Three things to practise

There are three things which a man is bound to practise. Whosoever neglects any one of them must needs neglect them all, and whosoever cleaves to any one of them must needs cleave to them all. Strive, therefore, to understand, and consider heedfully,


The first is this, that with your mind and your tongue and your actions you declare God to be One; and that, having declared Him to be One, and having declared that none benefits you or harms you except Him, you devote all your actions to Him alone. If you act a single jot of your actions for the sake of another, your thought and speech are corrupt, since your motive in acting for another's sake must be hope or fear; and when you act from hope or fear of other than God, who is the lord and sustainer of all things, you have taken to yourself another god to honour and venerate.


Secondly, that while you speak and act in the sincere belief that there is no God except Him, you should trust Him more than the world or money or uncle or father or mother or any one on the face of the earth.


Thirdly, when you have established these two things, namely, sincere belief in the unity of God and trust in Him, it behoves you to be satisfied with Him and not to be angry on account of anything that vexes you.


Beware of anger! Let your heart be with Him always, let it not be
withdrawn from Him for a single moment


Shaqiq of Balkh

Which truths are most useful to us

In order to be always disposed to judge well, it seems to
me, only two things are needed: •knowledge of the truth and
•a dependable practice of remembering and assenting to this
knowledge whenever the occasion demands. But because
nobody except God knows everything perfectly, we have to
settle for knowing the truths that are most useful to us.

(1) The first and chief of these is that there is a God
on whom all things depend, whose perfections are infinite,
whose power is immense and whose decrees are infallible.
This teaches us to accept with a good spirit everything that
happens to us, as expressly sent by God. Moreover, since the
true object of love is perfection, when we lift up our minds
to think about God as he is we find ourselves naturally so
inclined to love him that we even rejoice in our afflictions,
through the thought that he wills that they should come to
us.

(2) The second thing we must know is the nature of
our soul: that it •doesn’t need the body in order to stay
in existence, •is much nobler than the body, and •is capable
of enjoying countless satisfactions that aren’t to be found
in this life. This prevents us from fearing death, and moves
us so far from caring about the things of this world that we
regard as negligible anything that fortune can do to us.

(3) We can be greatly helped towards this ·frame of mind
or condition of soul· by judging the works of God in the way
they deserve and by having the capacious idea of the extent
of the universe that I tried to make conceivable in the third
book of my Principles. For if we imagine that
•beyond the heavens there is nothing but imaginary
spaces, and that
•all the heavens are made only for the service of the
earth and
•the earth is made only for man,
this ·has three bad effects on us·. •It inclines us to think
that this earth is our principal home and that this life is the
best life we will have. •Instead of knowing the perfections
that we really do have, we get a sense of our perfections
by comparing ourselves with other creatures to which we
attribute imperfections that they don’t have. •With preposterous
self-importance we want to be in God’s confidence and
to join him in running the world—which causes an infinity
of pointless anxieties and frustrations.

(4) After acknowledging the goodness of God, the immortality
of our souls and the immensity of the universe, there is
one more truth that seems to me to be most useful to know,
namely this:
Although each of us is a person separate from others,
and therefore with interests that differ somewhat from
those of the rest of the world, each of us ought still
to think that he couldn’t survive on his own, and
that he is really one of the parts of the universe, and
more particularly a part of this earth, of this state,
of this society, of this family—to which he is joined
by where he lives, by his oath ·of allegiance·, by his
birth. And the interests of the whole of which he is a
part should always be put before his own individual
personal interests.
In a measured and thoughtful way, however; for •it would
be wrong for him to expose himself to a great evil in order to
procure only a slight benefit for his relatives or his country,
and •if he on his own is worth more than all the rest of his
city, it would be wrong for him to sacrifice himself to save
it. But someone who saw everything in relation to himself
wouldn’t shrink from greatly harming other men when he
believed that this would bring him some small benefit. Such
a person would have no true friendship, no fidelity—quite
generally no virtue. On the other hand, someone who
•considers himself a part of the community takes pleasure
in doing good to everyone, and isn’t afraid of even risking
his life in the service of others when the occasion demands;
indeed, he would be willing to lose his soul, if he could, to
save others. So this way of •considering oneself—·namely as
a part of something larger·—is the source and origin of all
the most heroic actions men do. ·But let us be careful about
what we identify as heroism·. Someone who risks death for
reasons of vanity (he hopes to be praised) or out of stupidity
(he doesn’t see the danger) is to be pitied more than prized.
Now think about someone who risks death because he thinks
it is his duty, or suffers some other harm in order to bring
good to others. It may be that when he thinks about it he
doesn’t think he did it because he owes more to the public
of which he is a part than to himself in particular, but
that is why he acted as he did, and this reason has become
confused in his mind. A person is naturally drawn to have
it—·i.e. this thought of being part of a larger whole·—when
he knows and loves God as he should. For then, abandoning
himself completely to God’s will, he strips himself of his own
interests and has only one passion—to do what he believes
would be agreeable to God. This brings him satisfactions of
the mind, contentments, that are worth incomparably more
than all the transient little joys that depend on the senses.

(5) In addition to these truths that generalize over all our
actions, we ought to know many other truths that concern
more particularly each individual action. The chief of these,
in my view, are the ones I mentioned in my last letter, namely:
•All our passions represent to us the goods that they
incite us to seek as being much greater than they
really are;
•The pleasures of the body are never as lasting as those
of the soul, or as great when we have them as they
appear when we are looking forward to them.
We should carefully take this in, so that •when we feel ourselves
moved by some passion we’ll suspend our judgment
until it calms down and •we won’t let ourselves easily be
deceived by the false appearance of the goods of this world.

(6) I have only this to add, that we ought to examine in
detail all the customs of the place where we are living, so as
to see how far they should be followed. Although we can’t
have certain demonstrations of everything, we ought to make
choices and (in matters of custom) embrace the opinions
that seem the most probable. Why? So that when there’s
a need for action we won’t be irresolute; because nothing
causes regret and repentance except irresolution.

Finally, just this: As I said before, if one is to be disposed
always to judge well, one needs not only •knowledge of the
truth but also •habit. ·Here is why·. Suppose that in the past
we have been convinced of some truth P by clear and evident
reasons; we can’t keep anything—·e.g. those reasons·— in
mind continually; so in the course of time we might be led
by false appearances to turn away from believing P; and our
protection against that is by long and frequent meditation
on P to imprint it in our mind so ·deeply· that it turns into a
•habit. In this sense the scholastics are right when they say
that virtues are habits; for our failings are indeed usually
due not to lack of •theoretical knowledge of what we should
do but to lack of practical knowledge—i.e. lack of a firm habit
of belief. 

Descartes

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misfortunes and good sense

I know that it’s nearly impossible to resist the first upsets
that new misfortunes arouse in us, and even that the best
minds are usually the ones in which passions are the most
violent and act most strongly on their bodies. But it seems
to me that on the following day, when sleep has calmed the
emotions that the blood carries in such circumstances, the
person can begin to get his mind in order, calming it down.
To do this, focus on thinking of all the •benefits you can get
from whatever it was that you had taken to be a great mishap
the day before, and turn your attention away from the •evils
you had imagined in it. ·This can be done·, because there
are no events so disastrous, or so absolutely bad in people’s
judgment, that a lively-minded person couldn’t look at them
from an angle that would make them appear favourable. You
can draw this general consolation from the misfortunes that
have come your way: they may have contributed greatly
towards your developing your mind to the point that you
have—and that’s a good that you should value more than
an empire! Great prosperity often dazzles and intoxicates in
such a way that it possesses those that have it rather than
being possessed by them. Although this doesn’t happen to
anyone with a cast of mind like yours, prosperity would still
give you fewer openings for the exercise of your mind than
adversity does. I believe that just as nothing in the world
can be called ‘good’ without qualification except good sense,
so there is no evil from which we can’t draw some benefit if
we have good sense.


Descartes

Beatitude of soul

good fortune [= ‘good luck’] depends only on things external to us;
so someone to whom some good comes without his having
done anything to get it is regarded as more fortunate than
wise men are. In contrast with that, true beatitude [béatitude]
seems to me to consist in a complete contentment of the
mind and an inner satisfaction. People who are the most
favoured by fortune usually don’t have this contentment,
and wise people acquire it with no help from fortune. Thus,
vivere beate, to live in beatitude, is nothing but to have a
mind that is perfectly content and satisfied.

When I think about what the things are quod beatam
vitam efficiat, i.e. that can give us this utter contentment
·that I call ‘beatitude’·, I see that they are of two sorts:
(1) those that depend on us, such as virtue and wisdom,
and (2) those that don’t depend on us, such as honours,
riches, and health. Consider two men who are equally (1)
wise and virtuous, and who differ in that (2) one of them
is shapely, not ill, and affluent while the other is deformed,
unhealthy, and poor; it is certain that the former can be more
completely contented than the latter can.
Still, a small jug can be just as full as a larger one! Taking
the contentment of each man to be
the fullness and the satisfaction of
his desires regulated according to reason,
I don’t doubt that the poorest people, least blest by nature
and fortune, can be entirely content and satisfied just as
others can, although they don’t enjoy as many good things.
That is the only sort of contentment that is in question here;
trying for the other sort would be a waste of time, because it
is not in our own power.
Now, it seems to me that each person can make himself
content, unaided by anything external to him, provided he
respects three conditions that are related to the three rules
of morality that I presented in the Discourse on the Method.
(1) He should always try to use his mind as well as he
can in order to know what he should do or not do in all the
events of life.
(2) He should have a firm and constant resolution to do
whatever reason advises, without being turned away from
that by his passions or appetites. Virtue, I believe, consists
precisely in sticking firmly to this resolution; though I don’t
know that anyone has ever explained the word in this way. . . .
(3) He should bear in mind that while he is living as much
as he can under the guidance of reason, all the good things
that he doesn’t have are one and all entirely outside his
power. This will get him into the habit of not wanting them.
Why is it that we want to be healthier and richer than we are,
but don’t want to have more arms or more tongues than we
have? It is because we know that we can’t by our own efforts
come to have more tongues or arms, while •we imagine that
health and riches are achievable by our exertions or are owed
to our nature—·i.e. are things that it is not natural for us
to lack·. We can rid ourselves of •that opinion by bearing in
mind that since we have always followed the advice of our
reason we have left undone nothing that was in our power,
and that sickness and misfortune are as natural to man as
prosperity and health. 
Nothing can impede our contentment except •desire and
•regret or repentance. 
·I have explained how the person who
lives by reason can be free of discontenting desires, and now
I add that he can also be free of repentance·. If he always
does whatever his reason tells him to do, then even if events
show him afterwards that he has gone wrong, he will never
have any grounds for repentance, because it was not his
fault.
I should add that beatitude is not incompatible with
every sort of desire—only with desires that are accompanied
by impatience and sadness. Also, it isn’t necessary ·for
beatitude = utter contentment· that our reason should be
free from error. All that is needed is for our conscience
to testify that we have never lacked resolution and virtue
to carry out whatever we have judged the best course. So
virtue by itself is sufficient to make us content in this life.
Nevertheless, because virtue unenlightened by intellect can be false: i.e. our will and resolution to do well can carry us to evil
courses that we think are good,
(1) the contentment that comes from such virtue is not solid,
·i.e. we can’t depend on it to be durable·; and because
we ordinarily oppose this virtue to pleasures, appetites,
and passions,
(2) it’s very difficult to put it into practice. On the other
hand, the right use of reason gives us a true knowledge of
the good ·and thus (1) gives us solid contentment because· it
prevents our virtue from being false; and because the right
use of reason brings virtue into harmony with permissible
pleasures, (2) it makes the practice of virtue quite easy.
·And it also contributes to virtue in a way that I haven’t yet
mentioned, namely·: by giving us knowledge of the condition
of our nature, it restrains our desires in such a way that
one must admit that •man’s greatest happiness depends on
this right use of reason and that therefore •the study that
leads one to it is the most useful occupation one can have.
Certainly it is the most agreeable and delightful.

Descartes

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souls- vulgar and great

What chiefly marks off the greatest souls from low-level vulgar ones, it seems to me, is that vulgar souls give themselves over to their passions and are happy or sad purely according to whether
what happens to them is agreeable or unpleasant;
whereas great souls reason so powerfully that—although they
too have passions, which are often more violent than
those of the vulgar—their reason remains in command
and brings it about that even afflictions serve them
and contribute to the perfect happiness that they can
enjoy ·not merely in the after-life but· already in this
life.
Here is how they do it. They bear in mind •that they are
immortal and capable of receiving very great contentment,
and on the other hand •that they are joined to mortal and
fragile bodies that are bound to perish in a few years; so
they do whatever they can to make fortune favourable in this
life, but they value this life so little from the perspective of
eternity that they give ·worldly· events no more consideration
than we give to events on the stage. Just as the sad stories
that we weep to see represented on a stage often entertain
us as much as happy ones, so the greatest souls get an
inner satisfaction from all the things that happen to them,
even the most distressing and unbearable. When they feel
pain in their bodies they try hard to put up with it, and
this show of their strength is agreeable to them. Seeing
a friend in some great trouble they feel compassion at the
friend’s ill fortune and do all they can to rescue him from it,
and they aren’t afraid of risking death if that is necessary
for this purpose. But the sadness that their compassion
brings doesn’t afflict them, because they are happy over the
testimony of their conscience, which tells them that they are
doing their duty, acting in a manner that is praiseworthy
and virtuous. In short, just as the greatest prosperity of
fortune never intoxicates them or makes them insolent, so
also the greatest adversities can’t defeat them or make them
so sad that the body to which they are joined falls ill.


Descartes

virtues and wisdom

There’s a great difference between apparent virtues and true ones. .
What I call ‘apparent virtues’ are certain relatively unusual
vices that are ·extreme· opposites of other better known vices,
with the related virtues occupying a position intermediate
between the two. Because they are further from their
opposite vices than the virtues are, they are usually praised
more highly than the related virtues are. Here are some
examples.
 (1) It more often happens that someone timidly
flees from danger than that someone rashly throws himself
into it; so rashness is contrasted with the vice of timidity
as if it were a virtue, and is commonly valued more highly
than true courage ,which is intermediate between timidity
and rashness. 
The same mechanism is at work when 
(2)someone who is over-generous is more highly praised than
one who gives liberally ·because his conduct is further from
the vice of meanness than is the virtuous conduct of the
merely liberal giver.
There is also a division within the true virtues, between
ones that arise solely from knowledge of what is right and
ones that come partly from some error. Examples of the
latter class of virtues:
goodness that is a result of naivety,
piety that comes from fear,
courage that comes from the loss of hope.
Because such virtues differ from each other, they have
different names; whereas the pure and genuine virtues that
come entirely from knowledge of what is right all have the
very same nature and are covered by the single term ‘wisdom’.
The person who is firmly and effectively resolved always to
use his reasoning powers correctly, as far as he can, and to
do whatever he knows to be best, is the person who is as
wise as his nature allows him to be. And simply because
of this wisdom, he will have justice, courage, temperance,
and all the other virtues—all interlinked in such a way that
no one of them stands out among the others. Such virtues
are far superior to the ones that owe their distinguishing
marks to some admixture of vice, but they usually receive
less praise because common people are less aware of them.The kind of wisdom I have described has two prerequisites:


•the perceptiveness of the intellect and the •disposition
of the will. If something depends on the will, anybody can
do it; but ·the same doesn’t hold for intellectual perceptions,
because· some people have much keener intellectual vision
than others. Someone who is by nature a little slow in
his thinking and ·therefore· ignorant on many points can
nevertheless be wise in his own way and thus find great
favour with God; all that is needed is for him to make a firm
and steady decision to do his utmost to acquire knowledge
of what is right, and always to pursue what he judges to
be right. Still, he won’t rise to the level of those who are
firmly resolved to act rightly and have very sharp intellects
combined with the utmost zeal for acquiring knowledge






Descartes

Fear of God

You should never fear anything except God. If ever you begin to feel afraid of anything, remember the great fear, which is due to God. Throughout the day, fill your entire consciousness
with this sense of awe. 
This is the way to achieve true joy. 
In order to achieve these levels, you must combine your fear of Heaven with love. A person's main strength lies in the love he has for God. Nevertheless fear must come first.


R Nachman

You must break the force of your anger with love. If you feel yourself becoming angry, make sure you do nothing unkind because of your anger. You must make a special effort to be kind to the very person you are angry with. Sweeten your anger with kindness. When you do this, you will be able to draw benefit from the Tzaddik and then you will be able to understand the true goal of all things. You will taste the delight of the World to Come, and you will see how everything in the world is part of the movement to this ultimate goal. Your perception will be according to the root which you have in the soul of the Tzaddik 




Anger and unkindness arise when people's understanding is limited. The deeper their
understanding the more their anger disappears, and kindness, love and peace spread. 


When a person gives way to anger, it stirs up the great accuser, Esau, or Edom. The accuser in the upper world is the source of a flurry of accusers and enemies who come down and take
charge of this angry man. His anger puts his wisdom to flight, and the image of God disappears from his face. He no longer has the face of a man. This is why he is in the power of his enemies.


R Nachman

Time is nothing

A person with complete understanding knows that time in this world is really nothing. The sensation of time stems from deficient understanding. The greater one's understanding, the more
one sees and understands that in reality time does not exist. We can actually feel how time flies like a passing shadow and a cloud that will soon disappear. If you take this to heart you will be
free of worries about mundane matters and you will have the strength and determination to snatch what you can -- a good deed here, a lesson there -- in order to gain something that is truly
enduring out of this life. You will gain the life of the eternal world, which is completely beyond time.


R Nachman

Peace

There are two kinds of peace. There is the peace `in one's bones' in oneself. This is the first priority, because at times a person has no peace in himself, as it is written: `There is no peace in
my bones because of my sin' (Psalms 38:4). When a person develops genuine fear of Heaven he can attain peace within himself. Through this he is able to pray. And prayer leads to the second kind of peace universal peace, when there is peace in all the worlds As peace spreads in the world the whole world can be drawn to serve God with one accord.

Moral purity leads to peace.

The real meaning of peace is to fit together two opposites. So you shouldn't be disturbed when you come across someone who is the exact opposite of yourself and thinks the exact opposite. Do not assume you will never be able to live amicably with him. And similarly if you see two people who are completely opposite types, you should not decide it is impossible to make peace between them. Quite the contrary! Perfect peace is achieved through the effort to
make peace between two opposites, just as God makes peace in His high places between Fire and Water, which are two opposites. The way to achieve peace is through complete self-sacrifice to
sanctify the name of God. Then it is possible to pray with genuine devotion . 

God always takes into account the good that people do. It may be that something not so good was mixed up with it, but God pays no attention to this. If this is God's way, how much more so
should we attempt to do the same. Never look for the bad side of other people or hunt out their shortcomings and weak points when it comes to religion. Look only for the good and always
search out the merit and worth in them. You will then be at peace with everybody.

R Nachman

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Acts of charity and kindness

Acts of charity and kindness have the power to break the force of the serpent, which is the root of materialistic ideology. And then these wild animals will have no power over you.
However at times even after you have crushed them they are soon back again, placing fresh doubts in your mind about whether the world is governed only by the will of God. If this happens
you must make fresh efforts at charity and kindness. Charity has the power to subdue the ideology of materialism and reveal that everything is governed only by the will of God.


R Nachman

Truth

Impartiality and objectivity are as rare as justice, of which they are but two special forms.

Self−interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is

extraordinarily small. What governs men is the fear of truth, unless truth is useful to them, which is as much

as to say that self−interest is the principle of the common philosophy or that truth is made for us but not we

for truth. As this fact is humiliating, the majority of people will neither recognize nor admit it. And thus a

prejudice of self−love protects all the prejudices of the understanding, which are themselves the result of a

stratagem of the ego. Humanity has always slain or persecuted those who have disturbed this selfish repose of

hers. She only improves in spite of herself. The only progress which she desires is an increase of enjoyments.

All advances in justice, in morality, in holiness, have been imposed upon or forced from her by some noble

violence. Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies. It is too often by

employing one vice against another—for example, vanity against cupidity, greed against idleness—that the

great agitators have broken through routine. In a word, the human world is almost entirely directed by the law

of nature, and the law of the spirit, which is the leaven of its coarse paste, has but rarely succeeded in raising it

into generous expansion.

Amiel

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