Random Quotes of Note - that relate to topics in this forum

"The problem with free speech is that it’s hard, and self-censorship is the path of least resistance. But, once you learn to keep yourself from voicing unwelcome thoughts, you forget how to think them—how to think freely at all—and ideas perish at conception."  from the New Yorker magazine.

(.... to state the obvious, totalistic cultures, countries, systems, communities, cults - it isn't hard to get people to shut down their critical / rational mind.  Self-censorship is the path of least resistance.  Free speech = speaking out = questioning = saying NO. 

Say YES and bow, and shut up.  Keep your mouth shut, hold your tongue -  and your mind shuts down.  And when the mind shuts down, you stop seeing fully, you narrow your focus to suit the culture and keep yourself safe.  Safe from attack, safe from rejection, safe from the disapproval of the powers that be, the leader, the guru. the path of least resistance is not the path to waking up... just the opposite..... well, you might make some progress in some areas, even have a breakthrough experience, but it all takes place in the echo chamber, in the iron bubble.


“Ignorance isn’t necessarily a vacuum waiting to be filled; just as often, it is a wall, actively maintained.” - Kathryn Schulz

In many totalitarian systems - small or large - walls are glorified, worshiped... actively maintained, gilded, decorated, continuously made higher and stronger.....

“Ignorance isn’t necessarily a vacuum waiting to be filled; just as often, it is a wall, actively maintained.” - Kathryn Schulz


From the meditative perspective,  a wall of ignorance stoutly defended, is easier to address than those walls that we have chosen to ignore.
Our wish to find relief from our innate sense of separateness from existence (call it our karmic inertia or inheritance) makes any tribal membership, the victor over independent thought.

Howard wrote:

Our wish to find relief from our innate sense of separateness from existence (call it our karmic inertia or inheritance) makes any tribal membership, the victor over independent thought.

Well, it's a koan isn't it?  Independent thought fosters awareness of the accommodations people make in order to maintain membership in their tribe of choice, but then what?  Unless we are content to live a solitary existence some accommodation is necessary.  When are accommodations acceptable and when do they become toxic?  It's about personal integrity along with affirming our connection with others.

Religion is to thought as Kentucky Fried Chicken is to food, okay if you're hungry and too lazy to cook.

But if you need a bit of help with the cooking, try art, not religion
 
 
True, it is strange to inhabit the Earth no longer,
to use no longer customs scarcely acquired,
not to interpret roses, and other things
that promise so much, in terms of a human future;
to be no longer all that one used to be
in endlessly anxious hands, and to lay aside
even one's proper name like a broken toy.
Strange, not to go on wishing one's wishes. Strange,
to see all that was once relation so loosely fluttering
hither and thither in space. And it's hard, being dead,
and full of retrieving before one begins to perceive
a little eternity. - All of the living, though,
make the mistake of drawing too sharp distinctions.
Angels (it's said) would be often unable to tell
whether they move among living or dead. The eternal
torrent whirls all the ages though either realm
for ever, and sounds above their voices in both.
 
 
In 66 years of living on this planet and traveling all over this planet at lease 12 of them in China I’ve never found a monument to the power of meditation to rival the late poetry of Rilke and I defy any of you to show me one!
 
And yet he did it without trampling on anyone, without stealing from anyone, wherever you go he’s been there before and yet he’s never, ever left even a trace.
 
When Pasternak was a young man he wrote to Rilke (who had been a friend of his father’s) and Rilke replied sending copies of some poems. Pasternak never replied to the letter, but decades later, after his death, it was found in his pocket with the words “very important” written on them.
 
Pasternak confided in a friend, “I could never have imagined that anything so shattering would happen to me in my life as to receive a letter from Rilke!