On Being with Krista Tippett

Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings. But contemplate their return. Each separate being in the universe. Returns to the common source. Returning to the source. Is serenity.

And I wanted to recover that time and because people had seen me publicizing this book they offered me work in television after my teaching career had collapsed.

It's the spine of the book. It's the spine of the book that poem.

And the first moment when it came back actually was when I heard a lecture reading T.S. Eliot poem Ashwednstein which you find you'll find the beginning of my book.

Well, I had this, well, this poem, as you say, came to me at one of the darker times of my life when I really thought I was losing my mind.

Because I do not hope to turn again because I do not hope. And being, and it was just after I'd made this decision to stop expecting help that this poem came to me with such force.

My favorite book title of all time, because after you've written that book, what else is left to say?

He wrote in one sense the opulence of American life has served to perpetuate Jeffersonian illusions about human nature for we have thus far sought to solve all our problems by the expansion of our economy. This expansion cannot go on forever and ultimately we must face some vexatious issues of social justice.

I am my own most vexing problem

if we should perish the ruthlessness of the foe would only would be only the secondary cause of the disaster the primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes to blind to see all the hazards of the struggle and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred in vain glory

we take and must continue to take morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization we must exercise our power but we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by the exercise by which the exercise of power is legitimatized

we cannot expect even the wisest of nations to escape every peril of moral and spiritual complacency for nations have always been constantly self-righteous but it will make a difference whether the culture in which the policies of nations are formed is only as deep and as high as the nation's highest ideals or whether there is a dimension in the culture from the standpoint of which the element of vanity in all human ambitions and achievements is discerned the realm of mystery and meaning which encloses and finally makes sense out of the baffling configurations of history is not identical with any scheme of rational intelligibility the faith which appropriates the meaning in the mystery inevitably involves an experience of repentance for the false meanings which the pride of nations and cultures introduces into the pattern such repentance is the true source of charity and we are more desperately in need of genuine charity than of more technocratic skills

You know, I mean, one book that I had packed, you know, was Black Power by him and Charles Hamilton.

And this is captured in Ernest Gaines novel, lesson before dying.

We hear a guy being sentenced to be executed and he's afraid of dying. At the last minute he yells out, help me Joe Lewis, help me Joe Lewis.

One book that I had packed was Black Power by him and Charles Hamilton.

In 2009, he published his second memoir, which he called a riff on middle-aged, marriage, fatherhood and failure and titled The Fifth Ending.

in baseball, The Fifth Ending can represent a complete game. The structure of this book consists of balls and strikes. Balls and strikes can also stand for BS. How much is thrown at a person by the time they reach 50? When BS becomes just B, it might represent not balls but the blues.

The last line of the fifth inning is all I know is baseball.

And I feel that the her courage and I feel inspired, and especially I feel that when the story that I created is to reach America and reach the world.

And I feel that the message that I got when I set by the Harry Potter author at the World's ceremony is that people are interested in China and that I am making a good use of myself.

She woke up one morning, not knowing any tradition, Christian or Eastern or whatever. And from a ten years depression became totally filled with peace and joy. And that never left her since 1986.

We have a new book out, loving what is.

Here's what my wife says in loving what is this new book that we have. The direct path is God is everything, God is good when you know that you don't need a spiritual method and somebody who actually lives that is living at a level where every breath is prayer, every in in Simone, vase, sense, every every step, every experience putting you know a cup of decaft to your mouth. Making love walking down the street that's a life of prayer because everything in that person's consciousness is good is God even the most what to somebody else would seem the most difficult or unacceptable experiences. It's all embrace because it's all reality and therefore it's all God and therefore it's all good.

And there's even one piece on the September 11th. Really? In the book.

It's on page 219, it's a dialogue called terrorism in New York City.

And I felt just really blown out by the intimacy of this writer talking about love and beauty and solitude in ways that I had never even guessed that it was just a incredibly powerful experience for me and he was really my first experience of a teacher.

It communicates something about to people to a lot of people who don't feel open to quote unquote religious texts or spiritual texts. It communicates something of the vastness of the world of the depth of experience and realka himself was not a very clear person but was had a profound connection with something. Something else let's say so anybody reading the dueneo energies or the son as to or if he is especially I think is in touch with. A larger sense of human possibilities at the very least and I think that's why so many people who wouldn't open. The bug of a guita or even the doubt it can have found something more through realka's poems.