Death
What a soul that is which is ready, if at any moment it must be separated from the body, and ready either to be extinguished or idspersed or continue to exist; but so that this readiness comes from a man’s own judgment, not from mere obstinacy, as with the Christians, but considerately and with dignity and in a way to persuade another, without tragic show. (M. Aurelius, Meditations XI.3)
Our lack of pride belittles death. Christianity taught us to lower our eyes—to look down—so that death would find us peaceful and meek. Two thousand years of training accustomed us to a quiet, modest, and sure death. We die down. We do not have the courage to look at the sun at the last moment.
If we cannot combine the elegance of an Athenian ephebe with the passions of a conquistador, this same gravitational death is in store for us too. We shall then expire quietly in the shadow cast by our lowered eyes. Oh, but to die with muscles strained like a runner waiting for the starting signal, head thrown back, braving space and conquering death, full of pride and the illusion of force! I often dream of an indiscreet death, in full sight of infinity! (E. M. Cioran, Tears and Saints p. 43)
Follow your way with preparedness for death. (M. Musashi, Dokkōdō 17)
道においては死をいとはす思う。（宮本 武蔵、独行同 十七）
My opening proposition ‘the world is my representation’ next results in ‘first I am, and then the world’. We should embrace this as an antidote against confusing death with annihilation. (A. Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena vol. II §139)
'Rehearse death.' To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate beyond the reach of, all political powers. What are prisons, warders, bars to him? He has an open door. There is but one chain holding us in fetters, and that is our love of life. There is no need to cast this love out altogether, but it does need to be lessened somewhat so that, in the event of circumstances ever demanding this, nothing may stand in the way of our being prepared to do at once what must do at some time or other. (Seneca, Letter XXVI)
Emptiness
Nobility is only in the negation of existence, in a smile that surveys annihilated landscapes. Once I had a ‘self’; now I am no more than an object … I gorge myself on all the drugs of solitude; those of the world were too weak to make me forget it. Having killed the prophet in me, how could I still have a place among men? (E. M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay p. 7)
[Transcendent primordialism] is the key to understand the true nature of Far Eastern spirituality, as well as its specific expressions such as the artistic ones (e.g., painting, in which "nature" is portrayed in an evanescent way, hinting to an ethereal, metaphysical "emptiness"). (J. Evola, Taoism: the Magic, the Mysticism p. 16)
The more clearly one becomes aware of the frailty, nothingness and dreamlike character of all things, the more clearly one will also become aware of the eternity of one’s own inner essence, because really it is only in contrast to it that the character of things is known, just as one is only able to perceive the rapid pace of one’s ship by looking at the fixed shore, not by looking into the ship itself. (A. Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena vol. II §138)
The noble, that is, the uncommon and indeed the sublime is really introduced to drama only by cognition, as opposed to willing, in that the former soars freely above all those movements of the will and even makes them the substance of its meditations, as Shakespeare in particular shows throughout his works, especially in Hamlet. Now should knowledge intensify to the point where it becomes aware of the nothingness of all willing and striving and as a result the will abolishes itself, drama only then becomes genuinely tragic and consequently truly sublime, and so reaches its highest purpose. (A. Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena vol. II §336)
Reality is differentiated and Emptiness vanishes into an emptiness. […] Emptiness is not a vacancy, it holds in it infinite rays of light and swallows all the multiplicities there are in this world. (D. T. Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist p. 30)
Melancholy
If, in her Foundations, Teresa of Avila lingers over the subject of melancholia, it is because she recognizes it as incurable. Physicians, she says, cannot deal with it, and the mother superior of a convent, faced with such sufferers, has but one recourse: to inspire them with the dread of authority, to threaten them, to frighten them. The saint’s method remains the best: only kicks, slaps, and a good beating will be effective in the case of a "depressive." Moreover, such treatment is precisely what the "depressive" himself resorts to when he decides to end it all: he merely employs more thorough means. (E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born p. 46)
Silence
I can stand up to God only by confronting him with another solitude. Without my solitude I would be nothing more than another clown. (E. M. Cioran, Tears and Saints p. 52)
Respiration being disturbed, the mind becomes disturbed.
By restraining respiration, the yogī gets steadiness of mind. (Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā 2.2)
chale vāte chalaṃ chittaṃ niśchale niśchalaṃ bhavet
yoghī sthāṇutvamāpnoti tato vāyuṃ nirodhayet
He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know. (Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 56)
知者不言， 言者不知。（老子、道德經 五十六）
That which Heraclitus was evading [in the temple of Artemis], however, is still the same thing we steer clear of: the noise and the democratic chatter of the Ephesians, their politics, their news from the "empire" (Persia, you understand me), their market stuff of "today"—for we philosophers need rest from one thing before all else: from all "today." We venerate what is silent, cold, noble, distant, past, in general every kind of thing at whose sight the soul does not have to defend itself and lace itself shut—something with which one can talk without talking out loud. (F. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality III.8)
A spirit who is sure of itself […] speaks softly; it seeks seclusion, it makes others wait. One can recognize a philosopher by the fact that he three bright and loud things: fame, princes, and women—which is not to say they don’t come to him. He shies away from all-too-bright light: therefore he shies away from his time and its "day." In this he is like a shadow: the more the sun sets for him the greater he becomes. (F. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality III.8)
What is lacking, babbles;
what is full is at peace.
The fool is like a half-full pot;
the wise like a brimfull lake.
When the Ascetic speaks much
it is relevant and meaningful:
knowing, he teaches the Dhamma;
knowing, he speaks much.
But one who, knowing, is restrained,
knowing, does not speak much;
that sage is worthy of sagacity,
that sage has achieved sagacity. (Suttanipāta 3.11.43-45)
Yadūnakaṃ taṃ saṇati,
Yaṁ pūraṃ santameva taṃ;
Aḍḍhakumbhūpamo bālo,
Rahado pūrova paṇḍito.
Yaṃ samaṇo bahuṃ bhāsati,
Upetaṃ atthasañhitaṃ;
Jānaṃ so dhammaṃ deseti,
Jānaṃ so bahu bhāsati.
Yo ca jānaṃ saṃyatatto,
Jānaṃ na bahu bhāsati;
Sa munī monamarahati,
Sa munī monamajjhagā.
But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. (II Timothy 2:16)
Sleep
The extraordinary thing about sleeplessness is that it affords no discontinuity. Sleep breaks up the state of waking life, but for the sleepless one, who remains lucid in the middle of the night, there is no difference between day and night. He lives in a kind of ceaseless, endless time. It is another time and another world. Life in essence can only be sustained because of the discontinuity. Why else does one sleep? Not to rest, but above all to forget. A person who wakes up after a night of unbroken sleep has the illusion of beginning something new. When one instead remains awake the whole night long, nothing new begins. At eight in the morning one is in the same condition as at eight at night and one's perspective on things is naturally completely different. I believe that the fact that I have never believed in progress, that I have never allowed myself to be seduced by "progress," has to do with that. One has simply a completely different attitude toward time: not time that passes, but time that will not go away. That alters a life, naturally. (E. M. Cioran, Salmagundi No. 103, p. 127)
In every initiatory tradition, to overcome sleep has had the meaning of participation in a transcendent lucidity, free from the contingencies of material and individual existence. (J. Evola, The Mystery of the Grail p. 96)
Suicide
He is a little man in every way, for whom there are many persuasive reasons for departing from life. (Epicurus, Vatican Sayings XXXVIII)
Christianity in its core bears the truth that suffering (the cross) is the real purpose of life, hence it rejects suicide as being opposed to this[. This] reason against suicide, however, is ascetic, and therefore applies only to a much higher ethical standpoint than that which has ever been adopted by European moral philosophers. But if we climb down from that very high standpoint, then there is no longer a tenable moral reason to condemn suicide. (A. Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena vol. II §157
That steadfast man was resolute,
A meditator always rejoicing in meditation,
Applying himself day and night
Without attachment even to life.
Having conquered the army of Death,
Not returning to renewed existence,
Having drawn out craving with its root,
Godhika has attained final Nibbāna. (Saṃyutta Nikāya 4.23)
yo dhīro dhitisampanno,
jhāyī jhānarato sadā;
ahorattaṃ anuyuñjaṃ,
jīvitaṃ anikāmayaṃ.
jetvāna maccuno senaṃ,
anāgantvā punabbhavaṃ;
samūlaṃ taṇhamabbuyha,
godhiko parinibbuto.
Women
For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. (I Corinthians 11:7-10)
The danger that a woman represents, particularly today, is not so much her female aspect as the fact that she encourages the need for support, for reliance upon someone else who may be a weak soul unable to find in himself a meaning for his life. [...] Modern men mostly little know what spiritual virility and internal sufficiency mean; through "soul" and "sentiment" they descend to the level of women who, often enough today, and without appearing to be so, are the directors of man’s life. (J. Evola, The Doctrine of Awakening p. 124)
The Amazon, symbolically speaking, is the feminine principle that usurps the function of dominion; though the hero needs the woman and through her is able to become such, he still must destroy in her the traits according to which she proved fatal for the previous dynasty. (J. Evola, The Mystery of the Grail p. 91)
Woman by nature is extravagant. (Menander, Monostichoi 97)
Women are suited to be nurses and governesses of our earliest childhood precisely by the fact that they themselves are childish, silly and shortsighted, in a word, big children their whole life long, a sort of intermediate stage between a child and a man, who is the actual being. Just look at a girl as she dawdles, dances around with and sings to a child for days, and then imagine what a man doing his utmost could achieve in her stead! (A. Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena vol. II §364)
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