Definition of Philosophy

     Philosophy is the conscious living of the truth.

​

​

What Truth Is

     What is truth?

     Is it the motionless bottom of the deep ocean, which graciously accepts and affectionately embraces every one of its children, who is unable to resist the inanimate debris of the ship overturned by its untamed momentum?

     Is it the drop of water, which hides the most immense fire in its insides?

     Is it the overflowing joy, which knows no obstacles in its way?

     Is it the grandeur of virtue?

     No. These are its ornaments.

     Truth is peace.

​

​

Conscience

     The prince has awaken...

     He rushes to find his lyre.

     With the first tones everything around him wakes up. He plays and, from the thousand-voiced chord of his lyre, music is now richly springing. Under its rhythm, men happily go to bathe. Its melody feeds them. And, for them, work is an unending dance with the hoe and with the pruning knife as a tambourine.

     They do not have houses. Every day they tend their garden, where you will find every rare flower, every common one and every wild flower of the mountain and the ravine. And they are all tidy, clean, strong and healthy. And the paths of the garden are beautiful.

     The prince will pass, playing his lyre, and they, bent down to their work, care for the materials for the lyre. Their only worry being to not miss its voice, and with it also lose the light and the joy and the life.

     So when conscience wakes up inside us and asks to express itself, when the moment of performance comes, when also our prince wakes up, let us see to it, that he finds the trees strong and healthy for his lyre and the paths open for him to walk on. Because, if he would have to take the hoe himself, he does not know how to operate it, his hand being used to play the lyre, and he strikes badly and misses the target.  Therefore, let us not shut the doors to the wise gardeners, who know how to cultivate, with patience and compassion, the most delicate and tender trees and not only those which can grow and multiply by themselves. Let us allow religion, art, science, society to move freely. The first, to support and protect the trees with the feeling of safety it provides us. The second, to water them with the inner joy that it pours. The next one, to clean up their soil so that their roots may spread freely so that they may stand strong. And the latter, to come: sometimes with its freezing cold, to strengthen them; sometimes with scissors in hand, for that proud branch which wants to destroy the symmetry by its coming forth; sometimes with its warmth, to vitalize it. Let us always go near the greatly experienced gardener, who also knows how to clean the soil; and grants freshness and gives support against the power of the wind. So that he may help us hear the song, which will spring forth from each one of us, to refresh and vitalize him.

     And this song, whatever it may be, wherever it may be heard, will have only one purpose.

     Harmony.

​

​

The Strong One

     - I am strong like darkness. When I spread myself over the world, you do not see anything else but me.

     - I am strong like light. When I spread myself over the world, you see everything but me.

​

​

Beauty

     You were walking inside beauty for years.

     Every inanimate thing around you was proclaiming beauty and you were greedily sipping the flooding of the beautiful and the high and the great, which was overflowing abundantly out of everything around you. And you were enjoying it for many years. Until a time came, when in all of these you did not see anything other than their stillness. So much, that their beauty did not enchant you any more. Only their stillness tormented you. And this began to gradually remind you of the fact that even you will remain still some time.

     That is what happens, they all stay silent and still, when they are waiting for the great moment.

     And, behold! some day, a breath of life passed over them.

     And everything moved.

     They came with you, wherever you went. And as you had all these forms inside you, it was as if your life was multiplied a thousand times. Movement and life and beauty everywhere inside you and outside. How much joy this did give you. And how many new thoughts it did bring to you.

     Beauty does not die. Beauty waits for life, that life may give it movement, as also life waits for beauty to appear and act in all its glow and grandeur. Beauty is the form of life. Whoever wants to gain life must be moved by beauty. The breath of life is sitting on the form of the beautiful. This attracts it. Whoever has taken beauty inside him, does not go still, does not die. One day, life will pass by and take him with her.

​

​

Hamlet

     An apparition is always there, to arm us in life.

     When we see the ideal State, which we have been molding for years so that we may live happily in it, fall down, all strength for life leaves us; we want to follow the same fate.

     But the apparition of its king and ruler, which wanders among the ruins in the night looking for his palace, brings us back to life, giving us the power to build again.

     It is inside of us that this power will work, because it is inside us that this State is found, such that, as life spreads out, a hand will always be found to demolish it and we to rebuild it, stronger, bigger, more beautiful.

     + + +

     This power, in the tragedy of Hamlet, is passion. Hamlet has the ability to hold it, to wrestle with it, to consciously direct it, but he lacks experience in life.

     He thinks that ideals die. He places his ideals outside of himself and outside of life. He also wants himself to be something different from the other people. So, in the first contact with reality, when the moment comes for him to use his powers, instead of becoming, as his father tells him, “idler than the fat wild herb which imperturbably spreads its roots in the shores of oblivion”, and little by little restore his ideals, he hastens to do his duty, which, he thinks, is to destroy the perpetrator of the destruction. Thus he scatters his powers, spreads disaster and is himself lost.

     If we consider the whole work of Shakespeare as an effort for the spirit to dominate over passion, the tragedy of Hamlet is the most crucial point, where both are equally possible. But “his philosophy” did not prepare him for this great moment. He let life teach him that, which is the basis and the source of “philosophy”.

​

​

Diamond

     I would not call you precious and expensive gem, that you are king among gems, if you were born only for being an ornament and for lazy work; if, when you lose a tiny piece from your form, or a cut, a knife would leave you empty of honors and of value, denuded.

     Clean, strong, always the same, true is even your smallest piece. As you are proud, immutable, faithful, you become a companion to the hardest work in the hands of the worker.

​

​

The Bedtime Story

     - Tell us, grandma, the story.

     The same story. The one, which you tell us each evening, for so many days now. I want to hear its beginning. Speak the words, one by one. So that its beginning takes time to end. That is how I would like the story to begin. Strongly.

     - Have you experienced the story, grandma?

     But even if you have not lived it, you live it from its beginning each time you tell it for us. And see, I think that I have also lived this story…

     But let us leave all these.

     Begin, grandma. Frosoula with her doll is also with us today, to listen to it.

     But, before you start, do that nice play you do each time, before you tell this story. So that Frosoula can see it too, who does not know it.

     And grandma suddenly grabs Frosoula’s doll and throws it out of the window. Frosoula springs up in terror. But grandma has a special skill in this play. As you would watch the doll fall without anybody holding it, grandma would grab it and give it to you unharmed.

     When the play was finished, the children, ecstatic and fascinated, waited around grandma, who would tell the story.

     Grandma spoke beautifully. She spoke in a delicate way, which pleased the children. And, from time to time, as she spoke, she would throw in some sparks, strong as truths, which looked like wild jokes to the children and they would start laughing loudly.

     Some other times, as she spoke in such a magnificent, loud and flamboyant way, she seemed to become one with the dragon of the story, who would stride over the earth from one mountain top to the other. And the children felt as if held by his little finger and enjoying the gorgeous view from above, with him. They almost felt a giddiness as they made a tour around the earth with her.

     Grandma began the story.

     And I will relate it to you in a few words.

    There was once a child, who had never held a new toy in his hands. He always made his toys himself. He always spent his time with old toys of other children.

     One day, it so happened that they gave him a brand new toy in a box. He ran into the house, opened the box and saw a little car inside. As he grabbed it… a sharp corner pricked his hand. It hurt so much! Without further thought, he opened the window and threw out the toy. Much time passed since then.

     During a holiday, he was walking with his father in a nearby city. He saw many children playing there. But one of them was holding something that made our child not believe his eyes as he looked at it.

     Something, that was exactly the same as his own toy. The little car.

     The other child would wind it and it ran. It had a klaxon. Its lights would go on.

     - So beautiful was, indeed, my little toy. And could it be that the one I now see is mine.

     He went and asked the child. And he answered that he had bought it. So he was satisfied.

     But, since that moment, his mind always went to his little car. He decided to go look for it.

     As soon as he was back home, he ran to the place from which he had thrown out the little car, to see if he could find it there. Much time had passed. Rains. Wind. Who knows where it might have been pushed. But the decision was made. The little car had to be found. Whatever he did, his mind was on the little car.

     Years passed and, one day, he saw a kitten holding a little something and playing with it. It looked as something familiar to his eyes. He went nearer and - –That is it! A little wheel of the old toy. In other places and times he found the driver’s wheel, the klaxon. The sea washed ashore many other pieces. Until, finally, he could assemble them all into something that looked like the old little car.

     Many years later, passers-by saw an old man sleeping under a tree.

     Happiness was spread all over his face. And in his hands something like a little toy; you could see him holding it tightly.

     When the story ended, the other children had fallen asleep. Only Frosoula had stayed awake that night Tightly embracing her doll, she was celebrating the victory.

​

​

​

​

End of This Selection

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​