01 OCT 2025 by ideonexus
How to Not Fear Death
Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it—so at least ...10 SEP 2013 by ideonexus
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...A liberating perspective.
13 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
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...Because the experimentor knows all the ways the experiment could have gone wrong. Conversely, no one believes and hypothesis except its originator.