Category: Sage Advice
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How to Lose Weight
I don’t doubt that Americans are the fattest people in the world. Some years back I landed at New York’s JFK airport after a year in Turkey. Walking from the plane into the terminal, and without having given any thought to the matter, the first thing that struck me was how obese Americans are. Many…
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How to Become Wealthy Overnight
John Blofeld, Beyond the Gods: Buddhist and Taoist Mysticism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974), p. 153: For the sake of wealth, people already well above the poverty line slave all their lives, not realising that withdrawal from the rat-race would immediately increase rather than diminish their wealth. Obviously anyone who finds the full satisfaction of…
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Go For Broke and Die with Your Boots On
Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, pp. 56-57: Moore's health was quite good in 1946-47, but before that he had suffered a stroke and his doctor had advised that he should not become greatly excited or fatigued. Mrs. Moore enforced that prescription by not allowing Moore to have a philosophical discussion with anyone for longer…
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Give In or Stand One’s Ground?
Should we give in to others or stand our ground? It depends on the circumstances. It is foolish to try to conciliate or accommodate someone who will be made worse by our conciliation, someone who will be emboldened in his wrongdoing. Conciliation in such a case becomes appeasement. There were bullies in the schoolyard who…
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Seize and Squeeze
Seize the day and squeeze it for all the juice it's worth. Repeat tomorrow. And no day without a little Emerson: . . . we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as…
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Control Your Mind!
A thought arises. Interrogate it: Whither? To what purpose? The climber tests each foothold before putting his weight on it. So should we test each thought before living in it and losing ourselves in it. Why? Because the seed of word and deed is in the thought. To control thought is to control the seed…
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The Problem of the Fugitive Thought: Write It Down Before It Escapes!
If you are blessed by a good thought, do not hesitate to write it down at once. Good thoughts are visitors from Elsewhere and like most visitors they do not like being snubbed or made to wait. Let us say a fine aphorism flashes before your mind. There it is is fully formed. All you…
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In the Interests of Prandial Harmony
Some of you will be at table with relatives today. Experientia docet: Such occasions of putative conviviality can easily degenerate into nastiness. A prophylactic to consider is the avoidance of all talk of politics and religion. But to paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, What else is there to talk about? An exaggeration, no doubt, but God…
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Advice for Those in Despair
Theodor Haecker, Tag- und Nachtbuecher 1939-1945 (Haymon Verlag, 1989), p. 115, entry of 4 October 1940: Ich habe einmal einem Verzweifelnden den Rat gegeben, zu tun, was ich selber in aehnlichen Zustaenden getan habe, in kurzen Fristen zu leben. Komm, sagte ich mir damals, eine Viertelstunde wirst du es ja noch aushalten koennen! I once…
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Ambition and Age
Lack of ambition in the young is rightly seen as a defect. But here is an old man still driven by his old ambitions, none of which were of too lofty a nature. Is he not a fool? For his old ambitions, appropriate as they were in youth, have become absurd in old age. His…
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The Epicurean Cure
Epicurus as quoted by Pierre Hadot in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Blackwell 1995, p. 87): We must concern ourselves with the healing of our own lives. He proposes a TETRAPHARMAKOS, a four-fold healing formula: God presents no fears, death no worries. And while good is readily attainable,…
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Epictetus Advises Imelda Marcos
Epictetus, Enchiridion, tr. E. Carter, XXXIX: The body is to everyone the measure of the possessions proper for it, as the foot is of the shoe. If, therefore, you stop at this, you will keep the measure; but if you move beyond it, you must necessarily be carried forward, as down a precipice; as in…
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A Method of Study
From a reader: I have a few questions, they're very practical in nature. I was hoping if you could give me a brief outline of your method of study and how you read books? How do you keep track of such a vast amount of resources? I'm on information overload because, well, I'm a 21st…
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Be Positive!
The Cloudview Trailhead is the one nearest to my house. It is a bit hard to get to as one must negotiate a number of turns. One fellow didn't like people driving onto his property in search of it so he posted a sign: Not the Trailhead! Some time ago I notice he had replaced…
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Master Desire and Aversion
It is a curious fact that a man who has no time for his own wife easily finds time for the wife of another. Not valuing what he has, he desires what he does not have, even though at some level he understands that, were he to take possession of what he now merely desires,…