Themes

"So in this idea, then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you're all that, only you're pretending you're not. And it's perfectly OK to pretend you're not, to be perfectly convinced, because this is the whole notion of drama."

"Zen … does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes."

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float."

"My work is an attempt to make room in the Kosmos for all of the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum. I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. To Freudians I say, Have you looked at Buddhism? To Buddhists I say, Have you studied Freud? To liberals I say, Have you thought about how important some conservative ideas are? To conservatives I say, Can you perhaps include a more liberal perspective? And so on, and so on, and so on... At no point I have ever said: Freud is wrong, Buddha is wrong, liberals are wrong, conservatives are wrong. I have only suggested that they are true but partial. My critical writings have never attacked the central beliefs of any discipline, only the claims that the particular discipline has the only truth — and on those grounds I have often been harsh. But every approach, I honestly believe, is essentially true but partial, true but partial, true but partial. And on my own tombstone, I dearly hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial..."

"Whether I am walking or standing still, whether I sleep or remain awake, the supreme knowledge and intuition, are present with me — constantly and continuously."

"What, Me Worry?"

"Trivialism arises from the idea that mathematics is classical and there is contradiction in mathematics, and therefore (under our old classical reasoning), all of mathematics is true, we then get to the meaninglessness of any particular mathematical statement and wallow in our degenerate theory."

"To search for truth should be the main goal in one's life. This is a very difficult task. Let us begin by asking what is truth? What is untruth? To make this decision itself is difficult. Once the decision has been made, it is even more difficult to understand the limitations possible even in truth: elements of doubt and illusion. The Ultimate Truth is still far away, even if we are anywhere near relative truth, it should be deemed a great achievement."

"The balance between karma and akarma gives holistic vision. Lots of discussions regarding Karmayoga. No work can be completed without karma. That is the truth. Everybody accepts this truth. Our world is one of incompleteness. Where there is incompleteness, there is relativity. Both karma and akarma are relative. No work is completed without akarma."

"Trivialism is pretty hopeless as a philosophy, although it is very easy to defend/maintain verbally! The main criticism against it which is pertinent to this project is well expounded, and it is an argument from meaning. It is not clear that a trivialist can mean anything by his utterance or written statement, since there is no recognizable judgment attending sentences."

"Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est."

"If trivialism were true, then every state of affairs obtains — good or bad. Moreover, they obtain without any effort on my part. The trivialist then may offer the following wisdom to those burdened by the weight of the world: Why be worried? Because of the misfortune that befalls you? You regret not having taken a different course of action? But necessarily all things obtain – including everything that is bad for you. There was nothing you could have done to prevent this. So why regret your past actions? Instead, be happy and relaxed. And besides, everything good obtains too – you have missed out on nothing. The conditions for a peaceful, tranquil, and meaningful life are here to enjoy. And there is nothing you need to do in order to ensure that this remains so. Stop your worry, and be happy – and do whatever pleases you."

"There's no one thing that's true. It's all true."

"All skepticism is a kind of idealism. Hence when the skeptic Zeno pursued the study of skepticism by endeavoring existentially to keep himself unaffected by whatever happened, so that when once he had gone out of his way to avoid a mad dog, he shamefacedly admitted that even a skeptical philosopher is also sometimes a man, I find nothing ridiculous in this. There is no contradiction, and the comical always lies in a contradiction. … There is no special difficulty connected with being an idealist in the imagination; but to exist as an idealist is an extremely strenuous task, because existence itself constitutes a hindrance and an objection. To express existentially what one has understood about oneself, and in this manner to understand oneself, is in no way comical. But to understand everything except one’s own self is very comical."

"Truth is beyond space and time. One who does not yearn for truth, will be trapped within space and time and become dogged. That man alone can remain free from mulish tendencies, who has the capacity to think across time: in the past, present and the future."

"Eric Draven: Little things used to mean so much to Shelly - I used to think they were kind of trivial. Believe me, nothing is trivial."

"Certum est, quia impossible est."

"Trivialism, the doctrine that everything is actually true."

"I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me — and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to me."

"The whole time of my life may be divided into an infinity of parts, each of which is in no way dependent on any other; and, accordingly, because I was in existence a short time ago, it does not follow that I must now exist, unless in this moment some cause create me anew as it were, — that is, conserve me."

"Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?"

"Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all."

"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense."

"GP: Is there an essential meaning behind POEE? M2: There is a Zen Story about a student who asked a Master to explain the meaning of Buddhism. The Master's reply was "Three pounds of flax." GP: Is that the answer to my question? M2: No, of course not. That is just illustrative. The answer to your question is FIVE TONS OF FLAX!"

"GP: Maybe you are just crazy. M2: Indeed! But do not reject these teachings as false because I am crazy. The reason that I am crazy is because they are true. GP: Is Eris true? M2: Everything is true. GP: Even false things? M2: Even false things are true. GP: How can that be? M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it. GP: Why do you deal with so many negatives? M2: To dissolve them. GP: Will you develop that point? M2: No."

"Imagine if you could actually be that happy? That would be powerful, man. People would be tunneling under the street to avoid you. They'd go "Oh, man — is that happy guy still out there?"

"The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it."

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew. Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true."

"There are two ways in which the avoidance of trivialism can fail. One is to accept the classical equivalence of negation- and absolute inconsistency."

"The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth."

"A symbol is always in general and, however precise its translation, an artist can restore to it only its movement: there is no word-for-word rendering. Moreover, nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing."

"I suppose every child has a world of his own — and every man, too, for the matter of that. I wonder if that's the cause for all the misunderstanding there is in Life?"

"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously."

"I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie."

"I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are..."

"Creeds matter very little... The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label."

"It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite."

"Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them."

"I quite fixedly believe the Wardens of Earth sometimes unbar strange windows, that face on other worlds than ours. And some of us, I think, once in a while get a peep through these windows. But we are not permitted to get a long peep, or an unobstructed peep, nor very certainly, are we permitted to see all there is — out yonder. <!-- The fatal fault, sir, of your theorizing is that it is too complete. It aims to throw light upon the universe, and therefore is self-evidently moonshine. The Wardens of Earth do not desire that we should understand the universe, Mr. Kennaston; it is part of Their appointed task to insure that we never do; and because of Their efficiency every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong."

"Be these people either Conservatives or Socialists, Yellows or Reds, the most important thing is — and that is the point I want to stress — that all of them are right in the plain and moral sense of the word. … I ask whether it is not possible to see in the present social conflict of the world an analogous struggle between two, three, five equally serious verities and equally generous idealisms? I think it is possible, and that is the most dramatic element in modern civilization, that a human truth is opposed to another human truth no less human, ideal against ideal, positive worth against worth no less positive, instead of the struggle being as we are so often told, one between noble truth and vile selfish error."

"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."

"Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question."

"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct."

"In mathematics we can take our inner distance from the content of our statements. In the final analysis mathematics is a mental game that we can play or not play as we choose. Religion, on the other hand, deals with ourselves, with our life and death; its promises are meant to govern our actions and thus, at least indirectly, our very existence. We cannot just look at them impassively from the outside. Moreover, our attitude to religious questions cannot be separated from our attitude to society. Even if religion arose as the spiritual structure of a particular human society, it is arguable whether it has remained the strongest social molding force through history, or whether society, once formed, develops new spiritual structures and adapts them to its particular level of knowledge. Nowadays, the individual seems to be able to choose the spiritual framework of his thoughts and actions quite freely, and this freedom reflects the fact that the boundaries between the various cultures and societies are beginning to become more fluid. But even when an individual tries to attain the greatest possible degree of independence, he will still be swayed by the existing spiritual structures — consciously or unconsciously. For he, too, must be able to speak of life and death and the human condition to other members of the society in which he's chosen to live; he must educate his children according to the norms of that society, fit into its life. Epistemological sophistries cannot possibly help him attain these ends. Here, too, the relationship between critical thought about the spiritual content of a given religion and action based on the deliberate acceptance of that content is complementary. And such acceptance, if consciously arrived at, fills the individual with strength of purpose, helps him to overcome doubts and, if he has to suffer, provides him with the kind of solace that only a sense of being sheltered under an all-embracing roof can grant. In that sense, religion helps to make social life more harmonious; its most important task is to remind us, in the language of pictures and parables, of the wider framework within which our life is set."

""I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men."

"...a border line case of a bearded person may be admitted as both bearded and not bearded without triviality. The admission does not carry a commitment to everything being true (i.e. it does not carry a commitment to what we might term trivialism – the view that everything is true)."

"I know of no discussion which has degenerated into trivialism into trivilaism, except in moments of jest."

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."

"All illusion comes and goes, but the soul remains unchanged. What is meant by God-realization is to actually experience this important thing — that the soul is eternal."

"It is never presumptuous for anyone to hope for realization. It is the goal of creation and the birthright of humanity. Blessed are they who are prepared to assert that right in this very life."