Ruins 11

Jan Bruegel the Elder, Coastal Landscape with Fishermen and Ruins of the Temple of Minerva Medica (c. 1620) 

Storm on the Sea 21

Joos de Momper the Younger, The Storm at Sea (c. 1560) 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 252

The difference between the modern Brâhmaism and Hinduism is like the difference between the single note of music and the whole music. 

The modern Brâhmas are content with the single note of Brahman, while the Hindu religion is made up of several notes producing a sweet and melodious harmony. 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.37

M. Where, then, are they who say that anger has its use? Can madness be of any use? 

 

“But still it is natural.” 

 

Can anything be natural that is against reason? Or how is it, if anger is natural, that one person is more inclined to anger than another? Or that the lust of revenge should cease before it has revenged itself? Or that anyone should repent of what he had done in a passion? As we see that Alexander the king did, who could scarcely keep his hands from himself, when he had killed his favorite Cleitus, so great was his compunction. 

 

Now who that is acquainted with these instances can doubt that this motion of the mind is altogether in opinion and voluntary? For who can doubt that disorders of the mind, such as covetousness and a desire of glory, arise from a great estimation of those things by which the mind is disordered? From whence we may understand that every perturbation of the mind is founded in opinion. 

 

And if boldness—that is to say, a firm assurance of mind—is a kind of knowledge and serious opinion not hastily taken up, then diffidence is a fear of an expected and impending evil; and if hope is an expectation of good, fear must, of course, be an expectation of evil. Thus fear and other perturbations are evils. Therefore, as constancy proceeds from knowledge, so does perturbation from error. 

 

Now, they who are said to be naturally inclined to anger, or to pity, or to envy, or to any feeling of this kind, their minds are constitutionally, as it were, in bad health; yet they are curable, as the disposition of Socrates is said to have been; for when Zopyrus, who professed to know the character of everyone from his person, had heaped a great many vices on him in a public assembly, he was laughed at by others, who could perceive no such vices in Socrates; but Socrates kept him in countenance by declaring that such vices were natural to him, but that he had got the better of them by his reason. 

 

Therefore, as anyone who has the appearance of the best constitution may yet appear to be naturally rather inclined to some particular disorder, so different minds may be more particularly inclined to different diseases. 

 

But as to those men who are said to be vicious, not by nature, but their own fault, their vices proceed from wrong opinions of good and bad things, so that one is more prone than another to different motions and perturbations. 

 

But, just as it is in the case of the body, an inveterate disease is harder to be got rid of than a sudden disorder; and it is more easy to cure a fresh tumor in the eyes than to remove a defluxion of any continuance. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.37 

 

I was never very fond of how the ideological bullies would order me to toe the line, by a pure power of the will, without any concern for the circumstances of my head and my heart. In their quest for perfection, they were quick to ignore the quirks of the human condition. “Suck it up, buttercup!” 

 

At the same time, I never improved one bit when I allowed myself to be coddled by relativism, making all sorts of excuses for self-indulgence. Once every desire was acceptable, and any inclination was natural, I was actually abandoning my responsibility in favor of slavery “If it feels good, do it!” 

 

Only an upside-down view of the human person will start with the passions, and then concoct a convenient reason to justify them. In reality, it is working from the false premise that meaning is to be found in the emotions, when an emotion is merely an impression. 

 

How will I now choose to understand it, to guide it, to transform it? A day does not pass without the temptation of anger or lust, but that does not mean it is natural for me to succumb—it is natural for me to form a conscience. 

 

I was often told it was good for me to outraged at someone who offended me, or to satisfy my libido whenever I felt the urge, as if I were bound by some primal necessity. Yet I am a man, not a beast, since I possess the power of judgment. 

 

What if I decided to express a rapport instead of a resentment, or to be respectful instead of randy? If it is natural to obey every longing, then why are these libertines so miserable? If it is impossible to resist a compulsion, then why are those modest folks in the corner so at peace? 

 

There was nothing great about Alexander when he killed Cleitus during a drunken argument, and his remorse was then hardly noble when he succumbed to despair. He was not required to act as he did, but he could only have mastered his excesses by comprehending his own predilections. 

 

Yes, whether we are somehow born with them or we acquire them through long practice, our tendencies become like a part of our makeup. No, such dispositions do not bind us to our fate. The improvement of our nature is to decide how we will find a way to rise above them. 

 

In other words, an ailment is not our natural state. Of course, Socrates knew that he had flaws, though what made him a man of worth was his willingness to overcome them, by means of seeking wisdom and virtue. By struggling to know himself, his own peculiar personality within the greater design of Nature, he becomes something of a role model for the confused thinker desperately trying to find his way. 

 

While it remains a work in progress, and I imagine I will never be done with it, I learn more about my instincts and proclivities every day, and by doing so I discover my unique position in the bigger picture. How I build the patterns of my habits, for good or for ill, is a function of my deliberate estimation. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Andre Castaigne, The Killing of Cleitus by Alexander the Great (1899) 

Memento Mori 4

Philips Gijsels, Memento Mori with a Skull and Crossbones (c. 1650) 

 

Vanitas 89

Peeter Sion, Vanitas Still Life with Skull (c. 1660) 

Stoic Snippets 249

How unsound and insincere is he who says, "I have determined to deal with you in a fair way!"—What are you doing, man? There is no occasion to give this notice. It will soon show itself by acts. 

The voice ought to be plainly written on the forehead. Such as a man's character is, he immediately shows it in his eyes, just as he who is beloved forthwith reads everything in the eyes of lovers. 

The man who is honest and good ought to be exactly like a man who smells strong, so that the bystander as soon as he comes near him must smell, whether he choose or not. 

But the affectation of simplicity is like a crooked stick. Nothing is more disgraceful than a wolfish friendship. Avoid this most of all. The good and simple and benevolent show all these things in the eyes, and there is no mistaking. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.15 

IMAGE: Gustave Doré, The Wolf Turned Shepherd (1868) 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.36

M. Anger, too, when it disturbs the mind any time, leaves no room to doubt its being madness: by the instigation of which we see such contention as this between brothers: 
 
“Where was there ever impudence like thine?
Who on thy malice ever could refine?” 
 
You know what follows: for abuses are thrown out by these brothers with great bitterness in every other verse; so that you may easily know them for the sons of Atreus, of that Atreus who invented a new punishment for his brother: 
 
“I who his cruel heart to gall am bent, 
Some new, unheard-of torment must invent.” 
 
Now, what were these inventions? Hear Thyestes: 
 
“My impious brother fain would have me eat 
My children, and thus serves them up for meat.” 
 
To what length now will not anger go? Even as far as madness. Therefore, we say, properly enough, that angry men have given up their power, that is, they are out of the power of advice, reason, and understanding; for these ought to have power over the whole mind. 
 
Now, you should put those out of the way whom they endeavor to attack till they have recollected themselves; but what does recollection here imply but getting together again the dispersed parts of their mind into their proper place? 
 
Or else you must beg and entreat them, if they have the means of revenge, to defer it to another opportunity, until their anger cools. 
 
But the expression of cooling implies, certainly, that there was a heat raised in their minds in opposition to reason; from which consideration that saying of Archytas is commended, who being somewhat provoked at his steward “How would I have treated you,” said he, “if I had not been in a passion?" 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.36 
 
Even as I can distinguish between the nature of different emotions, they are invariably bound up together in daily living, each one feeding into another. It is no accident, for example, that lust and anger are so closely aligned, since the failure to acquire what I crave will soon be turned into wrath, and my disappointment with myself is redirected toward blaming someone else. 
 
Indeed, the degree of the grudge is often in a direct proportion to the degree of the longing. That lost love of my life is now so livid that she refuses to acknowledge me when we pass on the street, though, to be fair, she once pointed her finger at me and laughed hysterically. I instinctively feel the pain, of course, but then I remember how I can choose not to wallow in gloom or to stew in resentment. 
 
I am sometimes asked why the Stoic model of the passions doesn’t have a separate place for anger, and I can only suggest that any sort of hatred is also just another perversion of love. Instead of wishing the good for another, I somehow perceive a benefit in another suffering harm: it can be called anger when I still hope for a bitter satisfaction, and malice when I finally take my nasty delight. 
 
And how swiftly it can drive us to insanity! I cannot bear to dwell for too long on most of the things I thought were out of joy and love, though they were really symptoms of gratification and lust. That I wince at the thought of them can, I suppose, be taken as a good sign, for at least something of my conscience remains intact. 
 
I should never mock the lover when he is infatuated, or later denounce him when he is vengeful, because I have hardly done any better myself; though it is self-inflicted, it is nevertheless a sort of madness. 
 
I have learned so much from the tragic tales of the House of Atreus, and yet these, too, make me shudder, such that I almost become consumed by the intensity of the feeling, no longer knowing right from wrong. I need to forget about who started it, and to focus on who is going to have the decency to finish it without any spite.
 
We rightly advise a period of “cooling off” when we feel angry, though in the worst cases a passage of time might only make the hostility more ferocious. Whatever the severity of the rage, however, the key is always in recovering a control over our judgments, and thereby taming our emotions, which is properly a return to our natural state. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Anonymous, Atreus and Thyestes (c. 1410) 

Chuang Tzu 6.1

He who knows the part which the Heavenly in him plays, and knows also that which the Human in him ought to play, has reached the perfection of knowledge. 

He who knows the part which the Heavenly plays knows that it is naturally born with him; he who knows the part which the Human ought to play proceeds with the knowledge which he possesses to nourish it in the direction of what he does not yet know—to complete one's natural term of years and not come to an untimely end in the middle of his course is the fullness of knowledge. 

Although it be so, there is an evil attending this condition. Such knowledge still awaits the confirmation of it as correct; it does so because it is not yet determined. 

How do we know that what we call the Heavenly in us is not the Human? And that what we call the Human is not the Heavenly? There must be the True man, and then there is the True knowledge. 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.35

M. Now, the cure for one who is affected in this manner is to show how light, how contemptible, how very trifling he is in what he desires; how he may turn his affections to another object, or accomplish his desires by some other means; or else to persuade him that he may entirely disregard it: sometimes he is to be led away to objects of another kind, to study, business, or other different engagements and concerns: very often the cure is effected by change of place, as sick people, that have not recovered their strength, are benefited by change of air. 
 
Some people think an old love may be driven out by a new one, as one nail drives out another: but, above all things, the man thus afflicted should be advised what madness love is: for of all the perturbations of the mind, there is not one which is more vehement; for (without charging it with rapes, debaucheries, adultery, or even incest, the baseness of any of these being very blamable; not, I say, to mention these) the very perturbation of the mind in love is base of itself, for, to pass over all its acts of downright madness, what weakness do not those very things which are looked upon as indifferent argue? 
 
"Affronts and jealousies, jars, squabbles, wars,
Then peace again. The man who seeks to fix
These restless feelings, and to subjugate
Them to some regular law, is just as wise
As one who’d try to lay down rules by which
Men should go mad."  
 
Now, is not this inconstancy and mutability of mind enough to deter anyone by its own deformity? 
 
We are to demonstrate, as was said of every perturbation, that there are no such feelings which do not consist entirely of opinion and judgment, and are not owing to ourselves. For if love were natural, all would be in love, and always so, and all love the same object; nor would one be deterred by shame, another by reflection, another by satiety. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.35 
 
A diversion can offer me a bit of relief from the agitation, or some support in overcoming my fixation, but it is never, in itself, a complete solution. I nod as I go over Cicero’s list, recalling how a change of scenery helped me for a time, or some fresh company lightened the load, or a new project kept my mind occupied, and yet my troubles always returned if I didn’t go to the root, by addressing the errors in my thinking that produced such disordered feelings. 
 
Lust, as the twisted version of love, comes over me when my judgments about the good are confused. While I might wish to blame my beloved for not desiring me in return, or to curse the world for not providing me with the satisfaction I demand, the cure for what ails me is a thorough reform of my priorities. An obese man will not become healthy without finally mastering his own cravings. 
 
What is the point to moving around, when every place will ultimately offer the very same temptations? Where is the benefit to finding new friends, if I fail to understand what it even means to be a friend? As much as I can keep myself busy, won’t there eventually come the time when I am once again idle? The change must occur in the substance on the inside, not in the accidents on the outside. 
 
A fellow I knew some years ago was convinced that hanging out a different pub would relieve him of his melancholy, and I rudely laughed at him, even as I later convinced myself to take a completely different job as a repellant against my own version of the Black Dog. I wish I could meet him again, so we might now laugh together, in much better spirits. 
 
When a girl in college lied to me once too often, I promptly became enamored of a totally different girl, and when her attention quickly drifted elsewhere, I foolishly assumed that I simply had poor taste. I certainly did have poor taste, but in my own values, not in the merits of others. Find fault with the agent, or the efficient cause, not with the occasion, or the material cause. 
 
I have now acquired many eccentric hobbies, and though each of them has brought me great joy, not a one of them has exorcised my demons. Collecting obscure records only goes so far to engage my interests, and it just takes a single sour mood to turn the words and music of any song into a sad reflection of my own resentment. 
 
There is an elephant in the room, and he is my own discontent, which is the inevitable offspring of my distorted expectations. I wish him no harm, but he’s the one who needs to find some new digs. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Jan Steen, The Lovesick Maiden (c. 1660) 

Dhammapada 387

The sun is bright by day, the moon shines by night, the warrior is bright in his armor, the Brahmana is bright in his meditation; but Buddha, the Awakened, is bright with splendor day and night. 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.34

M. Now we see that the loves of all these writers were entirely libidinous. There have arisen also some among us philosophers (and Plato is at the head of them, whom Dicaearchus blames not without reason) who have countenanced love. 
 
The Stoics, in truth, say, not only that their wise man may be a lover, but they even define love itself as an endeavor to originate friendship out of the appearance of beauty. 
 
Now, provided there is any one in the nature of things without desire, without care, without a sigh, such a one may be a lover; for he is free from all lust: but I have nothing to say to him, as it is lust of which I am now speaking. But should there be any love—as there certainly is—which is but little, or perhaps not at all, short of madness, such as his is in the Leucadia—
 
“Should there be any God whose care I am—"
 
it is incumbent on all the Gods to see that he enjoys his amorous pleasure.
 
“Wretch that I am!”
 
Nothing is more true, and he says very appropriately,
 
“What, are you sane, who at this rate lament?”
 
He seems even to his friends to be out of his senses: then how tragical he becomes!
 
“Thy aid, divine Apollo, I implore,
And thine, dread ruler of the wat’ry store!
Oh! all ye winds, assist me!” 
 
He thinks that the whole world ought to apply itself to help his love: he excludes Venus alone, as unkind to him.
 
“Thy aid, O Venus, why should I invoke?” 
 
He thinks Venus too much employed in her own lust to have regard to anything else, as if he himself had not said and committed these shameful things from lust. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.34 
 
When I am not making cheap excuses for myself, I have to admit how almost all the problems of my life revolve around extreme passions derived from disordered judgments, and why the most cringeworthy of these anxieties are ultimately about the selfish entanglements of romantic love. 
 
I try to defend this, of course, by insisting that love is a noble and glorious thing, but I know on the inside how I am really just talking about various forms of lust, whether for physical or emotional gratification. As soon as I say that it can’t be helped, and I elevate my suffering to the status of some honorable burden, I must bow to the deeper truth of what Cicero, and the Stoics, are trying to teach me. 
 
Once again, it is a shame that I use the term “love” so broadly and lazily, confusing a dazed feeling that “comes over me” with a deliberate act of the will: “falling” in love has brought me despair, while choosing to love has been my redemption. If professional definitions can be so precise, why do our moral distinctions lag so far behind? The difficulty is in our thinking, not in any complexities of the subject matter. 
 
Songs, films, poems, and novels about the power of the love, along with the grief from the broken hearts that follow, surely have their place, yet they will only rub salt in the wound when my soul is already in disarray. Self-pity is hardly the right medicine for the illusion of irreparable loss. 
 
Be a lover, but don’t be lecherous. Once we bicker about the technicalities, we are forgetting how the purity of the intent is the deciding factor, and I can finally understand something of why Justice Potter Stewart didn’t wish to get caught up in defining pornography, even as he clearly knew it when he saw it. 
 
I, too, have found myself blaming God for cursing me with love, quite oblivious to the fact that God also gave me the power of reason to determine my own actions. I, too, have begged for some sort of magical intervention, only to learn the hard way that relying on the fickle nature of the passions, and the inconstancy of fortune, is a sure path to misery. 
 
No, Apollo won’t be bothered to satisfy my lusts, because he is occupied with something greater, and Venus won’t quench my desires, because she is too busy tending to her own. I have made my own bed, and now I have to lie in it. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Giulio Romano, The Lovers (c. 1525) 

Careful . . .

Why the Stoics?

When people bother to learn anything about me, they are often confused about why I have such a strong commitment to the Stoics, in contrast to the many other schools of philosophy I so deeply admire. 

“Wait, you taught me all about St. Thomas Aquinas, and now you’re telling me that you don’t really follow Aquinas?” 

“I spent a whole year reading Plato with you, and it seemed like you were consumed by anything and everything Plato had to say. What gives with your constant private quotes from Marcus Aurelius? Were you lying to us?” 

“Did we just waste a whole semester studying Aristotle, only to learn that he was wrong?” 

No, no, and no. 

I love you enough not to force you into a corner, and I love myself enough not to bow down to any mortal tribe. The slavery to any “-ism” is your greatest enemy. 

For your sake, I ask you to think for yourself. For my sake, I demand an openness to Truth, in all of its forms, and I sadly know that I am at my worst when I narrow my vision. 

But why that annoying love for the Stoic tradition? 

On the level of theory, I have never read a philosopher who hasn’t taught me something of great value, either positively or negatively, so I continue to broaden the horizon. 

On the level of practice, however, the only thing that has saved me from total despair, and from a completely pointless death, has been the Stoic principle that nothing is good or bad for me except for my own moral judgments. 

Aquinas will nudge you that way through his complete search for the Divine, and Plato will remind you to follow the Good above all else, and Aristotle will insist that happiness depends upon the habit of virtue. 

All three, however, are still enamored of supposedly ideal circumstances, by the best lay of the land, so to speak, and yet only the Stoic will take it all the way, with absolutely no footnotes, limitations, or conditions. 

I am as good a man, and thereby as happy a man, as I choose to be. In this, I serve God, I serve the Good, and I serve virtue. In making something of myself, I have found myself as a part within the harmony of the Whole. 

Only the Stoic has the balls, pardon my French, to completely transcend the conditions, and thereby to express happiness in its purest form. The Stoic makes no apologies for being poor, or sick, or ugly, or unpopular—he knows exactly where he’s at, and so he doesn’t waver. 

Why should he need to, when he sees his own nature in its naked purity, as but one instance of Nature itself, a sliver of Providence given to him, as his own power to make his own mark? However small, it is always significant. No piece is ever disposable. 

Stoicism speaks to me with such force because it cuts through the nonsense, the excuses, the mediocrity. I have already cursed once, but I will also add that Stoicism tolerates no bullshit. 

I need no longer listen to the arrogant priest who commands me to blindly obey, only so that he might be gratified in this world. 

I need no longer suck at the teat of the fat politician, who requires my vote for his supposed favors. 

I need no longer be terrified of the mighty boss, because he really has nothing to offer me, and, most importantly, he really has nothing he can take away from me. 

Stoicism is a “high octane” philosophy, and, in the Western tradition, it stands as a pinnacle of wisdom, in its most down-to-earth form. I also see something of that same strain in Mystic Catholicism, or in Vedanta Hinduism, or in Vajrayana Buddhism, or in Sufi Islam, but that is a discussion for another time. 

The Stoics, quite literally, saved my life. That says far more than any academic degree, or business promotion, or pious posturing. 

—4/2016 

Wisdom from the Early Cynics, Diogenes 31

On being asked by a tyrant what bronze is best for a statue, Diogenes replied, "That of which Harmodius and Aristogeiton were moulded." 

Asked how Dionysius treated his friends, "Like purses," he replied; "so long as they are full, he hangs them up, and, when they are empty, he throws them away." 

Some one lately wed had set up on his door the notice: 

The son of Zeus, victorious Heracles,
Dwells here; let nothing evil enter in. 

To which Diogenes added, "After war, alliance." 

The love of money he declared to be the mother-city of all evils. 

Seeing a spendthrift eating olives in a tavern, he said, "If you had breakfasted in this fashion, you would not so be dining." 

—Diogenes Laërtius, 6.50 

IMAGE: Harmodius and Aristogeiton 

Wisdom from the Early Stoics, Zeno of Citium 71

Now the Stoics say that the wise man is passionless, because he is not prone to fall into such infirmity. 

But they add that in another sense the term apathy is applied to the bad man, when, that is, it means that he is callous and relentless. 

Further, the wise man is said to be free from vanity; for he is indifferent to good or evil report. 

However, he is not alone in this, there being another who is also free from vanity, he who is ranged among the rash, and that is the bad man. 

Again, they tell us that all good men are austere or harsh, because they neither have dealings with pleasure themselves nor tolerate those who have. 

The term harsh is applied, however, to others as well, and in much the same sense as a wine is said to be harsh when it is employed medicinally and not for drinking at all. 

—Diogenes Laërtius, 7.117 

IMAGE: Jan van Bijlert, Young Man Drinking a Glass of Wine (c. 1640) 

Songs of Innocence 1

Songs of Innocence: Introduction (1789) 

William Blake (1757-1827) 

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me—

"Pipe a song about a lamb:"
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again:"
So I piped; he wept to hear.

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe,
Sing thy songs of happy cheer:"
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read—"
So he vanish'd from my sight;
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear. 

Songs of Innocence and Experience

It took me many years to appreciate William Blake, and now I can barely imagine my life without him. 

Songs of Innocence and Experience has become almost a daily source of reference for the tension between the natural and the fallen, between virtue and vice. The pairing of the text with illustrations is a special joy. 

The images reproduced in this series of posts are from the 1826 copy at the Library of Congress ("Copy Z"), as they are the best resolution I have available. 

—5/2015 

• • • • • 

William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (1794) 

Cosmos 11

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.33

M. However, we may allow the poets to trifle, in whose fables we see Jupiter himself engaged in these debaucheries: but let us apply to the masters of virtue—the philosophers who deny love to be anything carnal; and in this they differ from Epicurus, who, I think, is not much mistaken. 
 
For what is that love of friendship? How comes it that no one is in love with a deformed young man, or a handsome old one? I am of opinion that this love of men had its rise from the Gymnastics of the Greeks, where these kinds of loves are admissible and permitted; therefore Ennius spoke well:
 
“The censure of this crime to those is due 
Who naked bodies first exposed to view.”
 
Now, supposing them chaste, which I think is hardly possible, they are uneasy and distressed, and the more so because they contain and refrain themselves. 
 
But, to pass over the love of women, where nature has allowed more liberty, who can misunderstand the poets in their rape of Ganymede, or not apprehend what Laius says, and what he desires, in Euripides? 
 
Lastly, what have the principal poets and the most learned men published of themselves in their poems and songs? What doth Alcaeus, who was distinguished in his own republic for his bravery, write on the love of young men? And as for Anacreon’s poetry, it is wholly on love. But Ibycus of Rhegium appears, from his writings, to have had this love stronger on him than all the rest. 

—From Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.33 
 
I am hesitant to offer any comment at all on this chapter, not because the topic is in itself distasteful, but rather because most anyone reading along will, without giving it a second thought, have the knee-jerk reaction of assuming that Cicero is a hateful homophobe. 
 
What good will come, I wonder, from engaging with an outraged partisan who refuses to do anything but toe the sacred party line? It sadly goes both ways. I remain confused by the way contempt is considered a fitting response to those with whom we disagree; if I am truly to be a champion of tolerance, I can hardly cherry-pick my causes. 
 
So, I simply ask myself to consider, in the privacy of my own thoughts, what the purpose of sexuality might be within the fullness of human nature. In the end, it really makes little difference whether our attractions are for men or for women, and it matters far more that we first reflect on why our desires should be guided by our understanding. 
 
I know all too well that not all of my instincts and urges are necessarily good for me, and I have learned the hard way that I become a monster when the reason is taken out of the animal, when I act only on my feelings, without the benefit of thinking. Lust, in any form, is a kind of slavery, and love, in any form, is a kind of liberation. Chastity, a sadly unpopular word, is not the same thing as celibacy—chastity is self-restraint, not self-denial. 
 
Once it is merely the pleasure I crave, I am treating both myself and others as objects of gratification. Once it is the genuine beauty I seek, I am finally treating both myself and others as end in themselves, and never as means. I suspect all of us really sense, deep down inside, when we are being vulgar, and when we are being virtuous. Is the heart being led by the head, or being dragged down by the gut? 
 
Poetry is certainly an art that inflames the passions, though this does not demand that the fervent man become a lecherous man. I will follow my own conscience in this matter, and I am happy for you to follow yours. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490)