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Dear All.
The great thing about a back injury is that it brings you to a dead halt. I should have gone on a retreat last week, but have stuck at home instead. That didn’t stop me having a contemplative time. In fact it was rather forced on me. And thank God for Zoom as I could join on Zoom. There is being and becoming. To spend a week simply resting in the being rather than dashing onto the next thing has the effect of recalibrating, spending time of addressing what is of true lasting value rather than which inevitably comes to pass.
When the Stoics talk about virtue they are talking about this very thing. The thing that’s of true lasting value. It’s from here that all the virtues arise. To make the connection between the passing and the eternal is the way to live a truly humane life. As Marcus says: Within is the well spring of the good. Ever dig and it will ever flow.
To spend time in quiet contemplation is an obvious way of doing just that. The Stoics have the idea of Kathakonta, a measured response to needs that arise in life. Only in that way may we serve the common good, bring, in our own way, a sense of unity to a world full of division.
Best wishes, William
PS The back's getting better.
SOCRATES HAS A QYIET CONTEMPLATE
At the beginning of Plato’s Symposium, the narrator, Appollodorus, describes how after guests of the playwright, Agathon had gathered at his house, preparing themselves to enjoy a dinner party, they suddenly realised that the guest of honour, Socrates himself, wasn’t present. A servant was sent to look for him. He returned and informed the others that Socrates had retired into the portico of a nearby house. ‘There he is fixed and when I call him he will not stir.’
Agathon insisted that he should be called again but was encouraged to leave him alone, being assured that Socrates made a habit of going off anywhere he happened to be and falling into fits of abstraction.
Given that their symposium was to be devoted to a discussion of the nature of love, how appropriate that Socrates should take time to reflect before events got underway. It is difficult to speak of love if the beloved hasn’t first been called to mind.
PRACTICE:
Before racing on to the event to come, still the mind and take time to reflect. It may only be a moment, but that moment provides an opportunity to come to yourself.
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