Illumination (Ekaku)

Mind illuminates old teachings; old teachings illuminate mind.

Hakuin Ekaku

It's history

History is a record of accidents, haphazardly noted by the half-blind trying to advance diverse and contradictory agendas.

The enemies

Conviction and complacency
are the enemies of truth.

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A choice

What is not an error but a choice
may also be a choice.

Which?

Am I defined by my limits or by
my desire to transcend them?

Or and

Live ethically or die.

So tired (Hughes)

I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two—
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.

Langston Hughes, "Tired"

The competition

We compete to create
in order to determine
what will be remembered.

The pendulum of the mind (Jung)

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Carl Jung

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General rule

Better pedantic than obscure.

Reality

Reality is meant to be assimilated, not annihilated.

Five (Dostoyevsky)

I agree that two times two is four is an excellent thing; but if we're going to start praising everything, then two times two is five is sometimes also a most charming little thing.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground

Which one?

One of my poems could change the world.
I've no idea which one.

When they're gone

The good want the world to stop and take notice when they are gone. The wicked want it to never start again.

What price? (Bernstein)

Indeed, from a corporate point of view, having too many people in the workforce who think too much may be detrimental if they find themselves in dead-end jobs that require little thought. Such ideas are fundamentally antidemocratic of course; they are a breeding ground for a passive and mal-informed citizenry that is unable to make sense of the complex issues that confront the nation. What price do we have to pay for an informed citizenry, one that can understand the complex multiplicity of American culture, can read into events, not simply register them as a series of fated accomplishments?...Will we spend billions for defense while begrudging any money spent on what we are defending?

Charles Bernstein, Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions

It's history

History doesn't care about history.

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Attacks (Nietzsche)

In times of peace, the warlike man attacks himself.

Friedrich Nietzsche