#aversions

[philosophybits]

The person who realizes that hatred is an enemy ... and who persistently strikes it down, is happy in this world and the next.

Śāntideva, Bodhicaryāvatāra, Crosby & Skilton tr. (6:6)

[suliqyre]

Even the best intentions can produce suffering. Even when our desires and beliefs are perfectly aligned with principles of care, consideration, and cooperation, we can suffer because of them.

Intentions are future-oriented entities. They are formed by judgments we make about how we want our future to be. When we act primarily on our intentions, we also become future-oriented. Our every moment is then consumed by thoughts and feelings about how our future will be and how it might differ from the ideal constructed by our intentions. This happens because we easily become attached to our intentions.

When we are attached, we identify with our desires, aversions, and beliefs, and when we identify, it feels necessary to seek out the things we desire, to avoid the things we hate and fear, and to confirm our beliefs. To act instead from compassion does not require us to change our intentions, but only to allow ourselves adequate distance from them. Our intentions can then exist freely as the future-oriented entities they are, while we ourselves exist wholly in the present, sensitive and responsive to what is most needed and necessary right now.

Read more...

[asktheheirofslytherin]

Have you ever gotten high on weed

I have not. I generally dislike the sensation of intoxication. I enjoy knowing I am in full control of myself at all times. To lose myself would be akin to the death of myself. The soft hum of a glass of wine or liquor is one thing, but the mere idea of drunkenness or the state of being "stoned" is truly unsettling.

[philosophybits]

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.

François de La Rochefoucauld, Moral Reflections

[philosophybits]

The motivation of evil, blind absorption by contingent self-interest, tends to dissolve in the medium of thought.

Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 127

[philosophybits]

There is no need to provoke aversion, it comes without being called. There are many who hate for no particular reason, without knowing how or why.

Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

[philosophybits]

An absolute drive toward perfection and completeness is an illness, as soon as it shows itself to be destructive and averse toward the imperfect, the incomplete.

Novalis, General Draft

[philosophybits]

Nothing is in its origins more contemptible and in its consequences more hideous than the fear of ridicule.

Friedrich Schlegel, Critical Fragments