Having Some Kind of Existential Crisis

A blog wholly dedicated to philosophical and ideological posts. Feel free to share your own beliefs! Original? No. Useful? Maybe.

[zenlikeme-deactivated20111123]

[hskoec-blog]

zenlikeme:

I shut out the light in the middle of the night and am plunged into total darkness, and yet I know that a world exists around me. In the same way, I consider life and meaning: just because I stare into the void and see nothing does not mean that nothing is there.

I think there are things at...

While I hold myself to be an Existentialist, I also find it unlikely that everything around us is an accident. That said, I do truly believe as well that certain things only exist as a sort of "by-product" of the world around us, and, as I stated before, I am a good Existentialist, in that I firmly believe that our purpose is only what we make it out to be.

[greatrelease]

Why are you so firmly, so solemnly convinced that only the normal and the positive—in short, only well-being—is to man’s advantage?

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (via greatrelease)

[buddhaquotes-deactivated2013032]

…don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering’ — then you should abandon them.

Buddha (via buddhaquotes)

[greatrelease]

The more aware I was of goodness and of everything “lofty and beautiful,” the deeper I sank into my slime, and the more likely I was to get mired down in it altogether. But the main point is that all this seemed to take place within me not by chance, but as though it had to be so. As though this were my most normal condition rather than a disease or a corruption, so that in the end I even lost the will to fight this corruption. I really did come to believe that this was indeed by normal condition.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (via greatrelease)

[lifewithstan]

[hskoec-blog]

lifewithstan:

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

I stumbled on to a message board the other day where one of the users had that famous Nietzsche quote as their signature.

As someone who adores the works of Nietzsche,...

[003030300]

[hskoec-blog]

majesticbeth:

“Let this become your key — next time when anger comes, just watch it. Don’t say ‘I am angry’; say rather ‘Anger is there; I am watching it.’ And see the difference! The difference is vast. Suddenly you are out of the grip of anger if you can say ‘I am just a watcher; I am not anger.’ When sadness comes, just sit by the side and look at it and say ‘I am the watcher; I am not sadness’ and see the difference. Immediately you have cut the very root of sadness. It is no more nourished; it will die of starvation, because we feed these emotions by being identified with them.”

— Oshō

[thatpeacefulblog]

[hskoec-blog]

thatpeacefulblog:

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

-Buddha

[thatpeacefulblog]

[hskoec-blog]

thatpeacefulblog:

When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because...

[thatpeacefulblog]

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein (via thatpeacefulblog)

[atramentum]

“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”

Edgar Allan Poe (via lipsticksmiles)

[thatpeacefulblog]

[hskoec-blog]

thatpeacefulblog:

“This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, Falsehood with truth, And hatred with love. — Peace Pilgrimt

[thatpeacefulblog]

[hskoec-blog]

thatpeacefulblog:

I observe in the limited field in which I find myself, that unless I can reach the hearts of men and women, I am able to do nothing. I observe further that so long as the spirit of hate persists in some shape or other, it is impossible to establish peace or to gain our freedom by peaceful effort.

[thatpeacefulblog]

[hskoec-blog]

thatpeacefulblog:

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”  — Siddhārtha Gautama

[hskoec-blog]

Hell is other people

that is all

submitted by: somethingthatisgood

[carl-isle-blog]

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.”

-Siddhartha Gautama (via thedarlingoctopus)

[somethingthatisgood-blog]

And life itself told me this secret: ‘Behold’, it said, Í am that which must overcome itself again and again.

thus spoke zarathustra (via somethingthatisgood)

[zeneveryman]

[hskoec-blog]

zeneveryman:

A good and short story of how Buddhism can be beneficial without a belief in a god.