| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose
or meaning; but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and
is a thing which no other bear can do. This imitation of speech,
taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of
tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. The
further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. Meantime I
will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the North and
make an exhaustive search. There must certainly be another one
somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company
of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will muzzle this
one first.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: so complete as to be absolute release from the individual's burthen
of KARMA. Buddhism seeks an ESCAPE FROM INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY.
The deeper one pursues religious thought the more nearly it
approximates to a search for escape from the self-centred life and
over-individuation, and the more it diverges from Professor
Metchnikoff's assertion of its aims. Salvation is indeed to lose
one's self. But Professor Metchnikoff having roundly denied that
this is so, is then left free to take the very essentials of the
religious life as they are here conceived and present them as if
they were the antithesis of the religious life. His book, when it
is analysed, resolves itself into just that research for an escape
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: friend Jane Todd an' a friend of hers from the tenement. That
thief of a McGaw has stirred up the Union over the haulin' bid,
and they've sent notice to Schwartz that I don't belong to the
Union, an' if he don't throw me over an' give the job to McGaw
they'll call out the men. If they do, there's a hundred women and
three times that many children that'll go hungry. This woman
here's got a girl herself that hasn't drawed a well breath for six
months, an' her man's been idle all winter, an' only just now got
a job at Schwartz's, tending gate. Now, what'll I do? Shall I
chuck up the job or stick?"
The old man looked into the desolate, weary face of the woman and
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