Search

(21) Now, all thoughtful folk, mark me! no one can be truly happy, except he who abides in the strictest sanctification. No bodily and fleshly delight can ever take place with out spiritual loss, for the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. Therefore, the more a man fleeth from the created, the more the Creator hastens to him. And consider this: if the pleasure we take in the outward image of our Lord Jesus Christ diminishes our capacity for receiving the Holy Spirit, how much more must our unbridled desire for earthly comforts diminish it!

(14) For man, and especially the Sage, is not the Couplement of soul and body: the proof is that man can be disengaged from the body and disdain its nominal goods.

It would be absurd to think that happiness begins and ends with the living-body: happiness is the possession of the good of life: it is centred therefore in Soul, is an Act of the Soul- and not of all the Soul at that: for it certainly is not characteristic of the vegetative soul, the soul of growth; that would at once connect it with the body.

A powerful frame, a healthy constitution, even a happy balance of temperament, these surely do not make felicity; in the excess of these advantages there is, even, the danger that the man be crushed down and forced more and more within their power. There must be a sort of counter-pressure in the other direction, towards the noblest: the body must be lessened, reduced, that the veritable man may show forth, the man behind the appearances.

Let the earth-bound man be handsome and powerful and rich, and so apt to this world that he may rule the entire human race: still there can be no envying him, the fool of such lures. Perhaps such splendours could not, from the beginning even, have gathered to the Sage; but if it should happen so, he of his own action will lower his state, if he has any care for his true life; the tyranny of the body he will work down or wear away by inattention to its claims; the rulership he will lay aside. While he will safeguard his bodily health, he will not wish to be wholly untried in sickness, still less never to feel pain: if such troubles should not come to him of themselves, he will wish to know them, during youth at least: in old age, it is true, he will desire neither pains nor pleasures to hamper him; he will desire nothing of this world, pleasant or painful; his one desire will be to know nothing of the body. If he should meet with pain he will pit against it the powers he holds to meet it; but pleasure and health and ease of life will not mean any increase of happiness to him nor will their contraries destroy or lessen it.

When in the one subject, a positive can add nothing, how can the negative take away?

(91) Which say, "See me a man destined to the fire; I am a part of the fire, and go to join my whole; Not a light, so that I should join the Source of light." Kill thine own lust and give life to the world; It has killed its lord, reduce it to servitude. That claimant of the cow is thy lust; Beware! That slayer of the cow is thy reason; Go! Reason is a poor captive, and ever cries to God On what depends its getting meat without toiling?

(100) On its killing the cow of the body, the source of evil. Lust says, "Why hast thou killed my cow?" It says, "Because lust's cow is the form of the body." Reason, the Lord's child, has become a pauper, Lust, the murderer, has become a lord and chief. Know'st thou what is meat untoiled for? 'Tis the food of spirits and the aliment of the Prophet. But it is attainable only by slaying the cow; Treasure is gained by digging, O digger of treasure!

(42) But how is it possible to become like the Lord and have knowledge of God if one is subject to physical pleasures? Every pleasure is the consequence of an appetite, and an appetite is a certain pain and anxiety, caused by need, which requires some object.1S In my opinion those who choose this kind of life are simply "suffering pain to their shame," as the well-known verse puts it, 16 choosing evil which they bring upon themselves, now and hereafter. If, then, all things were lawful and one need have no fear that because of one's wicked deeds one's hope of salvation would be lost, perhaps they might have some excuse for living this wicked and wretched life. But through the commandments a life of blessedness is shown to us. We must all keep to them without misinterpreting any of the words or neglecting any of our duties, however minute. We must follow where the word leads; and if we depart from it, we must fall into "endless evil." And by following the divine scripture, the path by which believers travel, we are to be made like unto the Lord as far as possible. We must not live as if there were no difference between right and wrong, but, to the best of our power, must purify ourselves from indulgence and lust and take care for our soul which must continually be devoted to the Deity alone. For when it is pure and set free from all evil the mind is somehow capable of receiving the power of God and the divine image is set up in it. " And everyone who has this hope in the Lord purifies himself," says the Scripture, "even as he is pure."

(1) [This chapter is supplementary to chapter iii.] Those who understand the conditions of life devote no attention to things which life cannot accomplish. Those who understand the conditions of destiny devote no attention to things over which knowledge has no control. For the due nourishment of our physical frames, certain things are needful. Yet where such things abound, the physical frame is not always nourished. For the preservation of life it is necessary that there should be no abandonment of the physical frame. Yet where the physical frame is not abandoned, life does not always remain. Life comes, and cannot be declined. It goes, and cannot be stopped. But alas! the world thinks that to nourish the frame is enough to keep life. And if indeed it is not enough, what then is the world to do? Although not enough, it must still be done. It cannot be neglected. For if one is to neglect the physical frame, better far to retire at once from the world. By renouncing the world, one gets rid of the cares of the world. The result is a natural level, which is equivalent to a re-birth. And he who is re-born is near.

(28) And what follows, expressed indeed in foul language, but in a manner worthy of the voluptuaries. Wherefore the divine law appears to me necessarily to menace with fear, that, by caution and attention, the philosopher may acquire and retain absence of anxiety, continuing without fall and without sin in all things. For peace and freedom are not otherwise won, than by ceaseless and unyielding struggles with our lusts. For these stout and Olympic antagonists are keener than wasps, so to speak; and Pleasure especially, not by day only, but by night, is in dreams with witchcraft ensnaringly plotting and biting. How, then, can the Greeks any more be right in running down the law, when they themselves teach that Pleasure is the slave of fear? Socrates accordingly bids "people guard against enticements to eat when they are not hungry, and to drink when not thirsty, and the glances and kisses of the fair, as fitted to inject a deadlier poison than that of scorpions and spiders." And Antisthenes chose rather "to be demented than delighted." And the Theban Crates says: "Master these, exulting in the disposition of the soul, Vanquished neither by gold nor by languishing love, Nor are they any longer attendants to the wanton."

(4) On this point there is this verse: Where one's mind is attached — the inner self Goes thereto with action, being attached to it alone. Obtaining the end of his action, Whatever he does in this world, He comes again from that world To this world of action. — So the man who desires. The soul of the released Now the man who does not desire. — He who is without desire, who is freed from desire, whose desire is satisfied, whose desire is the Soul — his breaths do not depart. Being very Brahma, he goes to Brahma.

(1) Worldly senses are the ladder of earth, The health of the former is sought of the leech, The health of the latter from "The Friend." The health of the former arises from tending the body, The kingly soul lays waste the body, Happy the soul who for love of God Has lavished family, wealth, and goods! Has destroyed its house to find the hidden treasure, And with that treasure has rebuilt it in fairer sort; Has dammed up the stream and cleansed the channel, And then turned a fresh stream into. the channel;

(4) “ O ye gentlemen, this body of ours is to be abhorred, and the body of Buddha is to be desired. And why? The body of Buddha is the body of the law. It is born of immeasurable virtues and wisdom. It is born of discipline, meditation, wisdom, emancipation, wisdom of emancipation. It is born of mercy, compassion, joy, and impartiality. It is born of charity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditation, emancipation, samadhi, learning, meekness, strength, wisdom, and all the Paramitas. It is born of the necessary means. It is born of the six supernatural powers. It is born of the threefold intelligence. It is born of the thirty-seven requisites of enlightenment. It is born of the concentration and contemplation of mind. It is born of the ten powers, threefold fearlessness and the eighteen special faculties. It is born by uprooting all wicked deeds and by accumulating all good deeds. It is born of truth. It is born of temperance. Of these immeasurable pure virtues is born the body of Tathagata.

(9) "For the minds of those even who are deemed grave, pleasure makes waxen," according to Plato; since "each pleasure and pain nails to the body the soul" of the man, that does not sever and crucify himself from the passions. "He that loses his life," says the Lord, "shall save it;" either giving it up by exposing it to danger for the Lord's sake, as He did for us, or loosing it from fellowship with its habitual life. For if you would loose, and withdraw, and separate (for this is what the cross means) your soul from the delight and pleasure that is in this life, you will possess it, found and resting in the looked-for hope. And this would be the exercise of death, if we would be content with those desires which are measured according to nature alone, which do not pass the limit of those which are in accordance with nature - by going to excess, or going against nature - in which the possibility of sinning arises.

(2) Before ere man sinned was the Sensuality so obedient unto the Will, unto the which it is as it were servant, that it ministered never unto it any unordained liking or grumbling in any bodily creature, or any ghostly feigning of liking or misliking made by any ghostly enemy in the bodily wits. But now it is not so: for unless it be ruled by grace in the Will, for to suffer meekly and in measure the pain of the original sin, the which it feeleth in absence of needful comforts and in presence of speedful discomforts, and thereto also for to restrain it from lust in presence of needful comforts, and from lusty plesaunce in the absence of speedful discomforts: else will it wretchedly and wantonly welter, as a swine in the mire, in the wealths of this world and the foul flesh so much that all our living shall be more beastly and fleshly, than either manly or ghostly.

(16) "And now, as all the world is in error, I, though I know the true path,—how shall I guide? If I know that I cannot succeed and yet try to force success, this would be but another source of error. Better, then, to desist and strive no more. But if I strive not, who will? "An ugly man who has a son born to him in the middle of the night will hurry up with a light, in dread lest the child should be like himself. "An old tree is cut down to make sacrificial vessels, which are then ornamented with colour. The stump remains in a ditch. The sacrificial vessels and the stump in the ditch are very differently treated as regards honour and dishonour; equally, as far as destruction of the woods original nature is concerned. Similarly, the acts of Robber Chê and of Tsêng and Shih are very different; but the loss of original nature is in each case the same. "The causes of this loss are five in number; viz.—The five colours confuse the eye, and the eyes fail to see clearly. The five sounds confuse the ear, and the ear fails to hear accurately. The five scents confuse the nose, and obstruct the sense of smell. The five tastes cloy the palate, and vitiate the sense of taste. Finally, likes and dislikes cloud the understanding, and cause dispersion of the original nature. "These five are the banes of life; yet Yang and Mih regarded them as the summum bonum. They are not my summum bonum. For if men who are thus fettered can be said to have attained the summum bonum, then pigeons and owls in a cage may also be said to have attained the summum bonum!

(5) As slaves the Scripture views those "under sin" and "sold to sin," the lovers of pleasure and of the body; and beasts rather than men, "those who have become like to cattle, horses, neighing after their neighbours' wives." The licentious is "the lustful ass," the covetous is the "savage wolf," and the deceiver is "a serpent." The severance, therefore, of the soul from the body, made a life-long study, produces in the philosopher gnostic alacrity, so that he is easily able to bear natural death, which is the dissolution of the chains which bind the soul to the body. "For the world is crucified to me, and I to the world," the [apostle] says; "and now I live, though in the flesh, as having my conversation in heaven."