The Void, of which it cannot be said that it is or is not, nor that it has consciousness or has none, while it denies absoluteness to any experiential value (alike to being and to consciousness) cannot be identified. And that is the doctrine of not-self (anatta) as I see it in one aspect at present. This voidness cannot be “is-ed” and so introduced into the worldly scheme, except as the denial of absoluteness of all particular values. It has no more effect on ordinary life than the theory of relativity. But just as that theory completely alters calculation of enormous speeds, so, as I see it, this void-element completely alters calculations of extraordinary situations, of death (as killing, suicide or the partner of old age). N.T

Thursday, March 6, 2014

How uncertain and empty everything is ...


There's a childish instinct in humanity that makes the proudest among us, if he's a man and not crazy, long, - Blessed Father! - for the paternal hand that would guide us, in whatever shape or form as long as it guide us, through the world's mystery and confusion. Each of us is a speck of dust that the wind of life lifts up and then drops. We have to depend on a stronger force, to place our small hand in another hand, for today is always uncertain, the sky always far, and life always alien.

These of us who have risen highest merely have a deeper awareness of how uncertain and empty everything is.

Perhaps we're guided by illusion; we're surely not guided by consciousness.

Fernando Pessoa
The Book of Disquiet
translation: Richard Zenith
p. 158
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