Avoid Being Scattered

 But the fate of learned ambition is a proper subject for every scholar to consider; for who has not had occasion to regret the dissipation of great abilities in a boundless multiplicity of pursuits, to…

Be Reasonable

Open your heart to the influence of the light which, from time to time, breaks in upon you:  when scruples importune you, which you in your lucid moments know to be vain, do not stand…

The Communist and the Buddhist

[Nikolay] Valentinov … recorded his shock at Lenin’s certainty not only that Marx and Engels were absolutely correct, but that no fundamental principle they enunciated, about anything, could ever be changed.  “Nothing in Marxism is…

How Things Looked in 1990

All over the world, we are saturated by a contemporary culture of materialism, instant communications, and electronic luxury. Advertising bombards us with pulsating music, sexual imagery, and the urgent appeal to involve ourselves more and…

Advice from the Sages

I am sorry that I cannot say anything more comforting, for active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with…

Who Remained Decent?

So let us ask: who behaved better u­nder pressure, imprisoned Bolsheviks or religious believers? Materialists or ­those who acknowledged absolute standards of good and evil? Who acted nobly and who behaved like a scoundrel?  To…

The Path of the Prosaic

for Natalie Long Faith comes not from theory but from experience, from the bottom up, by living the right sort of life from moment to moment. For Zossima, that means attending to the prosaic. One…