Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.
Able
So while you’re an athlete, and you have that platform, what you want to be able to do is make it work for you as much as possible, because there’s going to be life after sports.
We have a sense that we should be like the mythical cowboy… able to take on and conquer anything and live in the world without the need for other people.
Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the ‘slippery slope’: once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die.
We should be proud of our country when we have done something to be proud of, when we have lived up to our own standards. But the flip side of genuine pride is being able to recognize when we have fallen short, and to hold ourselves to account.
Would you allow a people to come from somewhere else and occupy a part of the United States, and set up an independent state, and, after 50 years, you would not be able to stay on this land?
So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.
I’m a professor of comparative literature, among other things, so I’m able to read in a couple of other languages, and I understand that not everyone is, not everyone can, although it is quite stunning how many people do read Spanish in the United States, but moving between languages is also extremely helpful.
Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.