Clothed in Abstractions

Each star system is an island in space, quarantined from its neighbors by the light-years. I can imagine creatures evolving into glimmerings of knowledge on innumerable worlds, every one of them assuming at first their puny planet and paltry few suns to be all that is. We grow up in isolation. Only slowly do we teach ourselves the Cosmos.

You tried to change, didn’t you? Closed your mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than he who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over the self.

“The Self cannot be pierced by weapons or burned by fire; water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it. The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry. It is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundations of eternity. The Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought, beyond all change. Knowing this, you should not grieve.”

every revolution starts and ends with his lips

I think I fall in love a little bit with anyone who shows me their soul. This world is so guarded and fearful. I appreciate rawness so much.

Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it’s right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. We can’t prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering–unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. All of us here are going to know grief, if we live fifty years, we’ll have known pain for fifty years. And in the end we’ll die. That’s the condition we’re born on. I’m afraid of life! There are times I–I am very frightened. And happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn’t all a misunderstanding–this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain….If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could…get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It’s the self that suffers, and there’s a place where the self–ceases. I don’t know how to say it. But I believe that the reality, the truth which I recognize in suffering as I don’t in comfort and happiness–that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.

I was alone. In ways people aren’t supposed to be alone.

I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all. I like watching people, but I don’t like talking to them, dealing with them, pleasing them, or offending them. I am tired.

I can’t settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.