Poverty urges us to do and suffer anything that we may escape from it, and so leads us away from virtue.
Horace (B.C. 65-8)
Tag: Virtue
The Pagan philosophers teach that by cultivating goodness…
The Pagan philosophers teach that by cultivating goodness we can purify ourselves of our selfishness. This breaks the chains that bind us to our illusionary ego-self, freeing us to experience our true divine nature. Central to the Pagan path is accepting whatever life brings us as our divinely decreed fate; surrendering the illusion of personal power and recognising ourselves as ‘puppets of God’. This is not passive resignation, but actively engaging with the things as they are by being a willing vehicle of God’s unfolding purpose in the universe.
Tim Freke
One cannot see God as long as one…
One cannot see God as long as one feels ‘I am the doer’. Fully awakened souls are beyond virtue and vice. They realize that it is God who does everything.
Ramakrishna
Education is not merely a means for earning…
Education is not merely a means for earning a living or an instrument for the acquisition of wealth. It is an initiation into life of spirit, a training of the human soul in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue.
-Vijayalakshmi Pandit
Last Curtain by Rabindranath Tagore
I know that the day will come
when my sight of this earth shall be lost,
and life will take its leave in silence,
drawing the last curtain over my eyes.
Yet stars will watch at night,
and morning rise as before,
and hours heave like sea waves
casting up pleasures and pains.
When I think of this end of my moments,
the barrier of the moments breaks
and I see by the light of death
thy world with its careless treasures.
Rare is its lowliest seat,
rare is its meanest of lives.
Things that I longed for in vain
and things that I got
—let them pass.
Let me but truly possess
the things that I ever spurned
and overlooked.
The poem ‘Last Curtain’ explains the vulnerability one feels at the time of death. The actual treasures one can take to the grave are none but his deeds of good. The poem conveys the message that the things that matter the most at death, are those virtues that are considered as least important by many men during their lives.
Who sows virtue reaps honor Da Vinci
Who sows virtue reaps honor.
-Da Vinci
Can you step back from your own mind…
Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things? Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.
-Lao Tzu
Excellence is an art won by training and…
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle
The virtue of a man ought to be…
The virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday conduct.
Blaise Pascal
Tolerance is a cheap low grade parody of…
Tolerance is a cheap, low-grade parody of love. Tolerance is not a great virtue to aspire to. Love is much tougher and harder.
N. T. Wright
The superior man thinks always of virtue the…
The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.
Confucius
In medio stat virtus : Virtue stands in the middle
In medio stat virtus : Virtue stands in the middle.
Virtue is in the moderate, not the extreme position. – Horace
Voltaire said : The better is the enemy of the good.
Variant translations:
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
The best is the enemy of the good.
In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defined a virtue as a balance point between a deficiency and an excess of a trait. The point of greatest virtue lies not in the exact middle, but at a golden mean sometimes closer to one extreme than the other.
For example:
* Generosity lies in between miserliness and extravagance.
* Courage lies in between cowardice and foolhardiness.
* Confidence lies in between self-deprecation and vanity.
Virtue, by definition, is a characteristic that promotes individual and collective well being. A vice, on the other hand, does not promote well being. What is surprising to me is that a virtue stands between two vices.
Now, this is something to think about. The present day paradigm is being the best. We all are told that we have to be the best at what we do. And we even strive for it.
We give up things just to be the best in what we do. We encourage children to be first in class. In fact our lives are so competitive that we call it a rat race. We drive ourselves hard and get burnt out.
No wonder this puts things out of perspective. We feel miserable when we cant be the best. We don’t forgive our own mistakes.
Pushing to extreme cant be a balanced way of life, even if the extreme is perfection. Being the best may be good for business, but it may not be good for the spirit.
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Note:
Arriving at a middle position is sometimes equated to striking a balance or working a compromise. These can be powerful approaches to mitigate situations that are otherwise held in extremes.
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Note:
In the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism, the term “Middle Way” was used in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta [Sanskrit: Dharma-chakra-pravartana Sūtra; English: Sutra to set in motion of the wheel of the dharma], which the Buddhist tradition regards to be the first teaching that the Buddha delivered after his awakening. In this sutta, the Buddha describes the Noble Eightfold Path as the middle way of moderation, between the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification:
Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. There is an addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is an addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.
Avoiding both these extremes, the Perfect One has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana.
And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata? It is the Noble Eightfold Path, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.