- Bellman.
Quote Of The Day:
Philosophical paradoxes are conflicts of linguistics more than of reality. (
From Pali to Coleridge: Essays of Meaning. 1972. Found it in a dentist's office.)
If the above phrase means anything to you, then perhaps you are the one who will find solace from my words. See, when I was much younger, I had been told that the perfect life would be painfully boring. While others had inferred from that the fallacy of perfection, I took it otherwise and questioned its implications. The perfect life, I reasoned, would
not be boring to any painful capacity, for that would negate its being "perfect" to begin with, thus rendering the statement itself invalid. The crux, then, lies with
boredom, and with preventing its excess. The perfect life must be one of moderation: Surpassing violences and excesses of speech, body, and mind which would threaten balance.
I emphasize:
Surpassing, not
suppressing. Suppression would certainly achieve
a single perfect life, but at the expense of many others'. Surpassion (not even a word, how alien to our language!) allows for every expression its time and place (even violences) but refuses to submit to their defining. This is also the most difficult path to take. It's no wonder that, to many belief systems, moderation is seen as (one of) the last
step(s) in an incredible journey of the soul.
Yes, moderation: the seventh virtue, the ultimate virtue for mortals to achieve. From there, we can only
contemplate the higher ones which immortals embody (according to Aquinas, in any case). In some interpretations, moderation is also the seventh element-- Right Mindfulness-- of the eightfold path, the final noble truth elaborated by the Buddha.
The perfect life could not be painful. We would have to adjust our threshold for and relationship with boredom, however.
This subject has lingered in my thoughts for upwards of seven years now, though it has only attained its spiritual associations within the last two. I'm not what one would call an ordinarily spiritual person; I grew up worshiping only science and the empirical in a family of down-to-earth breadwinners. But, as books steadily captured senses I had reason to believe were my very
values, it was only a matter of time before I would be exposed to, and compelled to grapple with, sacred texts as well.
Now, I do not submit to every conclusion posited by those texts, but I
do believe in their sincerity (with case-by-case exceptions), and it is precisely from this perspective that I have given credence to certain... patterns. Patterns which, in time, would lead me to a strengthened recognition of the vast (cosmic, duration mathematically inaccessible) cycles of the Boojums.
Ishmael, on the other hand... well, the less said about his last two years, the better.
