Quote
God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath. And this the more, because it is one of the appointed conditions of the labor of men that, in proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and the harvest, is the fulness of the fruit; and that generally, therefore, the farther off we place our aim, and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of what we have labored for, the more wide and rich will be the measure of our success. Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they can benefit those who come after them; and of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.
John Ruskin
Some fodder for the longtermists. Maybe this is in tension with yesterday’s James quote? Or maybe there is a way that heart to heart transmission can also be part of a long term project — like the aspiration to awaken all beings to their own true nature.
Links
One of the best things I’ve ever read about the phenomenology of grief.
Description of the PSIP therapy modality, situated within a broader mammalian biology framework which categorizes levels of response to a trauma (from anxiety to panic attack, depression, numbness). I’m not qualified to evaluate the efficacy of the therapy in question but the seems plausible to me.
Free to watch documentary on the life of Namkhai Norbu (revered Dzogchen teacher) — looks great, plan to watch this soon.
Emptiness Tip (of an infinitely large iceberg)
One confusing thing about the Buddhist concept of emptiness is that it often used both in the way I’ve been using it — as denoting the mind-constructedness of reality — but also in other places to refer to the “ground of being” — the ultimate or fundamental reality from which everything arises1. The ideas are related, certainly - the absolute from which reality is constructed and the constructedness itself. Keep that in mind if you are reading stuff about emptiness. Here’s an example of talking about it more as the field / ground of being.