A conversation last weekend with AJ was thought-provoking, as ever. We pondered, briefly (and I will attempt to summarize my questions and some preliminary conclusions about them soon on another post) about a broad difference in attitude and approach to life: one of withholding belief, active questioning, reasoning, testing and finally accepting, versus, one of accepting first, suspending disbelief, cultivating patience, then retroactively understanding, iteratively tweaking the basis for that acceptance and then building further paradigms for questioning, reasoning and so forth. (Acceptance can be thought of as a tolerance of the various superficial differences we see in individuals as well as the tiny leaps of faith we make in following a certain path). As you can see the two roads cross the same broad milestones, and start off on an imaginary circle but at different points. But those starting points can be very crucial on our perspective in life on the whole; our willingness to question dogma, accept change, propel that change as well when required, and sometimes accept what cannot be changed, cultivating compassion, tolerance and a desire to seek truth all at once.
All this talk made me wonder...
Let us suppose we were to build a spiritual being from first principles; is there any specific order in which we would fill at being up with virtues? For example, would developing acceptance and patience better position an individual for learning and thereby acquiring other qualities? (By making them grateful for that which is given and loving it wholeheartedly first, being tolerant of the limitations of oneself and others, and thereby being better able to appreciate increments and improvements made in knowledge and spiritual growth...you get the drift.)
Or would one take an equimolar ratio of all virtues and allow the individual to harness it to its potential over time, and hope they will all reach the maximum capacity at some stage?...
At any rate, I suppose, the current model the good Lord has chosen is some combination of the above, wherein each individual possesses the ability to develop all virtues to the fullest extent, but only has some in a mature form. This possibly positions them to learn actively from those around them when they encounter a limitation in their own selves/stage of maturity, while also being able to lend a hand to others lacking for what they may have realized in their own lives...
More musings to come! Happy Diwali!
The Fasting Verses (cont.)
13 years ago
2 comments:
Regarding the second part of your post, this is a fascinating question -- that of which virtues, if any, we ought to seek to develop first. What you've pointed out establishes that developing in terms of one virtue is likely to have a positive effect on other virtue(s). I would argue that it may be somewhat arbitrary which virtues we build from first, but that ultimately we should strive to do our very best to cultivate each of these virtues as deeply as possible.
It seems to me quite likely that some virtues come more easily to some of us than others, and that each of us has our own special toolbox from which to work and build. Each of us has our own strengths. It also seems like the key to fostering our own development is to build from the virtues that do come more readily to us. Thoughts?
Agreed :) In fact, in conclusion that is where I'm headed. Each person needs to figure out what they have in their tool box, what remains to be filled and how to learn and share. :)
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