Can the world exist without one to cognise it? Which comes first the being-consciousness or the rising-consciousness? The former is always there and eternal; the latter rises and disappears. It is transient.
If we sincerely want to become a liberated person, then we have to be willing to be independent in a world where so few truly think for themselves.
An experience teaches ably the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.
One is absolutely sickened, not by crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.
