The Briefing Room
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Skull on May 03, 2021, 11:39:52 pm
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These are some character traits needed for a good life. Wisdom is more valuable than knowledge or perhaps wisdom is just more difficult to know.
So I encourage those interested to expound and/or bring in quotes that inspire or enlighten this area.
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Very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching; for he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master.
Ben Jonson (d. 1637)
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It is not so important to know everything as to know the exact value of everything, to appreciate what we learn, and to arrange what we know.
Hannah More (d. 1833)
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Medical science today has the same attitude as in 1887:
Neither biology nor physiology are the science, nor even branches
of the Science of Life, but only that of the appearances of life. While true
philosophy stands Oedipus-like before the Sphinx of life, hardly daring
to utter the paradox contained in the answer to the riddle propounded,
materialistic science, as arrogant as ever, never doubting its own
wisdom for one moment, biologises itself and many others into the
belief that it has solved the awful problem of existence. In truth,
however, has it even so much as approached its threshold? It is not,
surely, by attempting to deceive itself and the unwary in saying that life
is but the result of molecular complexity, that it can ever hope to promote the truth.
Blavatsky, from "Science of Life" article.
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Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.
Shakespeare.
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The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.
Abigail Van Buren (d. 2013)
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How grand indeed shines the light of truth upon the face of the man whose heart is enlightened by the sense of his oneness with all; and what pathos there is when the sense of separateness drives him away from his oneness with other men.
G. de Purucker (d. 1942)
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11. Those who mistake the unessential to be essential and the essential to be unessential, dwelling in wrong thoughts, never arrive at the essential.
12. Those who know the essential to be essential and the unessential to be unessential, dwelling in right thoughts, do arrive at the essential.
Buddha
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3:9 They that trust in him, shall understand the truth: and they that are faithful in love shall rest in him: for grace and peace is to his elect.
10 But the wicked shall be punished according to their own devices: who have neglected the just, and have revolted from the Lord.
Wisdom of Solomon
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Now the tree of life is Virtue in the most comprehensive sense, which some term Goodness. From it the particular virtues derive their existence.
Philo (d. 50)
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Philo of Alexandria was not sympathetic to men who lust for boys:
The common and vulgar love for boys, not only robs men of courage, the virtue most useful for life in peace as well as war, but produces in their souls the disease of effeminacy and renders androgynous those who should have been trained in all the pursuits making for valor. And having ruined their years of boyhood, and degraded them to the class and condition of sex objects, it injures the lovers, too, in the most essential respects, body, mind, and property. For the mind of the boy-lover is necessarily aimed at his darling, and is keen-sighted for him only, blind to all other interests, private and public.
Contemplative Life, Winston translation
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Those things on which philosophy has set its seal are beyond the reach of injury; no age will discard them or lessen their force, each succeeding century will add somewhat to the respect in which they are held; for we look upon what is near us with jealous eyes, but we admire what is further off with less prejudice. The wise man's life, therefore, includes much; he is not hedged in by the same limits which confine others; he alone is exempt from the laws by which mankind is governed; all ages serve him like a god. If any time be past he recalls it by his memory, if it be present he uses it, if it be future he anticipates it; his life is a long one because he concentrates all times into it.
Seneca (d. 65)
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A splendid article by Bradley Birzer on ancient philosophers valuing reason & the Logos:
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2021/05/10-ancient-books-influenced-stoicism-bradley-birzer.html (https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2021/05/10-ancient-books-influenced-stoicism-bradley-birzer.html)
“A book is a word spoken into creation. Its message goes out into the world. It cannot be taken back,” Michael O’Brien warned as well as assured in his magisterial novel, Sophia House. Just as each word is a reflection of The Word (Logos), so each book is a reflection of The Book. While Christians have come to have a sort of monopoly on The Word and its greatest meaning and exemplar, others—such as the Stoics—embraced the Logos as well. And, while Christians have also come to have a sort of monopoly on The Book, others—such as the Stoics—embraced a variety of works. Here are ten books written by non-Stoics that greatly influenced Stoicism.
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Just as on a dark night black with clouds,
The sudden lightning glares and all is clearly shown,
Likewise rarely, through the Buddhas’ power,
Virtuous thoughts rise, brief and transient, in the world.
Virtue, thus, is weak; and always
Evil is of great and overwhelming strength.
Except for perfect bodhichitta,
What other virtue is there that can lay it low.
Shantideva, from his Way of the Bodhisattva
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Truth is the Voice of Nature and of time—
Truth is the startling monitor within us—
Naught is without it, it comes from the stars,
The golden sun, and every breeze that blows...
Wm. Thompson Bacon, from Thoughts in Solitude.
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“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” ― Albert Einstein
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The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it ~ Albert Einstein
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Truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the
illusion still lingers of knowing it, and that leads to many misunderstandings.
Solzhenitsyn
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From Ven. Nyanaponika's Introduction to his classic book on Roots of Good and Evil:
The Buddha has taught that there are three roots of evil: greed, hatred and delusion. These three states comprise the entire range of evil, whether of lesser or greater intensity, from a faint mental tendency to the coarsest manifestations in action and speech. In whatever way they appear, these are the basic causes of suffering.
These roots have their opposites: non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion. These are the three roots of good: of all acts of unselfishness, liberality and renunciation; of all expressions of loving kindness and compassion; of all achievements in knowledge and understanding.
These six mental states are the roots from which everything harmful and beneficial sprouts. They are the roots of the Tree of Life with its sweet and bitter fruits.
Greed and hatred, maintained and fed by delusion, are the universal impelling forces of all animate life, individually and socially. Fortunately, the roots of good also reach into our world and keep the forces of evil in check, but the balance is a precarious one needing to be preserved by constant watchfulness and effort. On the level of inanimate nature, too, we find counterparts to greed and hatred in the forces of attraction and repulsion, kept in their purposeless reactive movement by inherent nescience which cannot provide a motive for cessation of the process. Thus, through an unfathomable past, the macrocosm of nature and the microcosm of mind have continued their contest between attraction and repulsion, greed and hatred; and unless stopped by voluntary effort and insight, they will so continue for aeons to come. This cosmic conflict of opposing energies, unsolvable on its own level, is one aspect of dukkha (unsatisfactoriness): the ill of restless, senseless movement as felt by a sensitive being.
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Key verses from chapter 5:13-14 of Shantideva's Bodhisattva Guide:
Where would there be leather enough to cover the entire world?
The earth is covered over merely with the leather of my sandals.
Likewise, I am unable to restrain external phenomena, but I shall
restrain my own mind. What need is there to restrain anything else?
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The same question stands open from the days of Socrates and Pilate down to our own age of wholesale negation: is there such a thing as absolute truth in the hands of any one party or man? Reason answers, “there cannot be.” There is no room for absolute truth upon any subject whatsoever, in a world as finite and conditioned as man is himself. But there are relative truths, and we have to make the best we can of them.
In every age there have been Sages who had mastered the absolute and yet could teach but relative truths. For none yet, born of mortal woman in our race, has, or could have given out, the whole and the final truth to another man, for every one of us has to find that (to him) final knowledge in himself. As no two minds can be absolutely alike, each has to receive the supreme illumination through itself, according to its capacity, and from no human light. The greatest adept living can reveal of the Universal Truth only so much as the mind he is impressing it upon can assimilate, and no more. Tot homines, quot sententiae [as many men, so many opinions] — is an immortal truism.
The sun is one, but its beams are numberless; and the effects produced are beneficent or maleficent, according to the nature and constitution of the objects they shine upon. Polarity is universal, but the polariser lies in our own consciousness. In proportion as our consciousness is elevated towards absolute truth, so do we men assimilate it more or less absolutely. But man’s consciousness again, is only the sunflower of the earth. Longing for the warm ray, the plant can only turn to the sun, and move round and round in following the course of the unreachable luminary: its roots keep it fast to the soil, and half its life is passed in the shadow. . . .
From "What is Truth?" article of Blavatsky
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Words of wisdom indeed, yet they are hardly sufficient for the success of Mankind.
For every Marcus Aurelius there must be a Julius Caesar, a doer and achiever.
In life, Behavior measures the difference between success and failure, not intentions.
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Words of wisdom indeed, yet they are hardly sufficient for the success of Mankind.
For every Marcus Aurelius there must be a Julius Caesar, a doer and achiever.
In life, Behavior measures the difference between success and failure, not intentions.
Weak as I am in education, but did not Marcus spend most of his time ruling & warring? Certainly an achiever, not a palace philosopher. Anyway, here is more of the article on valuing all kinds of truth:
Now, since truth is a multifaced jewel, the facets of which it is
impossible to perceive all at once; and since, again, no two men, however
anxious to discern truth, can see even one of those facets alike, what can
be done to help them to perceive it? As physical man, limited and
trammelled from every side by illusions, cannot reach truth by the light
of his terrestrial perceptions, we say—develop in you the inner
knowledge. From the time when the Delphic oracle said to the enquirer
“Man, know thyself,” no greater or more important truth was ever
taught. Without such perception, man will remain ever blind to even
many a relative, let alone absolute, truth. Man has to know himself, i.e.,
acquire the inner perceptions which never deceive, before he can master
any absolute truth. Absolute truth is the symbol of Eternity, and no finite
mind can ever grasp the eternal, hence, no truth in its fulness can ever
dawn upon it. To reach the state during which man sees and senses it,
we have to paralyze the senses of the external man of clay. This is a
difficult task, we may be told, and most people will, at this rate, prefer to
remain satisfied with relative truths, no doubt. But to approach even
terrestrial truths requires, first of all, love of truth for its own sake, for
otherwise no recognition of it will follow. And who loves truth in this age
for its own sake? How many of us are prepared to search for, accept, and
carry it out, in the midst of a society in which anything that would
achieve success has to be built on appearances, not on reality, on self-assertion,
not on intrinsic value? We are fully aware of the difficulties in
the way of receiving truth. The fair heavenly maiden descends only on a
(to her) congenial soil—the soil of an impartial, unprejudiced mind,
illuminated by pure Spiritual Consciousness; and both are truly rare dwellers in civilized lands.
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Weak as I am in education, but did not Marcus spend most of his time ruling & warring? Certainly an achiever, not a palace philosopher. Anyway, here is more of the article on valuing all kinds of truth:
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Respectfully,
Skull, hardly disparaging your argument, simply pointing out that;
Words while powerful, must motivate the mind to achieve, otherwise
we are left w/wise ideas to debate.
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Respectfully,
Skull, hardly disparaging your argument, simply pointing out that;
Words while powerful, must motivate the mind to achieve, otherwise
we are left w/wise ideas to debate.
I understood your point about words alone as sounding brass.
Firstly I have no argument, nor am I seeking or caring for one.
Just sharing part of an article that presents the two most common motivations for achievement: personal, worldly, visible one and/or a spiritual, religious one. Both are possible for one person, but without the spiritual motive, the first alone often breeds foul offspring.
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All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others.
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.
Is there need for lengthy explanation?
Childish beings look out for themselves;
Buddhas labor for the good of others:
See the difference that divides them!
From chapter 8 of Shantideva's Guide for Bodhisattvas.
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St Paul letter to Romans:
12 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
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Rav Miller on three Torahs, based on Sefer Yetzira, an oral tradition from Abraham:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3kcsuQJtv4&t=332s
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Science, once the anchor of the salvation of Truth, has ceased to be
the temple of naked Fact. Almost to a man the Scientists strive now only
to force upon their colleagues and the public the acceptance of some
personal hobby, of some new-fangled theory, which will shed lustre on
their name and fame. A Scientist is as ready to suppress damaging
evidence against a current scientific hypothesis in our times [1888],
as a missionary in heathen-land, or a preacher at home.
Blavatsky
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Who meditates oppression, his dwelling is overturned.
Babylonian Hymn to Samas.
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Men were brought into existence for the sake of men, that they might do one another good.
Cicero
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197. Ah, how happily we live,
Without hatred among those who hate!
Without hatred we dwell
Among people who hate.
198. Ah, how happily we live,
Healthy among the sick!
Healthy we dwell
Among people who are sick.
199. Ah, how happily we live,
Carefree among the careworn!
Carefree we dwell
Among people who are careworn.
Buddha, from Happiness chapter of Dhammapada.
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Don’t be judgmental about people. Don’t pass judgment on people. Those who pass judgment on people harm themselves. I, or someone like me, may pass judgment on people.
Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya 6:44
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What the people wanted was a government which would provide a comfortable life for them, and with this as the foremost object ideas of freedom and self-reliance and service to the community were obscured to the point of disappearing. Athens was more and more looked on as a cooperative business, possessed of great wealth, in which all citizens had a right to share... Athens had reached the point of rejecting independence, and the freedom she now wanted was freedom from responsibility. There could be only one result...If men insisted on being free from the burden of a life that was self-dependent and also responsible for the common good, they would cease to be free at all. Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.
Edith Hamilton (d. 1963)