EXCHANGING DESIRES

Generally something mystical is seen in our view of

life and death. But there is nothing of the kind.

I like my garden, I like to read a book, I like to pet

my children. Dying, I am deprived of all this, and so I

do not want to die, and I am afraid of death.

It may happen that my whole life is composed of such

temporal, worldly desires and their gratification. If so, I

cannot help but fear that my desires will come to an end.

But if these desires and their gratification have been

changed in me, giving way to other desires,—to fulfil

God's will, to surrender myself to Him in the form in

which I am now and in all the possible forms in which I

may be, then, the more my desires have changed, the less

death is, not only terrible to me, but the less even does it

exist for me.

But if my desires will be completely changed, there is

nothing but life, and there is no death.

To exchange the worldly, the temporal, for the eternal,

this is the path of life, and we must walk on it.

Each of us knows how this is in his soul.

 

LEO TOLSTOY

OF MICE AND MEN

Last night the plashing of the water in the basin awoke

me. I called my wife, thinking that she was washing

herself. She was asleep : it was a mouse that had fallen

into the basin and was struggling to get out.

We have had conflicts before on account of mice, and

these conflicts have caused me to reflect. It would happen

that a mouse would get into a mouse-trap, which somebody

else had set. I take it, to carry it out, and to let the mouse out in the yard.

My wife says, " You had better not touch it : I will

take it out myself and will have it killed."

I leave it to her, knowing that the mouse will be

killed.

But to-day, as I was lying and wanting to go to sleep,

I heard this tiny creature struggle as it was drowning,

and I understood that it was not right, and that I had

done wrong, when I had permitted the mice to be killed,

when I had had the chance to save them.

I saw that I did not do it in order not to violate love, but in order to avoid a small unpleasantness.

Tliis is bad in our situation : we permit not mice,

but men to perish,

doing other people a pleasure,

only to avoid a small unpleasantness.

It is this that we should remember and not forget fo

a minute.

LEO TOLSTOY

TRUE GOOD

There is one teacher, Christ, and he teaches one thing,

the fulfilment of the Father's will, not for the pleasure of

men, but in order that we may be with Him, consequently

may be happy and free.


The chief obstacle in this is in the malice and praise or

the condemnation of men. This obstacle, if you are the

least bit careless, takes the place of the seeking of the true

good in the fulfilment of God's will.
 
LEO TOLSTOY

WHAT IS EVIL FOR?

None of us is called to destroy all the sufferings of
men, but only to serve men.


People always ask, " What is evil for ?"


What is evil ?


What we call evil is a challenge addressed to us, a


demand made upon our active love.

The man who will reply to these demands of the activity

of love will see precisely as much evil as he needs in order to

provoke his  activity.


Thus I think and feel now, but only lately I saw very


much evil, and I was vexed and in despair, and so I


prescribe the recipe which has helped me.


The moment you see an evil, even the smallest,
try to mend it, to diminish it,
and you will never see much evil at once
and will not arrive at despair,
and the hands will not drop,
and you will do much good.
 
LEO TOLSTOY

Ambassadorship

Remember how often Christ has said, " The Father has sent me. I am sent. I do the will of Him who has sent me."These words have always been obscure to me.God could not have sent God, and I did not understand any other meaning, or understood it obscurely.
Only now has the simple, clear, and joyous meaning of these words been revealed to me. I arrived at the comprehension of them through doubt and suffering. Without this teaching there is no solution to those doubts which torment every disciple of Christ.
Their meaning is this, that Christ has taught all men the life which he considered the true one for himself. But he considers his life an embassy, a fulfilment of the will of Him who sent him.But the will of Him who sent is the rational (good)life of the whole world. Consequently, it is the business of life to carry the truth into the world.
Life has, according to Christ's teaching, been given to man with his reason for no other purpose than that he should carry this reason into the world, and so man's whole life is nothing but this rational activity turned upon other beings in general, and not merely upon men.Thus Christ understood his life, and thus he taught us to understand ours.
Each of us is a power which is conscious of itself, —a flying stone which knows whither it flies and why, and is glad because it flies and knows that it is nothing,—a stone, — and that all its meaning is in this flight, this force which has thrown him, — that his whole life is this force.
Indeed, outside this view, that is, that every man is a messenger of the Father, called into life only for the purpose of doing His will, — outside this view life has not only no meaning, but is also detestable and terrible. And, on the contrary, it is enough to become well familiarized and one with this view of life, and life not only acquires a meaning, but also becomes joyous and significant. Only with this view are all doubts, struggles, and terrors destroyed.
If I am God's messenger, my chief business does not only consist in fulfilling the five commandments,—they are only conditions under which I must fulfil the ambassadorship,—but in living in such a way as to carry into the world with all means given me that truth which I know, that truth which is entrusted to me.
It may happen that I shall myself often be bad, that I shall be false to my mission ; all this cannot for a moment destroy the meaning of my life : " To shine with that light which is in me, so long as I am able, so long as there is light in me."Only with this teaching are destroyed the idle regrets as to there not being or having been what I wished, and the idle desire for something definite in the future ; there is destroyed the terror of death, and the whole of life is transferred into the one present. Death is destroyed by this, that, if my life has blended with the activity of introducing reason and the good into the world, the time will come when the physical annihilation of my personality will cooperate with what has become my life,—the introduction of the good and of reason into the world.
The conviction of the ambassadorship has the following practical effect upon me (I speak for myself and, I know,for others also):
Outside the physical necessities, in which I try to confine myself to the least, as soon as I am drawn to some activity,— speaking, writing, working,—I ask myself (I do not even ask, I feel it) whether with this work I serve Him who sent me. I joyously surrender myself to the work and forget all doubts and—fly, like a stone, and am glad that I am flying.
But if the work is not for Him who has sent me, it does not even attract me, I simply feel ennui, and I only try to get rid of it, I try to observe all the rules given for messengers. But this does not even happen.It seems to me that a man can live in such a way as to sleep, or in such a way as with his whole soul, with delight, to serve Him who has sent him.

LEO TOLSTOY

WORK OF LOVE

Christ has conquered the world and has saved it,because he has suffered with love and joy, that is, has conquered suffering and has taught us to do the same.
I know this, but am still unable to learn it, althoughI see for sure that I am moving in this direction.
May God help all men to do the common work, the work of love, by word, deed, abstinence, effort : here, not to speak a bad word, not to do what would be worse;there, to overcome timidity and false shame, and to do what is necessary, what is good, —what is loving.
All tiny, imperceptible acts and words,— but from these mustard-seeds grows the tree of love which with its branches shades the whole world.
This work may God aid us to do with our friends, with our enemies, with strangers, in moments when our mood is the highest, and in moments when it is the lowest.
And it will be well for us, and it will be well for everybody.
LEO TOLSTOY

God's work

What do I do when I want to change a bristle into a

cobbler's thread ?

How do I treat these articles ?

With the greatest attention, care, tenderness, almost

love.

What does the watchmaker do as he puts together a

watch, if he is a master and indeed knows how to make

a watch ?

All his fingers are busy : some of them hold a wheel;

others place an axle in position, and others again move up

a peg

All this he does softly, tenderly. He knows that

if he rudely sticks one thing into another, and even if he

presses a little too hard on one part, forgetting another

part, the whole will go to pieces, and that he had better

not attend to this matter, if he cannot devote all his forces

to it.

I say all this for this purpose:

At first people live not knowing why ; they live only

for their enjoyment, which takes the place of their question,

" What for ? " but later there comes a time for every

rational being, when it asks " What for ? " and receives

that answer which Christ gave and which we all know,

« To do God's work."

Is it possible God's work is less important, or less complicated,

than bristles or a watch ?

Is it possible God's work may be done at haphazard,

and all come out right ?

In a watch one cannot press too hard upon a part

needed ; but the defenders of the worldly life say, " What

is the use of being finical : if a thing does not fit in, bang

it with the hammer, and it will go in." It does not matter

to them that the rest will all be flattened. They do

not see this.

It is impossible to work over a watch without giving

it full attention and, so to speak, love for all its parts. Is

it possible that one may do God's work in such a way ?

It is all very well for a man to do God's work at haphazard

(that is, not to live in love with his brothers), if he

does not believe fully that his work is God's work. But

when he comes to believe that the meaning of his life

consists in nothing but cooperating for the union of men

he cannot help but abandon himself to Him whose work

he is doing ; he can no longer without attention, care, or

love treat all men with whom he comes in contact, because

all men are wheels, pegs, and cogs of God's work.

The difference between such a man and a watchmaker

is only this, that the watchmaker knows what will result

from all the parts ; but a man, in doing God's work, does

not know, does not see the external side of the work. A

man is rather an apprentice, who hands, cleans, oils, and

partly unites the component parts of the watch, which is

unknown to him in form, but known in its essence (the

good).

I want to say that a man who believes that his life is

the fulfilment of God's work ought to labour until he

gets seriousness, attention, care in his relations with men, —such caution as will make squeaking, force, breakage impossible, and all will always be soft and loving, not

for his own pleasure, but because this is the only condition

under which God's work is possible.

When this condition is wanting, one or the other is

necessary,— to attain this condition, or to throw up God's

work and stop deceiving oneself and others.

As the watchmaker stops his work the moment there

is some grating or squeaking, so also must a believer stop

as soon as there is an inimical relation to a man, and he

must know that, no matter how little important this man

may seem to him, there is nothing more important for

him than his relation to this man, so long as there is a

squeaking between them.

And this is so, because a man is an indispensable wheel

in God's work, and so long as he does not enter amicably

where he ought to enter the whole work comes to a

stop.

The relations among men make it obligatory upon

them to find in each of them and in themselves " the son

of man," to unite with him,— to evoke in themselves and

in him a desire to approach him, that is, love.

I shall be told, " this is hard to find."

All you have to do is to act like the watchmaker:

tenderly, carefully, not for yourself, but for the work, and

it will come to you naturally.

A disunion takes place for no other reason than that

I want by force to drive an axle into the wrong wheel.

If it does not fit one way or another, mend yourself:

there is a place for it,—it is necessary and will do the

work somewhere.

As you attain your aim and get the better of the work

in making boots or watches, not by a tension of strength,

but by care, by tenderness of treatment, so it is also with

the treatment of men. And not only is it so, but as

many times more so, as a man is more complex and more

delicate than a watch.

It is not possible to work one's feelers out sufficiently

well to treat people with them. And the longer and so

the thinner these feelers are, the more powerfully do they

move people.

I wish that a man who is near to me should not lead

an idle and luxurious life.

I can, with my rudeness, take away from him the possibility

of luxury and compel him to work. If I do so, I

shall not advance God's work one hair's breadth,—I shall

not move the man's soul.

If I extend my feelers more finely and farther out, I

shall prove logically and incontestably to him that he is

a dissipated and despised man. And with this I shall

not advance God's work, but shall only live with him in

communion, seeking out and strengthening everything

which unites us, and keeping away from everything which

is foreign to me. And if I myself do God's work and

live by it, I shall more certainly than death draw this

man to God and cause him to do God's work.

We have become so accustomed in the worldly life to

attain our aims by means of the stick of power, of authority,

or even by means of the stick of logical thought, that

we want to do the same in God's work.

But one stick jumps upon another.

But God's work is done with very delicate feelers, for

which there are no obstacles.

LEO TOLSTOY