Adversaria (1)
‘When you feel disagreeable it is better for you to sit. There is no other way to accept your problem and work on it.’ —Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind…, p. 40)
‘Engaging with mystery is neither problem-solving nor completing tasks. None of these mysteries can be solved, answered definitively, controlled, managed, or mastered. We never finish with any of them or deal with them decisively. They are constants in our surroundings […] We cannot change them (though our egos may try). We can only change in response to them. Some responses are more sustainable than others, more suited to some of than others. Our responses are always provisional, subject to change.’ —Thomas Attig (How We Grieve, p. xliv)
‘Truth is unattainable, but logic is intelligible. Ghosts may be things, but things are things, even if they be ghosts’ —Fernando Pessoa (unsigned), ‘Essay on the Nature and Meaning of Rationalism’
‘In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should to it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely.’ —Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind…, p. 63).
‘As we live, we establish, broaden, enrich, combine, transform, and at times discard or abandon practical involvements with things, places, other persons, and projects. We develop and achieve individual character through our patterns of caring and through the variety, breadth, and depth of our attachments to the surrounding world. Our life histories unfold as we weave and reweave these threads of attachment.’ —Thomas Attig (How We Grieve, p. 107)
‘…the house was brand-new, wood with panels and a high step slate roof, one of the styles that I lumped all together and called Queen William.’ —Rex Stout (Fer-de-Lance, ch. 10)