If you’re doing research and you know exactly what you’re gonna find, you’re not doing research, you’re doing marketing

--- Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, during a TEDx CERN Talk about how all research — real research, that is — is improbable.

See video at time code 2:15 onwards

All research is improbable. All research is going to turn up some things you really didn’t expect. If you’re doing research and you know exactly what you’re gonna find, you’re not doing research, you’re doing marketing.

We don’t sit to get better. We sit to be with life as it is.

--- Seth Segall, closing line in the blog post, Good Sitting, Bad Sitting, November 23, 2012

From the post:

William and Matthew are at the start of their Zen journey. They’re beginning to learn that sitting isn’t about perfect concentration and bliss, but about seeing the mind as it is — a mirror that reflects everything — including the energies of holidays and far-off conflicts. Thoughts about these ongoing events rise and stir the emotions. The goal is not the elimination of these thoughts and emotions, but developing our capacity to observe them in a kind and interested way. If all that we can observe is how helplessly caught up we are in them — how our minds have a mind of their own — then that, in and of itself, is the beginning of wisdom. We are not the masters of our own house, and learning to work skillfully with the energies at play is the work of a lifetime.

 ...

Sitting is a strange process. In the beginning, it’s hard to grasp what it’s all about. Later on, it doesn’t get much easier. The only thing that’s clear is “just do it.” Whether the sitting is “good” or “bad,” just do it. You never get any better at it. Not really. But this whole idea of “getting better” is part of the problem, the endless self-improvement and self-manipulation game.

Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone

--- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), in the section "Ethics"

A sobering thought for those of us with a sitting practice. The glass-half-full interpretation is that since we're all narcissistic, meditation offers a safe way to indulge this vice.

It is easier to fast than diet

--- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), in the section "The Sacred and the Profane"

In context:

One categorical: it is easier to fast than diet. You cannot be "slightly" kosher or halal by only eating a small portion of ham.

The "slightly kosher" coda actually detracts from the aphorism; it's just a vanilla oxymoron, like "partly pregnant."