The futile quest for certainty | Vividness
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The futile quest for certainty | Vividness
While emptiness is what’s left when you take away the thoughts and beliefs that you have constructed around an event, not knowing is a way to move in the absence of such thoughts. It’s a creative possibility. Not knowing who you are allows you to meet an event without pretending it is something else—something that happened before. Then you might ex
... See moreJohn Tarrant • Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life
You really, really, really don’t know when a given event is, or isn’t, for the best. If this falls into the category of “too soon”, by all means file it away for later. But it’s true all the same: you can’t know what effect present-day events will have in the long run, and it’s to ignore your status as a limited human being to imagine you ever coul
... See moreIn other words, somehow we have this preference for occurrence, so we’re always working in that framework of trying to get comfortable through political beliefs and philosophies and religions and everything, trying to gain pleasure in all that occurs.
Pema Chödrön • The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving Kindness
The Buddhist explanation is that we feel this uneasiness because we’re always trying to get ground under our feet and it never quite works. We’re always looking for a permanent reference point, and it doesn’t exist. Everything is impermanent. Everything is always changing—fluid, unfixed, and open. Nothing is pin-down-able the way we’d like it to be
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