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| 0226346803
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| Dec 01, 1974
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| 1909314552
| 9781909314559
| 1909314552
| 4.48
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| Jul 27, 2015
| Nov 10, 2015
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it was amazing
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This essay deals with equally important topics in Buddhist practice, all schools and sects combined, yet the link between these two concepts do not se
This essay deals with equally important topics in Buddhist practice, all schools and sects combined, yet the link between these two concepts do not seem to be obvious, even further their link to the idea of enlightenment, as the central purpose of Buddhism is also not immediate. This book aims at explaining more about these core concepts from the practical point of view, starting from the earliest Buddhist texts which details the practice of both compassion and emptiness, preserved in different Buddhist traditions and in various languages. Starting from compassion, it is popular knowledge that compassion is central to Buddhist practice, and its importance can be seen even among lay followers without ever consulting any texts. Compassion is encouraged first as a general attitude to be adopted in one’s daily life and also as a meditation practice. As a meditation practice, it supports and strengthens this mental attitude during daily life. It also protects from the proliferation of unwholesome mental attitudes such as anger, malevolence, and cruelty towards others. But most importantly, compassion meditation is a mind broadening mental training. The idea is to keep extending the idea of compassion progressively across broader mental levels until it encompasses all consciousness, overcoming any hindrance that may arise in the mind. In fact, hindrances such as anger or covetousness are fixations that arise in the mind, proliferate, and then disappear. The untrained mind is easily sidetracked by them and rapidly overwhelmed by their presence and trapped immediately in their endless cycle. Therefore, compassion Meditation can be considered as a concentration exercise that targets the overcoming of the hindrances while developing a broad and flexible mind. This broad mind is then pushed further using the concept of emptiness. Emptiness in Buddhist practice is a concept that targets the impermanence of phenomena rather than its non-existence. Far from being a nihilistic approach to the phenomena it is a tool to dissect how human existence is a mental construction made out of the diverse source material of physical substance, feelings, perception and recollection of mental images. Once this mental construct is analyzed, what is left behind it is the impermanent arising and cessation of the mind. Therefore, in Buddhist terms, all phenomena are empty. In practical terms, the realization and clear comprehension of emptiness is developed through what the Buddhist texts call residing in emptiness, a practice that the Buddha described by detailing progressive steps. It is here where the mind broadening achieved through compassion meditation becomes the bridge to emptiness practice. As the mind becomes free from hindrances and malleable enough, the idea is to shift attention and build a mental distance from perceptions. As the Buddha puts it, for a forest dwelling monk he begins the exercise by not perceiving his fellow monks, as they are an empty and impermanent perception, then proceed by removing subsequent perceptions like that of the forest, then earth and follow by that of space, then move progressively to that of consciousness. The purpose is to realize the conditioned, impermanent, and inessential nature of all these mental constructions. Even further, the realization of the emptiness of what is perceived is extended to the perceiver. Central to clinging and suffering is the perception of a self that perceives experiences, delights, or sufferers. The practice of residing in emptiness aims to the realization that this entity perceived as a separate and essential Self who experiences the world is in itself a construction, fueled by ignorance and delusion, and leading to a fundamentally wrong comprehension of the real nature of human existence. This is an important step towards complete liberation of the mind by the eradication of ignorance and uprooting of conceit. ...more |
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| 1681724057
| 9781681724058
| B09CH8KVZY
| 4.61
| 36
| unknown
| Aug 11, 2021
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it was amazing
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Bhikkhu Analayo is a German born Buddhist monk trained and ordained in Sri Lanka. In addition to being a meditation practitioner and teacher, he is on
Bhikkhu Analayo is a German born Buddhist monk trained and ordained in Sri Lanka. In addition to being a meditation practitioner and teacher, he is one of the most influential scholars in Buddhist academia in the last few years. He published numerous articles and books about an area of study called Early Buddhism. In fact, during the few centuries following the Buddha’s death, his teaching was transmitted orally, therefore, in its journey from India to China, Sri Lanka and Tibet, Buddhist texts and practices had different lines of transmissions in different languages and interpretations, which resulted in the emergence of different schools of thought. Early Buddhism is an academic research area where these different texts are compared in order to isolate what is the common core between them, supposing that what is most common is the closest to what the Buddha really taught. As simple as it might sound, this was not possible due to the language barrier, as the texts are preserved in different ancient languages, namely Pali, Chinese and Tibetan. The contribution of Bhikkhu Analayo is that he learned all of these languages and was able to perform a cross examination of these texts, which is the concept behind all his academic research. In the case of this small volume, he tackles the concept of feeling in Early Buddhist thought, by providing multiple essays examining Buddhist texts in Pali, and comparing them to the Chinese and Tibetan counterparts. Then he comes out with a conclusion that highlights the most essential understanding and the kind of practical training that should be followed. Feeling, or Vedana as it is called in Pali, is pivotal in the Buddhist understanding of the human experience. According to Buddhist analysis, our experience of the world is a series of fragmented events that rises, lasts for a while then ceases, giving place to another event. It starts with a stimulus and ends up with a response. Although these events are somehow fragmented, they can be dependent on each other. The most obvious link is that of habituation, as when we react with anger towards something we are more likely to react identically to a similar stimulus. If those events are examined closely, which is one of the aims of meditation practice, what comes out is not a monolithic event, but a series of elements that constitute what we are deluded into thinking its one experience. Every event from its rise to its disappearance can be thus broken down into a chain of elements called the twelve links of depending arising that goes as follows: ignorance, volitional formations, consciousness, name and form, six sense spheres, contact, Vedana, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, aging and death. Each one of these links is a subject of investigation on its own in the Buddhist practice, but the focus of this little volume is restricted to the link of feeling. Due to its position after contact and before craving, it is a perfect tool to investigate the nature of human experience. On occasions of bodily pain or intense pleasure, it is easy to be aware of feeling, however, there is no experience that exists on its own without feelings, the mental formations are also accompanied by feelings that we are most of the time unaware of. The emphasis on feeling in the Buddhist texts in this volume shows that the meditation on feeling tone is an excellent tool to unlock the subjective experience, break it down and have an insight of its true nature. As a result, it enables the breaking of the ever-continuous chain of dependent arising that leads to continuous suffering and rebirth. Certain aspects of feeling are an easy target and can be practiced not only during sitting meditation but in everyday life. Like all other aspects of human experience feelings are impermanent, but their impermanence is easy to spot, therefore, the mindfulness of their ever-changing nature from pleasant, to unpleasant and neutral is a basic yet effective exercise. Feelings can be broken down to mental feelings and bodily feelings, present feelings can be transposed to past and future feelings which occur with the same process. Moreover, when observed carefully, it is clear that feeling is conditioned to some sort of contact. This contact can be with a mental object, such as the mind coming into contact with some idea which provokes pleasure or displeasure; or a physical contact, which can be as simple as physical stimulus like cold and heat. On the other hand, feelings are the main drive for craving, as the pursuit of pleasure and aversion to displeasure is also an automatic reaction of the untrained mind. Even in the case of neutral feelings, they are perceived with an undertone of discomfort and a haste towards another stimulus that can replace them with a more pleasurable feeling. Another interesting aspect of insight that contemplation of feeling can allow meditators, is the disengagement from feeling. We can experience feelings without completely identifying with them. Simply noting their presence and acknowledging their nature is an alternative to being completely carried away and overwhelmed by their strength. This practice aims to replace the automatic response with a much more reflected and learned one. Even if the stimulus is painful, the unwise reaction most of the time adds layers of suffering to it, which can be avoided through proper training and understanding, bringing us back to the importance of the share of self inflicted pain in the totality of the pain we really suffer due to external stimuli. Not identifying with feelings reduces the suffering which comes with the painful feelings, but also the unsatisfactoriness that comes with knowing that pleasurable feelings will change soon. In the end, the purpose is to break the components of experience and understand how they depend on each other, therefore allowing the practitioner to stop the chain reaction that leads to continuous repetition of the same habits. This breaking apart also leads to insight into the real nature of the human experience and how if kept to itself it will lead only to perpetual bondage. Through this understanding one gains a certain degree of independence not only from the stimuli itself, but from his own way of reacting to it, progressing towards disenchantment, and letting go of all conditions which lead to suffering. ...more |
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| 1911407562
| 9781911407560
| B08J4DNM2R
| 4.43
| 14
| unknown
| Sep 22, 2020
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it was amazing
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The author of this book is a German born Buddhist monk ordained and trained in Sri Lanka in the Theravada tradition. He is an eminent scholar of Buddh
The author of this book is a German born Buddhist monk ordained and trained in Sri Lanka in the Theravada tradition. He is an eminent scholar of Buddhism and a prominent meditation teacher. His study area is Early Buddhism. In fact, Buddhism as we see it today is composed of different schools of thought, interpretation, and practices. Each one of these schools base their practice on a set of texts that were transmitted orally and then written centuries after the death of the Buddha. Furthermore, each of these texts are in a different language and were transmitted by a reciting tradition proper to a peculiar area. As a result of this situation, we have texts in Pali from Sri Lanka, in Chinese from China, Tibetan, and Sanskrit and Gandhari fragment from the Indian sphere of influence. For most of the history of Buddhist practice and scholarship, these traditions and texts existed separately. The work of this scholar is the first ever attempt to bridge these texts by learning all these languages and surveying all these texts in order to detect the points of convergence and divergence. The common teachings are more likely to be closer to the historical Buddha. This body of work is dubbed early Buddhism. The divergences are more likely to be results of later elaborations. This is in no sense a belittling or a diminishing of the value of these texts, on the contrary, they give us an insight how the understanding and the practice of Buddhism unfolded throughout the centuries across vast geographical areas and different host cultures. Inside of this paradigm, this book is a survey of the notion of mindfulness in the different reciting traditions in which parallel versions exist. By the time of the Buddha, mindfulness was already an age-old practice in the Indian subcontinent, central to many religious tradition and philosophical systems. However, as is the case now, a clear definition and understanding of its use was never a consensus. The goal of the author is to survey key aspects of mindfulness as described in parallel versions of Buddhist texts. Each chapter of this book deals with a specific aspect of Mindfulness, provides the English translation of the Chinese text, since it is the one in which no English translation is available, then compares the differences with the other versions preserved in other languages. There are five aspects of Mindfulness that he focuses on: Protective, Embodied, Attentive, Receptive, and finally liberating. The more intuitive aspect of mindfulness is the attentive one. Any beginner practitioner is told that mindfulness is about directing your attention towards an object and sustaining it there. However, this have led to a confusion between Mindfulness and attention and concentration, all of them being important notion in themselves in Buddhist practice. Attention being a link in the dependent origination chain and concentration being a factor of the noble eight-fold path. The author uses the texts to clear this ambiguity, showing that attention is there in every act of cognition, while mindfulness is a specific type of attention that needs to be established, the purpose of establishing it is to gain more concentration, which means a collected mind undistracted and undivided, able to see the real nature of things. The Embodied dimension is more related to the type of meditation most prominent in the Buddhist practice, which is the four establishments: awareness of body, of feeling tones, of consciousness and mental objects. The four establishments are used as a sort of anchor to sustain the state of mindfulness. Attention is kept on the body, feeling and mind yet there is a kind of monitoring of all what is happening around us. Having this form of embodiment facilitates the coming back to a mindful state when it is lost, and at the same time provides the practitioner with a wider perspective without him being lost or carried away by sense objects. The receptive dimension is closely related to this aspect. After the anchoring comes the opening of the mind to experience the body, feeling and mind in a broader way, both those of oneself and of others. The mind obtains an increased receptivity to phenomena, being equanimous and balanced, and safely anchored in the body, to which it can come back whenever the balance is disturbed. Balanced receptivity is also supported by not being overwhelmed by our biases and inclinations that stem from ignorance and habituation. In this manner, the mind is able to see itself in a clearer and more neutral way. This leads us to the protective aspect of Mindfulness. The balanced and undivided mind is less likely to be dragged around by its delusions. The mental proliferation is the characteristic of the untrained and heedless mind. A mind with the right mindfulness receives the sense objects while knowing what they are, or at least while investigating what they are. It is thus sheltered from hasty mental constructions that lead to suffering. Mindfulness helps him to create a distance between him and the sense object, and also gives him time to investigate, understand and react properly. This is the start of the path to liberation. Building on this practice, strengthening all of the aspects of mindfulness, but especially the protective one, leads to the proper understanding of the real nature of our experience, and the three marks of existence that characterizes it: impermanence, un-satisfactoriness and non-self. On the gradual path, mindfulness helps drag the mind out of the endless whirlpool of desire and discontent, attraction and repulsion, making it thus an essential practice towards enlightenment. It is important to understand that these aspects are not independent, they do in fact depend on each other and build on each other. Besides, this is a conceptual description to be used only as an indication to what should be practiced concretely in daily life. The practice takes all conceptual frameworks into a different level. Furthermore, the topic of mindfulness is inexhaustible, the buddha himself stated that he could give a teaching for a hundred years just in this specific topic. So, what comes in this book is only pointing at certain aspects that can help practitioners understand where they are going with their practice. Yet, it is a deeply appreciated help from a highly learned teacher and meditator. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 14, 2024
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Mar 31, 2024
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Mar 14, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| B01K0Q1M8C
| 4.26
| 23
| unknown
| unknown
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really liked it
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To my understanding, King Lear is a play about human delusion, how it spreads and procreates inside of our minds, pushes us to make the worst of decis
To my understanding, King Lear is a play about human delusion, how it spreads and procreates inside of our minds, pushes us to make the worst of decisions, and even while we struggle against its consequences, we are deluded to the verge of madness. We make mistakes which are so obvious yet so unavoidable and fatal. The play kicks off with a classic Shakespearian compulsive decision making, that sets the other characters on their inevitable way to tragedy. The action is swift, the wheel of fortune turns on everyone involved. The most powerful human weaknesses and passions are once again highlighted in the most splendid manners. We witness how greed and power strife overwhelm humans and pushed them to the most improbable machinations, building sandcastles in their minds. It is a whirlpool that sucks them in only to throw them out empty handed, realizing that they were chasing shadows created by their minds. The other form of delusion that this play describes is what we usually call madness. In the utmost stages of despair, humans become even more convinced of their delusions. In fact, they create ones in which they find their consolation and stick to them stubbornly. It becomes a way to delight in despair, a way to rebel against fortune’s blows, reestablish oneself beyond its scope even if the verdict was already proclaimed. The subtle form of delusion comes in the ambiguous speeches of the fool, a prominent character in the play. His speeches are ridiculous and vulgar but speak painful truths for those who dare to listen. His manner is insolent, even savage. He sings obscure songs and interrupts himself with random fortune telling. But in between, he delivers messages which remind us of the irony of life events. Other parts of the play were simply brilliant in the way that some particular scenes are staged. We get the impression that they are staging a play inside of a play. The characters sometimes sound perfectly aware of their foolishness and delusion, as they stop and address the reader or the audience. The scene of the mock suicide by Gloucester is particularly amusing and thought provoking as he is tricked into thinking that he has jumped over a huge cliff. It is a combination of the serious and the absurd that only Shakespeare can pull off. In the end, King Lear is also a play about the divine and its real relationship with human affairs. Are we pawns in the hands of Gods that they are using to amuse themselves? Do they watch over some order and re-establish it when disturbed by human action? or human action is in itself completely under their power, for even the most self-destructive and obviously foolish decisions? The characters are back in forth between all these questions without ever settling on an answer. The just and the good are innocent victims while the vile and the treacherous thrive usurping rights which do not belong to them, nor do they deserve them. The reader is left in the hot spot of trying to create a moral of the story for himself. ...more |
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Paperback Bunko
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| B0DTRP2SXM
| unknown
| 4.30
| 96
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it was amazing
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اولا، الطبعة التي ساتحدث عنها ليست للحكم العطائية فحسب، بل هي شرح العارف بالله احمد ابن عجيبة، الذي يعتبر من اهم اعلام الصوفية في المغرب. هذا الشرح بح
اولا، الطبعة التي ساتحدث عنها ليست للحكم العطائية فحسب، بل هي شرح العارف بالله احمد ابن عجيبة، الذي يعتبر من اهم اعلام الصوفية في المغرب. هذا الشرح بحد ذاته سيجعل تجربة القارئ مع هذه الطبعة، مختلفة جذريا عن اي طبعة اخرى. ثانيا، لا اعتبر نفسي من الملمين بالصوفية، و قراءاتي في هذا المجال محدودة. اضف الى ذلك ضعف مستوى لغتي العربية و عدم فهمي لغالب المصطلحات الاساسية في الصوفية. لهذه الاسباب، هذا التعليق هو انطباع و فهم شخصي، يركز على اهم الافكار التي اعتبرها ذات تاثير كبير بالنسبة لي. لا شك في ان شرح ابن عجيبة هو أهم ما يميز هذه الطبعة. الحكم العطائية بحد ذاتها هي جمل و عبارات مختصرة، وضعت ليتأمل فيها القارئ. لكن ابن عجيبة يستخرج بشرحه كل كلمة و يعطيها دورها الخاص و يتعمق في معانيها. يستشهد كذلك في الكثير من الاوقات بآيات قرآنية، أحاديث و أقوال كبار المتصوفة كالامام الجنيد، الامام عبد القادر الجيلاني، الشبلي و الحسن البصري، و كذلك أعلام التصوف في المغرب كالقطب مولاي عبد السلام ابن مشيش. هذا الشرح المفصل جعل من هذه الحكم نصا شاملا حول الصوفية. يتم فيه التدقيق في اهم و ادق مفاهيمها، كعلاقة العبد بربه، الطبيعة الحقيقية للنفس، الكون و المخلوقات، حال العبد في وجوده بين المخلوقات و الطريق التي تؤدي به الى إدراك وحدانية الخالق و تغيبه عن ما سواه. أي محاولة لشرح هذه المفاهيم من طرفي ستتسبب في مغالطات كثيرة. لذلك أفضل أن يعتبر ما سأحاول قوله الان أدبا و شعرا أكثر منه علما أو معرفة. يعتبر المتصوفة أن الانسان في الاصل مكون من روح و مادة. هذه الاخيرة تعيقه عن إدراك أن الروح طبيعتها ربانية خالصة، و تمنعها من العودة الى أصلها، فتحاصرها فيما دون الله تعالى. إنه ما يسمى بالغير أو السوى، أي الحوادث المتغيرة و الاسباب. حياة عامة الناس هي صراع مستمر مع هذه المتغيرات. يطاردون الشهوات و الحظوظ، منشغلين بالحرص على عدم ضياع الفرص. فتراهم منهمكين في القلق عند فقدان ربحهم، و الخوف من الخسران و الضياع. بالنسبة للصوفية، هذه أوهام و خيالات و أشباح، تبعد الانسان كل البعد عن طريق الحقيقة. إنها تنبع من أن النفس البشرية مجبولة على حب حظوظها، دائمة الانشغال بنفسها. من أهم خصوصيات النفس عند الصوفية، هو حبها لرؤية نفسها. إذ لا يحب الانسان المال و الجاه و الخصوصية، بل يحب رؤية نفسه مالكا للمال، مختصا بإهتمام الخلق و اختصاصهم له. إن طبيعة هذا الوهم إكثر تعقيدا. ليس فقط حب النفس و ظهورها بل اعتقادها إن لها القدرة على الكون و المتغيرات و الاسباب. فترى نفسها أنها أكتسبت كذا و كذا، و دفعت شر كذا و كذا، هكذا تجدها غارقة في الحرص و التدبير. حقيقة الامر عند الصوفية، أن النفس ليس لها حول ولا قوة، كل ما تتوهم انها ملكته، هو من تدبير الخالق و احسانه. فالمال و الجاه و الخصوصية من قدرته تعالى، بل حتى العبادات و الطاعات. في تصور الصوفية للوحدانية المطلقة، ليس هنالك ما هو خارج عن وحدانيته تعالى. إن اعطاء صفة الوجود المستقل للنفس، و منحها الحول و القوة هو شرك بالله تعالى و ضرب في وحدانية وجوده و قدرته. غير ان فهم هذه الامور ليس بالحروف و الكلمات، بل هي تجارب و إدراكات مباشرة يختص بها البعض، او كما تسمى في الصوفية أذواق. من الطبيعي انها إن قرأت من طرف العوام فهي تبدو بعيدة عن كل منطق. لكن من هنا تبدأ الطريقة الصوفية. إدراك هذه المعاني الخفية يكون بقدرة الله تعالى و بمجهود عبده، دون ان ننسى ان المجهود بحد ذاته هو منة و نعمة من الله تعالى. أول الطريق هو ترك الاوهام و الاشباح، بالتسليم لتدبيره تعالى و حوله و قدرته، و ترك كل حرص، ثم الزهد و الفقر و العزلة عن الخلق و تحمل إذايتهم. هكذا هي طرق أغلب أئمة الصوفية و أقطابها. قد لا تبدو مشجعة لعامة الناس أو حتى منطقية. لكن مجددا، إنها تبقى أذواقا لا تفهم و لا تشرح بالعبارات. الهدف منها هو إدراك الطبيعة الحقيقية للأسباب و الحوادث، و النفس و خيالاتها. ثم تجاوزها كونها تشكل الحجاب الذي يحجب العبد عن ربه، و عن إدراك طبيعته الربانية الاصل. الطريقة لا تكون الا بما هو أهم من الزهد و التذلل. إنه الاخلاص. يعتبر الاخلاص مفهوما محوريا في التصوف. إذ إن لم يكن هناك إخلاص في التوجه نحو الله تعالى فكل المجاهدات هي في الحقيقة تبعد عن الله. عدم الاخلاص يعني الرياء و حب رؤية النفس على الاقل. في مقامات أخرى، الاخلاص التام لله هو وسيلة لمحاربة النفس، فالنفس لها ما لا نهاية له من الحيل و الخدع التي تتمثل بها للانسان فتضله و ترمي به نحو حب ظهورها و رؤيتها. فتجعل من تواضعه تكبرا خفيا، و من عباداته طمعا في تقدير العوام و تعظيمهم له. تمام الاخلاص يوجب كذلك الابتعاد عن الطلب و الرجاء حتى من الله تعالى. الاخلاص في التسليم بقدرته و اليقين في وحدانيته يوجبان اندثار الفرق بين العبد و المعبود، حتى يفقد الرجاء في ما هو غير الله معناه. إذ غاب العبد تماما عن ما سوى الله، و لو كان من نعمته و احسانه تعالى. و في نهاية الامر، تبقى الهداية و الرعاية من الله تعالى لعباده الذين اختصهم بها. لكن نعمته لا تحصى و رحمته لا تحد. فالتعداد و الحد ليسا الا صورة يبنيها العبد لجهله بحقيقة الاشياء، فتبعده عن طريق الحق و تبقيه في غفلته و وهمه. فاللهم اهدنا برحمتك، إذ اننا لا ننفع انفسنا بما نظنه معرفة، فكيف لنا ان ننفع انفسنا بما هو جهل في حقك و جهل بحقيقتك. ...more |
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| 1590302486
| 9781590302484
| B01BIT922I
| 3.96
| 57,876
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really liked it
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This is a small size one hundred and sixty page volume. It contains two texts, the first is the Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, the second is
This is a small size one hundred and sixty page volume. It contains two texts, the first is the Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, the second is The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War by a more obscure Yagyu Munenori. Although both deal with military strategy and skill, they are of very different nature and influence. The Book of Five Rings is divided into five parts. There is great straightforwardness in the style, and the language is also very concise and austere. The writing conveys the menacing attitude of its author, and the feeling that this is a man who had faced death so many times. Musashi was 17th century masterless Samurai who roamed around Japan to learn, dual and perfect his swordsmanship. His book is not only about handeling sowrds in a one-on-one battle, but he goes further to large scale battle. Because the essence of the two is the same, although they appear very different. Those people who think that they are different are deluded by superficial appearance. Even more deluded are those who believe that the art of swordsmanship resides in the mastery of this weapon of the other, in the position of the eye or the length of the steps. This is an even more vulgar delusion. The real essence of the art of battle lays in three aspects. The first of them is that the art of battle cannot be transmitted by writing. It must be practiced and thought of repeatedly over and over, until it is mastered than should be even repeated more until it is perfected. The second aspect is what Musashi calls no fixation. Those who think that victory is gained because of an advantageous situation, or a particular weapon and posture are misled into being blocked in one thing. Fixation means death. A warrior should not be rigid, otherwise the price will be his life. This concept brings us to a more fundamental aspect of Musashi’s swordsmanship school, which is rhythm. In fact, everything has a rhythm, Nature, Life and battle too, a good warrior is someone who can read through this rhythm and act according to it. Meaning he can see the rise and fall of the concentration, motivation and determination of his opponent and himself too, he can constantly change and adapt to the situation. This idea of rhythm is not only applied in matters of combat alone, but also in all walks of life. As for the second text, it is not as technical as the first one, although they do have a few ideas in common. It shows the Buddhist influences on the art of battle more straightforwardly. In every one of his analyses Yagyu Munenori reminds us that all starts in the mind, and that the defects in strategy, techniques and failure to see the situation clearly are first defects of the mind, then they translate outwardly in behavior. The emphasis he puts on purifying the mind is so big that the text feels almost like a religious Buddhist text. However, that is its strength because it becomes applicable to all walks of life and even to menial tasks. The style is also more embellished and less dry and clear cut than Musashi’s style. The combination of the two texts was a good idea as they contrast to illuminate each other’s strengths and weaknesses. It is true that some concepts remain very hard to grasp for readers who are not familiar with Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. However, it remains a good start that shows how these ideas were used to create the eastern practical sense of thinking out of the box and seeking the deeper and the most fundamental aspect of things. ...more |
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Zen is the school of Buddhism prevailing in Japan and in China, where it is called Chan. Zen itself is divided into multiple subgroups with a variety
Zen is the school of Buddhism prevailing in Japan and in China, where it is called Chan. Zen itself is divided into multiple subgroups with a variety of interpretations. However, in the broad sense, it is considered as the Mahayana branch in distinction to the Hinayana branch, the latter prevailing in other countries such as Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. The fact that Zen was a Chinese interpretation added to a multitude of existent schools, led some to question whether Zen is a Buddhist school or not. This profound objection raised to the fundamental nature of Zen was even more exacerbated by the fact that it introduced concepts which do not prevail in other schools and even sometimes seem directly contrary to their premises. To answer these questions, the author goes back to the fundamental essence of the Buddhist teachings, which is the enlightenment by putting an end to ignorance. This ultimate objective of the discipline is the same, but while crossing over to China, the language, and the method with which the teaching was handed had to be adapted to the new environment. In fact, according to the author, the metaphysical ingenuity and intellectual brilliance of the Indian people was dropped and replaced by the practical and industrious nature of the Chinese people. This was the major transformation that had to occur and that made Zen the school we know today. To be more concrete, the Hinayana schools puts a large emphasis on the study of the texts in an intellectual sense, an approach with potentially harmful results. In fact, one of the features of ignorance is the tendency of the human mind to intellectualize what it perceives. In this manner, the mind is trapped in endless intellectual gymnastics in which an idea is only present to be replaced by another idea in an instant. The Buddhist way was from the first place, a way of escape from the miseries of intellectualism, and its teaching transcends the relative and unstable truth of logic which always disguises itself in the form of a universal truth. By their practical sense, the Chinese tried to drop as much as was possible from this intellectual emphasis, they proposed that the truth is in the real world, and the discipline should be one that is inseparable from the real world. Even the higher truth is in the real world too. Disciples are not to isolate themselves in scholarly discussions and lofty meditation states, but they are to live and practice among the world and its objects, which will show them the way to truth. Two other important characteristics of the Zen are those of buddha-Nature and instant enlightenment. Contrary to most Buddhist schools, the Zen followers do not believe that disciples advance slowly on a path which transforms them from ignorant humans to liberated sages. In fact, we are all not only liberated sages, but Buddhas, the problem is that leading a life of delusion caused by senses and thoughts made us forget our true nature and create a huge distance from it. But the fundamental truth is that we are all buddhas in Nature. So, to go back to our buddha Nature we need only an instant to remember and retrieve what was lost, rather than a long path of practice. That is the idea of instant enlightenment, however, the instant is not that easy to find, the rigorous search should be carried in the most practical sense of the term and in the most unusual and unpredicted places. To illustrate this sense of practicality, a multitude of stories and anecdotes about the Zen masters and their disciples are told. To the newcomer, they seem paradoxical, annoyingly repetitive, and absurd. However, they are in fact designed to provide a path to the breaking away of the vicious cycle, powered by the habitual workings of the human mind. Sometimes the masters even use violence and cruelty, in a way that seems beyond the scope of our understanding, yet the teaching continued for centuries, flourished, and survived when other schools lost their spiritual vitality or failed to adapt. For the author, it is a sign of the unique genius and demonstrated creativity that will always distinguish Zen not only from other Buddhist schools but from most spiritual teachings in other religions too. ...more |
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One can’t blame such a short book for not being detailed enough. The author is trying to put a complicated century and a half of a sophisticated cours
One can’t blame such a short book for not being detailed enough. The author is trying to put a complicated century and a half of a sophisticated course of History into 140 pages. That being said, the book does in a sense gave a broad overview about the main issues that Japan as nation and as a culture dealt with throughout its modern period. Questions about identity, confrontation with the West, Imperial History and brutal socio-economic changes. The book started by squaring the main issue of Japan and Modernity very well. The problem lies in the concept of modernity itself. Because of the peculiar circumstances in which the concept was thought of, we subconsciously think that modernity is something out there for others to achieve, to adopt or to struggle with. Modernity is in fact a set of ideas and ways of organization, that can appear separately, perhaps incompletely in other cultures than the West. The first chapter elucidates what was the political, social and economic scene in Japan before the dramatic confrontation with the American ships led by Commodore Perry in July 1853. Japan was not any feudal monarchy; it was not completely isolated from the world. It seems like it did have a substantial political class with a sophisticated distribution of power, it was a much more urbanized in pre modern standards. At the same time socio economic and demographic pressures provided seeds for social upheavals and political changes. When it comes to the confrontation with the West, although of isolationist tendencies, the political elites understood and formed an excellent judgement of the danger that lies ahead, and the fact that there were only two options: miraculously westernize or be governed by Westerners. The political class had to make some difficult choices: abandon some of its privileges, introduce new ideas and fundamentally change its way of governing. To peoples who confronted the same challenge posed by Western Modernity, and a part from all external favorable conditions, it was this ability to change, and to make the sacrifices needed to implement that change that set the Japanese a part. In 50 years from Commodore Perry’s surprise visit, Japan had a Constitution, a representative government and was heavily importing western education, industrial and warfare techniques. Unfortunately, the book does not detail this step which was crucial into the making of Japan as we know it today, but moves quickly into the consequences of this successful implementation. As Japan westernized and modernized, it demanded equality with westerners and access to their privileges as powers, which in XIX century logic meant colonies, if not a whole empire of them, as a natural growth process. The traditional target of Japanese imperialism was always the Korean peninsula, but with its advanced navy Japan took on China and other neighbor territories in the Pacific. This Era started a gradual militarizing of the government that will culminate in a radical nationalism pushed to fascism by the beginning of the Second World War. Japanese involvement in the region was always questioned by the other colonial powers. Which for the Japanese meant that Japan was never considered their equal, even after all its achievements. This, combined with a soaring nationalism and unrealistic ambitions of a radicalized military government pushed the country into isolation and catastrophic WW2 campaign, which ended in bombardment by atomic weapons. Japan accepted US rule after the war. It was far less interventionist than expected, and aimed to demilitarize and democratize the country, but it still counted on the established political class, which guaranteed a sense of continuity amid the trauma of defeat. For the reconstruction of the economy, the war effort in the Korean war kickstarted the tremendous growth more than all reforms implemented by the Americans. Although its relationship with its pacific neighbors remained strained, the economic success provided new opportunities for regional influence. The consequence of the WW2 generated deep issues in the perception of the Japanese state and society. If the US occupation ended far earlier than expected, Japan’s defense is still outsourced to the US. War reparations are not yet settled. It seems that the Japanese still struggle to make sense of what happened, and attitudes range from revisionist rewriting of History to pathologizing and victimization of the situation. Neighbors accuse Japan of not being sincere enough in its apologies and that they stem mainly out of a necessity of being politically correct. Its economic power is also seen as suspicious if not straight new imperialism. All of these questions fueled an intense debate, which is still ongoing by the early decades of the 21th century. ...more |
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This is the first volume in a three-volume series of the History of Islam, by the historian Marshall G.S. Hodgson, from the distinguished department o
This is the first volume in a three-volume series of the History of Islam, by the historian Marshall G.S. Hodgson, from the distinguished department of History of the University of Chicago. This volume covers the formative years of Islam, starting from just before its rise in Arabia to the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate. Geographically it is mainly centered on from Oxus to Nile region, which means the historical centers of Islam: The Hijaz, Iraq and Iran, Syria and Egypt, the dynamic between this region was decisive in the making of the Islamic Civilization. This is a work of meticulously careful scholarship. It adopts a macro vision of World History which tries to put everything in a wider context enabling us to see the bigger picture. The author provides us with a long introduction discussing important Islamic terms and concepts, such as Shari’a, Prophetic Tradition, Sunna, which usually get misleading translation and conditions the whole discipline of Historiography of Islam. He is also very cautious when it comes to unconscious biases imported from the study of western civilization, often in the form of misleading parallelisms. Another strength of this book is that it does venture into the unknown territory of religion. Every phenomenon is easier to describe and analyze in terms of socio-political structures and economic conditions. Moreover, Islam in particular is very elusive as a religious phenomenon, and we tend to see it considered by many as a political agenda, or at least a response to economic opportunity. Here is an author who captures the religious impulse of Islam and puts it intelligibly into words, demonstrating thus that the pure religious motivation does exist, it is even crucial to the socio-political and the economic, which make his description of Islam a consistent whole. Religion, as the author tries to define it, is a cosmic vision in which the individual is seeking to make sense of himself and of the Cosmos. Of course, the degree of investment in this vision varies considerably from individual to individual, it ranges from naive wishful thinking to total abandonment for the sake of this vision, in the forms of monasticism or maybe martyrdom. Within this spectrum, we find Islam, which can be considered as a moral challenge posed by Mohammed to his tribe in Arabia, in the form of a social reform with egalitarian ideals. The vision of Islam is one of a cosmos where the individual is accountable to only one deity. His tribal allegiances, worldly advantages won’t change the level of commitment he should invest, thus making all believers equal before God. There is a sense of exclusive allegiance and exclusive truth inside of Islam which prevent anything else from infiltrating this immediate relationship between created and creator, not even priests and political leaders. In the following centuries even the status of the sacred scripture i.e. the Qur’an will be subject to debate for the sake of this exclusivity which pious groups kept pushing further and further. But the moral challenge posed by Mohammed to his fellow tribesmen did not emerge out of nowhere. It is the continuity and the culmination of a long process which the whole region was subject to. These are ideas which appeared following the post axial age transformation. With the development of agrarian based societies, prosperity of commerce and intensification of exchange both commercial and intellectual, religion itself went through a transformation from what was centered on cults and rituals to Nature or local deities to a sophisticated vision of Man which put individual responsibility towards others and Gods in the forefront. Moral integrity and justice in dealing with others in markets or in courts become linked with the place of humans in the cosmos. Some groups thought of Religion as a law that governs all aspects of the individual’s life, others emphasized the individual judgement after death, and notions of reward and punishment were even pushed toward messianic and chiliastic expectations. A second post axial age transformation that we can see exploited afterwards in the vision of Islam is that of religion as rooted in a historical event. Although religion claims universal and atemporal truths, with the Abrahamic monotheism in particular, it became ever more entangled with one event in History. In Judaism, its not only the covenant but a whole series of events which came to define the faith. For Christianity it was the crucifixion of Christ, and for Islam it was the Prophetic mission of Mohammad. All these points are the beginning of a Drama in which the believers are asked to confirm and renew their commitments to the faith throughout their lives, a Drama that unfolds toward a grand finale which will be the end of the World, but most importantly of History. A third crucial trend to the understanding of Islam is what the author calls populistic tendencies of post axial age religion. The term populistic perhaps have different connotations than what it did in the 60s. However, what the author tries to convey is that religion, instead of being the task of an elite class of priests and aristocratic sponsors it become more present in market places and a primary concern of the masses. Islam is the culmination of this populistic tendencies in both Abrahamic monotheism and old Iranian religion. The Jewish people thought of themselves as God’s chosen people, and thus separated themselves from other groups. Christian people instituted a hierarchy among the believers, where only the monks live completely the holy life, which is in no way accessible to lay people. Old Iranian religions had a class of priests. All esoteric forms of these religions were elitist by the very definition of esoterism, starting from the fact that not all people are equal in their ability to see religious truth. In contrast to all these options, Islam refused monasticism and priestly classes, and shunned esoterism as heresy. Muslims sure thought of themselves as carriers of the true message, but they will not keep it to themselves but bring it to all of humanity. The message itself was clear, accessible to all, save those who denied it out of jealousy or bad faith. This populistic tendency will play a crucial role in the subsequent development of Islam, even more in the choices that different Muslim groups considered on the course of their project of implementing Islam as a way of life and a basis for social order. In fact, the moral challenge of egalitarianism and submission posed by Muhammad to his tribe quickly transformed into a political project during his period in Medina, and got later upgraded to the scale of an international empire. But the same time big questions were not yet answered: the legitimacy of rule, the status of the conquered peoples, the management of the revenue of conquest. All of which was to constitute a major source of conflict, factions and political instability. Vast territories of Byzantine Syria and Egypt, and Sassanid Iran were conquered due to the weakening of existing local political and social structures that can hold up a resistance, after the devastation caused by the war between the two empires. In less than 10 years of the Prophet Mohammed’s death, three centers of Islam were defined: Damascus, an occupied historical capital; Kufa and Basra: garrison towns founded in South Iraq; and Fustat : Garrison town founded in Egypt and of course Medina in the Hizaj which during the early conquest remained the headquarter of the Islamic expansion. The geographical distribution of these centers, the enormous wealth and power which came to the Arab hands with the conquest and the choice of setting up garrison towns was a major factor in the creation of factions, when it is not old tribal factions that were resurfacing. Succession crisis followed immediately. Yet it is a very peculiar succession crisis in which the vision of Islam played a crucial role, and paradoxically enough this crisis itself made some of the most enduring patterns in Islamic civilization. Muhammad’s charismatic leadership was built on personal grounds. The following Caliphs were appointed based on the same principle: how much of a close relationship they had with him, in a tacit belief that by being close to the Prophet one can be more able to continue the work of implementing his religious message and political project, at least among the Arabs, as at this point there was no question about the conquered being admitted in this project. The other source of legitimacy was the traditional Arab chieftainship, also a personal mode of government but based on the consensus of powerful tribes and the adequacy of the candidate. Both modes held a strong sense of egalitarianism which emphasizes the dignity of each and every Arab as the highest value. But the innovation brought by the Islamic message was a challenge to privileged groups. Worse than that, different privileged groups were created, such as those who were the first to adhere to Islam. Even underprivileged groups were no longer underprivileged, with the immense wealth and power that flowed back to the Hijaz from the conquest. In the dynamics that moved all of these groups, one question remained: who was entitled to rule over the community founded by Muhammed, and what was he supposed to do precisely. The civil wars, known as Fitna, which mean in Arabic trial, were complicated struggles on a variety of levels. The first Fitna was the confrontation between Arab chieftain Mu’awiya, reclaiming power to his prestigious clan against Ali, the cousin and son in law of the Prophet. It was also the confrontation between a ruler who strived for power, appointing his son as a successor against Arab custom, and a pious if not a very naïve leader. This war was also based on tribal allegiances, the Syrians supported Mu’awiya and Ali sought support in Kufa in a move that was fateful to that region and linked it forever to Ali and his descendants. A third partly, oddly enough, decided to opt out of this struggle, although with a strong Alid sentiment, they went their own way, but this never meant that they were out of the political arena, at least for the time to come. With the triumph of Mu’awiya, the pious groups who believed in the possibility and the viability of the religious project of Islam suffered a major blow. At the same time, the Muslim state was for the moment built on an Arab Kingship Model. But once again tribal factions inside Syria itself and the ever-restless Kufa turned to Ali’s son to rise against the central power, and even power groups in the Hijaz were revolt for their share of power. But Omayyad rule will once again survive this crisis, not only that but the outcome of this second Fitna was two major decisive events in the development of Islam: the elimination of any claim to power by the Hijaz families, and the traumatizing death of Husayn son of Ali, which will mark the most important stage in the making of the Shii Islam. By this time, it seems that no political theory was involved, even by Muslim standards. Rule was legitimized by sheer military power and ability to rally different factions momentarily to support one candidate. It is true that strong pro-Ali sentiment remained very powerful, but after the crushing defeat it took fewer militant aspects, it even turned to chiliastic expectations and esoteric teachings. The Kharriji faction, those who refused to take sides between Ali and Mu’awiya were literally roaming around offering their support to whoever suited their political whim of the time. Furthermore, Iranian coverts were slowly becoming a separate interest group, which will play a crucial role in the rise of the Abbasid dynasty. This level of political fragmentation might distract from where we left Islam as a religion in the first place. But surprisingly it is very present. The failure of the Pro Ali movement and the disappointment they had impacted their interpretation of Islam forever. After the traumatizing death of Husayn, and the prosecution which the other descendants of Ali, these groups adopted a vision where the justice that Muhammad promised is for another time, for the moment they have to morn the injustice that they suffered, and wait patiently. For those who did not support Ali, although they might on the surface look as if they are getting along with the power, that is not the case. In fact, pious groups, mainly in the Hijaz, turned to a kind of impotent opposition to a political system that left no place for them except the masses and their market place. In fact, these groups abandoned all claims to power. They did return to the message of the Prophet, and tried to find a way to implement Islam as a basis for social order and law. By collecting the sayings of the Prophet, the exegesis of the Qur’an and the elaboration of a great body of religious literature, they managed to offer a version of Islam more concerned with the individual responsibility towards God and the Last judgment, and heavily focused on conformity to a certain standard of purified conduct and ritual. It is an existence for a pious individual for himself, or at least for a group with whom he shares the same pious concern, which leaves the State, or any other political grouping behind. This group came to came to constitute the majority of Muslims. A part from a public recognition of rulers during Friday prayers, extracted from them by coercion, their political project of Islam ended up paradoxically apolitical. ...more |
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Ce volume est l’édition intégrale des fables de la Fontaine, dans leur version originale et non pas celle adaptée aux jeunes lecteurs. Il s’agit de la
Ce volume est l’édition intégrale des fables de la Fontaine, dans leur version originale et non pas celle adaptée aux jeunes lecteurs. Il s’agit de la poésie française du XVII siècle, avec son style sophistiqué qui cherche à impressionner une audience aux standards esthétiques et littéraires assez élevés. Pour le lecteur moderne, le texte présente plusieurs défis, en particulier pour ceux qui ne lisent pas souvent la littérature de cette époque, puisqu’un effort de déchiffrage est nécessaire pour suivre le sens et l’image que le poète essaie de nous transmettre. Les commentaires et les notes fournissent un appui important pour les termes archaïques et le contexte particulier d’élaboration qui parfois conditionne l’interprétation de ces fables. La Fontaine a puisé ses fables à partir de plusieurs sources. La plus dominante est sans doute celle d’Esope, auteur grec semi légendaire, considéré comme le père de ce genre. Par la suite, plusieurs fables sont des adaptations assez libres des auteurs antiques comme Virgile et Ovide. D’autres fables sont inspirées par les auteurs persans ou indiens, récemment traduits et diffusés en France. Etant un texte de l’âge d’or de la poésie française, les fables sont caractérisées par une économie de langue couplée avec la vivacité et la finesse de l’esprit. On commence dans l’ordinaire et le banal pour monter brusquement vers une morale qui frappe l’esprit. La longueur de l’élaboration dans chaque situation varie, mais orientées vers un dénouement parfois imprévu, parfois comique mais toujours édifiant. Quoique les animaux sont les personnages principaux dans la majorité de ces fables, d’autres figurent sont exploitées pour créer la variation, telle les dieux et héros de la mythologie gréco-romaine, les hommes de religion ou même des profils types que la Fontaine a côtoyé dans sa vie : les coquettes, les princes ambitieux, les bourgeois� Quant au contenu des fables, certains sujets sont privilégiés. La morale est adressée principalement aux ambitieux, aux traitres, aux ingrats et aux avares. Après les vices individuels viennent ceux qui se créent par la nécessité de vivre en société : la discorde, les conflits de pouvoir, la lâcheté, la flatterie et l’hypocrisie. La Fontaine transpose des situations vécues dans les cours des Rois, entre les nobles et même les guerres entre les puissances européennes au monde animal. Il allège ainsi la gravité du sujet et se permet une satire politique des événements de son temps. Enfin, il est judicieux peut être de signaler que cette édition rassemble l’ensemble de l’œuvre fabuliste de La Fontaine, imprimées et révisées au cours de toute sa vie et même à titre posthume. Le volume est d’une longueur importante, et pour un lecteur pas nécessairement féru de poésie française il risque de devenir fatiguant ou au moins de prendre un temps important pour le finir. ...more |
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عاش الامام الغزالي بين النصف الثاني للقرن الحادي العشر و بداية القرن الثاني عشر. تنقل و جال عبر جميع ربوع العالم الاسلامي : ايران، الشام، الحجاز و مصر
عاش الامام الغزالي بين النصف الثاني للقرن الحادي العشر و بداية القرن الثاني عشر. تنقل و جال عبر جميع ربوع العالم الاسلامي : ايران، الشام، الحجاز و مصر. لكن الرحلة لم تكن رحلة في الزمان و المكان فقط. الرحلة الجوهرية كانت قبل كل شيء رحلة فكرية. انتقل فيها الغزالي بين الاشكالات الاساسية التي كانت تواجه المفكرين و رجال الدين المسلمين آنذاك، و التي نستطيع القول، دون مبالغة، أنها لا تزال واضحة في الساحة الفكرية الاسلامية اليوم. في الحقبة التي عاش فيها الغزالي كان العالم الاسلامي يشهد نقاشات حادة بين مجموعات ذات توجهات فكرية مختلفة، إن لم نقل متضاربة. لقد أدى استيراد فلسفة الاغريق ، الى ظهور حركة المتكلمين،اللذين ارادوا استعمال المنطق للرد على حجج خصومهم باستعمال الضروريات العقلية. لكن عندما تم استعمال هذه المقاييس العقلية في جوهر الاشياء لم يؤدي ذلك الا الى المزيد من الارتباك. من جهة اخرى، نجد حركة الفلاسفة التي لم تتردد في استعمال الضروريات في الكشف عن خاصيات الاشياء. كقدم العالم أو خلقه ،صفات الله و مدى علمه، و خاصيات الجسمانيات و الروحانيات. فانتهى الدهريون الى قدم العالم، أما الطبيعيون فانشغلوا بالبحث في الطبيعة ليستنتجوا ان الانسان لا يختلف عن باقي ما في الطبيعة من حيوانات. بعضهم انكر الصانع و الحساب. بينما حاول بعضهم التشبث بوجوده و الرد على منكريه بنفس طرقهم العقلية. توجه آخر لعله كان اكثر تأثيرا في حقبة الغزالي، هو الباطنية. اعتمد هؤلاء على مفهوم ضرورة التعليم من المعلم المعصوم لتجاوز الاختلاف. لكن المعلم بنفسه ليس موضع اتفاق، و عندما تعذر ذلك تم تغييبه، و بذلك عادوا الى نقطة البداية دون الاجابة عن السؤال. كل هذه المذاهب درسها الغزالي و انتقدها و رد على مؤيديها. بالنسبة له، جميعها غير قادرة على الوصول الى حقيقة الاشياء، بل تؤدي بالانسان الى الارتباك و التخبط و الضلال فقط. رغم أنه سلك كل هذه الطرق و لم يتوصل الى أي معرفة يقينية، بقي إيمان الغزالي بوجود الحقيقة اليقينية و إمكان التوصل إليها قويا، واستمر في البحث مستعدا لفعل كل ما يمكن لبلوغها. هذا الايمان القوي لم يكون مضادا او خارجا عن الضروريات العقلية و المنطقية. بل كان وعيا منه بمحدودية امكانات العقل و نقائصها. فكما لا تستطيع الحواس ان تبين لنا الحجم الحقيقي للكواكب، و تم التوصل الى حقيقة ذلك بالضروريات الهندسية و المنطقية، فالمعرفة اليقينية بالله، بالحساب و اليوم الاخر، بالمعنى الحقيقي للعبادات التي تؤدي الى تصفية القلوب و شفاءها تختلف عن المعرفة العقلية، كما تختلف هذه الاخيرة عن المعرفة بالمحسوسات. انها معرفة بالسلوك و الذوق و الكشف، تتجاوز الاستماع و التعلم بالقياس و الاستنتاج العقلي. يبقى السؤال الاهم، هو كيف الوصول الى هذه المعرفة. في رحلة الغزالي كانت أول خطوة هي التخلي عن الجاه و المنصب و التفرغ الكامل للتأمل و التفكر. إن أكثر ما يعيق الانسان عن طريق الحقيقة هو ارتباطه بالحياة الدنيا و ما فيها من رياء و هوى النفس. البحث عن الحقيقة اليقينية لا يبدأ الا بترك كل الملاهي الدنوية و الوعي بكونها اوهاما و فخاخا ليس الا. ما يأتي بعد ذلك يرتبط بمجهود الانسان و بمشيئة الله، فالله يهدي من يشاء. تجربة الغزالي أوصلته في النهاية الى معرفة يقينية بالله، بالحساب و بالنبوة. فالنبوة ليست الا اعلى درجات المعرفة. فالمعرفة درجات، اسفلها معرفة المحسوسات و أعلاها درجة لا يستطيع أغلبنا تخيله، كوننا بعيدين جدا عنه. من هذا المنظور، يبدو الاختلاف الذي عاش فيه العالم الاسلامي عبر العصور و فشل في التعايش معه نتيجة طبيعية. من جهة أخرى، أي إجتهاد سيبقى مجهودا فرديا، إذ كل فرد يسلك طريقه وحده، و يبني على ما كشف له، فلا بد أن تختلف فيه العامة. ليس هناك شك في وجود المعرفة اليقينية لكن سبيلها وعر و لا يمكن ان تكون باستطاعة الجميع. ...more |
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This is where it all started, or almost. Like many great Shakespearian works Romeo and Juliet is also an adaptation of an existing work. In this case
This is where it all started, or almost. Like many great Shakespearian works Romeo and Juliet is also an adaptation of an existing work. In this case a poem called The tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet which appeared around 1562 by some obscure English poet named Arthur Brooke. And even that was not the story’s first literary debut. It seems that death for the sake of love is a privileged theme in folklore and mythology. But once again, the Shakespearian adaptation topples them all, and ever since his days it crystallized into the ultimate love story. However one must not believe all the hearsay stemming from its fame and its literary and cinematographic legacy, curious and funny surprises can come up when checking the real Shakespeare. The first of them is that in the play Juliet is not Romeo’s first love, by the time he meets her he is just coming out of an infatuation with a certain Rosalinda. This casts a certain doubt about his love for Juliet, or whether it is just another infatuation which got complicated and entangled for political reasons. Shakespeare with his usual genius carries this ambiguity throughout the play, leaving the reader undecided whether to trust the tragic nature of this destiny, or was it just a young foolishness which went all wrong. More amusing is the amount of sex jokes found in this play, which completely forces the reader to change how he thought of the Love usually represented by the story of Romeo and Juliet. It was a curious discovery of the bawdiness of the Elizabethan era, with a vulgarity hard to associate with a poet usually regarded as lofty as a poet can be. Perhaps these parts were intended as a sort of entertainment for the play’s audience at the time, and one can only imagine the uproar or the chocked laughter among them. They remind us that Shakespeare was after all a popular entertainer, and had to amuse his audiences in the same way our modern entertainment industry relies on sexual references to attract viewers. In comparison with other Shakespearian works, Romeo and Juliet seems a bit weak, as if it is just the start of what will appear later in Hamlet, Othello or Julius Caesar. The dialogues are good and the pace of the events is perfect, yet it lacks the deep and philosophical developments and insights. The wit and the eloquence is there, but those moments of brilliance when the reader almost imagines himself one with the character, completely immersed in the tragedy’s atmosphere are not yet mature. It is the end of the play that echoes most the Shakespearean atmosphere. He excels as usual in painting the darkness of the desperation that leads his characters towards ending their lives. The death was sought for but done by violent means, an expected end but obtained so fast one almost loses it out of sight. ...more |
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The Conference f Birds is an allegory of a spiritual journey written by XIIth century Persian poet Farid Din Attar. He is not the household name when
The Conference f Birds is an allegory of a spiritual journey written by XIIth century Persian poet Farid Din Attar. He is not the household name when it comes to Sufism and Islamic mysticism, yet his work is such a complete representation of the peculiarities of Sufi writings, with a striking and powerful imagery, elaborated paradoxes, and excellently thought-provoking similes. The spiritual journey being itself a mystery which cannot be clearly related, it is only through this allegory that the poet tries to convey what cannot be analytically described. Most of times he is only making signs, never fully giving an answer, since any answer have to be realized and understood by the seeker himself, no one can stand for him in walking this journey, which for the majority, seems quit an obscure and absurd endeavor. Perhaps one of the first questions that comes to mind, is the motivation of those who intend to embark on a spiritual journey and turn their backs on the world. For most of us this seems quite distant and unlikely. After all we spend most of our lives striving after worldly belongings, status and success, and conformity to social expectations. The spiritual path is for those who have seen the futility of these attempts, who realized the fickleness of the world, the despair that comes up from seeking praise and avoiding blame, the wasting of efforts in trying to get this only to want otherwise in the next moment. The quest is in a sort a way out of all this turmoil of life that we are born to. In walking the path of detachment, one can find a refuge, and maybe the stillness of peace. It is a calling for seekers to leave worldly concerns behind, it is described by Attar in the form of a longing, the imagery of a longing lover is abundant throughout the poem. This intense attraction that pushes one away from all other distractions, and absorbs all his efforts to direct them towards one goal. It also strips every thing else from value, so that the object of love remains the sole matter of concern. Yet not all experience this intense longing nor do they hold on to it until the end of the journey. Distractions are real and do have a powerful hold on the will of seekers. They come in the form of excuses, like cowardice, fear and laziness, but also ignorance of the real value of things. Our attachment to what we believe a real source of happiness, and our fear of losing it and inability to gave it up for this unknown goal that is the fulfillment of spiritual life, stops prematurely all attempts. In Attar’s Poem, greed for acquiring possessions, attachment to what is fickle and changing, to the sense of selfhood and the pride found in it, are all obstacles to even the conceptual understanding of the spiritual path, let along embarking on it. In the spirit of Islam which upholds the absolute oneness of God, this is portrayed by Sufis as a form of Idolatry. It is indeed the most sophisticated and intimate idolatry that exists. Because next to God, one places another object of worship, glorifying it without being aware of the extend of his delusion. Although the objects of delusion are diverse, and the analytic mind roams around endlessly to justify this or that, the core of the delusion remains one and only, and that is the notion of the Self. The Self occupies a pivotal role in Attar’s poem, it is that which pulls us away from the path, the master who enslaves us and drives us to despair. It is the source of greed and pride, of forgetfulness and neglect. The spiritual quest from beginning to the end is about the abandoning of the symptoms of this slavery but also the total annihilation of the source of the disease. God’s chosen ones, through the power of his calling, the intensity of their longing, are pulled away from the idolatry of the Self towards coming back to the original Oneness with God. Even if one is fortuned enough to see beyond these illusions, there are still many dangers that lay ahead. The path is plagued with difficulties such as doubt, weakness and many abundant distractions. Even if one leaves behind greed and pride in worldly affair, more intimate and subtler forms of these defilements arise within himself, like greed in the reward in the next life, and conceit arising because of spiritual achievement. The aim of the spiritual life is the total abandoning of even the slightest traces of the Self, the letting go of all this whirlpool of greed and conceit, and the realization of the purity of Nothingness, the dwelling in God’s glory and in the Peace of his Bliss. At the climax of the journey, Attar tries to convey the bewilderment of the seekers as they discover the Truth hidden for so long from there sight. To their great astonishment, the birds discover that what they were seeking once belonged to them, it was a part of them, but because of ignorance, ingratitude and pride they sold it, they sold it for what was way below its true value. Attar elaborates magnificent similes to describe the foolishness of the one who gives away the priceless for a cheap price, and therefore condemns himself to an existence of misery by his own hands. It is by this realization that the seeker comes back to God, retrieves what he has lost, becomes complete and not lacking anything in the Nothingness of the Annihilation in God. His painful separation from God was a sin that he committed with his own hand, but through God’s Grace and Mercy this fatal error was pardoned. In his epilogue, Attar acknowledges the difficulty of this endeavor of describing something which is realized in silence and not by word. But he seems to be confident in the power of his poetry, and hopes that it will provide other seekers with signs which will help them on their path. But beyond our efforts to see our existence with insight, and Attar’s help to point the way, there remains only God’s Grace to hope for, He is the Ultimate Guide and the Ultimate Savor able to pull us from our ignorance. It is through His Mercy that we can hope to advance on this path, for as weak and deluded as we are, we have nothing to offer Him in return. ...more |
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| 0192854100
| 9780192854100
| 0192854100
| 3.64
| 967
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| Jul 11, 2002
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Being and Time is the oldest book I own and still have not yet read. I bought it in my days of youthful conceit. Nowadays I wonder it is even worth in
Being and Time is the oldest book I own and still have not yet read. I bought it in my days of youthful conceit. Nowadays I wonder it is even worth investing time and effort in reading this German philosophy which borders on charlatanism, written by this questionable character with Nazi affiliation. To find a way out of this, this small volume tackles briefly the life and the work of Martin Heidegger, trying to make it as concise and simple as possible to the unfamiliar reader. Being and Time is by far the most important work of Heidegger’s career. Sure, he wrote and lectured on other subjects such as language, technology, philosophy of history but it seemed like they were all side products of his biggest philosophical statement and always stemmed from the new paradigm he first published in his major work. One starts to wonder what is so new and so groundbreaking about this book? Being and Time is a response and a challenge to science and to Phenomenology as practiced in the early XXth century. They both claim to know the world by introducing a subject object dualism, by dividing the world into fields of study and observation, by highlighting this feature and relegating the other to the background. They describe a world as an aggregate of entities but they never answer the real question, what is Being? Aristotle did better with his categories of substance, quality, quantity� but he still divides beings into separate entities. Even when philosophers try to get away from this disparate realm of modes, they find themselves describing the world as a realm of extended matter, or variables which accept values, all in a hopeless effort to homogenize it. Heidegger believe all this confusion is due to a bad start. The good one is to go back to the origin of things. Our being in the world is already an engagement in the world, which cannot fit into a subject and object scheme. We are already here or there. For us, the world is not a collection of extended objects with geometrical shapes or inert matter, to systemize and describe in a disinterested way. The world is tools, objects of interest and significance to us, interrelated in a vast web of other objects and events. Our being in the world is experienced as one, as a whole. Every time we highlight a chunk of the world and interact in a certain way with it but at the same time other possibilities are kept in the background of our minds, to be brought into focus whenever we need them. Existing in the world is thus more about possibilities of interactions with other entities. But these possibilities are not limitless. We are thrown into the world and most of time have only limited options to choose from. This is facticity. Yet most of us even abandon these limited options by following the crowd. Most of us are inauthentic people who gave up their possibilities to the “They�, doing what “they� did, thinking what “they� thought and following what “they� believe. This is a significant feature of our being in the world and of our way of experiencing it. Not only among average people more concerned about career or fashion choices than with questions related to the nature of being, but even among philosophers who often fall to what Plato, Kant and Aristotle believed. Surprisingly this is not morally problematic to Heidegger, he is not at all concerned with ethics. The inauthentic being is in no sense inferior to that of the authentic one. It is simply a mode of being. The problem with inauthenticity is that it misleads man and makes him unable to uncover the truth about his being, so he constantly misinterprets himself. This brings us to Heidegger’s notion of Truth. In his sense, Truth is not correctness, correspondence with facts or with assertions, Truth is unconcealment and uncovering of our being in the world, as it is only for us that being is an issue, unlike trees or stones. The traditional definition of Truth neglects our constant engaging in and dependance of the world. Truth is thus an ongoing project to unfold and illuminate this interrelated existence, and not divide it or transform it into separate entities the way science and traditional philosophers did. Heidegger views the work of philosophy as hermeneutics, an ongoing project of understanding and interpreting, to provide an accurate description of our existence in the world. Our being in the world exposes at the same time our features and those of the world. The two cannot be separated. However, this does not exclude some a priori conditions in the Kantian sense of the word. To start with, we are fundamentally spatial, we experience the world in directions, we are also familiar with tools and objects in the world. We have this innate and somehow preconceptual understanding of our being in the world, allowing us to engage with it, but this understanding is not a “knowledge� of the world. Heidegger again, hardly deals with knowledge or epistemology. By far the most important feature of our existence in the world is the fact that it is temporal. More than spatiality or intuitive understanding of the objects of the world temporality is a key aspect of existence in the world. Once again, Heidegger rejects traditional conceptions of Time, it is not for him an endless series of “nows�, Time depends closely on our experience of the world. This experience is a constant rushing towards the future, going back to the past, and bouncing back to the present. The future is marked by one event which is of enormous significance: death. The past can be limited by an individual’s birth but usually it stretches back to historical events. The present is the place where we consider our possibilities, for authentic being at least. Death is particularly important as it pushes us to consider our time and our options, and think about the right investment we ought to make. In the case of inauthentic existence, the constant possibility of death is dismissed, it is lost in the chatter of the crowd and thrown as far as possible from consideration. Existing authentically supposes surveying one’s life, his possibilities and taking a stance, becoming resolute about what to do. He might not have many options, or not even know exactly what to do but a moment of vision is present at hand, just like that of Saint Paul’s conversion or Martin Luther in the storm. It is about withdrawing from the crowd and taking responsibility for one’s life. Once again resoluteness is not superior to sinking in the crowd. It is just another mode of being. But why should one become resolute? This mode of being makes the best out of the temporality of being, it uses it to transcend the past, the future and the present. In being resolute one steps out of the world and keep objects at a distance, he sees only possibilities and escapes the grips of facticity. It is the only way to transcendence and to freedom. This is a fair dose of what this little book is trying to showcase, and of course Being and Time will have even much more elaborated developments to ponder. It seems that this German charlatan is quit an interesting fellow, to be read not only for the sake of some intellectual conceit. ...more |
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| 0007558082
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| 3.87
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| Oct 11, 1928
| Dec 16, 2025
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This is the imagined biography of Orlando, a wealthy nobleman from the Elizabethan age, who transformed into a woman when he was thirty years old, and
This is the imagined biography of Orlando, a wealthy nobleman from the Elizabethan age, who transformed into a woman when he was thirty years old, and lived to the twentieth century. This is far from being a historically informed novel, or a discussion of socio-economic factors related to gender, it is rather a stream of consciousness description of a human being we can hardly identify with. Orlando is a man later a woman fascinated by literature, it is his only satisfaction and only real interest. The discussion on the nature and value of literature is pretty developed, but from the perspective of the dreamy, ambitious and quit instable state of mind that the protagonist is usually in. another recurrent development is that of society, being a nobleman/noblewoman who get to find itself usually in social circles of the nobility, Orlando questions the reality of such existence, or rather how humans try to fill their existence with such meaningless verbiage and protocols. Indeed, perhaps the novel asks one big question: what is life? as a man or a woman, Orlando is always in a constant state of turmoil, his mind always jumps from that to this. We get to feel his mental fatigue and despair trying to find one meaningful thing to hold on for salvation. The concept of having him/her live for centuries introduces the brutality of change, of the torment of living divided between the past and the future, the helplessness in the face of a world going on its own way, imposing new ideas, fashions and even a new atmosphere to which Orlando’s restless mind can’t digest. The reader wonders if so many passages are a distant echo of the state of mind of the author, herself struggling with mental illness, which eventually lead her to take her own life. The number of impressions, especially those of nature can be overwhelming. Between passages of incredibly witty remarks, we find longer development about nature, objects and trivia. Everything is magnified in the mind of Orlando and one struggles to follow the endless meandering of this mind. It does not seem that there is something substantial from where it starts or towards which he is trying to go back. One feels only lost in its delusion. Yet Orlando is conscious of this fact, and know that he only discards an illusion to acquire another. This is a perfect description of the human experience after all. Even by the end, we still far from coming out with a conclusion, the mind only stops when it is extremely fatigued, not because he found an answer, and its pause lasts only for a brief moment, in order to resume its endless labor of creating his own delusions. ...more |
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عاش الشاعري بين القرنين الثامن و التاسع الميلادي. هي فترة اساسية في تكون الاسلام كديانة بمختلف معتقداتها و افكارها و ممارساتها الشعائرية. ليس فقط ذلك،
عاش الشاعري بين القرنين الثامن و التاسع الميلادي. هي فترة اساسية في تكون الاسلام كديانة بمختلف معتقداتها و افكارها و ممارساتها الشعائرية. ليس فقط ذلك، هي مرحلة تكوينية على صعيد الفكر السياسي الاسلامي و تأثيره في التوجهات الفقهية و ترجمتها الى تشريع و أحكام. في خضم هذا السياق المعقد و المتغير بتغير القوى السياسية، نجد شعر الامام الشافعي، الذي يكاد يخدع القارئ، بتلك السكينة و الهدوء اللذين يوحي بهما. يصعب تخيل السياق الواقعي الذي نظم فيه ديوان يسمو به شاعره عن صراعات الفقهاء و رياء العلماء و طغيان الحكماء. يبدو ان ان الشاعري من خلال شعره يشير الينا لعلنا نرى ما وراء ما يعيش فيه الانسان من سباق و جهد في محاولة تحصيل مطامع الحياة الانسانية. إنه يذكرنا بتفاهة هذا الصراع، الذي لا يتأجج و يشتد الا بجهل المرء بحقيقة الاشياء. فنحن نمضي وجودنا بين الرياء و التفاخر بما اكتسبناه اليوم، و الحسرة و اليأس بما ضاع في الغد. و العكس صحيح. من أكثر الامور غرابة هو اعتقاد الانسان أنه مالك شيئا ما، او قادر على السيطرة على تقلبات الدهر، فيظن النعمة حقا مكتسبا، و النقمة بلاء يمكن ردعه. من اهم ما يجده القارئ في هذا الديوان هو الزهد في الحياة الدنيا، لتفاهتها و فناءها، و التوكل على الله القادر على كل شيء، الذي يعطي و يمنع، و التخلي عن الرياء الذي لا يؤدي الا الى الجهل و الضلالة. قد تكون قراءة شخصية ولكن الا يبدو من خلال هذه الافكار التي لا ينفك يعود إليها في ديوانه أن الشاعري يرى ما وراء الصراعات الفقهية. أغلب نقاشات الفقهاء لا تتسم بالزهد، إنها في حقيقة الامر لا تبتعد كثيرا عن مطامع الحياة الدنيا. ان لم نستطع معرفة كيف كان عليه الحال في أيام الشافعي فوصف النقاشات الفقهية بكونها نقاشات دنيوية ينطبق على ما نراه من فقهاء اليوم الى حد كبير. اذ كثيرا ما تتعلق بالجنس و المال و الاملاك و البيع و الشراء. هذا الجانب المتزهد لا يجد مكانا بجوار الفقه، على الاقل ذلك الفقه الموجه الى العامة. من جهة أخرى، يبدو ان الشافعي يعود هنا او هناك ليذكرنا بتشبته بما اصبح يشكل في الفترات التاريخية التي تلته، الأرثوذكسية الاسلامية بامتياز،بمعنى السنة و الفقه. اولا، ان دراسة القرآن و سماع الحديث و النقاشات الفقهية هي ما يعتبر علما. من خلال بعض الابيات نرى ان البحث عن هذا العلم و اكتسابه كان محركا اساسيا في حياة الشاعري. ثانيا، اتخاذ الرسول و آل بيته و احترامهم و تقديرهم كمكون اساسي لما يعتبر اسلام اهل السنة. ثالثا، العلاقة بين الفقهاء و السلطة، ففي الكثير من الابيات، يذكر الشاعري بخطورة الاقتراب من السلطة بسبب تقلباتها، و يحذر من تأثيرها على الأمانة العلمية، أو الفقهية في هذه الحالة. بهذا يكون ديوان الشافعي قد عرض بالتفصيل، الإشكالات الاساسية التي طبعت الاسلام منذ نشأته و لا تزال توجه النقاشات و الاسئلة المطروحة في يومنا هذا. الاسلام كنمط حياة و ممارسات دينية مقننة بأحكام فقهية، تعرض ولا يزال لصعوبة بل استحالة اتفاق جميع الاراء الفقهية و غياب سلطة مركزية تفرض رأيها. العلاقة الإشكالية بين السلطة و الفقه ترتب عليها و لا يزال، تناقضات و صراعات قوة يصبح فيها حلال اليوم حراما غدا. جانب التزهد، ولو انه كان مكونا اساسيا في الاسلام في الفترة التي عاش فيها الشافعي ، هو الوحيد الذي لم ينجو من الدهر. ليس هذا بأمر غريب، فبحكم ما يقول الشافعي بنفسه، لم يكن، و ربما لن يكون ابدا للزهد جماهير من المتحمسين. ...more |
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| 9981090727
| 9789981090729
| 9981090727
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| Jan 01, 2002
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it was amazing
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Il s’agit d’un petit trésor caché qui mérite d’être plus connu et diffusé. Un de ces documents historiques qui présentent une vision du côté opposée.
Il s’agit d’un petit trésor caché qui mérite d’être plus connu et diffusé. Un de ces documents historiques qui présentent une vision du côté opposée. C’est un récit du voyage en France du Pacha de Tétouan, ville du nord du Maroc, envoyé comme ambassadeur par le Sultan Moulay Abderrahman à la cour de Louis-Philippe en 1845. Dans un contexte de pression coloniale, la mission avait pour objectif de confirmer l’engagement du Maroc vis-à-vis de la puissance française suite à un ensemble de défaites qu’il a connu. Paradoxalement, l’objectif de la mission lui-même n’est pas détaillé dans ce récit. S’agissant d’un compte rendu à l’attention du Sultan, ce sont plutôt les impressions et les découvertes de ce monde inconnu que l’auteur a pris soin de rapporter. L’auteur du récit est un scribe tétouanais dans le service du Pacha. Formé en droit et jurisprudence islamique et agent du « Makhzen », c'est-à-dire l’appareil étatique marocain traditionnel, qui malgré sa fragilité politique au XIX siècle, est resté capable de s’adapter et survivre les plus profonds changements. Assafar est très attentif aux facteurs de la puissance militaire française et de son organisation politique, ses avancées technologiques sans négliger les différences de mœurs et de manières qui frappent son esprit. Assafar vient d’une élite sociale qui puise ses privilèges dans la continuation d’une tradition religieuse et politique, et pour qui les bouleversements de la modernité constituent une grande menace. Néanmoins, il est bien conscient des réalités politiques et militaires que l’enthousiasme religieux et le conservatisme obstiné ne peut changer. Son discours est plein d’appréciation du sérieux et de l’acharnement au travail et au gain des français, sur lesquels se base la prospérité de leur société, ainsi que le respect sacré des lois, de la méritocratie et l’organisation ingénieuse et raisonnée loin des contraintes de la tradition ou de la religion. En même temps, il reste fidèle au paradigme islamique type, rappelant qu'à chaque fois que malgré le succès dans cette vie éphémère, ces mécréants et dénégateurs qui n’adhèrent pas à la vraie foi, ont raté la récompense ultime et éternelle après la mort. Quant à la description de ce que l’ambassade a vu en France, le détail peut parfois sembler stupéfiant au lecteur. Assafar décrit les manières de cuisiner, de manger et de s'asseoir qui le frappent par leur différence de ce qu’un marocain de l’élite est habitué à voir. Les services des hôtels et de la poste, le recensement de la population et l’éclairage public l’impressionnent, ainsi que la facilité et la sécurité de traverser une si longue distance par des moyens de transport si rapides et confortables. Il est en train de faire l’expérience de plusieurs petits détails que l’occidentalisation et la technologie moderne ont transformé en un quotidien même pour le bas peuple, en moins de 150 ans. Pour ce qui est du plus sérieux, Assafar note le haut degré d’instruction de la population, la diffusion de l’information par les journaux qu’il découvre pour la première fois et l’énorme importance accordée à l’impression des livres et à l’enregistrement de toute sorte de chose, religieuse ou non. Venant d’un monde ou le transfert du savoir se fait principalement par la mémoire, et ou le seul savoir qui existe est le savoir religieux, Assafar affronte un monde où tout est écrit et tout est étudié, sans distinction de valeur. Par son discours politiquement correct à l’égard de ses coreligionnaires conservateurs, Assafar est peut être en train de frayer un chemin vers le changement quoique timidement. Lors d’une célébration du nouvel an dans le Palais Royal, il mentionne avoir rencontré une ambassade égyptienne, qui n’est pas la première à atterrir à Paris. L’Egypte étant la première puissance musulmane qui n’a pas beaucoup hésité à chercher à importer les techniques françaises. Parmi les membres de ces premières missions estudiantines figure un certain Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, auteur d’un récit de voyage intitulé l’Or de Paris, qui est resté référence dans le genre pour les voyageurs musulmans, et que Assafar connaissait très bien. ...more |
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| 0140444475
| 9780140444476
| 0140444475
| 4.06
| 397
| -390
| Aug 04, 1987
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really liked it
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This is a collection of seven dialogues by Plato: Ion, Lachès, Lysis, Charmides, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor and Euthydemus. The collection comes wit
This is a collection of seven dialogues by Plato: Ion, Lachès, Lysis, Charmides, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor and Euthydemus. The collection comes with a general and brief introduction to the works of Plato. Then each dialogue comes with an introduction of its own hinting at the recent interpretation and commentaries by recent scholarship. Even each section of a dialogue starts with a summary of the argument involved in order to make it easy for readers who are new to Plato. “Early Dialogue� means that this is the part of Plato’s career in which he has not yet developed his most renowned ideas, mainly the theory of Forms, and the theory of knowledge as a form of recollection. However, in these dialogues he already asks the same questions, about the nature of Greek virtues such as excellence, self mastery and courage, and whether these virtues are a skill to be acquired and for what reason or benefit we ought to pursue them. Although most of them are definition dialogues, they do end up in the classical Socratic aporia, in which the participants admit their inability to find a clear cut answer to the problem, as a manifestation of their awareness of their own ignorance and the necessity to keep pursuing wisdom. This pursuit of wisdom is done in the Socratic way, by criticizing every self-evident postulate, looking for counterexamples in order to disprove the validity of what seems so universal, and testing for fallacies and biases. In his investigation he leads his interlocutors from the basic and the familiar into deeper realms of self knowledge. In the Lachès, the discussion on courage starts from a common definition of courage as endurance in battle and ends up in an aporia hinting at a much more sophisticated definition of courage, being some sort of knowledge of what is really fearful and what is not. In the Lysis, a discussion starts about friendship and the motives why someone seeks those who are like or unlike himself, , and ends up with the much elaborated aporia that friendship is about seeking what is good, because of the presence of the bad. All these are ideas which Plato was already considering in the start of his career, and which will blossom later especially in works such as the Republic. Another defining trait of the Socratic Method, or the platonic thought, as limits between the two are so blurred in these dialogues, is the analogy between learning, teaching or being good at a skill or at a branch of knowledge and that of virtue. If we can define virtue and know what it is then we can learn it and excel at it, the same way a doctor or a mathematician learns and excels at his discipline. This boils down to the platonic idea that virtue is nothing else than knowledge. In the Charmides, Plato pushes this idea to its limits, exploring the paradoxes of the knowledge of knowledge, meaning of what one actually knows and what one does not know. Perhaps the most striking peculiarity of these dialogues, one which is essential to their description by scholars as early works of Plato, is his polemicist approach, going even to caricatured depiction of the sophists. In Hippias Major, Hippias Minor and even far more in the Euthydemus we are introduced to the confusing word play and verbiage of the sophists, which they use to prove the thing and it’s contrary, and offer to teach as a wisdom which will help one in all walks of life. Socrates is of course depicted as their antithesis par excellence. As he answers with his usual irony, he always reminds us, not without great humor and wit, of his desire to learn, to escape the confusion of particulars and traps of logical fallacies in order to achieve wisdom which is the real guarantee of the good and the happy life. ...more |
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| 1578635586
| 9781578635580
| 1578635586
| 4.21
| 356
| 1962
| Jul 01, 2014
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it was amazing
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It will be judicious to start with an overview of some of the basic Buddhist concepts, in order to clarify what is meant by meditation in this context
It will be judicious to start with an overview of some of the basic Buddhist concepts, in order to clarify what is meant by meditation in this context. A core idea in eastern religions and philosophical system is that of existence as an endless cycle, in which human existence in particular is plagued by suffering, if not the suffering of grave misfortunes; that of sickness, aging and death is simply inescapable. Humans suffer because of their attachment to impermanent things, like the body which is mortal, feelings of pleasure and happiness that are impermanent in their very nature, as they have to change and make a place for other feelings of opposite nature in this endless cycle of existence. Even anger, hatred and sadness can be objects of attachment, since we delight in them and cannot let them go. According to the teaching of the buddha, this is a state of ignorance. Humans are deluded into putting their happiness in impermanent and unsatisfactory things of the world, which are destined to a conditioned decay just as they originated conditionally. It is here where the key to escape suffering lies, in the direct understanding and knowledge of the real nature of conditioned things and the transcendence of them, in order to stop the craving and the attachment to them, and thus put an end to the endless cycle of rebirth. This is certainly no easy task, that is way the teacher laid down a whole program of mental training, with a variety of technics, adapted to different characters, aimed at different levels of spiritual attainment. It is a path to walk and not a miraculous answer, and the practice of meditation goes hand in hand with whoever choses to walk on this path. This book presents the technique that the buddha taught, mainly mindfulness. The text in Buddhist scripture which deals with this practice is titled the discourse on Sattipatthana, literally the way of mindfulness. In order to avoid any mystification of the word mindfulness, we should remember that we all have our short moment of mindfulness, meaning this brief moment of simple awareness of things in the present moment, without any value judgment or wondering thoughts or any subjective addition to what is being perceived. This brief state is always experienced in its embryonic state, dismissed in a haste in order to go back to our usual value-judging, argumentative selves. In most eastern religious practices, it is this state that should be cultivated, given the clarity in which the mind enjoys at that moment, and the absence of disturbances that distort reality and cause suffering. In order to strengthen and exploit mindfulness, one won’t depend on chance. Exercises using specific objects were recommended by the buddha. The most basic one is the body, being and external and a crude object, then one can advance to what is more difficult to observe, feelings, states of minds and mind objects. The concept is so simple but requires practice in order to see its fruits. It is simply about sitting and concentrating the mind on one object, when put in practice, one can see that the major difficulty is that the mind always wonders away from its object. This is its nature, for most beginners, the mind is always seeking something else to hold on to. In Buddhist terms, the aim of this exercise is to develop factors of enlightenment and abandon the defilements of the mind. Obviously the first factor is that of concentration, meaning the ability to maintain attention to one object for a long time. There is also tranquility, in fact the whole practice is sometimes named tranquility meditation because one of its most important aims is to calm down the mind and stop its restless wondering. The practice also teaches us to invest more energy into the restraining of our mind, and inquire more into the state in which it is observed. This is the factors of energy and investigation, used to counter act slumber and laziness of mind. In brief, the practice of mindfulness aims at knowing oneself. But this knowledge is a specific one, it is a knowledge in the light of what Buddhists call the three characteristics of existence, which are also the first three of the four noble truth. The first characteristic is that of impermanence, meaning that the only constant in existence is that of change. The body is impermanent, although we only realize the change when it is displeasing, in the case of aging or being sick. Feelings, mind states and mental objects are even more elusive, most people don’t even notice when or how do they switch from a pleasant state to an unpleasant one, or go through a rapid chain of thoughts, only to finish in more confusion. Even worse, we are tormented by feelings and mental states which we do not even understand. The second characteristic is that of unsatisfactoriness, meaning that most of these feelings, mental objects which constitute our image of the real world do not bring lasting happiness, they change so fast and we should jump to something else to keep ourselves gratified, even our own impressions about them change and we force ourselves to chase something else. The last characteristic is by far the most subtle one, and the most unique to Buddhism, it is that of Non-self, or impersonality. After observing the body, the mind and feelings, their impermanence and unsatisfactoriness, and also their dependance on causes and conditions, one gradually comes to realize that there is no lasting permanent essence that creates or interacts with the real world, our experience is an endless whirling of sensual stimulus, feelings, mental states and objects. the illusion of cohesion or Self is created by our attachment to the gratification through these channels of experience. Our inability to see their real nature of impermanence and unsatisfactorines ties us to the endless cycle of birth and death. And where do this realization brings us? it brings us to the fourth noble truth, that of cessation. It is the realization that it is possible to stop the suffering, by detaching and not identifying with the components of our experience and the objects of the external world. This it the liberating knowledge which the practice of meditation aims at, meaning seeing things as they are and not mistaking them for sources of happiness while most of times, they are sources of suffering. Happiness is beyond what is impermanent, unsatisfactory and conditioned, it is the state of Nibbana. ...more |
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Nov 10, 2023
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Oct 15, 2023
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May 24, 2023
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Feb 23, 2023
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it was amazing
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Jan 08, 2023
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Oct 29, 2022
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