55 ideas
| 7990 | Serene wisdom is freedom from ties, and indifference to fortune [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Who everywhere is free from all ties, who neither rejoices nor sorrows if fortune is good or is ill, his is a serene wisdom. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.57) | |
| A reaction: This is very similar to the 'apatheia' of the Stoics, though they are always more committed to rationality. This is quite a good strategy when times are hard, but as a general rule it offers a bogus state of 'wisdom' which is really half way to death. |
| 19250 | Everything interesting should be recorded, with records that can be rearranged [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Everything worth notice is worth recording; and those records should be so made that they can readily be arranged, and particularly so that they can be rearranged. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], V) | |
| A reaction: Yet another epigraph for my project! Peirce must have had a study piled with labelled notes, and he would have adored this database, at least in its theory. |
| 19228 | Sciences concern existence, but philosophy also concerns potential existence [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy differs from the special sciences in not confining itself to the reality of existence, but also to the reality of potential being. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: One might reply that sciences also concern potential being, if their output is universal generalisations (such as 'laws'). I take disposition and powers to be central to existence, which are hence of interest to sciences. |
| 19241 | An idea on its own isn't an idea, because they are continuous systems [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as an absolutely detached idea. It would be no idea at all. For an idea is itself a continuous system. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: This is the new anti-epigraph for this database. This idea is part of Peirce's idea that relations are the central feature of our grasp of the world. |
| 19227 | Philosophy is a search for real truth [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy differs from mathematics in being a search for real truth. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: This is important, coming from the founder of pragmatism, in rejecting the anti-realism which a lot of modern pragmatists seem to like. |
| 19218 | Metaphysics is pointless without exact modern logic [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysician who is not prepared to grapple with the difficulties of modern exact logic had better put up his shutters and go out of the trade. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: This announcement comes before Russell proclaimed mathematical logic to be the heart of metaphysics (though it is contemporary with Frege's work, of which Peirce was unaware). It places Peirce firmly in the analytic tradition. |
| 19229 | Metaphysics is the science of both experience, and its general laws and types [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics is the science of being, not merely as given in physical experience, but of being in general, its laws and types. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this. The question then is whether such a science is possible. Dogmatic empiricists think not. Explanatory empiricists (me) think it is. |
| 19219 | Metaphysical reasoning is simple enough, but the concepts are very hard [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical reasonings, such as they have hitherto been, have been simple enough for the most part. It is the metaphysical concepts which it is difficult to apprehend. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: Peirce is not, of course, saying that it is just conceptual, because for him science comes first. It is the woolly concepts that alienate some people from metaphysics. Metaphysicians should challenge the concepts they use much, much more! |
| 19231 | Metaphysics is turning into logic, and logic is becoming mathematics [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics is gradually and surely taking on the character of a logic. And finally seems destined to become more and more converted into mathematics. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: Remarkably prescient for 1898. I don't think Peirce knew of Frege (and certainly not when he wrote this). It shows that the revolution of Frege and Russell was in the air. It's there in Dedekind's writings. Peirce doesn't seem to be a logicist. |
| 7989 | Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.49) | |
| A reaction: Quotations like this can usually be counterbalanced in eastern philosophy by wild irrationality, but they certainly felt to tug of reason. Only the Dhaoists seem really opposed to reason (e.g. Idea 7289). |
| 19247 | The one unpardonable offence in reasoning is to block the route to further truth [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: To set up a philosophy which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth is the one unpardonable offence in reasoning. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], IV) | |
| A reaction: This is Popper's rather dubious objection to essentialism in science. Yet Popper tried to do the same thing with his account of induction. |
| 19246 | 'Holding for true' is either practical commitment, or provisional theory [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Whether or not 'truth' has two meanings, I think 'holding for true' has two kinds. One is practical holding for true which alone is entitled to the name of Belief; the other is the acceptance of a proposition, which in pure science is always provisional. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], IV) | |
| A reaction: The problem here seems to be that we can act on a proposition without wholly believing it, like walking across thin ice. |
| 19237 | Deduction is true when the premises facts necessarily make the conclusion fact true [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The question of whether a deductive argument is true or not is simply the question whether or not the facts stated in the premises could be true in any sort of universe no matter what be true without the fact stated in the conclusion being true likewise. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: A remarkably modern account, fitting the normal modern view of semantic consequence, and expressing the necessity in the validity in terms of something close to possible worlds. |
| 19256 | Our research always hopes that reality embodies the logic we are employing [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Every attempt to understand anything at least hopes that the very objects of study themselves are subject to a logic more or less identical with that which we employ. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VIII) | |
| A reaction: The idea that external objects might be subject to a logic has become very unfashionable since Frege, but I love the idea. I'm inclined to think that we derive our logic from the world, so I'm a bit more confident that Peirce. |
| 19238 | The logic of relatives relies on objects built of any relations (rather than on classes) [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: In the place of the class ...the logic of relatives considers the system, which is composed of objects brought together by any kind of relations whatsoever. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: Peirce's logic of relations might support the purely structural view of reality defended by Ladyman and Ross. Modern logic standardly expresses its semantics in terms of set theory. Peirce pioneered relations in logic. |
| 19226 | We now know that mathematics only studies hypotheses, not facts [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It did not become clear to mathematicians before modern times that they study nothing but hypotheses without as pure mathematicians caring at all how the actual facts may be. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: 'Modern' here is 1898. As a logical principle this would seem to qualify as 'if-thenism' (see alphabetical themes). It's modern descendant might be modal structuralism (see Geoffrey Hellman). It take maths to be hypotheses abstracted from experience. |
| 19240 | Realism is the belief that there is something in the being of things corresponding to our reasoning [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: If there is any reality, then it consists of this: that there is in the being of things something which corresponds to the process of reasoning. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: A nice definition of realism, a little different from usual. I belief that the normal logic of daily thought corresponds (in its rules and connectives) to the way the world is. We evaluate success in logic by truth-preservation. |
| 19239 | There may be no reality; it's just our one desperate hope of knowing anything [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: What is reality? Perhaps there isn't any such thing at all. It is but a working hypothesis which we try, our one desperate forlorn hope of knowing anything. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite sure why the hope is 'forlorn'. We have no current reason to doubt that the hypothesis is working out extremely well. Lovely idea, though. |
| 7996 | I am all the beauty and goodness of things, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: I am the beauty of all things beautiful; ...I am the goodness of those who are good, says Krishna. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.36) | |
| A reaction: Another attempt to annexe everything which is admirable to the nature of God. This sounds strikingly Platonic (c.f. Idea 7992, which seems Aristotelian). One scholar dates the text to 150 BCE. I think there is influence, one way or the other. |
| 19252 | Objective chance is the property of a distribution [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Chance, as an objective phenomenon, is a property of a distribution. ...In order to have any meaning, it must refer to some definite arrangement of all the things. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VI) |
| 19232 | In ordinary language a conditional statement assumes that the antecedent is true [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: In our ordinary use of language we always understand the range of possibility in such a sense that in some possible case the antecedent shall be true. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Peirce is discussing Diodorus, and proposes the view nowadays defended by Edgington, though in the end Peirce defends the standard material conditional as simpler. I suspect that this discussion by Peirce is not well known. |
| 19223 | We act on 'full belief' in a crisis, but 'opinion' only operates for trivial actions [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: 'Full belief' is willingness to upon a proposition in vital crises, 'opinion' is willingness to act on it in relatively insignificant affairs. But pure science has nothing at all to do with action. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear statement of the pragmatic view of beliefs. It is not much help in distinguishing full belief about the solar system from mere opinion about remote galaxies. Ditto for historical events. |
| 19253 | We talk of 'association by resemblance' but that is wrong: the association constitutes the resemblance [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Allying certain ideas like 'crimson' and 'scarlet' is called 'association by resemblance'. The name is not a good one, since it implies that resemblance causes association, while in point of fact it is the association which constitutes the resemblance. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VII) | |
| A reaction: I take it that Hume would have agreed with this. It is an answer to Russell's claim that 'resemblance' must itself be a universal. |
| 19224 | Scientists will give up any conclusion, if experience opposes it [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The scientific man is not in the least wedded to his conclusions. He risks nothing upon them. He stands ready to abandon one or all as experience opposes them. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: In the age of massive speculative research grants, the idea that 'he risks nothing upon them' is no longer true. Ditto for building aircraft and bridges, which are full of theoretical science. Notoriously, many scientists don't live up to Peirce's idea. |
| 19243 | If each inference slightly reduced our certainty, science would soon be in trouble [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Were every probable inference less certain than its premises, science, which piles inference upon inference, often quite deeply, would soon be in a bad way. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], IV) | |
| A reaction: This seems to endorse Aristotle's picture of demonstration about scientific and practical things as being a form of precise logic, rather than progressive probabilities. Our generalisations may be more certain than the particulars they rely on. |
| 19225 | I classify science by level of abstraction; principles derive from above, and data from below [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: I classify the sciences on Comte's general principles, in order of the abstractness of their objects, so that each science may largely rest for its principles upon those above it in the scale, while drawing its data in part from those below it. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: He places mathematics at the peak of abstraction. I assume physics is more abstract than biology. So chemistry draws principles from physics and data from biology. Not sure about this. Probably need to read Comte on it. |
| 19234 | 'Induction' doesn't capture Greek 'epagoge', which is singulars in a mass producing the general [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The word 'inductio' is Cicero's imitation of Aristotle's term 'epagoge'. It fails to convey the full significance of the Greek word, which implies the examples are arrayed and brought forward in a mass. 'The assault upon the generals by the singulars'. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, thought I don't think there is enough evidence in Aristotle to get the Greek idea fully clear. |
| 19236 | Induction can never prove that laws have no exceptions [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Induction can never afford the slightest reason to think that a law is without an exception. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Part of the general Humean doubts about induction, but very precisely stated, and undeniable. You can then give up on universal laws, or look for deeper reasons to justify your conviction that there are no exceptions. E.g. observe mass, or Higgs Boson. |
| 19251 | The worst fallacy in induction is generalising one recondite property from a sample [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The most dangerous fallacy of inductive reasoning consists in examining a sample, finding some recondite property in it, and concluding at once that it belongs to the whole collection. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], V) | |
| A reaction: The point, I take it, is not that you infer that the whole collection has all the properties of the sample, but that some 'recondite' or unusual property is sufficiently unusual to be treated as general. |
| 19235 | How does induction get started? [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Induction can never make a first suggestion. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to lead to the general modern problem of the 'theory-laden' nature of observation. You don't see anything at all without some idea of what you are looking for. How do you spot the 'next instance'. Instance of what? Nice. |
| 19222 | Men often answer inner 'whys' by treating unconscious instincts as if they were reasons [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Men many times fancy that they act from reason, when the reasons they attribute to themselves are nothing but excuses which unconscious instinct invents to satisfy the teasing 'whys' of the ego. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: A strikely modern thought, supported by a lot of modern neuro-science and psychology. It is crucial to realise that we don't have to accept the best explanation we can think of. |
| 19220 | We may think animals reason very little, but they hardly ever make mistakes! [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Those whom we are so fond of referring to as the 'lower animals' reason very little. Now I beg you to observe that those beings very rarely commit a mistake, while we ---- ! | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: We might take this as pessimism about reason, but I would take it as inviting a much broader view of rationality. I think nearly all animal behaviour is highly rational. Are animals 'sensible' in what they do? Their rationality is unadventurous. |
| 7995 | In all living beings I am the light of consciousness, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: In all living beings I am the light of consciousness, says Krishna. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.22) | |
| A reaction: Everything grand seems to be claimed for God at this stage of culture, but I am not sure how coherent this view is, unless this is pantheism. In what sense could we possibly be Krishna, when none of us (except Arjuna) is aware of it? |
| 19255 | Generalisation is the great law of mind [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The generalising tendency is the great law of mind. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VII) | |
| A reaction: How else could a small and compact mind get a grip on a vast and diverse reality? This must even apply to inarticulate higher animals. |
| 19242 | Generalization is the true end of life [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Generalization, the spelling out of continuous systems, in thought, in sentiment, in deed, is the true end of life. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: I take understanding to be the true aim of life, and full grasp of particulars (e.g. of particular people) is as necessary as generalisation. This is still a very nice bold idea. |
| 19249 | 'Know yourself' is not introspection; it is grasping how others see you [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: 'Know thyself' does not mean instrospect your soul. It means see yourself as others would see you if they were intimate enough with you. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], V) | |
| A reaction: When it comes to anger management, I would have thought that introspection had some use. You can see a tantrum coming before even your intimates can. Nice disagreement with Sartre! (Idea 7123) |
| 7906 | When the Buddha reached the highest level of insight, he could detect no self in the world [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: The great Buddha passed through the eight stages of Transic insight, and quickly reached their highest point. From the summit of the world downwards he could detect no self anywhere. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Buddhacarita [c.50], XIV) | |
| A reaction: In the manner of Nietzsche, I am inclined to say that they find what they want to find, because that is their value. They want to get rid of the self, and dream of a mode in which existence continues without it. Is Buddhism opposed to human life? |
| 19257 | Whatever is First must be sentient [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: I think that what is First is ipso facto sentient. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VIII) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't mention Leibniz's monads, but that looks like the ancestor of Peirce's idea. He doesn't make clear (here) how far he would take the idea. I would just say that whatever is 'First' must be active rather than passive. |
| 19248 | Reasoning involves observation, experiment, and habituation [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The mental operations concerning in reasoning are three. The first is Observation; the second is Experimentation; and the third is Habituation. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], V) | |
| A reaction: I like the breadth of this. Even those who think scientific reasoning has priority over logic (as I do, thinking of it as the evaluation of evidence, with Sherlock Holmes as its role model) will be surprised to finding observation and habituation there. |
| 19221 | Everybody overrates their own reasoning, so it is clearly superficial [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The very fact that everybody so ridiculously overrates his own reasoning, is sufficient to show how superficial the faculty is. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: A nice remark. The obvious counter-thought is that the collective reasoning of mankind really has been rather impressive, even though people haven't yet figured out how to live at peace with one another. |
| 19233 | Indexicals are unusual words, because they stimulate the hearer to look around [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Words like 'this', 'that', 'I', 'you', enable us to convey meanings which words alone are incompetent to express; they stimulate the hearer to look about him. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Peirce was once of the first to notice the interest of indexicals, and this is a very nice comment on them. A word like 'Look!' isn't like the normal flow of verbiage, and may be the key to indexicals. |
| 7999 | All actions come from: body, lower self, perception, means of action, or Fate [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Whatever a man does, good or bad, in thought, word or deed, has these five sources of action: the body, the lower 'I am', the means of perception, the means of action, and Fate. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 18.14/15) | |
| A reaction: The 'means of action' will presumably take care of anything we haven't thought of! Nothing quite matches the idea of 'the will' here. A twitch from the first, eating from the second, a startled jump from the third, struck by lightning from the fifth. |
| 7991 | Hate and lust have their roots in man's lower nature [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Hate and lust for things of nature have their roots in man's lower nature. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 3.34) | |
| A reaction: It seems outmoded now (since Freud) to label parts of human nature as 'higher' and 'lower'. I would defend the distinction, but it is not self-evident. The basis of morality is good citizenship, and parts of our nature are detrimental to that. |
| 19230 | People should follow what lies before them, and is within their power [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Each person ought to select some definite duty that clearly lies before him and is well within his power as the special task of his life. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: I like that. Note especially that it should be 'well' within his power. Note also that this is a 'duty', and not just a friendly suggestion. Not sure what the basis of the duty is. |
| 7988 | There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in a just war [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in righteous war. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.31) | |
| A reaction: What worries me now is not the urging to fight, as long as a good cause can be found, but the idea that someone should see his social role as 'warrior'. The modern 'soldier' is ready to fight, but a traditional 'warrior' is obliged to fight. |
| 19245 | We are not inspired by other people's knowledge; a sense of our ignorance motivates study [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is not the man who thinks he knows it all, that can bring other men to feel their need for learning, and it is only a deep sense that one is miserably ignorant that can spur one on in the toilsome path of learning. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], IV) |
| 7992 | The visible forms of nature are earth, water, fire, air, ether; mind, reason, and the sense of 'I' [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: The visible forms of nature are eight: earth, water, fire, air, ether; the mind, reason, and the sense of 'I'. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there is an implication that there are also invisible forms. The Bhuddists launched an attack on 'I' as one of the categories. The first five appear to be Aristotle's, which must be of scholarly (and chronological) interest. |
| 19244 | Chemists rely on a single experiment to establish a fact; repetition is pointless [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The chemist contents himself with a single experiment to establish any qualitative fact, because he knows there is such a uniformity in the behavior of chemical bodies that another experiment would be a mere repetition of the first in every respect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], IV) | |
| A reaction: I take it this endorses my 'Upanishads' view of natural kinds - that for each strict natural kind, if you've seen one you've them all. This seems to fit atoms and molecules, but only roughly fits tigers. |
| 19254 | Our laws of nature may be the result of evolution [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: We may suppose that the laws of nature are results of an evolutionary process. ...But this evolution must proceed according to some principle: and this principle will itself be of the nature of a law. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VII) | |
| A reaction: Maybe I've missed something, but this seems a rather startling idea that doesn't figure much in modern discussions of laws of nature. Lee Smolin's account of evolving universes comes to mind. |
| 7994 | Everything, including the gods, comes from me, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: All the gods come from me, says Krishna. ...I am the one source of all | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.2/8) | |
| A reaction: This seems very close to monotheism, and sounds very similar to the position that Zeus seems to occupy in later Greek religion, where he is shading off into a supreme and spiritual entity. |
| 7993 | Brahman is supreme, Atman his spirit in man, and Karma is the force of creation [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Brahman is supreme, the Eternal. Atman is his Spirit in man. Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: I can't help wondering how they know all this stuff, but then I'm just a typical product of my culture. We seem to have a trinity here. Who's in charge? Is Atman just a servant? Is Karma totally under the control of Brahman? |
| 7904 | The first stage of trance is calm amidst applied and discursive thinking [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: The first stage of trance is calm amidst applied and discursive thinking. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Buddhacarita [c.50], V.11) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am not sure that I would want to go any further that the first stage, since the elimination of discursive thinking seems to me to be approaching death. To pursue intense thinking very calmly I take to be the ideal of all western philosophers. |
| 7905 | The Buddha sought ultimate reality and the final goal of existence in his meditations [Ashvaghosha] |
| Full Idea: Next the Boddhisatva, possessed of great skill in Transic meditation, put himself into a trance, intent on discerning both the ultimate reality of things and the final goal of existence. | |
| From: Ashvaghosha (Buddhacarita [c.50], XIV.2) | |
| A reaction: The ontological and teleological goals of the Buddha were identical to the goals of the ancient Greek philosophers, and even we have teleological aims in our study of evolution. I would expect better results from the western approach. |
| 7997 | Only by love can men see me, know me, and come to me, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Only by love can men see me, and know me, and come unto me, says Krishna | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 11.54) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a paradox here, as it is unclear how you can love Krishna, if you have not already seen him in some way. This is another paradox of fideism - that faith cannot possibly be the first step in a religion, as faith needs a target. |
| 7998 | The three gates of hell are lust, anger and greed [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Three are the gates of this hell, the death of the soul: the gate of lust, the gate of wrath, and the gate of greed. Let a man shun the three. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 16.21) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who wishes to procreate, champion justice, and make a living, has to pursue all three. Wisdom consists of pursuing the three appropriately, not in shunning them. How did this bizarre puritanism ever come to grip the human race? |