Aldous Huxley

"I read T.R.V. Murti and Jay Garfield, two brilliant scholars whose expositions on Buddhist Middle Way philosophy were unprecedented in the English language; Aldous Huxley’s groundbreaking The Perennial Philosophy; Kabloona, a riveting memoir of Gontran de Poncins’s journey to live with the Inuit; Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s seminal On Death and Dying, which sparked an entire movement to humanize death; and Brenda Ueland’s classic If You Want to Write, a monument to self-expression, written or otherwise. I read Nietzsche and Kafka, Camus and Wolfe, Pirsig and Didion, Heinlein and Clarke."

"doesn’t know the difference. •Seek balance through harmonizing the different aspects of life: physical, spiritual, emotional, sexual. •The physical world is illusion but deal with it as if it were real. At every moment in all societies contradictions are developing and these inevitably lead to discontinuities. In his book “Beyond the Mexique Bay,” Aldous Huxley wrote, “Life is a series of routines punctuated by orgies.” It is and it should be, and neither Huxley nor I mean it in the purely conventional sense. •The Roman stoic philosopher Seneca said a lot of useful things. Here are a few: “Happiness is balance; to teach is also to learn; knowing is better than remembering; we are born unequal, we die equal; to govern is to serve, not to rule.” •Be passionate but avoid zealotry. •Be politically correct. Be a Bubba. Use Bill Clinton as a role model. Wear sackcloth and enjoy pain. Lead an opulent lifestyle. •Own a house. Enjoy hotel rooms. •Travel to extremes. Consider each resting place a sanctuary and a home. •Strive for high levels of awareness. Enjoy brain moments. •Be responsible but remember that the ultimate freedom is the utter absence of obligation. •Be highly principled, but be flexible and above all fair. •Be optimistic, or be pessimistic but above all be realistic."