Varapanyo's good friend's

 There is something definitively vile about the man who only admits equals, who does not tirelessly seek out his betters. NGD

[What about the man who admits only disciples?😊]

Half the Holy Life

Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling among the Sakyans where there was a town of the Sakyans named Nāgaraka. Then the Venerable Ānanda approached the Blessed One. Having approached, he paid homage to the Blessed One, sat down to one side, and said to him:

“Venerable sir, this is half of the holy life, that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship.”

“Not so, Ānanda! Not so, Ānanda! This is the entire holy life, Ānanda, that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship. When a bhikkhu has a good friend, a good companion, a good comrade, it is to be expected that he will develop and cultivate the Noble Eightfold Path.

“And how, Ānanda, does a bhikkhu who has a good friend, a good companion, a good comrade, develop and cultivate the Noble Eightfold Path? Here, Ānanda, a bhikkhu develops right view, which is based upon seclusion, dispassion, and cessation, maturing in release. He develops right intention … right speech ... right action ... right livelihood … right effort … right mindfulness … right concentration, which is based upon seclusion, dispassion, and cessation, maturing in release. It is in this way, Ānanda, that a bhikkhu who has a good friend, a good companion, a good comrade, develops and cultivates the Noble Eightfold Path.

“By the following method too, Ānanda, it may be understood how the entire holy life is good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship: by relying upon me as a good friend, Ānanda, beings subject to birth are freed from birth; beings subject to aging are freed from aging; beings subject to death are freed from death; beings subject to sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair are freed from sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair. By this method, Ānanda, it may be understood how the entire holy life is good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship.” SN 45: 2

“Bhikkhus, as to external factors, I do not see any other factor that is so helpful for the arising of the seven factors of enlightenment as this: good friendship. When a bhikkhu has a good friend, it is to be expected that he will develop and cultivate the seven factors of enlightenment.” (...)
SN 46: 50

“Bhikkhus, I do not see even a single thing that so causes unarisen wholesome qualities to arise and arisen unwholesome qualities to decline as good friendship. For one with good friends, unarisen wholesome qualities arise and arisen unwholesome qualities decline.”
AN 1:7

“Then, Māgandiya, associate with true men. When you associate with true men, you will hear the true Dhamma. When you hear the true Dhamma, you will practise in accordance with the true Dhamma. When you practise in accordance with the true Dhamma, you will know and see for yourself thus: ‘These are diseases, tumours, and darts; but here these diseases, tumours, and darts cease without remainder. With the cessation of my clinging comes cessation of being; with the cessation of being, cessation of birth; with the cessation of birth, ageing and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair cease. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.’” MN 75

***
My friends.

1) Suttas as the true representation of the Lord Buddha words.

Nanavira Thera:
It was, and is, my attitude towards the Suttas that, if I find anything in them that is against my own view, they are right, and I am wrong. I have no reason to regret having adopted this attitude. Regarding the Commentaries, on the other hand, the boot is on the other leg—if this does not sound too incongruous.)

Monks, a faithful disciple, having scrutinized the Teacher’s advice, proceeds in accordance with this: “The Auspicious One is the teacher, I am the disciple. The Auspicious One knows. I do not know. MN 70

With the cessation of my clinging comes cessation of being (see↑) The most incredible conspiracy theory cannot be compare with the Dhamma, which undermine the puthujjana's very existence, the thing which, according to Descartes cannot be doubt. But:

This ‘sacrifice of the intellect’, which Saint Ignatius Loyola says is ‘so pleasing unto God’, is required also, incidentally, of the quantum physicist: he has to subscribe to the proposition that there are numbers that are not quantities. It is not, however, required of the follower of the Buddha, whose saddhā—trust or confidence—is something like that of the patient in his doctor. The patient accepts on trust that the doctor knows more about his complaint than he himself does, and he submits himself to the doctor’s treatment. So far, indeed, from saying to his disciples ‘You must accept on trust from me that black is white’, the Buddha actually says, in effect, ‘What you must accept on trust from me is that you yourselves are unwittingly assum-ing that black is white, and that this is the reason for your suffering’.

A man with avijjā, practising reflexion, may identify ‘self’ with both reflexive and immediate experience, or with reflexive experience alone, or with immediate experience alone. He does not conclude that neither is ‘self’, and the reason is clear: it is not possible to get outside avijjā by means of reflexion alone; for however much a man may ‘step back’ from himself to observe himself he cannot help taking avijjā with him. There is just as much avijjā in the self-observer as there is in the self-observed. And this is the very reason why avijjā is so stable in spite of its being sankhatā. Simply by reflexion the puthujjana can never observe avijjā and at the same time recognize it as avijjā; for in reflexion avijjā is the Judge as well as the Accused, and the verdict is always ‘Not Guilty’. In order to put an end to avijjā, which is a matter of recognizing avijjā as avijjā, it is necessary to accept on trust from the Buddha a Teaching that contradicts the direct evidence of the puthujjana’s reflexion. This is why the Dhamma is patisotagamī (Majjhima iii,6 <M.i,168>), or ‘going against the stream’. The Dhamma gives the puthujjana the outside view of avijjā, which is inherently unobtainable for him by unaided reflexion (in the ariyasāvaka this view has, as it were, ‘taken’ like a graft, and is perpetually available).

Nanavira Thera

Here is Camus on Heidegger; perhaps it says more about Camus than Heidegger—and also something about me, since I trouble to quote it.

Heidegger considers the human condition coldly and announces that existence is humiliated. The only reality is “anxiety” in the whole chain of being. To the man lost in the world and its diversions this anxiety is a brief, fleeting fear. But if that fear becomes conscious of itself, it becomes anguish, the perpetual climate of the lucid man “in whom existence is concentrated.” This profes-sor of philosophy writes without trembling and in the most abstract language in the world that “the finite and limited character of human existence is more primordial than man himself.” His interest in Kant extends only to recognizing the restricted character of his “pure Reason.” This is to conclude at the end of his analyses that “the world can no longer offer anything to the man filled with anguish.” This anxiety seems to him so much more important than all the categories in the world that he thinks and talks only of it. He enumerates its aspects: boredom when the ordinary man strives to quash it in him and benumb it; terror when the mind contemplates death. He too does not separate consciousness from the absurd. The consciousness of death is the call of anxiety and “existence then delivers itself its own summons through the intermediary of consciousness.” It is the very voice of anguish and it adjures existence “to return from its loss in the anonymous They .” For him, too, one must not sleep, but must keep alert until the consummation. He stands in this absurd world and points out its ephemeral character. He seeks his way amid these ruins. (Myth, p. 18)

Clearing the Path is a work book. Its purpose is to help the user to acquire a point of view that is different from his customary frame of reference, and also more satisfactory . Necessarily, an early step in accomplishing this change is the abandonment of specific mistaken notions about the Buddha’s Teaching and about the nature of experience. More fundamentally, however, this initial change in specific views may lead to a change in point-of-view, whereby one comes to understand experience from a perspective different from what one has been accustomed to—a perspective in which intention, responsibility, context, conditionality, hunger, and related terms will describe the fun-damental categories of one’s perception and thinking—and which can lead, eventually, to a fundamental insight about the nature of personal existence.

Such a change of attitude seldom occurs without considerable prior development, and this book is intended to serve as a tool in fostering that development. As such it is meant to be lived with rather than read and set aside. These notions are developed more fully throughout Clearing the Path but it is as well that they be stated concisely at the outset so that there need be no mistaking who this book is for: those who find their present mode of existence unsatisfactory and who sense, however vaguely, the need to make a fundamental change not in the world but in themselves.

Clearing the Path has its genesis in Notes on Dhamma (1960-1963), printed privately by the Honourable Lionel Samaratunga (Dewalepola, Ceylon, 1963—see L. 63). Following production of that volume the author amended and added to the text, leaving at his death an expanded typescript, indicated by the titular expansion of its dates, (1960-1965). Together with the Ven. Nanavira Thera’s type-script was a cover letter:

To the Prospective Publisher:

The author wishes to make it clear that Notes on Dhamma is not a work of scholarship: an Orientalist (in casu a Pali scholar), if he is no more than that, is unlikely to make very much of the book, whose general tone, besides, he may not altogether approve. Though it does not set out to be learned in a scholarly sense, the book is very far from being a popular exposition of Buddhism. It is perhaps best regarded as a philosophical commentary on the essential teachings of the Pali Suttas, and presenting fairly considerable difficulties, particularly to ‘objective’ or positivist thinkers, who will not easily see what the book is driving at. From a publisher’s point of view this is no doubt unfortunate; but the fact is that the teaching contained in the Pali Suttas is (to say the least) a great deal more difficult—even if also a great deal more rewarding—than is commonly supposed; and the author is not of the opinion that Notes on Dhamma makes the subject more difficult than it actually is.

The difficulties referred to in this cover letter gave rise to extensive correspondence between the Ven. Nanavira and various laypeople who sought clarification and expansion of both specific points and general attitudes and methods of inquiry . The author devoted considerable energy to this correspondence: some letters run to five thousand words, and three drafts was not uncommon. From one point of view the Ven. Nanavira's letters may be seen as belonging to the epistolary tradition, a tradition refined in an earlier era when much serious philosophical and literary discussion was conducted on a personal basis within a small circle of thinkers. On another view many of the letters can be regarded as thinly disguised essays in a wholly modern tradition. Indeed, one of these letters (L. 2) was published some years ago (in the ‘Bodhi Leaf’ series of the Buddhist Publication Society), stripped of its salutation and a few personal remarks, as just such an essay. The author himself offers a third view of the letters in remarking that at least those letters which contain direct discussion of Dhamma points ‘are, in a sense, something of a commentary on the Notes’ (L. 53).

In this perspective the letters can be seen as both expansions and clarifications of the more formal discussions in the Notes. Those who find the mode of thought of the Notes initially forbidding might profitably regard the letters as a useful channel of entry.

Nanamoli Thera

I seem to have lived my life in three modes: up till the outbreak of war in 1939 I lived it in a very pleasant and mainly graceful rock-pool. The financial insecurity beginning in 1937 and the outbreak of war in 1939 silted the pool up. 1939–1948 was lived in the midst of History: Anti-aircraft volunteer gunner to G.S.O. III, I.B. in Caserta, and afterwards Assistant head of the B.B.C. Italian section at Bush House. From then on it has been lived as an observer, withdrawn and watching. (Nov. 56)

I shall never be able to compose my biography: but let no one else have the presumption to do so; for this would amount to theft. (Nov. 56)
Don’t worry, no one will think of it. (Nov. 57)

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women actors on it” says Shakespeare. But actually only the men and women in the public gaze are actors on it. I, for instance, whom—and this I hold one of my greatest blessings while it is so—the public does not gaze on, am not an actor, but only a scene-shifter: the stage is curtained when I and those like me move on it.
(Addition:) Or that is how I should like it to be always. (Jan. 58)

People seem to approach religion for one of two main reasons or for both mixed together: They are moved either by a wish to discover truth (leaving that vague word vague here) or by a need to find justification for a predilection. Of the first, an outstanding example is, perhaps Kierkegaard. The second is far the more common. In myself I find elements of both. Perhaps the two merge with the incompatibility of two lines that meet at right-angles, and from the meeting-point some set out in one direction and some in the other. (Jul. 59)

Modern analogy: just as the bombardment by neutral mesons is needed to split the atom’s nucleus which is held together by negative and positive charges, as we are told—so perhaps equanimity is the projectile with which to split the individual held together by the charges, of hate and lust. (Jan. 58)

There are certain aspects of truth that one can only discover in oneself; if one is told of them, one will certainly, and in the very nature of existence itself, reject them absolutely. But perhaps they can be shared by those who have discovered them individually for themselves, and perhaps those who have not discovered them can be aided indirectly to discover them for themselves. (The use of the word “truth” here is in the sense of desirability of discovery). (Mar. 58)

“Don’t build yourself an ivory tower” the moralists say. But I am an ivory tower by the mere fact that I am. On the crude physical level the body is a frame of (ivory) bones on which the muscles are stretched, crowned by an (ivory) bone pill-box turret housing the brain-shielding it from the blows of ‘reality’ so that it can get on with its absurd work undisturbed. On the non-physical level my I-ness is an ivory tower of orderly individual views and vistas shielding ‘me’ from being swallowed up in chaos. Dear moralists: don’t they see that life is a constant flight up and down the endless steps of the dark ivory tower seeking to escape from the horrid chaos of real freedom? (Jun. 59)

Words distort thinking, thoughts distort perceiving, percepts distort acting, acts distort being, [beings distort naught, that I may be the acting of the perceiving of the thinking of the wording of the question ‘who?’.] (Aug. 59)

It is not memory but forgetting which is the positive function in maintaining existence. It is partial forgetting that conceals the contradictions and makes what is not forgotten, to be possible. (Nov. 59)

Existence described as a system of null-functions activated into partial non-nullity by ignorance. (Jan. 60)

From Theravada tradition:

Ajhan Sumedho:

This investigation of time, I think, is a very important reflection because we are a time-bound society; we really believe in the reality of it. We believe our age, the sense of history and the continuity of time. And we believe we have been born; we have this sense of going through the years and yet in some way remaining the same. We just assume that we are the same person throughout this span which we call ‘our lifetime’.

In awareness, however, we realize there is no such thing as time, and that all we do is project onto the experience of now. That is what we call ‘time’. In reality there is only right now, only the here and now. This is where consciousness operates. Breathing is happening right now; feeling through the body and the senses is now; the thinking process is now. We can remember what we were thinking yesterday, but even that is a thought, a memory in the present.

Breaking down the assumptions about oneself and the cultural habits one has in regard to time I found very helpful in learning to trust in awareness and recognizing that liberation is now, freedom is now, nibbana is now ― rather than having this perception of practising now in order to attain liberation in the future. The point is, we create the perception of past, present and future, birth and death, beginning and ending. First we create the words to describe experience, and then we become attached to those words, often not noticing the reality behind them. So we create ourselves as personalities, and we create England, and we create our positions in society. When Christians ask whether we have a Creator-God in Buddhism, we say, ‘Well, not exactly, because “I” am the creator of the world,’ which can sound like a kind of megalomania. If one is claiming to be the ultimate creator, that is a sign of madness, isn’t it? But in terms of the reality of this moment, we are the ones who are creating; we are projecting our habits and feelings onto this moment. So, in terms of reflection in awareness, we call this ‘the creator of the world’.

Ajhan Chah

A devout, elderly village lady from a nearby province came on a pilgrimage to Wat Ba Pong. She told Achaan Chah she could stay only a short time, as she had to return to take care of her great grandchildren, and since she was an old lady, she asked if he could please give her a brief Dharma talk.

He replied with great force, “Hey, listen. There's no one here, just this. No owner, no one to be old, to be young, to be good or bad, weak or strong. Just this, that's all; various elements of nature playing themselves out, all empty. No one born and no one to die. Those who speak of death are speaking the language of ignorant children. In the language of the heart, of Dharma, there's no such thing.

“When we carry a burden, it's heavy. When there's no one to carry it, there's not a problem in the world. Do not look for good or bad or for anything at all. Do not be anything. There's nothing more; just this.”

A visiting Zen student asked Achaan Chah, “How old are you? Do you live here all year round?”
“I live nowhere,” he replied. “There is no place you can find me. I have no age. To have age, you must exist, and to think you exist is already a problem. Don't make problems; then the world has none either. Don't make a self. There's nothing more to say.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj

To be is to suffer. The narrower the circle of my self-identification, the more acute the suffering caused by desire and fear.

I only say that to find the immutable and blissful you must give up your hold on the mutable and painful. You are concerned with your own happiness and I am telling you that there is no such thing. Happiness is never your own, it is where the ‘I’ is not.

Why do you worry about the world before taking care of yourself? You want to save the world, don't you? Can you save the world before saving yourself? And what means being saved? Saved from what? From illusion. Salvation is to see things as they are.

Your mind projects a structure and you identify yourself with it. It is in the nature of desire to prompt the mind to create a world for its fulfilment. Even a small desire can start a long line of action; what about a strong desire? Desire can produce a universe; its powers are miraculous. Just as a small matchstick can set a huge forest on fire, so does a desire light the fires of manifestation. The very purpose of creation is the fulfilment of desire. The desire may be noble, or ignoble, space (akash) is neutral — one can fill it with what one likes: You must be very careful as to what you desire. And as to the people you want to help, they are in their respective worlds for the sake of their desires; there is no way of helping them except through their desires. You can only teach them to have right desires so that they may rise above them and be free from the urge to create and recreate worlds of desires, abodes of pain and pleasure.

Q: Is there no salvation for the world?
M: Which world do you want to save? The world of your own projection? Save it yourself. My world? Show me my world and I shall deal with it. I am not aware of any world separate from myself, which I am free to save or not to save. What business have you with saving the world, when all the world needs is to be saved from you? Get out of the picture and see whether there is anything left to save.

Q: I find all this seeking and brooding most unnatural.
M: Yours is the naturalness of a born cripple. You may be unaware but it does not make you normal. What it means to be natural or normal you do not know, nor do you know that you do not know.

Meister Eckhart

A pure heart is one which is worried by nothing and is tied to nothing, which has not bound its best part to any mode, does not seek its own in anything, that is fully immersed in God's dearest will and gone out of its own.

Do you want to know who is a truly poor man? That man is truly poor in spirit who can do without anything unnecessary. That is why he who sat naked in his tub said to Alexander the Great, to whom the whole world was subject, 'I am a greater ruler than you, for I have rejected more things than you have ever possessed. What you think it a great thing to possess, is too petty for me to scorn.' He is far more blessed who can do without all things and have no need of them, than he who has possession of all things and has wants. That man is the best who can do without what he does not need. Therefore he who can do without and despise the most has abandoned most. It seems a great thing if a man gives up a thousand marks of gold for God's sake and builds many hermitages and monasteries and feeds all the poor: that would be a great deed. But he would be far more blessed who should despise as much for God's sake. That man would possess very heaven who could for God's sake renounce all things, whatever God gave or did not give.

Since it is God's nature not to be like anyone, we have to come to the state of being nothing in order to enter into the same nature that He is. So, when I am able to establish myself in Nothing and Nothing in myself, uprooting and casting out what is in me, then I can pass into the naked being of God, which is the naked being of the spirit.

for God is in this power as in the eternal Now. If a man's spirit were always united with God in this power, he would not age. For the Now in which God made the first man and the Now in which the last man shall cease to be, and the Now I speak in, all are the same in God and there is but one Now.

Observe, this man dwells in one light with God, having no suffering and no sequence of time, but one equal eternity. This man is bereft of wonderment and all things are in him in their essence. Therefore nothing new comes to him from future things nor any accident, for he dwells in the Now, ever new and without intermission. Such is the divine sovereignty dwelling in this power.

Collection of born ariyas (according VB)

Antonio Porchia

Caillois, wanting to find out what sort of man had written and sent this surprising volume, had looked into the matter and "found myself in the presence of a man somewhere in his fifties, respectably—though neither studiously nor elegantly—dressed; a potter or carpenter by trade, I forget which, and self-employed, what is more; at once simple and shy, and altogether such that I assured myself, simply as a formality, first by means of certain subterfuges, and then quite openly, that he had never in his life heard of Lao-Tzu or Kafka." (By whom Caillois had suspected his unknown author to be influenced.) Judging by Caillois' observations, the remarkable content of the Voices is a peculiarly pure sense the product of Porchia's own non-literary experience. Of this, or of its circumstances, little is publically known beyond a few facts so bare that they would fit on any tombstone.

Antonio Porchia was born in Italy in 1886, lived in Argentina from 1911, and died in 1968. Voices represents the whole of his writing—some six hundred entries in all. There have been several editions since the first one.

The most recent (and in Porchia's judgment the most complete, though it does not include some from the first collection) was published in 1966, and it is from this edition that the present selection has been made. Some of the entries, Porchia has stated, evolved over the course of years; some he has deleted in favor of later ones which, in his opinion, convey the same sense better. But the aphorisms themselves are not, in his view, compositions of his own so much as emanations which he has heard and set down.

It is easy to see why Caillios might have imagined that Porchia owed something to certain Eastern texts, and perhaps to some moderns such as Kafka. A few of the aphorisms have close affinities with sentences from Taoist and Buddhist scriptures; others suggest, among the moderns, not only Kafka but Lichtenberg, or—to some-one whose language is English—Blake. Caillois' determining, to his own satisfation, that Porchia was unfamiliar with such possible mentors is interesting, surprising, and in the end remains for the most part a matter of curiosity rather than a contribution to an assessment of the values and originality of Porchia's Voices. For the authority which the entries invoke, both in their matter and in their tone, is not that of tradition or antecedents, but that of particular, individual experience. Whatever system may be glimpsed binding the whole together is not fashioned from any logic except that of one man's cast of existence. It is this which makes the work as a whole, and some of the separate sentences, elusive, but it is this which gives them their unmistakable pure immediacy— their quality of voice.
At the same time, the entries and the work as a whole assume and evoke the existence of an absolute, of the knowledge of it which is truth, and of the immense desirability of such knowledge. With no doctrinal allegiances, nor any attempt at dogmatic system, Porchia's utterances are obviously, in this sense, a spiritual, quite as much as a literary, testament. And the center to which they bear witness, as well as the matrix of their form, is the private ordeal and awe of individual existence, the reality that is glimpsed through time and circumstance, as a consequence of feeling and suffering. It is this ground of personal revelation and its logic, in the sentences, that marks their kinship, not with theology but with poetry.

And yet the reality of the self, except as suffering, is not an unquestionable certainty. "My final belief is suffer-ing. And I begin to believe that I do not suffer." In any event, the self is less real than that which is greater than it, on which it depends. "We see by means of something which illumines us, which we do not see." The fidelity of Porchia's vision, and its personal embodiment in lan-guage, is too sharp, and frequently too desperate, however, to be tempted to homiletics. On the contrary, the distillate of suffering in some of the entries is pure and profound irony—an irony not of defense but of acceptance. "Every toy has to break." "When I throw away what I don't want, it will fall within reach." It is finally the acceptance, with its irony, that underlies the suffering and the vision and relates them to each other in a way that suggests that the relation may be the privilege of man's existence. "Man goes nowhere. Everything comes to man, like tomorrow." —w. S. MERWIN

https://varapanno.blogspot.com/search/label/Porchia?m=0

Fernando Pessoa

I don’t feel my soul, just peace. External things, all of them distinct and now perfectly still, even if they’re moving, are to me as the world must have been to Christ when, looking down at everything, Satan tempted him. They are nothing, and I can understand why Christ wasn’t tempted. They are nothing, and I can’t understand why clever old Satan thought they would be tempting.

Caesar aptly defined what ambition is all about when he said: ‘Better to be first in the village than the second in Rome!’ I’m nothing in the village and nothing in any Rome. The corner grocer is at least respected from the Rua da Assunção to the Rua da Vitória; he’s the Caesar of a square city block. Me superior to him? In what, if nothingness admits neither superiority nor inferiority, nor even comparison?

Creator of indifferences’ is the motto I want for my spirit today. I’d like my life’s activity to consist, above all, in educating others to feel more and more for themselves, and less and less according to the dynamic law of collectiveness. To educate people in that spiritual antisepsis which precludes contamination by commonness and vulgarity is the loftiest destiny I can imagine for the pedagogue of inner discipline that I aspire to be. If all who read me would learn – slowly, of course, as the subject matter requires – to be completely insensitive to other people’s opinions and even their glances, that would be enough of a garland to make up for my life’s scholastic stagnation.

Cioran

Nescience is the basis of everything, it creates everything by an action repeated every moment, it produces this and any world, since it continually takes for real what in fact is not. Nescience is the tremendous mistake that serves as the basis of all our truths, it is older and more powerful than all the gods combined.

Existence = Torment. The equation seems obvious to me, but not to one of my friends. How to convince him? I cannot lend him my sensations; yet only they would have the power to persuade him, to give him that additional dose of ill-being he has so insistently asked for all this time.

In the slaughterhouse that morning, I watched the cattle being led to their death. Almost every animal, at the last moment, refused to move forward. To make them do so, a man hit them on the hind legs.
This scene often comes to mind when, ejected from sleep, I lack the strength to confront the daily torture of Time.

Not to have been born, merely musing on that—what happiness, what freedom, what space!

Nicolas Gomez Davila - very good friend (ariyan or not - not enough data to be certain)

—An ethics that does not command us to renounce is a crime against the dignity to which we should aspire and against the happiness which we can obtain.

—The man who wants to avoid grotesque collapses should not look for anything to fulfill him in space and time.

—There is something definitively vile about the man who only admits equals, who does not tirelessly seek out his betters.
[What about the man who admits only disciples?😊]

—Phrases are pebbles that the writer tosses into the reader’s soul.

The diameter of the concentric waves they displace depends on the dimensions of the pond. 

—Once I believe I have mastered a truth, the argument which interests me is not the one which confirms it but the one which refutes it.

The Desert Fathers

A brother was leaving the world, and though he gave his goods to the poor he kept some for his own use. He went to Antony, and when Antony knew what he had done, he said, ‘If you want to be a monk, go to the village over there, buy some meat, hang it on your naked body and come back here.’ The brother went, and dogs and birds tore at his body. He came back to Antony, who asked him if he had done what he was told. He showed him his torn body. Then Antony said, ‘Those who renounce the world but want to keep their money are attacked in that way by demons and torn in pieces.’

Macarius once told this story about himself: When I was a young man, and living in my cell in Egypt, they caught me, and made me a cleric in a village. Because I did not want to minister, I fled to another place. A man of the world, but of a devout life, came to help me, and took what I made with my hands and ministered to my needs. It happened that a girl of the village was tempted by the devil and seduced. When she was seen to be pregnant, she was asked who was the father of the child and she said, ‘It was this hermit who slept with me.’ They came out, arrested me, and brought me back to the village; they hung dirty pots and jug handles on my neck, and made me walk round the village, beating me as I went, and saying, ‘This monk has seduced our girl. Away with him, away with him.’ They beat me until I was almost dead but another hermit came and said, ‘How long have you been beating that stranger monk?’ The man who used to minister to my needs followed behind, much ashamed, and they heaped insults on him, saying, ‘You supported this hermit, and look what he has done.’ The parents of the girl said that they would not let me go unless I found someone to guarantee her support. I spoke to the man who used to minister to me and asked him to be my guarantor, and he gave a pledge on my behalf. I went back to my cell, and I gave him all the baskets I had, and said, ‘Sell them, and give my wife some food.’ Then I said to myself, ‘Macarius, since you have found a wife for yourself, you need to work much harder to support her.’ So I worked night and day and passed on to her the money that I  made. When it was time for the unfortunate girl to bear a child, she spent many days in labour, and still did not produce the baby. They said to her, ‘What’s the matter?’ She said, ‘I know why I am in agony so long.’ Her parents asked her why. She said, ‘I accused that hermit falsely, for he had nothing to do with it; the father is a young man named so-and-so.’ The man who ministered to me heard this, and came to me with joy saying, ‘The girl could not bear her child, until she confessed that you had nothing to do with it and that she had told lies about you. Look, all the villagers want to come to your cell and glorify God, and ask your pardon.’ When I heard this, I did not want them to trouble me, so I rose and fled here to Scetis. That was why I began to live here.

Once Theophilus of holy memory, the archbishop of Alexandria, came to Scetis. The brothers gathered together and said to Pambo, ‘Speak to the bishop, that he may be edified.’ Pambo replied, ‘If he is not edified by my silence, my speech certainly will not edify him.’

Antony once heard about how a young monk showed off on a journey. He saw some old men walking wearily along the road, and he ordered some donkeys to appear and carry them home. When the old men told Antony about this he said, ‘I think that monk is like a ship laden with a rich cargo, but it is not yet certain that it will reach port in safety.’ Shortly afterwards, Antony began to weep and pull his hair, and groan. When his disciples saw it, they said, ‘Why are you weeping, abba?’ He replied, ‘A great pillar of the church has just fallen.’ He said this about the young monk, and added, ‘Walk over and see what has happened.’ So his disciples went, and found the monk sitting on his mat and weeping for a sin that he had committed. When he saw Antony’s disciples, he said, ‘Tell the abba to pray God to give me just ten days, and I hope to be able to satisfy Him.’ Within five days he was dead.

The monks praised a brother to Antony. Antony went to him and tested him to see if he could endure being insulted. When he saw that he could not bear it, he said to him, ‘You are like a house with a highly decorated outside, but burglars have stolen all the furniture by the back door.’

A provincial judge once wanted to see Poemen and he would not allow it. So the judge arrested his nephew as if he were a criminal and imprisoned him, saying, ‘I will release him when Poemen comes to ask about him.’ The boy’s mother came to her  brother Poemen and began to weep outside the door of his cell. Bitterly unhappy, she began to reproach him, saying, ‘You may have a heart of cold steel, you may be pitiless, but at least have mercy on your kin and relent.’ But he told her, ‘Poemen is not a father of children.’ So she went away. When the judge heard this he sent a messenger to say, ‘You have only to ask and I will release him.’ Poemen sent back this message, ‘Try his case legally. If he ought to die, let him die. If he is innocent, do as you say.’

Good books on practice

Epictetus - Discourses, Encheiridion
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
Seneca - Moral letters
Pierre Hadot writings

Higher ethics, higher culture

French Moralists: Joubert, Chamfort, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère
Stanisław Lec,
Guido Ceronetti
Pascal, Montaigne,
Jacob Burckhardt

Thinking against

Akio Nakatani - Exploding the Nuclear Weapons Hoax
Holocaust - www.HolocaustHandbooks.com, www.NukeBook.org

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So called Antisemitism

Kevin MacDonald 

Andrew Joyce https://varapanno.blogspot.com/search/label/Andrew%20Joyce?m=0

Herve Ryssen https://varapanno.blogspot.com/search/label/Ryssen?m=0
Oliver Revilo

Intelligent Project

William A. Dembski
Michael J. Behe
Jonathan Wells

9/11 Jewish crime

Christopher Bollyn https://varapanno.blogspot.com/search/label/Bollyn?m=0
Nicolas Kollerstorm https://varapanno.blogspot.com/search/label/Kollerstrom?m=0

History

Thucydides, Tacitus
Jaeger Paideia
Annales - French school (history of ideas)

Respected and admired writers

Shalamov, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Lichtenberg, W.H. Auden, Bela Hamvas, Bobkowski, Witkacy, Ortega y Gasset, Henryk Elzenberg, Edward Stachura, Leopardi