Quotes

Bored... researching Wittgenstein and looking at old notes I had written down:

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it. Ludwig Wittgenstein


Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Yes. Language is our big problem. Language ruins us and makes us suffer. Language is certainly my big problem. All my disatifactions would instantly disappear if I couldn't identify them or talk about them. But so would I. Without language I would have no experience, no life in the world. To say that language is the problem is to say that life is the problem: it's true, but what are you going to do about it? Norman Fisher

We want to make the world a better place, so to speak. But seeking to make the world a better place without first appreciating the world as it is produces all kinds of problems. Micheal Carroll 

She showed me brains, blacked lungs, biceps. The intricacy and self-sufficiency of it all was what struck me the most - that we're carrying around these various parts, nestled in just the right business. These bodies were machines; however miraculous, they had nothing to do with the lives that had once inhabited them. Hannah Tennant-Moore

The approach of the Mind Only school is to analyse phenomena of our everyday existence, such as the psychological aggregates; break them down into their component parts, down to the smallest particle; and show that, in all of it, there is nothing to be found. the Dalai Lama

So when we hear that meditation is useless, that it's not about generating some benefit, we wonder, "what's the point?" But if we are to understand meditation [or anything at all] we must drop our preconceived notions, biases, prejudices... instead let's look at the mind we bring to this practice. If it's a mind of getting somwhere, a mind that seeks peace, calm, enlightenment, freedom, then it's not the mind of enlightenment. It's a mind that seeks gain and keeps coming up short, a mind of strain and frustration. Here is why meditation is useless: meditation is, finally, just to be here. Not over there in some place called peace or freedom or enlightenment. Not longing for something else. Not trying to be or aquire something new or different. Not seeking benefit. Steve Hagen