Anathemas and Admirations (40 page)

To attain deliverance, we must believe that everything is real, or else that nothing is. But we distinguish only
degrees
of reality; things strike us as more or less true, more or less
in being
. And so it is that we never know where we are.

To trace back to the sovereign zero, out of which emerges that subaltern zero that constitutes ourselves. . . .

The Serious is not quite an attribute of existence; the Tragic is, for it implies a notion of gratuitous disaster, whereas the Serious suggests a minimum of finality. And the charm of existence is that it allows of none.

Each of us passes through his Promethean crisis, and all we do afterward is revel in or revile that past.

To exhibit a skull in a showcase: already a challenge; a whole skeleton, a scandal After even the most furtive glance, how will the passing wretch attend to his affairs, and in what mood will the poor lover proceed to his assignation? With all the more reason, a prolonged halt before our ultimate metamorphosis can only discourage desire and delirium. . . . And thus it is that as I walked away, there was nothing for me to do but curse that vertical horror and its uninterrupted sneer.

“When the bird of sleep thought to nest in my pupils, it saw the lashes and fled in fear of the net.” Who better than this Ben al-Hamara, an Arab poet of Andalusia, has perceived the unfathomability of insomnia?

Those moments when a memory or even less is enough to slip out of the world.

Even as a runner who stops in the heat of the race, trying to understand the meaning of it all: to meditate is an admission that one is winded.

Enviable form of renown: to attach our name, like our first ancestor to mud that will dazzle the generations of men.

“What is impermanent is suffering; what is suffering is non-self. What is non-self is not mine; I am not that, that is not I” (
Samyutta Nikaya). What is suffering is non-self.
It is difficult, it is impossible, to agree with Buddhism on this point, crucial though it is. For us, suffering is what is most ourselves, most self. What a strange religion! It sees suffering everywhere yet at the same time declares it to be unreal.

On his countenance, not a trace of mockery remaining. It is because he had an almost sordid attachment to life. Those who have not deigned to cling to it wear a scornful smile, sign of deliverance and of triumph. They are not going into nothingness; they have left it behind.

Before his serious health problems, he was a scholar; since . . . he has
fallen
into metaphysics. To be accessible to that essential divagation, the cooperation of loyal miseries is necessary — those eager to recur.