Don't deliver an essay with so many points. No one can absorb it. Just say one thing... Of course, you can say the point in many different ways over and over again with different illustrations.
You imagine that I look back on my life's work with calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track.
What you feel and how you react to something is always up to you. There may be a "normal" or a common way to react to different things. But that's mostly just all it is.
The "Highway 61" album [of Bob Dylan] was produced by Bob Johnston if I'm not incorrect. And Bob Johnston was an entirely different producer than Tom Wilson. Tom Wilson had produced jazz records and was a Harvard educated.
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
The proper way to create friends is to have a warm heart, not simply money or power. The friend of power and the friend of money are something different.
How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot in life which he has chosen, or which chance has thrown in his way, but praises those who follow a different course?
[Lat., Qui fit, Maecenas, ut nemo quam sibi sortem,
Seu ratio dederit, seu fors objecerit, illa
Contentus vivat? laudet diversa sequentes.]
That which arises dependent on something is not in the least that thing, neither is it different from it. Therefore, it is neither permanent or nothing.
In one and the same human being there are cognitions that, however utterly dissimilar they are, yet have one and the same object,so that one can only conclude that there are different subjects in one and the same human being.
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it
Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who have wept, who've all longed and lost, who've all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you're not really any different from everyone else.
You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A life lived for others is a life worthwhile.