Great Death

When Zen master Sekiso passed away and the brotherhood asked the head monk to succeed him as abbot, Zen master Kyuho, who had previously served as the master's attendant, came and addressed them. He posed a question to the head monk, "The master often told us to `cease all activity,' to `do nothing whatever,' to `become so cold and lifeless the spirits of the dead will come sighing around you,' to `become a bolt of fine white silk,' to `become the dead ashes in a censer left forgotten in an ancient graveyard,' to `become so that the present instant is ten thousand years.'

"What is the meaning of these instructions? If you show that you grasp them, you are the next abbot. If you show that you do not, you aren't the man for the job."

"His words," said the head monk, "refer to the essential oneness of all things."

"You have failed to understand the master's meaning," said Kyuho.

"Get some incense ready," replied the head monk. "If I have terminated my life by the time that incense burns, it will mean I grasped the master's meaning. If I am still living, it will mean I did not."

Kyuho lit a stick of incense. Before it had burned down the head monk had ceased breathing. Kyuho patted the dead man on the back, and said, "Others have died while seated; some have died while standing. But you have just succeeded in proving that you could not have even seen the master's meaning in your dreams."

— Hakuin

The deep-loving beast-form of Sunyata barrelling towards nonduality

I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.

I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.

I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.

I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.

I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge.


...

I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God.

I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.

I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.

I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

How idiocy is perpetuated through generations

From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. "Don't ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!" — "Who are you to think? It's so, because I say so!" — "Don't argue, obey!" — "Don't try to understand, believe!" — "Don't rebel, adjust!" — "Don't stand out, belong!" — "Don't struggle, compromise" — "Your heart is more important than your mind!" — "Who are you to know? Your parents know best!" — "Who are you to know? Society knows best!" — "Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!" — "Who are you to object? All values are relative!" — "Who are you to want to escape a thug's bullet? That's only a personal prejudice!"

— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Waking

Wake to the day with the joy and zest of having arrived in Heaven. All will be well for you. Sit back and enjoy! What can possibly touch you, who are beyond space and time? Be as a dead man, the dead man you are, untouched by the worries and concerns of this world.

— Kevin Solway, Poison for the Heart

Misuse of mass media, and immediacy

With the press as degenerate as it is, human beings eventually will surely be transformed into clods. A newspaper's first concern has to be circulation; from then on the rule for what it publishes can be: the wittiness and entertainment of printing something that has no relation to communication through the press. How significant! How easy to be witty when misuse of the press has become the newly invented kind of witticism.

For example, they write that a certain well-known person (mentioned by name) wears an embroidered shirt. This is written and then read by the whole market town where the lunatic press thrives. The man is cartooned with an embroidered shirt and this treatment goes on for half a year — and naturally is the most widely read of everything read in the market town. If this is not either lunacy or idiocy, then I know of no other alternative. People are simply too immediate and momentary, but on this scale it is a non plus ultra — to use the circulation of the press to discuss for half a year something which, after all, the most addle-brained person ought to be sufficiently human not to talk about for more than five minutes — it can only lead to idiocy.

— Søren Kierkegaard, 1847

A strong mind

A strong mind

The written word of a thinker is structured by the organisation of logic, rather than by the standards of conventional communication in language which have come to show no sign of this; even more, the thinker – the true thinker who lives in thought – has his very being in thought, and the meaning conveyed in his thought has a far different meaning to the standards conveyed in conventional language. To state this simply, reality is truly understood, and only understood, with thought, and this thought has rejected the form and convention of animal culture.

There is no salvation through reading the written word expressed by a thinker, since the desire to lay hold of the truth engineered through another is not the key to truth, but a distancing from it. Even the act of turning to one's own writings with this desire for an outward form, for an outward encapsulation, distances one from the truth that is only actualised with one's own thought.

Thought is the only arena for understanding. It is not reading, it is not writing, it is not speaking, and it is not listening. Thought is the only arena, the only workshop, the only engine, powerful enough to create understanding. All words must come from meanings manipulated by one's own mind, and even more, one must actually construct and invent the meanings wholly within one's own finely-scrutinising intellect, for there to be any real and lasting understanding.

The written word, or any meanings conveyed by another, are nothing but a tossed-away cocoon, a hardened residue of the arrival of understanding. These are relics of something already past, not the source of, nor the crystallised agent of salvation. They can do no more than stimulate one who has lost inwardness, whose mind is weak, to seek again that inwardness for himself. They cannot substitute.

The written word is no achievement.

Aphorisms

The mind has no dust needing to be swept away, or dirt collected on a window-glass obscuring some bright scene. There is always the ever-pure without any inherent form or shape to clasp to; everything is the glory of the empty void which has no inherent form but presents as all that is and can be.

There is no equanimity when there is equanimity: the balance between happiness and sadness is a false equanimity which needs to stay between somethings. But as there is nothing, therefore there is no equanimity – that is equanimity.

It is not „who is it that is being angry or upset?“ but rather, „how is it possible to become upset when the beginning or ending of what is imagined to be a bad thing is actually only imaginary?“

It is not „when did that thing really occur which is imagined to be hurtful?“ but rather „did something really come into existence at all?“

It is not „has something come into existence?“ but „why this sudden need to grasp onto something?“

Why lose the ungraspable and try to grasp it? Know that one has everything already.

Indeed: Awake in the morning with the joy of having arrived in heaven. All will be well. It is true: one is already in heaven – or rather, there is neither heaven or hell. There is nothing but everything already. There is nothing attained, nothing lost.

Know the eternal. Meditate on the ever-present if you ever feel inclined to think it could change from one minute to the next. Just sit with what is, then you may dance and float and always be motionless.

Truthless spontaneity

The tragedy of our time is that it is altogether momentary. If a man gets an idea, he wants to have it promptly accepted. Yeah, Great, Do It! If someone else had gotten the idea of individuality, he would immediately have supplied it with so many adherents that the whole thing would have fizzled out since the manifestation would have become the mob of followers and the idea of individuality would have been disregarded.

— Kierkegaard, 1847