More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
August 7 - November 5, 2018
At first it is very easy to obtain pleasure from sex, and even to enjoy it. Any fool can fall in love when young.
humans, like the majority of mammalian species, are not monogamous by nature. It is impossible for partners not to grow bored unless they work to discover new challenges in each other’s company, and learn appropriate skills for enriching the relationship.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola
avarice.
Samadhi, the last stage of Yoga, is only the threshold for entering Nirvana,
“The sun that lights us all, the stars, the sea, the train of clouds, the spark of fire—if you live a hundred years or only a few, you can never see anything higher than them.”
I just sit in the train and look over the roofs of the city, because it’s so fascinating to see the city, to be above it, to be there but not be a part of it, to see these forms and these shapes, these marvelous old buildings, some of which are totally ruined, and, I mean, just the fascination of the thing, the curiosity of it…. I
without cultivating the necessary skills, one cannot expect to take true enjoyment in a pursuit.
Unless a person knows how to give order to his or her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment: it will focus on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges or long-term frustrations. Entropy is the normal state of consciousness—a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable. To avoid this condition, people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is readily available, as long as it distracts attention from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings. This explains why such a huge proportion of time is invested in
...more
every individual is a historian of his or her own personal existence.
dilettante.
Ideally, the end of extrinsically applied education should be the start of an education that is motivated intrinsically. At that point the goal of studying is no longer to make the grade, earn a diploma, and find a good job. Rather, it is to understand what is happening around one, to develop a personally meaningful sense of what one’s experience is all about.
“Work gives man nobility, and turns him into an animal.”
Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.
The flow experience that results from the use of skills leads to growth; passive entertainment leads nowhere.
“The future,” wrote C. K. Brightbill, “will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely.”
While interacting with television, the mind is protected from personal worries. The information passing across the screen keeps unpleasant concerns out of the mind.
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude,”
“is either a wild beast or a god.”
Getting married requires a radical and permanent reorientation of attentional habits.
to be completely free one must become a slave to a set of laws.
it is important to consider beforehand how family life can be turned into a flow activity. Because if it is not, boredom and frustration will inevitably set in, and then the relationship is likely to break up unless there are strong external factors keeping it together.
“Love means never having to say ‘I’m sorry,’”
“Home is where you’re always welcome.”
Men especially like to comfort themselves with this notion.
Only when it is too late—when the wife has become dependent on alcohol, when the children
friendship usually involves common goals and common activities, it is “naturally” enjoyable.
This is especially true for individuals who cannot tolerate solitude, and who have little emotional support at home.
While families provide primarily emotional protection, friendships usually involve mysterious novelty.
The integrity of the self depends on the ability to take neutral or destructive events and turn them into positive ones.
When a blow falls on a young teenager—even something as trivial as a bad grade, a pimple erupting on the chin, or a friend ignoring him at school—it seems to him as if the world is about to end, and there is no longer any purpose in life.
People who know how to transform stress into enjoyable challenge spend very little time thinking about themselves.
The focus is still set by the person’s goal, but it is open enough to notice and adapt to external events even if they are not directly relevant to what he wants to accomplish.
The process of discovering new goals in life is in many respects similar to that by which an artist goes about creating an original work of art.
Nietzsche concluded that God was dead, philosophers and social scientists have been busy demonstrating that existence has no purpose, that chance and impersonal forces rule our fate, and that all values are relative and hence arbitrary.
Without such a purpose, even the best-ordered consciousness lacks meaning.
in the ancient Greek civilization, according to the social philosopher Hannah Arendt, men sought to achieve immortality through heroic deeds, whereas in the Christian world men and women hoped to reach eternal life through saintly
Every human culture, by definition, contains meaning systems that can serve as the encompassing purpose by which individuals can order their goals.
If the grass looks greener across the fence, we simply move to the other field
If a man has not bothered to find out what he wants, if his attention is so wrapped up in external goals that he fails to notice his own
Malcolm X, who in his early life followed the behavioral script for young men in the slum, fighting and dealing drugs, discovered in jail, through reading and reflection, a different set of goals through which to achieve dignity and self-respect.
Thus there are also successful businessmen who spend some of their free time in hospitals keeping company with dying patients because they believe that reaching out to people who suffer is a necessary part of a meaningful life.
