Magic. Turn evil to good. Turn an impure life into a pure one. Turn animal into god. Create change in accordance with desire. Strong wisdom and knowledge enables this, through causality, but this causality hopefully will produce a good desire, and not a bad one, because the manifestation of a bad desire can turn a good person into an evil one. Be careful what you wish for, magic is real, and you might have it.
Ancient mystic alchemists were searching for the philosopher’s stone to turn lead into gold. The philosophers stone is metaphorically truly much greater than this, it’s the knowledge of the power to turn nothing into diamonds, to turn a bad life into a good one, to become virtuous from lack of virtue, to become wise from a state of ignorance. The ancient teachings of the world’s greatest minds and noble spiritual teachers each have had a piece of it, the accumulation of all their acquired wisdom, mixed with an individual input, experience, understanding and insight is the final piece to put the whole stone together. To be good, simple, content, ego less, self less, content with the present, understanding reality, accepting that no one knows everything and everything isn’t worth being known, certain things are more important than others, and what’s unknown in those fields is what should be strived for. Being a good person when no one is watching, causality, turning the other cheek, loving your neighbor, the noble Eightfold path, learning, living, loving, and ultimately destroying suffering and living in peace.
This is white magic, this ability to achieve this state of mind is potentiality, to which in relation to the potential, the actualizing is the philosophers stone. While complete possession of it is surely impossible, the noble pursuit towards its actualizing was worth pursuing in ancient times, just as, if viewed correctly, it is worth seeking out in our own lives. Philosophy, psychology, knowledge itself, is all pieces of the stone, but the realization after practice with understanding of the teachings, the practical wisdom in the accumulation of experiential knowledge as it refers to the mode of being from which the most optimal solutions arise in response to any situation, is the stone itself. Immortality, lead to gold, these are archetypal, metaphorical comparisons for the wonder that internal discovery and mastery of what we have to work with, our minds, to the highest level, can achieve. Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Mohammad, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Einstein, they all have had pieces, all have had glimpses and intuitions regarding this concept, some more than others, but none of them had all of each other’s pieces. They just had their own, and they contributed their findings to the world for our benefit. In today’s age we can compile all their knowledge into one language, and if our brains are hardware, we can download this knowledge like software onto it, with our own unique operating system of prior experiences to differentiate each person from another, and add our own input. As they did, we should do, seek to provide at least part of the stone, a part that wasn’t there, a bit of truth, a bit of virtue, to leave the those who come after us in better relation to the totality of the stone.
The philosophers stone isn’t something simple to put together and contain, or a place we can easily get into, or in other words the perfect life, enlightenment, Nirvana, paradise, or heaven isn’t easily achieved, if anything good in life takes hard work, the best of life takes the hardest work. We can’t merely hear the knowledge, read the scriptures, or see the holy life at work within another. We must experientially work towards our development of our character, we must turn our gaze towards the improvement of the mode of being from which our actions manifest from. It takes work, intellectually, physically, philosophically, scientifically, it cannot be handed down and it cannot be given out. The desire and manifestation of results of the striving, is the magic which was spoken of. It is the uncover of what is hidden, and the revelation of what was found. It is desire turned into achievement of desire, and potentiality transmuted into actuality. We must put forth the effort ourselves, we must work, and through diligently striving along the path to greatness, attain that greatness which we seek. It is never an end point that we will reach, it is in the striving that we accumulate pieces of the stone. The stepping off the shoulders of those who come before us can afford us the grace of knowledge not deserved, and in our debt, we must work to create something useful for others to step off of.
Call it magic, the philosophers stone, wisdom, holiness, we all are capable of achieving inner peace, we all are capable of learning what’s going on, and saving the world, our own world, we just have to learn, practice, and realize it. We are all capable of moving closer to it. It isn’t a matter of achieving the philosophers stone, it is merely a metaphorical representation of the goal we should be aspiring towards. We can move towards it, and become incrementally better at “being”. Seek the truth, paradise lies within. There’s always hope for a lost soul, give peace a chance, get better everyday, virtue, and happiness. Knowledge is power, and power is responsibility. All conditioned phenomena are impermanent. All that arises is subject to change. As above, so below.
Be wise and discerning in sharing yourself, understand the audience, and their perspective. Many things people won’t be able to understand, or they will judge you negatively based on what you tell them due to ignorance of the nature of the situation, and that’s alright, and not a terrible thing, people have different perspectives and understandings, and predicting the effect of our speech is important in discerning what we should say. All speech that is withholding, often denoted as a “white lie” is not exactly dishonest, but can at times be appropriate. White lies become immoral when the information withheld would be beneficial and useful to the observer, more so than detrimental, the discerning of such effects is clearly quite a task to carry out, but, with experience and greater understanding of people’s psychology, we can better predict the resultant effects of speech. Every situation, every person, every moment, contains within it the possibility of good and bad, and what we say, or reveal, contains the same possibility. Intention and desired outcome is important, the reason why we say something is something that truly should matter to us, and we should look to understand why we want to say certain things to certain people, and in this way we can better understand our own nature.
Correct speech is based upon honesty, but also usefulness and beneficiality, some things said, although they may be factual, are not the best way of teaching or helping another. At times it is easy to assume that it is always a good thing to tell the truth and if something really happened or if we truly are thinking about something in the moment, then there is no crime done in sharing it with someone. This isn’t as obviously useful and beneficial as it may initially seem, and often times, this line of thinking does not lead to an optimal outcome. There is a way to remain honest, and display an idea, without involving the ego, without causing suffering. There are many times when a certain form of honesty can be unvirtuous, in those words which are truthful yet hold bad intentions, or intentions solely focused on painting our own image, or those utterances stemming from an unintegrated part of the psyche, such as the persona. This doesn’t mean that the flip side isn’t true. There isn’t anything wrong with helping someone else get to know us, and our intentions can still be pure in doing this, if we are mindful of it and deem it wise to do so. This is more beneficial than just letting the ego run wild in building a picture of ourselves to impress the other person, such as in persona dominance, but genuinely sharing information that is pertinent to the other person getting to know us, because they have told us they wish to do so. In many cases there are two sides to one coin, and we should look to integrate both sides into one overarching view, in all subject matters of importance.
In practical usage, we must be careful with our speech, to the degree we do so, the better our experience. In Buddhist doctrine, Correct Speech is characterized by a number of factors that, in each individual distinction, we can see the benefit of, but in the totality, may be “perfectionist” or stressful to uphold. The idea here isn’t to stress ourselves out, but rather, strive to perfection, and see how we can better use our speech towards beneficial and useful means. In Buddhism correct speech is characterized by the complete abstinence of any speech that is not beneficial and useful, not conducive to aiding the other person, or yourself, in alleviating suffering and providing wellbeing. Speech must be unequivocally true, and based on intentions towards the wellbeing of others. Speech that is untrue, unbeneficial, promoting unwholesome actions such as violence, stemming from ignorance, “Wrong View” or not in alignment with the dharma, “Wrong Intentions” or ill-will, speech stemming from negative emotion, such as anger, speech characterized as gossip and even idle chatter, are all considered “Wrong Speech”. Speech that is of other people, who are not around, in a way that criticizes their character, such as in gossip, is prohibited in Buddhist Correct Speech. While in our lives the criticism of another person can serve to aid the person we’re in conversation with by providing them useful knowledge, the gossiping that is here listed, is of a nature that is merely out of hate or ill-will for the person we are gossiping about. This type of speech creates division between people, rather than union, we should aim at bringing people closer together in harmony, rather than creating separation. Any speech that springs from bad intentions, that merely looks to paint ourselves in a deceptively “good” light, through the admonition of another, is considered wrong speech. But the Buddha expands to even more restrictive ends in his conceptualization of Correct Speech. Talk that is for entertaining purposes, talk of popular people, of events, of “village talk” or “idle talk” such as about politics, or inconsequential speech that doesn’t serve the purpose of alleviating suffering, or providing the truth about a better way to live, truth that is merely neutral in content and neither useful nor detrimental, is also admonished in the Buddhist conception. Any speech that is of a harsh tone, or stemming from anger, frustration, or negative emotion, rather than from a calm, peaceful, loving mind, is also to be stifled with mindfulness, and he states we should work to make our speech come from a place of love, while maintaining a soft, non-aggressive tone. In my opinion, this aspect of Buddhist Correct Speech is not optimal, always, as a general rule, it is practical, but there are situations in which I believe a harsher tone is necessary to convey the message, in times when the optimal solution or teaching must be characterized by some tough love, where our tone may be more aggressive. As long as the intentions are pure, the content is true, and the message is beneficial and useful, I believe the speech can be presented in a less than harmonious way. We ought not always embody trait agreeableness, there are times when being disagreeable is in our best interest.
Being mindful of the content of the present moment, in paying attention to what manifests itself as a precursor to our action in communicating using language, we can identify speech that is of any of the above admonished speech, and seek to consciously promote that speech which is wholesome. Mindfulness of the thought precursor behind speech may be hindering in “over thinking”, yet, until our character is sufficiently grown so that it’s spontaneous manifestations are in accordance with our value structure, we must promote the beneficial habit forming practice of being mindful of what we say. Until the source of speech is purified, we ought not respond spontaneously in conversation, that is, if we wish to cultivate the character trait of being able to produce Correct Speech. Mindfulness in regard to our current state of being, including our emotional state, can also inform us as to the source from which our speech is coming from. Any state of being that is characterized by negative emotion, and not one of good-will towards the conversant, ought to be mindfully avoided at the first sight of its recognition, in this way, we can use the Buddhist practice of paying attention to the present moment, to modify the speech which we produce, through being aware of our current state and its implied inclinations.
We should seek to be more careful and articulate in our speech, to be wise in everything we do or say. We may sometimes feel like we want to share something, for our own gain, and a lot of times this is okay, but also, a lot of times this is not the way to fix a problem, or to accept what has happened to us when the content is specifically producing negative emotions within us. Many times another person cannot solve these problems for us, we must seek to conquer our own demons before unleashing them upon the world. They are ours, and our responsibility, only with someone truly ready, truly a seeker, with little dust on their eyes, can we reveal the whole truth to. We must be wise in who, how, and when.
As far as following universal maxims, or dogmatic rules from which to follow in the use of Correct Speech, I think such rule following is quite dangerous, as novel situations need be handled with tailored responses, and often universal maxims fail to take into account extreme cases where they are less than optimal. When the stakes are highest, and the effect of true speech in terms of violence, or profound suffering results, we must be conscious of employing ulterior methods than the general values we have listed above in producing speech. Lying, deceiving, speech from ill-will, while generally are in fact beneficial, are not all inclusive to every situation we may find ourselves in, and in extremely rare cases, their implementation may be optimal towards the saving of life, or the preservation of life. If you still think along the lines of “I’m going to tell the truth, regardless of its content, it’s virtue,” then you are thinking to shallowly. There is so much more nuance to truth telling, sometimes the truly best thing to say is not the exact objective truth, but rather metaphorical truth, or the lesson learned from it. There are truths to useful way to operate in the world, and this itself can aide others in the navigation of their lives, we shouldn’t limit truth to purely objective and scientific truth, but expand it to the knowledge which would aide in progressing another person toward their goals, or in opening them up to the potentiality of a different perspective, or way to be in the world. While this may seem opinionated, if we look from the objective standpoint of better or worse solutions to alleviate suffering and provide lasting wellbeing, or better or worse ways of being to improve one’s journey towards a desired end, we can categorize, morally, the beneficial and useful nature of some content of knowledge in proportion to another, the revelation of this, would be metaphoric truth, or truth which can be used for practical purposes, insofar as it is an objectively better way of navigation towards a desired outcome. As in all else before, discerning when and how to reveal metaphorical truth is a task of prudence, and experiential knowledge of effects of certain concepts and ideas can better serve us as data points to use as reference to know the proper speech given a situation.
Events and experiences need to be filtered through the language of the audience, in order to have a meaningful connection. The language we use should be tempered by the person we are in conversation with, we wouldn’t explain a concept the same way to an academic colleague as we would our child, although the same “truth” may be present in each, the way we go about articulating the idea, the terminology and form of rhetoric we use in conveying it, must be appropriate so that the knowledge conveyed is in terms understandable to the audience. Be yourself, but be wise, and don’t follow a simple maxim. We should constantly be updating our articulation of concepts, and ideas, so as to better be able to represent them symbolically in the speech we use to convey them, as well as, obviously, to sharpen up our conceptualizations into a more useful format. The way we do this with our speech, it has been argued, creates the thoughts which fill our experience, so a more precise and articulate way of conceptualizing, for ourselves, produces a greater ability to categorize and judge reality as we experience it, modifying our experience and shaping the way we see the world. As we become more articulate, and better able to clearly conceptualize reality, the clearer we can make distinctions, and the better teachers we come, effecting our speech positively. Look deeper, think harder, doing and saying the right thing isn’t easy, because its implications can be long lasting and significant. Its effect can change more than we can calculate, and anything that comes from us we must take responsibility for. This doesn’t mean over analyze every word, but in general, we must work to ever improve our speech, if we wish to live our best potential lives, and to aide others in their journey. It’s not always in telling someone the answer that teaches them, but sometimes the question, or the journey, is more valuable.
Aristotle set out in his Nicomachean Ethics to define the optimal means and the ends of human life. In doing this he posited a fourfold system of categorization in regards to the “causes”, which can be applied to understand any object, or phenomena. The first is the material cause, or what the object is made of, i.e. the matter that composes a phenomenon. The second is the efficient cause, or what conditions the phenomena to arises or what predeterminations cause the phenomena to come into being. The third is the formal cause, or the identity of the phenomena, what distinguishes it, what are its characteristics, what makes it recognizable, its form or shape as it exists in the current state which is under scrutiny. The fourth cause, and the most important for the task which Aristotle lays out in this book on ethics, is the final cause, or for what purpose the object exists for, what is the reason for its existence, towards what end is it used, or ought to be used.
If we take the phenomena as being Dasien, or a human being, we can apply this structure in order to determine that fourth cause, the one with practical implications, and for with which we can clarify meaning and a path in pursuit of that meaning, implying morality and a philosophy as a way of life. The material cause of a human is his flesh and bones, his cellular structure, his musculature, in short, those components which are the material components of an organism. The efficient cause is the parental gametes, the reproductive cells of his biological parents – of course the genealogy can be traced back further, but as the descriptive element of the initially preceding cause which formed the human, we point to the reproductive cells which constituted his initial formulation. The formal cause is the shape or form of the human in which he is perceived, his bilateral, symmetrical appearance, the four limbs, the appearance of a human that we can recognize visually.
The fourth cause, the reason for which humans live, is less scientific and appears to be more subjectively determined. Many people claim to live for the sake of purposes which are far ranging, and many admit to not being able to determine what their “purpose” actually is. We can pose this question, and answer it from many different perspectives. From a biological standpoint, the cause of a human is to be the survival machine which propagates his genetic material into the future through surviving long enough to reproduce successfully in a way which preserves parts of his genome. From a religious standpoint, people can determine their purpose through sacred texts, spiritual insights, the worship and alignment with a higher power(s), and living in pursuance of the religiously formulated ideals. From an existentialist point of view, people’s purpose is to “create” or “discover” a consciously formulated meaning. Nihilists incorrectly assume that there “is no meaning, neither to be discovered or created”, that it merely doesn’t exist. While people may state various forms of meaning for which they are pursuing, the fact remains that people’s actions truly reveal their beliefs. Aristotle pointed to common pursuits which dominate humans lives, such as wealth, fame, and sensual pleasure. All in all, we can see an underlying factor to which all human life is striving for, Aristotle called it Eudemonia, which is commonly translated as “happiness”, but more accurately is akin to “wellbeing” or “human flourishing”. He claimed that for all the other factors for which people strive after, they do so for the sake of this flourishing. While his definition of happiness is quite different from our commonly intuited meaning that the word implies, I conceptualize the ends for which we strive as being the reduction of suffering, or unsatisfactoriness, and the increase in wellbeing, i.e. to have a more pleasant subjective experience. All our aims and strivings in life are born from this unsatisfactory nature, as the Buddhist first Noble Truth states: “Life is unsatisfactoriness”. The biological imperative of desire and unsatisfactory nature to be a constant, drives us to pursue things towards their alleviation, for biologically beneficial reasons, so this isn’t necessarily a “bad” thing, it is actually a somewhat useful thing, in its essential foundation, yet it can be hijacked towards leading people to not so optimal activities and pursuits as the domain of knowledge and action, and the things that influence us, expands to include activities and mind altering substances, which are not conducive to the wellbeing, or happiness, which we all inherently seek. It here must be noted that Aristotle’s conceptualization of Eudemonia wasn’t short sighted, he didn’t merely mean the happiness or flourishing of instant gratification, or momentary peace, such as is afforded to us through Epicureanism in pursuit of temporary friendships or sensual pleasure, but rather that lasting and enduring resultant of activity which isn’t focused on the present, but afforded into the future, a life-long lasting flourishing and growth that we can take pride in, the resultant of volitional activity.
The common drives of egotistical advancement, in areas such as wealth or fame, are pursued with an underlying desire for achieving happiness, so they are merely means to an end. The same can be said for philosophical systems such as existentialism, absurdism, religious or secular ideological structures. Thus, we have our end towards which humans are striving, that thing which is not pursued for the sake of another thing, but is the end for which all other pursuits are pursued for; happiness, flourishing, wellbeing, reduction of suffering. Now that we have a concrete end to human life, Aristotle poses what is the optimal path towards attaining a life that is in accordance with it. He claims that such a path must be self-sufficient, or relying on ourselves, as pursuits that are wholly out of our control, or in which we lay at the mercy of the external world; other people, material, or sensual inputs, are transient and unreliable, and altogether out of our control. This excludes from our search towards an optimal means to attaining happiness things such as reputation, wealth and sensual pleasure, for which most people commonly act under the guise as a means to the discovered end of Eudemonia, as they are liable to change due to external factors, and are not sufficiently pursued on an individual level in a way that is conclusively final in being the end and a mean simultaneously, and as being an exact derivative of our own creation. While these aims are pursued as a method to happiness, they are not pursued for their own sake, which is what Aristotle was explicitly looking for, that which can be pursued which in itself is desirable for the sake of itself.
Aristotle proposed that the concept of being virtuous, and in virtue itself, was the means and the ends towards which we will most optimally achieve Eudemonia. He developed the justification, and expounded the concept of virtue as being that means which is also an end in itself, which we ought to pursue as it is the optimal means of achieving Eudemonia, and in so claiming, the birth of the philosophical system of Morality known as Virtue Ethics is born. Aristotle claimed that we must not merely contemplate what it means to be virtuous, which we must surely due so that we can manifest it, but we must voluntarily embody the virtues in action, it must be an active exercise of voluntary manifestation of the virtues, not merely an understanding or rumination as to their content. As to what the virtues are, what they are constituted by, how we ought to display them, Aristotle had much to say, what it mostly boils down to, in my conceptualization, is the pursuit of manifesting the character traits that one has deemed to be “virtuous”, and from this action, one necessarily produces the most reliable form of Eudemonia, one that is depended not on any external source, but rather on the internal will and volition.
In my opinion, prudence, or wisdom, which is considered a virtue, is the all-encompassing source from which we determine what virtue takes precedence, as well as is used in determining when and how we should pursue Virtue Ethics itself. As to what this consists of, I mention in my essay “Wisdom Ethics”, in which I propose that the enterprise of Virtue Ethics necessarily falls under a broader categorization focused on the different utilities of selecting different moral frames of mind, and it is allocated as a sub category to a meta system of ethical consideration. Aristotle posits that virtue ethics is a type of morality that doesn’t weigh the outcome of moral actions, but rather focuses on the character traits which underlie the manifestation of action. He claimed, that through being a courageous, just, temperate, and wise person, and through the manifestation of these virtues and their development as character traits, one could naturally produce results which are of a morally “good” nature, and provide the moral agent with a life most readily consisting of a state of Eudemonia. The extent to which we are able to develop conceptual and experiential knowledge as to the virtues, determines the degree to which we can manifest them. The morally good he claimed stems from the manifestation of these virtues, in their implementation within the present moment, and he noted its potential application to any situation in life. Virtue Ethics provides a self-sufficient cause of happiness, and the degree to which our character and our actions are in alignment with the defined virtue determines the moral judgment of the person or action. He doesn’t consider the weight of the outcome of actions as that which is more pertinent, but rather, the action itself and its alignment with virtue takes precedence.
In defining the individual virtues Aristotle uses a method of the “Golden Mean”, in which the virtue is found in between two extremities, which is comparable to the Buddhist doctrine of the “Middle Path”. In between sensual overindulgence, and self mortification, we find discipline, we find the middle, optimal path. In Aristotle’s outlining, we find examples such as courage laying in between rashness and cowardice, generosity as the mean between stinginess and extravagance, and honesty in between secrecy and talkativeness. We can see how experiential knowledge, in the form of wisdom, plays a role in determining whether we hit the mark or not, as the virtues each respectively lie upon a spectrum in any given category, and the correct embodiment of the virtues in between the extremities, in an optimal manner, is determined by our ability to recognize it as such, which takes experience, introspection, and intelligent contemplation to determine. It is difficult to recognize when being honest is optimal, when we should rather be compassionate, how much should be revealed, when and to whom. This is where the general structure of Wisdom Ethics comes into play.
All in all, Aristotle’s system of determining being virtuous as the optimal mode of morality in which we should embody as a means to the end of happiness, is an interesting philosophical ideal, and is extremely useful in developing character traits which we should hope to embody. Is it the end all to morality, is it the best system to embody? I would say, as far as I can see, no, that other schools of ethics such as utilitarianism, and in general contemplating the effects of actions in contrast to solely the action themselves, is useful and important in a proper morality, as described in the essay “Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, and Wisdom Ethics”. It is beneficial and useful to the individual to attempt to develop virtuous attributes through the voluntary use of them, but, it takes wisdom to know when this system is favorable to others, and when other systems may be more beneficial, both to the individual and his expanding circle of influence.
Seek Truth 