Running out of ideas

If one lacks the faith to dissolve oneself in a sea of wisdom, one can still occupy oneself in a relatively noble fashion with ideas of truth. The problem is, ideas run out. It is not long before you ahve thought all thoughts, and perhaps written all ideas, and they cease to thrill. One's ink runs dry.

The temptation is now to fall back into the immediacy of common worldliness, where there is at least some pleasure, some colour, however shallow.

The wise never run short of ideas, because they seek no joy in them, and thus find no pain. Their strength arises from their having sacrificed knowledge, and having become all-knowledge.

— Kevin Solway

Kierkegaard and epilepsy

Kierkegaard probably did suffer from epileptic fits, as described by Heidi and Leif Bork Hansen in their essay "Kirkegaard's Epilepsy: The Intriguing Secret of the Machinery". It is not altogether true, however, that Kirkegaard's conception of the Infinite was influenced by his epileptic experiences. Kirkegaard noted many times in his Journals that his "thorn in the flesh" was something he strove not to give into, and was aware that it was a untruth.

It was not, as the Hansens surmise, a direct result of his God-relationship, as a sort of divinely raised whip of discipline. Rather, Kierkegaard knew his illness as a psychosomatic combination of melancholy, and the psychological strain of his penitentiary education, under the ideals of reverence for his father and respect for his beloved:

At one time my condition was such that I had the burden of anguish which I may call my thorn in the flesh: a sorrow, a mental anguish related to my late father, a deep grief related to that beloved girl and everything that was involved. Thus I believed that, compared to the ordinary man, I mgiht be said to be carrying a heavy burden.

Kierkegaard was always sickly, and knew it. From childhood, his illness forced him to concentrate on the intellectual. He could not be one of the "universals" - a physically sound, robust, worldly fellow. His epilepsy was an important cause in his development as an extraordinary genius. In the same vein, it would have caused him to become acutely self-aware, to watch out for signs of approaching fits, so as to manage his neurological states better. But it is important to make a clear distinction between this kind of self-monitoring and the other kind of spiritual monitoring which makes up the body of his journal entries entitled, "About myself". Occasionally, he uses such entries to control any hypochondriac or depressive moods, but he is largely writing about how to adjust his moods and thoughts to a higher psychology, in the wake of various stressful events.

The Hansens imply that the temporal lobe seizure ("God-experience") that epileptics often use to justify belief in God was relevant to Kierkegaard's case. However, Kierkegaard did not identify the God-relationship as an altered state of consciousness, for, he did not value the idea of drawing close to God on Sundays, "quiet hours", or in special moments. The God-relationship was a 24/7/365 thing for Kierkegaard. Also, anyone who would argue that Kierkegaard's religiousness was entwined with his epileptic fits would have to argue that Kierkegaard thought Jesus, or the God-man prototype, should have similar fits in order to be religious. It is the kind of argument one would make who had no knowledge of Kierkegaard's emphasis on the education. If Kierkegaard indeed thought that epileptics were the true apostles, he would have been outright interested in finding epileptics and would have preached people into trances, rather than discoursing on purely intellectual ideas.

Similarly, the Hansens imply that Kierkegaard broke his engagement with Regina Olsen because of the epilepsy, but this is false. Kierkegaard's melancholy was something more closely aligned with his reverence for his father, having been made aware at an early age that the most noble man is rejected by society, and it was this characteristic melancholy, combined with his sickliness (creating a penchant for the otherworldly, the intellectual, the idea), which he knew would make the marriage a lie. He was unable to share candidly this inner life with Regina, and knew that any such marriage would be a farce.

Kierkegaard did indeed write compulsively, but this cannot be entirely put down to epileptic hypergraphia. Any genius wishes to control and restrain thought, to find and iterate the idea. Writing one's ideas profusely, as well as speaking or reading, are means to do this. In addition, Kierkegaard regarded his writings as to be read aloud, and mentions that he often speaks what he is to write, before he writes, to ensure the idea is expressed well. It is not entirely out of the question that a bachelor living alone, who has no object in life but his authorship (which was his penitentiary education), no past-times like watching television or gallivanting around the countryside, and whose daily life mostly included hours of thinking and writing, would write a lot.

The Hansens, who have never entered into the life of genius, have made inferences about Kierkegaard's life based on their ignorance. It would seem that their intention is to help publicise their own services as "humanitarian therapists" and to help again to destroy human consciousness of the spiritual man.

Verses on Wisdom

That which I am, if I am finite,
is a part of the Infinite,
  And since all parts of the Infinite are the body of the Infinite,
    therefore I am the Infinite.

I am the Infinite.
Everything I do is the Infinite.
The Infinite is me.
There is no separation between us.
I am the Infinite.

The barrier that separates me from attaining wisdom
is a real barrier,
  But I cross it in an instant
     when the Infinite has blown away the smoke.

I seek truth,
but in what?
If I want truth that is utterly reliable,
then only the Infinite can supply.
I, a finite thing, am different every moment,
and satisfying ideas shift and swirl.
But what is still here, amidst the chaos?
Even when I am gone, what remains?
The Infinite.

My past habits constrain,
dreams echo in new circumstances;
so I experience repetition.
But let me remember my true identity,
and I experience freedom from karma.
The repetition ends.
Then I find circumstances are what they are,
instead of vehicles to relive the past.

Death no longer signifies loss or change;
   I grieve no more, because the Infinite is real to me.
Illness or the strains of poverty become sweet,
though it seems insane to think so.
   Even the slander of fools becomes sweet,
     though I wish they could taste this sweetness,
     and not the bitterness of cyclical existence.

One needs no longer to reach for heavens,
or be demoralised by the hells of human society.
But live moment by moment,
seeing the Infinite in everything.
  The burden of human suffering lifts,
     and one can function as Nature permits.

The Significance of the Pseudonyms

All communication of truth has become abstract: the public has become the authority; the newspapers call themselves the editorial staff; the professor calls himself speculation; the pastor is meditation; no man, none, dares to say I.

But since without qualification the first prerequisite for the communication of truth is personality, since "truth" cannot possibly be served by ventriloquism, personality has to come to the fore again.

But in these circumstances, since the world was so corrupted by never hearing an I, it was impossible to begin at once with one's own I. So it became my task to create author-personalities and let them enter in the actuality of life in order to get men a bit accustomed to hearing discourse in the first person.

Thus my task is no doubt only that of a forerunner until he comes who in the strictest sense says: I.

But to make a turn away from this inhuman abstraction to personality — that is my work.

— Kierkegaard, mid-1849

Away with revolutions, and "we, the avant-garde"

The wrong way is much too close, wanting to reform, to arouse the whole world — instead of oneself, and this certainly is the wrong way for hotheads with a lot of imagination.

Mediocrity

This is mediocrity: to want to be along a little bit in those certain things requiring complete capability.

- Kierkegaard, mid-1849

The test of an individual

A person says, it is impossible to be certain of the truth in their own opinions. This person is genuinely uncertain when speaking this, because of saying exactly what represents them only. But immediately thereafter, they remember that another person has also said that it is impossible to be certain of the truth of their own opinions, with the same genuine uncertainty and humble quiet countenance, and that remembrance gives them assurance. So they reassert with confidence that it is not possible to be certain of the truth of their own opinions.... only the truth of someone else's.

This is a very common phenomenon, which means, most everyone has an opinion - and it is someone else's.

Oh, how relieved we are to find that our troubled uncertainties are reaffirmed by another person. Now the troubled uncertainty dissipates, for we are safe in the crowd.

Another kind of memento mori

The fashion designer (in Stages) gets the idea of starting a fashionable boutique, one section devoted entirely to dressing corpses; thus for the corpse to be dressed in vogue is equivalent to being buried in Christian ground, that is, the latest interpretation.

Human sympathy — Enlightened understanding

Life prompts one to become aware of the many, many less endowed, weak, simple men, women, and children, the sick and the sorrowful, etc., who live among us. Life says to the religious: Confronted by all these people, can you have the heart to jack up the price of the religious, of salvation, as high as you are doing, you cruel person. And if the religious person is truly religious and consequently has love in his heart, this objection will make a deep impression on him, one who wants so much to be with those who suffer, whose only joy and consolation, after all, is to comfort those who suffer.

But the objection is the spiritual trial of "human sympathy." ....

The point is that the religious person unconditionally shall and must have sympathy for all the weak; he wants to be with them, comfort them, and all that, but he does not dare do it — that is, he does not dare center his life in this sympathy so that instead of remaining true to God he scales down and remains in the religiosity of sympathy.

As soon as a religious person ceases to comprehend it this way: I dare not, I cannot do otherwise (that is, he is in the power of the absolute, absolute obedience is demanded of him), he will be side-tracked and will remain in the religiosity of sympathy.

The danger for the religious person who is in the religiousness of the absolute is, of course, self-righteousness, that he becomes arrogant instead of pious, that he wants to be better than other men or puts God, as it were, in his debt, or at least has a self-satisfied consciousness of having done his part.

For this reason such a religious person will usually have a secret strain, comparable to Paul's "thorn in the flesh," which gives him the bold confidence to go on, because it teaches him that he is nothing and truly makes this truth in him. No one can venture out into absolute religiousness on his own; he must begin in an altogether singular understanding with God. Under other circumstance, that which in absolute religiousness is dialectically cruel becomes outright cruelty, sin, guilt.


— Kierkegaard, 1849

The importance of venturing even just a little

To me he is an example and proof that a man does not understand more than his life expresses. This explains his opinion that the opposition I have had of late is nemesis or God's punishment.

— Kierkegaard, (1849)

What is it to be a poet?

What is it to be a poet? It is to have one's own personal life, one's actuality, in categories completely different from those of one's poetical production, to be related to the ideal only in imagination, so that one's personal life is more or less a satire on the poetry and on oneself. In this sense all modern thinkers, even the outstanding ones (I mean the Germans, for there simply are no Danish thinkers), are poets. And on the whole this is the maximum to be seen in life. Most men live utterly destitute of ideas; some few relate poetically to the ideal but deny it in their personal lives. Pastors likewise are poets, and since they are pastors they are "deceivers," as Socrates once called poets, in a much deeper way than poets are.

But here as everywhere demoralization has come about through the disappearance of position no. 1 and the assumption of position no. 1 by no. 2. Relating oneself to the ideal in one's personal life is never seen. Such a life is the life of the witness to the truth. This rubric disappeared long ago, and preachers, philosophy professors, and poets have taken over the place of servants to the truth, whereby they no doubt are served very well — but they do not serve the truth.

— Kierkegaard, 1849

Epigram — Aphorism

Definition of epigram:

An epigram is a succinct statement of great wit. It is not a definition, because it is not didactic. It is prose, not poetry, in the sense that the idea (encapsulated in the statement) is not presented as a lyrical speculation but as a direct and living expression of its own meaning. It is monadic, being a complete idea, that conveys its meaning in the very structure of how it is expressed.

For example, Kierkegaard, a master of the epigram, often referred to his own life as an epigram on his contemporaries. This indicates the nature of the epigram, that its meaning points to the truth of things, but in a deeply personal way. In the following paragraph, the last sentence is a double epigram.

'I could be tempted to say that I have taken one examination more than most people, although it is true enough that this examination is of such a nature that one or another has submitted to it who otherwise is not an examinee — I allowed the ardor of my feelings to be examined by a woman. Whatever I have suffered because I staked everything on that desire and once again staked everything on it since she asked for it, and yet once again staked everything on it, I who must bear the responsibility and be the agent — I still had strength enough, in order to mitigate the affair for her, to give the impression that I was a villain, a deceiver. Thus a murder was placed upon my conscience; it was said and repeated as solemnly as possible, that this would be her death. Therefore this girl was the examiner. One and a half years later she was engaged again — since that time I have scarcely spoken to a young girl, and no thought has been more alien to my soul than to want to fall in love again or even to think about it.

If at times it has satisfied my anger to be like an epigram over my contemporaries, here I have learned how woeful it is to be an epigram in that way.'

---

Definition of aphorism:

An aphorism is a succinct statement, that presents a principle, or the essence or genius of an idea, and is more didactic in nature than the epigram. However, the vital key to presenting the principle is the same reflective dialectic as found in the epigram. That is, the meaning of an aphorism is also expressed in the actual mechanics of its structure and wording, perhaps more than in the actual words chosen. The aphorism puts Truth before the man and the man expresses Truth, whereas the epigram uses man to see Truth which explains its more lyrical nature.

Kevin Solway is a master of aphoristic writing, having drawn out the nuggets of truth from many scriptures. His "Poison for the Heart" is full of aphorisms.

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.

-

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

Buying sweets - Buying suffering

A pagan (Cicero, in De finibus) relates that the greatest sensualist in the Orient (Sardanapalus) put on his tombstone: I took all the pleasures of the world with me to the grave — to which another pagan (Aristotle) is supposed to have said: How so? You could not even hold on to a single one of them while you were living.

— Kierkegaard

Both-And --- Either/Or

From a strictly Christian point of view, what we men call earnestness in contrast to diversion is often nothing but diversion.

— Kierkegaard

Suffering

Emotional suffering when young is a vital ingredient for becoming wise. It is necessary to learn how painful life can be, and that being alive and experiencing is not intrinsically enjoyable.

This is not sadomasochism.

A deep, lasting, strong experience of emotional pain will force a person to become indifferent to life. If they can bear up under that pain, without sinking into self-pity or suicidalism, then they are able to reflect on what it is that makes life different to not-living.

They become dwellers in the land of thought, imagination, and reflection.

If they can live in between life and death, with no strong attachment to either, neither wishing to "make merry and forget their woes" or to "celebrate destruction and nihilism", then they become thinkers and are likely to have some wise insights.

Images

A link to some interesting images.

Regarding the starry evening sky

Alas, but man is still an animal-creature, and the indolent inclination to ape and mimic seems to be his second nature. That is why it is so very easy to collect them in a herd; that a proclaimer will get thousands who want to learn what he says by rote, perhaps become professors of it — but perhaps not one in ten thousand who himself gazes at the starry evening sky. But are not the proclaimers all too frequently to blame when the whole thing becomes aping and copying, for it is to their earthly and temporal advantage. Be unprincipled, if you will, toward the starry evening sky, make it seem that what is glorious is not the starry evening sky but your conception of it, get a few blaring knights of commerce on your staff, and you will soon get a crowd who will pay a fancy price for your wonderful instruction. Ah, but if you are honest toward the starry evening sky, if you tell the truth and declare that the glory belongs to it and that every man could if he would see its glory in his own way, and that his own way means infinitely much more to him than yours to him or his to you: well, then there is really no occasion for making money or for animal-like crowding together in herds.

— Kierkegaard

mediocrity

...any crime is far preferable to this self-satisfied, smiling, cheerful, blissful demoralisation: mediocrity.

Soren Kierkegaard

The knife edge of living according to the truth

Resignation to the Infinite is a simple matter. It just means following one's reason in regards the nature of ultimate reality. It just means: stop building something. This indeed is easy.

But now arises the difficulty. Karma (one's memory, habits, routines, preferences, and a life-time of deep-engrained beliefs) is all about building the self up, building anything up, as a safe haven in reality. This sets one's whole being against reason. This is the personal struggle, of ongoing and profound resignation. Perhaps after many years, one finds new force in the habit of reason. So one starts to 'float' and the habit of constructing fades.

But now arises a greater difficulty. One floats, living beside things, resigned to any environment and any experience. One's higher understanding, emptied of a need for self - reputation, accomplishment, experience to fall back on, etc. - stands in collision with the entire human environment. Clearly, one values the highest and purest resignation possible. And because of this valuing, there is a struggle against wishing for the entire human environment to be dragged up and educated.

So here is the collision with the world. In the same instant, there is the old danger, of the ego wanting to protect itself by destroying a worldful of threats (human evil), posed with a higher expression of the same (wanting all other selves to resemble oneself), posed with a purer, higher form of ego (wanting to be a self that exists with no attachment to any environment), posed with an even higher ego that values not protecting the false self by hiding in a selfish, unattacked, private heavenly bliss, posed with an even higher ego that submits its claims to accomplish anything and simply enters into the world with a deep consciousness of the true state of affairs.

And in this collision is that awareness that no matter how one does try within the world to educate, one's resignation - to these enormous demands on consciousness to run the program of reason through every level of egotistical rebellion in oneself consistently and constantly - will enforce the belief in others that one is half-mad, obsessive, depressive, and doing something torturously unnatural - and they will flee one.

Maneating is spiritual obesity and it kills

Preachers and professors eat the dead. Novelists, writers of romances, and minor authors eat even the living. It never occurs to such a scoundrel that he could assist some greater excellence not to succumb. O, no, even if he could, he owes it to his trade not to do it lest he miss out on a poetic motif and the public's eagerness for just that sort of writing.

- Kierkegaard

(A confessional demonstration of my own maneating)

Sublimation - Subliminal

Sublime:
transitive verb
1: to cause to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state and condense back to solid form
2 a (1): to elevate or exalt especially in dignity or honor
(2): to render finer (as in purity or excellence)
b: to convert (something inferior) into something of higher worth
intransitive verb: to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state
[Etymology: C14th Middle English, from Middle French sublimer, from Medieval Latin sublimare to refine, sublime, from Latin sublimis to elevate.]

Sublimation: to divert the expression of (an instinctual desire or impulse) from its unacceptable form to one that is considered more socially or culturally acceptable.
[Etymology: C15th Middle English, from Medieval Latin sublimatus, past participle of sublimare]

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Subliminal:
1: inadequate to produce a sensation or a perception
2: existing or functioning below the threshold of consciousness
[Etymology: 1886 sub- + Latin limin-, limen threshold]

A story

His character was weak; moreover he had a great sense and fondness for enjoying life, and not the simpler pleasures but the more refined ones, yes, the most refined of all: being honored, esteemed, and respected as a man of earnestness, character, and principles, a man who stands firm when everything shakes, etc.

He was in fact a very gifted man intellectually, an exceptional orator, and definitely was brilliantly shrewd.

This combination is Bishop M., and this combination has managed to confuse a whole generation with respect to Christianity. For his weakness of character is never seen, since it is covered up by his brilliant shrewdness; his desire for pleasure is never seen, it is accepted as — a new refinement! — devout freedom of spirit in contrast to pietistic anxiety.

-- Kierkegaard, 1854

Spirit

By primitivity Christianity does not of course mean the usual fanfare about the intellectual, about being a genius and the like. No; primitivity, spirit, means staking your life and putting the kingdom of God first, first, first. The more literally a person can accept this, and act accordingly, the more primitivity he has.

....Anyone who has persevered in living up to his primitivity has a reliable knowledge of existence, may be rated an able seaman on life's ocean, has something he can vouch for. If a blushing (oh, Socrates!) youth turns to such a man he will not talk a lot of moonshine, nor will he offer the youth that sham reliability: be like the others.

....primitivity - having to be primitive, alone with God without being preceded by others whom one can ape and to whom one can refer for corroboration - is something people accept most reluctantly. All deadening of spirit is bound up with this historical taking shelter and making a pretext of the innumerable millions who have lived before us.


— Kierkegaard (1854, year before dying)

Genius in confrontation with the choice between happiness (women, society) and morality

The reason why madness overtakes so many men of genius - fools believe it comes from the influence of Venus, or the spinal degeneration of neurasthenics - is that for many the burden becomes too heavy, the task of bearing the whole world on the shoulders, like Atlas, intolerable for the smaller, but never for the really mighty minds. But the higher a man mounts, the greater may be his fall; all genius is a conquering of chaos, mystery, and darkness, and if it degenerates and goes to pieces, the ruin is greater in proportion to the success. The genius which runs to madness is no longer genius; it has chosen happiness instead of morality. All madness is the outcome of the insupportability of suffering attached to all consciousness.

— Otto Weininger


The man of genius possesses, like everything else, the complete female in himself; but woman herself is only a part of the Universe, and the part can never be the whole; femaleness can never include genius. This lack of genius on the part of woman is inevitable because woman is not a monad, and cannot reflect the Universe.

— Otto Weininger


It is certainly true that most men need some kind of a God. A few, and they are the men of genius, do not bow to an alien law. The rest try to justify their doings and misdoings, their thinking and existence (at least the menial side of it), to some one else, whether it be the personal God of the Jews, or a beloved, respected, and revered human being. It is only in this way that they can bring their lives under the social law. . . .

— Otto Weininger

Woman and Genius

It is through woman that ideality is born into the world and - what were man without her! There is many a man who has become a genius through a woman, many a one a hero, many a one a poet, many a one even a saint; but he did not become a genius through the woman he married, for through her he only became a privy councillor; he did not become a hero through the woman he married, for through her he only became a general; he did not become a poet through the woman he married, for through her he only became a father; he did not become a saint through the woman he married, for he did not marry, and would have married but one - the one whom he did not marry; just as the others became a genius, became a hero, became a poet through the help of the woman they did not marry.

— Kierkegaard


Women, in general, are not attracted to art at all, nor knowledge, and not at all to genius.

— Rousseau


Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome.

— Camille Paglia, in Sexual Personae


There are no female geniuses because there are no female Jack-the-Rippers.

— Camille Paglia


Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.

— Ambrose Bierce

Genius

Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.

— Owen Meredith Earl of Lytton

Communion with Nature

One can very well eat lettuce before its heart has been formed; still, the delicate crispness of the heart and its lovely frizz are something altogether different from the leaves. It is the same in the world of the spirit. Being too busy has this result: that an individual very, very rarely is permitted to form a heart; on the other hand, the thinker, the poet, or the religious personality who actually has formed his heart, will never be popular, not because he is difficult, but because it demands quiet and prolonged working with oneself and intimate knowledge of oneself as well as a certain isolation. Even if, in a full-toned voice, I could say something that would please each and every one, if it were of a religious nature I would not say it, because it is already a kind of religious indecency that it should be necessary to make an outcry about it; on the contrary, religious things have to do with a softly murmured soliloquy with oneself. Alas, things are so topsy-turvy that, instead of having to do with each individual going alone into his secret closet to commune quietly with himself, people believe that religion is a matter for very loud talk.

— Soren Kierkegaard

'The bad Infinite' vs. 'the good Infinite'

The principal objection, the total objection to the natural sciences, can formally be expressed simply and definitely like this: It is unthinkable that it could occur to a human being who has reached a conclusion about himself as a spirit in relation to eternity, to choose physical science (with its empirical material) as a field for his efforts.

....That a physicist has a consciousness goes without saying, he has a consciousness within the circumscribed scope of his talent, perhaps he has amazing acumen, a gift of combination, almost a conjuror's knack for idea-associations, and so on. But at the very maximum it amounts to this: such an eminent talent, this absolutely uniquely gifted man is able to explain Nature, but does not understand his own self! He does not become transparent to himself in regard to his spiritual destiny, to the ethical guidance of his talent, etc.

But this state of affairs is nothing but scepticism, as is easily seen (for scepticism is this: that an unknown quantity, some 'X', can explain everything. But when everything is explained through an 'X' which is not explained, then in toto nothing is explained, nothing at all. If this is not scepticism, then it is superstition.)

— Soren Kierkegaard

Religion and the sexes

The greatest possible misunderstanding about religious matters between one human being and another occurs when you take a man and a woman, and the man wants to teach her religion, and the whole bliss inherent therein, in this being for God, then becomes the object of her amorous love.

— Soren Kierkegaard

The ultimate extinction of the Dharma

"Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was in the state of Kushinagara. The Tathagata was to enter Nirvana within three months and the bhikshus and Bodhisattvas as well as the great multitude of beings had come to pay homage to the Buddha and to bow in reverence. The World Honored One was tranquil and silent. He spoke not a word and his light did not appear. Worthy Ananda bowed and asked the Buddha,

'O Bhagavan, heretofore whenever you spoke the Dharma, awesome light would naturally appear. Yet today among this great assembly there is no such radiance. There must be a good cause for this and we wish to hear the Bhagavan's explanation.'

The Buddha remained silent and did not answer until the request had been repeated three times. He then told Ananda,

"After I enter Nirvana, when the Dharma is about to perish, during the Evil Age of the Five Turbidities, the way of demons will flourish. Demonic beings will become Shramanas; they will pervert and destroy my teachings. Wearing the garb of laypersons, they will prefer handsome clothes and their precept sashes will be made of multi-colored cloth. They wll use intoxicants, eat meat, kill other beings and they will indulge in their desire for flavorful food. They will lack compassion and they will bear hatred and jealousy even among themselves.

"At that time there will be Bodhisattvas, Pratyekabuddhas, and Arhats who will reverently and diligently cultivate immaculate virtue. They will be respected by all people and their teachings will be fair and egalitarian. These cultivators of the Way will take pity on the poor, they will be mindful of the aged, and they will save and give counsel to those people they find in difficult circumstances. They will at all times exhort others to worship and to protect sutras and images of the Buddha. They will do meritorious deeds, be resolute and kind and never harm others. They will forsake their bodies for others' benefit. They will hold no great regard for themselves but will be patient, yielding, humane, and peaceful.

"If such people exist, the hordes of demonic bhikshus will be jealous of them. The demons will harass them, slander and defame them, expel them from their midst and degrade them. They will ostracise the good monks from the monastic community. Thereafter these demons will not cultivate the Way-virtue. Their temples and monastic buildings will be vacant and overgrown with weeds. For want of care and maintenance their Way-places will drift into ruin and oblivion. The demonic bhikshus will only be greedy for wealth and will amass great heaps of goods. They will refuse to distribute any of it or to use it to gain blessings and virtue.

"At this time, the evil monks will buy and sell slaves to till their fields and to slash and burn the mountain forests. They will do harm to living creatures and they will feel not the least bit of compassion. These slaves will themselves become bhikshus and maidservants will become bhikshunis. Totally lacking in Way-virtue, these people will run amok, indulging in licentious behaviour. In their turbid confusion they will fail to separate the men from the women in the monastic communities. From this generation on, the Way will be weakened. Fugitives from the law will seek refuge in my Way, wishing to be Shramanas but failing to observe the moral regulations. The precepts will continue to be recited twice a month, but in name alone. Being lazy and lax, no one will want to listen any longer. These evil Shramanas will be unwilling to recite the sutras in their entirety and they will make abbreviations at the beginning and at the end of the texts as they please. Soon the practice of reciting sutras will stop altogether. Even if there are people who recite texts, they will be unlettered, unqualified people who will insist, nonetheless, that they are correct. Bumptious, arrogant, and vain, these people will seek fame and glory. They will display elegant airs in the hope of attracting offerings from other people.

"When the lives of these demonic bhikshus come to an end their essential spirits will fall into the avici hells. Having committed the five evil sins, they will suffer successive rebirths as hungry ghosts and as animals. They will know all such states of woe as they pass on through aeons as numerous as sands on the banks of the Ganges River. When their offences are accounted for they will be reborn in a border land where the Triple Jewel is unknown.

"When the Dharma is about to disappear, women will become vigorous and will at all times do deeds of virtue. Men will grow lax and will no longer speak the Dharmas. Those genuine Shramanas they see will be looked upon as dung and no one will have faith in them. When the Dharma is about to perish, all the gods will begin to weep. Rivers will dry up and the five grains will not ripen. Epidemic diseases will frequently take the lives of multitudes of people. The masses will toil and suffer while the local officials will plot and scheme. No one will adhere to principles. Instead, all people will be ever more numerous like the sands of the ocean-bed. Good persons will be hard to find; at most there will be one or two. As the aeon comes to a close, the revolution of the sun and the moon will grow short and the lifespan of people will decrease. Their hair will turn white at the age of forty years. Because of excessive licentious behaviour they will quickly exhaust their seminal fluids and will die at a young age, usually before sixty years. As the life-span of males decreases, that of females will increase to seventy, eighty, ninety, or one hundred years.

"The great rivers will rise up in disharmony with their natural cycles, yet people will not take notice or feel concern. Extremes of climate will soon be taken for granted. Beings of all races will mix together at random, without regard for the noble and the mean. They will alternately sink and float like feeding creatures.

"Then there will be Bodhisattvas, Pratyekabuddhas, and Arhats who will gather together in an unprecedented assembly because they will all have been harried and pursued by the hordes of demons. They will no longer dwell in the assemblies but the Three Vehicles will retreat to the wilderness. In a tranquil place they will find shelter, happiness, and long life. Gods will protect them and the moon will shine down upon them. The Three Vehicles will have an opportunity to meet together and the Way will flourish. However, within fifty-two years the Shurangama Sutra and the Pratyutpanna Samadhi, the Standing Buddha Samadhi, will be the first to change and then to disappear. The twelve divisions of the canon will gradually follow until they vanish completely, never to appear again. Its words and texts will be totally unknown everafter. The precept sashes of Shramanas will turn white of themselves. When my Dharma disappears it will be just like an oil lamp which flares brightly for an instant just before it goes out. So too, will the Dharma flare and die. After this time it is difficult to speak with certainty of what will follow.

"So it will remain for the next ten million years. When Maitreya is about to appear in the world to become the next Buddha, the planet will be entirely peaceful. Evil vapors will have dissipated, rain will be ample and regular, the crops will grow abundantly. Trees will grow to a great height and people will grow to be eighty feet tall. The average lifespan will extend to 84,000 years. It will be impossible to count all the beings who will be taken across to liberation."

Worthy Ananda addressed the Buddha, 'What should we call this Sutra and how shall we uphold it?'

The Buddha said, "Ananda, this sutra is called The Ultimate Extinction of the Dharma. Tell everyone to propagate it widely; the merit of your actions will be measureless, beyond reckoning."

When the four-fold assembly of disciples heard this sutra they grieved and wept. Each of them resolved to attain the true path of the Supreme Sage. Then bowing to the Buddha, they withdrew.



---The Buddha Speaks the Ultimate Extinction of the Dharma Sutra, from the Shurangama Sutra, Introduction II.

Sex and Character

The feminine is unconscious, but the masculine is conscious.

The sage consciously surrenders to the truth which he is conscious of, whereas unconscious things, like the feminine, or a rock, are simply undifferentiated.

--- Kevin Solway