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

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Love is the most carnal of illusions


We cannot love, son. Love is the most carnal of illusions. Listen: to love is to possess. And what does a lover possess? The body? To possess it we would have to incorporate it, to eat it, to make its substance our own. And this impossibility, were it possible, wouldn't last, because our own body passes on and transforms, because we don't even possess our body (just our sensation of it), and because once the beloved body were possessed it would became ours and stop being other, and so love, with the disappearance of the other, would likewise disappear. (…)

How can I possess with my body, when I don't even possess my body? How can I possess with my soul, when I don't possess my soul? How can I understand with my mind, when I don't understand my mind? There is no body or truth we possess, nor even any illusion. We are phantoms made of lies, shadows of illusions, and our life is hollow on both the outside and the inside.


Fernando Pessoa
The Book of Disquiet
translation: Richard Zenith
p. 300-302

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