fading city, fading lights...

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Confidence

Sometimes I'm sure about things,
Sometimes I'm unsure about things.

Am I sure I'm sometimes unsure?
or,
Am I not sure about being sure?

Which is the surer best?

And just as men depend upon A boat for traversing the sea, So does the mental body need The matter-body for occurrence. And as the boat depends upon The men for traversing the sea, So does the matter-body need The mental body for occurrence. Depending each upon the other The boat and men go on the sea. And so do mind and matter both Depend the one upon the other.

'Visuddhimagga' (XVIII, 36),
("The path to purity") is a Theravada Buddhist commentary written by Buddhaghosa approximately in 430 CE in Sri Lanka. It is considered the most important Theravada text outside of the Tipitaka canon of scriptures.The Visuddhimagga's structure is based on the Ratha-vinita Sutta ("Relay Chariots Discourse," MN 24), which describes the progression from the purity of discipline to the nibbana, considering seven steps.

inside/outside heaven

It is amazing/interesting how we believe in heaven: any place of complete bliss and delight and peace. Whatever your image of it is, it is mostly some vague idea inside your head. Inside your head. Inside your head.
What is your heaven outside your head? Your heaven in “the real world”? Is it the same as the one inside your head? Which one is true or truer?

Now, which heaven is more important for you? Would you be willing to risk your outside heaven for your inside heaven? or the other way around?

Here’s something more interesting, providing the heaven inside your head is rather different from any outside heaven you might experience (which usually is the case, or you are a very happy person now):
Where does your idea of heaven - your inside heaven - come from, if you never really truly experienced it nor seen it in the real world?

My best answer is that it’s something that you constructed inside your head from multiple happy events, happy situations and happy ideas in your life.

It’s just an idea.

It’s just not real.

It’s an illusion.

Want something more interesting? Re-read the post replacing “heaven” with “hell”, “happy” with “sad”.

I Know, I Alone

I know, I alone
How much it hurts, this heart
With no faith nor law
Nor melody nor thought.

Only I, only I
And none of this can I say
Because feeling is like the sky -
Seen, nothing in it to see.


(10.08.1932)
~Fernando Pessoa
'Selected Poems' translated by J.Griffin.

Life

Life is nothing but a dream, I will dream my own Life.

A dream is nothing but a life, I will Live my own dream.

“Even though flowers fall, don't regret it.
Even though weeds grow, don't hate them.
Don't arouse the passions of attraction and repulsion, hating and loving.
If only we don't arouse the passions, the falling of flowers and the growing of weeds as they are is manifest absolute reality.”

~ Hakuun Yasutani

But,
what are we without our passions? ...