Grist

Promises are made by the people we believe ourselves to be,
but they are broken or kept by the people we really are.

False monk!
It is not out of humility that you seek to obliterate your story,
and cannot suffer to be a story among stories.

With the self-same tools,
devils tempt and angels teach;
how we make use of them is all.

The instant we stop taking things for granted,
we come up against the soul, --
and can no longer walk down the street.

The child deprived of discipline does not remain a child, but becomes a parasite. Inertia has always this downward tendency. Who does not strive to advance, loses what ground he has gained.

The great truths of the mystics are not for us. We never earned them, and they are not our own. We fool ourselves, if we think such harmony as the saints witnessed exists for us; between the world and ourselves, or between ourselves and God. Those blinding, ecstatic glimpses of theophany amount to nothing, if they do not inspire us to the practice of deep, meditative prayer. No doubt, Providence is forever at work; all things are well ordered, and tending towards perfection. But this order is not in sympathy, nor will it ever sympathize, with personal egos. For the vast majority of us, whom Huxley calls "the nice, ordinary, unregenerate people", the world is a mortar and pestle, grinding our ambitions to dust, and the Word of the Lord is anathema to all we hold dear.

The people of our time have no capacity for the spiritual life. Our struggles take place in the mud, while the higher conflicts are quite beyond us. Self-interest shapes our means and determines our ends. We are spoiled and desensitized, incapable of suffering. Our ideals are petty. Our ambitions feeble, guilty things. We are lost souls; haunting flesh, and rebellious to the light. The world is a possession we cannot relinquish, and the preservation of which costs us all that we are. Truly, we are a wasted people. Nevertheless, we have no more reason to despair than the ancients, seeing that men of all times have found the spiritual life intrinsically unattainable -- at least, by their own merits. There is something about the spiritual life which is always beyond us, always unlived, always potential. If one can never be perfect, neither can one's spiritual practice be perfect. Yet, the grace of God can even make a higher perfection out of our imperfection; in our weakness, He is strong. Compared to the Lord, who is infinite, the efforts of the ablest men are sickly, insipid things. How shall we not have compassion for every individual, regardless of circumstance? The world is an impassable river, in whose current we are all caught and swept against the rocks. From the frailest to the most robust, we are in over our heads. But, then, we were never meant to cross. Only to drown, and learn the vanity of our strength.

Prayer is sincere only when we think we're faking it,
humility is at its peak when we're struck by our pride,
and compassion ignites when we feel ourselves cold.

The biblical verse, "Milk for babes, and meat for strong men," describes and prescribes a kind of moral relativism, which is, yet, not entirely subjective. In rendering milk to the one, and meat to the other, we are not applying a double-standard, at all. Rather, the two are, in fact, analogous. What is good for the goose may be good for the gander, but there is no such likeness between child and mature adult. The very notion of relativity even presupposes an objective standard; while a suit must be tailored differently for differently-sized men, the suit must, nonetheless, be tailored to fit. 

How may our spirits be ignited by the contemplation of the saints? What have we to do with them? Can a candle be lit from the sun? It would melt and be dissolved into atoms before it ever reached that place! And yet, we know by honest reflection that no candle could be lit, if the sun had not first been set ablaze, and warmed the earth into life. Moreover, even suns disperse their light, and are lost to view, like candles, in the limitlessness of space.

Asking the question, "Why is there suffering?" (or "What purpose could the existence of suffering ultimately serve?") does more good for the soul than any answer we are likely to come up with. In fact, the purpose of suffering, if it must have one, may be none other than to provoke the contemplation of a purpose so exalted as to render a justification for suffering. In other words, the contemplation of its purpose IS its purpose. 

Camus was mistaken. Not suicide, but procreation, is the most pressing question confronting philosophers. Death will occur in any case, but life is in our grip.

We take all for granted! How could we not? Look you, how many treasures surround us -- we are, ourselves, composed of treasures, composing treasures, and each enriching one another endlessly. Do you know what it is, to have Being? And eyes to look out of? Companions you can touch? The earth beneath your feet, and gravity enveloping your limbs, holding you to it? The heavens stretching out beyond reckoning in all directions? To laugh, to sing, to dance, or to grieve for one who is lost? To wrap oneself in starlight and reflect upon the nature of a god? All this is ours! All this, felicity inestimable. If only we could see it.

I am pessimistic with respect to mankind, but optimistic with respect to man. I have faith in the individual. Only individuals can rise, paradoxically, by keeping their feet on the ground, and ranking themselves with the crowd. 

I am water funneled between rocks,
pinched and wrenched and routed, --
but I gush out in a bright cacophony
of pleasure and force!

When I was a Determinist, it seemed to me that a person's perspective could only be broadened by making an examination of (what appeared to be) the antecedent causes of any single occurrence. It was, I felt, entirely shortsighted to stop at a man's will, when looking to detect the motive for his choice, or the reason for his motive. Whatever answer one gave, I insisted the question could always be repeated, "Why?" It was plain to me that we could always go deeper, always discover another link in the chain of causation. But I was mistaken. We do not enlarge our perspective, or add to our knowledge of a particular instance, by making an inventory of all that preceded it; on the contrary, we merely narrow our focus to consider the minutiae which is not antecedent to, but, ultimately, contained within, a given moment. The reasoning of determinism is a simple deconstruction. It is a breaking-down of effects into causes, without realizing that the causes are not external motivators, but intrinsic elements within the effects. This realization speaks to the heart of free-will, and the spirit of existentialism. It ends in the conviction that this present moment can never be evaded, mitigated, reduced, or explained away by a scrutiny of the past.

Religious denominations need not be causes for serious division or strife. It is conceivable that boundaries may be respectfully maintained. One does not wear a catcher's mitt to a game of basketball, nor propose the calculating of planetary orbits at a convention of biochemists, nor insist on hearing jazz when one has come to attend an opera. Why, then, should it be thought narrow or malicious, to exclude the Dhammapada from a Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Christian service? I propose that anyone may practice, if he so chooses, Christianity in the morning, Sikhism in the afternoon, and Buddhism at night. But I say, nonetheless, that it is bad form to be Christian in a mosque, or Taoist in the Temple of Athena. When in Rome, I am always Catholic.