A speech given at Manchester UK (18 October 1897) https://ivu.org/history/besant/text.html
“all our suffering is associated with this pre-occupation. All loss and gain, pleasure and pain arise because we identify so closely with this vague feeling of selfness that we have. We are so emotionally involved with and attached to this "self" that we take it for granted.”
Source: The Embodied Mind (1991), p. 63
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Francisco Varela 17
Chilean biologist 1946–2001Related quotes
Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Ch. I-VI, 2013
Context: In this verse Lord Krishna advises Arjuna how to fight the battle he is trying to avoid. Life in the world functions by ego, attachment and desire, which gives the rise to the idea of “likes” and “dislikes”. In this way the mind starts identifying all experiences in the world in terms of opposites, such as pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat... Here, Sri Krishna is saying that if Arjuna has neither desire for heaven nor for sovereignty over the earth, then he should achieve equanimity of the mind. With equanimity of the mind one can achieve success in the war of life. Without it, one cannot remain unaffected by the pairs of opposites and will be continually tossed about by the waves of egocentric likes and dislikes.
Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 41 (p. 409)
Speaking on issues of two duties of the two ideals of conduct and the two forms of duty quoted in page=488.
“The loss of what we have is pain more dire
Than not to gain the thing that we desire.”
Che 'l perder l'acquistato e maggior doglia
Che mai non acquistar quel che l'uom voglia.
XXV, 58
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato
“So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.”
Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 10
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 543.