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 23, 2014

No empire justifies breaking a child's toy


Reading about the effect of wars and revolutions – there's always one or the other in the news – doesn't make us feel horror but tedium. What really disturbs our soul isn't the cruel fate of all the dead and wounded, the sacrifice of all who die in action or who die without seeing action, but the stupidity that sacrifices lives and property to some inevitably futile cause. All ideas and all ambitions are a hysteria of prattling woman poising a man. No empire justifies breaking a child's toy. No ideal is worth the sacrifice of a toy train.

Pessoa
The Book of Disquiet
translation: Richard Zenith
p. 373-374
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