Detachment and Realization Inter-Are

You may think you are working in a detached spirit, but attachment creeps into the mind from nobody knows where. You may worship in the temple or arrange a grand religious festival or feed many…

Not the Pat Answer

Father Zosima then advises his suppliant, in some of the words that Father Ambrose of Optina Pustyn asked Dostoevsky to convey to Anna Grigoryevna: “Be not comforted. Consolation is not what you need. Weep and…

Don’t Be a Sleepwalker

My instructor asked questions such as: What had I done, in detail, from the time I had awakened until the time I arrived at the session, a period of one and a half hour? ……

It’s Simple

 He was not trying to convince me of anything. He spoke with sorrow about people’s reluctance to follow life’s most important law—that you should wish for others what you wish for yourself; that you should…

Sharing Her Wealth

[Simone Weil] continued giving her comrades her lucid and sad reflections, completely free of the blur of opinion, clear of the complacency of illusion, and untouched by the concerns of personal ambition. –Gabriella Fiori, Simone Weil:…

Counter-the Culture

The highest way of living for those who take the tonsure is to aim to lack nothing while owning nothing. —Yoshida Kenkô, Essays in Idleness, translated by Meredith McKinney If you wish to possess everythingYou must…

Look Deeply

I love my tiny hut, my lonely dwelling. When I chance to go down into the capital, I am ashamed of my lowly beggar status, but once back here again I pity those who chase…

Some Sayings

Ben Bag Bag said, Turn it (the Torah) and turn it over again, for everything is in it, and contemplate it, and wax grey and old over it, and stir not from it, for thou…