This is Water - Alumni Bulletin - Kenyon College
This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
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‘Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality—there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth—actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested.’
David Foster Wallace • The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel
Let us visualize the waves on the ocean, several waves appearing on the surface of the ocean. Some waves are big, there are those that are small, and each wave seems to have its own life. A wave may have ideas like, “I am a wave. I am only a wave among many waves. I am smaller than the other wave. I am less beautiful. I last less than the other wav... See more
Thich Nhat Hanh • Rest In the River
The real way not to drown is to let go of the idea that there’s an outside and an inside. It’s to not panic. We know this; we learn it in swimming lessons from the time we’re kids. The way to stay afloat is not to swim harder against the current that’s pulling you, the regrets that haunt you, the fantasies that consume you. It’s to simply be here,
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