Category: meditation

• July 6, 2013

  Benedict’s abbot as guide

  Benedict’s abbot is a discerning man. Different means are to be employed with the undisciplined and the disciplined.  The undisciplined monks are to be reprimanded and taught by example, less by words. The disciplined, receptive to words, are to be entreated gently ‘to do better.’ Benedict’s abbot is self-integrated. His words converge with his deeds,…
• July 5, 2013

  Taciturnitas

  In an endnote to Chapter 6 entitled ‘Silence,’ the editor Bruce L. Venarde tells us that ‘Taciturnitas traditionally means limited speech, but Benedict generally uses it to signify silence.’ The senses are not unrelated. Silence can lend its ear to limited speech, and limited speech rests and resounds more readily than it wriggles. In the Chapter…
• July 3, 2013

  ‘Inclining the ear of the heart…’

  ‘Listen carefully, my son, to the teachings of a master and incline the ear of your heart.’ So begins the Prologue of St. Benedict’s Rule. How carefully must one listen to incline the ear of the heart. To what? To the teachings. Of whom? Of the master whose words come from elsewhere, the teachings he imparts. But…
• July 2, 2013

  The quietness of the intelligent man

  Kenko does well to stress the intelligent man’s quietness in company. Nobody likes a know-it-all. Some men, out of pride or vanity or ennui, profess to be experts in some esoteric subject while not a few others add to the dullness of the evening by having an opinion about everything passed around the table. They…
• July 1, 2013

  Why is Kenko disillusioned?

  All around Kenko are signs of late autumn. The flowers, irregularly strewn yet carefully placed, so completely matches Kenko’s  aesthetic ideas of simplicity, irregularity, and incompleteness–not to mention his ascetic notion of the value of exclusion–that he is taken aback. That a man could live like this is… if not wisdom, then at least admirable.…