Infatuation is one part sexual desire, one part restlessness, and one part misdirected love of the Good.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
Desideratum
It would be desirable to be able to survey one's faults and limitations with an equanimity that does not give way to acceptance, but combines with both a gentle resolve to work at self-improvement, and a detachment from the outcome of such work.
Getting Stoned
It means one thing in the decadent West, quite another in the fanatical Middle East.
The more we become 'stoners,' the more readily do we become objects of 'stonings.'
Intimacy, Reserve, and Bukowski’s Bluebird
We desire intimacy with human others but we must combine it with reserve.
And this for three reasons: out of respect for the Other and her inwardness; from a sober recognition of our fallen tendency to dominate; and out of a need to protect ourselves.
The wise do not wear their hearts on their sleeves, but neither do they suppress Bukowski's bluebird.
If Less Horrifying . . .
. . . would this world and the people in it be as intellectually stimulating?
Men and women of my stripe love to beat their heads against puzzles, problems, mysteries, and every type of conundrum.
Well, Lord, you have certainly given us fodder for brain-bashing. And if this world is, as your top reps maintain, a divine fiction, one dependent in its Dasein and Sosein moment-by-moment, then I must say you have done a mighty fine job. It seems so bloody real and self-existent as to exclude you as author and itself as just divine text.
Gender Appropriation?
There is much inane talk these days of 'cultural appropriation.' Is it 'gender appropriation' when women wear pants?
The Misery of Philosophy I
Philosophy is endless because inconclusive. But how is knotting one's thread with a dogma better than going on endlessly? After all, what we want is knowledge of truth, not the mere fixation of belief.
Human Perversity
One seizes upon a present good, sensuous pleasure, even though it is transient and ultimately unsatisfactory, over a merely possible lasting future good to be had by foregoing the present good.
Republicans
Parlano molto ma fanno poco.
They talk a lot but do little.
False Expectation
He who expects all of life to be both wise and philosophical is neither.
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Modeled on Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837):
Nessun maggior segno d'essere poco filosofo e poco savio, che volere savia e filosofica tutta la vita.
There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical.
(Giacomo Leopardi, Pensieri, tr. W. S. Di Piero, Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1981, p. 69) Do you see how the translation imports an ambiguity that is not present in the Italian original?
Aspiration Date
We each have an expiration date on which we will draw and expel our last breath. And there was a day on which we first drew breath. But more significant than either is one's spiritual aspiration date, the date, if it comes at all, on which one awakens to the Quest.
Compensation
To compensate us for loss of hearing, old age grants us the wisdom to appreciate that most of what is said is not worth hearing in the first place.
Deformative Influences
We speak of formative influences; why not also of deformative influences? Parents and siblings, family and friends, church and school, the rude impacts of nature, the softer ones of language and culture — all contribute to our formation but to our deformation as well. The learning of a craft is a formation, but as Nietzsche sagely observes, "Every craft makes crooked." If so, every formation is a deformation.
A Goal of Meditation
To bring the soul into the field of awareness and not merely believe in it like the religionist or reason about it like the philosopher.
Notes After a Meditation Session
The discursive mind loves the dust it kicks up. We love distraction, diversion, dissipation, and diremption, even as we sense their nullity and the need to attain interior silence. This is one reason why meditation is so hard. We love to ride the wild horse of the mind. It is much easier than swimming upstream to the Source.
Or to unmix the metaphors, it is much easier to ride than rein in that crazy horse. But we have the reins in our hands, and it is just a matter of having the will to yank back on them. (10 September 1997)