when it rains it pours. what can i say. this, and the two previous entries sorta represent recent thoughts of mine (or scraps of paper in my back pocket) that i've had with me for a while. now, as i enter them onto this page, i liberate my mind from their intense contemplation--safe in the knowledge that they will continue to be there, but maybe not so everpresent to my mind. hmmm.
the three difficulties
1) recognize your neurosis as neurosis
2) then not to do the habitual thing, but to do something different to interrupt the neurotic habit
3) to make this practice a way of life
good good.
9.17.2003
9.15.2003
here are a few buddhist concepts that i had written down on a piece of scrap paper in my back pocket. i'm not sure if they belong on here, but then again who decides what belongs here? for some reason i have a difficult time throwing out this piece of scrap paper--for fear that these insightful words will be forever lost. so maybe if i write them on here they will continue to thrive and move me...
the four preliminaries
1) maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life
2) be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone
3) recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; what goes around come around.
4) contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will suffer.
my mind sorta gets wrapped in a paradox when i read these words over and over. i want to know them because i feel i need to know them. but do i feel like i need to know them because i want to be a better person? and if so, isn't that exactly what it's telling me not think about? so what's the solution then? to throw this piece of paper out and forget about this whole thing? where does that leave me?
the four preliminaries
1) maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life
2) be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone
3) recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; what goes around come around.
4) contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will suffer.
my mind sorta gets wrapped in a paradox when i read these words over and over. i want to know them because i feel i need to know them. but do i feel like i need to know them because i want to be a better person? and if so, isn't that exactly what it's telling me not think about? so what's the solution then? to throw this piece of paper out and forget about this whole thing? where does that leave me?
9.14.2003
some quotes i want to remember:
"each man is haunted until his humanity awakens." -Blake
"custom will reconcile people to any atrocity." -George Bernard Shaw
"if we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." -T.H. Huxley
"sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." -T.H. Huxley
and here's a quote i read in the Shambhala Sun that i really enjoyed:
"it suddenly dawned on me that i was on a bus, that outside the bus, as it moved down the street, it had turned dark, night had come on, lights were on in the buildings that lined the street; and above the buildings was the night sky, and all was right with the world. in that moment, it would seem that my consciousness had switched from its microcosmic state of personal issues and problems, to a macrocosmic awareness that inhabited a large universe--that in fact my consciousness was but a single filament of this larger whole."
those words are so beautiful to me. i love to imagine myself as a single filament of a larger whole, in fact i would say that when i truly feel those words it's not my imagination running wild, but my inner true nature exposing itself. i suppose these quotations are significant for me because they seem so different in many ways, but actually incorporate the true human sensations in their perspective. good or bad don't really make sense to these words, they exist on a plane of truth that makes no sense of human judgments. yes yes.
"each man is haunted until his humanity awakens." -Blake
"custom will reconcile people to any atrocity." -George Bernard Shaw
"if we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." -T.H. Huxley
"sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." -T.H. Huxley
and here's a quote i read in the Shambhala Sun that i really enjoyed:
"it suddenly dawned on me that i was on a bus, that outside the bus, as it moved down the street, it had turned dark, night had come on, lights were on in the buildings that lined the street; and above the buildings was the night sky, and all was right with the world. in that moment, it would seem that my consciousness had switched from its microcosmic state of personal issues and problems, to a macrocosmic awareness that inhabited a large universe--that in fact my consciousness was but a single filament of this larger whole."
those words are so beautiful to me. i love to imagine myself as a single filament of a larger whole, in fact i would say that when i truly feel those words it's not my imagination running wild, but my inner true nature exposing itself. i suppose these quotations are significant for me because they seem so different in many ways, but actually incorporate the true human sensations in their perspective. good or bad don't really make sense to these words, they exist on a plane of truth that makes no sense of human judgments. yes yes.
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