6. David Foster Williams in This is Water writes “And the so called ‘real world’ will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called ‘real world’ of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of the self.”
Buddha informed his fellow practitioners that desire for power, pleasure, and immortality would sustain a state of suffering in one’s life. In what way(s) has the desire for power, pleasure, or immortality fed your own existence. Share a story when you found yourself consumed by one of these ends. How did this pursuit open up the reality of suffering in your life?
7. In This is Water, David Foster Williams writes, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
How have you experienced freedom in light of William’s description? How have you gone out of your own way/ your own comfort zone to “sacrifice for [a person or people], over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways?” Write the story of how you have enlivened freedom in exactly this manner.
8. T.S. Eliot in his poem ‘Little Gidding’ writes,
‘We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.’
The soul made known in The Fountain enlivens exactly this poetic acclamation. How did the soul ‘not cease from exploration’? How did the soul come to ‘the end of’ exploring’? And how did the soul ‘arrive where [he] started and know the place for the first time’?
Share how the soul in The Fountain made manifest Eliot’s poetry.
