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Post by stardustpilgrim on Oct 2, 2022 14:14:02 GMT -5
OK, couldn't resist, from The Trouble With Being Born. It seems Cioran was a Papagenos. I haven't read him in a couple of years. The Trouble with Being Born Quotes Showing 1-30 of 530 “It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.” ― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born tags: suicide1220 likesLike “What do you do from morning to night?" "I endure myself.” ― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born 512 likesLike “The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don’t know where that elsewhere is.” ― Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born Those are from: www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/580808-de-l-inconv-nient-d-tre-nThis next quote might be the best one for this thread.“When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, “What’s your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act.” And they do calm down.” ― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born 155 likesLike “To have committed every crime but that of being a father.” ― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born 134 likesLike “What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification.” ― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born 113 likesLike “To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.” ― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Oct 2, 2022 14:25:10 GMT -5
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Oct 2, 2022 15:57:48 GMT -5
From my second favorite Cioran book, The Temptation to Exist. The end of quote 3 gets us to sree. 2. "Try as we will to take the cure of ineffectuality; to meditate on the Taoist fathers’ doctrine of submission, of withdrawal, of a sovereign absence; to follow, like them, the course of consciousness once it ceases to be at grips with the world and weds the form of things as water does, their favorite element—we shall never succeed. They scorn both our curiosity and our thirst for suffering; in which they differ from the mystics, and especially from the medieval ones, so apt to recommend the virtues of the hair shirt, the scourge, insomnia, inanition, and lament. A life of intensity is contrary to the Tao, teaches Lao Tse, a normal man if ever there was one. But the Christian virus torments us: heirs of the flagellants, it is by refining our excruciations that we become conscious of ourselves. Is religion declining? We perpetuate its extravagances, as we perpetuate the macerations and the cell-shrieks of old, our will to suffer equaling that of the monasteries in their heyday. If the Church no longer enjoys a monopoly on hell, it has nonetheless riveted us to a chain of sighs, to the cult of the ordeal, of blasted joys and jubilant despair. The mind, as well as the body, pays for a life of intensity. Masters in the art of thinking against oneself, Nietzsche, Baudelaire, and Dostoevsky have taught us to side with our dangers, to broaden the sphere of our diseases, to acquire existence by division from our being. And what for the great Chinaman was a symbol of failure, a proof of imperfection, constitutes for us the sole mode of possessing, of making contact with ourselves." - Emil Cioran, The Temptation to Exist 3. "We breathe too fast to be able to grasp things in themselves or to expose their fragility. Our panting postulates and distorts them, creates and disfigures them, and binds us to them. I bestir myself, therefore I emit a world as suspect as my speculation which justifies it; I espouse movement, which changes me into a generator of being, into an artisan of fictions, while my cosmogonic verve makes me forget that, led on by the whirlwind of acts, I am nothing but an acolyte of time, an agent of decrepit universes. (...) If we would regain our freedom, we must shake off the burden of sensation, no longer react to the world by our senses, break our bonds. For all sensation is a bond, pleasure as much as pain, joy as much as misery. The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity." - Emil Cioran, The Temptation to Exist from: www.aamboli.com/quotes/book/the-temptation-to-exist/2 18 is pretty good. |
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Post by sree on Oct 2, 2022 16:10:40 GMT -5
I was doing some work in the garden the past couple of hours. Thanks for the quotes. I browsed and they all looked good, good enough for discussion after I have reflected on them.
You are a passionate reader. What is driving you to read? Is it because you are an American and it is our cultural habit? Krishnamurti never read. He just watched Clint Eastwood movies. He was like me in that regard. Mom told me one time that the French read more than we do. The Russians also. And that they talk about serious things at dinner. You think Macron is serious?
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Post by sree on Oct 2, 2022 16:16:38 GMT -5
Metaphorically speaking, our butts are our minds, where our heads are in. It's all one, as Ramakrishna would say. There is no getting out. Toughing it out is the only option.
"Bodhiharma facing the wall" is my spiritual practice. It's derived from Krishnamurti's teaching. Stillness. Don't move, he said. Watch every impulse to become like Joe Blow taking his hits in a world where Momo wants to die. Don't do it.
This is sad you sound defeated and resigned to despair.. This is a very good comment coming from you, farmer. Everybody runs away from despair. I don't. It's like eating my greens at dinner instead of pushing it away and scarf down the dessert.
Resignation to despair builds character. It's like being a matador who never quits no matter how many times he gets gored.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2022 17:52:09 GMT -5
Only one on page 8 in English. 75. "I would like to forget everything, to forget myself and to forget the world."- Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair It is wise to be very careful with one's wishes. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Oct 2, 2022 19:00:14 GMT -5
I was doing some work in the garden the past couple of hours. Thanks for the quotes. I browsed and they all looked good, good enough for discussion after I have reflected on them.
You are a passionate reader. What is driving you to read? Is it because you are an American and it is our cultural habit? Krishnamurti never read. He just watched Clint Eastwood movies. He was like me in that regard. Mom told me one time that the French read more than we do. The Russians also. And that they talk about serious things at dinner. You think Macron is serious?
I have always been a reader. I remember picking out 2 books from the public library, a local branch, the summer before 1st grade. I couldn't read them, I don't remember if my parents or sister read them to me. I think in elementary school we had to read a certain number of books, we got to choose the extra reading. I remember liking Robin Hood, I think we had 3 different versions in the library. I liked biographies mostly, the old west mostly. I read about the western heroes, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill, Jim Bowie, others. I especially liked stories about Mountain Men. That was me, I was sure when I could, I would live alone, I have always been a loner. Tarzan was my hero, the film Tarzan, I never read the books. I was sure I would some day live alone, like Tarzan. I didn't read much fiction, other than assignments. I was about 20 when I first read science fiction, Isaac Asimov, The Foundation trilogy. I think I've written about, later, I read to try to understand myself. And I came to like science. That probably came from my 9th grade Earth Science teacher. The year previous he taught HS science. I knew because he told us about teaching at one of the all Black high schools. 9th grade was the first year Charlotte had integration, the first year I went to school with Africa Americans. He told us about the poor, some kids went to school in the winter with shoes that had holes in them, in the bottom. He taught stuff apart from the text book. I figured out later he had taught us college chemistry, probably from his college notes. He made science interesting, chemistry was like a puzzle. Mr. Henderson. I just liked to learn about people and the world, the universe. I didn't read The Catcher in the Rye in school. I read it later, I wished we had read it in HS. I discovered Walker Percy in 1980. I browsed his new hardback book, The Second Coming. It was a sequel to his second book, The Last Gentlemen. Then, it took a year for a book to come out in paperback, so I decided to read all of Percy's novels within a year and read The Second Coming when it came out in paperback. He is still my favorite novelist, I think he wrote only one other novel after The Second Coming, The Thanatos Syndrome, that was about 1987. It was a sequel to an earlier book also, Love In the Ruins. The other book in there was Lancelot, it was a study of evil. Percy was an MD. He inherited a depressive disorder, his father and grandfather both committed suicide. He fought depression periodically throughout his life. He died in 1990, not suicide, I still have the newspaper clipping somewhere. He was about ten when his father died, he and his brother went to live with their Uncle Will Percy, who was rich. So basically Percy could do anything with his life he wanted. He decided to become a doctor. He finished medical school, decided he wanted to do research. Doing research he contracted TB, I think that was in the '40's. The treatment then, he was bedridden. So he read. He liked the existentialists. He most liked Kierkegaard, also liked Dostoyevsky. When he got over TB he decided to become a writer, he never practiced medicine. He basically became a philosopher, but decided to do philosophy in literature, novels. His Kierkegaard was his model. His first two were never published. Then he wrote The Moviegoer, I think that was 1961. In 1962 it won the National Book Award having never been nominated. One of the judges on the panel said, Hey, I found this book I think we need to look at. They all liked it. It's still my favorite novel. I wish I had found it at 13, 14 or 15, instead of 28. The main character is Binx Boiling, he has an ordinary job, likes films, is on a search. It's an existential search, he can't quite define it. But all the while also Percy wrote essays on philosophy and semiotics. His first collection was The Message in the Bottle. Another, Signposts In A Strange Land. Another came out just a couple of years ago, Symbols & Existence. But the last book he published while alive was a popular book on philosophy and psychology, Lost In the Cosmos, The Last Self Help Book (You Will Ever Need). The full subtitle (or first sentence, don't exactly recall) is a full page long. It's actually a very interesting and funny book. it sold pretty well. But Percy describes himself as an ex-suicide, I think it's in The Message in the Bottle. An ex-suicide has contemplated suicide but chosen not to. He says an ex-suicide gets up, takes a shower, gets dressed, fixes some breakfast, walks out on his porch, looks out into the day, and then goes to work, because he doesn't have to. When I read that sentence (paraphrased), I understood it immediately. The Outsider by Colin Wilson is also a favorite, still. I had learned about it, but didn't special order. Sometimes even if I had found out about a book, I would wait to chance upon it. Going back to Colorado to visit once, probably 1978, there it was in a bookstore, I think it was in Boulder, possibly Denver. It was a significant book. These days, for about 8 years, I read a Lee Child-Jack Reacher book about every 6-9 months. It's like 3 days blown to hell, but sometimes necessary. Books are my friends. Krishnamurti did read detective novels sometimes. I read all the Lutyen's biographies, I think that's in there somewhere. |
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Post by sree on Oct 2, 2022 22:52:25 GMT -5
The problem of self, to you, may not be a problem of self to me. My problem with self is this state of awareness of being a minder of the body. This is as far as I can go in paring down the problems of the self. In a conventional life, the self has more problems living in a social setting in which other selves are tied to you. Living with no psychological relationships with comfort animals (i.e dog, cat, wife, grandfather, gurus, celebrities, etc.) is a load off. Laffy's suggestion to meet people to deal with loneliness would be an advice to a recovering alcoholic to have a few drinks and be happy. I am developing a relationship with nature. In the mornings, I am with the trees in my garden. The ambience comes from a different culture absent of human energy. Krishnamurti said he could hear the sound of the trees in that quiet when not a leaf is moving. I have not gotten that far yet. The trees are still trees even though their conceptual nature is apparent and they are not perceived as objects of science. I'm going by what you posted, you said all people live lives with no meaning. You said you are disappointed with life. All includes sree. Those are self-problems. Yes, sree is included in an existence with no meaningful purpose. Look at the trees. Their leaves are turning. Soon they will fall just as people - including all in this forum - will sooner or later die. Trees have no problems. They just have a meaningless existence. Consider the human heart. It beats. 70 times or so a minute. Whatever for? As long as it keeps beating, sree has to tend to its pointless functioning.
Emil Cioran was a whiner. I am not a whiner. I am stating a fact that my existence has no purpose apart from tending to the body. Until the body dies, I need to stay out of trouble by living like a tree.
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Post by Reefs on Oct 3, 2022 4:50:22 GMT -5
Metaphorically speaking, our butts are our minds, where our heads are in. It's all one, as Ramakrishna would say. There is no getting out. Toughing it out is the only option.
"Bodhiharma facing the wall" is my spiritual practice. It's derived from Krishnamurti's teaching. Stillness. Don't move, he said. Watch every impulse to become like Joe Blow taking his hits in a world where Momo wants to die. Don't do it.
This is sad you sound defeated and resigned to despair.. Yeah, he regularly talks himself right into despair. And for no reason (he seems to live in relative comfort, as far as I can tell), except for some kind of unhealthy intellectual narcissism. He has turned self-pity into an art. Sure, that's one way to use your mind, but I'd call that using your mind to your disadvantage. |
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Post by Reefs on Oct 3, 2022 5:16:19 GMT -5
This is sad you sound defeated and resigned to despair.. This is a very good comment coming from you, farmer. Everybody runs away from despair. I don't. It's like eating my greens at dinner instead of pushing it away and scarf down the dessert.
Resignation to despair builds character. It's like being a matador who never quits no matter how many times he gets gored.
There is no valor in struggle or suffering. That's just your cultural brainwashing speaking. Society wants to teach you that what feels good to you is actually bad for you and what feels bad to you is actually good for you. Struggle and suffering is not natural. It's part of the natural world and life, yes. But in terms of normal or predominant state of being, it is an anomaly and it is not sought thru-out the natural world. What is natural is a playful attitude, a certain ease and lightness of being. What is sought, almost as a biological imperative, is exuberance and thriving. Seth talked about this and how consciousness withdraws as soon as basic requirements in that regard aren't met anymore. Which means what feels good to you is indeed good for you, and what feels bad to you is indeed bad for you. Little children know this. The animals know this. Adults, apparently, don't seem to know this anymore (or pretend to not know this anymore because society forces them to justify their existence thru struggle and suffering). Even highly successful people who essentially just followed their bliss and turned their work into play will tell you that they only got to where they are right now because they do 17 hour days 24/7/365 at the office or in the gym. It's the weirdest thing! You don't need to prove your worthiness thru struggle and suffering. If you do, it does show a fundamental misunderstanding of life, not some kind of wisdom. |
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Post by Reefs on Oct 3, 2022 5:41:28 GMT -5
Yeah, he regularly talks himself right into despair. And for no reason (he seems to live in relative comfort, as far as I can tell), except for some kind of unhealthy intellectual narcissism. He has turned self-pity into an art. Sure, that's one way to use your mind, but I'd call that using your mind to your disadvantage. Sounds like he's bored aimless and friendless I'd say most of it is just an act to get attention, which he seems to seek and enjoy. It's basically just addiction to thinking. And the topic his mind got stuck on is suffering. Could as well get stuck on thriving instead or any other random topic. It probably wouldn't make much of a difference to him, because he seems rather content with his life. Nothing serious going on here, IMO. Mostly just noise, making conversation. That's all. It never goes deeper than mere mental commentary, and if it does, he quickly shuts it down. There's nothing genuine or sincere about it. Just compare Sree to other folks here in the past who were truly in a state of existential suffering or desperation, like let's say Midnight. |
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Post by Reefs on Oct 3, 2022 8:24:04 GMT -5
I'd say most of it is just an act to get attention, which he seems to seek and enjoy. It's basically just addiction to thinking. And the topic his mind got stuck on is suffering. Could as well get stuck on thriving instead or any other random topic. It probably wouldn't make much of a difference to him, because he seems rather content with his life. Nothing serious going on here, IMO. Mostly just noise, making conversation. That's all. It never goes deeper than mere mental commentary, and if it does, he quickly shuts it down. There's nothing genuine or sincere about it. Just compare Sree to other folks here in the past who were truly in a state of existential suffering or desperation, like let's say Midnight. Yeah, just conversation for him I guess. And money can't buy happiness or peace of mind.. but it sure can take a few of the more unpleasant aspects of life out of play, which is fine but doesn't matter.. and focus on the body is a double edged sword perhaps, absolutely fine.. but also potentially the work of a narcissist  the modern world is too much to handle these days, people overwhelmed, stressed out.. seeking momentary comfort by losing themselves to soothing distractions A question worth pursuing, especially for Sree, would be: Will a purely intellectual approach to life inevitably lead to a predominantly pessimistic perspective on life? If yes, why? If no, why not? |
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Post by sree on Oct 3, 2022 11:00:04 GMT -5
This is sad you sound defeated and resigned to despair.. Yeah, he regularly talks himself right into despair. And for no reason (he seems to live in relative comfort, as far as I can tell), except for some kind of unhealthy intellectual narcissism. He has turned self-pity into an art. Sure, that's one way to use your mind, but I'd call that using your mind to your disadvantage. This is an ad hominem attack. Shame on you, Reefs. Take apart what I am saying if my spiritual stance is wrong. Don't psychoanalyze me. It has no benefit to anyone who wants to die and needs clarity. If I need help, I have the money to get professional help from the best therapist in NYC. I don't need free armchair telemedicine doled out to the poor.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Oct 3, 2022 11:23:43 GMT -5
I'm going by what you posted, you said all people live lives with no meaning. You said you are disappointed with life. All includes sree. Those are self-problems. Yes, sree is included in an existence with no meaningful purpose. Look at the trees. Their leaves are turning. Soon they will fall just as people - including all in this forum - will sooner or later die. Trees have no problems. They just have a meaningless existence. Consider the human heart. It beats. 70 times or so a minute. Whatever for? As long as it keeps beating, sree has to tend to its pointless functioning. Emil Cioran was a whiner. I am not a whiner. I am stating a fact that my existence has no purpose apart from tending to the body. Until the body dies, I need to stay out of trouble by living like a tree.
Writing yesterday, one > last< possibility popped into my mind. Reefs has you nailed...... |
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Post by sree on Oct 3, 2022 11:26:28 GMT -5
I was doing some work in the garden the past couple of hours. Thanks for the quotes. I browsed and they all looked good, good enough for discussion after I have reflected on them.
You are a passionate reader. What is driving you to read? Is it because you are an American and it is our cultural habit? Krishnamurti never read. He just watched Clint Eastwood movies. He was like me in that regard. Mom told me one time that the French read more than we do. The Russians also. And that they talk about serious things at dinner. You think Macron is serious?
I have always been a reader. I remember picking out 2 books from the public library, a local branch, the summer before 1st grade. I couldn't read them, I don't remember if my parents or sister read them to me. I think in elementary school we had to read a certain number of books, we got to choose the extra reading. I remember liking Robin Hood, I think we had 3 different versions in the library. I liked biographies mostly, the old west mostly. I read about the western heroes, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill, Jim Bowie, others. I especially liked stories about Mountain Men. That was me, I was sure when I could, I would live alone, I have always been a loner. Tarzan was my hero, the film Tarzan, I never read the books. I was sure I would some day live alone, like Tarzan. I didn't read much fiction, other than assignments. I was about 20 when I first read science fiction, Isaac Asimov, The Foundation trilogy. I think I've written about, later, I read to try to understand myself. And I came to like science. That probably came from my 9th grade Earth Science teacher. The year previous he taught HS science. I knew because he told us about teaching at one of the all Black high schools. 9th grade was the first year Charlotte had integration, the first year I went to school with Africa Americans. He told us about the poor, some kids went to school in the winter with shoes that had holes in them, in the bottom. He taught stuff apart from the text book. I figured out later he had taught us college chemistry, probably from his college notes. He made science interesting, chemistry was like a puzzle. Mr. Henderson. I just liked to learn about people and the world, the universe. I didn't read The Catcher in the Rye in school. I read it later, I wished we had read it in HS. I discovered Walker Percy in 1980. I browsed his new hardback book, The Second Coming. It was a sequel to his second book, The Last Gentlemen. Then, it took a year for a book to come out in paperback, so I decided to read all of Percy's novels within a year and read The Second Coming when it came out in paperback. He is still my favorite novelist, I think he wrote only one other novel after The Second Coming, The Thanatos Syndrome, that was about 1987. It was a sequel to an earlier book also, Love In the Ruins. The other book in there was Lancelot, it was a study of evil. Percy was an MD. He inherited a depressive disorder, his father and grandfather both committed suicide. He fought depression periodically throughout his life. He died in 1990, not suicide, I still have the newspaper clipping somewhere. He was about ten when his father died, he and his brother went to live with their Uncle Will Percy, who was rich. So basically Percy could do anything with his life he wanted. He decided to become a doctor. He finished medical school, decided he wanted to do research. Doing research he contracted TB, I think that was in the '40's. The treatment then, he was bedridden. So he read. He liked the existentialists. He most liked Kierkegaard, also liked Dostoyevsky. When he got over TB he decided to become a writer, he never practiced medicine. He basically became a philosopher, but decided to do philosophy in literature, novels. His Kierkegaard was his model. His first two were never published. Then he wrote The Moviegoer, I think that was 1961. In 1962 it won the National Book Award having never been nominated. One of the judges on the panel said, Hey, I found this book I think we need to look at. They all liked it. It's still my favorite novel. I wish I had found it at 13, 14 or 15, instead of 28. The main character is Binx Boiling, he has an ordinary job, likes films, is on a search. It's an existential search, he can't quite define it. But all the while also Percy wrote essays on philosophy and semiotics. His first collection was The Message in the Bottle. Another, Signposts In A Strange Land. Another came out just a couple of years ago, Symbols & Existence. But the last book he published while alive was a popular book on philosophy and psychology, Lost In the Cosmos, The Last Self Help Book (You Will Ever Need). The full subtitle (or first sentence, don't exactly recall) is a full page long. It's actually a very interesting and funny book. it sold pretty well. But Percy describes himself as an ex-suicide, I think it's in The Message in the Bottle. An ex-suicide has contemplated suicide but chosen not to. He says an ex-suicide gets up, takes a shower, gets dressed, fixes some breakfast, walks out on his porch, looks out into the day, and then goes to work, because he doesn't have to. When I read that sentence (paraphrased), I understood it immediately. The Outsider by Colin Wilson is also a favorite, still. I had learned about it, but didn't special order. Sometimes even if I had found out about a book, I would wait to chance upon it. Going back to Colorado to visit once, probably 1978, there it was in a bookstore, I think it was in Boulder, possibly Denver. It was a significant book. These days, for about 8 years, I read a Lee Child-Jack Reacher book about every 6-9 months. It's like 3 days blown to hell, but sometimes necessary. Books are my friends. Krishnamurti did read detective novels sometimes. I read all the Lutyen's biographies, I think that's in there somewhere. In the Moviegoer, Binx found the answer in the mundane. He did not spin spiritual fairy tales. He was appalled by the "everydayness" of reality and came to embrace it. Good for Binx, but that won't work for Momo. Binx was not boxed in by life. He was just profoundly unhappy in much the same situation as Bourdain's, and perhaps yours also. Why were you down in the dumps in Colorado?
I am not boxed in by life. I can be if I am not cautious and live like Bourdain. Living in this world is like playing chess with the Devil. Sooner or later, the Devil will close in. Have you ever played chess with a computer? The Devil is IBM's Big Blue. Every move you make eliminates avenues of escape when you get checked. Bourdain was checkmated.
No one can beat the Devil. He is the human mind.
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