March 21 to
April 21
The love that
in the responsibility for every individuality feels itself to be a member of a
free community is devotion.
In devotion,
the nature of living thinking is experienced, of the spirit that lives in us as
individuality. In living thinking we do not develop our subjective thoughts, rather the spirit thinks through us the thoughts that indwell within creatures. However, the
spirit does not do this by overwhelming us, but such that we unite with it
in a free deed, which is at the same time a beholding. In reverence for the
spirit in us and in all beings, we raise ourselves to ethical individualism.
The content of this reverence, however, differs according to whether it refers to creatures of nature or human beings. Natural creatures we comprehend through
our own thoughts, human beings through theirs. By not thinking our
subjective thoughts about other human beings, but by devoting our thoughts to
theirs, our own individuality becomes the bearer of another individuality.
Since externality is wholly overcome in thinking, we lose ourselves in this
other individuality, only to find ourselves in it again. In this way, freedom
becomes community for devotion.
Thus it becomes power of sacrifice.
A meditation
of such devotion is the contemplation of the loss-and-found scenes in the lives
of the leaders of humanity. (Buddha is found again under the tree with the
singers, the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple with the teachers.)
No comments:
Post a Comment