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A book of meditations. A revealing spiritual self-portrait by one of the great peacmakers of our times.
Maturity: Among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play who takes it for granted that he is at one with his playmates.
Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions.
The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.
Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
Maturity: Among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play who takes it for granted that he is at one with his playmates.
Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions.
The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.
Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Dag Hammarskjold was born in Jonkoping, Sweden, in 1905, and died near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, on September 18, 1961, in an air crash while flying there to negotiate a cease-fire between United Nations and Katanga forces.
The son of the Swedish prime minister during World War I, Hammarskjold studied law and economics at the universities of Uppsala and Stockholm. He quickly gained prominence in his own country as secretary and then chairman of the board of governors of the Bank of Sweden; he was undersecretary of the Swedish department of finance from 1936 to 1945. In 1946 he entered the foreign ministry as financial adviser and became chief Swedish delegate to the OEEC in 1948. In 1951 he was the vice chairman of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations, in 1952 he was chairman, and in 1953 he was elected Secretary-General and re-elected in 1957.
Widely read in literature and philosophy, Dag Hammarskjold translated the poetry of St.-John Perse into Swedish. He was made a member of the Swedish Academy in 1954.
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
The son of the Swedish prime minister during World War I, Hammarskjold studied law and economics at the universities of Uppsala and Stockholm. He quickly gained prominence in his own country as secretary and then chairman of the board of governors of the Bank of Sweden; he was undersecretary of the Swedish department of finance from 1936 to 1945. In 1946 he entered the foreign ministry as financial adviser and became chief Swedish delegate to the OEEC in 1948. In 1951 he was the vice chairman of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations, in 1952 he was chairman, and in 1953 he was elected Secretary-General and re-elected in 1957.
Widely read in literature and philosophy, Dag Hammarskjold translated the poetry of St.-John Perse into Swedish. He was made a member of the Swedish Academy in 1954.
From the Hardcover edition.
MARKINGS
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing
MEISTER ECKHART
1925-1930
Thus is was
I am being driven forward
Into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper,
The air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal
Stirs the strings
Of expectation.
Still the question:
Shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence.
Smiling, sincere, incorruptible--
His body disciplined and limber.
A man who had become what he could,
And was what he was--
Ready at any moment to gather everything
Into one simple sacrifice.
Tomorrow we shall meet,
Death and I--
And he shall thrust his sword
Into one who is wide awake.
But in the meantime how grievous the memory
Of hours frittered away.
Beauty: a note that set the heartstrings quivering as it flew by; the shimmer of the blood beneath a skin translucent in the sunlight.
Beauty: the wind which refreshed the traveler, not the stifling heat in dark adits where beggars grubbed for gold.
Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step: only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.
Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy.
Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
"Better than other people." Sometimes he says: "That, at least, you are." But more often: "Why should you be? Either you are what you can be, or you are not--like other people."
What you have to attempt--to be yourself. What you have to pray for--to become a mirror in which, according to the degree of purity of heart you have attained, the greatness of life will be reflected.
Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence. Friendship needs no words--it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.
If your goal is not determined by your most secret pathos, even victory will only make you painfully aware of your own weakness.
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible--not to have run away.
To be sure, you have to fence with an unbuttoned foil: but, in the loneliness of yesterday, did you not toy with the idea of poisoning the tip?
We carry our nemesis within us: yesterday's self-admiration is the legitimate father of today's feeling of guilt.
He bore failure without self-pity, and success without self-admiration. Provided he knew he had paid his utter-most farthing, what did it matter to him how others judged the result.
A Pharisee? Lord, thou knowest he has never been righteous in his own eyes.
1941-1942
The middle years
He stood erect--as a peg top does so long as the whip keeps lashing it. He was modest--thanks to a robust conviction of his own superiority. He was unambitious--all he wanted was a life free from cares, and he took more pleasure in the failures of others than in his own successes. He saved his life by never risking it--and complained that he was misunderstood.
"The Army of Misfortune." Why should we always think of this as meaning "The Others"?
Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.
Isn't the void which surrounds you when the noise ceases your just reward for a day devoted to preventing others from neglecting you?
What gives life its value you can find--and lose. But never possess. This holds good above all for "the Truth about Life."
How can you expect to keep your powers of hearing when you never want to listen? That God should have time for you, you seem to take as much for granted as that you cannot have time for Him.
The devils enter uninvited when the house stands empty. For other kinds of guests, you have first to open the door.
"Upon my conditions."* To live under that sign is to purchase knowledge about the Way at the price of loneliness.
There is only one path out of the steamy dense jungle where the battle is fought over glory and power and advantage--one escape from the snares and obstacles you yourself have set up. And that is--to accept death.
The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only he who listens can speak. Is this the starting point of the road towards the union of your two dreams--to be allowed in clarity of mind to mirror life and in purity of heart to mold it?
Openness to life grants a lightning--swift insight into the life situation of others. What is necessary?--to wrestle with your problem until its emotional discomfort is clearly conceived in an intellectual form--and then act accordingly.
It makes one's heart ache when one sees that a man has staked his soul upon some end, the hopeless imperfection and futility of which is immediately obvious to everyone but himself. But isn't this, after all, merely a matter of degree? Isn't the pathetic grandeur of human existence in some way bound up with the eternal disproportion in this world, where self--delusion is necessary to life, between the honesty of the striving and the nullity of the result? That we all--every one of us--take ourselves seriously is not merely ridiculous.
He tends a garden, the borders of which have, without his knowledge, been set by his own powers. His pride in tending it well and his blindness to everything that lies outside its borders make him a little self-opinionated. But is this any worse than that slightly irritable contempt of the man who cannot so deceive himself and has therefore chosen to fight extra muros?
". . . and have not charity." Isn't the fulfillment of our duty towards our neighbor an expression of our deepest desire? It very well may be. In any case, why torture ourselves in order to hurt others?
Praise nauseates you--but woe betide him who does not recognize your worth.
The Strait Road--to live for others in order to save one's soul. The Broad--to live for others in order to save one's self--esteem.
So! We are to believe that misfortune is the fault of those it strikes--a fault which sooner or later will blossom into crime, unless the unfortunate one keeps silent about his fate.
You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn't reserve a plot for weeds.
If you don't speak ill of others more often that you do, this certainly isn't from any lack of desire. But you know that malice only gives you elbowroom when dispensed in carefully measured doses.
You are your own god--and are surprised when you find that the wolf pack is hunting you across the desolate ice fields of winter.
"Hallowed be Thy Name." When all your strength ought to be focused into one pencil of light pointing up through the darkness, you allow it to be dissipated in a moss fire where nothing is consumed, but all life is suffocated.
When all becomes silent around you, and you recoil in terror--see that your work has become a flight from suffering and responsibility, your unselfishness a thinly disguised masochism; hear, throbbing within you, the spiteful, cruel heart of the steppe wolf--do not then anesthetize yourself by once again calling up the shouts and horns of the hunt, but gaze steadfastly at the vision until you have plumbed its depths.
On the bookshelf of life, God is a useful work of reference, always at hand but seldom consulted. In the white-washed hour of birth, He is a jubilation and a refreshing wind, too immediate for memory to catch. But when we are compelled to look ourselves in the face--then He rises above us in terrifying reality, beyond all argument and "feeling," stronger than all self--defensive forgetfulness.
The road to self--knowledge does not pass through faith. But only through the self--knowledge we gain by pursuing the fleeting light in the depth of our being do we reach the point where we can grasp what faith is. How many have been driven into our darkness by empty talk about faith as something to be rationally comprehended, something "true."
Our secret creative will divines its counterpart in others, experiencing its own universality, and this intuition builds a road towards knowledge of the power which is itself a spark within us.
1945-1949
Towards new shores--?
At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose your self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I's. But in only one of them is...
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing
MEISTER ECKHART
1925-1930
Thus is was
I am being driven forward
Into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper,
The air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal
Stirs the strings
Of expectation.
Still the question:
Shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence.
Smiling, sincere, incorruptible--
His body disciplined and limber.
A man who had become what he could,
And was what he was--
Ready at any moment to gather everything
Into one simple sacrifice.
Tomorrow we shall meet,
Death and I--
And he shall thrust his sword
Into one who is wide awake.
But in the meantime how grievous the memory
Of hours frittered away.
Beauty: a note that set the heartstrings quivering as it flew by; the shimmer of the blood beneath a skin translucent in the sunlight.
Beauty: the wind which refreshed the traveler, not the stifling heat in dark adits where beggars grubbed for gold.
Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step: only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.
Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy.
Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
"Better than other people." Sometimes he says: "That, at least, you are." But more often: "Why should you be? Either you are what you can be, or you are not--like other people."
What you have to attempt--to be yourself. What you have to pray for--to become a mirror in which, according to the degree of purity of heart you have attained, the greatness of life will be reflected.
Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence. Friendship needs no words--it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.
If your goal is not determined by your most secret pathos, even victory will only make you painfully aware of your own weakness.
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible--not to have run away.
To be sure, you have to fence with an unbuttoned foil: but, in the loneliness of yesterday, did you not toy with the idea of poisoning the tip?
We carry our nemesis within us: yesterday's self-admiration is the legitimate father of today's feeling of guilt.
He bore failure without self-pity, and success without self-admiration. Provided he knew he had paid his utter-most farthing, what did it matter to him how others judged the result.
A Pharisee? Lord, thou knowest he has never been righteous in his own eyes.
1941-1942
The middle years
He stood erect--as a peg top does so long as the whip keeps lashing it. He was modest--thanks to a robust conviction of his own superiority. He was unambitious--all he wanted was a life free from cares, and he took more pleasure in the failures of others than in his own successes. He saved his life by never risking it--and complained that he was misunderstood.
"The Army of Misfortune." Why should we always think of this as meaning "The Others"?
Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.
Isn't the void which surrounds you when the noise ceases your just reward for a day devoted to preventing others from neglecting you?
What gives life its value you can find--and lose. But never possess. This holds good above all for "the Truth about Life."
How can you expect to keep your powers of hearing when you never want to listen? That God should have time for you, you seem to take as much for granted as that you cannot have time for Him.
The devils enter uninvited when the house stands empty. For other kinds of guests, you have first to open the door.
"Upon my conditions."* To live under that sign is to purchase knowledge about the Way at the price of loneliness.
There is only one path out of the steamy dense jungle where the battle is fought over glory and power and advantage--one escape from the snares and obstacles you yourself have set up. And that is--to accept death.
The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only he who listens can speak. Is this the starting point of the road towards the union of your two dreams--to be allowed in clarity of mind to mirror life and in purity of heart to mold it?
Openness to life grants a lightning--swift insight into the life situation of others. What is necessary?--to wrestle with your problem until its emotional discomfort is clearly conceived in an intellectual form--and then act accordingly.
It makes one's heart ache when one sees that a man has staked his soul upon some end, the hopeless imperfection and futility of which is immediately obvious to everyone but himself. But isn't this, after all, merely a matter of degree? Isn't the pathetic grandeur of human existence in some way bound up with the eternal disproportion in this world, where self--delusion is necessary to life, between the honesty of the striving and the nullity of the result? That we all--every one of us--take ourselves seriously is not merely ridiculous.
He tends a garden, the borders of which have, without his knowledge, been set by his own powers. His pride in tending it well and his blindness to everything that lies outside its borders make him a little self-opinionated. But is this any worse than that slightly irritable contempt of the man who cannot so deceive himself and has therefore chosen to fight extra muros?
". . . and have not charity." Isn't the fulfillment of our duty towards our neighbor an expression of our deepest desire? It very well may be. In any case, why torture ourselves in order to hurt others?
Praise nauseates you--but woe betide him who does not recognize your worth.
The Strait Road--to live for others in order to save one's soul. The Broad--to live for others in order to save one's self--esteem.
So! We are to believe that misfortune is the fault of those it strikes--a fault which sooner or later will blossom into crime, unless the unfortunate one keeps silent about his fate.
You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn't reserve a plot for weeds.
If you don't speak ill of others more often that you do, this certainly isn't from any lack of desire. But you know that malice only gives you elbowroom when dispensed in carefully measured doses.
You are your own god--and are surprised when you find that the wolf pack is hunting you across the desolate ice fields of winter.
"Hallowed be Thy Name." When all your strength ought to be focused into one pencil of light pointing up through the darkness, you allow it to be dissipated in a moss fire where nothing is consumed, but all life is suffocated.
When all becomes silent around you, and you recoil in terror--see that your work has become a flight from suffering and responsibility, your unselfishness a thinly disguised masochism; hear, throbbing within you, the spiteful, cruel heart of the steppe wolf--do not then anesthetize yourself by once again calling up the shouts and horns of the hunt, but gaze steadfastly at the vision until you have plumbed its depths.
On the bookshelf of life, God is a useful work of reference, always at hand but seldom consulted. In the white-washed hour of birth, He is a jubilation and a refreshing wind, too immediate for memory to catch. But when we are compelled to look ourselves in the face--then He rises above us in terrifying reality, beyond all argument and "feeling," stronger than all self--defensive forgetfulness.
The road to self--knowledge does not pass through faith. But only through the self--knowledge we gain by pursuing the fleeting light in the depth of our being do we reach the point where we can grasp what faith is. How many have been driven into our darkness by empty talk about faith as something to be rationally comprehended, something "true."
Our secret creative will divines its counterpart in others, experiencing its own universality, and this intuition builds a road towards knowledge of the power which is itself a spark within us.
1945-1949
Towards new shores--?
At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose your self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I's. But in only one of them is...
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherBallantine Books
- Publication date1985
- ISBN 10 0345327411
- ISBN 13 9780345327413
- BindingMass Market Paperback
- Number of pages224
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