Vexations

The idea of vexation, and the state of ‘being vexed’, relies on there being two essential ingredients: [1] – That I want things being a certain way, and [2] – That things aren’t that way. This is so simple and so obvious that we don’t…

Accepting Pain

In our day-to-day lives we are constantly having to make the choice of either accepting pain, or rejecting it.  In the first case we ‘settle up our bills’, in the second case we ‘evade payment’. Evading takes many forms, and it can also go to…

Seeing the Paradox

Impossibility often shows itself to us in the form of paradox. We can see this happening when we try to make ourselves ‘calm down’ on purpose – when I try to mentally calm myself then what I do is to split off a new layer…

Cultivating Non-Aggression

We are so habituated to controlling that we try to apply it to everything – like Abraham Maslow’s story of the carpenter whose only tool was a hammer. For this lamentably under-equipped carpenter, says Maslow, the whole world is a nail. If the whole world…