Showing posts with label goodness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goodness. Show all posts

Friday, May 27, 2016

Knowledge, Commitment and Freedom

"Only true knowledge of a person makes it possible to commit one's freedom to the other."
--Karol Wojtyla

"Love," says Christian theologian, Wojtyla, 'consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom-- it is a "giving" of the self... to limit one's freedom on behalf of another. Limitation might seem to be something negative or unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing."

If this freedom is not engaged by the will, it becomes negative, and gives to human feeling, a sense of emptiness and unfulfilment. Yet love commits to freedom and " imbues it with that to which the will is naturally attracted-- the element of goodness. Thus the will then aspires to the good; freedom is the providence of the will, existing for and because of love; it is the way of love in which human beings share most fully in the good. "Human freedom then is one of the highest in the moral order of things," says Wojtyla. This order encompasses the spectrum of man's longings and desires; his growing pathways of awareness of the life in the spirit. But man longs for love more than he longs for freedom. In choosing, there is an affirmation of value in response to natural, sense perceptions, to sentiment. "Sexual values [as an expression of the appetite] tend to impose themselves," regardless of the choosing of the possible values of a whole person.

For this reason, a man, especially, one who has not succumbed to mere passion, but preserves his interior innocence, usually finds himself in the arena of struggle between the sexual instinct and a need for freedom, or liberty to do as he otherwise wishes. This natural instinct, this drive of Eros cannot be underestimated; it is a powerful, yet limited drive. Eros can, and often lays siege to the will itself, clouding the other values with sensual intensity. Through a perception of sentiment, however, the will may be freed of the vice-like hold of a conscious, lusting desire, of a consumer view; rather it is transformed by sentiment, and the action of the will to a longing for a person of the other sex, for a possibility of wholeness.

It is love, finally, when the will enters into the equation, providing a conscious commitment of one's freedom in respect to another person, in recognition and affirmation, providing a creative contribution of the love that develops between the persons. Thus love is between persons, existing in a space that is neither one or the other, is created, and not possessed. So then in love, in freedom, there is a conscious will for another person's good, an unqualified good, a good unlimited, that is a person's happiness.
"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction. " -Antoine de St. Exupery

We desire moreover to make the beloved happy, to please them and see to their good. It is this precisely that makes possible for a person to be re-born in love, to become alive, aware of the riches within himself, of his creativity, his spirituality, of his fertility. The person, in love, compels belief in his own spiritual powers; it awakens the creativity and the sense of worth within the individual. And yet for all its lofty abundance, human lovers must learn to translate their highest impulses into the everyday world.

Friday, July 5, 2013

An Epic Tale, Mahabharata

"Lying on the bed of arrows, Bhisma thinks of me, and my mind is gone to him, to that repository of knowledge. Strive for truth. Be good." --The Mahabharata

 Many here in the West are familiar with the Bagvad Gita, a famous dialog between Krsna and Arjuna; however fewer are aware that it is actually a text contained within the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata is an epic tale. It is the longest of poems, stretching out more than 100,000 verses!

According to tradition, its author is the sage Vyasa, the Arranger; however current scholarship has determined that the text was compiled over a lengthy period of time. It reached its current form about the fourth century CE. Along side the Ramayana, the Mahabharata is considered  two of the major epics in Hinduism, and sometimes compared to the great texts of other faiths
During the medieval period in Europe, the poem existed in two major forms, one northern and one southern. It was re-told in a Tamil version.

The central hero of the story is Yudhisthira, the son of Dharma personified as a deity. It is divided into 18 parts and is often acted out in a play throughout India and else where. It is a fluid and contemporary part of modern Hinduism. In the 1980's there was a version presented on television which was very popular.
 The origins of the story lay in the non-Brahminical social groups of the Aryavarta, especially the Ksatiya aristocrats, giving some understanding of their lives. The epic was overshadowed by the orthodox Brahmans and given its ideology by the same.
In a version told by Indian author, R.K. Narayan, the tale is shortened to its most critical elements and was published in London in 1978.

While the story may be enjoyed on many levels, it is an allegory and a metaphor for the human plane, the ethics of the higher and lower selves and the struggle between the two, and forms a profound philosophy. The story's central theme is a struggle over the rulership of a kingdom by two clans. It ends with the death of Krsna and the gradual uncovering of his divine identity.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Evil Love

"A human being is beautiful and may be revealed as beautiful to another human being."
--Love and Responsibility
by Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II

Love and truth, writes Karol Wojtyla, are inseparable. "When we speak of truth in attraction, it is essential ... that the attraction not be limited to partial values, to something inherent in a person, but not to the person as a whole... there must be a direct attraction to the whole person... And the person as an entity, and hence as a good, is different from all that is not a person... The object of attraction which is seen as a good, is also seen as a thing of beauty. This is very important in the attraction on which love between masculine and feminine is based... A human being is beautiful and may be revealed as beautiful to another human being."

A woman, reckons Wojtyla, may be beautiful in a way all her own, and a man attracted to her through her beauty. Likewise, a man is also beautiful in his own particular way. This beauty must necessarily include the entirety of the individual, not merely his physical nature. Desire also belongs to true love; it is perhaps the most powerful component of human love; this is true because we are all limited beings, social beings and we have need for others. And yet love between man and woman would prove evil, if it went no further than love as desire; it is not enough to love and desire others as a good for yourself, one must however long for and seek that person's good. If this is not present, then an egoism exists.

Genuine love completes the life and enlarges the existence of a person. Love given and received in friendship, in goodwill, with desire, are closely connected. How so? If for example, one person desires another as a good for himself, then they must want that person to be a true good, not false goods. Goodwill is indeed free of self interest, it is selflessness in love. Such love is the love which does the most good to those who experience it; both persons are fulfilled in the exchange.

Evil may generally be defined as the sum of opposition to the genuine needs and desires of individuals. Evil seeks not acquisition but loss or deprivation of an otherwise good. Thus truth is the antithesis of evil. In love, truth is the factor which balances its parts, such as desire, friendship, good will, attraction, tenderness among others. One may, in truth, realize what one experiences to be genuine good or not. Truth allows for the objective evaluation of a possible good, and contrasts that good against its opposite. Thus, in the Christian mind, God is the ultimate; his love is truth to which Christians may aspire.