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Sunday, June 29, 2008

Plato (en Espanol)

Platón (en griego Πλάτων) (circa. 427 a. C./428 a. C.347 a. C.) fue un filósofo griego, alumno de Sócrates y maestro de Aristóteles, de familia nobilísima y de la más alta aristocracia. Su influencia como autor y sistematizador ha sido incalculable en toda la historia de la filosofía, de la que se ha dicho con frecuencia que alcanzó identidad como disciplina gracias a sus trabajos. Durante su juventud luchó como soldado en las guerras del Peloponeso de las cuales Atenas salió derrotada, y el poder y la economía que ostentaba sobre el mundo griego cayó en las manos de Esparta. Entre sus obras más importantes se cuentan los Diálogos y La República (en griego Πολιτεια, politeia, "forma de gobernar - ciudad"), en la cual elabora la filosofía política de un estado ideal; el Fedro, en el que desarrolla una compleja e influyente teoría psicológica; el Timeo, un influyente ensayo de cosmología racional influida por las matemáticas pitagóricas; y el Teeteto, el primer estudio conocido sobre filosofía de la ciencia.
Fue fundador de la Academia de Atenas, donde estudió Aristóteles. Participó activamente en la enseñanza de la Academia y escribió sobre diversos temas filosóficos, especialmente los que trataban de la política, ética, metafísica y epistemología. Las obras más famosas de Platón fueron sus diálogos. Si bien varios epigramas y cartas también han perdurado.
Los diálogos de Platón tienen gran vitalidad y frecuentemente incluyen humor e ironía. Por su método expositivo se considera a Platón el filósofo más ameno.
A Sócrates lo menciona frecuentemente en los diálogos. Cuánto del contenido y de los argumentos es obra de Sócrates o de Platón, es difícil decir, por cuanto Sócrates no dejó evidencia escrita de sus enseñanzas; esta ambigüedad es la que se conoce como el “problema socrático”. No hay duda, sin embargo, que Platón fue influido profundamente por las enseñanzas de Sócrates; de hecho sus primeras ideas y ensayos lucen como adaptaciones de las de Sócrates.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

C. G. Jung Quotes


"There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites."

"How else could it have occurred to man to divide the cosmos, on the analogy of day and night, summer and winter, into a bright day-world and a dark night-world peopled with fabulous monsters, unless he had the prototype of such a division in himself, in the polarity between the conscious and the invisible and unknowable unconscious?"

"The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness."

". . . the anima is bipolar and can therefore appear positive one moment and negative the next; now young, now old; now mother, now maiden; now a good fairy, now a witch; now a saint, now a whore."


"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."


"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity."


"I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. "


"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."


"It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves."


"The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure--be it a daemon, a human being, or a process--that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure. . . . In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history. . . ."


"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."


"Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health."


"Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. "

More Mandarin Vocabulary

虽然 suīrán although; 忽然 hūrán suddenly; 当然 dāngrán of course;
成为 chéngwéi, =变成 biànchéng become
事情 shìqing situation
工作 gōngzuò work; 作业 zuòyè homework
文化 wénhuà culture
银行 yínháng bank; 行业 hángyè profession
所以 suǒyǐ so, therefore; 所有 suǒyǒu all; 厕所 cèsuǒ toilet
看见 kànjian see; 意见 yìjian idea, view, opinion; 听见 tīngjiàn hear
已经 yǐjing already
办公室 bànggōngshì office; 公司 gōngsī company;
公共 gōnggòng public, communal, common; 公共汽车 gōnggòngqìchē (public) bus
同志 tóngzhì comrade
第三世界 dì-sān shìjiè 3rd World
(=知道 zhīdao) know; 知识 zhīshi knowledge[zhì] (=智 zhì) wit, (=智慧 zhìhuì) wisdom,
(=智力 zhìlì) intellect
事实 shìshí fact; 实际上 shíjìshang actually; 实在 shízài really
心理 xīnlǐ psychology, mentality
说话 shuōhuà talk, speak
作者 zuòzhě author
这儿 zhèr here; 那儿 nàr there
向者 xiàngzhě formerly, once upon a time
问题 wèntí question, problem; 访问 fǎngwèn visit
动物 dòngwù animal; 活动 huódòng activity; 运动 yùndòng sports
地方 dìfang place
面包 miànbāo bread
石头 shítou stone
现代 xiàndài modern
身体 shēntǐ body
将来 jiānglái future
参与 cānyù participate in
愿意 yuànyi wish, desire
办法 bànfǎ method
决定 juédìng decide
最近 zuìjìn recently/soon; 最喜欢 zuì xǐhuan favorite
电气 diànqì electricity
方便 fāngbiàn convenient
两次 liǎng cì twice
星期 xīngqī week; 长期 chángqī long term
提供 tígōng provide
金子 jīnzi gold
反映 fǎnyìng reflect
做法 zuòfǎ method, way of doing
公司 gōngsī company, corporation; 司令 sīlìng commander
王国 wángguó kingdom, realm, domain
接受 jiēshòu accept; 难受 nánshòu unhappy
阳光 yángguāng sunlight; 光荣 guāngróng glory
界限 jièxiàn boundary, limit; 世界 shìjiè world
任务 rènwu assignment, task

Mircea Eliade said..........

"In our day, when historical pressure no longer allows any escape, how can man tolerate the catastrophes and horrors of history—from collective deportations and massacres to atomic bombings—if beyond them he can glimpse no sign, no transhistorical meaning; if they are only the blind play of economic, social, or political forces, or, even worse, only the result of the 'liberties' that a minority takes and exercises directly on the stage of universal history?
"We know how, in the past, humanity has been able to endure the sufferings we have enumerated: they were regarded as a punishment inflicted by God, the syndrome of the decline of the 'age,' and so on. And it was possible to accept them precisely because they had a metahistorical meaning [...] Every war rehearsed the struggle between good and evil, every fresh social injustice was identified with the sufferings of the Saviour (or, for example, in the pre-Christian world, with the passion of a divine messenger or vegetation god), each new massacre repeated the glorious end of the martyrs. [...] By virtue of this view, tens of millions of men were able, for century after century, to endure great historical pressures without despairing, without committing suicide or falling into that spiritual aridity that always brings with it a relativistic or nihilistic view of history"[31]
Mircea Eliade

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Ontology

In philosophy, ontology (from the Greek ὄν, genitive ὄντος: of being (part. of εἶναι: to be) and -λογία: science, study, theory) is the most fundamental branch of metaphysics. It studies being or existence and its basic categories and relationships, to determine what entities and what types of entities exist. Ontology thus has strong implications for conceptions of reality.
Some philosophers, notably of the Platonic school, contend that all nouns refer to entities. Other philosophers contend that some nouns do not name entities but provide a kind of shorthand way of referring to a collection (of either objects or events). In this latter view, mind, instead of referring to an entity, refers to a collection of mental events experienced by a person; society refers to a collection of persons with some shared characteristics, and geometry refers to a collection of a specific kind of intellectual activity. Any ontology must give an account of which words refer to entities, which do not, why, and what categories result. When one applies this process to nouns such as electrons, energy, contract, happiness, time, truth, causality, and god, ontology becomes fundamental to many branches of philosophy.

Ontology has one basic question: "What actually exists?" Different philosophers provide different answers to this question.
One common approach is to divide the extant entities into groups called "categories". However, these lists of categories are also quite different from one another. It is in this latter sense that ontology is applied to such fields as theology, library science and artificial intelligence.
Further examples of ontological questions include:
What is existence?
Is existence a property?
Why does something exist rather than nothing?
What constitutes the identity of an object?
What is a physical object?
What features are the essential, as opposed to merely accidental, attributes of a given object?
Can one give an account of what it means to say that a physical object exists?
What are an object's properties or relations and how are they related to the object itself?
When does an object go out of existence, as opposed to merely changing?

Tesla




Metatron's Cube


The Fruit of Life (a component of the Flower of Life) has thirteen circles. If each circle's center is considered a "node", and each node is connected to each other node with a single line, a total of seventy-eight lines are created. Within this cube, many other shapes can be found, including two-dimensionally flattened versions of the five Platonic solids. The true Metatron's Cube will include all five Platonic solids in such a way that the solids, existing in volumetric 3D space, have had their z-coordinates set to zero but their x- and y-coordinates retained, such that they are orthogonally flattened.
In early kabbalist scriptures, Metatron supposedly forms the cube from his soul. This cube can later be seen in Christian art, where it appears on his chest or floating behind him. Metatron's cube is also considered a holy glyph, and was often drawn around an object or person to ward off demons and satanic powers. This idea is also present in alchemy, in which the cube was favoured as a containment circle or creation circle.
The simplest means of constructing Metatron's Cube is to begin with a cube flattened along a space diagonal, such that it becomes a 2D figure, equivalent to a regular hexagon divided via its own diagonals into six equilateral triangles. The vertices of this 2D figure are then connected with additional lines. Several steps later, the full Metatron's Cube figure is formed.[23] This method requires dividing vertices according to the golden ratio. There is also a method of construction from the Flower of Life.[24] The cube resembles the fourth dimensional analog of the cube, or the Tesseract.

The Tree of Life


Yggdrasil


In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil (Old Norse Yggdrasill, IPA: [ˈyɡˌdrasilː]; the extra -l is a nominative case marker) is the World Tree, a great ash tree located at the center of the universe and joining the nine worlds of Norse cosmology. The trunk of the tree may be thought of as forming a vertical axis around which these worlds are situated, with Ásgard, realm of the gods, at the top and the Hel, located in Niflheim, at the bottom. Midgard, our world that is inhabited by humans, is located in the middle and surrounded by Jötunheim, land of Jötunn, both of which are separated by the ocean. Yggdrasil is also sometimes referred to as Mimameid or Laerad.

Four Great Classical Novels

The Four Great Classical Novels, or Four Major Classical Novels (Chinese: 四大名著) of Chinese literature, are the four novels commonly counted by scholars to be the greatest and most influential in classical Chinese fiction. Well known to every Chinese reader in the 20th century, they are not to be confused with the Four Books of Confucianism. These[clarify] books are considered to be the pinnacle of China's achievement in classical novels, influencing the creation of many stories, theater, movies, games, and other entertainment throughout China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.
In chronological order, they are:
Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義) (14th century) (more recently and appropriately known as, and translated as, simply "Three Kingdoms")
Water Margin (水滸傳) (also known as Outlaws of the Marsh) (14th century),
Journey to the West (西遊記) (16th century),
Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢) (also known as The Story of the Stone) (first block print 1791)
Some consider Jin Ping Mei (金瓶梅) (The Plum in the Golden Vase or Golden Lotus) (1610) to be a fifth classic. In the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty, Jin Ping Mei along with the above first three novels, was classified as "Four Major Novels of Wonder" (四大奇書,四大奇书) by Feng Menglong (冯梦龙). With the advent of Dream of the Red Chamber, its position has gradually been usurped. It has almost faded into oblivion in the modern era, because Chinese governments often banned it for its explicit description of sex.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Great_Classical_Novels"

Axis Mundi (Wikipedia Excerpt)

The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar and center of the world) is a ubiquitous symbol that crosses human cultures. The image expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet. At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all. The spot functions as the omphalos (navel), the world's point of beginning.[1]
The axis mundi image appears in every region of the world and takes many forms. The image is both feminine (an umbilical providing nourishment) and masculine (a phallus providing insemination into a uterus). It may have the form of a natural object (a mountain, a tree, a vine, a stalk, a column of smoke or fire) or a product of human manufacture (a staff, a tower, a ladder, a staircase, a maypole, a cross, a steeple, a rope, a totem pole, a pillar, a spire). Its proximity to heaven may carry implications that are chiefly religious (pagoda, temple mount, church) or secular (obelisk, minaret, lighthouse, rocket, skyscraper). The image appears in religious and secular contexts.[2] The axis mundi symbol may be found in cultures utilizing shamanic practices or animist belief systems, in major world religions, and in technologically advanced "urban centers"–wherever the impulse exists to link a column with the idea of a center.

The symbol originates in a natural and universal psychological perception: that one's native land and home stand at "the center of the world." Home is indeed the center of one's known universe, the point of one's origin. From it one may venture in any of the four cardinal directions, make discoveries, and establish new centers. The name of China, "Middle Kingdom," expresses the ancient perception of its residents that their land occupied the center of the world, with other lands lying in various directions relative to it.[3]
Within the central known universe a specific locale–often a mountain or other elevated place, a spot where earth and sky come closest–gains status as center of the center, the axis mundi. High mountains are typically regarded as sacred by peoples living near them. Shrines are often erected at the summit or base. Japan's highest mountain, Mount Fuji, has long symbolized the world axis in Japanese culture. Mount Kun-Lun fills a similar role in China. For the ancient Hebrews Mount Zion expressed the symbol. Sioux beliefs take the Black Hills as the axis mundi. Mount Kailash is holy to several religions in Tibet. The Pitjantjatjara people in central Australia consider Uluru to be central to both their world and culture. In ancient Mesopotamia the cultures of ancient Sumer and Babylon erected artificial mountains, or ziggurats, on the flat river plain. These supported staircases leading to temples at the top. The pre-Columbian residents of Teotihuacán in Mexico erected huge pyramids featuring staircases leading to heaven. Jacob's Ladder is an axis mundi image, as is the Temple Mount. For Christians the Cross on Mount Calvary expresses the symbol.[4] The Middle Kingdom, China, had a central mountain, Kun-Lun, known in Taoist literature as "the mountain at the middle of the world." To "go into the mountains" meant to dedicate oneself to a spiritual life.[5] Monasteries of all faiths tend, like shrines, to be placed at elevated spots. Wise religious teachers are typically depicted in literature and art as bringing their revelations at world centers: mountains, trees, temples.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

"The Magic Tiger" by Brandon Fike

The Magic Tiger
Please translate this story into English.
Qing ba zhe ge gu shi fan yi cheng ying wen.

很久以前,有一只会魔法的老虎.
Hen jiu yi qian, you yi zhi hui mo fa de lao hu.
很多人相信,谁捉住了这只老虎,就會得到三个愿望.
Hen duo ren xiang xin, shui zhuo zhu le zhe zhi lao hu, jiu hui de dao san ge yuan wang.

一天,一个叫Brandon的年轻男人決定要捉住这只会魔法的老虎.
Yi tian, yi ge jiao Brandon de nian qing nan ren jue ding yao zhuo zhu zhe zhi hui mo fa de lao hu.
Brandon 知道这只老虎很难捉住,因为它跑得很快!
Brandon zhi dao zhe zhi lao hu hen nan zhuo zhu, yin wei ta pao de hen kuai!
Brandon用了很多天去想怎樣捉 住这只老虎.然后他有了一个主意.
Brandon yong le hen duo tian qu xiang zen yang zhuo zhu zhe zhi lao hu, ran hou ta you le yi ge zhu yi.
Brandon拜訪了一位魔法師,并請求这位魔法師将他變成一只漂亮的母老虎.
Brandon bai fang le yi wei mo fa shi,bing qing qiu zhe wei mo fa shi jiang ta bian cheng yi zhi piao liang de mu lao hu.
当这只会魔法的老虎看到Brandon, 他愛上了 Brandon!
Dang zhe zhi hui mo fa de lao hu kan dao Brandon, ta ai shang le Brandon!
最終, Brandon變回一个男人,把这只老虎捉住了.
Zui zhong, Brandon bian hui le yi ge nan ren, ba zhe zhi lao hu zhuo zhu le.