questions

  

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As we return to our senses, we gradually discover our sensory perceptions to be simply our part of a vast interpenetrating webwork of perceptions and sensations borne by countless other bodies. Supported, that is, not just by ourselves, but by icy streams tumbling down graphic slopes, by owl wings and lichens, and by the unseen, imperturbable wind, a profoundly carnal field, as this very dimension of smells and tastes and chirping rhythms warmed by the sun and shivering with seeds. 

It is, indeed, nothing other than the biosphere – the matrix of earthly life in which we ourselves are embedded, the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body – by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he, or she, experiences.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty

 

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Change your ways of feeling and thinking, take stock of them and examine them closely. You are in bondage by inadvertence. Attention liberates. You are taking so many things for granted. 

Begin to question. The most obvious things are the most doubtful. Ask yourself such questions as: 

Was I really born?

Am I really so-and-so?

How do I know that I exist?

Who are my parents?

Have they created me, or have I created them?

Must I believe all I am told about myself?

Who am I, anyhow?

You have put so much energy into building a prison for yourself. Now spend as much on demolishing it. In fact, demolition is easy, for the false dissolves when it is discovered.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

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