06 고행, 비집착, 올바른 생계
일상의 삶에서 일어나는 일들을 수용하기
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Mortification of the flesh
- is an act by which an individual or group seeks to mortify or deaden their sinful nature,
- as a part of the process of sanctification.
- Mortificaton of the flesh is undertaken
in order to repent for sins and share in the Passion of Jesus.
Wikipedia
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고행, 금욕abstinence, 禁欲
스스로의 행위를 내부로부터 규제하고 통괄하는 일
일체의 육체적·정신적인 욕구나 욕망을 억제하는 자기 부인(自己否認)의 행위(골3:5). 육욕(肉慾)을 금하는 일. 통상적으로, 금식, 절제, 독신생활, 또는 신체에 고통을 가함(자학) 등으로 나타난다.
- 성도에게서 금욕의 목적은 죄 아래 있는 인간의 육체적 욕망을 억제함으로써 영혼을 정화하고, 하나님과의 거룩한 교제를 이루는 데 있다고
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[A] MORTIFICATION 고행
This treasure of the Kingdom of God has been hidden by time and multiplicity and the soul's own works, or briefly by its creaturely nature. But in the measure that the soul can separate itself from this multiplicity, to that extent it reveals within itself the Kingdom of God. Here the soul and the Godhead are one.
0 U R kingdom go' is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of 'Thy kingdom come.' For the more there is of self, the less there is of God. The divine eternal fullness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing and acting.
Eckhart
0 U R kingdom go' is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of 'Thy kingdom come.' For the more there is of self, the less there is of God. The divine eternal fullness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing and acting.
Mortification or deliberate dying to self is inculcated with an uncompromising firmness in the canonical writings of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and most of the other major and minor religions of the world, and by every theocentric saint and spiritual reformer who has ever lived out and expounded the principles of the Perennial Philosophy.
But this 'self-naughting' is never (at least by anyone who knows what he is talking about) regarded as an end in itself. It possesses merely an instrumental value, as the indispensable means to something else. In the words of one whom we have often had occasion to cite in earlier sections, it is necessary for all of us to 'learn the true nature and worth of all self-denials and mortifications.'[113 114 ]
As to their nature, considered in themselves, they have nothing of goodness or holiness, nor are any real part of our sanctification, they are not the true food or nourishment of the Divine Life in our souls, they have no quickening, sanctifying power in them; their only worth consists in this, that they remove the impediments of holiness, break down that which stands between God and us, and make way for the quickening, sanctifying spirit of God to operate on our souls, which operation of God is the one only thing that can raise the Divine Life in the soul, or help it to the smallest degree of real holiness or spiritual life. . . .
As to their nature, considered in themselves, they have nothing of goodness or holiness, nor are any real part of our sanctification, they are not the true food or nourishment of the Divine Life in our souls, they have no quickening, sanctifying power in them; their only worth consists in this, that they remove the impediments of holiness, break down that which stands between God and us, and make way for the quickening, sanctifying spirit of God to operate on our souls, which operation of God is the one only thing that can raise the Divine Life in the soul, or help it to the smallest degree of real holiness or spiritual life. . . .
Hence we may learn the reason why many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for all their mortifications. It is because they mistake the whole nature and worth of them.
They practise them for their own sakes, as things good in themselves;
they think them to be real parts of holiness, and so rest in them and look no further, but grow full of self-esteem and self-admiration for their own progress in them.
This makes them self-sufficient, morose, severe judges of all those that fall short of their mortifi-cations. And thus their self-denials do only that for them which indulgences do for other people: they withstand and hinder the operation of God upon their souls, and instead of being really self-denials, they strengthen and keep up the kingdom of self.
The rout and destruction of the passions, while a good, is not the ultimate good; the discovery of Wisdom is the surpassing good. When this is found, all the people will sing.
Living in religion (as I can speak by experience) if one is not in a right course of prayer and other exercises between God and our soul, one's nature growth much worse than ever it would have been, if one had lived in the world.
William Law
The rout and destruction of the passions, while a good, is not the ultimate good; the discovery of Wisdom is the surpassing good. When this is found, all the people will sing.
P/jib
Living in religion (as I can speak by experience) if one is not in a right course of prayer and other exercises between God and our soul, one's nature growth much worse than ever it would have been, if one had lived in the world.
For pride and self-love, which are rooted in the soul by sin, find means to strengthen themselves exceedingly in religion, if the soul is not in a course that may teach her and procure her true humility. For by the corrections and contradictions of the will (which cannot be avoided by any living in a religious community) I find my heart grown, as I may say, as hard as a stone; and nothing would have been able to soften it but by being put into a course of prayer, by which the soul tendeth towards God and learneth of Him the lesson of truly humbling herself.
Once, when I was grumbling over being obliged to eat meat and do no penance, I heard it said that sometimes there was more of self-love than desire of penance in such sorrow.
That the mortified are, in some respects, often much worse than the unmortified is a commonplace of history, fiction and descriptive psychology.
Dame Gertrude More
Once, when I was grumbling over being obliged to eat meat and do no penance, I heard it said that sometimes there was more of self-love than desire of penance in such sorrow.
St. Teresa
That the mortified are, in some respects, often much worse than the unmortified is a commonplace of history, fiction and descriptive psychology.
Thus, the Puritan may practise all the cardinal virtues—prudence, fortitude, temperance and chastity —and yet remain a thoroughly bad man;
for, in all too many cases, these virtues of his are accompanied by, and indeed causally connected with, the sins of pride, envy, chronic anger and an uncharitableness pushed sometimes to the level of active cruelty.
청교도는 신중함, 강인함, 절제, 순결과 같은 모든 기본 덕목을 실천하면서도 철저히 나쁜 사람으로 남을 수 있습니다. 왜냐하면 너무나 많은 경우에 그의 이러한 미덕은 교만, 시기, 만성적인 분노, 때로는 적극적인 잔인함의 수준까지 밀어붙이는 무자비함을 동반하고 실제로 인과적으로 연결되어 있기 때문입니다.
Mistaking the means for the end, the Puritan has fancied himself holy because he is stoically austere. 청교도의 에고
But stoical austerity is merely the exaltation of the more creditable side of the ego at the expense of the less creditable. Holiness, on the contrary, is the total denial of the separative self, in its creditable no less than its discreditable aspects, and the abandonment of the will to God.
To the extent that there is attachment to 'I,' 'me,' 'mine,' there is no attachment to, and therefore no unitive knowledge of, the divine Ground.
Mortification has to be carried to the pitch of non-attachment or (in the phrase of St. François de Sales) 'holy indifference';
otherwise it merely transfers self-will from one channel to another, not merely without decrease in the total volume of that self-will, but sometimes with an actual increase.
As usual, the corruption of the best is the worst. The difference between the mortified but still proud and self-centred stoic and the unmortified hedonist consists in this:
- the latter, being flabby, shiftless and at heart rather ashamed of himself, lacks the energy and the motive to do much harm except to his own body, mind and spirit;
- the former, because he has all the secondary virtues and looks down on those who are not like himself, is morally equipped to wish and to be able to do harm on the very largest scale and with a perfectly untroubled conscience.[116]
These are obvious facts; and yet, in the current religious jargon of our day the word 'immoral' is reserved almost exclusively for the carnally self-indulgent. The covetous and the ambitious, the respectable toughs and those who cloak their lust for power and place under the right sort of idealistic cant, are not merely unbiamed; they are even held up as models of virtue and godliness. The representatives of the organized churches begin by putting haloes on the heads of the people who do most to make wars and revolutions, then go on, rather plaintively, to wonder why the world should be in such a mess.
Mortification is not, as many people seem to imagine, a matter, primarily, of severe physical austerities. It is possible that, for certain persons in certain circumstances, the practice of severe physical austerities may prove helpful in advance towards man's final end.
Mortification is not, as many people seem to imagine, a matter, primarily, of severe physical austerities. It is possible that, for certain persons in certain circumstances, the practice of severe physical austerities may prove helpful in advance towards man's final end.
In most cases, however, it would seem that what is gained by such austerities is not liberation, but something quite different—the achievement of 'psychic' powers. The ability to get petitionary prayer answered, the power to heal and work other miracles, the knack of looking into the future or into other people's minds—these, it would seem, are often related in some kind of causal connection with fasting, watching and the self-infliction of pain. Most of the great theocentric saints and spiritual teachers have admitted the existence of supernormal powers, only, however, to deplore them.
To think that such Siddkis, as the Indians call them, have anything to do with liberation is, they say, a dangerous illusion. These things are either irrelevant to the main issue of life, or, if too much prized and attended to, an obstacle in the way of spiritual advance. Nor are these the only objections to physical austerities.
Carried to extremes, they may be dangerous to health—and without health the steady persistence of effort required by the spiritual life is very difficult of achievement.
And being difficult, painful and generally conspicuous, physical austerities are a standing temptation to vanity and the competitive spirit of record breaking.
'When thou didst give thyself up to physical mortification, thou wast great, thou wast admired.' So writes Suso of his own experiences—experiences which led him, just as Gautama Buddha had been led many centuries before, to give up his course of bodily penance.
And St. Teresa remarks how much easier it is to impose great penances upon oneself than to suffer in patience, charity and humbleness the ordinary everyday crosses of family life
(which did not prevent her, incidentally, from practising, to the very day of her death, the most excruciating forms of self-torture. Whether these austerities really helped her to come to the unitive knowledge of God, or whether they were prized and persisted in because of the psychic powers they helped to develop, there is no means of determining.)
Our dear Saint (Francois de Sales) disapproved of immoderate fasting. He used to say that the spirit could not endure the body when overfed, but that, if underfed, the body could not endure the spirit.
When the will, the moment it feels any joy in sensible things rises upwards in that joy to God, and when sensible things move it to pray, it should not neglect them, it should make use of them for so holy an exercise; because sensible things, in these conditions, subserve the end for which God created them, namely to be occasions for making Him better known and loved.
He who is not conscious of liberty of spirit among the things of sense and sweetness—things which should serve as motives to prayer—and whose will rests and feeds upon them, ought to abstain from the use of them; for to him they are a hindrance on the road to God.
[118]
One man may declare that he cannot fast; but can he declare that he cannot love God? Another may affirm that he cannot preserve virginity or sell all his goods in order to give the price to the poor; but can he tell me that he cannot love his enemies? All that is necessary is to look into one's own heart; for what God asks of us is not found at a great distance.
Anybody who wishes to do so can get all, and indeed more than all,
Our dear Saint (Francois de Sales) disapproved of immoderate fasting. He used to say that the spirit could not endure the body when overfed, but that, if underfed, the body could not endure the spirit.
Jean Pierre Camus
When the will, the moment it feels any joy in sensible things rises upwards in that joy to God, and when sensible things move it to pray, it should not neglect them, it should make use of them for so holy an exercise; because sensible things, in these conditions, subserve the end for which God created them, namely to be occasions for making Him better known and loved.
St. John of the Cross
He who is not conscious of liberty of spirit among the things of sense and sweetness—things which should serve as motives to prayer—and whose will rests and feeds upon them, ought to abstain from the use of them; for to him they are a hindrance on the road to God.
St. John of the Cross
[118]
One man may declare that he cannot fast; but can he declare that he cannot love God? Another may affirm that he cannot preserve virginity or sell all his goods in order to give the price to the poor; but can he tell me that he cannot love his enemies? All that is necessary is to look into one's own heart; for what God asks of us is not found at a great distance.
St. Jerome
Anybody who wishes to do so can get all, and indeed more than all,
the mortification he wants out of the incidents of ordinary, day-to-day living, without ever resorting to harsh bodily penance.
Here are the rules laid down by the author of Holy Wisdom for Dame Gertrude More.
Dame Gertrude More (born as Helen More; 25 March 1606 - 17 August 1633) was a nun of the English Benedictine Congregation, a writer and chief founder of the abbey at Cambrai which became Stanbrook Abbey.
- First, that she should do all that belonged to her to do by any law, human or Divine.
- Secondly, that she was to refrain from doing those things that were forbidden her by human or Divine Law, or by Divine inspiration.
- Thirdly, that she should bear with as much patience or resignation as possible all crosses and contradictions to her natural will, which were inflicted by the hand of God.
Such, for instance, were aridities, temptations, afflictions or bodily pain, sickness and infirmity; or again, the loss of friends or want of necessaries and comforts.
All this was to be endured patiently, whether the crosses came direct from God or by means of His creatures. . . . These indeed were mortifications enough for Dame Gertrude, or for any other soul, and there was no need for anyone to advise or impose others.
Augustine Baker
====To sum up, that mortification is the best
which results in the elimination of self-will, self-interest, self-centred thinking, wishing and imagining.
Extreme physical austerities are not likely to achieve this kind of mortification.
But the acceptance of what happens to us (apart, of course, from our own sins) in the course of daily living is likely to produce this result.
If specific exercises in self-denial are undertaken, they should be inconspicuous, non-competitive and unirijurious to health.
- Thus, in the matter of diet, most people will find it sufficiently mortifying to refrain from eating all the things which the experts in nutrition condemn as unwholesome.
- And where social relations are concerned, self-denial should take the form, not of showy acts of would-he humility, but of control of the tongue and the moods—in refraining from saying anything uncharitable or merely frivolous (which means, in practice, refraining from about fifty per cent. of ordinary conversation),
- and in behaving calmly and with quiet cheerfulness when external circumstances or the state of our bodies predisposes us to anxiety, gloom or an excessive elation.
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요컨대, 고행은 자기 의지, 자기 이익, 자기 중심적 사고, 소원 및 상상을 없애는 때기 이 최고입니다.
극단적인 육체적 가혹함은 이런 종류의 고행을 달성하지 못할 것입니다.
그러나 일상 생활의 과정에서 우리에게 일어나는 일(물론 우리 자신의 죄는 제외하고)을 받아들이는 것이 이러한 결과를 낳을 가능성이 높습니다.
극기의 특정 운동을 하는 경우 눈에 띄지 않고 경쟁적이지 않으며 건강에 해롭지 않아야 합니다.
따라서 식이요법과 관련하여 대부분의 사람들은 영양 전문가들이 건강에 해롭다고 비난하는 모든 것을 삼가는 것이 충분히 고통스럽다는 것을 알게 될 것입니다.
그리고 사회적 관계에 관한 한 극기는 겸손의 과시적인 행동이 아니라 혀와 기분을 통제하는 형태를 취해야 합니다. , 일상적인 대화의 약 50% 자제), 외부 환경이나 우리 몸의 상태가 불안, 우울 또는 과도한 의기양양함을 일으키기 쉬운 경우 침착하고 조용하고 쾌활하게 행동합니다.
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When a man practises charity in order to be reborn in heaven, or for fame, or reward, or from fear, such charity can obtain no pure effect.
Sutra on the Distinction and Protection of the Dkarma
When Prince Wen Wang was on a tour of inspection in Tsang, he saw an old man fishing. But his fishing was not real fishing, for he did not fish in order to catch fish, but to amuse himself. So Wen Wang wished to employ him in the administration of government, but feared lest his own ministers, uncles and brothers might object. On the other hand, if he let the old man go, he could not bear to think of the people being deprived of such an influence.
Chuang Tu
God, if I worship Thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell. And if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine everlasting Beauty.
하나님, 제가 지옥이 두려워서 예배한다면 저를 지옥에서 불태워 주십시오.
그리고 제가가 낙원을 바라면서 당신을 숭배한다면, 저를 낙원에서 제외시키십시오.
그러나 제가가 당신 자신을 위해 예배한다면 당신의 영원한 아름다움을 아끼지 마십시오.
Rabia of Basra
8세기의 수피 시인
======[B] NON-ATTACHMENT [120]
Rabi'a, the Sufi woman-saint, speaks, thinks and feels in terms of devotional theism;
the Buddhist theologian, in terms of impersonal moral Law;
the Chinese philosopher, with characteristic humour, in terms of politics;
but all three insist on the need for non-attachment to self-interest
—insist on it as strongly as does Christ when he reproaches the Pharisees 바리새인for their egocentric piety, as does the Krishna of the Bhagavad-Gita when he tells Arjuna to do his divinely ordained duty without personal craving for, or fear of, the fruits of his actions.
바리새 사람은 이스라엘이 그리스-로마 문화 곧 그리스와 로마문화가 융합된 이방문화의 영향을 받아가는 헬레니즘화로 이스라엘 고유 문화와 신앙을 잃을 것을 우려하여 오경(토라 또는 율법)의 가르침을 문자적으로 준수하는데 철저함을 보였으며,[1] 유대교 신학을 계승하는 업적을 남겼다. 이들은 천사 등의 영적인 존재를 받아들였고 부활을 믿었기 때문에, 모세5경에 나오지 않는다고 해석하여 영적인 존재와 부활을 믿지 않는 근본주의자들인 사두가이파와 대립하였다.
St. Ignatius Loyola was once asked what his feelings would be if the Pope were to suppress the Company of Jesus. 'A quarter of an hour of prayer,' he answered, 'and I should think no more about it.'
This is, perhaps, the most difficult of all mortifications—to achieve a 'holy indifference' to the temporal success or failure of the cause to which one has devoted one's best energies.
St. Ignatius Loyola was once asked what his feelings would be if the Pope were to suppress the Company of Jesus. 'A quarter of an hour of prayer,' he answered, 'and I should think no more about it.'
This is, perhaps, the most difficult of all mortifications—to achieve a 'holy indifference' to the temporal success or failure of the cause to which one has devoted one's best energies.
If it triumphs, well and good; and if it meets defeat, that also is well and good,
if only in ways that, to a limited and time-bound mind, are here and now entirely incomprehensible.
By a man without passions I mean one who does not permit good or evil to disturb his inward economy, but rather falls in with what happens and does not add to the sum of his mortality.
The fitting disposition for union with God is not that the soul should understand, feel, taste or imagine anything on the subject of the nature of God, or any other thing whatever, but should remain in that pureness and love which is perfect resignation and complete detachment from all things for God alone.
Disquietude is always vanity, because it serves no good. Yes, even if the whole world were thrown into confusion and all things in it, disquietude on that account would be vanity.
Sufficient not only unto the day, but also unto the place, is the evil thereof. Agitation over happenings which we are powerless to modify, either because they have not yet occurred, or else are occurring at an inaccessible distance from us, achieves nothing beyond the inoculation of here and now with the remote or anticipated evil that is the object of our distress. Listening four or five times a day to newscasters and commentators, reading the morning papers and all the weeklies and monthlies—nowadays, this is described as 'taking an intelligent interest in politics.' St. John of the Cross would have called it indulgence in idle curiosity and the cultivation of disquietude for disquietude's sake.
I want very little, and what I do want I have very little wish for. I have hardly any desires, but if I were to be born again, I should have none at all. We should ask nothing and refuse nothing, but leave ourselves in the arms of divine Providence without wasting time in any desire, except to will what God wills of us.
Push far enough towards the Void,
Hold fast enough to Quietness,
And of the ten thousand things none but can be worked on by you.
I have beheld them, whither they go back.
See, all things howsoever they fiourish
Return to the root from which they grew.
This return to the Root is called Quietness;
Quietness is called submission to Fate;
What has submitted to Fate becomes part of the always-so;
To know the always-so is to be illumined;
Not to know it means to go blindly to disaster.
I wish I could join the 'Solitaries' (on Caldey Island), instead of being Superior and having to write books. But I don't wish to have what I wish, of course.
[122]
We must not wish anything other than what happens from moment to moment, all the while, however, exercising ourselves in goodness.
In the practice of mortification as in most other fields, advance is along a knife-edge. On one side lurks the Scylla of egocentric austerity, on the other the Charybdis of an uncaring quietism. The holy indifference inculcated by the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy is neither stoicism nor mere passivity. It is rather an active resignation. Self-will is renounced, not that there may be a total holiday from willing, but that the divine will may use the mortified mind and body as its instrument for good. Or we may say, with Kabir, that 'the devout seeker is he who mingles in his heart the double currents of love and detachment, like the mingling of the streams of Ganges and Jumna.' Until we put an end to particular attachments, there can be no love of God with the whole heart, mind and strength and no universal charity towards all creatures for God's sake. Hence the hard sayings in the Gospels about the need to renounce exclusive family ties. And if the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head, if the Tathagata and the Bodhi-sattvas 'have their thoughts awakened to the nature of Reality without abiding in anything whatever,' this is because a truly Godlike love which, like the sun, shines equally upon the just and the unjust, is impossible to a mind imprisoned in private preferences and aversions.
The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly. So the soul, held by the bonds of human affections, however slight they may be, cannot, while they last, make its way to God.
There are some who are newly delivered from their sins and so, though they are resolved to love God, they are still novices and apprentices, soft and weak. . . . They love a number of superfluous, vain and dangerous things at the same time as Our Lord. Though they love God above all things, they yet continue to take pleasure in many things which they do not love according to God, but besides Him—things such as slight inordinations in word, gesture, clothing, pastimes and frivolities.
There are souls who have made some progress in divine love, and have cut off all the love they had for dangerous things; yet they still have dangerous and superfluous loves, because they love what God wills them to love, but with excess and too tender and passionate a love.... The love of our relations, friends and benefactors is itself according to God, but we may love them excessively; as also our vocations, however spiritual they be; and our devotional exercises (which we should yet love very greatly) may be loved inordinately, when we set them above obedience and the more general good, or care for them as an end, when they are only means.
The goods of God, which are beyond all measure, can only be contained in an empty and solitary heart.
Suppose a boat is crossing a river and another boat, an empty one, is about to collide with it. Even an irritable man would not lose his temper. But suppose there was someone in the second boat. Then the occupant of the first would shout to him to keep clear. And if he did not hear the first time, nor even when called to three times, bad language would inevitably follow. In the first case there was no anger, in the second there was—because in the first case the boat was empty, in the second it was occupied. And so it is with man. If he could only pass empty through life, who would be able to injure him?
[124]
When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.
It is by losing the egocentric life that we save the hitherto latent and undiscovered life which, in the spiritual part of our being, we share with the divine Ground. This new-found life is 'more abundant' than the other, and of a different and higher kind. Its possession is liberation into the eternal, and liberation is beatitude. Necessarily so; for the Brahman, who is one with the Atman, is not only Being and Knowledge, but also Bliss, and, after Love and Peace, the final fruit of the Spirit is Joy. Mortification is painful, but that pain is one of the pre-conditions of blessedness. This fact of spiritual experience is sometimes obscured by the language in which it is described. Thus, when Christ says that the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be entered except by those who are as little children, we are apt to forget (so touching are the images evoked by the simple phrase) that a man cannot become childlike unless he chooses to undertake the most strenuous and searching course of self-denial. In practice the command to become as little children is identical with the command to lose one's life. As Traherne makes clear in the beautiful passage quoted in the section on 'God in the World,' one cannot know created Nature in all its essentially sacred beauty, unless one first unlearns the, dirty devices of adult humanity. Seen through the dung-coloured spectacles of self-interest, the universe looks singularly like a dung-heap; and as, through long wearing, the spectacles have grown on to the eyeballs, the process of 'cleansing the doors of perception' is often, at any rate in the earlier stages of the spiritual life, painfully like a surgical operation. Later on, it is true, even self-naughting may be suffused with the joy of the Spirit. On this point the following passage from the fourteenth-century Scale of Perfection is illuminating.
Many a man bath the virtues of humility, patience and charity towards his neighbours, only in the reason and will, and bath no spiritual delight nor love in them; for ofttimes he feeleth grudging, heaviness and bitterness for to do them, but yet nevertheless he doth them, but 'tis only by stirring of reason for dread of God. This man hath these virtues in reason and will, but not the love of them in affection. But when, by the grace of Jesus and by ghostly and bodily exercise, reason is turned into light and will into love, then hath he virtues in affection; for he hath so gnawn on the bitter bark or shell of the nut that at length lie hath broken it and now feeds on the kernel; that is to say, the virtues which were first heavy for to practise are now turned into a very delight and savour.
As long as I am this or that, or have this or that, I am not all things and I have not all things. Become pure till you neither are nor have either this or that; then you are omnipresent and, being neither this nor that, are all things.
The point so dramatically emphasized by Eckhart in these lines is one that has often been made by the moralists and psychologists of the spiritual life.
By a man without passions I mean one who does not permit good or evil to disturb his inward economy, but rather falls in with what happens and does not add to the sum of his mortality.
Chuang Tru
The fitting disposition for union with God is not that the soul should understand, feel, taste or imagine anything on the subject of the nature of God, or any other thing whatever, but should remain in that pureness and love which is perfect resignation and complete detachment from all things for God alone.
St. John of the Cross
Disquietude is always vanity, because it serves no good. Yes, even if the whole world were thrown into confusion and all things in it, disquietude on that account would be vanity.
St. John of the Cross
Sufficient not only unto the day, but also unto the place, is the evil thereof. Agitation over happenings which we are powerless to modify, either because they have not yet occurred, or else are occurring at an inaccessible distance from us, achieves nothing beyond the inoculation of here and now with the remote or anticipated evil that is the object of our distress. Listening four or five times a day to newscasters and commentators, reading the morning papers and all the weeklies and monthlies—nowadays, this is described as 'taking an intelligent interest in politics.' St. John of the Cross would have called it indulgence in idle curiosity and the cultivation of disquietude for disquietude's sake.
I want very little, and what I do want I have very little wish for. I have hardly any desires, but if I were to be born again, I should have none at all. We should ask nothing and refuse nothing, but leave ourselves in the arms of divine Providence without wasting time in any desire, except to will what God wills of us.
St. François de Sales
Push far enough towards the Void,
Hold fast enough to Quietness,
And of the ten thousand things none but can be worked on by you.
I have beheld them, whither they go back.
See, all things howsoever they fiourish
Return to the root from which they grew.
This return to the Root is called Quietness;
Quietness is called submission to Fate;
What has submitted to Fate becomes part of the always-so;
To know the always-so is to be illumined;
Not to know it means to go blindly to disaster.
Lao Tu
I wish I could join the 'Solitaries' (on Caldey Island), instead of being Superior and having to write books. But I don't wish to have what I wish, of course.
Abbot John Chapman
[122]
We must not wish anything other than what happens from moment to moment, all the while, however, exercising ourselves in goodness.
St. Catherine of Genoa
In the practice of mortification as in most other fields, advance is along a knife-edge. On one side lurks the Scylla of egocentric austerity, on the other the Charybdis of an uncaring quietism. The holy indifference inculcated by the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy is neither stoicism nor mere passivity. It is rather an active resignation. Self-will is renounced, not that there may be a total holiday from willing, but that the divine will may use the mortified mind and body as its instrument for good. Or we may say, with Kabir, that 'the devout seeker is he who mingles in his heart the double currents of love and detachment, like the mingling of the streams of Ganges and Jumna.' Until we put an end to particular attachments, there can be no love of God with the whole heart, mind and strength and no universal charity towards all creatures for God's sake. Hence the hard sayings in the Gospels about the need to renounce exclusive family ties. And if the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head, if the Tathagata and the Bodhi-sattvas 'have their thoughts awakened to the nature of Reality without abiding in anything whatever,' this is because a truly Godlike love which, like the sun, shines equally upon the just and the unjust, is impossible to a mind imprisoned in private preferences and aversions.
The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly. So the soul, held by the bonds of human affections, however slight they may be, cannot, while they last, make its way to God.
St. John of the Cross
[123]There are some who are newly delivered from their sins and so, though they are resolved to love God, they are still novices and apprentices, soft and weak. . . . They love a number of superfluous, vain and dangerous things at the same time as Our Lord. Though they love God above all things, they yet continue to take pleasure in many things which they do not love according to God, but besides Him—things such as slight inordinations in word, gesture, clothing, pastimes and frivolities.
St. Franpois de Saks
There are souls who have made some progress in divine love, and have cut off all the love they had for dangerous things; yet they still have dangerous and superfluous loves, because they love what God wills them to love, but with excess and too tender and passionate a love.... The love of our relations, friends and benefactors is itself according to God, but we may love them excessively; as also our vocations, however spiritual they be; and our devotional exercises (which we should yet love very greatly) may be loved inordinately, when we set them above obedience and the more general good, or care for them as an end, when they are only means.
Sr. François de Sales
The goods of God, which are beyond all measure, can only be contained in an empty and solitary heart.
St. Jo/in of the Cross
Suppose a boat is crossing a river and another boat, an empty one, is about to collide with it. Even an irritable man would not lose his temper. But suppose there was someone in the second boat. Then the occupant of the first would shout to him to keep clear. And if he did not hear the first time, nor even when called to three times, bad language would inevitably follow. In the first case there was no anger, in the second there was—because in the first case the boat was empty, in the second it was occupied. And so it is with man. If he could only pass empty through life, who would be able to injure him?
Chuang Ttu
[124]
When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.
Anonymous Sufi Aphorism
It is by losing the egocentric life that we save the hitherto latent and undiscovered life which, in the spiritual part of our being, we share with the divine Ground. This new-found life is 'more abundant' than the other, and of a different and higher kind. Its possession is liberation into the eternal, and liberation is beatitude. Necessarily so; for the Brahman, who is one with the Atman, is not only Being and Knowledge, but also Bliss, and, after Love and Peace, the final fruit of the Spirit is Joy. Mortification is painful, but that pain is one of the pre-conditions of blessedness. This fact of spiritual experience is sometimes obscured by the language in which it is described. Thus, when Christ says that the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be entered except by those who are as little children, we are apt to forget (so touching are the images evoked by the simple phrase) that a man cannot become childlike unless he chooses to undertake the most strenuous and searching course of self-denial. In practice the command to become as little children is identical with the command to lose one's life. As Traherne makes clear in the beautiful passage quoted in the section on 'God in the World,' one cannot know created Nature in all its essentially sacred beauty, unless one first unlearns the, dirty devices of adult humanity. Seen through the dung-coloured spectacles of self-interest, the universe looks singularly like a dung-heap; and as, through long wearing, the spectacles have grown on to the eyeballs, the process of 'cleansing the doors of perception' is often, at any rate in the earlier stages of the spiritual life, painfully like a surgical operation. Later on, it is true, even self-naughting may be suffused with the joy of the Spirit. On this point the following passage from the fourteenth-century Scale of Perfection is illuminating.
Many a man bath the virtues of humility, patience and charity towards his neighbours, only in the reason and will, and bath no spiritual delight nor love in them; for ofttimes he feeleth grudging, heaviness and bitterness for to do them, but yet nevertheless he doth them, but 'tis only by stirring of reason for dread of God. This man hath these virtues in reason and will, but not the love of them in affection. But when, by the grace of Jesus and by ghostly and bodily exercise, reason is turned into light and will into love, then hath he virtues in affection; for he hath so gnawn on the bitter bark or shell of the nut that at length lie hath broken it and now feeds on the kernel; that is to say, the virtues which were first heavy for to practise are now turned into a very delight and savour.
Walter Hilton
As long as I am this or that, or have this or that, I am not all things and I have not all things. Become pure till you neither are nor have either this or that; then you are omnipresent and, being neither this nor that, are all things.
Eckhart
The point so dramatically emphasized by Eckhart in these lines is one that has often been made by the moralists and psychologists of the spiritual life.
It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with 'I,' 'me,' 'mine' that we can truly possess the world in which we live.
Everything is ours, provided that we regard nothing as our property.
And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.
True love in this differs from dross and clay, That to divide is not to take away.
There can be no complete communism except in the goods of the spirit and, to some extent also, of the mind, and only when such goods are possessed by men and women in a state of non-attachment and self-denial. Some degree of mortification, it should be noted, is an indispensable prerequisite for the creation and enjoyment even of merely intellectual and aesthetic goods. [126] Those who choose the profession of artist, philosopher or man of science, choose, in many cases, a life of poverty and unrewarded hard work. But these are by no means the only mortifications they have to undertake. When he looks at the world, the artist must deny his ordinary human tendency to think of things in utilitarian, self-regarding terms. Similarly, the critical philosopher must mortify his common sense, while the research worker must steadfastly resist the temptations to over-simplify and think conventionally, and must make himself docile to the leadings of mysterious Fact. And what is true of the creators of aesthetic and intellectual goods is also true of the enjoyers of such goods, when created. That these mortifications are by no means trifling has been shown again and again in the course of history. One thinks, for example, of the intellectually mortified Socrates and the hemlock with which his unmortified compatriots rewarded him. One thinks of the heroic efforts that had to be made by Galileo and his contemporaries to break with the Aristotelian convention of thought, and the no less heroic efforts that have to be made today by any scientist who believes that there is more in the universe than can be discovered by employing the time-hallowed recipes of Descartes. Such mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artist—and the philosopher and the man of science are also artists—knows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession.
The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking, feeling and fancying.
Man's intellectual faculties are by the Fall in a much worse state than his animal appetites and want a much greater self-denial. And when own will, own understanding and own imagination have their natural strength indulged and gratified, and are made seemingly rich and honourable with the treasures acquired from a study of the Belles Lettres, they will just as much help poor fallen man to be like-minded witW Christ as the art of cookery, well and duly studied, will help a professor of the Gospel to the spirit and practice of Christian abstinence.
Because it was German and spelt with a K, Kultur was an object, during the First World War, of derisive contempt. All this has now been changed. In Russia, Literature, Art and Science have become the three persons of a new humanistic Trinity. Nor is the cult of Culture confined to the Soviet Union. It is practised by a majority of intellectuals in the capitalist democracies. Clever, hard-boiled journalists, who write about everything else with the condescending cynicism of people who know all about God, Man and the Universe, and have seen through the whole absurd caboodle, fairly fall over themselves when it comes to Culture. With an earnestness and enthusiasm that are, in the circumstances, unutterably ludicrous, they invite us to share their positively religious emotions in the face of High Art, as represented by the latest murals or civic centres; they insist that so long as Mrs. X goes on writing her inimitable novels and Mr. Y his more than Coleridgean criticism, the world, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, makes sense. The same over-valuation of Culture, the same belief that Art and Literature are ends in themselves and can flourish in isolation from a reasonable and realistic philosophy of life, have even invaded the schools and colleges. Among 'advanced' educationists .there are many people who seem to think that all will be well so long as adolescents are permitted to 'express themselves,' and small children are encouraged to be 'creative' in the art class. But, alas, plasticine and self-expression will not solve the problems of education. Nor will technology and vocational guidance; nor the classics and the Hundred Best Books. The following criticisms of education were made more than two and a half centuries ago; but they are as relevant today as they were in the seventeenth century. [128]
He knoweth nothing as he ought to know, who thinks he know-eth anything without seeing its place and the manner how it relateth to God, angels and men, and to all the creatures in earth, heaven and hell, time and eternity.
Nevertheless some things were defective too (at Oxford under the Commonwealth). There was never a tutor that did professly teach Felicity, though that be the mistress of all the other sciences. Nor did any of us study these things but as aliens, which we ought to have studied as our own enjoyments. We studied to inform our knowledge, but knew not for what end we studied. And for lack of aiming at a certain end, we erred in the manner.
In Traherne's vocabulary 'felicity' means 'beatitude,' which is identical in practice with liberation, which, in its turn, is the unitive knowledge of God in the heights within and in the fullness without as well as within.
Whit follows is an account of the intellectual mortifications which must be practised by those whose primary concern is with the knowledge of the Godhead in the interior heights of the soul.
Happy is the man who, by continually effacing all images and through introversion and the lifting up of his mind to God, at last forgets and leaves behind all such hindrances. For by such means only, he operates inwardly, with his naked, pure, simple intellect and affections, about the most pure and simple object, God. Therefore see that thy whole exercise about God within thee may depend wholly and only on that naked intellect, affection and will. For indeed, this exercise cannot be discharged by any bodily organ, or by the external senses, but only by that which constitutes the essence of man—understanding and love. If, therefore, thou desirest a safe stair and short path to arrive at the end of true bliss, then, with an intent mind, earnestly desire and aspire after continual cleanness of heart and purity of mind. [129] Add to this a constant calm and tranquillity of the senses, and a recollecting of the affections of the heart, continually fixing them above. Work to simplify the heart, that being immovable and at peace from any invading vain phantasms, thou mayest always stand fast in the Lord within thee, to that degree as if thy soul had already entered the always present now of eternity—that is, the state of the deity. To mount to God is to enter into oneself. For he who so mounts and enters and goes above and beyond himself, he truly mounts up to God. The mind must then raise itself above 'itself and say, 'He who above all I need is above all I know.' And so carried into the darkness of the mind, gathering itself into that all-sufficient good, it learns to stay at home and with its whole affection it cleaves and becomes habitually fixed in the supreme good within. Thus continue, until thou becomest immutable and dost arrive at that true life which is God Himself, perpetually, without any vicissitude of space or time, reposing in that inward quiet and secret mansion of the deity.
The relationship between moral action and spiritual knowledge is circular, as it were, and reciprocal. Selfless behaviour makes possible an accession of knowledge, and the accession of knowledge makes possible the performance of further and more genuinely selfless actions, which in their turn enhance the agent's capacity for knowing. And so on, if all goes well and there is perfect docility and obedience, indefinitely. The process is summed up in a few lines of the Maitrayana Upanishad. [130]
A man undertakes right action (which includes, of course, right recollectedness and right meditation), and this enables him to catch a glimpse of the Self that underlies his separate individuality.
True love in this differs from dross and clay, That to divide is not to take away.
There can be no complete communism except in the goods of the spirit and, to some extent also, of the mind, and only when such goods are possessed by men and women in a state of non-attachment and self-denial. Some degree of mortification, it should be noted, is an indispensable prerequisite for the creation and enjoyment even of merely intellectual and aesthetic goods. [126] Those who choose the profession of artist, philosopher or man of science, choose, in many cases, a life of poverty and unrewarded hard work. But these are by no means the only mortifications they have to undertake. When he looks at the world, the artist must deny his ordinary human tendency to think of things in utilitarian, self-regarding terms. Similarly, the critical philosopher must mortify his common sense, while the research worker must steadfastly resist the temptations to over-simplify and think conventionally, and must make himself docile to the leadings of mysterious Fact. And what is true of the creators of aesthetic and intellectual goods is also true of the enjoyers of such goods, when created. That these mortifications are by no means trifling has been shown again and again in the course of history. One thinks, for example, of the intellectually mortified Socrates and the hemlock with which his unmortified compatriots rewarded him. One thinks of the heroic efforts that had to be made by Galileo and his contemporaries to break with the Aristotelian convention of thought, and the no less heroic efforts that have to be made today by any scientist who believes that there is more in the universe than can be discovered by employing the time-hallowed recipes of Descartes. Such mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artist—and the philosopher and the man of science are also artists—knows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession.
The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking, feeling and fancying.
Man's intellectual faculties are by the Fall in a much worse state than his animal appetites and want a much greater self-denial. And when own will, own understanding and own imagination have their natural strength indulged and gratified, and are made seemingly rich and honourable with the treasures acquired from a study of the Belles Lettres, they will just as much help poor fallen man to be like-minded witW Christ as the art of cookery, well and duly studied, will help a professor of the Gospel to the spirit and practice of Christian abstinence.
William Law
Because it was German and spelt with a K, Kultur was an object, during the First World War, of derisive contempt. All this has now been changed. In Russia, Literature, Art and Science have become the three persons of a new humanistic Trinity. Nor is the cult of Culture confined to the Soviet Union. It is practised by a majority of intellectuals in the capitalist democracies. Clever, hard-boiled journalists, who write about everything else with the condescending cynicism of people who know all about God, Man and the Universe, and have seen through the whole absurd caboodle, fairly fall over themselves when it comes to Culture. With an earnestness and enthusiasm that are, in the circumstances, unutterably ludicrous, they invite us to share their positively religious emotions in the face of High Art, as represented by the latest murals or civic centres; they insist that so long as Mrs. X goes on writing her inimitable novels and Mr. Y his more than Coleridgean criticism, the world, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, makes sense. The same over-valuation of Culture, the same belief that Art and Literature are ends in themselves and can flourish in isolation from a reasonable and realistic philosophy of life, have even invaded the schools and colleges. Among 'advanced' educationists .there are many people who seem to think that all will be well so long as adolescents are permitted to 'express themselves,' and small children are encouraged to be 'creative' in the art class. But, alas, plasticine and self-expression will not solve the problems of education. Nor will technology and vocational guidance; nor the classics and the Hundred Best Books. The following criticisms of education were made more than two and a half centuries ago; but they are as relevant today as they were in the seventeenth century. [128]
He knoweth nothing as he ought to know, who thinks he know-eth anything without seeing its place and the manner how it relateth to God, angels and men, and to all the creatures in earth, heaven and hell, time and eternity.
Thomas Traherne
Nevertheless some things were defective too (at Oxford under the Commonwealth). There was never a tutor that did professly teach Felicity, though that be the mistress of all the other sciences. Nor did any of us study these things but as aliens, which we ought to have studied as our own enjoyments. We studied to inform our knowledge, but knew not for what end we studied. And for lack of aiming at a certain end, we erred in the manner.
Thomas Traherne
In Traherne's vocabulary 'felicity' means 'beatitude,' which is identical in practice with liberation, which, in its turn, is the unitive knowledge of God in the heights within and in the fullness without as well as within.
Whit follows is an account of the intellectual mortifications which must be practised by those whose primary concern is with the knowledge of the Godhead in the interior heights of the soul.
Happy is the man who, by continually effacing all images and through introversion and the lifting up of his mind to God, at last forgets and leaves behind all such hindrances. For by such means only, he operates inwardly, with his naked, pure, simple intellect and affections, about the most pure and simple object, God. Therefore see that thy whole exercise about God within thee may depend wholly and only on that naked intellect, affection and will. For indeed, this exercise cannot be discharged by any bodily organ, or by the external senses, but only by that which constitutes the essence of man—understanding and love. If, therefore, thou desirest a safe stair and short path to arrive at the end of true bliss, then, with an intent mind, earnestly desire and aspire after continual cleanness of heart and purity of mind. [129] Add to this a constant calm and tranquillity of the senses, and a recollecting of the affections of the heart, continually fixing them above. Work to simplify the heart, that being immovable and at peace from any invading vain phantasms, thou mayest always stand fast in the Lord within thee, to that degree as if thy soul had already entered the always present now of eternity—that is, the state of the deity. To mount to God is to enter into oneself. For he who so mounts and enters and goes above and beyond himself, he truly mounts up to God. The mind must then raise itself above 'itself and say, 'He who above all I need is above all I know.' And so carried into the darkness of the mind, gathering itself into that all-sufficient good, it learns to stay at home and with its whole affection it cleaves and becomes habitually fixed in the supreme good within. Thus continue, until thou becomest immutable and dost arrive at that true life which is God Himself, perpetually, without any vicissitude of space or time, reposing in that inward quiet and secret mansion of the deity.
A/b ertus Magnus (?)
Some men love knowledge and discernment as the best and most excellent of all things. Behold, then knowledge and discernment come to be loved more than that which is discerned; for the false natural light loveth its knowledge and powers, which are itself, more than what is known. And were it possible that this false natural light should understand the simple Truth, as it is in God and in truth, it still would not lose its own property, that is, it could not depart from itself and its own things.
Theologia Germanica
The relationship between moral action and spiritual knowledge is circular, as it were, and reciprocal. Selfless behaviour makes possible an accession of knowledge, and the accession of knowledge makes possible the performance of further and more genuinely selfless actions, which in their turn enhance the agent's capacity for knowing. And so on, if all goes well and there is perfect docility and obedience, indefinitely. The process is summed up in a few lines of the Maitrayana Upanishad. [130]
A man undertakes right action (which includes, of course, right recollectedness and right meditation), and this enables him to catch a glimpse of the Self that underlies his separate individuality.
- 'Having seen his own self as the Self, he becomes selfless (and therefore acts selflessly)
- and in virtue of selflessness he is to be conceived as unconditioned.
- '자신의 자아를 큰 자아로 봄으로서 이타적이 되고(따라서 이타적으로 행동하게되고)
- 이타심 덕분에 그는 무조건적인 것으로 간주된다.
This is the highest mystery, betokening emancipation;
through selflessness he has no part in pleasure or pain (in other words, he enters a state of non-attachment or holy indifference),
but achieves absoluteness' (or as Albertus Magnus phrases it, 'becomes immutable and arrives at that true life which is God Himself').
When mortification is perfect, its most characteristic fruit is simplicity.
A simple heart will love all that is most precious on earth, husband or wife, parent or child, brother or friend, without marring its singleness;
When mortification is perfect, its most characteristic fruit is simplicity.
A simple heart will love all that is most precious on earth, husband or wife, parent or child, brother or friend, without marring its singleness;
external things will have no attraction save inasmuch as they lead souls to Him;
all exaggeration or unreality, affectation and falsehood must pass away from such a one, as the dews dry up before the sunshine.
The single motive is to please God, and hence arises total indifference as to what others say and think, so that words and actions are perfectly simple and natural, as in his sight only.
Such Christian simplicity is the very perfection of interior life—God, his will and pleasure, its sole object.
And here is a more extended account of the matter by one of the greatest masters of psychological analysis.
In the world, when people call anyone simple,
N. Grou
And here is a more extended account of the matter by one of the greatest masters of psychological analysis.
In the world, when people call anyone simple,
they generally mean a foolish, ignorant, credulous person.
But real simplicity, so far from being foolish, is almost sublime.
All good men like and admire it, are conscious of sinning against it, observe it in others and know what it involves;
and yet they could not precisely define it.
I should say that simplicity is an uprightness of soul which prevents self-consciousness.
It is not the same as sincerity, which is a much humbler virtue.
Many people are sincere who are not simple.
They say nothing but what they believe to be true,
and do not aim at appearing anything but what they are.
But they are for ever thinking about themselves,
weighing their every word and thought,
and dwelling upon themselves in apprehension of having done too much or too little.
These people are sincere but they are not simple.
They are not at their ease with others, nor others with them.
There is nothing easy, frank, unrestrained or natural about them.
One feels that one would like less admirable people better, who were not so stiff.
To be absorbed in the world around and never turn a thought within,
To be absorbed in the world around and never turn a thought within,
as is the blind condition of some who are carried away by what is pleasant and tangible, is one extreme as opposed to simplicity.
And to be self-absorbed in all matters, whether it be duty to God or man,
is the other extreme, which makes a person wise in his own conceit—reserved, self-conscious, uneasy at the least thing which disturbs his inward self-complacency.
Such false wisdom, in spite of its solemnity,
is hardly less vain and foolish than the folly of those who plunge headlong into worldly pleasures.
The one is intoxicated by his outward surroundings, the other by what he believes himself to be doing inwardly;
but both are in a state of intoxication, and the last is a worse state than the first, because it seems to be wise, though it is not really, and so people do not try to be cured.
Real simplicity lies in a juste milieu equally free from thoughtlessness and affectation,
in which the soul is not overwhelmed by externals,
so as to be unable to reflect, nor yet given up to the endless refinements,
which self-consciousness induces.
That soul which looks where it is going without losing time arguing over every step, or looking back perpetually, possesses true simplicity.
Such simplicity is indeed a great treasure.
How shall we attain to it? I would give all I possess for it;
it is the costly pearl of Holy Scripture.
The first step, then, is for the soul to put away outward things and look within so as to know its own real interest;
The first step, then, is for the soul to put away outward things and look within so as to know its own real interest;
so far all is right and natural; thus much is only a wise self-love, which seeks to avoid the intoxication of the world. [132]
In the next step the soul must add the contemplation of God, whom it fears, to that of self.
In the next step the soul must add the contemplation of God, whom it fears, to that of self.
This is a faint approach to the real wisdom, but the soul is still greatly self-absorbed: it is not satisfied with fearing God; it wants to be certain that it does fear Him and fears lest it fear Him not, going round in a perpetual circle of self-consciousness.
All this restless dwelling on self is very far from the peace and freedom of real love;
but that is yet in the distance;
the soul must needs go through a season of trial,
and were it suddenly plunged into a state of rest, it would not know how to use it.
The third step is that, ceasing from a restless self-contemplation,
The third step is that, ceasing from a restless self-contemplation,
the soul begins to dwell upon God instead, and by degrees forgets itself in Him.
It becomes full of Him and ceases to feed upon self.
Such a soul is not blinded to its own faults or indifferent to its own errors;
it is more conscious of them than ever, and increased light shows them in plainer form,
but this self-knowledge comes from God, and therefore it is not restless or uneasy.
==
Fénelon
François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, more commonly known as François Fénelon, was a French Catholic archbishop, theologian, poet and writer. Today, he is remembered mostly as the author of The Adventures of Telemachus, first published in 1699. Wikipedia
How admirably acute and subtle this is! One of the most extraordinary, because most gratuitous, pieces of twentieth-century vanity is the assumption that nobody knew anything about psychology before the days of Freud.
But the real truth is that most modern psychologists understand human beings less well than did the ablest of their predecessors. Fnelon and La Rochefoucauld knew all about the surface rationalization of deep, discreditable motives in the subconscious, and were fully aware that sexuality and the will to power were, all too often, the effective forces at work under the polite mask of thepersoncz. Machiavelli had drawn Pareto's distinction between 'residues' and 'derivations'—between the real, self-interested motives for political action and the fancy theories, principles and ideals in terms of which such action is explained and justified to the credulous public. [133]
Like Buddha's and St. Augustine's, Pascal's view of human virtue and rationality could not have been more realistically low. But all these men, even La Rochefoucauld, even Machiavelli, were aware of certain facts which twentieth-century psychologists have chosen to ignore—the fact that human nature is tripartite, consisting of a spirit as well as of a mind and body; the fact that we live on the border-line between two worlds, the temporal and the eternal, the physical-vital-human and the divine; the fact that, though nothing in himself, man is 'a nothing surrounded by God, indigent of God, capable of God and filled with God, if he so desires.'
The Christian simplicity, of which Grou and Fénelon write, is the same thing as the virtue so much admired by Lao Tzu and his successors.
The Christian simplicity, of which Grou and Fénelon write, is the same thing as the virtue so much admired by Lao Tzu and his successors.
According to these Chinese sages, personal sins and social maladjustments are all due to the fact that men have separated themselves from their divine source and live according to their own will and notions,
not according to Tao —which is the Great Way, the Logos, the Nature of Things, as it manifests itself on every plane from the physical,
up through the animal and the mental, to the spiritual.
Enlightenment comes when we give up self-will and make ourselves docile to the workings of Tao in the world around us and in our own bodies, minds and spirits.
Sometimes the Taoist philosophers write as though they believed in Rousseau's Noble Savage, and (being Chinese and therefore much more concerned with the concrete and the practical than with the merely speculative)
they are fond of prescribing methods by which rulers may reduce the complexity of civilization and so preserve their subjects from the corrupting influences of man-made and therefore Tao-eclipsing conventions of thought, feeling and action.
But the rulers who are to perform this task for the masses must themselves be sages; and to become a sage, one must get rid of all the rigidities of unregenerate adulthood and become again as a little child. For only that which is soft and docile is truly alive; that which conquers and outlives everything is that which adapts itself to everything, that which always seeks the lowest place—not the hard rock, but the water that wears away the everlasting hills.
The simplicity and spontaneity of the perfect sage
are the fruits of mortification
—mortification of the will and, by recollectedness and meditation, of the mind.
Only the most highly disciplined artist can recapture, on a higher level, the spontaneity of the child with its first paint-box. Nothing is more difficult than to be simple.[134]
'May I ask,' said Yen Hui, 'in what consists the fasting of the heart?'
'Cultivate unity,' replied Confucius.
'You do your hearing, not with your ears, but with your mind;
not with your mind, but with your very soul.
But let the hearing stop with the ears.
Let the working of the mind stop with itself.
Then the soul will be a negative existence, passively responsive to externals. In such a negative existence, only Tao can abide.
And that negative state is the fasting of the heart.'
'Then,' said Yen Hui, 'the reason I could not get the use of this method is my own individuality. If I could get the use of it, my individuality would have gone.
'Then,' said Yen Hui, 'the reason I could not get the use of this method is my own individuality. If I could get the use of it, my individuality would have gone.
Is this what you mean by the negative state?'
'Exactly so,' replied the Mastçr. 'Let me tell you.
'Exactly so,' replied the Mastçr. 'Let me tell you.
If you can enter the domain of this prince (a bad ruler whom Yen Hui was ambitious to reform) without offending his amour propre,
cheerful if he hears you, passive if he does not;
without science, without drugs, simply living there in a state of complete indifference —you will be near success. . ..
Look at that window. Through it an empty room becomes bright with scenery; but the landscape stops outside. in this sense you may use your ears and eyes to communicate within, but shut out all wisdom (in the sense of conventional, copybook maxims) from your mind. This is the method for regenerating all creation.'
Mortification may be regarded, in this context, as the process of study, by which we learn at last to have unstudied reactions to events—reactions in harmony with Tao, Suchness, the Will of God. [135]Those who have made themselves docile to the divine Nature of Things, those who respond to circumstances, not with craving and aversion, but with the love that permits them to do spontaneously what they like; those who can truthfully say, Not I, but God in me—such men and women are compared by the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy to children, to fools and simpletons, even sometimes, as in the following passage, to drunkards.
It is by long obedience and hard work that the artist comes to unforced spontaneity and consummate mastery. Knowing that he can never create anything on his own account, out of the top layers, so to speak, of his personal consciousness, he submits obediently to the workings of 'inspiration'; and knowing that the medium in which he works has its own self-nature, which must not be ignored or violently overriden, he makes himself its patient servant and, in this way, achieves perfect freedom of expression. But life is also an art, and the man who would become a consummate artist in living must follow, on all the levels of his being, the same procedure as that by which the painter or the sculptor or any other craftsman comes to his own more limited perfection.
Prince Hui's cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his knife, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every whs/ik of rent flesh, every ckhk of the chopper, was in perfect harmony—rhythmical like the Dance of the Mulberry Grove, simultaneous like the chords of the Ching Shou.[136]
'Well done!' cried the Prince. 'Yours is skill indeed.'
'Sire,' replied the cook, 'I have always devoted myself to Tao. It is better than skill.
Chuang Tu
Mortification may be regarded, in this context, as the process of study, by which we learn at last to have unstudied reactions to events—reactions in harmony with Tao, Suchness, the Will of God. [135]Those who have made themselves docile to the divine Nature of Things, those who respond to circumstances, not with craving and aversion, but with the love that permits them to do spontaneously what they like; those who can truthfully say, Not I, but God in me—such men and women are compared by the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy to children, to fools and simpletons, even sometimes, as in the following passage, to drunkards.
A drunken man who falls Out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people's; but he meets his accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear and the like cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existence. If such security is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from God?
Chuang Tu
Prince Hui's cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his knife, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every whs/ik of rent flesh, every ckhk of the chopper, was in perfect harmony—rhythmical like the Dance of the Mulberry Grove, simultaneous like the chords of the Ching Shou.[136]
'Well done!' cried the Prince. 'Yours is skill indeed.'
'Sire,' replied the cook, 'I have always devoted myself to Tao. It is better than skill.
When I first began to cut up bullocks, I saw before me simply whole bullocks. After three years' practice I saw no more whole animals. And now I work with my mind and not with my eye. When my senses bid me stop, but my mind urges me on, I fall back upon eternal principles. I follow such openings or cavities as there may be, according to the natural constitution of the animal. I do not attempt to cut through joints, still less through large bones.
'A good cook changes his chopper once a year—because he cuts. An ordinary cook, once a month—because he hacks. But I have had this chopper nineteen years, and though I have cut up many thousands of bullocks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone. For at the joints there are always interstices, and the edge of a chopper being without thickness, it remains only to insert that which is without thickness into such an interstice. By these means the interstice will be enlarged, and the blade will find plenty of room. It is thus that I have kept my chopper for nineteen years, as though fresh from the whetstone.
'Nevertheless, when I come upon a hard part, where the blade meets with a difficulty, I am all caution. I fix my eyes on it. I stay my hand, and gently apply the blade, until with a hwah the part yields like earth crumbling to the ground. Then I withdraw the blade and stand up and look around; and at last I wipe my chopper and put it carefully away.'
In the first seven branches of his Eightfold Path the Buddha describes the conditions that must be fulfilled by anyone who desires to come to that right contemplation which is the eighth and final branch.[137] The fulfilment of these conditions entails the undertaking of a course of the most searching and comprehensive mortification—mortification of intellect and will, craving and emotion, thought, speech, action and, finally, means of livelihood.
'A good cook changes his chopper once a year—because he cuts. An ordinary cook, once a month—because he hacks. But I have had this chopper nineteen years, and though I have cut up many thousands of bullocks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone. For at the joints there are always interstices, and the edge of a chopper being without thickness, it remains only to insert that which is without thickness into such an interstice. By these means the interstice will be enlarged, and the blade will find plenty of room. It is thus that I have kept my chopper for nineteen years, as though fresh from the whetstone.
'Nevertheless, when I come upon a hard part, where the blade meets with a difficulty, I am all caution. I fix my eyes on it. I stay my hand, and gently apply the blade, until with a hwah the part yields like earth crumbling to the ground. Then I withdraw the blade and stand up and look around; and at last I wipe my chopper and put it carefully away.'
'Bravo!' cried the Prince. 'From the words of this cook I have learnt how to take care of my life.'
Chuang Tu
===
[C] (right) LIVELIHOOD
In the first seven branches of his Eightfold Path the Buddha describes the conditions that must be fulfilled by anyone who desires to come to that right contemplation which is the eighth and final branch.[137] The fulfilment of these conditions entails the undertaking of a course of the most searching and comprehensive mortification—mortification of intellect and will, craving and emotion, thought, speech, action and, finally, means of livelihood.
Certain professions are more or less completely incompatible with the achievement of man's final end; and there are certain ways of making a living which do so much physical and, above all, so much moral, intellectual and spiritual harm that, even if they could be practised in a non-attached spirit (which is generally impossible), they would still have to be eschewed by anyone dedicated to the task of liberating, not only himself, but others. The exponents of the Perennial Philosophy are not content to avoid and forbid the practice of criminal professions, such as brothel-keeping, forgery, racketeering and the like; they also avoid themselves, and warn others against, a number of ways of livelihood commonly regarded as legitimate. Thus, in many Buddhist societies, the manufacture of arms, the concoction of intoxicating liquors and the wholesale purveying of butcher's meat were not, as in contemporary Christendom, rewarded by wealth, peerages and political influence; they were deplored as businesses which, it was thought, made it particularly difficult for their practitioners and for other members of the communities in which they were practised to achieve enlightenment and liberation. Similarly, in mediaeval Europe, Christians were forbidden to make a living by the taking of interest on money or by cornering the market. As Tawney and others have shown, it was only after the Reformation that coupon-clipping, usury and gambling in stocks and commodities became respectable and received ecclesiastical approval.
For the Quakers, soldiering was and is a form of wrong livelihood—war being, in their eyes, anti-Christian, not so much because it causes suffering as because it propagates hatred, puts a premium on fraud and cruelty, infects whole societies with anger, fear, pride and uncharitableness. Such passions eclipse the Inner Light, and therefore the wars by which they are aroused and intensified must be regarded, whatever their immediate political outcome, as crusades to make the world safe for spiritual darkness.
It has been found, as a matter of experience, that it is dangerous to lay down detailed and inflexible rules for right livelihood—dangerous, because most people see no reason for being righteous overmuch and consequently respond to the imposition of too rigid a code by hypocrisy or open rebellion. [138]
For the Quakers, soldiering was and is a form of wrong livelihood—war being, in their eyes, anti-Christian, not so much because it causes suffering as because it propagates hatred, puts a premium on fraud and cruelty, infects whole societies with anger, fear, pride and uncharitableness. Such passions eclipse the Inner Light, and therefore the wars by which they are aroused and intensified must be regarded, whatever their immediate political outcome, as crusades to make the world safe for spiritual darkness.
It has been found, as a matter of experience, that it is dangerous to lay down detailed and inflexible rules for right livelihood—dangerous, because most people see no reason for being righteous overmuch and consequently respond to the imposition of too rigid a code by hypocrisy or open rebellion. [138]
In the Christian tradition, for example, a distinction is made between the precepts, which are binding on all and sundry, and the counsels of perfection, binding only upon those who feel drawn towards a total renunciation of 'the world.'
The precepts include the ordinary moral code and the commandment to love God with all one's heart, strength and mind, and one's neighbour as oneself.
Some of those who make a serious effort to obey this last and greatest commandment find that they cannot do so whole-heartedly unless they follow the counsels and sever all connections with the world.
Nevertheless it is possible for men and women to achieve that 'perfection,' which is deliverance into the unitive knowledge of God, without abandoning the married state and without selling all they have and giving the price to the poor.
Effective poverty (possessing no money) is by no means always affective poverty (being indifferent to money). One man may be poor, but desperately concerned with what money can buy, full of cravings, envy and bitter self-pity. Another may have money, but no attachment to money or the things, powers and privileges that money can buy. 'Evangelical poverty' is a combination of effective with affective poverty; but a genuine poverty of spirit is possible even in those who are not effectively poor. It will be seen, then, that the problems of right livelihood, in so far as they lie outside the jurisdiction of the common moral code, are strictly personal. The way in which any individual problem presents itself and the nature of the appropriate solution depend upon the degree of knowledge, moral sensibility and spiritual insight achieved by the individual concerned. For this reason no universally applicable rules can be formulated except in the most general terms. 'Here are my three treasures,' says Lao Tzu. 'Guard and keep them! The first is pity, the second frugality, the third refusal to be foremost of all things under heaven.' And when Jesus is asked by a stranger to settle a dispute between himself and his brother over an inheritance, he refuses (since he does not know the circumstances) to be a judge in the case and merely utters a general warning against covetousness.[39]
Ga-San instructed his adherents one day: 'Those who speak against killing, and who desire to spare the lives of all conscious beings, are right. It is good to protect even animals and insects. But what about those persons who kill time, what about those who destroy wealth, and those who murder the economy of their society? We should not overlook them. Again, what of the one who preaches without enlightenment? He is killing Buddhism.'
From 'One Hundred and One Zen Stories'
Once the noble Ibrahim, as he sat on his throne,
Heard a clamour and noise of cries on the roof,
Also heavy footsteps on the roof of his palace.
He said to himself, "Whose heavy feet are these?'
He shouted from the window, 'Who goes there?'
The guards, filled with confusion, bowed their heads, saying,
'It is we, going the rounds in search.'
He said, 'What seek ye?' They said, 'Our camels.'
He said, 'Who ever searched for camels on a housetop?'
They said, 'We follow thy example,
Who seekest union with God, while sitting on a throne.'
Of all social, moral and spiritual problems that of power is the most chronically urgent and the most difficult of solution. Craving for power is not a vice of the body, consequently knows none of the limitations imposed by a tired or satiated physiology upon gluttony, intemperance and lust.
'L'état c'est moi,' says the tyrant; and this is true, of course, not only of the autocrat at the apex of the pyramid, but of all the members of the ruling minority through whom he governs and who are, in fact, the real rulers of the nation. Moreover, so long as the policy which gratifies the power lusts of the ruling class is successful, and so long as the price of success is not too high, even the masses of the ruled will feel that the state is themselves—a vast and splendid projection of the individual's intrinsically insignificant ego. The little man can satisfy his lust for power vicariously through the activities of the imperialistic state, just as the big man does; the difference between them is one of degree, not of kind.
No infallible method for controlling the political manifestations of the lust for power has ever been devised. Since power is of its very essence indefinitely expansive, it cannot be checked except by colliding with another power. Hence, any society that values liberty, in the sense of government by law rather than by class interest or personal decree, must see to it that the power of its rulers is divided. National unity means national servitude to a single man and his supporting oilgarchy. Organized and balanced disunity is the necessary condition of liberty. His Majesty's Loyal Opposition is the loyalest, because the .most genuinely useful section of any liberty-loving community. Furthermore, since the appetite for power is purely mental and therefore insatiable and impervious to disease or old age, no community that values liberty can afford to give its rulers long tenures of office. The Carthusian Order, which was 'never reformed because never deformed,' owed its long immunity from corruption to the fact that its abbots were elected for periods of only a single year. In ancient Rome the amount of liberty under law was in inverse ratio to the length of the magistrates' terms of office. These rules for controlling the lust for power are very easy to formulate, but very difficult, as history shows, to enforce in practice. They are particularly difficult to enforce at a period like the present, when time-hallowed political machinery is being rendered obsolete by rapid technological change and when the salutary principle of organized and balanced disunity requires to be embodied in new and more appropriate institutions.
Acton, the learned Catholic historian, was of opinion that all great men are bad; Rumi, the Persian poet and mystic, thought that to seek for union with God while occupying a throne was an undertaking hardly less senseless than looking for camels among the chimney-pots. A slightly more optimistic note is sounded by St. François de Sales, whose views on the matter were recorded by his Boswellizing disciple, the young Bishop of Belley.
We see, then, that a 'great man' can be good—good enough even to aspire to unitive knowledge of the divine Ground—provided that, while exercising power, he fulfils two conditions. First, he must deny himself all the personal advantages of power and must practise the patience and recollectedness without which there cannot be love either of man or God. And, second, he must realize that the accident of possessing temporal power does not give him spiritual authority, which belongs only to those seers, living or dead, who have achieved a direct insight into the Nature of Things. A society, in which the boss is mad enough to believe himself a prophet, is a society doomed to destruction. A viable society is one in which those who have qualified themselves to see indicate the goals to be aimed at, while those whose business it is to rule respect the authority and listen to the advice of the seers.[143] In theory, at least, all this was well understood in India and, until the Reformation, in Europe, where 'no position was so high but that it was subject to a spiritual superior in what concerned the conscience and the soul.' Unfortunately the churches tried to make the best of both worlds—to combine spiritual authority with temporal power, wielded either directly or at one remove, from behind the throne. But spiritual authority can be exercised only by those who are perfectly disinterested and whose motives are therefore above suspicion. An ecclesiastical organization may call itself the Mystical Body of Christ; but if its prelates are slave-holders and the rulers of states, as they were in the past, or if the corporation is a large-scale capitalist, as is the case today, no titles, however honorific, can conceal the fact that, when it passes judgment, it does so as an interested party with some political or economic axe to grind. True, in matters which do not directly concern the temporal powers of the corporation, individual churchmen can be, and have actually proved themselves, perfectly disinterested—consequently can possess, and have possessed, genuine spiritual authority. St. Philip Neri's is a case in point. Possessing absolutely no temporal power, he yet exercised a prodigious influence over sixteenth-century Europe. But for that influence, it may be doubted whether the efforts of the Council of Trent to reform the Roman church from within would have met with much success.
In actual practice how many great men have ever fulfilled, or are ever likely to fulfil, the conditions which alone render power innocuous to the ruler as well as to the ruled? Obviously, very few. Except by saints, the problem of powrJr finally insoluble. But since genuine self-government is possible only in very small groups, societies on a nationø - national scale will always be ruled by oligarchical minorities whose members come to power bewill always arise and, since it cannot be solved except by people like Francois de Sales, will always make trouble. [144] And this, in its turn, means that we cannot expect the large-scale societies of the future to be much better than were the societies of the past during the brief periods when they were at their best.
Ga-San instructed his adherents one day: 'Those who speak against killing, and who desire to spare the lives of all conscious beings, are right. It is good to protect even animals and insects. But what about those persons who kill time, what about those who destroy wealth, and those who murder the economy of their society? We should not overlook them. Again, what of the one who preaches without enlightenment? He is killing Buddhism.'
From 'One Hundred and One Zen Stories'
Once the noble Ibrahim, as he sat on his throne,
Heard a clamour and noise of cries on the roof,
Also heavy footsteps on the roof of his palace.
He said to himself, "Whose heavy feet are these?'
He shouted from the window, 'Who goes there?'
The guards, filled with confusion, bowed their heads, saying,
'It is we, going the rounds in search.'
He said, 'What seek ye?' They said, 'Our camels.'
He said, 'Who ever searched for camels on a housetop?'
They said, 'We follow thy example,
Who seekest union with God, while sitting on a throne.'
Jalal-uddin Rumi
Of all social, moral and spiritual problems that of power is the most chronically urgent and the most difficult of solution. Craving for power is not a vice of the body, consequently knows none of the limitations imposed by a tired or satiated physiology upon gluttony, intemperance and lust.
Growing with every successive satisfaction, the appetite for power can manifest itself indefinitely, without interruption by bodily fatigue or sickness. Moreover, the nature of society is such that the higher a man climbs in the political, economic or religious hierarchy, the greater are his opportunities and resources for exercising power. But climbing the hierarchical ladder is ordinarily a slow process, and the ambitious rarely reach the top till they are well advanced in life. [140] The older he grows, the more chances does the power lover have for indulging his besetting sin, the more continuously is he subjected to temptations and the more glamorous do those temptations become. In this respect his situation is profoundly different from that of the debauchee. The latter may never voluntarily leave his vices, but at least, as he advances in years, he finds his vices leaving him; the former neither leaves his vices nor is left by them. Instead of bringing to the power lover a merciful respite from his addictions, old age is apt to intensify them by making it easier for him to satisfy his cravings on a larger scale and in a more spectacular way. That is why, in Acton's words, 'all great men are bad.' Can we therefore be surprised if political action, undertaken, in all too many cases, not for the public good, but solely or at least primarily to gratify the power lusts of bad men, should prove so often either self-stultifying or downright disastrous?
'L'état c'est moi,' says the tyrant; and this is true, of course, not only of the autocrat at the apex of the pyramid, but of all the members of the ruling minority through whom he governs and who are, in fact, the real rulers of the nation. Moreover, so long as the policy which gratifies the power lusts of the ruling class is successful, and so long as the price of success is not too high, even the masses of the ruled will feel that the state is themselves—a vast and splendid projection of the individual's intrinsically insignificant ego. The little man can satisfy his lust for power vicariously through the activities of the imperialistic state, just as the big man does; the difference between them is one of degree, not of kind.
No infallible method for controlling the political manifestations of the lust for power has ever been devised. Since power is of its very essence indefinitely expansive, it cannot be checked except by colliding with another power. Hence, any society that values liberty, in the sense of government by law rather than by class interest or personal decree, must see to it that the power of its rulers is divided. National unity means national servitude to a single man and his supporting oilgarchy. Organized and balanced disunity is the necessary condition of liberty. His Majesty's Loyal Opposition is the loyalest, because the .most genuinely useful section of any liberty-loving community. Furthermore, since the appetite for power is purely mental and therefore insatiable and impervious to disease or old age, no community that values liberty can afford to give its rulers long tenures of office. The Carthusian Order, which was 'never reformed because never deformed,' owed its long immunity from corruption to the fact that its abbots were elected for periods of only a single year. In ancient Rome the amount of liberty under law was in inverse ratio to the length of the magistrates' terms of office. These rules for controlling the lust for power are very easy to formulate, but very difficult, as history shows, to enforce in practice. They are particularly difficult to enforce at a period like the present, when time-hallowed political machinery is being rendered obsolete by rapid technological change and when the salutary principle of organized and balanced disunity requires to be embodied in new and more appropriate institutions.
Acton, the learned Catholic historian, was of opinion that all great men are bad; Rumi, the Persian poet and mystic, thought that to seek for union with God while occupying a throne was an undertaking hardly less senseless than looking for camels among the chimney-pots. A slightly more optimistic note is sounded by St. François de Sales, whose views on the matter were recorded by his Boswellizing disciple, the young Bishop of Belley.
'Mon Père,' I said one day, 'how is it possible for those who are themselves high in office to practise the virtue of obedience?'
Francois de Sales replied, 'They have greater and more excellent ways of doing so than their inferiors.'
As I did not understand this reply, he went on to say, 'Those who are bound by obedience are usually subject to one superior only.. . . But those who are themselves superiors have a wider field for obedience, even while they command; for if they bear in mind that it is God who has placed them over other men, and gives them the rule they have, they will exercise it out of obedience to God, and thus, even while commanding, they will obey. [142]Moreover, there is no position so high but that it is subject to a spiritual superior in what concerns the conscience and the soul. But there is a yet higher point of obedience to which all superiors may aspire, even that to which St. Paul alludes, when he says, "Though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all." It is by such universal obedience to everyone that we become "all things to all men"; and serving everyone for Our Lord's sake, we esteem all to be our superiors.'
In accordance with this rule, I have often observed how Francois de Sales treated everyone, even the most insignificant persons who approached him, as though he were the inferior, never repulsing anyone, never refusing to enter into conversation, to speak or to listen, never betraying the slightest sign of weariness, impatience and annoyance, however importunate or ill-timed the interruption. To those who asked him why he thus wasted his time his constant reply was, ' It is God's will; it is what He requires of me; what more need I ask? While I am doing this, I am not required to do anything else. God's Holy Will is the centre from which all we do must radiate; all else is mere weariness and excitement.'
Jean Pierre Camus
We see, then, that a 'great man' can be good—good enough even to aspire to unitive knowledge of the divine Ground—provided that, while exercising power, he fulfils two conditions. First, he must deny himself all the personal advantages of power and must practise the patience and recollectedness without which there cannot be love either of man or God. And, second, he must realize that the accident of possessing temporal power does not give him spiritual authority, which belongs only to those seers, living or dead, who have achieved a direct insight into the Nature of Things. A society, in which the boss is mad enough to believe himself a prophet, is a society doomed to destruction. A viable society is one in which those who have qualified themselves to see indicate the goals to be aimed at, while those whose business it is to rule respect the authority and listen to the advice of the seers.[143] In theory, at least, all this was well understood in India and, until the Reformation, in Europe, where 'no position was so high but that it was subject to a spiritual superior in what concerned the conscience and the soul.' Unfortunately the churches tried to make the best of both worlds—to combine spiritual authority with temporal power, wielded either directly or at one remove, from behind the throne. But spiritual authority can be exercised only by those who are perfectly disinterested and whose motives are therefore above suspicion. An ecclesiastical organization may call itself the Mystical Body of Christ; but if its prelates are slave-holders and the rulers of states, as they were in the past, or if the corporation is a large-scale capitalist, as is the case today, no titles, however honorific, can conceal the fact that, when it passes judgment, it does so as an interested party with some political or economic axe to grind. True, in matters which do not directly concern the temporal powers of the corporation, individual churchmen can be, and have actually proved themselves, perfectly disinterested—consequently can possess, and have possessed, genuine spiritual authority. St. Philip Neri's is a case in point. Possessing absolutely no temporal power, he yet exercised a prodigious influence over sixteenth-century Europe. But for that influence, it may be doubted whether the efforts of the Council of Trent to reform the Roman church from within would have met with much success.
In actual practice how many great men have ever fulfilled, or are ever likely to fulfil, the conditions which alone render power innocuous to the ruler as well as to the ruled? Obviously, very few. Except by saints, the problem of powrJr finally insoluble. But since genuine self-government is possible only in very small groups, societies on a nationø - national scale will always be ruled by oligarchical minorities whose members come to power bewill always arise and, since it cannot be solved except by people like Francois de Sales, will always make trouble. [144] And this, in its turn, means that we cannot expect the large-scale societies of the future to be much better than were the societies of the past during the brief periods when they were at their best.
Francis de Sales was a Bishop of Geneva and is revered as a saint in the Catholic Church. He became noted for his deep faith and his gentle approach to the religious divisions in his land resulting from the Protestant Reformation. Wikipedia
Born: 21 August 1567, Château de Sales
