Storm on the Sea 35

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Ship in a Storm (1879) 

Ruins 25

Hubert Robert, Fantasy Ruins with Fountain and Figures (c. 1780) 

Memento Mori 18

Anonymous Dutch, Memento Mori (c. 1530) 

Vanitas 103

Damien L'homme, Vanitas (1641) 

Chuang Tzu 6.15

Tsze-yü and Tsze-sang were friends. 

Once, when it had rained continuously for ten days, Tsze-yü said, "I fear that Tsze-sang may be in distress." So he wrapped up some rice, and went to give it to him to eat. 

When he came to Tsze-sang's door, there issued from it sounds between singing and wailing; a lute was struck, and there came the words, "O Father! O Mother! O Heaven! O Men!" 

The voice could not sustain itself, and the line was hurriedly pronounced. Tsze-yü entered and said, "Why are you singing, Sir, this line of poetry in such a way?" 

The other replied, "I was thinking, and thinking in vain, how it was that I was brought to such extremity. Would my parents have wished me to be so poor? 

"Heaven overspreads all without any partial feeling, and so does Earth sustain all—would Heaven and Earth make me so poor with any unkindly feeling? 

"I was trying to find out who had done it, and I could not do so. But here I am in this extremity! It is what was appointed for me!" 

IMAGE: Ma Yuan, The Yellow River Breaches Its Course (c. 1200) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.8

“Good does not result from evil. But riches result from greed; therefore, riches are not a good.” 
 
“It is not true,” they say, “that good does not result from evil. For money comes from sacrilege and theft. Accordingly, although sacrilege and theft are evil, yet they are evil only because they work more evil than good. For they bring gain; but the gain is accompanied by fear, anxiety, and torture of mind and body.”
 
Whoever says this must perforce admit that sacrilege, though it be an evil because it works much evil, is yet partly good because it accomplishes a certain amount of good. What can be more monstrous than this? We have, to be sure, actually convinced the world that sacrilege, theft, and adultery are to be regarded as among the goods. 
 
How many men there are who do not blush at theft, how many who boast of having committed adultery! For petty sacrilege is punished, but sacrilege on a grand scale is honored by a triumphal procession. Besides, sacrilege, if it is wholly good in some respect, will also be honorable and will be called right conduct; for it is conduct which concerns ourselves. But no human being, on serious consideration, admits this idea. 
 
Therefore, goods cannot spring from evil. For if, as you object, sacrilege is an evil for the single reason that it brings on much evil, if you but absolve sacrilege of its punishment and pledge it immunity, sacrilege will be wholly good. 
 
And yet the worst punishment for crime lies in the crime itself. You are mistaken, I maintain, if you propose to reserve your punishments for the hangman or the prison; the crime is punished immediately after it is committed; nay, rather, at the moment when it is committed. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
I must tread lightly here, since I have little patience for those who compromise their supposed principles in order to achieve the most convenient results. They nobly claim they are being pragmatic, when they are really just looking for the easiest way out. 
 
At the heart of it is a confusion about the very nature of the good, treating our moral worth as if it could be calculated in a bank ledger. It’s all fine, they say, as long as we end up in the black, where the profits outweigh the losses, and we can therefore overlook having done a few vicious things, in order to achieve a far greater number of virtuous things. 
 
With the Peripatetics, I do not doubt that goodness admits of degrees, but this does not override a more fundamental distinction of kind. As clever as it sounds, the ends cannot justify the means, because any evil act, however small it may appear, is inherently opposed to any good act, however big it may appear. It is just as illogical when the schemers insist that two wrongs can make a right, when they now are left with only two wrongs. 
 
I believe Marcus Aurelius put it best: “If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it.” The Stoic knows full well why fudging it is a form of cowardice. Wickedness takes us in one direction, and righteousness takes us in the other. 
 
“Yes, I admit that stealing the money wasn’t terribly nice, but I now intend to use that money to do a whole bunch of much nicer things. Stop being such a goody two-shoes!” 
 
It isn’t merely about being nice, and it isn’t simply about getting the preferred results. Each and every one of my thoughts, words, and deeds reflects my whole character, such that my integrity as a person depends upon living with prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice, in each and every situation. Anything less is to act in bad faith, to abandon my human dignity. 
 
“Well, it’s not like I burned down the whole church or anything! Does it make such a big difference that I snatched a handful of bills out of the collection plate?” 
 
Even if the quantity happens to be more or less, the quality of the offense remains exactly the same. The true harm is in the soul, not in the circumstances. The real rewards and punishments proceed from the inside, not from the outside. I have gained nothing if I have accumulated more stuff, and I have lost nothing if I have maintained my character. Why would I sell my conscience for the sake of a few comforts? 
 
Once again, the Thomists taught me properly: a good can never come from committing an evil, though a good can always come from suffering an evil. The distinction is a critical one: we are defined by whatever we do, as an efficient cause, which includes transforming whatever might be done to us, as a material cause. 
 
If we start to excuse ourselves from some of the sins, it won’t be too long before we excuse ourselves from all of the sins. When we dodge any of our responsibilities, both to ourselves and to others, we engage in the perverse practice of painting over the rot. Forgive, but do not condone. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

Vivekachudamani 165-166

THE VESTURE FORMED OF VITAL BREATH

The breath-formed vesture is formed by the life-breath determined by the five powers of action; through its power the food-formed vesture, guided by the Self and sustained by food, moves in all bodily acts. 

Nor is this breath-formed vesture the Self, since it is formed of the vital airs, coming and going like the wind, moving within and without; since it can in no wise discern between right and wrong, between oneself and another, but is ever dependent. 

Maxims of Goethe 94

The world is a bell with a crack in it; it rattles, but does not ring. 

Wisdom from the Early Cynics, Diogenes 45

When Diogenes was dining in a temple, and in the course of the meal loaves not free from dirt were put on the table, he took them up and threw them away, declaring that nothing unclean ought to enter a temple. 

To the man who said to him, "You don't know anything, although you are a philosopher," he replied, "Even if I am but a pretender to wisdom, that in itself is philosophy." 

When someone brought a child to Diogenes and declared him to be highly gifted and of excellent character, "What need then," said he, "has he of me?" 

Those who say admirable things, but fail to do them, he compared to a harp; for the harp, like them, he said, has neither hearing nor perception. 

Diogenes was going into a theater, meeting face to face those who were coming out, and being asked why, "This," he said, "is what I practice doing all my life." 

—Diogenes Laërtius, 6.64 

IMAGE: Taras Shevchenko, Diogenes (1856) 

Wisdom from the Early Stoics, Zeno of Citium 85

Their physical doctrine the Stoics divide into sections (1) about bodies; (2) about principles; (3) about elements; (4) about the gods; (5) about bounding surfaces and space whether filled or empty. 

This is a division into species; but the generic division is into three parts, dealing with (i.) the universe; (ii.) the elements; (iii.) the subject of causation.

The part dealing with the universe admits, they say, of division into two: for with one aspect of it the mathematicians also are concerned, in so far as they treat questions relating to the fixed stars and the planets, e.g. whether the sun is or is not just so large as it appears to be, and the same about the moon, the question of their revolutions, and other inquiries of the same sort. 

But there is another aspect or field of cosmological inquiry, which belongs to the physicists alone: this includes such questions as what the substance of the universe is, whether the sun and the stars are made up of form and matter, whether the world has had a beginning in time or not, whether it is animate or inanimate, whether it is destructible or indestructible, whether it is governed by providence, and all the rest. 

The part concerned with causation, again, is itself subdivided into two. And in one of its aspects medical inquiries have a share in it, in so far as it involves investigation of the ruling principle of the soul and the phenomena of soul, seeds, and the like. 

Whereas the other part is claimed by the mathematicians also, e.g. how vision is to be explained, what causes the image on the mirror, what is the origin of clouds, thunder, rainbows, halos, comets, and the like.

—Diogenes Laërtius, 7.132-133 

Songs of Innocence 15

Spring (1789) 

William Blake (1757-1827) 

Sound the Flute!
Now it's mute.
Birds delight
Day and Night.
Nightingale
In the dale
Lark in Sky
Merrily
Merrily Merrily to welcome in the Year.

Little Boy
Full of joy.
Little Girl
Sweet and small,
Cock does crow
So do you.
Merry voice
Infant noise
Merrily Merrily to welcome in the Year. 

Little Lamb
Here I am,
Come and lick
My white neck.
Let me pull
Your soft Wool.
Let me kiss
Your soft face.
Merrily Merrily we welcome in the Year. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.7

Why, then, is the wise man great? Because he has a great soul. Accordingly, it is true that that which falls to the lot even of the most despicable person is not a good.
 
Thus, I should never regard inactivity as a good; for even the tree-frog and the flea possess this quality. Nor should I regard rest and freedom from trouble as a good; for what is more at leisure than a worm? 
 
Do you ask what it is that produces the wise man? That which produces a god. You must grant that the wise man has in an element of godliness, heavenliness, grandeur. The good does not come to everyone, nor does it allow any random person to possess it. Behold: 
 
“What fruits each country bears, or will not bear; 
Here corn, and there the vine, grow richlier. 
And elsewhere still the tender tree and grass 
Unbidden clothe themselves in green. Seest thou 
How Tmolus ships its saffron perfumes forth, 
And ivory comes from Ind; soft Sheba sends 
Its incense, and the unclad Chalybes 
Their iron.”
 
These products are apportioned to separate countries in order that human beings may be constrained to traffic among themselves, each seeking something from his neighbor in his turn. 
 
So the Supreme Good has also its own abode. It does not grow where ivory grows, or iron. Do you ask where the Supreme Good dwells? In the soul. And unless the soul be pure and holy, there is no room in it for God. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
Do not praise the part as if it were separate from the whole. Do not pursue the means without the dignity of the end. Do not elevate the inferior to the status of the superior. In the absence of a virtuous soul, there can be nothing else that is good in my life. 
 
Money has never made me a better man, though there were times when I did manage to spend it rightly. Fame has never offered me dignity, though there were times when it followed from doing my duty. Luxury has never granted me happiness, though there were times when my principles also happened to be pleasing. 
 
I have little a mantra that helps me to keep it straight: I have known good people who were rich, clever, or charming, but I have yet to meet any people who were good because they were rich, clever, or charming. 
 
“Thank God I have been this fortunate!” That is not a blessing, for it can just as easily be a curse. 
 
“I only need enough so I don’t have to worry!” Circumstances of any sort will leave you anxious. The solution lies in seeking that good which can never be taken away. 
 
“If I’m lucky, one day I won’t have to work at all!” Labor will only appear to be a burden when we are confused about the purpose of living itself. 
 
Back in high school, my friends and I would apply the phrase “like a god” to most anything—yes, teenagers come up with the goofiest expressions. It turned out having the hair of a god, or the car of a god, or the record collection of a god didn’t really make much sense, since a god wouldn’t need any of those things. The divine must be self-sufficient, wanting in nothing beyond itself. 
 
How could a mere mortal approach such a height? By nurturing what is distinctly his own, what lies within his soul, instead of chasing after superficial diversions, which will always leave him begging for more and more. Do not be fooled by the usual routine, the rules they teach you about in school or promote incessantly at the office: you can’t get there from here. 
 
If my nature is indeed to understand and to love, what else could possibly matter? The world is full of trade, of folks seeking to profit from buying and selling every product under the sun, and yet the one thing that remains priceless is always there for the taking, if we just put our minds to it. 
 
By all means, put the many fruits of this world to use, but recognize why the good in their use is derived exclusively from the virtues that stand behind them. I would propose a radically different way of judging between the “haves” and the “have nots”.
 
It isn’t enough to leave room for dessert. Make more room for the God who already dwells inside you. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

IMAGE: Master of the Dominican Effigies, The Garden of the Virtues (c. 1350) 

Frippisms 9

To try is to fail. 

Cosmos 28

Delphic Maxims 103

Βουλεύου χρόνῳ 

Give a timely counsel 

IMAGE: George Catlin, Sioux Chiefs in Profound Deliberation (c. 1837) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.6

“That which can fall to the lot of any man, no matter how base or despised he may be, is not a good. But wealth falls to the lot of the pander and the trainer of gladiators; therefore wealth is not a good.” 
 
“Another wrong premise,” they say, “for we notice that goods fall to the lot of the very lowest sort of men, not only in the scholar’s art, but also in the art of healing or in the art of navigating.”
 
These arts, however, make no profession of greatness of soul; they do not rise to any heights nor do they frown upon what fortune may bring. It is virtue that uplifts man and places him superior to what mortals hold dear; virtue neither craves overmuch nor fears to excess that which is called good or that which is called bad. 
 
Chelidon, one of Cleopatra’s eunuchs, possessed great wealth; and recently Natalis—a man whose tongue was as shameless as it was dirty, a man whose mouth used to perform the vilest offices—was the heir of many, and also made many his heirs. What then? Was it his money that made him unclean, or did he himself besmirch his money? 
 
Money tumbles into the hands of certain men as a shilling tumbles down a sewer. Virtue stands above all such things. It is appraised in coin of its own minting; and it deems none of these random windfalls to be good. 
 
But medicine and navigation do not forbid themselves and their followers to marvel at such things. One who is not a good man can nevertheless be a physician, or a pilot, or a scholar—yes, just as well as he can be a cook! He to whose lot it falls to possess something which is not of a random sort, cannot be called a random sort of man; a person is of the same sort as that which he possesses.
 
A strong box is worth just what it holds; or rather, it is a mere accessory of that which it holds. Whoever sets any price upon a full purse except the price established by the count of the money deposited therein? This also applies to the owners of great estates: they are only accessories and incidentals to their possessions. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
I appreciate why the Peripatetics wished to describe the good through its circumstances, and how they sought to explain the virtues within their proper setting, but the danger is that we then conflate our happiness with our conveniences, and we confuse the perfection of our own nature with the perfection of other natures. 
 
While there is no doubt that pebbles, or trees, or dogs have a particular goodness within them, it would be ridiculous to use this as a benchmark for the excellence of a man; look to the essence of the thing itself, not at its accidental relation to outside things. This is why the neighborhood I live in, and the contents of my bank account, and the list of people who happen to send me Christmas cards will never determine my inner worth. 
 
I know full well how a life of poverty, sickness, and loneliness can be an incredible burden, and yet that which is difficult should not be mistaken for that which is impossible. Instead of yearning for a change in my fortune, let me work on an increase of my character, which has the power to transform any obstacle into an opportunity for greater understanding and love. 
 
The Peripatetic can’t have it both ways. Don’t tell me that happiness is defined as the activity of a rational soul, and then add that certain amounts of money, health, and friends are also necessary conditions. It reminds me of those shifty bosses, who keep modifying the terms for a promotion, or those fake Christians, who say that you are justified by faith, except when you don’t put enough cash in the collection basket.
 
The Stoics refused, therefore, to speak of wealth, or any aspect of fortune, as a good. There is no direct connection between property and propriety, whatever the experts might say, because a state of affairs that is largely beyond our power does not reflect the merit of the judgements that are entirely within our power. 
 
Can the circumstances somehow take on a quality of goodness for us? Yes, but only indirectly, insofar as we choose to make an appropriate use of them, in harmony with our natural calling to a life of the virtues. Therefore, you will find some people who employ their money to make themselves better, while you will find others who merely treat their affluence as an excuse to become worse. 
 
This further applies to all of our human skills, so that however gifted a man may be at writing a book, or healing a patient, or sailing across the ocean, his goodness, in the one way that really matters, must proceed from the integrity of his conscience. I once met a fellow who was, by all accounts, one of the most brilliant chefs of our generation, though this did not stop him from simultaneously being one of the biggest scoundrels of our generation. 
 
May I still refer to the “good” in a casual sense, as a general expression of distinction and approval? I suspect there is little harm in it, as long as I never lose sight of the absolute measure. Most anyone can attach himself to riches, but it will take a very special sort of person to stand out as a source of the greatest value. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

IMAGE: Jacopo Bassano, Lazarus and the Rich Man (1545) 

Cycles of Life

Michael Leunig 88

Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates 48

On the occasion of a common dinner party, where some of the company would present themselves with a small, and others with a large supply of viands, Socrates would bid the servants throw the small supplies into the general stock, or else to help each of the party to a share all around. 

Thus the grand victualers were ashamed in the one case not to share in the common stock, and in the other not to throw in their supplies also. Accordingly, in went the grand supplies into the common stock. And now, being no better off than the small contributors, they soon ceased to cater for expensive delicacies. 

At a supper party, one member of the company, as Socrates chanced to note, had put aside the plain fare and was devoting himself to certain dainties. A discussion was going on about names and definitions, and the proper applications of terms to things. 

Whereupon Socrates, appealing to the company: "Can we explain why we call a man a 'dainty fellow'? What is the particular action to which the term applies?—since everyone adds some dainty to his food when he can get it. But we have not quite hit the definition yet, I think. Are we to be called dainty eaters because we like our bread buttered?" 

"No! Hardly!" some member of the company replied. 

Socrates: "Well, but now suppose a man confines himself to eating venison or other dainty without any plain food at all, not as a matter of training, but for the pleasure of it: has such a man earned the title?" 

"The rest of the world would have a poor chance against him," someone answered. 

"Or," interposed another, "what if the dainty dishes he devours are out of all proportion to the rest of his meal—what of him?" 

Socrates: "He has established a very fair title at any rate to the appellation, and when the rest of the world pray to heaven for a fine harvest: 'May our corn and oil increase!' he may reasonably ejaculate, 'May my fleshpots multiply!'" 

At this last sally, the young man, feeling that the conversation set somewhat in his direction, did not desist indeed from his savory viands, but helped himself generously to a piece of bread. 

Socrates was all-observant, and added: "Keep an eye on our friend yonder, you others next him, and see fair play between the sop and the sauce."  

Another time, seeing one of the company using but one sop of bread to test several savory dishes, Socrates remarked: "Could there be a more extravagant style of cookery, or more murderous to the dainty dishes themselves, than this wholesale method of taking so many dishes together?—why, bless me, twenty different sorts of seasoning at one swoop! 

"First of all he mixes up actually more ingredients than the cook himself prescribes, which is extravagant; and secondly, he has the audacity to commingle what the chef holds incongruous, whereby if the cooks are right in their method he is wrong in his, and consequently the destroyer of their art. 

"Now is it not ridiculous first to procure the greatest virtuosi to cook for us, and then without any claim to their skill to take and alter their procedure? 

"But there is a worse thing in store for the bold man who habituates himself to eat a dozen dishes at once: when there are but few dishes served, out of pure habit he will feel himself half starved, whilst his neighbor, accustomed to send his sop down by help of a single relish, will feast merrily, be the dishes never so few." 

He had a saying that euokheisthai, to "make good cheer," was in Attic parlance a synonym for "eating," and the affix eu (the attributive "good") connoted the eating of such things as would not trouble soul or body, and were not far to seek or hard to find. 

So that to "make good cheer" in his vocabulary applied to a modest and well-ordered style of living. 

—from Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.14 

Man's Search for Meaning 24

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. 

To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. 

Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative. 

It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys. 

Take as an example something that happened on our journey from Auschwitz to the camp affiliated with Dachau. We had all been afraid that our transport was heading for the Mauthausen camp. 

We became more and more tense as we approached a certain bridge over the Danube, which the train would have to cross to reach Mauthausen, according to the statement of experienced traveling companions. 

Those who have never seen anything similar cannot possibly imagine the dance of joy performed in the carriage by the prisoners when they saw that our transport was not crossing the bridge and was instead heading "only" for Dachau. 

—from Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning