Life in Balance: Amit Chaudhary’s Blog
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Quotes: From Peaceful Warrior the Movie

Thoughts
People are not their thoughts. They might think they are.

Not knowing

The first realization of the warrior: Not knowing.

Life
Life has 3 rules: Paradox, Humor and Change.

Doing

There is no starting and stopping, only doing

Knowledge is not same as wisdom. Wisdom is doing.

Journey
The journey is what brings us happiness. Not the destination.

Image thanks to JoVivek and Nagraj Salian on Flickr.

I looked up Golden Verses of Pythagoras after reading a reference about them in the The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin. Pythagoras was a Greek Philosopher who lived roughly during 500 BC.

These are guidelines on how to live one’s life and are full of wisdom.

Many of the Verses are relevant for Personal Development including the one about “Reviewing each day of your life”. Some of the other concepts are similar to those in Yoga texts.

Here are a few selected Golden Verses of Pythagoras:

• Do not neglect the health of your body. Give to the body food, drink and exercise in measure — so that it strengthen and know not surfeit and slumber.

• Before sleep closes your eyes remember thrice your deeds of the day. Consider them as an impartial judge and ask yourself: “What good did I do? What did I fail to do that I should have done?” Thus review everything you did throughout the day. Reproach yourself severely for all wrong deeds and be glad about the good ones.

• Remember about the law of cause and effect in your life.

• You are given the ability to overcome your passions: greed, laziness, lust, and anger; use it and restrain yourself.

• As for the misfortunes that are sent to people according to their destinies, you have to endure them patiently. Strive nevertheless to alleviate the pain as much as you can. And remember that the Immortal Gods never send to people trials which are above their strengths.

• Choose for yourself a wise friend; heed his advice and learn from his example; do not quarrel with him for trifle reasons.

• Listen to others’ advice and deliberate yourself. Only fools acts thoughtlessly, without consideration.

• And abstain from eating flesh: this is contrary to your nature and will prevent you from purifying yourself.

For the complete Verses, here are two translations of Golden Verses of Pythagoras:

• At Pythagoras.name, by the Russian E.P.Kaznacheeva

• At Sacred Texts by Florence M. Firth who in turn uses different translations
  

Career advice from a Technology Researcher Jim Gray

• Career advice for others: Follow Mike Stonebraker‘s advice, Go for the home run.

Don’t go for singles and doubles, don’t even go for the outfield, go for the bleachers. And that’s a very courageous thing to do. I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I think this is it, and I’m trying to spend my time as best I can, and I’m trying to spend my time so I’m proud of what I’ve done, and I try not to do any things that I’m not proud of.

So I have, in fact, only worked on things that I thought could really be significant, and I haven’t really worried very much about getting tenure or actually getting a job.

• On getting a paper published: Send it in again. Send it in again.

-Advice from Jim Gray, Database Researcher as part of ACM SIGMOD Distinguished Database Profiles

Temptation

• Temptation is temporary. Resist cravings long enough and you’ll win out.

-Don Chao, Men’s health

Vision and Spirit

• You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to allow the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

-Woodrow Wilson

Better than you

• When we’re trying to be as good as or better than someone else, I think envy is a strong motivator, but a weak navigator

-Steve Smith in a blog comment

Flight
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return.
Leonardo da Vinci from Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu’s
Want to find out what it is like to experience flight on the cheap (U$8 in 2007), try out and do loops and rolls in the X-Pilot flight simulators in the Museum of Flight, Seattle

Free Time
In my humble opinion, the best thing about living in time and space, is having free time.
AND, of course, always remembering that all of your time is free.
Yeah, big AND.
From Notes from the Universe by TUTs Adventures

Moving moments
Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words.
Marcel Marceau from the Lent Daily thought.

River to Ocean

A spiritual journey is like water in a river heading towards the ocean, it might take detours and go through different paths, but will eventually get to the ocean. A dear friend quoting ancient Sanskrit book.

Ancient Shiva “Borandev Temple” in Chhattisgarh, India

The next three below are from 30 day challenge wall(30 yoga classes in 30 days) at Bellevue Bikram Hot Yoga
What you would be
First say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do. Epictectus

Today
The beginning is always today. Mary wollstonecraft.

Long enough
We can do anything we want if we stick to it long enough. Helen Keller.

What you did not do?
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream! – Mark Twain. From Ch1., The Portable Personal Trainer by Eric Harr
HDR Image courtesy Matty_P on flickr.

True face in the mirror

In the yogic world, an air of unreality permeates discussions about the real. What is the use of being able to dissolve body into light, to lose subject-object separation in deep states of samadhi, if we cannot even bear to see our true face in the mirror? Ch. 13 in in Yoga and the Quest for the True Self by Stephen Cope

Victory or defeat

Far better it is to dare mightly things, to win glorious triumps, even checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. Theodore Roosevelt., Ch 7 The Portable Personal Trainer by Eric Harr

First law of success

The first law of success is concentration, to bend all the energies to one point, looking neither to the right nor to the left-William Mathews. from the book: Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy

HDR Image courtesy petecarr on flickr.