At a bare minimum, understanding entails being able to detect an internal contradiction: a paradox.
Aren't you an enigma wrapped in a thick coating of contradictions.
The ugliness of bigotry stands in direct contradiction to the very meaning of America.
God is cruel and not cruel. He is all being and not being at the same time. Hence He is all contradictions. Nature also is nothing but a mass of contradictions.
The word translated, koan, it means a problem. But it's a very special problem. And to strip it down to the way it works, you are given a problem which has no rational solution. There is a contradiction built into it. One standard - one is this is the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand clapping? And so on. All right, so the first thing is that it brings your rational mind to an impasse.
To a Buddhist, contradictions only exist in a mind that has been forced to cultivate them.
Capitalism is, in Mao's language, the main contradiction in the world today and so our efforts have to be focused on ending this system and making a new one.
Paradox implies that stating a contradiction disposes of it.
I hold myself accountable for my contradictions.
So capital is in fact borderless; that's the problem. On the other hand capital has to keep borders alive in order for this kind of cross-border trade to happen. So therefore the idea of borderlessness has a performative contradiction within it which has to be kept alive.
Even though their arguments did not invoke religion, I think we all know what's behind these arguments. They're trying to protect religious beliefs from contradiction by science. They used to do it by prohibiting teachers from teaching evolution at all; then they wanted to teach intelligent design as an alternative theory; now they want the supposed "weaknesses" in evolution pointed out. But it's all the same program - it's all an attempt to let religious ideas determine what is taught in science courses.
Love not pleasure; love God. This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved.
There is nothing that you can do that is worse for yourself, than to do something that you believe is inappropriate. And so, get clear and happy about whichever choice you make. Because it is your contradiction that causes the majority of the contradiction in vibration.
Jesus said that I am the only way. So it is illogical to say all religions are true, but it is not illogical to say all religions are false. All religion could be false but they can't all be true because there are direct logical contradictions.
Such, Polly, are your sex - part truth, part fiction; - Some thought, much whim and all a contradiction.
Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.
There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, , etc. , that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.
I love that contradiction between the ugly and the nice. It's shot in a very gourmet way in the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer. But then Grenouille doesn't differentiate between what's commonly considered to be good smells and bad. He just takes it all, like a true collector does.
So, this is how it's become? This is how I've become? A walking contradiction? I'm surrounded by people and feel alone. I claim to crave a bit of normalcy but now that I have some, it's like I don't know what to do with it, I don't know how to be a normal person anymore.
To accept an unorthodoxy is always to inherit unresolved contradictions