The Hammock Papers: Live.

08 January 2018

Live.

Coleman Barks interviewed by The Sun ...

Lawler: Do you see Rumi as a mystic, an artist, or both?

Barks: Rumi is really unusual, because he’s a master of poetry and such an enlightened human being. The most gifted artists are usually so independent that they can’t surrender their mind. Think of Vladimir Nabokov: so proud of himself and enjoying being Nabokov, and just a hairbreadth away from enlightenment. Mozart is interesting on this subject. He says, “Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of a genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”

To live in the heart sounds so simple. But if it is not lived, then those are just empty words. Rumi and Bawa would say that’s the work we are here to do. We’re here to dissolve the ego and live in the heart with compassion and kindness. The Dalai Lama has said, “My religion is kindness.”

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MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL