Quotes

"Imagination cannot grasp simple nothingness and must therefore fill the void with fantasies, as in experiments with sensory deprivation where subjects are suspended weightlessly in sound- and light-proof rooms. When death is considered the final victory of Black over White in the deadly serious battle of "White must win," the fantasies which fill the void are largely ghoulish. Even our popular fantasies of Heaven are on the grim side (...)."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would be to implant again into their presences a new organ ... of such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests.

Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"The point is only to know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that "I" and all other "things" now present will vanish, until this knowledge compels you to release them--to know it now as surely as if you had just fallen off the rim of the Grand Canyon. Indeed, you were kicked off the edge of a precipice when you were born, and it's no help to cling to the rocks falling with you. If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over--fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise: you don't die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"In death we doff the persona, as actors take off their masks and costumes in the green room behind the scenes. And just as their friends come behind the stage to congratulate them on the performance, so one's own friends should gather at the deathbed to help one out of one's mortal role, to applaud the show, and, even more, to celebrate with champagne or sacraments (according to taste) the great awakening of death."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"Yet graduation day is a very temporary fulfillment, for with your first sales promotion meeting you are back in the same old system, being urged to make that quota (and if you do, they'll give you a higher quota) and so progress up the ladder to sales manager, vice-president, and, at last, president of your own show (about forty to forty-five years old). In the meantime, the insurance and investment people have been interesting you in plans for Retirement--that really ultimate goal of being able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of all your labors. But when that day comes, your anxieties and exertions will have left you with a weak heart, false teeth, prostate trouble, sexual impotence, fuzzy eyesight, and a vile digestion.

All this might have been wonderful if, at every stage, you had been able to play it as a game, finding your work as fascinating as poker, chess, or fishing. But for most of us the day is divided into work-time and play-time, the work consisting largely of tasks which others pay us to do because they are abysmally uninteresting. We therefore work, not for the work's sake, but for money--and money is supposed to get us what we really want in our hours of leisure and play."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"Money alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"Here, as we have also seen, the "nub" problem is the self-contradictory definition of man himself as a separate and independent being in the world, as distinct from a special action of the world. Part of our difficulty is that the latter view of man seems to make him no more than a puppet, but this is because, in trying to accept or understand the latter view, we are still in the grip of the former. To say that man is an action of the world is not to define him as a "thing" which is helplessly pushed around by all other "things." We have to get beyond Newton's vision of the world as a system of billiard balls in which every individual ball is passively knocked about by all the rest! Remember that Aristotle's and Newton's preoccupation with causal determinism was that they were trying to explain how one thing or event was influenced by others, forgetting that the division of the world into separate things and events was a fiction. To say that certain events are causally connected is only a clumsy way of saying that they are features of the same event, like the head and tail of the cat."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"It would be sentimental and impossible to go back. Children are in touch with paradise to the extent that they have not fully learned the ego-trick, and the same is true of cultures which, by our standards, are more "primitive" and--by analogy--childlike. If, then, after understanding, at least in theory, that the ego-trick is a hoax and that, beneath everything, "I" and "universe" are one, you ask, "So what? What is the next step, the practical application?"--I will answer that the absolutely vital thing is to consolidate your understanding, to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give--to the cause of peace or of racial integration, to starving Hindus and Chinese, or even to your closest friends. Without this, all social concern will be muddlesome meddling, and all work for the future will be planned disaster."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"But I define myself in terms of you; I know myself only in terms of what is "other," no matter whether I see the "other" as below me or above me in any ladder of values. If above, I enjoy the kick of self-pity; if below, I enjoy the kick of pride. I being I goes with you being you. Thus, as a great Hassidic rabbi put it, "If I am I because you are you, and if you are you because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you."

(...)

Consider it also on a much vaster scale—the death of the universe at the time when all energy runs out, when, according to some cosmologists, the explosion which flung the galaxies into space fades out like a skyrocket. It will be as if it had never happened, which is, of course, the way things were before it did happen. Likewise, when you are dead, you will be as you were before you were conceived. So—there has been a flash, a flash of consciousness or a flash of galaxies. It happened. Even if there is no one left to remember.

(...)

And if I forget how many times I have been here, and in how many shapes, this forgetting is the necessary interval of darkness between every pulsation of light. I return in every baby born. Actually, we know this already. After people die, babies are born—and, unless they are automata, every one of them is, just as we ourselves were, the "I" experience coming again into being. The conditions of heredity and environment change, but each of those babies incarnates the same experience of being central to a world that is "other." Each infant dawns into life as I did, without any memory of a past. Thus when I am gone there can be no experience, no living through, of the state of being a perpetual "has-been." Nature "abhors the vacuum" and the I-feeling appears again as it did before, and it matters not whether the interval be ten seconds or billions of years. In unconsciousness all times are the same brief instant."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"If, then, you ask me how to get beyond the ego-feeling, I shall ask you why you want to get there. If you give me the honest answer, which is that your ego will feel better in the "higher spiritual status" of selftranscendence, you will thus realize that you—as ego—are a fake. You will feel like an onion: skin after skin, subterfuge after subterfuge, is pulled off to find no kernel at the center. Which is the whole point: to find out that the ego is indeed a fake—a wall of defense around a wall of defense ... around nothing. You can't even want to get rid of it, nor yet want to want to.

Understanding this, you will see that the ego is exactly what it pretends it isn't. Far from being the free center of personality, it is an automatic mechanism implanted since childhood by social authority, with—perhaps—a touch of heredity thrown in. This may give you the temporary feeling of being a zombie or a puppet dancing irresponsibly on strings that lead away to unknown forces. At this point, the ego may reassert itself with the insidious "I-can't-help-myself" play in which the ego splits itself in two and pretends that it is its own victim. "See, I'm only a bundle of conditioned reflexes, so you mustn't get angry with me for acting just as I feel." (To which the answer could be, "Well, we're just zombies too, so you shouldn't complain if we get angry.") But who is it that mustn't get angry or shouldn't complain, as if there were still some choice in the matter? The ego is still surviving as the "I" which must passively endure the automatic behavior of "myself" and others—again, as if there were some choice which the witnessing self can make between putting up with things and attacking them violently. What has happened is that the frustrated ego has withdrawn into its last stronghold of independence, retaining its identity as a mere watcher, or sufferer, of all that goes on. Here it pities itself or consoles itself as a puppet of fate.

But if this is seen as yet another subterfuge, we are close to the final showdown. A line of separation is now drawn between everything that happens to me, including my own feelings, on the one side, and on the other, I myself as the conscious witness. Isn't it easy to see that this line is imaginary, and that it, and the witness behind it, are the same old faking process automatically learned in childhood? The same old cleft between the knower and the known? The same old split between the organism/environment and the organism's feedback, or self-conscious mechanism? If, then, there is no choice in what happens to me, on one side of the line, there is equally no choice on the other, on the witnessing side, as to whether I should accept what happens or reject it. I accept, I reject, I witness just as automatically as things happen or as my emotions reflect my physiological chemistry.

Yet in this moment when one seems about to become a really total zombie, the whole thing blows up. For there is not fate unless there is someone or something to be fated. There is no trap without someone to be caught. There is, indeed, no compulsion unless there is also freedom of choice, for the sensation of behaving involuntarily is known only by contrast with that of behaving voluntarily. Thus when the line between myself and what happens to me is dissolved and there is no stronghold left for an ego even as a passive witness, I find myself not in a world but as a world which is neither compulsive nor capricious. What happens is neither automatic nor arbitrary: it just happens, and all happenings are mutually interdependent in a way that seems unbelievably harmonious. Every this goes with every that. Without others there is no self, and without somewhere else there is no here, so that—in this sense—self is other and here is there.

When this new sensation of self arises, it is at once exhilarating and a little disconcerting. It is like the moment when you first got the knack of swimming or riding a bicycle. There is the feeling that you are not doing it yourself, but that it is somehow happening on its own, and you wonder whether you will lose it—as indeed you may if you try forcibly to hold on to it. In immediate contrast to the old feeling, there is indeed a certain passivity to the sensation, as if you were a leaf blown along by the wind, until you realize that you are both the leaf and the wind. The world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside: they move together inseparably, and at first you feel a little out of control because the world outside is so much vaster than the world inside. Yet you soon discover that you are able to go ahead with ordinary activities—to work and make decisions as ever, though somehow this is less of a drag. Your body is no longer a corpse which the ego has to animate and lug around. There is a feeling of the ground holding you up, and of hills lifting you when you climb them. Air breathes itself in and out of your lungs, and instead, of looking and listening, light and sound come to you on their own. Eyes see and ears hear as wind blows and water flows. All space becomes your mind. Time carries you along like a river, but never flows out of the present: the more it goes, the more it stays, and you no longer have to fight or kill it.

You do not ask what is the value, or what is the use, of this feeling. Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use—which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing—for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound. Yet what would we think of a society which had no place for music, which did not allow for dancing, or for any activity not directly involved with the practical problems of survival? Obviously, such a society would be surviving to no purpose— unless it could somehow make a delight out of the "essential tasks" of farming, building, soldiering, manufacturing, or cooking. But in that moment the goal of survival is forgotten. The tasks are being done for their own sake, whereupon farms begin to look like gardens, sensible living-boxes sprout interesting roofs and mysterious ornaments, arms are engraved with curious patterns, carpenters take time to "finish" their work, and cooks become gourmets.

A Chinese philosophical work called The Secret of the Golden Flower says that "when purpose has been used to achieve purposelessness, the thing has been grasped." For a society surviving to no purpose is one that makes no provision for purposeless behavior— that is, for actions not directly aimed at survival, which fulfill themselves in being done in the present and do not necessarily imply some future reward. But indirectly and unintentionally, such behavior is useful for survival because it gives a point to surviving—not, however, when pursued for that reason. To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.

To be released from the "You must survive" double-bind is to see that life is at root playing. The difficulty in understanding this is that the idea of "play" has two distinct meanings which are often confused. On the one hand, to do something only or merely in play, is to be trivial and insincere, and here we should use the word "toying" instead of "playing." But if some woman should say to me, "I love you," would it be right to answer, "Are you serious, or are you just playing with me?" After all, if this relationship is to flourish, I very much hope that she is not serious and that she will play with me. No, the better question would be, "Are you sincere, or are you just toying with me?" Sincerity is better than seriousness, for who wants to be loved gravely? Thus, on the other hand, there is a form of playing which is not trivial at all, as when Segovia plays the guitar or Sir Laurence Olivier plays the part of Hamlet, or, obviously, when someone plays the organ in church."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"Once you have seen this you can return to the world of practical affairs with a new spirit. You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate "you" to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real "you" is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "you" is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new. What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained—though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"As it is, we are merely bolting our lives--gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in--because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being."

- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, 1966

. . .

"So if you were to draw one essential message from the fact of reincarnation, it would be: Develop this good heart that longs for other beings to find lasting happiness, and acts to secure that happiness. Nourish and practice kindness. The Dalai Lama has said: "There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; my philosophy is kindness.""

- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche, 1992

. . .

" A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe" a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest— a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty"

- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

. . .

- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche, 1992

. . .

"We often wonder: "How will I be when I die?" The answer to that is that whatever state of mind we are in now, whatever kind of person we are now: that's what we will be like at the moment of death, if we do not change. This is why it is so absolutely important to use this lifetime to purify our mindstream, and so our basic being and character, while we can."

- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche, 1992

. . .

"Our human existence is not the only kind of karmic vision. Six realms of existence are identified in Buddhism: gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hells. They are each the result of one of the six main negative emotions: pride, jealousy, desire, ignorance, greed, and anger. Do these realms actually exist externally? They may, in fact, exist beyond the range of the perception of our karmic vision. Let's never forget: What we see is what our karmic vision allows us to see, and no more. Just as we, in the present, unpurified, and unevolved state of our perception, can only be aware of this universe, an insect might see one of our fingers as a whole landscape in itself. We are so arrogant that we believe only "seeing is believing. " Yet the great Buddhist teachings speak of innumerable worlds in different dimensions—there may even be many worlds very like, or just like ours—and several modern astrophysicists have developed theories about the existence of parallel universes. How can we possibly say definitively what does or does not exist beyond the bounds of our limited vision?"

- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche, 1992

. . .

" There is a famous Tibetan saying : "Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation. " And Milarepa said: "Do not entertain hopes for realization, but practice all your life." "

- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche, 1992

. . .

" All the spiritual teachers of humanity have told us the same thing, that the purpose of life on earth is to achieve union with our fundamental, enlightened nature. The "task" for which the "king" has sent us into this strange, dark country is to realize and embody our true being. There is only one way to do this, and that is to undertake the spiritual journey, with all the ardor and intelligence, courage and resolve for transformation that we can muster. As Death says to Nachiketas in the Katha Upanishad:

There is the path of wisdom and the path of ignorance. They are far apart and lead to different ends. Abiding in the midst of ignorance, thinking themselves wise and learned, fools go aimlessly hither and thither like the blind led by the blind. What lies beyond life shines not to those who are childish, or careless, or deluded by wealth."

- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche, 1992

. . .

" Human beings have come to a critical place in their evolution, and this age of extreme confusion demands a teaching of comparably extreme power and clarity. I have also found that modern people want a path shorn of dogma, fundamentalism, exclusivity, complex metaphysics, and culturally exotic paraphernalia, a path at once simple and profound, a path that does not need to be practiced in ashrams or monasteries but one that can be integrated with ordinary life and practiced anywhere."

- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche, 1992

. . .

Let me tell you a story I was told by Sister Brigid, a Catholic nurse working in an Irish hospice. Mr. Murphy was in his sixties, and he and his wife were told by their doctor that he did not have long to live. The following day Mrs. Murphy visited her husband at the hospice, and they talked and wept all day long. Sister Brigid watched as the old couple talked and frequently broke down into tears, and when this had gone on for three days, she wondered if she should intervene. Yet the next day the Murphys seemed suddenly very relaxed and peaceful, holding hands and showing each other great tenderness.

Sister Brigid stopped Mrs. Murphy in the corridor and asked her what had taken place between them to have made such a great change on their behavior. Mrs. Murphy told her that when they found out her husband was dying, they looked back over their years together, and many memories came back to them. They had been married almost forty years, and naturally they felt enormous sorrow, thinking and talking about all the things they would never be able to do together again. Mr. Murphy had then made out his will, and written final messages to his grown-up children. All of this was terribly sad, because it was so hard to let go, but they carried on, as Mr. Murphy wanted to end his life well. Sister Brigid told me that for the next three weeks Mr. Murphy lived, the couple radiated peace and a simple, wonderful feeling of love. Even after her husband died, Mrs. Murphy continued to visit patients at the hospice, where she was an inspiration to everyone.

- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche, 1992

. . .

"Experimental philosophy and neuroethics research collects data about human ethical decisions in controlled scenarios such as trolley problems. It has shown that many types of ethical judgment are universal across cultures, suggesting that they may be innate, whilst others are culture specific. The findings show actual human ethical reasoning to be at odds with most logical philosophical theories, for example consistently showing distinctions between action by cause and action by omission which would be absent from utility based theories."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is_the_meaning_of_life

. . .

" Woe to the person who wants to be excused from suffering! That apostolic expression does not indicate only the forsakenness, the suffering of separation, which is even more terrible than the separation of death, since, death only separates a person from the temporal and therefore is a release, whereas this separation shuts him out from the eternal and therefore is an imprisonment that again leaves the spirit sighing in the fragile earthen vessel, in the cramped space, in the status of an alien, because the home of the spirit is in the eternal and the infinite. Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844 p. 337 (Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses)"

- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Four_Upbuilding_Discourses,_1844

. . .

" When the self is out of balance, i.e., has the wrong understanding of who it is because it conceives itself too much in terms of its own limiting circumstances (and thus fails to recognize its own freedom to determine what it will be) or too much in terms of what it would like to be, (thus ignoring its own circumstances), the person is in a state of despair. Notably, Anti-Climacus says one can be in despair even if one feels perfectly happy. Despair is not just an emotion, in a deeper sense it is the loss of self, i.e., it describes the state when one has the wrong conception of oneself. "

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard

. . .

" Here, then, I have your view of life, and, believe me, much of your life will become clear to you if you will consider it along with me as thought-despair. You are a hater of activity in life-quite appropriately, because if there is to be meaning in it life must have continuity, and this your life does not have. You keep busy with your studies, to be sure; you are even diligent; but it is only for your sake, and it is done with as little teleology as possible. Moreover, you are unoccupied; like the laborers in the Gospel standing idle in the marketplace, you stick your hands in your pocket and contemplate life. Now you rest in despair. Nothing concerns you; you step aside for nothing; "If someone threw a roof tile down I would still not step aside." You are like a dying person. You die daily, not in the profound, earnest sense in which one usually understands these words, but life has lost its reality and you "Always count the days of your life from one termination-notice to the next." You let everything pass you by; nothing makes any impact. But then something suddenly comes along that grips you, an idea, a situation, a young girl's smile, and now you are "involved," for just on certain occasions you are not "involved," so at other times you are "at your service" in every way. Wherever there is something going on you join in. You behave in life as you usually do in a crowd. "You work yourself into the tightest group, see to it, if possible, to get yourself shoved up over the others so that you come to be above them, and as soon as you are up there you make yourself as comfortable as possible, and in this way you let yourself be carried through life." But when the crowd is gone, when the event is over, you again stand on the street corner and look at the world. Either/Or Part II p. 195-196"

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard

. . .

" The question remains, however, why is it that human pathos or passion is the most precious thing? In some ways, it might have to do with our status as existential beings. It is not thought that gets us through life—it is action; and what motivates and sustains action is passion, the desire to overcome hardships, pain, and suffering. It is also passion that enables us to die for ideals in the name of a higher reality. While a scientist might see this as plain emotion or simple animal desire, Kierkegaard sees it as that which binds to the source of life itself. The desire to live, and to live in the right way, for the right reasons, and with the right desires, is a holy and sacred force. For Kierkegaard all Christian action should have its ground in love, which is a passion."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard

. . .

" Even with a spiritual power as the answer to meaning, another question arises: What is the purpose of a belief in God? Kierkegaard believed that there is no human-comprehensible purpose of God, making faith in God absurd itself. Camus on the other hand states that to believe in God is to "deny one of the terms of the contradiction" between humanity and the universe (and is therefore not absurd but what he calls "philosophical suicide"). Camus (as well as Kierkegaard), though, suggests that while absurdity does not lead to belief in God, neither does it lead to the denial of God. Camus notes, "I did not say 'excludes God', which would still amount to asserting"."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism

. . .

" For Camus, the beauty people encounter in life makes it worth living. People may create meaning in their own lives, which may not be the objective meaning of life (if there is one), but can still provide something to strive for. However, he insisted that one must always maintain an ironic distance between this invented meaning and the knowledge of the absurd, lest the fictitious meaning take the place of the absurd."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism

. . .

" The rejection of hope, in absurdism, denotes the refusal to believe in anything more than what this absurd life provides. Hope, Camus emphasizes, however, has nothing to do with despair (meaning that the two terms are not opposites). One can still live fully while rejecting hope, and, in fact, can only do so without hope. Hope is perceived by the absurdist as another fraudulent method of evading the Absurd, and by not having hope, one is motivated to live every fleeting moment to the fullest. In the words of Nikos Kazantzakis' epitaph: "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.""

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism

. . .

" The absurdist is not guided by morality, but rather, by their own integrity. The absurdist is, in fact, amoral (though not necessarily immoral). The Absurdist's view of morality implies an unwavering sense of definite right and wrong at all times, while integrity implies honesty with one's self and consistency in the motivations of one's actions and decisions."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism

. . .

" Fundamental to the concept of secular humanism is the strongly held viewpoint that ideology—be it religious or political—must be thoroughly examined by each individual and not simply accepted or rejected on faith. Along with this, an essential part of secular humanism is a continually adapting search for truth, primarily through science and philosophy. "

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism

. . .

" They suggest instead that an illusion of free will is experienced due to the generation of infinite behaviour from the interaction of finite-deterministic set of rules and parameters. Thus the unpredictability of the emerging behaviour from deterministic processes leads to a perception of free will, even though free will as an ontological entity does not exist."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

. . .

" By this analogy, it is suggested, the experience of free will emerges from the interaction of finite rules and deterministic parameters that generate nearly infinite and practically unpredictable behaviourial responses. In theory, if all these events could be accounted for, and there were a known way to evaluate these events, the seemingly unpredictable behaviour would become predictable."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

. . .

" It may be possible, then, that our intuitions about the role of our conscious "intentions" have led us astray; it may be the case that we have confused correlation with causation by believing that conscious awareness necessarily causes the body's movement. This possibility is bolstered by findings in neurostimulation, brain damage, but also research into introspection illusions. Such illusions show that humans do not have full access to various internal processes. The discovery that humans possess a determined will would have implications for moral responsibility. "

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

. . .

(about terminal lucidity)

"As a nurse, I saw many, many instances of this phenomenon. It was nothing at all unusual. It seemed to us that receiving religious last rights almost assured it happening, but of course, as with premonition dreams, having had to phone a priest for a patient in extremis, we were probably just noticing it more. The other common phenomenon I witnessed with dying patients, and indeed with my own mother, was the death bed visitor. One that the patient could see, and converse with, who wasn't there in reality. With my mother, it was her mother, dead for forty years. It seemed most prevalent in patients who weren't heavily medicated, and it seemed to bring much comfort. The fact that these experiences were so similar patient to patient, seemed to point out that it is a normal response on the part of a dying brain."

- http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/one-last-goodbye-the-strange-case-of-terminal-lucidity/#comment-D2F76B7D-D269-4354-ACBB3E0B2FD9C170

. . .

(about terminal lucidity)

"In another case study, the patient was mute and disoriented and hadn't seemed to notice or understand when her husband, whose name was Urs, died. A few months after her husband's death, she sat up in bed, stretched out her hand, and said, "Urs! Yes, yes, ready." She died shortly afterward."

- http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/930465-do-alzheimers-dementia-prove-the-soul-doesnt-exist/

. . .

"The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/30/d-t-suzuki-essays-in-zen-buddhism/

. . .

"We cannot suspend even for a moment our life-activity for philosophy to unravel its mysteries. Let the mysteries remain as they are, but live we must… Zen therefore does not rely on the intellect for the solution of its deepest problems."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/30/d-t-suzuki-essays-in-zen-buddhism/

. . .

"As nature abhors a vacuum, Zen abhors anything coming between the fact and ourselves. According to Zen there is no struggle in the fact itself such as between the finite and the infinite, between the flesh and the spirit. These are idle distinctions fictitiously designed by the intellect for its own interest. Those who take them too seriously or those who try to read them into the very fact of life are those who take the finger for the moon."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/30/d-t-suzuki-essays-in-zen-buddhism/

. . .

"The ultimate standpoint of Zen, therefore, is that we have been led astray through ignorance to find a split in our own being, that there was from the very beginning no need for a struggle between the finite and the infinite, that the peace we are seeking so eagerly after has been there all the time."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/30/d-t-suzuki-essays-in-zen-buddhism/

. . .

"When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That's why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness. Understanding someone's suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love's other name. If you don't understand, you can't love."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/31/how-to-love-thich-nhat-hanh/

. . .

"If our parents didn't love and understand each other, how are we to know what love looks like? … The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness. Our parents may be able to leave us money, houses, and land, but they may not be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/31/how-to-love-thich-nhat-hanh/

. . .

"The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine for another person. You can't offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person.

[…]

If you have enough understanding and love, then every moment — whether it's spent making breakfast, driving the car, watering the garden, or doing anything else in your day — can be a moment of joy."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/31/how-to-love-thich-nhat-hanh/

. . .

"In a deep relationship, there's no longer a boundary between you and the other person. You are her and she is you. Your suffering is her suffering. Your understanding of your own suffering helps your loved one to suffer less. Suffering and happiness are no longer individual matters. What happens to your loved one happens to you. What happens to you happens to your loved one.

[…]

In true love, there's no more separation or discrimination. His happiness is your happiness. Your suffering is his suffering. You can no longer say, "That's your problem.""

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/31/how-to-love-thich-nhat-hanh/

. . .

"Often, when we say, "I love you" we focus mostly on the idea of the "I" who is doing the loving and less on the quality of the love that's being offered. This is because we are caught by the idea of self. We think we have a self. But there is no such thing as an individual separate self. A flower is made only of non-flower elements, such as chlorophyll, sunlight, and water. If we were to remove all the non-flower elements from the flower, there would be no flower left. A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower can only inter-be with all of us… Humans are like this too. We can't exist by ourselves alone. We can only inter-be. I am made only of non-me elements, such as the Earth, the sun, parents, and ancestors. In a relationship, if you can see the nature of interbeing between you and the other person, you can see that his suffering is your own suffering, and your happiness is his own happiness. With this way of seeing, you speak and act differently. This in itself can relieve so much suffering."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/31/how-to-love-thich-nhat-hanh/

. . .

"The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it. This is a form of hope that we can all achieve, and it is the most abiding of all. Hope resides in the meaning of what our lives have been."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/17/sherwin-nuland-how-we-die/

. . .

"Perhaps the mere existence of things undone should be a sort of satisfaction in itself, though the idea would appear to be paradoxical. Only one who is long since dead while still seemingly alive does not have many "promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep," and that state of inertness is not to be desired. To the wise advice that we live every day as though it will be our last, we do well to add the admonition to live every day as though we will be on this earth forever."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/17/sherwin-nuland-how-we-die/

. . .

"We die so that the world may continue to live. We have been given the miracle of life because trillions upon trillions of living things have prepared the way for us and then have died — in a sense, for us. We die, in turn, so that others may live. The tragedy of a single individual becomes, in the balance of natural things, the triumph of ongoing life."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/17/sherwin-nuland-how-we-die/

. . .

"The dignity that we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives. Ars moriendi as ars vivendi: The art of dying is the art of living. The honesty and grace of the years of life that are ending is the real measure of how we die. It is not in the last weeks or days that we compose the message that will be remembered, but in all the decades that preceded them. Who has lived in dignity, dies in dignity."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/17/sherwin-nuland-how-we-die/

. . .

"To my mind, it is one of the profound contradictions of human existence that we long for immortality, indeed fervently believe that something must be unchanging and permanent, when all of the evidence in nature argues against us. I certainly have such a longing. Either I am delusional, or nature is incomplete. Either I am being emotional and vain in my wish for eternal life for myself and my daughter (and my wingtips), or there is some realm of immortality that exists outside nature."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/05/22/alan-lightman-accidental-universe-impermanence/

. . .

"Despite all the richness of the physical world — the majestic architecture of atoms, the rhythm of the tides, the luminescence of the galaxies — nature is missing something even more exquisite and grand: some immortal substance, which lies hidden from view. Such exquisite stuff could not be made from matter, because all matter is slave to the second law of thermodynamics. Perhaps this immortal thing that we wish for exists beyond time and space. Perhaps it is God. Perhaps it is what made the universe.

Of these two alternatives, I am inclined to the first. I cannot believe that nature could be so amiss. Although there is much that we do not understand about nature, the possibility that it is hiding a condition or substance so magnificent and utterly unlike everything else seems too preposterous for me to believe. So I am delusional. In my continual cravings for eternal youth and constancy, I am being sentimental. Perhaps with the proper training of my unruly mind and emotions, I could refrain from wanting things that cannot be. Perhaps I could accept the fact that in a few short years, my atoms will be scattered in wind and soil, my mind and thoughts gone, my pleasures and joys vanished, my "I-ness" dissolved in an infinite cavern of nothingness. But I cannot accept that fate even though I believe it to be true. I cannot force my mind to go to that dark place. "A man can do what he wants," said Schopenhauer, "but not want what he wants."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/05/22/alan-lightman-accidental-universe-impermanence/

. . .

"Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!"

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/27/alan-watts-taboo/

. . .

"Our practical projects have run into confusion again and again through failure to see that individual people, nations, animals, insects, and plants do not exist in or by themselves. This is not to say only that things exist in relation to one another, but that what we call "things" are no more than glimpses of a unified process. Certainly, this process has distinct features which catch our attention, but we must remember that distinction is not separation. Sharp and clear as the crest of the wave may be, it necessarily "goes with" the smooth and less featured curve of the trough. … In the Gestalt theory of perception this is known as the figure/ground relationship."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/27/alan-watts-taboo/

. . .

"Just because it is a hoax from the beginning, the personal ego can make only a phony response to life. For the world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only from the standpoint of someone standing aside from it — as if it were quite other than himself — and then trying to grasp it. Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, mummified.

But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship on the hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts — based on the realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process. This realization is already in us in the sense that our bodies know it, our bones and nerves and sense-organs. We do not know it only in the sense that the thin ray of conscious attention has been taught to ignore it, and taught so thoroughly that we are very genuine fakes indeed."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/27/alan-watts-taboo/

. . .

"In immediate contrast to the old feeling, there is indeed a certain passivity to the sensation, as if you were a leaf blown along by the wind, until you realize that you are both the leaf and the wind. The world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside: they move together inseparably, and at first you feel a little out of control because the world outside is so much vaster than the world inside. Yet you soon discover that you are able to go ahead with ordinary activities—to work and make decisions as ever, though somehow this is less of a drag. Your body is no longer a corpse which the ego has to animate and lug around. There is a feeling of the ground holding you up, and of hills lifting you when you climb them. Air breathes itself in and out of your lungs, and instead of looking and listening, light and sound come to you on their own. Eyes see and ears hear as wind blows and water flows. All space becomes your mind. Time carries you along like a river, but never flows out of the present: the more it goes, the more it stays, and you no longer have to fight or kill it.

[…]

Once you have seen this you can return to the world of practical affairs with a new spirit. You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate "you" to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real "you" is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "you" is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new.

You do not ask what is the value, or what is the use, of this feeling. Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies?"

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/27/alan-watts-taboo/

. . .

"The hard truth seems to be this: We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We would prefer it to be otherwise, of course, but there is no compelling evidence for a cosmic Parent who will care for us and save us from ourselves. It is up to us."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/08/carl-sagan-meaning-of-life/

. . .

""If we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from," Carl Sagan wrote in his timeless meditation on science and religion, "we will have failed.""

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/15/alan-lightman-accidental-universe-science-spirituality/

. . .

""The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both." "

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/15/alan-lightman-accidental-universe-science-spirituality/

. . .

"There are things we take on faith, without physical proof and even sometimes without any methodology for proof. We cannot clearly show why the ending of a particular novel haunts us. We cannot prove under what conditions we would sacrifice our own life in order to save the life of our child. We cannot prove whether it is right or wrong to steal in order to feed our family, or even agree on a definition of "right" and "wrong." We cannot prove the meaning of our life, or whether life has any meaning at all. For these questions, we can gather evidence and debate, but in the end we cannot arrive at any system of analysis akin to the way in which a physicist decides how many seconds it will take a one-foot-long pendulum to make a complete swing. The previous questions are questions of aesthetics, morality, philosophy. These are questions for the arts and the humanities. These are also questions aligned with some of the intangible concerns of traditional religion."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/15/alan-lightman-accidental-universe-science-spirituality/

. . .

"At any moment in time, every scientist is working on, or attempting to work on, a well-posed problem, a question with a definite answer. We scientists are taught from an early stage of our apprenticeship not to waste time on questions that do not have clear and definite answers.

But artists and humanists often don't care what the answer is because definite answers don't exist to all interesting and important questions. Ideas in a novel or emotion in a symphony are complicated with the intrinsic ambiguity of human nature. … For many artists and humanists, the question is more important than the answer. As the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a century ago, "We should try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Then there are also the questions that have definite answers but which we cannot answer. The question of the existence of God may be such a question.

As human beings, don't we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers?"

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/15/alan-lightman-accidental-universe-science-spirituality/

. . .

"Faith, in its broadest sense, is about far more than belief in the existence of God or the disregard of scientific evidence. Faith is the willingness to give ourselves over, at times, to things we do not fully understand. Faith is the belief in things larger than ourselves. Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments and at others to ride the passion and exuberance that is the artistic impulse, the flight of the imagination, the full engagement with this strange and shimmering world."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/15/alan-lightman-accidental-universe-science-spirituality/

. . .

"One August afternoon, the two baby ospreys of that season took flight for the first time as I stood on the circular deck of my house watching the nest. All summer long, they had watched me on that deck as I watched them. To them, it must have looked like I was in my nest just as they were in theirs. On this particular afternoon, their maiden flight, they did a loop of my house and then headed straight at me with tremendous speed. My immediate impulse was to run for cover, since they could have ripped me apart with their powerful talons. But something held me to my ground. When they were within twenty feet of me, they suddenly veered upward and away. But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact. Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant. It was a look of connectedness, of mutual respect, of recognition that we shared the same land. After they were gone, I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I do not understand what happened in that half second. But it was one of the most profound moments of my life."

- http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/15/alan-lightman-accidental-universe-science-spirituality/

. . .

If we do actually succeed in becoming richer, or more powerful, we believe, at least for a time, that life as a whole has improved. But symbols can be deceptive: they have a tendency to distract from the reality they are supposed to represent. And the reality is that the quality of life does not depend directly on what others think of us or on what we own. The bottom line is, rather, how we feel about ourselves and about what happens to us. To improve life one must improve the quality of experience.