Some Quotes by Jorge Luis Borges
An Argentine writer and philosopher..
I was introduced to this writer by metaAI. Apparently my curiosity and playful intelligence, and interconnections reminded of him. I felt compelled to read a few quotes of this writer. Wow! Some of them quite resonated.. Advaita, Upanishad, and Gita like statements stemming from the experiences of life.. as though closely distantly intensely witnessing the story that life unfolds..
I briefly read his “Aleph”.. A moment to peek into Infinity.. Space and Time dilation.. Like Yashoda seeing the Universe in Krishna’s mouth. Like in Gita’s Vishwaroopa.. Openheimer was touched by this chapter. The expanse of Infinity.. “The Infinite cannot be seen with physical eyes.. And the inner eyes can even see irradiance of a 1000 suns.. Of comforts and luxury.. I am creation.. I am Time.. I am destruction and Death.” And pain can be a turning point and unfold the realms of inner vision.
I was astonished by the similarities with the primordial sound seen in the Upanishads. It is sounds and silence that enable various states of human experiences.. mental chatter, thinking, communication.. ability to learn.. navigate corridors of knowledge through prior works.. Sounds encompass Infinity.. Shabda Brahma..
The etymologist in me was astounded by the choice of the title “Aleph”. It is the beginning letter in Arabic, which means, it opens an ocean of other letters. In Sanskrit, the orderly alphabets which represent the infinite are befittingly called a-kshara.. immutables for this very reason.. Panini codifies the vowel and consonant list as Al.. I heard somewhere.. The Al-gebra, Al-gorithm, and Al-eph perhaps beautifully encompass this “all” “infinity” in it.
“A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
“So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.”
“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
“Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence.”
“You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.”
“Life itself is a quotation.”
“Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.”
“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
