I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. We need the tonic of wildness. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. If with closed ears and eyes I consult consciousness for a moment, immediately are all walls and barriers dissipated, earth rolls from under me, and I float . . . in the midst of an unknown and infinite sea, or else heave and swell like a vast ocean of thought, without rock or headland, where are all riddles solved, all straight lines making there their two ends to meet, eternity and space gambolling familiarly through my depths. I am from the beginning, knowing no end, no aim. No sun illumines me, for I dissolve all lesser lights in my own intenser and steadier light. I am a restful kernel in the magazine of the universe. Men are constantly dinging in my ears their fair theories and plausible solutions of the universe, but ever there is no help, and I return again to my shoreless, islandless ocean. In my better hours I am conscious of the influx of a serene and unquestionable wisdom. What is that other kind of life to which I am thus continually allured? which alone I love? Are our serene moments . . . simply a transient realization of what might be the whole tenor of our lives? To be calm, to be serene! There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind. So it is with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. Such clarity! Silence is the communion of a conscious soul with itself. If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence. She is audible to all, at all times, in all places. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams, and endeavors to live the life which they have imagined, they will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
Walden turned my heart and mind totally around in college…visited Henry s grave site many years later and washed it…a small tombstone with the word HENRY on it…next to Emerson’s site with many words on his stone…💙🙏thank you so much for this Samaneri❤️
Thoreau sent a copy of “Walden” to his Concord friend and neighbor RW Emerson, with the chapter that ends “Simplify, simplify.” Ralph Waldo wrote back: “Henry, one ‘Simplify’ would have been quite enough.”
I first read “Walden” as a teenager in the ‘60s. It affected me profoundly. Reading the last chapter on my front porch just about transported me to another realm. I’ve reread the book several more times since then, most recently in 2017 in honor of HDT’s bicentennial. One of my favorite passages: “God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages” (2nd chapter).
Oh my goodness! This is the very first thing I listened to this morning. Then I read the words. Oh my goodness how this struck home, right into the heart...
Most precious and beautiful meditation & very much appropriate for a forest retreat to settle into Primordial Awareness. I take your meditations with me every where the ground takes me. Samaneri Jayasara, I am eternally grateful to you and the true beauty you bring into the depths of my Awareness. These meditations have been pivotal to my resurrection. Endless loving-kindness to You Most Precious Friend. ❤, ♾. 4:42pm San Diego, Ca
My longest meditations were sitting in the dirt by a Blue Oak under its twisted branches and shady canopy high up on a bluff looking down and across a lake. Once a young deer came up within a couple of feet and stared at me. I remained motionless and it would come back a couple more times to look at me some more🙂 Geese honk like trumpets Slow glide over green meadow Better than TV-
Nakedly blissful immersion into the contemplations and though the eyes of Walden Pond’s ersatz “Arjuna” under the silent tutelage of Lord Krishna’s guidance 🕉️❤️🔥
Thank you for your work. It is n almost daily companion. I would like to ask you to consider to read the Gospel of Truth from Nag Hammadi. It would be epic.
I live with cancer , chronic pain and crashed my car today totally. I will mis the car the most because I need follow up each 3 months. 🙏 you sure I am not the body 🙃 . Hard day , wish you all the best !!
Samaneri Jayasara's amazing presence & this community of seekers without borders, as it were, is quite an extraordinary thing. 🍃 🦋 Sending you extra angels for healing and a hug across the miles. ✨ Paz y luz.
@@mk-ue9tx Sending warmest wishes and all blessings your way at this challenging time. Please let us know how we can help you get mobile again with a car?
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
We need the tonic of wildness. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions.
I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
If with closed ears and eyes I consult consciousness for a moment, immediately are all walls and barriers dissipated, earth rolls from under me, and I float . . . in the midst of an unknown and infinite sea, or else heave and swell like a vast ocean of thought, without rock or headland, where are all riddles solved, all straight lines making there their two ends to meet, eternity and space gambolling familiarly through my depths.
I am from the beginning, knowing no end, no aim. No sun illumines me, for I dissolve all lesser lights in my own intenser and steadier light. I am a restful kernel in the magazine of the universe.
Men are constantly dinging in my ears their fair theories and plausible solutions of the universe, but ever there is no help, and I return again to my shoreless, islandless ocean.
In my better hours I am conscious of the influx of a serene and unquestionable wisdom. What is that other kind of life to which I am thus continually allured? which alone I love? Are our serene moments . . . simply a transient realization of what might be the whole tenor of our lives?
To be calm, to be serene! There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind. So it is with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. Such clarity!
Silence is the communion of a conscious soul with itself. If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence. She is audible to all, at all times, in all places.
The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams, and endeavors to live the life which they have imagined, they will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
🙏🏻
Thank you so much for sharing this 🙏🏻🙏🏻
🙏🏼
🌎🌍🌏🕊️
Beautiful words, beautifully spoken .,.. thank you, so much❤.
Walden turned my heart and mind totally around in college…visited Henry s grave site many years later and washed it…a small tombstone with the word HENRY on it…next to Emerson’s site with many words on his stone…💙🙏thank you so much for this Samaneri❤️
The splendour of silence poetically visualised . So beautiful ❤
Thoreau sent a copy of “Walden” to his Concord friend and neighbor RW Emerson, with the chapter that ends “Simplify, simplify.”
Ralph Waldo wrote back: “Henry, one ‘Simplify’ would have been quite enough.”
There is no destination when we go within.The journey is in itself the most peaceful destination
I first read “Walden” as a teenager in the ‘60s. It affected me profoundly. Reading the last chapter on my front porch just about transported me to another realm. I’ve reread the book several more times since then, most recently in 2017 in honor of HDT’s bicentennial. One of my favorite passages: “God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages” (2nd chapter).
So very grateful for this... perfect timing.. perfect imagery.. perfect reading. Thanks 🙏
Oh my goodness! This is the very first thing I listened to this morning. Then I read the words. Oh my goodness how this struck home, right into the heart...
Beautiful words, created by beautiful mind and read by beautiful soul.
Most precious and beautiful meditation & very much appropriate for a forest retreat to settle into Primordial Awareness. I take your meditations with me every where the ground takes me. Samaneri Jayasara, I am eternally grateful to you and the true beauty you bring into the depths of my Awareness. These meditations have been pivotal to my resurrection. Endless loving-kindness to You Most Precious Friend. ❤, ♾. 4:42pm San Diego, Ca
A beautiful choice of her to choose these verses of a writer. I am enchanted and reminded of my Ensglish studies. Thank You
My longest meditations were sitting in the dirt by a Blue Oak under its twisted branches and shady canopy high up on a bluff looking down and across a lake. Once a young deer came up within a couple of feet and stared at me. I remained motionless and it would come back a couple more times to look at me some more🙂
Geese honk like trumpets
Slow glide over green meadow
Better than TV-
Like your channel lots of references... On the way to enlightment. Thank you very much to enlight us by sharing all that. God bless you. Namasté
Thank You!
This is wonderful.
Reaing Thoureau's Walden atm and dreaming of my own little hut in the woods.
Beautiful reading... Thank you.
Just perfect , thank you for reading 🌲❤️🌾
Nakedly blissful immersion into the contemplations and though the eyes of Walden Pond’s ersatz “Arjuna” under the silent tutelage of Lord Krishna’s guidance 🕉️❤️🔥
Thank you. Great passage...
Breathtaking...!
Magnificent!
Thank you for your work. It is n almost daily companion. I would like to ask you to consider to read the Gospel of Truth from Nag Hammadi. It would be epic.
🙏❤❤❤
I live with cancer , chronic pain and crashed my car today totally. I will mis the car the most because I need follow up each 3 months. 🙏 you sure I am not the body 🙃 . Hard day , wish you all the best !!
Samaneri Jayasara's amazing presence & this community of seekers without borders, as it were, is quite an extraordinary thing. 🍃
🦋 Sending you extra angels for healing and a hug across the miles.
✨
Paz y luz.
@MortalClown after 20 years of advaita , garantie you are an imortalclown 😘
@@mk-ue9tx Sending warmest wishes and all blessings your way at this challenging time. Please let us know how we can help you get mobile again with a car?
@Samaneri Jayasāra - Wisdom of the Masters thank you very much , I need saving for another car . I will order a medical taxi in the time being. 🙏
❤🙏🏼
🕯🧡🙏🏻🧡🕯
🌞🌅🌎
💖💖💖
We need Emerson’s “Nature” now: “I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. All mean egotism is dissolved. I am part or particle of God.”
To say that I lived and that’s all. Every fase has
it’s mystery.
💜💎💜
Is there a way I could access the bird song recording?
💙💛💙
❤️
Bhagavad Gita 🙇🏼♀️Krishna