The first fact

Life is painful. This is the first fact, sounded at birth in groanings too deep for words. If I don’t know this, I’ll devolve into that most coarsened of figures—the pleasure seeker.

The secret of life

Cambridge University-educated Ajahn Brahm dropped theoretical physics in order to become a Buddhist monk. Today, nearing 70, he says the secret of life is that everything is out of control.

Man up

Good to keep top of mind: No one gets out of here alive. Things will go wrong.

Take control of your life

This is a manifestly bad idea, even a self-defeating one. Controlling myself implies the existence of a subject and an object. But I cannot, surely, be an object to myself. And as Eckhart Tolle observes, I do not have a life. I am life.

Babel

One of the most dangerous things we can do is give ourselves advice. Advice is the sound of ego erecting a shrine to itself. The more pacific path is to relax into what is. Where we’re baptized. Where we learn to breathe under water.