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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><font size="3"><font face="Arial">I</font><font face="Arial"> have one question to start: is Mitchell Catholic?</font></font></i></pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="Arial" size="3">From a Mitchell interview:</font></pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><p style="outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 12px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b style="outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Arial" size="3">Q: Faith plays an important role in your books, what's your own attitude towards religion?</font></b></p><p style="outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 12px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Arial" size="3">A: I am a kind of secular Buddhist. I meditate and find it very helpful, and Buddhism doesn't ask me to sacrifice my rationality or my common sense, it doesn't ask me to believe the impossible. I find it helpful to keep my mind under control, sane and calm. What happens after we die — I don't know, and I'm happy not to know. I feel I have no choice but to not know. Buddhism doesn't care if I don't accept its cosmology, I don't have to believe it all.</font></p><p style="outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 12px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Arial" size="3"><br></font></p><p style="outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 12px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Arial" size="3">Eternal Recurrence, in a non-<span style="line-height: 23.09375px;">Nietzschean sense, is one of the tropes of Cloud Atlas. </span></font></p><p style="outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 12px; border: 0px; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></p></pre> </div></body>
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