Reflex:
FYI, the parable about the monks was for the benefit of F4 and Nick
An interesting story. What do you think it means?
As I see it, the purpose of the prohibition is to help free the mind of an impediment that stands in the way of what they seek to attain. The young woman is not an impediment for the old monk, he carries her across and puts her down, but for the younger monk the prohibition itself is an impediment. By not touching woman one might become attached to bodily pleasure but forbidden fruit creates desire. In addition, one can become attached to the rules intended to aid detachment. Finally, there is attachment to detachment, the desire not to desire.
There is also the value of compassion and helping others as is exemplified in the Bodhisattva. The younger monk was thinking only of himself and continued to think only of himself.
Don’t feel bad. F4 doesn’t, either; he’s too busy giving philosophy a bad image.
You might see it that way from your perspective, but for me philosophy is a way of life, a life of self-examination, a life in which one seeks self-knowledge. But this requires the courage to be honest with yourself. All too often the inclination is to look away from oneself.
We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge--and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves--how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: 'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also' [Matthew 6.21]; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are constantly making for them, being by nature winged creatures and honey- gatherers of the spirit; there is one thing alone we really care about from the heart--'bringing something home.' Whatever else there is in life, so-called ,'experiences'--which of us has sufficient earnestness for them? Or sufficient time? Present experience has, I am afraid, always found us 'absent-minded': we cannot give our hearts to it--not even our ears! Rather, as one divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself into whose ear the bell has just boomed with all its strength the twelve beats of noon suddenly starts up and asks himself: 'what really was that which just struck?' so we sometimes rub our ears afterward and ask, utterly surprised and disconcerted, 'what really was that which we have just experienced?' and moreover: 'who are we really?' and, afterward as aforesaid, count the twelve trembling bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our being--and alas! miscount them.--So we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend our- selves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law 'Each is furthest from himself' applies to all eternity--we are not 'men of knowledge' with respect to ourselves. (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals)
We do not know ourselves because we lack the courage to see the truth about ourselves. And so, we seek elsewhere. We look, as he says in the quote: “to bring something home”, as if self-knowledge is something we could go out and gather. We are “by nature winged creatures and honey- gatherers of the spirit”. And yet we are also: “as one divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself”. Although preoccupied and immersed in ourselves we look outside ourselves for what we seek, as if there is some treasure to be found that can be brought home.
What happens to us, our experience is not understood because we are preoccupied with ourselves and do not pay attention. We think that what we are looking for must be a treasure of transcendent value, hence “divinely preoccupied”. We may hear “the bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our being” but we miscount them for:”we do not comprehend our- selves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law 'Each is furthest from himself' applies to all eternity”. Why for all eternity? Because eternity is our divine preoccupation. We are immersed in ourselves in so far as we seek eternity for ourselves. This is why he calls us “winged creatures”. We fly off in search of eternity for ourselves but away from ourselves, our experience, our life, our being and thus “we are necessarily strangers to ourselves”.