Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Saundaranandakavya', 'on Goodman's 'Ways of Worldmaking'' and 'On Sensations (frags)'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

5 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 2. Invocation to Philosophy

7910	Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha]
	Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths.
	From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI)
	A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake.

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 6. Physicalism

18438	Every worldly event, without exception, is a redistribution of microphysical states [Quine]
	Full Idea: Nothing happens in the world, not the flutter of an eyelid, not the flicker of a thought, without some redistribution of microphysical states.
	From: Willard Quine (on Goodman's 'Ways of Worldmaking' [1978], p.98)
	A reaction: Is this causation, identity, or baffling supervenience?

13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 3. Subjectivism

2975	That honey is sweet I do not affirm, but I agree that it appears so [Timon]
	Full Idea: That honey is sweet I do not affirm, but I agree that it appears so.
	From: Timon (On Sensations (frags) [c.285 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.104-5

29. Religion / C. Spiritual Disciplines / 3. Buddhism

7909	The Eightfold Path concerns morality, wisdom, and tranquillity [Ashvaghosha]
	Full Idea: The Eightfold Path has three steps concerning morality - right speech, right bodily action, and right livelihood; three of wisdom - right views, right intentions, and right effort; and two of tranquillity - right mindfulness and right concentration.
	From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI)
	A reaction: Most of this translates quite comfortably into the aspirations of western philosophy. For example, 'right effort' sounds like Kant's claim that only a good will is truly good (Idea 3710). The Buddhist division is interesting for action theory.

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / d. Heaven

7908	At the end of a saint, he is not located in space, but just ceases to be disturbed [Ashvaghosha]
	Full Idea: When an accomplished saint comes to the end, he does not go anywhere down in the earth or up in the sky, nor into any of the directions of space, but because his defilements have become extinct he simply ceases to be disturbed.
	From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI)
	A reaction: To 'cease to be disturbed' is the most attractive account of heaven I have encountered. It all sounds a bit dull though. I wonder, as usual, how they know all this stuff.