Short texts for contemplation:

1) Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD): The guiding principle

2) Karl Jaspers (1883-1969): The philosophical life

3) Max Picard (1888-1965): Silence is fundamental

4) Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900): The mission of love

5) Abraham Heschel (1907-1972): Radical wonder

6) Martin Buber (1878-1965): I and You

7) Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965): Reverence for Life

8) Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948): Courage over fear

9) José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955): Love as a flow

10) Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973): Generosity as light

11) Willem Zuurdeeg (1906-1963): The human cry

12) Novalis (1772-1801): Philosophy, poetry, the whole

13) Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592): Solitude

14) Epictetus (55-135 AD): Inner freedom

15) Susan Langer (1895-1985): Life of feeling

16) Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936): Love as self-pity

17) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): The Over-Soul

18) George Santayana (1863-1952): Beauty as perfection

19) Aristotle (384–322 BC): Happiness and virtue

20) Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805): The sublime

21) Maria Zambrano (1904-1991): The irrational light

22) Plotinus (204-270 AD): Spiritual beauty

23) Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949): The deeper life

24) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): The self-creator

25) Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837): Levels of self-knowledge

26) Erich Fromm (1900-1980): The art of loving

27) Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980): Existence before essence

28) John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893): Music is of unity

29) Aldus Huxley (1894-1963): The self as an island

30) Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): Virtue, freedom, love

31) Boethius of Dacia (13th century): The pursuit of wisdom

32) Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814): The voice of conscience

33) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831): Spirit is freedom

34) Simone Weil (1909-1943): To accept the void

35) Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) – The value of freedom

36) Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) – Harmony in the absolute

37) Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) – Subjectivity is Truth

38) Augustine (354-430 AD): The desire for wisdom

39) Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810–1884): Philosophy as freedom

40) Emil Cioran (1911-1995): The desire to be nothing

41) Joaquín Xirau Palau (1895-1945): The metaphysics of crisis

42) Blaise Pascal (1623-1662): The dignity of tought

43) Sophie de Condorcet (1764-1882): Noble love

44) Johann G. Herder (1744-1803): Between two worlds

45) Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973): Myself as a gift

46) Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837): Boredom

47) Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945): Humans as symbols makers

Short contemplative exercises:

a) Gentle Reading

b) Philosophical Note

c) Calligraphic Contemplation

d) Essential List

e) Recitation (Ruminatio)

f) Philosophical Mapping

g) Inner Conversation with a text

h) Free-floating reading

i) Guided philosophical imagery

Full texts for contemplation

SHORT  TEXTS  FOR  CONTEMPLATION

47) Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) – Humans as symbols makers

A German-Jewish philosopher, who left for the USA after the rise of the Nazis. In his AN ESSAY ON MAN (1944) he argues that the human capacity to create symbols is central to culture and human life.

The human being lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, and religion are parts of this universe. They are the various threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of human experience. All human progress in thought and experience is based on refining and strengthening this net.

No longer can the human being confront reality immediately; he cannot see it face to face. Physical reality seems to recede the more human symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves, the human being is, in a sense, constantly conversing with himself. He has enveloped himself so much in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except through this artificial medium.

46) Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) – Boredom

An Italian philosopher and major poet. The following is from his book THOUGHTS (1837), a collection of short passages which are often critical and dark.

Boredom is in some ways the most sublime human feeling. … Not being able to be satisfied with any earthly thing or, so to speak, with the whole earth; considering the immeasurable extent of space, the number and the wonderful size of the worlds, and finding that everything is small and petty in comparison with the capacity of one’s own mind; picturing to oneself the infinite number of worlds, and the infinite universe, and feeling that the soul and our desire must be still greater than such a universe; always accusing things of insufficiency and nothingness; and suffering huge lack and emptiness, and therefore boredom – all this seems to me the greatest sign of grandeur and nobility, which there is in human nature. And so, boredom is seldom seen in persons of no account, and very seldom or never in other creatures.

45) Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) – Myself as a gift

French existentialist philosopher, playwright, and music critic. Here he argues against the importance of my self (ego). I should treat my personality as something I received as a gift, not as my own great achievement. (“Ego and its relation to others,” 1941)

Maybe there is no more fatal error than that which conceives of the ego as the secret home of originality. … The best part of my personality does not belong to me. I am in no sense the owner, only the trustee. … If I consider myself as the guardians of my gifts, responsible for their fruitfulness – that is to say, if I recognize in them a call, or perhaps a question to which I must respond – it will not occur to me to be proud about them, and to parade them before an audience, which (as I said before) really means before myself.

Indeed, if we think about it, there is nothing in me that cannot or should not be regarded as a gift. It is pure fiction to imagine a pre-existent self to whom those gifts were given thanks to certain rights that I have, or as a reward for my previous merits.

44) Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) – Between two worlds

An influential German philosopher. In his OUTLINES OF A PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY OF HUMANITY (1803) he argues that humans live in two realms: the material world of the animal, and the spiritual world of ideals.

The curious inconsistency of the human condition becomes clear: As an animal, the human being tends to the earth, and is attached to it as his dwelling place. As a human being, he has within him the seeds of immortality, which require to be planted in another soil. As an animal, he can satisfy his wants, and people who are content with this feel themselves sufficiently happy here below; but those who seek a nobler purpose find everything around them imperfect and incomplete. What is most noble is never accomplished upon the earth, what is most pure is rarely stable and long-lasting. This arena is only a place of exercise and trial for the powers of our hearts and minds. The history of the human species – including what it has attempted and what has happened to it, the efforts it has made and the revolutions it has undergone – proves this sufficiently.

43) Sophie de Condorcet (1764-1882) – Noble love

A French writer and hostess of an intellectual salon in Paris. The following is adapted from her philosophical book LETTERS ON SYMPATHY (1798).

 A person who is worthy of esteem is happy to esteem others. His heart is easily moved by the mere thought of a good action, and it is tied and attached to anybody he thinks can perform such an action. He is happy to be with him, and their brotherhood of virtue creates between them freedom and equality, which they may experience tenderly like the tenderness between the closest blood and natural relatives.

[…] It is so true that the pleasure we find in loving comes (at least in the case of friendship), to a large extent, from our pleasure of making people happy through our affections, so that only generous souls can love. Souls that lack magnanimity or nobility, or that have been corrupted by selfishness, might want to be loved and might seek love’s delight and fruits, but only generous hearts who can be touched by the happiness of others really know how to love.

42) Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) – The dignity of thought

An influential French philosopher, mathematician and physicist. The following is from his famous PENSÉES (1670).

347. Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it, we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.

348. A thinking reed: It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.

41) Joaquín Xirau Palau (1895-1945) – The metaphysics of crisis

A Spanish philosopher. For him, reality is a dynamic movement towards fulfillment. Philosophy explores ways towards this fulfillment. The following is from his essay “Crisis” (1946).

The social and political crisis through which the world is passing has a metaphysical background that has been little noticed, or is wholly unknown to the great majority of people. It persists in the air that we breathe; its presence is so familiar that it is imperceptible. …

Modern life is chaos, not Cosmos. As such, it lacks a center, it is meaningless, aimless. The ancient world was an organism. And, as in every organism, each part served the whole, and the whole gave service to the parts. … The living body of reality had its foundation in the material realm, and its culmination was in the splendor of the spirit. … [But now] the organism splits and disappears. We are left only [with the duality of] matter and spirit, the real and the ideal. The glory of the world is reduced to either one or the other. Thus transformed into a thin thread of ideas or an endless flux of causes and effects, the world becomes an illusion. And through idealism and materialization, mathematical calculus or atomic movement, it tends to dissolve into nothingness.

40) Emil Cioran (1911-1995) – The desire to be nothing

A Romanian-born thinker who is known for his philosophical pessimism. The following is from his major book THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN (1973), which is a collection of short fragments.

* Once the shutters are closed, I stretch out in the dark. The outer world, a fading murmur, dissolves. All that is left is myself and … there’s the rub. Hermits have spent their lives in dialogue with what was most hidden within them. If only, following their example, I could give myself up to that extreme exercise, in which one unites with the intimacy of one’s own being! It is this self-interview, this inward transition which matters, and which has no value unless continually renewed, so that the self is finally absorbed by its essential version.

* The faint light in each of us which dates back to before our birth, to before all births, is what must be protected if we want to rejoin that remote glory from which we shall never know why we were separated.

* I have never known a single sensation of fulfillment, of true happiness, without thinking that it was the moment when – now or never – I should disappear for good.

39) Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810–1884) – Philosophy as Freedom

An Argentinian thinker, political theorist, and diplomat who influenced the Argentinian Constitution of 1853. For him, freedom is the purpose of humanity, and we can achieve it only if philosophy encompasses all aspects of our lives. From his book A PRELIMINARY FRAGMENT OF THE STUDY OF LAW (1837).

Since philosophy is the denial of all authority other than the authority of reason, philosophy is the mother of all emancipation, of all freedom, of all social progress. … There is only one freedom – that of reason, which has as many phases as there are elements in the human spirit. So when all these freedoms, or phases of rational freedom, do not exist at the same time, it can be said that no freedom properly exists. … To be free is not merely to act according to reason, but also to think according to reason, to believe according to reason, to write according to reason, to see according to reason… If, then, we want to be free, let us first be worthy of it. Freedom does not come in a flash. It is the slow birth of civilization. Freedom is not the conquest of a day; it is one of the purposes of humanity, a purpose that it will never achieve except relatively.

38) Augustine (354-430 AD) – The desire for wisdom

Augustine of Hippo was a major philosopher and a Catholic saint. His influence on Catholic thought and on medieval philosophy has been tremendous. The following is adapted from his book ON FREE CHOICE OF THE WILL (De libero arbitrio), Part 2.

Just as it is agreed that we all wish to be happy, so too it is agreed that we all wish to be wise, because who is happy without wisdom? Because nobody is satisfied without the supreme good which is discovered and possessed in the truth which we call wisdom.

Even before we are happy, the idea of happiness is impressed on our mind. This is how we know, and can assert confidently and with no doubt whatsoever, that we wish to be happy. Similarly, even before we are wise, the notion of wisdom is stamped on our mind. That is why each of us, if asked whether he wants to be wise, replies without a shadow of doubt that he does. … Because if your mind was not somehow aware of what wisdom is, you would never know that you desire to be wise, or that you should desire to be wise – and neither of them, I think, you will deny.

37) Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) – Subjectivity is Truth

Danish philosopher, father of existentialism. His central question is: What does it mean to live authentically, to really “exist” as a human being? His answer: to live “subjectively” – with one’s entire being, with passion, commitment, faith. The following is adapted from his CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT (1846).

Only knowledge that relates to existence is essential knowledge. All knowledge which is not existential – which does not involve inward reflection – is really accidental knowledge. Its degree and scope are of no importance. … The highest point of inwardness in an existing person is passion, because passion corresponds to truth as a paradox [=unsupported by objective reason]. … By forgetting that we are existing subjects, we lose passion, and truth stops to be a paradox, but the knowing subject begins to lose his humanity and becomes fantastic.

… The objective accent is on WHAT is said; the subjective accent is on HOW it is said. … Only in subjectivity is there decision and commitment, so to seek it in objectivity is to be in error. The passion of infinity brings forth decisiveness, not its content. In this way, the subjective HOW and subjectivity are the truth.

36) Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) – Harmony in the absolute

A British philosopher, influential in his lifetime but forgotten after his death. Inspired by Hegel, he posited an Absolute, where all of reality is united into a coherent whole, and where thought and being are one. The following is adapted from his APPEARANCE AND REALITY (1893).

We can find no province of the world so low that the Absolute does not inhabit it. Nowhere is there even a single fact so fragmentary and so poor that it does not matter to the universe. There is truth in every idea however false, there is reality in every existence however slight; and where we can point to reality or truth, there is the one undivided life of the Absolute. […] But on the other hand, Reality is not the sum of things. It is the unity in which all things, coming together, are transformed, although not equally. And in this unity, relations of separation and hostility are affirmed and absorbed. These relations, too, are harmonious in the Whole […] Extreme hostility implies a more intense relation, and this relation is part of the Whole and enriches its unity. The apparent disharmony and disturbance is overruled into harmony, and it is the condition of fuller and more individual development.

35) Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) – The value of freedom

A French existentialist philosopher, writer, and feminist. In THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY (1947) she argues that although no objective judgement can tell us the objective value of our action, what matters is that we are acting out of our freedom.

Regardless of the incredible dimensions of the world around us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes, and our weakness as individuals within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to want our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open to the infinite. And in fact, any person who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will, knows quite well that he does not need any external guarantee in order to be sure of his goals. His certainty in them comes from his own drive.

There is a very old saying which goes: “Do what you must, whatever happens.” … If each person did what he must, existence would be saved in each person without any need to dream about a paradise where everything would be reconciled with death.

34) Simone Weil (1909-1943) – To accept the void

A French spiritual philosopher. Her book GRAVITY AND GRACE (1940-2) tells us that we don’t have the powers to resist our natural desires – we need a void (like a “hole”) in our psychology, where supernatural grace can enter and act.

Like a gas, the soul tends to fill the entire space that is given to it. A gas that contracts and leaves a vacuum – this is contrary to the law of entropy. … Not to exercise all the power which you have is to have a void. This is contrary to all the laws of nature. Only grace can do it.

… To accept a void in ourselves is supernatural. Where is the energy for an act which has nothing that counterbalances it? The energy has to come from elsewhere. Yet, first something must be torn, something desperate has to take place, the void must be created.

… The human being escapes from the laws of this world only in lightning flashes. Moments when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. It is through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural.

33) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) – Spirit is freedom

A major German philosopher. For him, the history of the world is the history of the Spirit, which went through several historical stages to actualize its potential knowledge and self-consciousness. The following is from his LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY (1837).

Just as the essence of matter is gravity, so, in contrast, we may affirm that the essence of Spirit is Freedom. Everybody will easily agree that Spirit also has, among other properties, Freedom; but philosophy teaches that all the qualities of Spirit exist only through Freedom; that all these qualities are only means for attaining Freedom; that all of them seek and produce this and only this. It is a result of speculative philosophy that freedom is the only truth of Spirit.

Matter possesses gravity because of its tendency toward a central point. It is essentially composite – consisting of parts that exclude each other. It seeks its unity … Spirit, in contrast, may be defined as that which has its center in itself. It does not have a unity outside itself, but it has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit has self-contained existence.

32) Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) – The voice of conscience

A major German philosopher. In his book THE VOCATION OF MAN (1800) he finds the foundation not in reason (like Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”), but in the voice of moral conscience. Through faith in this voice, I accept that the world is real, and that my vocation is to obey this higher call. (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

“Your vocation is not just to know, but according to your knowledge to act!” — this is what I hear in the innermost depths of my soul, as soon as I recollect myself for a moment, and reflect upon myself. “You are here not for idle contemplation of yourself, not for brooding over your experiences — no, you are here for action. Your worth is determined by your action, and only your action.”

… This voice of my conscience announces to me precisely what I must do and what I should not do in every particular situation of life. It accompanies me, if I only listen to it with attention, through all the events of my life … My life stops being an empty play without truth or significance. There is something that must absolutely be done for its own sake alone. What conscience demands of me in this particular situation of life is mine to do, and this is why I am here.

31) Boethius of Dacia (13th Century) – The pursuit of wisdom

A Danish philosopher who taught at the University of Paris. He argued that philosophy, as the contemplation of truth and virtue, is the highest human activity, and should guide us independently of religion – for which he was persecuted by the Church. The following is adopted from his book ON THE SUPREME GOOD.

… All the operations of man’s lower powers are for the sake of the operations of his higher power, the intellect. And if, among the operations of the intellective powers, there is one which is best and most perfect, then all the other powers naturally exist for its sake. When a person performs such an operation, he enjoys the highest state possible for a human being. Such persons are the philosophers, who spend their lives in the pursuit of wisdom. Therefore, all the powers found in the philosopher operate according to the natural order – the earlier for the sake of the later, the lower for the sake of the higher and more perfect.

… Since in the philosopher, all the powers are for the sake of the highest power and highest action, which is contemplation of truth and delight in truth, and above all the first truth, therefore philosophers’ desire to know will never be satisfied until they know the uncreated being [=eternal being].

30) Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) – Virtue, freedom, love

A French philosopher who influenced profoundly modern political and social thought. His philosophy of education is presented in his book EMILE (1762), about an imaginary educator who educates the boy Emile. Here Emile, already a young adult, falls in love, and the educator encourages him to follow his love, but also be in control of it.

My son, there is no happiness without courage, nor virtue without a struggle. The word “virtue” is derived from a word signifying strength, and strength is the foundation of all virtue. Virtue is the heritage of a creature who is weak by nature but strong by will. … What is meant by a virtuous man? He who can conquer his loves, because then he follows his reason, his conscience; he does his duty; he is his own master and nothing can divert him from the right way. So far you have had only the semblance of liberty, the insecure liberty of the slave who has not received his orders. Now is the time for real freedom. Learn to be your own master; control your heart, my Emile, and you will be virtuous. …

This is your first passion [love]. Perhaps it is the only passion worthy of you. If you can control it like a man, it will be the last; you will be master of all the rest, and you will obey nothing but the passion for virtue.

29) Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) – The self as an island

An influential English thinker and writer. The following is slightly simplified from his book THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION (1954), where he tells about his experiences with the drug mescaline, and reflects on their philosophical implications.

We live together, we act on, and react to one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. The lovers, embraced, desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature, every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies – all these are private and incommunicable, except through symbols and at second hand. We can collect information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

Most island universes are sufficiently similar to permit understanding through inference, or even mutual empathy… To see ourselves as others see us, that is a most valuable gift. Not less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves. But what if these others belong to a different species and inhabit a radically alien universe?

28) John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893) – Music is of unity

An American thinker and music critic of the American Transcendentalist movement (which also included Emerson and Thoreau). The following is adapted from his essay “Music” (1849), which describes music as a universal languages through which we communicate with the unity of the universe.

The native impulses of the soul … when considered in their essence and original undistorted tendency, are divinely implanted loves. Union, harmony of some sort, is their very life. To meet, to unite, to blend by methods complex and quick, is their whole business and effort through eternity. … Through these (how else?) the hearts of the human race would be woven into one mutually conscious, undivided whole, one living temple not too narrow, nor too fragmentary for receiving the Spirit of Good.

Isn’t this announced in music, the natural language of these passions, which cannot express corruption nor any evil feeling, without ceasing to be music; which has no tone for any bad passion, and whatever it expresses translates into harmony and beauty? … Because music cannot cease to be harmony, cannot cease to symbolize the sacred relationship of each one to all, cannot contract a stain, any more than the sunbeam which shines into all corners.

27) Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980) – Existence before essence

An influential French existentialist philosopher, political activist, and novelist. For him, human consciousness is radically free – there is no fixed human nature that determines our behaviors, thoughts, or emotions. In this sense we create ourselves every moment.

What do we mean by saying that EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE? We mean that the human being first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. The human being, as seen by the existentialist, cannot be defined because at first he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.

… What we mean to say is that the human being has a greater dignity than a stone or a table. Because he first of all exists – he is something which pushes itself towards a future, and he is aware that this is what he is doing. A human being is, indeed, a project which has a subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a cauliflower. Before he project himself, nothing exists; not even in the heaven of intelligence: A human being will only attain existence when he is what he decides to be.

26) Erich Fromm (1900-1980) – The art of loving

A German-born Jewish psychologist and philosopher who worked in Mexico, USA, and Switzerland. His book THE ART OF LOVING (1956) suggests that true love – which is rare in our society – does not center on one’s own personal needs, but is an attitude of active giving to the world.

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person. It is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow human beings, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. … [When] one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that it is only necessary to find the right object – and everything will work by itself afterwards. …

If I truly love one person, I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, “I love you,” I must be able to say “I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.”

25) Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) – Levels of self-knowledge

A major Italian thinker and poet who died at the age of 39. The following is from his book THOUGHTS (Pensieri, 1837), a collection of fragments about humanity, which are often pessimistic and dark.

82. No one becomes a man (or woman) before he has had considerable experience of himself which reveals himself to himself, and determines his opinion of himself, and thus determines his destiny and his condition in life. Before this great experience, nobody in the world is much more than a child…

However, if this experience does occur … then he knows from experience the nature of the passions, he knows his own nature and temperament, he has a sense of his own abilities and strengths. And by now, he can judge himself and what he must hope for or despair of from himself, and what place he is probably destined to have in the world.

In short, life appears different to his eyes, since it has changed for him from a thing heard to a thing seen, from something imagined to something real, and he feels that he is in the middle of it, perhaps not happier but more powerful than before, in other words more inclined to make good use of himself and of others.

24) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) – The self-creator

A German thinker, a major modern philosopher. The following is from the section “On the way of the creator” from THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA (1883). Here Nietzsche’s Zarathustra envisions the “creator” who rejects the superficial values of society and creates new values for himself himself (his own “laws” or “evil and good”), living them fully and passionately. This makes his life noble and meaningful, but lonely and difficult. (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

You call yourself free? I want to hear your dominating thought, not to hear that you have escaped from a yoke. Are you one of those who has the RIGHT to escape from a yoke? Some people threw away their last value when they threw away their servitude.

Free FROM what? That doesn’t matter to Zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: Free FOR what? Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good, and place your own will above yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and punisher of your law? It is terrible to be alone with the judge and punisher of one’s own law. That is how a star is thrown out into the void and into the icy breath of solitude.

23) Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) – The deeper life

A Belgian playwright, poet, and Nobel Prize laureate in literature. He was not an academic philosopher, but wrote many short essays about life. The following is adapted from the essay “The Deeper Life” from his book THE TREASURE OF THE HUMBLE (1897).

Each person has to search for his own special ability for a higher life in the midst of the humble and inescapable reality of daily existence. There can be no nobler aim in life than this. It is only through our communications with the infinite that we can be distinguished from each other. If the hero is greater than the wretch who walks by his side, it is because at a certain moment of his existence he became more fully conscious of one of these communications. …

It is within our power to increase these communications. In the life of every person there was a day when the heavens opened by themselves, and this moment is almost always the birth of his true spiritual personality. Certainly, this moment forms our invisible, eternal features that we reveal (although we don’t know it) to angels and to souls. But with most people it is only chance that caused the heavens to open.

22) Plotinus (204-270 AD) – Spiritual beauty

A major Neo-Platonist philosopher who lived in late antiquity, mostly in Rome. The following is from his ENNEAD 1, Tractate 6: “Beauty.” (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

There are beauties that are more fundamental and high than the beauty of material objects. In the world of the senses we no longer know them, but the soul, which does not rely on sense-organs, sees them and announces them. We must ascend to the vision of these beauties, and leave the senses in their low place.

… Such a vision is only for those who see with the sight of the Soul. And when they experience this vision, they rejoice, and they are filled with joy and with agitation that is deeper than anything else, because now they are moving in the realm of truth. This is the spirit which beauty always inspires, wonderment and a delicious agitation, longing and love and a delightful trembling. …

Therefore we must ascend again towards the Good, which is what every soul desires. Anyone who has seen it, knows what I mean when I say that it is beautiful.

21) Maria Zambrano (1904-1991) – The irrational light

A poetic Spanish philosopher who believed in the power of irrational states of mind, such as dream and delirium. The following is from her book CLEARINGS IN THE FOREST (1977). Here she tells us that we should close our eyes (“sleep”) to the sharp violent light of reason, and “wake up” in the irrational “underworld,” where a softer light of deeper understanding will welcome us. (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

One must fall asleep above in the light. One must be awake below in the intra-terrestrial, intra-corporal darkness of the various bodies which terrestrial man inhabits: that of the earth, of the universe, of his own.

Down there in “the depths,” in the underworlds, the heart watches, is kept awake, is reawakened within itself.

Up above, in the light, the heart abandons itself, surrenders. It collects itself. It finally falls asleep no longer in pain. In the welcoming light where no violence is suffered, one has arrived to that light without forcing any door and even without opening it, without having passed through lintels of light and shadow, without effort and protection.

20) Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) – The sublime

A German philosopher, poet, and major playwright. The following is adapted from his essay ON THE SUBLIME (1801). For him, beauty follows order and reason, while the sublime takes us beyond reason, to a higher realm of freedom.

There are two capacities which nature gave us as companions throughout life. … In the first we recognize the feeling of the beautiful, in the second the feeling of the sublime. … With beauty we feel ourselves free, because our senses are in harmony with the laws of reason. With the sublime we feel ourselves free, because our senses have no influence on the realm of reason, because the spirit acts as if it stands only under its own laws

The feeling of the sublime is a mixed feeling. It is a combination of anxiety, which expresses itself in its highest degree as a shudder, and of joy, which can rise to ecstasy. And although it is not precisely pleasure, delicate souls generally prefer it to every pleasure. … We sense through the feeling of the sublime that our spiritual nature is not necessarily determined by the state of our senses; that the laws of nature are not necessarily our laws; and that we have in us an autonomous principle, independent of all sensuous impressions.

19) Aristotle (384–322 BC) – Happiness and virtue

A major ancient philosopher, born in Macedonia, studied with Plato, and tutored Alexander the Great. In Book I of his NICOMACHEAN ETHICS he discusses happiness (“Eudaimonia,” or flourishing):

Pleasure belongs to the soul, and pleasure for each person is about what he is a lover of: Horses for horse-lovers, and plays for theater-lovers, and in the same way justice is pleasant for a person who loves justice. And, in general, things that conform with virtue are pleasant for those who love virtue.

Now, the pleasures of most people are in conflict with each other, because they are not pleasant by their nature. But the lovers of goodness take pleasure in things that are pleasant by their nature. Such are always actions in conformity to virtue, so they are pleasant in themselves to lovers of goodness. The life of these people does not need extra pleasure as an additional attraction, because it contains its pleasure in itself…

But if so, then virtuous actions must be pleasant in themselves. But they are also good and noble. And they are good and noble in the highest degree, since the good person makes good judgements about these things. Happiness, then, is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world.

18) George Santayana (1863-1952) – Beauty as perfection

A Spanish-American philosopher, poet and novelist. The following is adapted and simplified from his book THE SENSE OF BEAUTY (1896). Here Santayana explains that beauty gives us a sense of perfection, and faith in it. (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

Our mind is satisfied when it finds harmony between who we are and what we experience: It finds it in the experience of beauty. When our perceptions and our imagination find what they crave … so that the correspondence between them is perfect, then perception is pleasure and existence needs no apology. The duality which is the condition of conflict disappears…

Beauty therefore seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility. If perfection is, as it should be, the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the moral dignity of beauty. Beauty is a testimony of the possible agreement between the soul and nature, and consequently a reason for faith in the supremacy of the good.

17) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – The Over-Soul

An American philosopher, leader of the Transcendentalist movement. The following is from the essay “The Over-Soul.” For Emerson, the “Over-Soul” is a higher dimension of existence, the source of inspiration and wisdom. (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being descends into us from we know not where. … I am forced every moment to acknowledge a higher origin of events than the will which I call “mine.”

As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river which, out of regions I don’t see, pours for a while its streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner – not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; that I may desire and search and be receptive, but from some alien energy the visions come.

… We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime, within each person is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE.

16) Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) – Love as self-pity

A Spanish philosopher, novelist and poet. The following is adapted from Chapter 7 of his book THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE (1912), which revolves around the issue of death – a central issue in his philosophy. (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

To love spiritually is to feel compassion, and whoever feels most compassionate loves most. People who burn with charity towards their fellow human beings feel this way because they have understood the depths of their own misery, of their own lack of substance, their own nothingness. And then, after turning their opened eyes towards their fellow human beings, they see that these people too are equally miserable, subject to annihilation, and they feel for them compassion and love.

… from this love or compassion for yourself, from this intense despair, from the knowledge that you will not exist after you die just as you did not exist before your birth, you go on to feel compassion for – that is, love to – all your fellow human beings in this world of appearance, those miserable shadows who walk about, going from nothingness to nothingness, mere sparks of consciousness shining for a moment in the infinite and eternal darkness.

15) Susan Langer (1895-1985) – Life of Feeling

An American philosopher of art, popular in the past but nowadays often forgotten. The following is adapted from her book FEELING AND FORM: A THEORY OF ART (1953). (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

Pure sensation – now pain, now pleasure – have no unity, and they change the person’s sensitivity only in simple ways. What is important in human life is sensations that are interpreted and shaped: remembered and anticipated, feared or wanted, or even imagined and avoided. … The continuity of thought systematizes our emotions into attitudes with distinct qualities, and determines the scope of an individual’s emotions. In other words: thanks to our thought and imagination we have not only feelings, but a LIFE OF FEELING. …

The artist does not have to experience in actual life every emotion he can express. By manipulating the elements he created, he may discover new possibilities of feelings, strange moods, perhaps concentrations of passion that are greater than his own temperament could ever produce. Because although a work of art reveals the character of subjectivity, it is itself objective. Its purpose is to objectify the LIFE OF FEELING.

14) Epictetus (55-135 AD) – Inner freedom

A major Stoic philosopher, born in Rome as a slave, educated and freed by his rich master, and then taught philosophy until his death. The following is from his ENCHIRIDION (135 AD). (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

15. Remember that you must behave in life like at a dinner party. Is a dish brought to you? Put out your hand and take your share with moderation. Does it pass away from you? Don’t stop it. Has it not arrived yet? Don’t stretch your hand, but wait until it reaches you. Do this regarding children, wife, public posts, riches, and you will eventually be a worthy participant in the feasts of the gods.

17. Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of whatever kind the author wished to make it. If it is short, then short; if it is long, then long. If he wishes you to act the role of a poor man, or a cripple, or a governor, or a private person, make sure that you act it properly. Because this is your task, to act well the character that was assigned you. To choose your part is somebody else’s business.

13) Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) – Solitude

An influential French philosopher, nobleman, and politician. He describes the difficulties of achieving real solitude in his ESSAYS, Book 1, Chapter 39: “Solitude”. (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

It is not enough to get away from the public, and not enough to go to another place. We have to get away from the conditions of the public that are inside us. It is our own self that we have to isolate and possess again.

(“I have broken my chain,” you say. But a dog may break its chain and still carry a long part of it connected to its neck” – Persius)

We carry our chains with us. Our freedom is not total. We still look at the things we have left behind. Our imagination is still full of them. … Our disease lies in the mind, and it cannot escape from itself. (“The mind which never escapes from itself is at fault” – Horace)

So we must bring back the mind and drag it into itself. That is the true solitude. It can be enjoyed in towns and in kings’ courts, but more conveniently alone.

12) Novalis (1772–1801) – Philosophy, poetry, and the whole

An important poet and philosopher of German Romanticism. For him, philosophy and poetry must join together to elevate humanity, and connect us with nature and with the whole. The following is from his LOGICAL FRAGMENTS I:25. (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

Poetry elevates each single thing through a particular combination with the rest of the whole. And while philosophy prepares the world for the active influence of ideas, poetry is the key to philosophy – to its purpose and meaning. Because poetry shapes the beautiful society, the world-family, the beautiful home of the universe.

Philosophy strengthens the powers of the individual with the powers of humanity and the universe, through system and state, making the whole the instrument of the individual, and the individual the instrument of the whole. In the same way, poetry functions regarding life: The individual lives in the whole and the whole in the individual. Through poetry there arises the highest sympathy and common activity, the most intimate communion of the finite and the infinite.

11) Willem Zuurdeeg (1906-1963) – The human cry

A Dutch philosopher of religion. The following is from his book MAN BEFORE CHAOS, published after his death:

Philosophy is born in a cry. The fountain of philosophizing is not cold, abstract intellectualizing, but a deep and passionate concern about life and its meaning. … Plato’s birth as a philosopher came when he cried out loud: “Being MUST prevail over meaninglessness and death!” …

The philosophical crying out suggests that a person can become authentically human when he has cried out in anxiety and triumph, in angry rebellion and in joyful reverence. Someone or some event touches him in a vital way, hurts him, knocks him over. When this happens, the cover is removed from a deeper, fuller possibility of his being. A self which had been trapped, or is sleeping, is liberated or awakened. Through such crying out, the person can become more truly himself, reaching out toward fulfilled humanity by establishing a fuller relationship to his own being, to others, to his world, and to his God.

10) Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) – Generosity as light

A French existentialist philosopher, playwright, and music critic. For him, “light” is not just a metaphor, but a fundamental category of certain realities in life, such as generosity (MYSTERY OF BEING, 1951). (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

To give is to expand, to expand oneself. But we must be careful not to interpret this in a material way, as if something that is too full flows out. The soul of the gift is its generosity, and obviously generosity is a virtue which must be carefully distinguished from excess. Wouldn’t an accurate definition of generosity be: A LIGHT WHOSE JOY IS TO GIVE LIGHT, TO BE LIGHT? … The special property of light is that it illuminates, it illuminates for others. This goes beyond the distinction between for me and for others. We might even say that this distinction does not exist for the light. If the joy of light is to be light, then it can only wish to be always more so. Light knows itself, then, as illuminating; and this knowledge is not like a sense of weakening and wasting itself, but on the contrary – it helps to increase its power. Like fire, generosity nurtures itself.

9) José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) – Love as a flow

An influential Spanish philosopher who wrote on human experience, including love. This text is from his book ON LOVE (1939). (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

Love goes from the lover to the beloved – from me to the other – in a centrifugal direction. … When we love, we abandon the tranquility and stability within ourselves, and migrate virtually toward the beloved. And this constant state of migration is what it is to be in love.

… Love is prolonged in time: One does not love in series of sudden moments or isolated instants which ignite and die like a spark of a turbine, but one loves the beloved with continuity… Love is a flow, a stream of spiritual matter, a fluid which flows continually like a fountain. … Love is not an explosion, but a continued emanation, a psychic radiation which proceeds from the lover to the beloved. It is not a single discharge, but a current.

8) Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) – Courage over Fear

A Russian spiritual existentialist philosopher. For him, life is mean and painful, and humanity is in a historical struggle towards spiritualization. This text is from his book THE DIVINE AND THE HUMAN (1945). (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

Man lives in fear of life and in fear of death. Fear rules in the life of the individual and of society. Anxiety, insecurity of life, eventually give rise to fear. But what is most serious is this: fear distorts thought and interrupts the knowledge of truth. … Fear always relates to suffering; it is experienced as suffering, and it is the terror of suffering. It is impossible to dissociate fear from this central fact of human life. Man is dragged away from the higher world to the lower world.

… Emancipation from fear is the main spiritual task of man. Achieving fearlessness is the highest condition of man, and it is a question of achievement, because no one can say that fear is entirely unknown to him. … It is only from the supra-conscious that the final and decisive victory over fear comes. It is a triumph of the spirit.

7) Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) – Reverence for Life

A French-German thinker, theologian, musician, and medical doctor, who devoted himself to serve the sick in a hospital he built in West Africa. He received the Nobel Prize for his writings on the reverence for life. (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

Only through reverence for life can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach. Only in this way can we avoid harming others, and, within the limits of our capacity, go to their aid whenever they need us.

… Through reverence for life, we come into a spiritual relationship with the universe. The inner depth of feeling, which we experience through it, gives us the will and the ability to create a spiritual and ethical set of values that enables us to act on a higher level, because we then feel ourselves truly at home in our world. Through reverence for life we become, in effect, different persons.

6) Martin Buber (1878-1965) – I and You

Jewish Austrian-Israeli philosopher and writer, known for his distinction between togetherness relationships (I-You) and objective relationships (I-It). This text is from his book I AND THOU (1923). (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

There is no I by itself, but only the I of “I-You” and the I of the “I-It.” …

When I encounter a human being as my You and I say to him the basic word I-You, then he is not a thing among things, and he doesn’t consist of things. He is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a dot in the world-grid of space and time. Nor is he a condition that can be experienced and described, a collection of certain qualities. Without neighbors and without division, he is You and he fills the sky. It’s not as if there is nothing except for him, but rather everything lives in his light.

5) Abraham Heschel (1907-1972) – Radical wonder

A Jewish American thinker, rabbi, philosopher, and activist of social justice. This text is from his book MAN IS NOT ALONE (1951). (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

We are able to look at the world with two faculties: with reason and with wonder. Through the first faculty we try to explain the world, and to adapt the world to our concepts. Through the second faculty we seek to adapt our minds to the world…

Wonder is a state of mind in which we do not look at reality through our memorized knowledge, in which we take nothing for granted. Spiritually, we cannot live by merely repeating borrowed or inherited knowledge. Ask your soul what it knows, what it takes for granted. It will tell you that it takes no-thing for granted; each thing is a surprise; being is unbelievable. We are amazed that we see anything at all. We are amazed not only at particular things and values, but at the unexpectedness of being itself, at the fact that there is being at all.

4) Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) – The mission of love

A Russian thinker, reflecting on the universal integration of humanity with the All. This text is from his book THE MEANING OF LOVE (1894). (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

A human being, by being this individual and not another individual, may become All only by abolishing in his consciousness the internal boundary which separates him from another human being. “This one” may become the “All” only together with others. Only together with others can an individual realize his absolute significance, and become an inseparable and irreplaceable part of the universal whole, an independent living original organ of the absolute life…

The meaning and worth of love is that it forces us to acknowledge, with all our being, the absolute central significance of another person, which, because of the power of our egoism, we are conscious of only in our own self. Love is important not as one among other feelings, but as the transfer of all our interest in life from ourselves to another, as the shifting of the center of our personal lives.

3) Max Picard (1888-1965) – Silence is fundamental

A Swiss thinker and a lover of solitude and nature. This text is from his book THE WORLD OF SILENCE (1948), the chapter “The basic phenomenon of silence”. (Read more on Agora [https://philopractice.org/web])

Silence is a basic phenomenon. That is to say, it is a primary, objective reality, which cannot be traced back to anything else. It cannot be replaced by anything else. It cannot be exchanged with anything else…

Silence is original and self-evident like the other basic phenomena – like love, and like loyalty, and death, and like life itself. But it existed before all these, and it is in all of them. Silence is the first-born among all basic phenomena. It envelops the other basic phenomena – love, loyalty, and death. And there is in them more silence than speech, more of the invisible than the visible. There is also more silence in one person that we can use in a person’s life. That is why every human life is surrounded by a mystery. The silence in a person stretches out beyond the individual’s life. In this silence, the person is connected with past and future generations.

  1) Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) – The guiding principle

A Roman emperor and important Stoic philosopher. For the Stoics, the “guiding principle” (or “daemon”) is the person’s inner center, or true self. When we connect to it, we experience inner freedom, peace, and harmony with the cosmos. The following is from his personal notebook MEDITATIONS. Read more on Agora (https://philopractice.org/web).

2:9. You must always bear in mind what is the nature of the whole cosmos, and what is my own nature, and how the first is related to the second, and what kind of a part I am in the whole. And there is nobody who stops you from always doing and saying the things that are according to the nature of the whole, of which you are a part.

7:28. Retire into yourself. The rational principle which rules is by nature content with itself when it does what is just, and in doing so it achieves tranquility.

8:48. Remember that the guiding principle is invincible. When it is self-collected, it is satisfied with itself, if it does nothing which it does not choose to do. …  Therefore, the mind which is free from passions is a citadel, because a person has nothing more secure to which he can escape.

SHORT  CONTEMPLATIVE  EXERCISES

i) Guided philosophical imagery

In this exercise we contemplate on a philosophical text in a non-verbal way, through visual imagery. The text must be easy to visualize – for example, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, where we can imagine ourselves sitting or walking in the cave.

First read the text to understand its basic ideas. Then close your eyes and imagine yourself in the world of the text (for example, sitting in Plato’s cave). Now start moving towards some destination (for example, walk out of the cave). Let your imagination take you on that journey. Notice the changing landscape and what you find on your way. When you feel you have reached your destination, stop, turn around, and go back to the starting point. Gently leave the imagined world and return the room.

Now try to put in words some of the experiences you had encountered. You may also express them in a poem or a drawing.

h) Free-floating reading

Normally when we read a text, we try to “grasp” it and “capture” its ideas in our understanding. We try to “digest” it and “tame” it in order to fit it into our thinking patterns. In this contemplative exercise we read a philosophical text without the intellectual effort to grasp it.

To do so, sit down in a collected but relaxed manner. Relax your mind, and start reading the philosophical text slowly and gently, letting the text flow without mental effort, without slowing down to understand anything unclear.­­­­­­ Let the words and ideas float like clouds in the sky, regardless of whether or not you understand them.

Many of the ideas will probably escape you, but you will notice glimpses of ideas, images, and insights. The result will be a different kind of understanding – fragmentary, beyond logical structure, modest and yet deep.

g) Inner Conversation with a text

When we converse with others, especially when we ask questions and listen for responses, we listen in a special way. This is the basic idea in this exercise.

Select a short philosophical text of about one or more paragraphs. Read it quietly and gently a few times, listening internally to what floats in your mind – ideas, associations, memories, images, etc. Now, in response, formulate a question in your mind, and silently ask the text this question. Listen internally to the “answer” of the text inside you, and after a while continue this conversation with another question. Your questions can be personal, or general, or whatever you choose.

You might feel silly speaking to the text. However, remember that the goal is to achieve a certain inner conversation. At the end of this inner conversation you may write gently an idea that touched you.

f) Philosophical Mapping

Prepare a sheet of drawing paper and a drawing pen or pencil. Read quietly and gently a short philosophical text (you may choose one of Agora’s text), and listen inwardly to words that resonate within you as pregnant with meaning, as well as images and association. When such a word or image appears, select for it a small place on the drawing paper, and carefully write it down or draw it. Then continue reading until the next word or image resonates in you – find for it another place on the paper and write or draw it too.

In this way you will gradually fill the paper with words and images, related to each other geographically like a philosophical map of ideas. You may add to the map lines and circles to indicate connections and distinctions. Throughout the process, all your hand movements should be gentle and precise to maintain a contemplative state of mind.

e) Recitation (Ruminatio)

Read a philosophical text carefully (you may choose one of Agora’s text), and notice a paragraph that intrigues or touches you. Read it gently several times, until you identify a sentence that seems especially pregnant with meaning. This will be your recitation sentence of the day.

Focus on this sentence and read it again and again several times like a mantra. It is best to do so by whispering quietly, a little slower than in usual reading, while listening to the flow of words and sounds. Notice how the words lose their usual meaning and become one overall melody. Recite the sentence at least ten or twenty times, then pause for a few minutes, and recite it again. Notice, especially in the pauses between recitations, the images and associations that float in your mind. If an interesting insight arises, you may want to write it in your notebook.

 d) Essential list

Read quietly and slowly a short philosophical text. Make a list of 3-6 words (or short expressions) that refer to the most central ideas in the text. They may be your own words, but they should express the “heart” of the text as you understanding it. For example, if you are using Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, you might write: prisoner; illusion; stepping out; light of truth.

Now, quietly reflect on these words for a few minutes – don’t analyze, simply let your mind wander and “resonate” with them. After a while, write those words on a piece of paper, and put it in a visible place (on your table, for example), or take it with you in your pocket or purse. For the rest of the day, reflect at the list from time to time for a few seconds. Notice if any images or words surface in your awareness. At the end of the day you may look back and integrate the insights you have received.

 c) Calligraphic contemplation (about 10-15 minutes)

Normally we speak and write automatically, and do not pay much attention to the specific letters and words we are vocalizing or putting on paper. We think “through” the flow of words. In this contemplative exercise our purpose is to “stop” the words from their automatic flow. In this way we want to “make present” the ideas, so that we can savor them and listen to them inwardly and deeply.

Read quietly a short philosophical text. Go over it slowly several times, until you notice a sentence that draws your attention. The sentence seems pregnant with meaning, and it “wants” to say to you something. When this happens, put down the text and copy the sentence on a sheet of paper in a very slow, precise, beautiful way. Pay attention to each pen-movement, to each line and circle, and try to make them present in your awareness.

You can use calligraphic writing, if you have some knowledge of it. If not, you may create your own calligraphic style, on the basis of a font that you like.

   a) Gentle Reading (about 5-15 minutes)

Preparation: A short philosophical text of about 4-10 lines.

Sit in a quiet place in a position that is comfortable and symmetric, straight but not tense. Calm your mind for a couple of minutes by closing your eyes, or following your breath, etc.

Now, look at the philosophical text that you have prepared in advance, and let your eyes glide slowly and gently over the lines. Do this much more slowly than your usual reading speed, and resist your natural tendency to run forward. Listen gently to each word without analyzing or imposing your interpretations, without being in control – let the words lead you. “Taste” carefully each one of the words and feel the way they flow. Silence your inner speech and let the text speak inside you, while listening carefully to the images and ideas that it raises in your mind. It is a good idea to re-read the text several times.

Your mind should be quiet now. After you finish reading, you may continue to sit in this inner silence for a few more minutes. Then, if you wish, you may gather your thoughts and formulate in words the understanding you have received from the text.

FULL  TEXTS  FOR  CONTEMPLATION