To be is to be contingent: nothing of which it can be said that "it is" can be alone and independent. But being is a member of paticca-samuppada as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.

Destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, than consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no ignorance than it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in M Sutta 22)

Nanamoli Thera

Thursday, July 30, 2026

Reason: the breadth of reasonableness or the narrowness of rationalism?

 I am myself—I am what I have.

I am what I did: I shall be what I do.

I am doing my work: I do exist my being.

I have to do to be: I have to be to do.

I am not what I do: I undo what I am.
**
Ambiguous Key Words

Reason
the breadth of reasonableness
the narrowness of rationalism

I - the “Ego”

‘I’ the unique subjective
‘I’ spoken by everyone else

is many / one

existence 
entity        
essence

truth

beauty—valuable
evil that exists—to be destroyed

Consciousness   many / one

observed subjectivity
observing subjectivity

all

all of these but not those
all of all without exception

To exist

to be = to be static = death
to become = to be dynamic = life

Positive

positive good
positive evil

and negative statements as:

I know nothing

I have no knowledge
I know what nothing is
*
Dialectics or Same Things as: "good" / "bad"

patience / weak-mindedness
tolerance / connivance
service / servitude, servility
independence / instability
freedom / chaos, crime
liberty / license
popularization / vulgarization
law and order /slavery, rigidity
conversion / apostasy
rectitude / bigotry
sincerity / priggishness
virtue / constraint justice revengefulness, punishment universal / insipid, colourless
grace / caprice
to sacrifice / to squander, to destroy, to betray the incomprehensible / the absurd
honour /conceit, arrogance, want of humility
equality / monotony (undiversity)
fraternity / nepotism

Up-to-Date Glossary

Beauty—the current style of hair-do and make-up.
Truth—What no one knows—does it matter? Perhaps what science is about to reveal to us after religion has had its day in doing so.
Goodness—= gracious (a gentle exclamation).
Philosophy—Solipsism (‘What am I?’ and all that: rather discreditable).
Psychology—Solalterism (‘What you are’ and all that: better than philosophy).
Psychoanalysis—Well, well! very deep and dirty.
Ethics—my right to decide what they shall do.
Politics—your right to oppose me.
Government—their obstruction of us.
Art—the normalization of the Enormous (e.g., Empire State Building, Tachisme, Auschwitz memorial, and what next?) Duty—to be politically conscious.
Christianity—the opposite of Marxism.
Marxism—the opposite of Christianity.
The Middle Way—sitting on the fence.

*
Two kinds of people: Those who, when a new idea is placed before them immediately assess it in terms of good and evil, and if received as good, they refuse to consider its impossibility, but, if received as evil, they refuse to countenance its possibility; and those who assess it in terms of possibility or impossibility, and if received as impossible, refuse to consider whether it is good, but if received as possible, then for them its possibility is more interesting than its evil—Ethics and Science.

Nanamoli Thera from Thinker's Notebook 

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