“We do not exist for the sake of something else. We exist for the sake of ourselves.”

Shunryu Suzuki

Shunryu Suzuki - “We do not exist for the sake of...” 1

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“Bringing people into existence as well as failing to bring people into existence can be regretted. However, only bringing people into existence can be regretted for the sake of the person whose existence was contingent on our decision. This is not because those who are not brought into existence are indeterminate. Instead it is because they never exist. We can regret, for the sake of an indeterminate but existent person that a benefit was not bestowed on him or her, but we cannot regret, for the sake of somebody who never exists and thus cannot thereby be deprived, a good that this never existent person never experiences. One might grieve about not having had children, but not because the children that one could have had have been deprived of existence. Remorse about not having children is remorse for ourselves—sorrow about having missed childbearing and child-rearing experiences. However, we do regret having brought into existence a child with an unhappy life, and we regret it for the child’s sake, even if also for our own sakes. The reason why we do not lament our failure to bring somebody into existence is because absent pleasures are not bad.”

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“You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live”

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“We definitely don't exist just for the sake of welcoming death someday; I believe we live for the sake of living on." —Kazuto Kirigaya "Kirito" (Sword Art Online)”

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“We have both lost ourselves and created something else, something that exists only as an interlacing of the two of us. ”

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“Men exist for the sake of one another.”

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