Contentment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 173 of 189 · 20 per page

• From The Case for God (2009)

  But “when the Whole [Brahman] has become a person’s very self, then who is there for him to see and by what means? Who is there for me to think of and by what means?” 55 But if you learned to “realize” the truth that your most authentic “Self” was identical with Brahman, you understood that it too was “beyond hunger and thirst, sorrow and delusion, old age and death.” 56 You could not achieve this insight by rational logic. You had to acquire the knack of thinking outside the ordinary “lowercase” self, and like any craft or skill, this required long, hard, dedicated practice. One of the principal technologies that enabled people to achieve this self-forgetfulness was yoga. 57 Unlike the yoga practiced in Western gyms today, it was not an aerobic exercise but a systematic breakdown of instinctive behavior and normal thought patterns. It was mentally demanding and, initially, physically painful. The yogin had to do the opposite of what came naturally. He sat so still that he seemed more like a plant or a statue than a human being; he controlled his respiration, one of the most automatic and essential of our physical functions, until he acquired the ability to exist for long periods without breathing at all. He learned to silence the thoughts that coursed through his mind and concentrate “on one point” for hours at a time. If he persevered, he found that he achieved a dissolution of ordinary consciousness that extracted the “I” from his thinking. To this day, yogins find that these disciplines, which have measurable physical and neurological effects, evoke a sense of calm, harmony, and equanimity that is comparable to the effect of music. There is a feeling of expansiveness and bliss, which yogins regard as entirely natural, possible for anybody who has the talent and application. As the “I” disappears, the most humdrum objects reveal wholly unexpected qualities, since they are no longer viewed through the distorting filter of one’s own egotistic needs and desires. When she meditated on the teachings of her guru, a yogin did not simply accept them notionally but experienced them so vividly that her knowledge was, as the texts say, “direct;” bypassing the logical processes like any practically acquired skill, it had become part of her inner world. 58 But yoga also had an ethical dimension. A beginner was not allowed to perform a single yogic exercise until he had completed an intensive moral program. Top of the list of its requirements was ahimsa, “nonviolence.” A yogin must not swat a mosquito, make an irritable gesture, or speak unkindly to others but should maintain constant affability to all, even the most annoying monk in the community.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Seneca, that wise man, tells us there is nothing more pleasing than a humble wife. Suffer your wife to speak, as Cato tells us, and fulfil her commands. Of course, if you are lucky, she may even obey you on occasions. That’s only being polite. A wife must be the keeper of your worldly goods. Who is going to look after you when you are sick? Take my advice. Love your wife in the manner that Jesus Christ loves the Holy Church. If you love yourself, you must also love your wife. No man is an enemy of his own flesh, I am sure. He protects it. You must cherish your wife in the same way. Or you will never thrive. Whatever people say and joke - that was no lady, that was my wife - husband and wife are on the highway to happiness. They are bound so closely together that no harm can come to them. The wife, in particular, gets off lightly. I will now return to my worthy knight named January. He had been considering all the matters I have put before you - the encroaching years, the physical bliss of marriage, the quiet and order of a settled home, the honey pot of a fair wife. Revolving these matters in his mind, he called together a group of his good friends in order to announce his decision. And with grave face he addressed them thus: ‘I am growing old, dear comrades. I am getting closer and closer to the brink of the grave. I must think about the life to come. I have stupidly wasted my strength in pursuit of all sorts of folly. As God is my judge, I am going to change. I have decided to marry as quickly as possible. I need your help in finding a pretty young girl. I need a bride now. I don’t think I can wait much longer. For my part I will look up and down the town. But you all must keep your eyes open, too. You must help me find a suitable wife.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  These are my last words.” They were not, of course, and eventually we made up with much sighing and crying. I had won. He gave me the reins and I took control of my house and property. I also ruled over his tongue - and over his fists. What do you think I did with that book? I made him burn it. When I had taken charge of the household he came up to me and said, “My own true wife, my Alison, do as you please for the rest of your life. Just preserve my honour and my standing.” ‘From that day forward we never had an argument. I swear to God that I became the best wife in the world. I was loyal to him, and he was true to me. I hope his soul is now at peace in a better world. Shall I tell you my story now?’ Biholde the wordes bitwene the Somonour and the Frere The Friar laughed when he heard all this. ‘Now, ma dame,’ he said, ‘by God that was a long preamble to a tale!’ The Summoner was listening. ‘What do you think?’ he asked the other pilgrims. ‘A friar will always be interfering. A friar is like a fly. He will alight on any dish and any meat. What is all this about preamble or perambulation, whatever you call it? Preamble yourself. Or trot, if you like. Or gallop ahead. You are spoiling our fun.’ ‘Is that all you have to say, sir Summoner?’ the Friar replied. ‘By God, before I leave you all, I will tell you a story about a summoner that will keep you in fits of laughter.’ ‘Fuck you, Friar. Before we get to Sittingbourne I will have told two or three tales about your profession that will reduce you to tears. I can see that you have already lost your temper.’ Harry Bailey intervened. ‘Peace! No more squabbling. Let the woman begin her story. You two are behaving like drunks. Go on now, mistress, and tell us your tale.’ ‘I am ready, Mr Bailey. That is, if the worthy Friar here will let me continue.’ ‘Ma dame,’ the Friar replied. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure.’

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The Romantic poets revived a spirituality that had been submerged in the scientific age. By approaching nature in a different way, they had recovered a sense of its numinous mystery. Wordsworth was wary of the “meddling intellect” that “murders to dissect,” pulling reality apart in its rigorous analysis. Unlike the scientists and rationalists, the poet did not seek to master nature but to acquire a “wise passiveness” and “a heart that watches and receives.”69 He could then hear the silently imparted lessons that had been impressed upon him by the streams, mountains, and groves of the Lake District during his infancy.70 Since reaching adulthood, both Wordsworth and Shelley had felt estranged from this living presence; the receptive, listening attitude had been educated out of them. But by assiduously cultivating this “wise passiveness,” Wordsworth had recovered an insight that was not dissimilar to that achieved by yogins and mystics. It was a blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.71 Like some of the philosophes, Wordsworth was fascinated by the workings of the human mind; he understood that the mind deeply affected our perception of the external world but was convinced that this was a two-way process. The external world silently informed our mental processes; the human psyche was receptive as well as creative, “working but in alliance with the works which it beholds.”72 Wordsworth’s younger contemporary John Keats (1795–1821) used the term “Negative Capability” to describe the ekstatic attitude that was essential to poetic insight. It occurred “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”73 Instead of seeking to control the world by aggressive reasoning, Keats was ready to plunge into the dark night of unknowing: “I am however young writing at random— straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness— without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion.”74 He claimed gleefully that he had no opinions at all, because he had no self. A poet, he believed, was “the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity.”75 True poetry had no time for “the egotistical sublime,”76 which forced itself on the reader:

• From The Case for God (2009)

  By the beginning of the third century BCE, six main philosophical schools had emerged: Platonism, Aristotelianism, Skepticism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism. They all saw theory as secondary to and dependent upon practice, and all regarded philosophy as a transformative way of life rather than a purely theoretical system. Each school developed its own scholasticism, building huge doctrinal edifices of written reflection on the teaching of the sages, but these writings were secondary to the oral transmission of the tradition.74 When a philosopher expounded an authority, such as Plato or Aristotle, his chief purpose was to shape the spirituality of his pupils. He would, therefore, feel free to give the old texts an entirely new interpretation if this met the needs of a particular group. What mattered was the prestige and antiquity of the old texts, not the author’s original intention. Until the early modern period, most Western thought developed in a way that was reminiscent of the modern design technique of bricolage, where something new is constructed from an assemblage of whatever materials happen to lie at hand. The Hellenistic era that followed the establishment of the empire of Alexander the Great (c. 356–323) and its subsequent disintegration was a period of political and social turbulence.75 Consequently, Hellenistic philosophy was chiefly concerned with the cultivation of interior peace.76 Epicurus (341–270), for example, established a community outside Athens near the Academy, where his disciples could lead a frugal, secluded life and avoid mental disturbance. At the same time, Zeno (342–270), who lectured in the Painted Stoa in the Athenian agora, preached a philosophy of ataraxia, “freedom from pain”: Stoics hoped to achieve total serenity by means of meditation and a disciplined, sober lifestyle.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Other traditions would also find that these fundamental principles were indispensable: Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism, and Daoism, as well as the three monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each had its own unique genius and distinctive vision, each its peculiar flaws. But on these central principles they would all agree. Religion was not a notional matter. The Buddha, for example, had little time for theological speculation. One of his monks was a philosopher manqué and, instead of getting on with his yoga, constantly pestered the Buddha about metaphysical questions: Was there a god? Had the world been created in time or had it always existed? The Buddha told him that he was like a man who had been shot with a poisoned arrow and refused medical treatment until he had discovered the name of his assailant and what village he came from. He would die before he got this perfectly useless information. What difference would it make to discover that a god had created the world? Pain, hatred, grief, and sorrow would still exist. These issues were fascinating, but the Buddha refused to discuss them because they were irrelevant: “My disciples, they will not help you, they are not useful in the quest for holiness; they do not lead to peace and to the direct knowledge of Nirvana.”64 The Buddha always refused to define Nirvana, because it could not be understood notionally and would be inexplicable to anybody who did not undertake his practical regimen of meditation and compassion. But anybody who did commit him-or herself to the Buddhist way of life could attain Nirvana, which was an entirely natural state.65 Sometimes, however, Buddhists would speak of Nirvana using the same kind of imagery as monotheists use of God: it was the “Truth,” the “Other Shore,” “Peace,” the “Everlasting,” and “the Beyond.” Nirvana was a still center that gave meaning to life, an oasis of calm, and a source of strength that you discovered in the depths of your own being. In purely mundane terms, it was “nothing,” because it corresponded to no reality that we could recognize in our ego-dominated existence. But those who had managed to find this sacred peace discovered that they lived an immeasurably richer life66. There was no question of “believing” in the existence of Nirvana or taking it “on faith.” The Buddha had no time for abstract doctrinal formulations divorced from action. Indeed, to accept a dogma on somebody else’s authority was what he called “unskillful” or “unhelpful” (akusala). It could not lead to enlightenment because it amounted to an abdication of personal responsibility. Faith meant trust that Nirvana existed and a determination to realize it by every practical means in one’s power.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  It seemed that the scientific knowledge that had come upon the early modern world with the force of a new revelation was not, after all, fundamentally different from the understanding we derived from the humanities. In Knowing and Being, Michael Polyani (1891–1976), a chemist and philosopher of science, argued that all knowledge was tacit rather than objectively and self-consciously acquired. He drew attention to the role of practical knowledge, which had been greatly overlooked in the modern emphasis on theoretical understanding. We learn how to swim or dance without being able to explain precisely how it is done. We recognize a friend’s face without being able to specify exactly what it is that we recognize. Our perception of the external world is not a mechanical, straightforward absorption of data. We integrate a vast number of things into a focal awareness, subjecting them to an interpretive framework that is so deeply rooted that we cannot make it explicit. The speed and complexity of this integration easily outstrips the relatively ponderous processes of logic or inference. Indeed, knowledge is of little use to us until it has been made tacit. Once we have learned how to drive a car, “the text of the manual is shifted to the back of the driver’s mind and transported almost entirely to the tacit operations of a skill.”65 When we learn a skill, we literally dwell in the innumerable muscular actions we perform without fully knowing how we achieve them. All understanding, Polyani claimed, is like this. We interiorize a language or a poem “and make ourselves dwell in them. Such extensions of ourselves develop new faculties in us; our whole education operates in this way; as each of us interiorises the cultural heritage, she grows into a person seeing the world and experiencing life in terms of this outlook.”66 This, it has been pointed out, is not dissimilar to the Cappadocians’ insistence that the knowledge of God was acquired not merely cerebrally but by the physical participation in the liturgical tradition of the Church, which initiated people into a form of knowing that was silent and could not be clearly articulated.67 Polyani argued that the scientific method is not simply a matter of progressing from ignorance to objectivity; as in the humanities, it is more likely to consist of a more complex movement from explicit to tacit knowledge. In order for their investigations to work, scientists often have to believe things that they know will be later proved wrong—though they can never be sure which of their current convictions will be so jettisoned. Because there is so much that cannot be proven, there will always be an element of what religious people call “faith” in science—the kind of faith that physicists showed in Einstein’s theory of relativity in the absence of empirical proof.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Even though the Greeks found his interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve far too literal, Augustine was no die-hard biblical literalist. He took science very seriously, and his “principle of accommodation” would dominate biblical interpretation in the West until well into the early modern period. God had, as it were, adapted revelation to the cultural norms of the people who had first received it.62 One of the psalms, for example, clearly reflects the ancient view, long outmoded by Augustine’s time, that there was a body of water above the earth that caused rainfall.63 It would be absurd to interpret this text literally. God had simply accommodated the truths of revelation to the science of the day so that the people of Israel could understand it; today a text like this must be interpreted differently. Whenever the literal meaning of scripture clashed with reliable scientific information, Augustine insisted, the interpreter must respect the integrity of science or he would bring scripture into disrepute.64 And there must be no unseemly quarreling about the Bible. People who engaged in acrimonious discussion of religious truth were simply in love with their own opinions and had forgotten the cardinal teaching of the Bible, which was the love of God and neighbor.65 The exegete must not leave a text until he could make it “establish the reign of charity,” and if a literal understanding of any biblical passage seemed to teach hatred, the text must be interpreted allegorically and forced to preach love.66 Augustine had absorbed the underlying spirit of Greek apophatic theology, but the West did not develop a fully fledged spirituality of silence until the ninth century, when the writings of an unknown Greek author were translated into Latin and achieved near-canonical status in Europe. He used the pseudonym Denys the Areopagite, Saint Paul’s first Athenian convert,67 but he was almost certainly writing toward the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth centuries. During the medieval period, Denys had a profound influence on nearly every major Western theologian. The fact that very few people have even heard of him today is, perhaps, a symptom of our current religious malaise.68

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The Buddha told him that he was like a man who had been shot with a poisoned arrow and refused medical treatment until he had discovered the name of his assailant and what village he came from. He would die before he got this perfectly useless information. What difference would it make to discover that a god had created the world? Pain, hatred, grief, and sorrow would still exist. These issues were fascinating, but the Buddha refused to discuss them because they were irrelevant: “My disciples, they will not help you, they are not useful in the quest for holiness; they do not lead to peace and to the direct knowledge of Nirvana.” 64 The Buddha always refused to define Nirvana, because it could not be understood notionally and would be inexplicable to anybody who did not undertake his practical regimen of meditation and compassion. But anybody who did commit him-or herself to the Buddhist way of life could attain Nirvana, which was an entirely natural state. 65 Sometimes, however, Buddhists would speak of Nirvana using the same kind of imagery as monotheists use of God: it was the “Truth,” the “Other Shore,” “Peace,” the “Everlasting,” and “the Beyond.” Nirvana was a still center that gave meaning to life, an oasis of calm, and a source of strength that you discovered in the depths of your own being. In purely mundane terms, it was “nothing,” because it corresponded to no reality that we could recognize in our ego-dominated existence. But those who had managed to find this sacred peace discovered that they lived an immeasurably richer life 66 . There was no question of “believing” in the existence of Nirvana or taking it “on faith.” The Buddha had no time for abstract doctrinal formulations divorced from action. Indeed, to accept a dogma on somebody else’s authority was what he called “unskillful” or “unhelpful” (akusala). It could not lead to enlightenment because it amounted to an abdication of personal responsibility. Faith meant trust that Nirvana existed and a determination to realize it by every practical means in one’s power. Nirvana was the natural result of a life lived according to the Buddha’s doctrine of anatta (“no self”), which was not simply a metaphysical principle but, like all his teachings, a program of action. Anatta required Buddhists to behave day by day, hour by hour, as though the self did not exist. Thoughts of “self” not only led to “unhelpful” (akusala) preoccupation with “me” and “mine,” but also to envy, hatred of rivals, conceit, pride, cruelty, and—when the self felt under threat—violence. As a monk became expert in cultivating this dispassion, he no longer interjected his ego into passing mental states but learned to regard his fears and desires as transient and remote phenomena.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  50 This advice would not have appealed to many politicians. Before he drank the hemlock, he washed his body to spare the women, thanked his jailer courteously for his kindness, and made mild jokes about his predicament. Instead of destructive, consuming rage, there was a quiet, receptive peace as he looked death calmly in the face, forbade his friends to mourn, and lovingly accepted their companionship. The execution of Socrates made a lasting impression on Plato, who became so disillusioned that he abandoned his dream of a political career and traveled in the eastern Mediterranean, where he became acquainted with Pythagorean spirituality. When he returned to Athens, he founded a school of philosophy and mathematics in a grove dedicated to the hero Academius on the outskirts of the city. The Academy was nothing like a department of philosophy in a modern Western university. It was a religious association; everybody attended the daily sacrifice to the gods performed by one of the students, who came not only to hear Plato’s ideas but to learn how to conduct their lives. 51 Plato regarded philosophy as an apprenticeship for death, 52 and claimed that this had also been the goal of Socrates: “Those who practise philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.” 53 At the moment of death the soul would become free of the body, so Plato’s disciples had to live out this separation on a daily, hourly basis, paying careful attention to their behavior, as if each moment were their last. They must constantly be on their guard against pettiness and triviality, thus transcending the individualized personality that they would one day leave behind, and strive instead for a panoptic perspective that grasped “both divine and human as a whole.” 54 A philosopher must not be a money lover, a coward, or a braggart; he should be reliable and just in his dealings with others. 55 A man who consistently behaved as if he were already dead should not take earthly affairs too seriously, but should be calm in misfortune. He must eat and drink in moderation, feeding his rational powers instead with “fine arguments and speculations.” If he applied himself faithfully to this regimen, the philosopher would no longer resent his mortality; it would be quite absurd for a man who had lived in this way to be upset when death finally arrived. If he had already set his soul free of the toils of the body, he could “leave it alone, pure and by itself, to get on with its investigations, to yearn after and perceive something, it knows not what.” 56 Like the Pythagoreans, Plato regarded mathematics as a spiritual exercise that helped the philosopher to wean himself from sense perceptions and achieve a level of abstraction that enabled him to view the world in a different way.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  For his followers, Socrates had become an incarnation of divine beatitude, a symbol of the wisdom to which his whole life was directed. Henceforth each school of Greek philosophy would revere its founding sage as an avatar of a transcendent idea that was natural to humanity but almost impossibly difficult to achieve.49 The Greeks had always seen the gods as immanent in human excellence; now the sage would express in human form the rational idea of God that had left the old Olympian theology far behind. Despite his humanity— and Alcibiades makes it clear that he was all too human—Socrates’ unique qualities pointed beyond himself to the transcendence that informed his moral quest. This became especially evident in the manner of his death. Socrates admitted that his conflict with the polis was inevitable. He had approached each of the magistrates of the city personally, trying to persuade him “not to care for any of his belongings before caring that he himself should be as good and as wise as possible; not to care for the city’s possessions more than for the city itself, and to care for other things in the same way.”50 This advice would not have appealed to many politicians. Before he drank the hemlock, he washed his body to spare the women, thanked his jailer courteously for his kindness, and made mild jokes about his predicament. Instead of destructive, consuming rage, there was a quiet, receptive peace as he looked death calmly in the face, forbade his friends to mourn, and lovingly accepted their companionship. The execution of Socrates made a lasting impression on Plato, who became so disillusioned that he abandoned his dream of a political career and traveled in the eastern Mediterranean, where he became acquainted with Pythagorean spirituality. When he returned to Athens, he founded a school of philosophy and mathematics in a grove dedicated to the hero Academius on the outskirts of the city. The Academy was nothing like a department of philosophy in a modern Western university. It was a religious association; everybody attended the daily sacrifice to the gods performed by one of the students, who came not only to hear Plato’s ideas but to learn how to conduct their lives.51

• From The Case for God (2009)

  [image file=image_rsrc4UU.jpg] Faith and ReasonBy the end of the eleventh century, philosophers and theologians in the West had embarked on a project that, they believed, was entirely new. They had begun to apply their reasoning powers systematically to the truths of faith. By now Europe was beginning to recover from the dark age that had descended after the fall of Rome. The Benedictine monks of Cluny in Burgundy had initiated a campaign to educate the clergy and laity, many of whom were woefully ignorant of the rudiments of Christianity. Hundreds of churches were built throughout Christendom, even in quite small villages and settlements, where people could attend Mass and hear the biblical readings. This instruction was reinforced by the cult of pilgrimage. During the long, difficult trek to a holy place— Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, Conques, or Glastonbury—lay folk experienced a “conversion” of life, turning away from their secular affairs and toward the centers of holiness. They traveled in a community of pilgrims, dedicated for the duration to the monastic ideals of austerity, charity, celibacy, and nonviolence. The rich had to share the hardships of the poor, who, in turn, realized that their poverty had spiritual value.1 Instead of being educated in the niceties of doctrine, Western Christians were introduced to their faith as a practical way of life. By the end of the century, there was a marked rise in commitment among the laity, and Europeans had begun to forge a new and distinctively Western Christian identity. Meanwhile, as they became reacquainted with the intellectual heritage of their more sophisticated neighbors in the Greek Byzantine and Islamic worlds, European monks had started to think and pray in a more “rational” way. One of the leading exponents of this new spirituality was Anselm of Laon, abbot of the prestigious monastery and school at Bec in Normandy, who was appointed archbishop of Canterbury by William Rufus in 1093.2 Excited by the new vogue for reasoning, he wanted to make traditional Christian teaching rationally coherent. There was no question of making his loyalty to God dependent upon rational proof; instead he saw his writings “advancing through faith to understanding, rather than proceeding through understanding to faith.”3 Men and women had to use all their faculties when they approached God, and Anselm wanted to make truths grasped intuitively intelligible, so that every part of his mind was involved in the contemplation of God. Augustine had taught the Christians of the West that all their mental activities reflected the divine, and this was particularly true of their reasoning powers. “I confess, Lord, with thanksgiving,” Anselm prayed in his Proslogion (“Colloquy”) with God, “that you have made me in your image, so that I can remember you, think of you and love you.”4 This was the raison d’etre of every “rational creature,” so people must spare no effort in “remembering, understanding and loving the Supreme Good.”5

• From The Case for God (2009)

  51 Plato regarded philosophy as an apprenticeship for death, 52 and claimed that this had also been the goal of Socrates: “Those who practise philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.” 53 At the moment of death the soul would become free of the body, so Plato’s disciples had to live out this separation on a daily, hourly basis, paying careful attention to their behavior, as if each moment were their last. They must constantly be on their guard against pettiness and triviality, thus transcending the individualized personality that they would one day leave behind, and strive instead for a panoptic perspective that grasped “both divine and human as a whole.” 54 A philosopher must not be a money lover, a coward, or a braggart; he should be reliable and just in his dealings with others. 55 A man who consistently behaved as if he were already dead should not take earthly affairs too seriously, but should be calm in misfortune. He must eat and drink in moderation, feeding his rational powers instead with “fine arguments and speculations.” If he applied himself faithfully to this regimen, the philosopher would no longer resent his mortality; it would be quite absurd for a man who had lived in this way to be upset when death finally arrived. If he had already set his soul free of the toils of the body, he could “leave it alone, pure and by itself, to get on with its investigations, to yearn after and perceive something, it knows not what.” 56 Like the Pythagoreans, Plato regarded mathematics as a spiritual exercise that helped the philosopher to wean himself from sense perceptions and achieve a level of abstraction that enabled him to view the world in a different way. Geometry was the hidden principle of the cosmos. Even though a perfect circle or triangle was never seen in the physical world, all material objects were structured on these ideal forms. Indeed, every single earthly reality was modeled on a heavenly archetype in a world of perfect ideas. Plato departed from Socrates in one important respect. He believed that we did not arrive at a conception of virtue by accumulating examples of virtuous behavior in daily life. Like everything else, virtue was an objective phenomenon that existed independently and on a higher plane than the material world. Plato’s “doctrine of the forms” is an extraordinary notion to us moderns. We regard thinking as something that we do, so we naturally assume that our ideas are our own creation. But in the ancient world, people experienced an idea as something that happened to them. It was not a question of the “I” knowing something; instead, the “Known” drew one to itself. People said, in effect, “I think— therefore there is that which I think.”

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Most medieval theologians had rejected Anselm’s ontological proof because, despite its apophatic dynamic, he had called God a “thing” (aliquid) that must “exist.” But now Descartes claimed that God was a “clear and distinct” idea in the human mind and was entirely happy to apply the word “existence” to God. Where Thomas had said that God was not a “sort of thing,” Descartes found no difficulty in calling God a being, albeit the “first and a sovereign Being.”17 Like Anselm, he saw existence as one of the perfections. “For it is not within my power to think of God without existence (that is of a supremely perfect Being devoid of a supreme perfection) though it is in my power to imagine a horse either with wings or without wings.”18 This truth was as clear as—if not clearer than—Pythagoras’s theorem of the right-angled triangle. “Consequently it is at least as certain that God, who is a Being so perfect, is, or exists, as any demonstration of geometry can possibly be.”19 God was absolutely necessary to Descartes’ philosophy and his science, because without God he had no confidence in the reality of the external world.20 Because we could not trust our senses, the existence of material things was “very dubious and uncertain.” But a perfect being was truth itself and would not allow us to remain in error on such a fundamental matter: On the sole ground that God is not a deceiver and that consequently He has not permitted any falsity to exist in my opinion which He has not likewise given me the faculty of correcting, I may assuredly hope to conclude that I have within me the means of arriving at the truth even here.21 What we know about the external world, we know in exactly the same way as God knows it; we could have the same “clear” and “distinct” ideas as God himself. Once Descartes was confident that the material world existed, he could proceed with the second part of his project: the creation of a single scientific method that could bring a world that was spinning out of control under the rule of reason. In his desire to master reality, Descartes could not accept the idea that the cosmos had come into being by accident. His cosmos was an intricate, well-oiled machine, set in motion and sustained by an all-powerful God. Like Mersenne, Descartes revived ancient Greek atomism, but with the crucial addition of an overseeing Creator. At the moment of creation, God had imposed his mathematical laws upon the atoms, so that when an atom collided with another, this was not a matter of chance but achieved by divinely implanted principles.22 Once everything had been set in motion, no further divine action was necessary, and God was able to retire from the world and allow it to run itself.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The subject of the portrait was a woman - a heavybrowed woman with untidy dark hair: she seemed to be sitting very squarely, and her gaze was rather grave. I thought she might be the sister from the family group, grown up; or she might be a friend of Florence’s, or a cousin, or - well, anybody. I leaned over to try to read the handwriting that showed where the card curled over; but it was hidden, and I didn’t like to pluck it free - it wasn’t that intriguing. Then I caught the bubbling of the pan of water I had set upon the stove, and hurried out to see to it. I found a little tin bowl to wash in, and a block of green kitchen soap; and then - since there was no towel, and I didn’t think it really polite to use the dish-cloth - I danced about before the range until I was dry enough to climb back into my dirty petticoats. I thought, with a little sigh, of Diana’s handsome bathroom - of that cabinet of unguents that I had liked to sample for hours at a time. Even so, it was marvellous to be clean again, and when I had combed my hair and tended my face (I rubbed a bit of vinegar into the bruise, and then a bit of flour); when I had thumped the filth from my skirts and pressed them flat and put them on again, I felt fit and warm and quite unreasonably gay. I walked back into the parlour - it was a matter of some ten steps or so - stood for a second there, then returned to the kitchen. It was, I thought, a very pleasant house; as I had already begun to notice, however, it was not a very clean one. The rugs, I saw, all badly wanted beating. The skirting-boards were scuffed and streaked with mud. Every shelf and picture was as dusty as the sooty mantelpiece. If this was my house, I thought, I would keep it smart as a new pin. Then I had a rather wonderful idea. I ran back into the parlour and looked at the clock. Less than an hour had passed since Florence’s departure, and neither she nor Ralph, I guessed, would be home much before five. That gave me about eight whole hours - slightly less, I supposed, if I wanted to be sure of finding myself a room in some lodging-house or hostel while it was still light. How much cleaning could you do in eight hours? I had no idea: it was generally Alice who had helped Mother out at home; I had hardly cleaned a thing before in my life; lately I had had servants to do my cleaning for me. But I felt inspired, now, to tidy this house - this house where I had been, albeit briefly, so content.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  But that did not mean that the divine was wholly inaccessible. We could, as it were, catch a glimpse of God by cultivating a different mode of perception, as the Sufis did when they chanted the names of Allah like a mantra and performed the meditative exercises that induced an altered state of consciousness. But those who did not have the time, talent, or inclination for this type of spirituality could make themselves conscious of God in the smallest details of daily life. Al-Ghazzali developed a spirituality that would enable every single Muslim to become aware of the interior dimension of Muslim law. They should deliberately call to mind the divine presence when they performed such ordinary actions as eating, washing, preparing for bed, praying, almsgiving, and greeting one another. They must guard their ears from slander and obscenity, their tongues from lies; they must refrain from cursing or sneering at others. Their hands must not harm another creature; their hearts must remain free of envy, anger, hypocrisy, and pride. 25 This vigilance— similar to that practiced by Stoics, Epicureans, Buddhists, and Jains— would bridge the gap between outward observance and interior commitment; it would transform the smallest action of daily life into a ritual that made God present in the lives of ordinary men and women, even if they could not prove this rationally. It has been said that al-Ghazzali was the most important Muslim since the Prophet Muhammad. After al-Ghazzali, one great philosopher after another—Yahya Suhrawardi (d. 1191), Muid ad-Din ibn al-Arabi (1165–1240), Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207–73), Mir Dimad (d. 1631), and his pupil Mulla Sadra (1571–1640)—insisted that theology must be fused with spirituality. The philosopher had a sacred duty to be as intellectually rigorous as Aristotle and as mystical as a Sufi; reason was indispensable for science, medicine, and mathematics, but a reality that transcended the senses could be approached only by more intuitive modes of thought. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Sufism ceased to be a fringe movement and remained the dominant Islamic mode until the nineteenth century. Ordinary laypeople practiced Sufi exercises, and these disciplines helped them to get beyond simplistically anthropomorphic ideas of God and experience the divine as a transcendent presence within. The Jews in the Islamic empire, who were so excited by falsafah that they developed a philosophical movement of their own, had a similar experience.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  So what happens if you give in? If you accept yourself, right at this moment, just as you are, without preconditions of any sort? Can you, as Walt Whitman suggests, be content with yourself as you are right now, whether fully isolated, or scrutinized by millions? This chapter describes a range of practices that can unlock this greater openness to who you actually are, openness that begets kindness and self-love. These practices coax you to more fully accept and appreciate who and how you are right now, failures and shortcomings and all. I describe both the formal practice of loving-kindness meditation as well as more informal practices, each of which allows you to experiment with self-love. These practices are not self-indulgent, navel-gazing escapes from reality. Like positivity resonance, they build your foundation for health and well-being. Indeed, studies show that self-directed, self-compassionate love is far more vital to your health and happiness than is oft-touted high self-esteem. Where to Start? Although people don’t differ in their worthiness of their own love, they differ a great deal in their ability to offer it. For many people—and you may be one of them—offering warmth and tenderness to yourself feels more than a little bit awkward. For whatever reasons, you simply may be unaccustomed to fully accepting and caring for yourself as you are. This may be a particular hang-up for those of us born and raised in cultures that foster deflating self-criticism, puffed-up self-aggrandizement, or both. Initial research bears this out. Kristin Neff, a developmental scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who has pioneered scientific assessment of a form of self-love that she calls self-compassion , has found this to be the case. Her research shows that people in cultures—like the United States—that are heavy on both self-deprecation and high self-esteem show lower levels of self-love and by consequence experience higher rates of depression and dissatisfaction with life. By contrast, people in cultures—like Thailand—where Buddhism infuses more self-acceptance into daily life show higher levels of self-love and by consequence seem to suffer less depression and dissatisfaction. Indeed, lore among those who teach LKM is that barriers to self-love are particularly high among Western students. Sharon Salzberg, cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society, in Barre, Massachusetts, is perhaps the leading Western teacher of LKM. It’s no overstatement to say that she is the person most responsible for first bringing the practice of LKM from the East to the West, having first encountered this ancient practice in India in the 1970s and then practicing it intensively in Burma in the 1980s. I’m lucky to be able to draw on Sharon’s deep expertise while I craft my experiments on LKM’s effects, as she serves as a consultant on my research grants. Sharon tells me that Western students frequently encounter difficulties or resistance when encouraged to direct loving-kindness toward themselves. Some even fall asleep at this stage.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  On the subject of toleration and the punishment of heretics, Bullinger agreed with the prevailing theory, but favorably differed from the prevailing practice. He opposed the Anabaptists in his writings, as much as Zwingli, and, like Melanchthon, he approved of the unfortunate execution of Servetus, but he himself did not persecute. He tolerated Laelio Sozini, who quietly died at Zürich (1562), and Bernardino Occhino, who preached for some time to the Italian congregation in that city, but was deposed, without further punishment, for teaching Unitarian opinions and defending polygamy. In a book against the Roman Catholic Faber, Bullinger expresses the Christian and humane sentiment that no violence should be done to dissenters, and that faith is a free gift of God, which cannot be commanded or forbidden. He agreed with Zwingli’s extension of salvation to all infants dying in infancy and to elect heathen; at all events, he nowhere dissents from these advanced views, and published with approbation Zwingli’s last work, where they are most strongly expressed.315 Bullinger’s house was a happy Christian home. He liked to play with his numerous children and grandchildren, and to write little verses for them at Christmas, like Luther.316

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Aun así, ella está bastante tiempo sola. Él ni siquiera permanece en casa las noches que ella tiene libre y me pregunto por qué demonios lo soporta. Ella parece capaz y con fortaleza. Una chica que puede cuidarse sola. ¿Qué los unió? De hecho, no parece tener a nadie más que a Cole y esa hermana suya. Ningún amigo u otros miembros de la familia han pasado por aquí a verla, que pueda decir. Aunque, de cualquier modo, estoy disfrutando teniéndola por aquí, incluso si deseo que Cole estuviera más en casa. Sonrío en cuanto paso por la puerta cada tarde, escuchando música de los ochenta sonando por la casa y de algún modo parece incluso más verano aquí dentro. Es agradable no volver a una casa vacía para variar, e incluso me sorprendo dejando el trabajo a tiempo todos los días, porque en realidad ahora disfruto estar en casa. Ella y yo hemos charlado más a lo largo de los últimos días, hablando sobre cómo fue el trabajo o cómo le está yendo en la escuela, y la chica tiene la extraña habilidad de hacerme hablar. Le gusta hacer cosas y es buena burlándose o haciendo bromas para tranquilizarme. Puedo prescindir de su lasaña de berenjena, eso está claro, pero si no estuviera aquí, Cole me estaría evitando incluso más de lo que lo hace hasta ahora, y no me estaría mordiendo la lengua con él como lo hago. Estoy contento de que ella esté aquí. Sosteniendo la bolsa de la ropa sucia sobre mi hombro, bajo las escaleras, girándome en la barandilla y entrando a la lavandería. Después de sacar mi ropa de la secadora, saco otras cosas de la lavadora y meto una nueva carga, encendiendo de nuevo ambas máquinas. Veo un rastro de polvo al frente de mi camiseta por trabajar esta mañana en el garaje y me la quito, metiéndola en la lavadora antes de cerrar la tapa. Dejando la bolsa sobre la ropa seca, tomo el cesto y vuelvo escaleras arriba. En mi habitación, arrojo la ropa sobre la cama y hurgo entre la pila, buscando otra camiseta. Pero me detengo, pasando ligeramente mis dedos sobre una pequeña pieza de tela roja que no reconozco. Está amontonada en mis jeans y no tengo que pensar dos veces para saber qué es. Mierda. Enganchando el dedo en la pequeña banda, miro a través de la pequeña tanga roja colgando de mi dedo. —¿Qué demonios? —digo entre dientes, bajando la mirada hacia la ropa para comprobar dos veces que es la mía—. ¿Cómo llegó esto a mis cosas?—. ¡Jord…! — grito pero me detengo, dándome cuenta de lo extraño que va a parecer si tengo su ropa interior. Voy a parecer un morboso, siendo atrapado con su ropa interior. Jesús. Suelto la prenda como si fuera un sartén caliente. Cae sobre la cama y me froto la nuca, sintiendo el ligero sudor en mi piel. Mi mente divaga.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He preached both in his convent and in the town-church, sometimes daily for a week, sometimes thrice in one day, during Lent in 1517 twice everyday. He was supported by the convent. As professor he took no fees from the students and received only a salary of one hundred guilders, which after his marriage was raised by the Elector John to two hundred guilders.153 He first lectured on scholastic philosophy and explained the Aristotelian dialectics and physics. But he soon passed through the three grades of bachelor, licentiate, and doctor of divinity (October 18th and 19th, 1512), and henceforth devoted himself exclusively to the sacred science which was much more congenial to his taste. Staupitz urged him into these academic dignities,154 and the Elector who had been favorably impressed with one of his sermons, offered to pay the expenses (fifty guilders) for the acquisition of the doctorate.155 Afterward in seasons of trouble Luther often took comfort from the title and office of his doctorate of divinity and his solemn oath to defend with all his might the Holy Scriptures against all errors.156 He justified the burning of the Pope’s Bull in the same way. But the oath of ordination and of the doctor of theology implied also obedience to the Roman church (ecclesiae Romanae obedientiam) and her defence against all heresies condemned by her.157 With the year 1512 his academic teaching began in earnest and continued till 1546, at first in outward harmony with the Roman church, but afterward in open opposition to it. He was well equipped for his position, according to the advantages of his age, but, very poorly, according to modern requirements, as far as technical knowledge is concerned.Although a doctor of divinity, he relied for several years almost exclusively on the Latin version of the Scriptures. Very few professors knew Greek, and still less, Hebrew. Luther had acquired a superficial idea of Hebrew at Erfurt from Reuchlin’s Rudimenta Hebraica.158 The Greek he learned at Wittenberg, we do not know exactly when, mostly from books and from his colleagues, Johann Lange and Melanchthon. As late as Feb. 18th, 1518, he asked Lange, "the Greek," a question about the difference between ajnavqhma and ajnavqema, and confessed that he could not draw the Greek letters.159 His herculean labor in translating the Bible forced him into a closer familiarity with the original languages, though he never attained to mastery. As a scholar he remained inferior to Reuchlin or Erasmus or Melanchthon, but as a genius he was their superior, and as a master of his native German he had no equal in all Germany. Moreover, he turned his knowledge to the best advantage, and always seized the strong point in controversy. He studied with all his might and often neglected eating and sleeping. Luther opened his theological teaching with David and Paul, who became the pillars of his theology. The Psalms and the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians remained his favorite books.