The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness as the work proceeds, is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind so that goodness can shine through.
Robert M. PirsigRead
(What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness).Familiarity can blind you too.
Interpretation
Familiarity with the ordinary can obscure our understanding of the world.
This quote by Robert M. Pirsig suggests that what often makes our perception of the world unclear is not its oddities or strangeness, but rather the mundane and everyday aspects we take for granted. When we become overly accustomed to our surroundings, we may fail to see their true nature and significance, highlighting the idea that familiarity can lead to a kind of blindness that prevents deeper appreciation and understanding.
In practice
In a discussion about why we overlook simple joys in life, this quote can serve as a reminder.
The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness as the work proceeds, is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind so that goodness can shine through.
When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.
The Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain.
It's better not to see than to see wrongly.
The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling.
You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.
We seek true individuality and the true individuals. But we find them not. For lo, we mortals see what our poor eyes can see; and they, the true individuals, - they belong not to this world of our merely human sense and thought.
Zen professes itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all religions and philosophies.
The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die.
I do not mean to moralise but to those who do, I would give this advice : if you mean ultimately to deprive the best things and states of all all honour and worth then continue to talk about them as you have been doing!
The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.
The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. You can't weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
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