Wisdom of Insecurity

salvation and sanity consist in the most radical recognition that we have no way of saving ourselves

Money is the perfect symbol of all such desires, being a mere symbol of real wealth, and to make it one’s goal is the most blatant example of confusing measurements with reality.

The miracles of technology cause us to live in a hectic, clockwork world that does violence to human biology, enabling us to do nothing but pursue the future faster and faster.

Religion wants to assure the future beyond death, and science wants to assure it until death, and to postpone death.

But in practice we are all bewitched by words. We confuse them with the real world, and try to live in the real world as if it were the world of words.

only doubtful truths need defense

This book, however, is in the spirit of the Chinese sage Lao-tzu, that master of the law of reversed effort, who declared that those who justify themselves do not convince, that to know truth one must get rid of knowledge, and that nothing is more powerful and creative than emptiness—from which men shrink.

At that moment Heaven doesn’t dawn, nor is there a benevolent God to embrace. There is something even better: wholeness. Self-division is healed. Once the mind has seen through all fear and all hope, it finds peace within itself, in a state of awareness beyond thought.

I have always been fascinated by the law of reversed effort. Sometimes I call it the “backwards law.” When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float. When you hold your breath, you lose it—which immediately calls to mind an ancient and much neglected saying, “Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it.”

As he sees it, the mind is in a whirl to escape itself and find itself at the same time.