When you drop the ego, you drop a whole world that you have created around it. For the first time you are able to see things as they are - not as you would like them to be. And when you are capable of knowing the facts of life, you become capable of knowing the truth. The facility of life is the first step towards truth. And ego is the most falsifying agent.
Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.
Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred.
Therefore we pledge to bind
ourselves to one another, to embrace
our lowliest, to keep company with
our loneliest, to educate our illiterate,
to feed our starving, to clothe our
ragged, to do all good things,
knowing that we are more than
keepers of our brothers and sisters.
We are our brothers and sisters
It wasn't the New World that mattered... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life - the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.
The government must give proper weight to both keeping America safe from terrorists and protecting Americans' privacy. But when Americans lack the most basic information about our domestic surveillance programs, they have no way of knowing whether we're getting that balance right. This lack of transparency is a big problem.
In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside. As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind's compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing.
I'm considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I've never been bored in my life.
If we were to lose our fish that we appreciate so much by overfishing; or if we were to lose some of our favorite beaches to overbuilding and pollution, then how would we feel? It's become a case of not knowing what you've got until it's gone.
What an investor needs is the ability to correctly evaluate selected businesses. Note that word “selected”: You don't have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.