Perennial Meditations (Saturday Review)
Notes, Takeaways, and Saturday Meditation (29 Jan - 4 Feb)
Welcome to Perennial Meditations (Saturday Review) — A weekly recap and reflection of ancient lessons on the art of living. Below you’ll find links, notable quotes, and a Saturday Meditation.
What is Love?
This week’s Saturday Meditation comes from an upcoming book for Reading & the Good Life, The Art of Loving, by the psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm (1900-1980). Fromm explained,
Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.
“Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling,” observed Fromm, “it is a practice.”
Reflection Questions (Pick one or create your own):
How would you define love to a friend?
What stands in the way of seeing love as a practice?
1. On the Faults of the Spirit (Listen here)
In a letter known today as On the Faults of the Spirit, Seneca wrote,
You can persuade me into almost anything now, for I was recently persuaded to travel by water. We cast off when the sea was lazily smooth; the sky, to be sure, was heavy with nasty clouds, such as usually break into rain or squalls. Still, I thought that the few miles … might be run off in quick time, despite the uncertain and lowering sky. …
But when we were so far out that it made little difference to me whether I returned or kept on, the calm weather, which had enticed me, came to naught. The storm had not yet begun, but the ground-swell was on, and the waves kept steadily coming faster. I began to ask the pilot to put me ashore somewhere; he replied that the coast was rough and a bad place to land, …
2. Three Ways to Say “Yes” to Life (Read here)
There are many things over which we have no control — probably most things. By walking our path in life, we discover that the world refuses to bow to our commands. For this reason, wisdom traditions have many names for accepting and aligning ourselves with how the world works. The Stoics advise us to live in accordance with nature. The Taoists say to live in the flow of life, and spiritual traditions have phrases and practices like acceptance, surrender, and letting go.
Reinhold Niebuhr, an American Protestant theologian, composed a prayer that has become the cornerstone of the recovery movement:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
It is known today as the Serenity Prayer. But two thousand years prior, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught essentially the same lesson,
Some things in the world are up to us, while others are not. Up to us are our faculties of judgment, motivation, desire, and aversion—in short, everything that is our own doing. Not up to us are our body and property, our reputations, and our official positions—in short, everything that is not our own doing.
3. The Sun is Always Shining (Read here)
I was walking around my neighborhood on a cloudy day last week — something I try to do daily. On this particular day, the sun was nowhere to be found. Complete overcast as far as the eye could see.
But it’s interesting to remember that the sun is always shining.
Even on this overcast day. If one were to fly above the clouds, one would find the sun shining brightly. The same is even true at night. The sun is still shining. It is simply shining on the other side of the world.
In his short classic No Mud, No Lotus (a book we explored for Reading & the Good Life), the late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh explained,
One of the most difficult things for us to accept is that there is no realm where there’s only happiness and there’s no suffering. This doesn’t mean that we should despair. Suffering can be transformed. As soon as we open our mouth to say “suffering,” we know that the opposite of suffering is already there as well. Where there is suffering, there is happiness.
But, when we experience suffering — it is incredibly challenging to see the availability of anything else. […]
4. Faith, Hope, and Love (Listen here)
In this week’s episode of In Search of Wisdom, I welcomed two friends and fellow travelers from The Walled Garden, Sharon Lebell (author of The Art of Living) and Simon Drew (author of The Poet & the Sage). As you’ll hear in the episode, Sharon and Simon have thought deeply about what it means to live a virtuous life, and I’m grateful they took the time to come on the show.
In the conversation, we explore the questions,
What is faith, and what’s the opposite of faith?
How should we think about hope in daily life?
Why do some philosophers see hope as something to avoid?
What roles do our views and beliefs play in living virtuously?
Wisdom in daily life and much more
Although we covered much ground in the conversation, we only scratched the surface. Our goal is to connect again in the near future to explore the virtue of love — more to follow. […]
5. Reading & the Good Life (Read here)
On Reading & the Good Life this week, we transitioned to a new book — Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
One of the selected passages we discussed included:
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. […]
— Man’s Search for Meaning, Ch. 1
6. Poetry, Pain, & the Art of Living (Listen here)
Is it even appropriate to think (or say) words like happiness and suffering in the same sentence? To start, let’s distinguish physical pain from suffering. We’ll turn to a well-known Buddhist parable (The Dart of Painful Feeling).
The Second Arrow — Buddhist Teaching
The Buddha taught his followers, “Monks, when the uninstructed worldling experiences a painful feeling, he sorrows, grieves, and laments; he weeps, beating his breast and becomes distraught. He feels two feelings—a bodily one and a mental one. Suppose they were to strike a man with a dart and then strike him immediately afterward with a second dart so that the man would feel a feeling caused by two darts. So too, when the uninstructed worldling experiences a painful feeling, he feels two feelings—a bodily one and a mental one.” […]
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Thank you for reading (& listening) this week; I hope you found something useful for daily life.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. As always, feel free to comment, ask questions, or suggest future topics.