Forest of Estrangement: The more goods we acquire in the temporal realm, the more intense our external work, the less accessible and farther removed is eternity

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, December 21, 2015

The more goods we acquire in the temporal realm, the more intense our external work, the less accessible and farther removed is eternity

The more goods we acquire in the temporal realm, the more intense our external work, the less accessible and farther removed is eternity. Hence the limited perspective of active and energetic people, the banality of their thought and actions. -- Cioran

There's a word in Pali bāhulika that is usually translated as "luxurious", though in his draft translation of the Majjhima Nikāya Ven. Ñanamoli sometimes translates it as "busy". I've always thought of this as being a bit idiosyncratic, but this passage from Cioran makes it apparent that the two words aren't as dissimilar as one might suppose.

(from Dhamma forum)

Forest of Estrangement

Monday, December 21, 2015

The more goods we acquire in the temporal realm, the more intense our external work, the less accessible and farther removed is eternity

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