has described elsewhere as a threat to all of us in the intrusive modern era. As a result, the two become estranged from each other, losing their identities as lovers.
Of course the novel is far richer than this summary suggests. The main action is repeated in miniature throughout, almost as if the story were constructed of modules. For instance, while Chantal waits for Jean-Marc to join her at the Normandy resort, she overhears two waitresses discussing a popular television program about people who have mysteriously disappeared called "Out of Sight," and she imagines the horror of losing Jean-Marc "that way someday." And several times in illogically different settings, she encounters a young tattooed man who seems to threaten her sexually.
 MILAN KUNDERA Credit: Fridik Rafusson/HarperFlamingo
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The novel is full of expressions of the paradoxical feelings so typical of Kundera's longer, more expansive novels like "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting," "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Immortality." For instance, one day while the two of them are eating lunch, Chantal is overcome by "a feeling of unbearable nostalgia for Jean-Marc." How could this happen in his presence? It can "if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more; if the beloved's death is, invisibly, already present." At this moment, she thinks of her dead child and is flooded with a wave of happiness, because it is his death that has made her presence at Jean-Marc's side "absolute." She does not disclose this reaction to Jean-Marc because she fears "he would see her as a monster."
"Identity" contains its share of Kundera lectures on the modern era. "How is friendship born?" Jean-Marc asks Chantal. "Certainly as an alliance against adversity," he continues. But "maybe there's no longer a vital need for such an alliance."
"There will always be enemies," rejoins Chantal.
"Yes, but they're invisible and anonymous. Bureaucracies, laws," responds Jean-Marc. "Friendship can no longer be proved by some exploit." He concludes, "We go through our lives without great perils, but also without friendship."
And as it progresses, the novel's action grows more and more surreal. The author even intervenes at the end, suggesting in his own voice that from a certain indeterminable point onward in the action, Chantal and Jean-Marc may simply be dreaming.
Yet despite all these earmarks of the typical Kundera novel, "Identity" remains the most compact and integrated of his recent fictions. In its brevity and unity of plot it surpasses even his previous book, "Slowness," which was his first to be written in French instead of Czech and was shorter by half than his best-known works.
Does this mean that he has renounced the polyphonic novel with scrambled narrative and multiple authorial voices that has typified his major work? Or is "Identity" going one step further than "Slowness," where he seemed to be suggesting that form is both more liberating than its opposite and finally inseparable from content?
One clue is that by writing in a form that goes against one's expectations, Kundera has forced the reader to take nothing at face value, but instead to see as tricks what in other writers' works one might view as the straightforward elements of a story. As a result, the meaning of "Identity" keeps collapsing into its opposite like an optical illusion that can be seen two different ways.
The effect is like a film clip that is shown at the ad agency where Chantal works. "On the screen is a behind in a horizontal position, good-looking, sexy, in close-up. A hand is caressing it tenderly, enjoying the skin of this naked, compliant body. Then the camera pulls back and we see the body entire, lying on a small bed: it is a baby, with its mother leaning over it. In the next sequence she lifts him up and her parted lips kiss the lax, wet, wide-open mouth of the nursling. At that instant the camera draws in, and the same kiss, by itself, in close-up, suddenly becomes a sensual love kiss." As with the lovers' perceptions of each other in this arresting, slightly frightening story of ideas in opposition, everything depends on a slippery notion of identity that can change from one paragraph to the next.
موضوع اصلی رمان بازمیگردد به دغدغه چاره ناپذیر و گاه آشکار و گاه پنهان انسان؛ بر زمان که بی ترحم و فرساینده میگذرد و آدمها را بی وقفه به سوی پیری و فنا و ناپدیدشدن میکشاند و پر نوسان دو شخصیت اصلی آن، زن و شوهری میانسال به نامهای شانتال و ژاک- مارک.
شانتال که به رغم فاصله گرفتن ناگزیر از توانمندی و طراوت جوانی و گذر از میانسالی کماکان و هنوز زیبا و تندرست و کم و بیش جذاب مانده، همراه با ژاک-مارک(شوهر دومش) با تکیه بر پیوندهای عاشقانه و همسویی فکری و تفاهم برآمده از روشنبینیشان، گفته و ناگفته میکوشند در تقابل با ناپایداری هستی و معناباختگی، به شیوه و پسند خود زندگی کنند. آن دو که کولهباری از تجربهها و حساسیتهای آدمهای اهل اندیشه را بر دوش دارند، بدون جلوهفروشیهای مثلاً روشنفکرانه یا کوچکترین حرف و حرکت نمایشی، خودآگاهانه و ناخودآگاهانه در مقابل ابتذال فراگیر «موقعیت» از «خود»شان مراقبت و دفاع میکنند.
«میلان کوندرا» در آغاز فصل اول رمان، هنگامی که شانتال به شهری کوچک در ساحل نورماندی سفر کرده و منتظر شوهرش ژان-مارک، در هتل مانده است، با اشارهای تلویحی کلید رمز مفهوم محوری «هویت» را به دست میدهد:
«ساعت ۷:۳۰ هم هنوز رستوران خالی بود. پشت میز نشست و منتطر شد تا کسی ببیندش. آن سوی سالن، نزدیک در آشپرخانه، دو پیشخدمت زن مشغول گپ زدن بودند. شانتال که از بلند کردن صدایش بیزار بود، بلند شد، عرض سالن را طی کرد و پشت آنها ایستاد.
اما هنوز غرق گفتوگوی خود بودند: «دارم بهت میگم، الآن ده سال شده، من میشناسمشون. وحشتناکه. هیچ سرنخی هم وجود نداره. هیچی؛ تو تلویزیون بود.» آن یکی گفت: «چه بلایی میتونه سرش اومده باشه؟» -«هیچ کی نمیتونه تصورشم بکنه. همینشم وحشتناکه.» -«یه قتل؟» -«اونا همه جارو گشتن.» -«یه آدم دزدی؟» -«ولی کی این کارو کرده؟ آخه چرا؟ اون که نه آدم مهمی بود، نه پولدار. اونا همهشونو تو تلویزیون نشون دادن. زنش و بچههاش. خیلی ناراحت کننده بود. میفهمی؟»
بعد متوجه شانتال شد: «شما هم اون برنامه تلویزیونی رو میبینین که درباره آدماییه که ناپدید میشن؟ اسمش هست «پنهان ز دیدهها.»» شانتال گفت: «بله.»
-«پس احتمالاً دیدین چه بلایی سر خانواده بوردیو اومد. اونا اهل اینجان.»
شانتال گفت: «بله؛ خیلی وحشتناکه!» و نمیدانست چهطور گفتوگو را از تراژدی به سمت مساله دنیوی غذا بچرخاند...
وقتی ژامبون را در بشقابش تکهتکه میکرد، نمیتوانست ذهنش را از فکری که پیشخدمت در سرش انداخته بود، دور کند...
شانتال تصور کرد که اگر روزی ژان-مارک را اینگونه از دست بدهد، نمیداند و حتی تصور هم نمیکند که باید چهکار بکند.»
این فراز نمایشی برآمده از تمهید هوشمندانه و خلاق میلان کوندراست و در حکم کنایهای برای هشدار به مخاطب و خواننده تا او را برای خواندن «هویت» و نزدیک شدن به عمق محور مفهومی آن که همانا ناپایداری هستی و زندگی در زیر سیطره مجهول زمان است؛ آماده کند.
شانتال پس از گذراندن شبی سخت و بد در اتاق هتل، وقتی برای پرسه زدن به ساحل میرود، از دیدگاه خود –بدون آنکه نویسنده تأکیدی داشته باشد- ابتذال و خود فریبی روزمرگی را درمییابد.
به فصل پنجم «هویت» میرسیم:
«در راهش به سوی ساحل با توریستهای آخر هفته روبهرو شد. هرگروه از آنها از الگویی مشابه تبعیت میکرد: مرد کالسکهای را هل میداد که کودکی داخلش بود و زن در کنارش راه میرفت. مرد حالتی خونسرد، خندان و کمی خجالتزده داشت و همهاش میخواست روی کودک خم شود، بینیاش را بگیرد و گریهاش را آرام کند؛ و زن حالتی بیتفاوت، غیر صمیمی، از خود راضی و حتی کینهتوز داشت. (که این آخری غیر قابل توضیح بود.)
این الگو در اشکال مختلفی پیش چشمان شانتال تکرار شد: مرد در کنار زن راه میرفت، کالسکه را هل میداد و کودک دیگرش را با وسیلهای که به خود بسته بود، بر پشتش حمل میکرد؛ مرد در کنار زن راه میرفت، کالسکه را هل میداد، یک بچه را روی کولش گذاشته بود و دیگری را با آغوش حمل کرد؛ مرد در کنار زن راه میرفت، کالسکه را هل نمیداد؛ ولی دست یکی از بچهها را گرفته بود و سه تای دیگر را بر پشت، روی شانههایش و در آغوش حمل میکرد. در نهایت، زنی بدون هیچ مردی، کالسکهای را هل میداد و این کار را با چنان نیرویی انجام میداد که در هیچ یک از مردان دیده نمیشد، طوری که شانتال در همان پیادهرو میرفت، در آخرین لحظه از جلویش به کناری پرید...»
شانتال در بخشی از یک شرکت تبلیغاتی مدیر است و این اوست که میباید و میتواند بنابر شناخت، تجربه و تخصصش کسانی را که برای کارکردن در شرکت مراجعه میکنند، انتخاب کند. در گفتوگو با ژان-مارک میگوید:
«این منم که تصمیم میگیرم اونا قبول یا رد بشن. بعضی از اونا تو نامههاشون، خودشونو با زبانی به روز، با رعایت همه قالبها، با استفاده از زبان فنی و با خوشبینی توصیف میکنن. قبل از اینکه اونا رو ببینم یا باهاشون حرف بزنم، میدونم که ازشون متنفرم. ولی میدونم که اونا کارشونو به بهترین نحو انجام میدن و وجدان کاری دارن.
از طرف دیگه، کسایی هم هستن که اگه تو دوره دیگهای به دنیا اومده بودن دنبال فلسفه، تاریخ هنر یا آموزش ادبیات فرانسوی میرفتن، ولی تو این روزگار برای اینکه چیز بهتری بخوان که به نومیدی منتهی نشه، تو شرکت ما دنبال کار میگردن. من میدونم که ته دلشون از کاری که دنبالشن متنفرن و بنابراین همجنس خودم هستن. حالا من باید تصمیم بگیرم...»
شانتال در پرسه زدنها و آمد و رفتنهایش توی پیادهروها میفهمد که دیگر مثل گذشتهها، مردان برنمیگردند تا او را نگاه کنند.
در فصل سیزدهم میخوانیم:
«همان روز اولی که همدیگر را ملاقات کردند، ژان-مارک نشانههایی از پیری را در چهره شانتال دیده بود(شانتال چهار سال از او بزرگتر بود) زیبایی شانتال که در آن موقع ژان-مارک را شوکه کرده بود، باعث نمیشد که او جوانتر از سنش به نظر بیاید.
احتمالاً کمی بعد هم ژان-مارک به او گفته بود که سنش زیباییاش را دو چندان کرده است. شانتال به او گفته بود: هر زنی با بیتوجهی یا توجهی که مردان به او نشان میدهند، سنش را میسنجد. عبارت شانتال در سر ژان-مارک پژواک میکرد و او داستان پیکر شانتال را تخیل میکرد. پیکری که در میان میلیونها پیکر دیگر گم شده بود، تا اینکه یک روز نگاهی بر آن نشست و آن را از انبوه تیره و تار بیرون کشید؛ بعد تعداد این نگاهها زیاد شد و پیکر ی را که تا پیش از این مانند مشعلی کوچک بود، درخشان کرد.
حالا زمان درخشندگی شکوه و افتخار فرا رسیده است؛ اما کمی بعد نگاهها کمتر میشوند و شعله کمفروغتر میشود، تا اینکه روزی میرسد که این بدن نیمه شفاف، و بعد شفاف، و بعد ناپیدا مانند دورهگرد بی وجود کوچکی در خیابان قدم بزند. در این سفری که از ناپیدایی اولیه شروع میشود و به ناپیدایی ثانویه ختم میشود...»
داستان حول محور «ناپایداری» و ناپدید شدن در ذهن شانتال و ژان-مارک ادامه پیدا میکند. عشق اما ادامه دارد و سوء تفاهمی ناشی از حسد ژان-مارک را به کاری احمقانه برمیانگیزد و رمان «هویت» با چرخشی ناگهانی، تحرکی در ژانر «وحشت» یا شبه وحشت پیدا میکند؛ اما پایان غیرمنتظره، در پرتو اندیشه، دیدگاه و خلاقیت کمنظیر میلان کوندرا، ما را به آغاز رمان و مفهوم محوری آن بازمی گرداند تا برای دوبارهخوانی «هویت» همت کنیم.
«میلان کوندرا» رماننویس اندیشمند و نوگرای معاصر به سال ۱۹۲۹ در شهر «برونو» کشور چک به دنیا آمد. این نویسنده از سال ۱۹۷۵ به فرانسه مهاجرت کرد. برخی رمانها و کتابهای ماندگار او همچون «جاودانگی»، «شوخی»، «بار هستی» و هنر رمان از این نویسنده به زبان فارسی برگردانده و چاپ و منتشر شده است.
http://farhangemrooz.com/news/27218/نگاهی-به-رمان-هویت-اثر-میلان-کوندرا
The Unbearable Lightness of Beingopens with a philosophical discussion of lightness versus heaviness. Kundera contrasts Nietzsche's philosophy of eternal return, or of heaviness, with Parmenides's understanding of life as light. Kundera wonders if any meaning or weight can be attributed to life, since there is no eternal return: if man only has the opportunity to try one path, to make one decision, he cannot return to take a different path, and then compare the two lives. Without the ability to co mpare lives, Kundera argues, we cannot find meaning; where meaning should exist we find only an unbearable weightlessness. The uncertain existence of meaning, and the opposition of lightness and heaviness, the key dichotomy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, sets the stage for the entire novel.
The year is 1968. The protagonist, Tomas, a brilliant Prague surgeon, pursues a philosophy of lightness in his erotic adventures and exploits. Briefly married in the past, he neither sees nor wishes to see his ex-wife or young son and is comfortably established as a perpetual bachelor. He meets Tereza, a café waitress in a town he visits, and realizes when she follows him to Prague that she intends to "offer him up her life." A determined libertine, he momentarily resists his budding roma ntic feelings for her, then gives in to his love.
Tereza had been living a frustrated life as a waitress in a small town, and dreamed of escaping, especially from her vulgar mother. She recognizes in Tomas an intellectual and dreamer, and falls in love with him instantly. The two live together, but Tomas is unable to give up his mistresses. For a while he hides his infidelity from Teresa. Eventually he admits to it, but claims that his sexuality is entirely separate from his love for her. Tereza, unable to accept his behavior or adopt a light attitud e towards sex, suffers increasingly from nightmares, and contemplates suicide.
To keep Tereza happy, Tomas marries her. He keeps his mistresses, however, including his closest friend and long-term lover Sabina, a beautiful, reckless, and talented painter. In spite of herself, Tereza is charmed by Sabina's openness and light-heartedness, and the two women grow friendly. Sabina finds Tereza a job in Prague as a photographer. Despite her friendship with Sabina, however, Tereza's jealousy of Tomas does not slacken.
The events of the Prague Spring result in the Soviet military occupation of the city. Tomas, who in the past wrote an article condemning the Czech Communists, is warned to leave. Sabina flees first, and later Tomas and Tereza join her in Switzerland. Tereza, who found some fulfillment in her job as photographer in Prague, realizes that in Zurich she is jobless and must sit at home while Tomas continues having affairs. She decides that "when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave," and returns to Prague. Tomas attempts to enjoy his newly recovered freedom for a few days, then gives up and returns to Prague and Tereza. The return truly means giving up freedom—there is no chance that the couple will be allo wed to leave again. In Prague, Tomas's political troubles escalate. He loses his position as surgeon for refusing to sign a denunciation of his anti-Communist article. Both the Communist regime and underground dissidents attempt to seduce him to their side. His own son reappears as a young dissident and preaches to Tomas with no success, for Tomas hates the idea of being used politically in the same way Sabina hates artistic kitsch. In the end, Tomas seeks obscurity in a job washing windows. His fame persists, however, and he continues seducing the women he works for.
Tereza, now a bartender, in a moment of desperation has an affair with a tall engineer who comes to her bar. She does so in hopes of coming closer to Tomas's way of life; instead she grows more miserable and becomes convinced the man was a police agent hired to gather potential blackmailing material. After many scenes and nightmares, she convinces Tomas to move with her to the country. This means giving up their way of life entirely, and an end to Tomas's erotic adventures.
After living peacefully in the country for some time, Tomas and Tereza are killed one night in a driving accident; they die instantly and together.
In Geneva, Sabina has a love affair with Franz, a university professor and idealistic intellectual who has more in common emotionally with Tereza than Sabina—he imbues his life with heavy meaning. He views Sabina as a romantic and courageous Czech dissident, and is tortured that he must betray his wife Marie-Claude in order to see her. Sabina loves Franz but their views on betrayal differ dramatically; whereas he hates the idea of betrayal, she views betrayal as the first step towards "going off into the unknown," the most glorious thing she can think of.
When Franz leaves his wife and expects to move in with her, Sabina abruptly leaves Switzerland. Sabina leaves Geneva for Paris and then Paris for America; she learns of Tomas and Tereza's deaths from a letter and understands her last link to the past has been broken. She ends up living with an elderly American couple and wondering if she has reached the end of her perpetual flight.
Franz remains separated from his wife. After Sabina's betrayal, he finds consolation with a young student, a girl in over-sized glasses who loves him simply. Franz never accepts that he clearly misunderstood Sabina, but continues to hold her image as in ideal in his head, (wrongly) thinking his decisions in life would have made her proud. At his death, his wife reclaims Franz's body and orders the words "A return after long wanderings" written on his tombstone.
باید تصور کرد که یک روز همه چیز، همانطور که پیش از این بوده، تکرار می شود و این تکرار تا بی نهایت ادامه خواهد یافت! اگر هر لحظه از زندگی مان باید دفعات بی شماری تکرار شود، هر کاری که در زندگی انجام دهیم، بار مسئولیت تحمل ناپذیری دارد. بار هر چه سنگین تر باشد، زندگی ما به زمین نزدیک تر، واقعی تر و حقیقی تر است.
در زندگی با همه چیز برای نخستین بار برخورد می کنیم. مانند هنرپیشه ای که بدون تمرین وارد صحنه شود. اما اگر اولین تمرین زندگی، خود زندگی باشد، پس برای زندگی چه ارزشی می توان قائل شد؟
یکبار حساب نیست، یکبار چون هیچ است. فقط یک بار زندگی کردن مانند زندگی نکردن است.
هیچ چیز از احساس همدردی سخت تر نیست. حتی تحمل درد خویشتن به سختی دردی نیست که مشترکا با کسی دیگر برای یک نفر دیگر یا بجای شخص دیگری، می کشیم و قوه تخیل ما به آن صدها بازتاب می بخشد.
وقتی فردی قوی آن قدر ضعیف می شود که به فرد ضعیف بی حرمتی می کند ، فرد ضعیف باید به راستی خود را قوی بداند و او را ترک کند.
توما به دیوار کثیف حیاط نگاه می کرد و نمی دانست که آیا این احساسِ عصبیِ زودگذری است یا عشق؟ و در این شرایط که یک مرد واقعی می داند چگونه سریعا تصمیم بگیرد از شک و دودلی خود شرمسار بود.این تردید زیباترین لحظه ی عمرش را از هر معنایی تهی می ساخت. توما خود را سخت سرزنش می کرد اما سرانجام دریافت که شک و تردید امری طبیعی است. آدمی هرگز از آنچه باید بخواهد آگاهی ندارد زیرا زندگی یک بار بیش نیست و نمی توان آن را با زندگی های گذشته مقایسه کرد یا در آینده تصحیح نمود…
کسی را از روی همدردی دوست داشتن، دوست داشتن حقیقی نیست.
واقعه هولناک یک زندگی را می توان به کمک استعاره سنگینی توضیح داد. می گویند بار سنگینی بر دوش داریم و این بار را حمل می کنیم، خواه قدرت تحمل آن را داشته باشیم و خواه نداشته باشیم. با آن مبارزه می کنیم، خواه بازنده باشیم، خواه برنده شویم.
می توان به پدر و مادر، به همسر، به عشق و به وطن خیانت کرد. اما زمانی که دیگر نه پدر و مادر، نه شوهر، نه عشقی و نه وطنی باقی بماند، به چه چیز می توان خیانت کرد؟
در مقابل دنیای پر از وقاحتی که او را در بر می گرفت، ترزا تنها یک سلاح داشت و آن هم کتاب هایی بود که از کتابخانه ی شهرداری به امانت می گرفت. او کتاب های زیادی خوانده بود. از “فیلدینگ” گرفته تا “توماس مان”. کتاب به او فرصت گریختن از نوعی زندگی را می داد که هیچ گونه رضایت خاطری از آن نداشت. کتاب به عنوان یک شی هم برای او معنای خاصی داشت: دوست داشت کتاب زیر بغل در خیابان ها گردش کند. کتاب برای او به منزله ی عصای ظریفی بود که آدم متشخص قرون گذشته، به دست می گرفت. کتاب او را از دیگران به کلی متمایز می ساخت.
http://kafebook.ir/کتاب-بار-هستی/
Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?
“In Japan, a number of time-honored everyday activities (such as making tea, arranging flowers, and writing) have traditionally been deeply examined by their proponents. Students study how to make tea, perform martial arts, or write with a brush in the most skillful way possible to express themselves with maximum efficiency and minimum strain. Through this efficient, adroit, and creative performance, they arrive at art. But if they continue to delve even more deeply into their art, they discover principles that are truly universal, principles relating to life itself. Then, the art of brush writing becomes shodo—the “Way of the brush”—while the art of arranging flowers is elevated to the status of kado—the “Way of flowers.” Through these Ways or Do forms, the Japanese have sought to realize the Way of living itself. They have approached the universal through the particular.”
― H.E. Davey, Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation
For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance. Two beautiful wings is perfection. There is a generation of people who idealize perfection as the existence of only one of these wings every time. But I see that a bird with one wing is imperfect. An angel with one wing is imperfect. A butterfly with one wing is dead. So this generation of people strive to always cut off the other wing in the hopes of embodying their ideal of perfection, and in doing so, have created a crippled race.
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”