Think of Everything as Already Broken

In his book Thoughts without a Thinker, psychiatrist Mark Epstein recounts this teaching by the Thai meditation master Achaan Chah. “You see this goblet?” Achaan Chah asks. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf, and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it fal...

 Everyone Believes and Experiment Except the Experimentor

No one believes an hypothesis except its originator but everyone believes an experiment except the experimenter. Most people are ready to believe something based on experiment but the experimenter knows the many little things that could have gone wrong in the experiment. For this reason the discoverer of a new fact seldom feels quite so confident of it as others do. On the other hand other people are usually critical of an hypothesis, whereas the originator identifies himself with it and is l...