Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Martin Buber
Read between
January 26 - January 27, 2023
The I-Thou relationship is a true relationship where people speak to each other as equals. Though one cannot sustain this forever, and many relationships become unequal,
in every era, God calls to everyone: ‘Where are you in this world? How far have you got with your allotted tasks?’
God does not expect to learn something he does not know; what he wants is to produce an effect in man which can only be produced by just such a question, provided that it reaches man’s heart—that man allows it to reach his heart.
every man is Adam and finds himself in Adam’s situation. To escape responsibility for his life, he turns existence into a system of hideouts. And in thus hiding again and again ‘from the face of God’, he enmeshes himself more and more deeply in perversity.
whatever power he may attain and whatever deeds he may do, his life will remain way-less, so long as he does not face the Voice.
the saying of our sages: “Consider three things. Know whence you came, whither you are going, and to whom you will have to render accounts.”
God does not say: ‘This way leads to me and that does not’, but he says: ‘Whatever you do may be a way to me, provided you do it in such a manner that it leads you to me.’
the way by which a man can reach God is revealed to him only through the knowledge of his own being, the knowledge of his essential quality and inclination.
never should asceticism gain mastery over a man’s life. A man may only detach himself from nature in order to revert to it again and, in hallowed contact with it, find his way to God.
fasting could serve this purpose in the initial stage of a person’s development and also later, at critical moments of his life.
A man who thus becomes a unit of body and spirit—he is the man whose work is all of a piece.
real transformation, real restoration, at first of the single person and subsequently of the relationship between him and his fellow-men, can only be achieved by the comprehension of the whole as a whole.
a man should himself realize that conflict-situations between himself and others are nothing but the effects of conflict-situations in his own soul; then he should try to overcome this inner conflict, so that afterwards he may go out to his fellow-men and enter into new, transformed relationships with them.
When a man has made peace within himself, he will be able to make peace in the whole world.’
in what the decisive inner conflict consists. It is the conflict between three principles in man’s being and life, the principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean, and that I do not do what I say. For this confuses and poisons, again and again
To begin with oneself, but not to end with oneself; to start from oneself, but not to aim at oneself; to comprehend oneself, but not to be preoccupied with oneself.
it is written: “Depart from evil and do good”—turn wholly away from evil, do not dwell upon it, and do good. You have done wrong? Then counteract it by doing right.’
Only when pride subjects itself to humility can it be redeemed; and only when it is redeemed, can the world be redeemed.
Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk, once said to his congregation: ‘What, after all, do I demand of you? Only three things: not to look furtively outside yourselves, not to look furtively into others, and not to aim at yourselves.’
‘God dwells wherever man lets him in.’ This is the ultimate purpose: to let God in. But we can let him in only where we really stand, where we live, where we live a true life.
