And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze_x000D_ _x000D_ About a star of deathless and painless peace_x000D_ _x000D_ But no astronomer can find where it is.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the elusive nature of profound peace and understanding, suggesting that despite its existence, it remains unattainable for many.
In this quote by Ted Hughes, the elephant symbolizes a powerful and ancient presence in nature, embodying deep wisdom and peace that exists beyond the reach of human understanding. The 'star of deathless and painless peace' represents an ideal state of being or knowledge that is universally desired yet impossible to locate or grasp fully, highlighting the limits of human inquiry and the mysterious aspects of existence that lie beyond empirical observation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the search for inner peace during a meditation retreat.
...imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.
The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.
Nobody wanted your dance, Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering Drowning life and your effort to save yourself, Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil, Looking for something to give.
Haven’t you heard of the music of the spheres?” asked the dragon. “It’s the music that space makes to itself. All the spirits inside all the stars are singing. I’m a star spirit. I sing too. The music of the spheres is what makes space so peaceful.
You solve it as you get older, when you reach the point where you've tasted so much that you can somehow sacrifice certain things more easily, and you have a more tolerant view of things like possessiveness (your own) and a broader acceptance of the pains and the losses.
The real mystery is this strange need. Why can't we just hide it and shut up? Why do we have to blab? Why do human beings need to confess?
I've always been a fan of issues around race and racialism, and I've loved playing with it. People act as though it isn't an issue, but it's a recurring theme in our lives globally.
I don't see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don't believe in an eye for an eye. I don't believe this is truly freedom.
Six is a number perfect in itself, and not because God created the world in six days; rather the contrary is true. God created the world in six days because this number is perfect, and it would remain perfect, even if the work of the six days did not exist.
I try to believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Count them, Alice. One, there are drinks that make you shrink. Two, there are foods that make you grow. Three, animals can talk. Four, cats can disappear. Five, there is a place called Underland. Six, I can slay the Jabberwocky.
Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor’s New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.
When we accept all of life's contradictions, when we can comfortably flow between the banks of pleasure and pain, experiencing them both while getting stuck in neither, then we are free.
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