This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Dharma is so called because it sustains or supports society (from the root dhri meaning to support). The people of a country are held together and sustained by Dharma.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
We quarrel unfortunate for us to dispense with pity.
Promise |
If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others. One who ceases to learn cannot adequately teach.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
On the haunted staircase of life, art is the only step that doesn't creak.
Affront | Idealism | Individual | Life | Life | Organization |
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two, and sleep's again.
Promise |
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned, bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell, be thy intents wicked or charitable, thou com'st in such a questionable shape that I will speak to thee.
Promise |
From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these.
We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.
Promise | Selfishness |
Every try to take a toy away from a toddler? They don't like that, do they? They start kicking and screaming. Best way to take a toy away from a toddler is distract the kid, give him something else to play with. Instead of trying to forcefully take thoughts out of your mind, give your mind something better to play with.
Maybe the difference between first marriage and second marriage is that the second time at least you know you are gambling.
Marriage is what happens between the memorable. He said that we often look back on our marriages years later, perhaps after one spouse has died, and wall we can recall are the vacations, and emergencies - the high points and low points. The rest of it blends into a blurry sort of daily sameness. But it is that very blurred sameness, the poet argues, that comprises marriage. Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. How do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody- so utterly well- known and so thoroughly ever-present, that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air?
Worth |
This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.
Marriage |
The sun was lying when he lay so sweet and calm amidst the serenity of the night.
And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play.
Good | Life | Life | People | Promise | Right | Thought | Will | Thought |