I admire your confidence. Perhaps doubts have always had an important place in my life. But I think you could agree that could have a positive impact.

Doubt is like my middle name and I cannot get rid of it. The more I doubt, the further I have to go to find a solution for it. Now I have found a way to accept it and celebrate it. Positive impact? I would say it is just part of me, neither positive nor negative.

I understand many contradictions. Some I don't.

I think contradiction is an intrinsic characteristics of the world. I have learned to embrace them, and sometimes I try to understand some.

I do not seek detachment. Detachment is an illusion. And not just in the language of relationship. When one says "I am detached." the very utterance belies the statement. Why make it, unless there is significance in stating it to someone? To someone. An attachment.

I know you want attachment. That was what I had always wanted, because I had been an outsider for so long and I wanted to belong. But now I am no longer avidly seeking approval or acceptance or attachment. Seeking attachment is also another form of "closeness", and anyone who wants to be free cannot find final liberation in attachment. Of course people are all different. Some want to be free and some want bondage. Maybe that's why the "sages" sometimes talk about the difference between "ordinary people" and "sages". But then again, anyone who seeks detachment should not attach himself to the idea of being detached. The wise one does not argue for or against detachment. Any argument would be cyclic, just like the universe. That's why they always teach one to "say nothing if you want to talk about it", and they teach you not even to believe them.

I like this idea of a cyclic universe very much. I think everything is cyclic. Every individual has to find his or her own location in the cyclic scale, and since the universe is continuous and infinite, no two people occupies the same spot. The more open or more "awakened" one is, the greater portion of the cycle one can occupy. The truly enlightened ones can co-exist with the full cycle of nature, live with the universe, and therefore detach oneself from the ordinary life and death. Something like that.

Hmm, this idea is similar to Tao Te Ching 50, the passage I was reading yesterday. Also reflects the passage about "ordinary", "wise", "saintly", "holy" people I was reading too. But I do not want to attach myself to one theory or another or my own theory, even I know them to be true.

-- email conversation with JA.