18 October 2012

Seneca on spending one's life-time

"nec cum illis moror, quibus me tempus aliquod congregavit aut causa ex officio nata civili, sed cum optimo quoque sum : ad illos, in quocumque loco, in quocumque saeculo fuerunt, animum meum mitto." (Seneca Ep. ad Lucilium LXII)

"Nor do I linger with those whom some time or other has brought me together nor because of something born of civil office, but rather I am with the best -- to those in whatever place, in whatever time they were, I send my mind and soul."

The mind is precisely this three-dimensional time-space through which we human beings can mindfully move freely, back and forth, to the "best" this time-space has to offer. Such time-space is open, whereas today's scientific, efficiently causal, linear time is one-dimensional, calculating, constricted, unfree.

03 October 2012

Seneca Ep. LV on absent friends

Huc usque cogtationes tuas mitte. Conversari cum amicis absentibus licet, et quidem quotiens velis, quamdiu velis : magis hac voluptate, quae maxima est, fruimur, dum absumus.... Et ideo aequo animo ferre debemus absentiam, quia nemo non multum etiam praesentibus abest. 
Seneca Epistulae ad Lucilium LV

"Send your thoughts here. You may consort with absent friends, indeed, as often as you wish, for as long as you 
wish; this pleasure, which is the greatest, is enjoyed while we are absent. ... And therefore we must bear absence with equanimity, because everyone is very much absent even for those present."