Context: To enjoy anything, we cannot be attached to it. William Blake understood this beautifully: He who binds to himself a Joy, Doth the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the Joy as it flies / Lives in Eternity's sunrise. What we usually try to do is capture any joy that comes our way before it can escape. We have our butterfly net and go after the joy like a hunter stalking his prey. We hide and wait, pounce on it, catch it, and take it home to put on our wall. When our friends come to visit, we say, "Hey, Stu, would you like to see my joy?" There it is on the wall - dead. We try to cling to pleasure, but all we succeed in doing is making ourselves frustrated because, whatever it promises, pleasure simply cannot last. But if I am willing to kiss the joy as it flies, I say, 'Yes, this moment is beautiful. I won't grab it. I'll let it go.'
“A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.”
"Critique of Transcendental Miserablism" (2007), in Fanged Noumena, pp. 624–5
“Attachment to spiritual things is… just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.”
Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation (1961)
Misattributed
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 263
[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 226]
The Keys to Well-being in Students, Presentation to the X NIS International Conference, Astana, Kazakhstan, 26 October 2017 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8hG_p7sujU)
“It is dangerous to attach probability zero to anything other than a logical impossibility.”
5. The Rules of Probability. p. 64.
Understanding Uncertainty (2006)
