Tag: religion

I would take Buddhism integrally as a model of conduct if doing so did not involve assuming a state of dependence that I find intolerable. Buddhism, to the letter, is to drop everything and live on alms. From this, the conclusion: if the final liberation requires as a mandatory step the complete subjection to this world, even temporarily, I will never experience it. It is as if, desiring freedom, it were first necessary to submit to the worst and most complete form of slavery. On second thought, I correct myself: I would not take Buddhism integrally because, integrally, anything becomes unpalatable.

It is a real shock to come into contact with the pages of Jakob Boehme. The first impulse is to ask: how is this possible? The mystical universe that permeates his lines seems unthinkable, inconceivable, imperceptible to the average human being. Where does such ingenious imagination come from? Whence is this conception of life that brings the banality of the concrete to its knees, making what the eyes can see ridiculous? The notion of the ultimate meaning, the vision of paths, the philosophy that implies a conduct… all these manifestations of a luminous and respectable spirit, of which I refuse to make a value judgment. But what is most astonishing, what paralyzes the mind and throws the brain into perplexity, is to be aware, at every page, that the author of the lines was a shoemaker!