life cannot be seen

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Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity — but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our “biography,” our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards… It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?

Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?


—Sogyal Rinpoche
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

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Master Lu Tzu said : That which exists through itself is called Meaning (Tao). Meaning has neither name nor force. 

It is the one essence, the one primordial spirit. 

Essence and life cannot be seen. 

It is contained in the Light of Heaven. 

The Light of Heaven cannot be seen. 

It is contained in the two eyes.


—Richard Wilhelm, Carl Jung

The Secret of the Golden Flower

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wait

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