Books That Changed the World Forever | Must-See Literary Masterpieces

[@skeller61]

Thanks for your suggestions. I’m just getting back into reading and pulled out my copy of 501 Must-Read Books. Having well thought out suggestions and reasons for each is invaluable to finding books you might otherwise not know about. You’ve got a new subscriber!

[@marimuthuelakkuvan1011]

gud collections

[@willieluncheonette5843]

“Plato is simply a record-keeper - he has not a single idea of his own! He is a devoted lover of Socrates, and whatever Socrates says, he goes on recording it, writing it. Socrates has not written anything - just as no great master has ever written anything. And Plato is certainly a great writer; perhaps Socrates may not have been able to write so beautifully. Plato has made Socrates’ teachings as beautiful as possible, but he himself is no one. Now the same work can be done by a tape recorder. And Aristotle is merely an intellectual, with no understanding of being, or even a desire to search for it. These people are taught in the universities. I was constantly in a fight with my professors. When they started teaching Plato, I said, “This is absolute nonsense, because Plato has nothing to say of his own. It is better to teach about Socrates. Plato can be referred to - he has compiled it all. But Socrates’ name has become almost a fiction, and Plato has become the reality” Plato’s allegory is of slaves who, working in a cave, see only their shadows on the walls and believe that what is happening on the walls is the only reality. They don’t know of any other reality except those shadows… they don’t even know that those shadows are their own. They know nothing about the outside world, outside their cave; it doesn’t exist for them. This is one of the most beautiful allegories - of tremendous importance. It is our allegory. Translated into our life, it means we are living in a certain cave and we are seeing shadows on a certain screen and we know nothing else about the screen. We know nothing about there being a world beyond the screen; we know nothing about these shadows on the screen, even that they are our own. Looked at rightly, it is the allegory of our mind. What do you know of the world? Just a small skull is your cave; and just the screen of your mind… and the things which you call thoughts, emotions, sentiments, feelings, are all shadows - they don’t have any substance in them. And you get angry, you get depressed, you are in anguish - because you have learned to be identified with those shadows. You are projecting them; they are your own shadows. It is your own anger that is projected on the screen of the mind. And then it becomes a vicious circle: that anger makes you more angry, more anger projects more anger, and so on and so forth. And we go on living our whole life without ever thinking that there is a world of reality beyond the mind, on the outside, and there is also a world of reality beyond all these sentiments, feelings, emotions - beyond your ego. That is your awareness. The whole art of meditation is to bring you out of the cave so that you can become aware that you are not those shadows but that you are a watcher. And the moment you become a watcher, a miracle happens: those shadows start disappearing. They feed on your identity; if you feel identified with them, then they are there. The more you identify with them, the more nourished they are."

[@AtoZ528MMA]

Thanks for sharing. It seems like you're exploring the depth of Plato's allegory of the cave and connecting it to meditation and self-awareness. The key idea is that most people live in a mental cave, mistaking shadows for reality. Through meditation and awareness, you can step out of the cave and see beyond the mind's illusions. It’s about finding your true self by detaching from thoughts and emotions that usually define your experience. Would you like further discussion on this concept or ideas on how to deepen your practice?