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The Buddhist View of Love
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Disassociation
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Sociability
People need a lot of self-love before they can find their own needs acceptable – and by extension, dare to try to transmit these to others.
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Hermits fascinate us because they are who we might be if only we learnt to be braver. They have unearthed the courage to be unusual.
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The business of living is a sickness enough; it can take half a lifetime to realise it isn’t weak or indulgent to take very gentle care of ourselves.
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We should use the reams of data about the unreliability of fears gone by as a guide to the future. If we got it so wrong in the past, it’s highly likely we’re getting it rather wrong now too.
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One of the great cities of the world arose off the back of an inspired mood. It wasn’t coal, guns or wealth that did it: it was a movement of the mind.
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It can take a lot of pain before we make our peace with so-called ‘ordinariness’ and accept it for the wonder it is.
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Whatever intelligence, foresight, dedication and effort we bring to the task, perfection is almost certainly going to elude us. There is simply so very much that can go wrong.
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In the grip of a transcendental experience, we willingly let go of the compromised ‘I’ in order to become, for a privileged while, a part of the timeless, beatific whole.
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No one is ever straightforwardly nice. The route to true benevolence flows through the door of a candid acknowledgement of ill temper and vanity.
Calm
The only prediction we can rely on is that life will – with ceaseless ingenuity – outrun our finest predictions.
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An unusual realisation that lovers may eventually make is that it is hard to envisage successfully navigating any relationship without some understanding – and mutual discussion of – Attachment Theory.
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Why do some of us end up unable ever to forget mean things people say and do while others sail on unmolested? The central explanation is: the degree and sort of love we received in childhood.
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We limit the concept of aristocracy unhelpfully when we identify it simply with a restricted franchise and country houses. We may be able to become something far more relevant and more flexible than an aristocrat of the blood: an aristocrat of the spirit.
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When despair stalks us, we should – like that mason – step back and imagine ourselves as part of a larger whole that can redeem us through its scale, logic and beauty.
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Ubuntu is distinctive; it means compassion and humanity and zeroes in on the crucial role that empathy should play in love well understood.
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To soothe our agitations and reduce our compulsions, we may need to check in on them regularly to try to mend their injuries: the violence, neglect and fear they may have suffered.
Sociability
Van Gogh’s story is so familiar that we are apt to lose sight of its ongoing relevance and universal import: people miss things.
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At a certain point, the truly wise stop trying to understand what everything means and surrender instead to the ‘ineffable’: that which cannot be grasped by anything as limited and flawed as the human mind.
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We make relationships so much more dramatic than they need to be to drown out the fears we associate with ordinary contentment.
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The true connoisseurs of beauty aren’t those who find life perfect, but those who have the full measure of its pain and bitterness.
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Love properly understood entwines us deeply with the day to day experience of another, much of it entirely boring to the wider world but deeply redolent of commitment and of mutual daily care for one’s small trials and joys.
Sociability
We may be in danger of gravely neglecting our potential so long as we continue to operate with a brittle concept of what confidence might look like.
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The end goal of maturity might be defined as the ability to approach as much of life as possible life without a script.
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It may not always be possible for us to become actual exiles, but we should at the very least strive to become internal exiles, that is, people who can behave like visitors in their own lands.
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Peace of mind doesn’t come from hoping for the best; it comes from close-up attention to the very worst – and from the sure knowledge that we can, with the strength we have inside us already, endure whatever fate might assign us.
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Like babies, we can be inveterate dividers. We decide that good and bad, pleasing and frustrating, cannot exist within the heart of a single person.
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Relationships
A frank declaration of dislike might even be deemed properly romantic, in the sense of being conducive to, and sustaining of, love.
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We deserve to feel sorry for ourselves for the world we’ve built. We face unprecedented difficulties holding on to anything tranquil or soothing.
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We need so much help in acknowledging what we are really like – and staying patient with what we see. We need all the loving realism can we can find.
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There are few more tempting or natural aspirations than that of managing to lead an unblemished life. But the years are in the habit of inducting us into a succession of heartbreaking realities.
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Being interesting has nothing to do with being well-read or well-travelled – and everything to do with succeeding at being a slightly more faithful correspondent of one’s authentic self.
Calm
We’ll be properly mature by the time we learn to appreciate the art of being direct, emotionally straightforward and – in the eyes of the frantic and impressionable many – exceptionally dull.
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The wise keep going not because they are braver, but because they have learnt to be a lot better prepared – by which we mean, a lot sadder.
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Intuitively, we know that music can heal but rarely is it asked to do so as directly and explicitly as it has been here. These extraordinary musical pieces carry the listener on a representative journey from psychological distress to understanding recovery and liberation.
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