Category: Gurdjieff - FONTECEDRO Ingegneria e Architettura

Georges Ivanovič Gurdjieff

13/1/2016

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Today we celebrate another anniversary of the birth of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.
The man was so surrounded by mystery that we do not even know with exactitude when he was born. And in his own biography he made sure that none could trace his trail through the lands of the Middle and Far East and Northern Africa. And even when he was in the West, he disappeared from sight from May to September of 1935. None knows where he was and where he went during those months.
And even in death he was a mystery. When he was taken to the hospital to his appointed death, here is how he left his apartment at 6 Rue des Colonel Rènard in bright pajamas and smoking, against doctor’s orders, a Gauloise Bleu:
“He sat upright on the stretcher, and was carried away like a Royal Prince! All his family was clustered at the street door (the crusty old concierge was in tears!) and as they carried him across the pavement he made a little gesture, a sort of wave with his hands and said, ‘A revoir, tout le monde!’”And then hours later, in the America Hospital, the Royal Prince died like a King.
Who was this man?
To ask this question is like to ask who was King Arthur or Merlin the Magician or Mullah Nassr Eddin or Saint George or Al Khidir. He was one of those timeless men who weave their ways through time, tradition and myth.
Future generations will find difficult to separate the man from the myth he himself created for us.
But who was this man?
It does not really matter to find the answer to this question. We will never find it, anyhow. What matters to us is to ask the question he invited us to ask:
Who am I?

Remo Remotti

22/8/2015

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picture by Angelo Pasquarelli

Cari Amici, positività e pace.
La vita dell'uomo sulla terra è più paragonabile a un Inferno o al Paradiso?
Dipende da noi.
E' questione di scelte.
Non ci vuole proprio niente per far si che la nostra vita diventi un Inferno.
Basta lasciarsi andare alla fretta, alle corse, alle ambizioni smodate, alle passioni,
al disordine dei sensi, alle gelosie, alle invidie, ai rancori
ed eccoci nell'Inferno.
A quel punto diventiamo delle foglie al vento, dei gatti che si mangiano la coda,
all'Inferno.
Come ci salviamo da tutto questo?
Con la disciplina. Disciplina fisica e spirituale.
Cerchiamo giornalmente di praticare dello sport.
Mente sana in corpo sano.
Cerchiamo, allo stesso modo di curare lo spirito.
Come?
Con la meditazione, col silenzio, per chi vuole con la preghiera.
Dobbiamo imparare ad essere centrati su noi stessi.
A lavorare, giorno per giorno, su noi stessi.
Avere un centro di gravità permanente, come dice Battiato.
Dobbiamo imparare a rifiutare la negatività,
qualsiasi tipo di depressione, di autocommiserazione.
Ogni giorno ci facciamo la doccia, ci laviamo i denti.
Allo stesso modo dobbiamo lavare e tenere pulita la mente.
Questa attività la chiamiamo "presa di coscienza", consapevolezza.
Che facciamo quando siamo troppo grassi?
Facciamo la dieta.
Ossia facciamo attenzione a quello che mangiamo.
Cerchiamo di usare l'attenzione a come nutriamo la nostra mente
perchè in definitiva "noi siamo quello che pensiamo".
Per cui, amici:
PENSIERI POSITIVI E DISCIPLINA.
Così arriveremo all'AMORE.
Amore verso noi stessi, amore verso gli altri, verso tutti e verso tutto:
animali, piante, minerali, il mondo, la vita.
A questo punto, amici miei, saremo in Paradiso.
Positività e pace.

Remo Remotti

Awakening

23/10/2014

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"Another way of putting it would be (without knowing Chinese) to propose this new translation of the first line of the Tao Te Ching: “A way that is entirely laid out, no, it is not the way.” I told you that I have encountered in my life a true teaching. One of the signs of its truth, for me, is that it never proposes an entirely prescribed path. No, at every step the entire dilemma is revisited. For me, nothing is resolved once and for all. And what I have always loved in you is your refusal of a prearranged path, and that’s important to me because alone one can’t sustain such a position. We must be a number of people to help each other, to awaken one another."

René Daumal from a letter to Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes / November 1941
Excerpted from Letters on the Search for Awakening 1930-1944, translated and published
by Dolmen Meadow Editions / Toronto.

Katherine Mainsfield / writer / Disciple of Gurdjieff

20/5/2014

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"Lost! One Golden Hour Set with Sixty Diamond Minutes.
No Reward Is Offered For It Is Gone For Ever!"

from "The Voyage"

The Gift of Attention

23/3/2014

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PARABOLA: You’ve mentioned “gift” a lot, this almost organic knowledge of inner intervals and tempos and so forth. It is true that the genius is born with the gift. Goethe says that the gift of attention is the only thing that differentiates the genius from the human being. Is there a way in which I could practice developing the sensibility and the sensitivity to speak with the kind of freshness which now is missing?

WILLIAM SEGAL: It’s as if there is a center that can vivify all parts of the circumference–a center that illuminates. When we speak and listen from this center, a relationship is set up where words have more meaning. A hitherto unused energy is added. Most people speak, as the expression goes, from the top of their heads, so the words issue mechanically–dead words. A stop, a moment of pause, brings unsuspected energies. There is a change, the quality of energy that’s transferred is quite different. But that is not so easy. It’s easier to speak from our knowledge, from accumulated experience, from imitation of others.

PARABOLA: Is there a courageous stance towards the unknown that is required?

WILLIAM SEGAL: There’s a risk. At the beginning, when one speaks from this center, one feels awkward, as if one has lost the support of the known. To remain related to the unknown, at the same time keeping in touch with the knowledge that one has accumulated through experience and education, is not so easy. Still, if one lived more from one’s center, one would speak with more sincerity, would find unexpected resources within oneself. One might even open in oneself conduits of expression and of material which are pretty well closed in us. One would tap material which is now dormant. Combinations of impressions would come together to produce more original, more effective language.

from “In Light of Meaning: An Interview with William Segal,” (Parabola, Volume XX, No. 3, Fall 1995).

Pamela Lyndon Travers / writer / disciple of Gurdjieff

11/2/2014

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“More and more I’ve become convinced that the great treasure to possess is
the unknown."

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Zen Moments

11/2/2014

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Katsushika Hokusai / Tea house at Koishikawa. The morning after a snowfall / 1830

We sit on our heels on the tatami, the Japanese woman and myself, telling the stories of our lives.
One can do this with a stranger. Too near, and the perspective is lost. Only the far can be near.
A sound–a knock, intimation only–had come from the inner door. And there she was in her blue yukata exactly like my own–the only wear in a Japanese inn–bowing to me, like a branch bending.
“It is permitted to practice my little English?”
I rise and become another branch. “It is permitted.”
And so we kneel before each other, the foot-square mirror at which I make my toilet reflecting each in turn.
There is no need for us to commend the cherry-blossoms–they are doing no more than their duty. Nor to chatter about the shrine at Ise.
Neither of us is a tourist. We are just two women, gone beyond time, our talk a shuttle pulling weft across warp, no beginning, no end to the pattern.
The cauldron of plenty in each of us seethes with its ferment, sweet and bitter–the world to be carried and no plaint made; love to suffer long and be kind, not vaunting, not puffed up; the seed that we carry to be threshed, freed from its crusty husk; the aching question of who we are and for what made, answered only by its echo; the need to stand before the Unknown and never ask to know; to take our leave of the world, head high, no matter how hard the parting; and, coquetry no whit abated, offer the unassuaging mould an acquiescent lip.
Arms crossed, we rock from side to side. Hushing what? Ourselves, perhaps. And again and again she murmurs a word, as a counterpoint to her movement.
“What is it that you are saying? Tell me.”
She rocks and seems to draw it closer, folding the word to her breast.
“A–Wa–Re.” She stresses the syllables, as though teaching a child.
“A–Wa–Re. It means, in our tongue, The Pity of Things.”
I look at her long and in silence. Then I rise and bow.
“Do you know that what you have said is our word ‘Aware’?”
She looks at me long and in silence. Then she, too, rises and bows. And at the door bows again.

There is nothing to say. We say nothing.

Pamela Travers from her article Zen Moments / 1987

PARABOLA

Monte Analogo

22/1/2014

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"Sono morto perchè non ho il desiderio,

non ho il desiderio perchè credo di possedere,

credo di possedere perchè non cerco di dare.

Cercando di dare, si vede che non si ha niente,

vedendo che non si ha niente, si cerca di dare sè stessi,

cercando di dare sè stessi, si vede che non si è niente,

vedendo che non si è niente, si desidera divenire,

desiderando divenire, si vive".

René Daumal

Hadji Asvatz Troov

21/1/2014

a cura di Vercoquin

The second beingfood

20/1/2014

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John and Elisabeth Bennett / last picture before die