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

Friday, March 14, 2014

The cross of simply existing


Some of us stagnated in the idiotic conquest of the ordinary, contemptibly seeking our daily bread without ever sweating for it, without making conscious effort, without the nobility of achievement.

Others of us, more high-minded, spurned state and society, wanting and desiring nothing, and trying to take to the calvary of oblivion the cross of simply existing – an impossible endeavor for whoever doesn't have, like the bearer of the Cross, the consciousness of a divine origin.

Still others, busy on the outside of the soul, devoted themselves to the cult of noise and confusion, thinking they were living whenever they heard themselves, and supposing they loved whenever they brushed love's outward forms. Living was painful because we knew we were alive; dying didn't scare us, for we had lost the normal notion of what death is.

Fernando Pessoa
The Book of Disquiet
translation: Richard Zenith
p. 261

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