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    • AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
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from grasping
  • But of course you have to also ungrasp non-grasping.
    • There's a quote from some guru: "quit x, quit y, quit quitting" or something like that, can you find it Ask Claude
      • I wasn't able to pin down the exact quote you're thinking of through general searches. The closest well-known quote matching the pattern "quit [x], quit [y], quit quitting" is the famous one about smoking — but let me try a more targeted search.
      • I haven't been able to find an exact match yet. The closest famous quote fitting the "quit [x], quit [y], quit quitting" pattern is the well-known humorous one about smoking. Could the quote you're thinking of be along the lines of "Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times" — which is commonly attributed to Mark Twain (though Quote Investigator notes the evidence for Twain is weak, and the joke template predates him)?
      • A very similar version attributed to W.C. Fields about drinking goes: *"Now don't say you can't swear off drinking; it's easy. I've done it a thousand times."*
      • These are the most famous "quit [x], quit quitting" style jokes from a well-known figure. However, I wasn't able to locate a quote with the specific three-part structure "quit x, quit y, quit quitting" from a guru or self-help figure. It's possible you may be misremembering the exact phrasing, or it could be a lesser-known or paraphrased quote. Could you give me any more context — such as what topic it was about (smoking, jobs, habits?) or roughly when/where you heard it? That would help narrow it down.
      • I think it was about Buddhist ungrasping in general, not about quitting something specific. Ask Claude
        • I wasn't able to find the exact quote you're remembering through my searches. Let me be transparent about what I found and offer the closest matches.
        • I could not locate a Buddhist quote with the specific structure "quit x, quit y, quit quitting." That precise formulation isn't surfacing anywhere in Buddhist literature online. It's possible you may be misremembering the wording, or it could be a relatively obscure or paraphrased teaching.
        • The closest and most likely candidate is a famous teaching by Ajahn Chah, which follows a similar escalating, self-referential logic about letting go:
        • Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don't accept praise or gain or anything else. If you let go a little you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace.
        • He also said:
        • Detach! If you see goodness, let it go. If you see rightness, let it go. These words, 'let go', do not mean that we don't have to practice. It means that we have to practice following the method of 'letting go' itself.
          • — This last part is particularly close to the self-referential spirit of "quit quitting."
        • The essence of his teaching was rather simple: be mindful, don't hang on to anything, let go and surrender to the way things are.
        • There's also a related idea in Pema Chödrön's work.
        • In her book Start Where You Are, she discusses the slogan "Abandon any hope of fruition," saying: "You could also say, 'Give up all hope' or 'Give up' or just 'Give.' The shorter the better."
        • That recursive "give up giving up" idea lives in her teachings implicitly.
        • And from Jack Kornfield:
        • "If you let go of everything — Objects, Concepts, Teachers, Buddha, Self, Senses, Memories, Life, Death, Freedom — let go and all suffering will cease. The world will appear in its pristine self-existing nature, and you will experience the freedom of the Buddha."
        • Do any of these ring a bell? If you can recall any other details — the teacher's tradition (Zen, Tibetan, Theravada), the book or talk format, or any other words from the quote — I can search more specifically.

non-grasping

12 Aug 2023 - 26 Aug 2026
Open in Logseq
    • Hypothesized goal of meditation although it isn't supposed to have one. A non-goal, a goal of not having strong goals. Certainly not the kind that make capitalists and paperclip maximizers.
    • Two distinct things?:
      • not grasping in the first place
      • recognizing that you are grasping and letting go