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You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate you to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed.
The only real "you” is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being.
For “you” is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new.
Just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.
—Hakuin
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Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?
That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future?
If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.
—Herman Hesse
Siddhartha
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To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence.
—Simone Weil
Waiting for God
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