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Dante, Sommo Poeta

Italy is marking the 700th anniversary of the departure of Sommo Poeta — the Great Poet, Dante Alighieri  (1265 Florence-1321 Ravenna), and his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. He wrote this monumental epic at the age of 35 when he was exiled from his hometown of Florence to spend the rest of his life in Ravenna, until his death. In this timeless book, Dante sets out on a voyage to the other world where souls embark upon terminating life on earth. Depending on their merit earned on earth,…

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The Mythic Iris

To love beauty is to see the light. The renown French author Victor Hugo (1802-1885) reflected on the bliss of beauty that strikes the eye, and said : To love beauty is to see light.  Nearly a century after Victor Hugo, Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968), the first man who traveled to space in 1961, expressed in awe as he gazed across the cosmos : Rays were blazing through the atmosphere of the earth, the horizon became bright orange, gradually passing into all colors of the rainbow: from light…

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Seeking Small Acts of Kindness

  To do good, which, as we all know, is universal, is in the heart of being human. Yet we find it difficult to do even small acts of kindness like lending an ear to a distressed friend, greeting the gardener at the park, offering coffee to a subordinate, or paying attention to the needs of a family member whose presence we take for granted. Simply because we naturally live in our ego, self-occupied with primarily satisfying our own pleasure and achievement needs in professional, social and…

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Traversing the Jungle in Search of the Truth

To live among today’s society and to influence others instead of being influenced by them  —now that’s a feat ! – Ostad Elahi In his pioneering book Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) examines our susceptibility to outside manipulation, and tendency for self-deception. Our minds or mental spaces are lured by the media and the social influences of our milieu, which define our choices, snatch our attention and shift our values. Content management, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience all intervene with how we perceive, think, and make decisions; they…

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Desiderata

    Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,  and remember what peace there may be in silence.  As far as possible, without surrender,  be on good terms with all persons.  Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,  even to the dull and the ignorant;  they too have their story.  Avoid loud and aggressive persons;  they are vexatious to the spirit.  If you compare yourself with others,  you may become vain or bitter,  for always there will be greater and lesser persons than…

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Saint Francis d’Assisi and Reviving Old Values

  The patron saint of ecology, Francis d’Assisi’s love of nature, and new ways of living together set forth by the eminent neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik Living in times of an unstoppable disease pervading the earth, it has become imperative to peruse our fragile relation with nature, and  to collectively revive our old values  says the eminent neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik : Crises are very common in the human condition. We have already known many epidemics which have forced cultural revolutions… With each epidemic, or natural disaster, there has…

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Leonarda da Vinci on Light and Marvels of the Eye

  Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.  The exceptional artist and polymath, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), driven by his rigorous quest for knowing the  human body, spirit, and its place in the universe, dedicated his life to display his findings through art. His gift for art  along with his profound knowledge in anatomy, botany, mathematics, engineering and physics are reflected in the corpus of his work.  He always carried a notebook in which he drew his sharp observations with precision…

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The Sacred Olive Tree

The myth has it that long long time ago, a big contest was going to be held for winning the patronage of the city of  Athens and its surrounding territory, Attica. The contest was to take place under the presiding witness of King Cecrops, the founder of Athens. The crowd gathered at the Temple of Parthenon which rose on the rocky hilltop overlooking the city of Athens. The two candidates of the glorious contest were Athena, the goddess of justice, wisdom and war skills, and Poseidon, the…

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Looking for the Shepherd’s Star

  “We are obliged to change and rethink the whole civilization,” says Boris Cyrulnik, the eminent neuropsychiatrist known for his work on resilience and trauma. Our culture has lost the compass, we navigate by sight, jostled by events […] We must take a new direction because we have just understood that man is not above nature, he is in nature.  Physically, psychologically and spiritually we are much more sculpted than we think by our natural space. He focuses on healing the soul in his latest book, Souls…

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Pythagoras and the Music of the Solar System

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. Pythagoras (circa 570 BC), the sage philosopher and polymath was born on the Greek island of Samos. Renown by his fundamental theory of mathematics and his studies on the pre-existing link between music and mathematics, he demystified the music of the planets of our solar system which he defined as musica universalis – the music of the spheres. Attesting to the fact that the planets and stars move according…

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Balancing Harmony of Routine

“We are routine beings, and arguably even more so at this time. And this is normal, although our brain likes to be surprised, it needs routine to avoid overheating, ” states Valentin Wyart, the acclaimed neuroscientist of École Normale Supérieure of France. Even more so nowadays, the routine allows us to structure ourselves when we have just spent a highly unstructured year with difficulties in planning. He affirms the restorative quality of routine in one’s daily life : These routines that we put in place allow at…

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Rumi, the Dancing Poet

One of the most read and quoted Persian poets of the 13th century, Mevlâna Mohammad Jalal al-dîn Rumi, known as Rumi was a savant and mystic. Born in Balkh region, today’s Afghanistan (1207-1273), he and his family moved to Konya, Turkey after the Mongol conquest. Soon after his settlement in Konya, mystics, and Sufi dervishes gathered around him to benefit from his spiritual and intellectual knowledge. The spiritual life was embedded in the daily material life of the dervishes. Their gatherings were accompanied by spiritual music and…

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The War of Gods at Troy

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another” wrote Homer in his timeless epic Iliad, which is considered as a pillar of ancient Greek literature. This outstanding masterpiece, presumed to be written around 700-800 BC, is set during the Trojan War, the ten year siege of Troy by the allied Greek kingdoms under the rule of Agamemnon. The myth begins with the beauty contest between Aphrodite, Athena and Hera. Aphrodite promises the jurist, Paris…

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Victor Hugo on Courage

  It is necessary, for the sake of the forward march of the human race, that there should be proud lessons of courage.   The legendary French writer and poet Victor Hugo (1802-1885), in his eternal book Les Misérables, portrays the nature of hesitation and indecision likening to a cat’s pause  : Everyone has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat : ‘Do come in !’  …

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Natural Spirituality

  “How easy to become learned, how difficult to become truly human.”   Ostad Elahi, thinker, judge, and remarkable musician of the 20th century, having spent his lifetime studying the essence and core principles of religions and the universal sayings of the sages, he conveys the quintessence of all religions : The religions differ only in their secondary aspects; otherwise, their fundamental objective and principles are the same. What is unique about his thought is that he did not contend with the theoretical perspective of matters which…

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