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Quote by Mathias Énard

“Europe sapped Antiquity under the Syrians, the Iraqis, the Egyptians. Our triumphant nations appropriated the universal with their monopoly on science and archaeology, dispossessing the colonize populations by means of this pillage of a past that, as a result, they readily experienced as alien: and so brainwashed Islamist wreckers drive tractors all the more easily through ancient cities since they combine their profoundly uncultivated stupidity with the more or less widespread feeling that this heritage is alien, retroactive emanation of foreign powers.”

Quote by Mathias Énard

Book:Compass

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Compass

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Mathias Énard

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“Buddhism was first introduced to China around the first century ce, yet it took many centuries before it was not only properly understood but also creatively appropriated. Even if the speed and ease of transferring information and engaging in intercultural exchange have been greatly enhanced by modern technology, an "appropriate appropriation" of a deep and vast tradition like Zen Buddhism takes at least several generations.”

“The claimed legitimizing devices of political consent or personal labour served only to obscure the unjustifiable seizure of land from the common by the powerful. Other commoners at the time of those seizures had not consented to them, and even if they had done so, their consent could not bind later generations.”

“Even you, the professional helper, often mistaken for the enlightened Guru or Staretz, can become lost in your thoughts that you must be competent without fault. You may become enthralled with your identity as a professional, even the pressures of the culture of mastery that expects you to heal your clients without fail. Never mind all of the variables over which you have no control, it is up to you, according to the canons of mastery, to control the health and well-being of those for whom you provide professional care. This potentiates a furthering alienation between you and your clients. You are at risk to become, if you have not already, the one who does to your clients; to be the one the active subject acting upon the passive and receptive objects, your clients; to be the one in possession of special knowledge, technique and mastery. All of this conspires to coax or coerce you into treating your client as reduced, a mere case. Unawareness to these influences gives you little chance to consider their influence on your practice in the clinical setting, much less give attentive efforts to resist or change them.”

“Once upon a time man conceived the belief that this universe, with its many worlds swinging through space, was created for him. He fancied that the sun shone by day to warm and vivify him; that the stars of night were none other than lamps to his feet; that the other animals existed to afford him food and clothing—and sport; that the very flowers of the field blossomed and fruited and were beautiful for his gratification. In fact, man conceived the belief that instead of being the wise brother and helper of this creation amidst which he moves, he was the great central pivot upon which all revolves. A sorry lesson, surely, for man to read into the broad, open page of Nature’s great book. Small wonder that to him in his meanness its message came as “the painful riddle of the earth.” But it was the best he could do: the best any of us can do until we have learned the great lesson of the ancient Wise One has written out for us—which she will teach us, in time, through death, if we will not let her teach it through life: the lesson that use is not appropriation; that appropriation sets use to groan and sweat under fardels of evil.”