According to the prevailing notion, freedom manifests as “preference-satisfying behavior.” About the preferences themselves we are to maintain a principled silence, out of deference to the autonomy of the individual. They are said to express the ...
But to demand that a work be “relatable” expresses a different expectation: that the work itself be somehow accommodating to, or reflective of, the experience of the reader or viewer. The reader or viewer remains passive in the face of the book o...
Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. 'I am that I am' sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words 'Be still'. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up...
London is one of the world's centres of Arab journalism and political activism. The failure of left and right, the establishment and its opposition, to mount principled arguments against clerical reaction has had global ramifications. Ideas minted in...
It seemed a ruse that fear of death should be the sole motivation for living and, yet, to quell this fear made the prospect of living itself seem all the more absurd; to extend this further, the notion of living one’s life for the purposes of ponde...
Of all modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home, they say, is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a ...
After a while he said: It’s not about knowin where you are. It’s about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. Or anybody’s. You dont start over. That's what it's about. Ever step you take is fore...
This imagined notion of who we are and how others are supposed to see us, is called aham. Aham constantly seek validation from external world. When that is not forthcoming it becomes insecure. Aham makes humans accumulate things; through things we ho...
On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualize as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality...
He was an American character, one typical of men of his generation, men who embraced the notion of freedom and individualism and the open road without always knowing its price, and whose enthusiasms could as easily lead to the cowardice of McCarthyis...
Raoul Duke: If the pigs were gathering in Vegas, I felt the drug culture should be represented as well. And there was a certain bent appeal in the notion of running a savage burn on one Las Vegas hotel, and then just wheeling across town and checking...
Derek Vinyard: We're so hung up on this notion that we have some obligation to help the struggling black man, you know. Cut him some slack until he can overcome these historical injustices. It's crap. I mean, Christ, Lincoln freed the slaves, like, w...
Jesse: Do you believe in reincarnation? Celine: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Jesse: Yeah, right. Well, most people, you know, a lot of people talk about past lives and things like that, you know? And even if they don't believe it in some specific wa...
Freud could never be certain, he said, in view of his wide and early reading, whether what seemed like a new creation might not be the work instead of hidden channels of memory leading back to the notions of others absorbed, coming now an...
[…] once in the quagmire each further action only serves to plunge me deeper. And at least as corrosive is the awareness that I am dealing with . That it is who are dragging me down. There is something deeply shameful about this. In such situations...
Something about the turbulence of adolescence makes you want to do something creative...I thought as I got older I would stop writing about it, but I find adolescence, and popular depictions of it, very interesting. I like to see where my own life in...
Only unconditional grace can transform a hardened heart into a grateful heart. Only a free gift can demolish any notion of quid pro quo. Only an utterly merciful act of love can fashion a new creation capable of love. As theologian Karl Barth puts it...
Nothing could be easier than disturbing a status quo instituted by others; the real work of the sinister current is to break the rules we rigidly establish for ourselves.” -Zeena Schreck for "Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and ro...
although we very clearly see the sun, we ought not therefore to determine that it is only of the size which our sense of sight presents; and we may very distinctly imagine the head of a lion joined to the body of a goat, without being therefore shut ...
Further, the same Arguments which explode the Notion of Luck, may, on the other side, be useful in some Cases to establish a due comparison between Chance and Design: We may imagine Chance and Design to be, as it were, in Competition with each other,...
Normally, to decide whether we are alive we do not look outside of ourselves to find out if we are nourishing and generating life. We look into ourselves to find out how strong and healthy and vital we are. But the notion of the seed that dies demand...
