Reduplication

What does it mean to work against oneself? It is quite simple. If the established, the traditional, etc., in the context of which a beginning is to be made, is sound, thoroughly sound — well, then apply directly what has to be applied; in any case there can be no talk or thought of reforming, for if the established is sound, then there is nothing, after all, to reform.

Conversely, to the same degree that the established, consequently there where one's striving begins, is corrupt, to the same degree it will become increasingly necessary dialectically to work against oneself, lest the innovation resulting from direct action is itself corrupted the minute it succeeds, and thus is not maintained in its heterogeneity.

— Kierkegaard, 1850

Shaving

A saying often quoted:

"I don't mow lawns for the same reason that I don't shave."

— Kevin Solway

Yet this man both mows lawns and shaves. He does it for exactly the same reason.

Love

God's love is the inescapable effects of living according to the truth: when one sacrifices the ego, life as it truly is is revealed. This sacrifice and the life after sacrificing ego is the love of the Infinite. That is, the Infinite cannot help but be what it is - and accepting this shows oneself in one's true and best light.

God's love is to make a man bored with life itself - since life/death is the duality that engenders and perpetuates the ego - not bored over things but sick to death of things, so that he is willing and wills death - since death is the death of duality. Then he is living without the constant rope-walking uncertainty of a dualistic mind, but, dying, experiences that what is cannot help to be but what is.

From Hakuin Ekaku

Soft-butter duck egg, melts from the top of the head, throughout the body.

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Let heartfire upper-body descend and intermingle with water lower-body (intellect descends into the elixir field underneath the navel).

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1000 breaths with motionless feather on the nose; breaths continue until all is breath --- a sea.

From Thomas Merton

It is precisely pride that prevents modern man from achieving depth, even when he most seeks it.

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The Zen man does not strictly speaking practise meditation at all, in any sense familiar to us in the West. Rather he enters into a purifying struggle against conceptual knowledge, in which he 'sweats out' his attachment to images, ideas, symbols, metaphors, analytic judgments, etc. as means for grasping, appreciating, and understanding reality.

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There is no self-display, because the 'true self', which functions in Zen experience, is empty, invisible, and incapable of being displayed.

Thinking and the Infinite

There are no problems, really, so intellectualising turns the wheel... if done blindly. Think, knowing it is God .. Nature .. Infinite .. that does all.

Patience - Complacency

In my opinion the tragedy of the world is simply this — human shortsightedness, many times well meaning, has thought somewhat along these lines: if on the whole you want the truth, then if once in a while a little consideration of your own advantage infiltrates, if at times a slightly tainted expedient sneaks in, it is of little consequence, and besides, that is how the world is, every practical man knows that, and I cannot remake the world.

O, you impatient, shortsighted one. No, remake the world, you certainly cannot. Well, then do what you can, live in quiet obscurity, working for your own living. Such a person at least does no harm. But if you want to work for the truth, then ponder before God exactly by what standard you are able to do it. Let it be according to a modest standard, in God's name, but promise God and yourself and hold to it that you will unconditionally use the purest means according to the standard.

The other is nothing but impatience and shortsightedness, and it has done irreparable harm.

Sheep voting sheep-style

There is something dreadful about seeing individuals rushing into this mutual insuring, which does not, as does other insurance, cover shipwrecks, but which, the mutual insuring itself, is a commune naufragium.

— Søren Kierkegaard