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

Monday, March 24, 2014

To notice everything for the first time


How could I love right now to be able to see all this as somebody whose only relation to it was visual – to everything as an adult traveller who has just arrived at the surface of life! To not have learned from birth to attached predetermined meanings to all these things. To be able to see them in their natural self-expression, irrespective of the expressions that have been imposed on them. To be able to recognize the fish wife in her human reality, independent of her being called a fishwife and my knowing that she exist and sells fish. To see the policeman as God sees him. To notice everything for the first time, not as a apocalyptic revelations of life's Mystery, but as direct manifestations of Reality.

Pessoa
The Book of Disquiet
translation: Richard Zenith
p. 377
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