Posts by Joshua

Early on she mentions Thich Nhat Hanh; if I had a "guru" when I was deep in Buddhism, it was certainly him. I loved his books, sought his dharma talks, and followed the goings-on at his Plum Village retreat in France. There actually was a Buddhist temple in home town, which I enjoyed going by but would never have considered going in—theirs was a cultural emphasis, and my interest was solely on the 'dhamma'.

My memory of Thich Naht Hanh's mindfulness is best represented by the dish-washing she mentions on the podcast. When you're washing the dishes, you're not thinking about Cicero's De Finibus; you're not thinking about work, or an interesting podcast. You're not listening to an audiobook—you're really not even thinking about the dishes! Your whole attention is trained on to the motions, sensations, the experience of dishwasher.

A thought will arise; you will acknowledge it, and then let it go. There will follow a moment of mental 'blankness', but inevitably, another thought will arise.

You will acknowledge it, and let it go. Your project is to clear your mind of the whole process of cognition. Your mind does not want to be clear—it has aeons of natural selection and a whole lifetime of habit driving it toward this singular purpose—it wants to think! But you are going for mindfulness, so you clear it again. You are trying to be in the present, fully awake to experience and sensation, but not to thought. Thought is a distraction from the present moment, and you are trying to be present.

Here's the thing; after a few thousand hours, or tens of thousands of hours, this training will result in a few empirically verifiable changes in the brain. The brains of long-practicing monks look different under brain imaging scans, and function differently; they've aged better, have more activation in the "good" areas (happiness, altruism) and less activation in the "bad" areas (fear, selfishness, anxiety).

Mindfulness in the early attempts can be really frustrating, and most people give up. In some individuals, where the mind is especially troubled, mindfulness can exacerbate existing mental health problems. But the biggest problem for me is the discipline required, and the colossal time-sink involved.

Personally, I got to a point where I chose to rely on the hope that there exist other pathways to happiness, and I abandoned that one. I'll never have the brain of a master meditator; but I like to think I've still got a fair crack at long-term happiness.

But you know what? For the sake of experiment, I may give it another try!

One thing I find interesting is the connection that she's drawing between mindfulness and curiosity. I think I probably spend quite a lot of my time 'zoned out'. I also think that its in those moments that my mind forges the most interesting connections;

"...hmmm...I wonder if that word has a Latin root..."

"Hmmm...If you put a tiny stirling engine in a mechanical watch, you might be able to make it self-winding just off of body heat..."

"Hmmm...that would make an interesting framing device for a poem..."

"Hmmm...that jobsite I'm going back to tomorrow presented a few challenges, but I might have fewer problems if I try it this way..."

"Hmmm...I could probably make my own canoe outriggers if I can think of a way to attach [x] to [y]..."

You get the idea. Discursive thought seems far more pleasurable to me than 'trying hard not to think'.

However, I'm well aware of the fact that human minds differ substantially in their interests and obsessions. I certainly know people who compulsively ruminate on things that I can see are making them miserable. The best example is the obsession with politics, whereof the symptoms are 1.) Endless frustration, and 2.) The tiresome tendency to relate every conversation back to politics.

Maybe mindfulness is, for many, a useful therapeutic retreat away from self-imposed mental aggravation? Whereas for some people an energetic and wandering mind bears fruits that are pleasing, rather than irritating?

The deep irony here is that the people I know for whom mindfulness might be well-advised, are exactly the kind of people who will dismiss the idea out of hand.

After all, they've got things on the internet to get angry about!

I haven't listened yet, but my gut response is something like John Mulaney here at the 1:40 mark:

But I suspect that my time as a near-Buddhist has colored my perception! I'll put that one in the hopper.

As I continue to think about the thorny problems we've just discussed, I began to realize that all I'm doing is coming up with a series of great cop-outs.

Time Enough?

One of my other enduring interests is horology, or the study of the human art and science of time-keeping. Perhaps the greatest living watchmaker in the English speaking world is Roger Smith, who lives and works on the Isle of Man. One of the unofficial mottos of that Isle is "Traa Dy Liooar", or Time Enough.

The problem for us is that we are "by nature mortal and ephemeral" (Claudius Ptolemy), and that the one thing we don't have is time: even if we are fortunate enough to study philosophy while young, as Epicurus advised, we cannot go on forever in suspense, and skeptical of the proper End of life.

We are needful of an answer, an operating axiom from which to work. Sooner or later we need to give this tangled semantic web the Gordian treatment—to cut through words and logic and disputation, through dialectic and debate and Ciceronian puppet-strings, and to come down to something visceral and experiential.

...but that's not really an answer, is it.

As a Land Surveyor, I'm plotting an essay on precisely this subject. I had an idea for a title;

'Angles and Demons'

"I know that I am by nature mortal, and ephemeral—but when I trace at my leisure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, my feet no longer touch the Earth, but I stand in the presence of Zeus Himself and take my fill of ambrosia."

-Claudius Ptolemy, Almagest

This is sort of what I mean by "finding god" in mathematics.

I'll take a shot at some of these;

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1. I'm most of the way through DeWitt's book, and in Chapter 14 he writes of Epicurus, "He favored a minimum of government and chose to look upon men as free individuals in a society transcending local political boundaries." Is this an eccentric opinion of DeWitt's, or would most experts on Epicurus describe him as a kind of libertarian or classical liberal?

While we do heavily push DeWitt as the best introduction to Epicurean Philosophy, many of us also recognize his tendency in several ways to extrapolate beyond the textual evidence. I cannot recall a citation in the relevant texts where this opinion is directly expressed.

Complicating the problem are several historical facts worth mentioning. First, and In support of DeWitt's assertion, we do know that Epicurus chose to settle in democratic Athens. He had other options, some of which had more centralized governments. (I'll also mention that we try to avoid the thorny issue of politics on this forum, for what I think are obvious reasons.)

The second factor is that capitalism as we understand it did not exist, and had not been proposed. Further, Epicurus himself held slaves; it's difficult in any age to hold liberty as a strong value when slavery is de rigeur. There are no classical texts from any author surviving which propose abolitionism as an object. The ancients simply saw these issues differently than we do.

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2. Now that I know more about Epicureanism, thanks to DeWitt's book, I have to say that the Epicurean position that puzzles me the most is the denunciation of mathematics. Is there a ancient Greek cultural context here that I'm not getting?

There certainly is! Epicurus lived in a demon-haunted age, and Mathematics were not exempt from this broader context. Pythagoras had proposed a connection between geometry and the "10 concentric celestial spheres". His claim was not only about geometry and astronomy, but about "Truth". Plato as well saw a connection between Euclidean geometric theorems, and the kind of pure absolute moral theory that he himself was dabbling in; hence the sign over his door—"Let no man enter here who has not studied geometry".

This will help to indicate the other problem with Mathematics—namely, that the Ancient Greeks had no real taste for their practical application. As an example of this; the Alexandrians had done the work of developing an understanding of pneumatics and hydraulics, and they even devised a basic steam engine. And what did they use things for? Tricks and sorcery to complement the charlatanism of the temples and oracles.

Yes, that's right; they were one step away from attaching a piston and a wheel to this contraption, by which effort they could have discovered locomotive power! But they didn't.

Epicurus did not have time for philosophy that did not invite a practical application. He was surrounded by geometers, and at the end of all their inquiries they were finding God.

He knew they were on the wrong track entirely, and so dismissed them.

...oops...

CiceroVersion-1,2.pdf

This is Version 1.2 with a spelling correction and what LaTeX calls a "medium skip" between paragraphs.

Cassius, I have taken your transcription of the Reid translation and put it into a LaTeX editor for typesetting and cleaning up. Paragraph numbers are back in the margins, for example.

I'm attempting to upload the PDF here.

I am happy to have feedback or suggestions, but in lieu of that I propose we use this as a common "fair" copy; given the document's size, the pagination should help us find what we're talking about more easily.

Cicero.pdf

Edit; If someone prefers wider margins for note-taking, or line-separations between paragraphs, that's quite easy to accommodate.

I haven't read any of these yet...

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simple loving

I feel certain that he meant to type "Simple living".

The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Alison Brown

^another book

Edward Ernest Sikes: Lucretius, Poet and Philosopher

^book I just found the title of. I know nothing else

Classical:

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Statesman and Orator:

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The poems of Lucretius are as you write: they exhibit many flashes of genius, and yet show great mastership.

Publius Vergilius Maro, Roman Poet:

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Happy is he who has discovered the causes of things and has cast beneath his feet all fears, unavoidable fate, and the din of the devouring Underworld.

Publius Ovidius Naso, Roman Poet:

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The verses of the sublime Lucretius will perish only when a single day shall consign the world to destruction.

Late Antiquity/Medieval

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus, called Lactantius; Roman Christian Writer, advisor to Constantine the Great:

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"the most worthless of the poets"

Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, called St. Jerome;

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The poet Titus Lucretius is born. He was later driven mad by a love philtre and, having composed between bouts of insanity several books (which Cicero afterwards corrected), committed suicide at the age of 44.

Renaissance:

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, French Essayist and Philosopher

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‘Tis to much purpose that the great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy, when, behold! he goes mad with a love philtre. Is it to be imagined that an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as a porter? Some men have forgotten their own names by the violence of a disease; and a slight wound has turned the judgment of others topsy-turvy. Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man; and than that what is there more frail, more miserable, or more nothing?

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But, to pursue the business of this essay, I have always thought that, in poesy, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace by many degrees excel the rest.

Lucy Hutchison, Puritan Homemaker

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"As by the study of these I grew in Light and Love, the little glory I had among some few of my intimate friends, for understanding this crabbed poet, became my shame, and I found I never understood him till I learnt to abhorre him, and dread a wanton dalliance with impious bookes. Then I reapd some profitt by it, for it shewd me that sencelesse superstitions drive carnall reason into Atheisme, which though Policy restreins some from avowing so impudently as this Dog, yet vast is their number, who make it a specious pretext within themselves, to thinke religion is nothing at all but an invention to reduce the ignorant vulgar into order and Government."

Enlightenment:

19th Century:

James Clark Caldwell, Confederate Soldier writing in a Union War Prison in Ohio:

John Tyndall, Irish Physicist;

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Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that 'nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods?' or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is not 'that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who wrings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb?' Believing as I do in the continuity of Nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial Life.

20th Century to Present:

Albert Einstein, German-born Theoretical Physicist

W. B. Yeats, Irish Poet:

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"The finest description of sexual intercourse ever written."

Christopher Hitchens, Anglo-American Journalist, Polemicist, Public Intellectual

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In January 1821, Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams to “encourage a hope that the human mind will some day get back to the freedom it enjoyed 2000 years ago.” This wish for a return to the era of philosophy would put Jefferson in the same period as Titus Lucretius Carus, thanks to whose six-volume poem De Rerum Naturum (On the Nature of Things) we have a distillation of the work of the first true materialists: Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus. These men concluded that the world was composed of atoms in perpetual motion, and Epicurus, in particular, went on to argue that the gods, if they existed, played no part in human affairs. It followed that events like thunderstorms were natural and not supernatural, that ceremonies of worship and propitiation were a waste of time, and that there was nothing to be feared in death.

This is a great resource, Nate! I like to have a handful of PDF's downloaded to my phone so that I have something to read even when I don't have reception, and these little bite-sized portions are perfect for that!

Interesting reading, Alex, thank you!

I think this is something we have to consider in its context. What we now know is that the seat of consciousness is in the brain; the ancients, including the Epicureans, had other ideas. Some believed that the seat of the 'soul' was in the breast with the heart. It is easy to observe in oneself the quickening of the pulse in love or fear; more difficult, to intuit that this behavior is governed by signals from the nervous system.

The Epicureans thought that the 'soul'—call it what you will—consisted of a sort of skein of finer atoms spread throughout all the members. If a portion of this soul rests in the hand at any given point in time, and the soul's chief end is pleasure, perhaps the argument of Chrysippus makes a little more sense?

Of course the shift of the soul from the members or the breast to the brain simply shifts the problem. Does the brain feel the lack of the Supreme good? I think of the restlessness that Lucretius describes of the Roman nobility; in the city they wish they were in the country, and in the country they wish they were in the city.

One of Epicurus' achievements was to instruct us in how to tap new sources of pleasure—even something as simple as remembering past pleasures can be a constant source of genuine pleasure available to us whenever we need it.

Last one for now...

I can also see this becoming a huge waste of my time! 😄