Category: Philosophy

Don’t Wait till Later

The Stoics would always say, one must think death is imminent, but it was less to prepare for death than it was to discover the seriousness of life. Marcus Aurelius, for example, as a Stoic,…

Today’s One-Liner (#11)

Method of investigation— as soon as one has arrived at any position, try to find in what sense the contrary is true. –Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Today’s One-Liner (#6)

The face offers itself to your compassion and to your obligation.  –Emmanuel Levinas, in Jill Robbins, Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas

Open Your Eyes

 Untold opportunities arise in one’s householder existence to practice sadhana. –Sri Anandamayi Ma, in Joseph Fitzgerald, The Essential Sri Anandamayi Ma: Life and Teachings of a 20th Century Indian Saint There is no time or place…

Microscopic Moments

In order to help ourselves change, we must become aware that breaking from our normal ways of being is what makes it possible to develop different sides of ourselves. Rituals—in the Confucian sense—are transformative because…

Reading’s Joys

“Nothing is more beautiful than Plato; such reading, for those who are able to understand him, can give one happiness even in the most miserable circumstances.” –Simone Weil

Self-Reliance, Self-Sabotage

Study the capacities you have, and after studying them, say: Zeus, bring whatever circumstances you like; for I have the equipment and resources, given to me by you, to make a cosmos of myself by…

How Some Saw Simone

A very Jewish soul. There was something of the Talmud in her. Very stringent in her logic. 206 [W]hat most struck me in her were her nobility, her straightforwardness, the purity of her soul. 218…