Spirituality and the art of living

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Spirituality and the art of living

• Joseph Chan
• Department of politics and public administration
• 23 November 2005

2
What is the meaning of life?

• Dr. Joes Laus view
• Not What is the purpose of life?
• But
• what is a valuable (meaningful) life?
• what makes a life meaningful?

3
What is the meaning of life?

• Major values that make a life meaningful or
  valuable
• Truth
• Goodness
• Beauty
• Love
• Cf. Wong Tak Sangs list

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What is the meaning of life?

• Many different concrete ways of realizing those
  values
• Is your life good?
• Are the things you do valuable?
• Are you capable of doing those things?
• Do you enjoy the things you do?
• Do you succeed in doing so?

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The art of living

• The challenge
• not what makes a life valuable, but how.
• Problems arise from
• Setback failure, sickness, breakdown of
  relationship loss of someone dear to you,
• Success
• The humdrum of everyday life

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The art of living

• Setback
• Exams
• Relationships
• Health

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The art of living

• Humdrum
• Loss of interest and vitality
• Success
• Goal displacementpower, status, money

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The art of living

• Alasdair Macintyre After Virtue (1981), Ch. 14.
• Practices
• Chess playing, sciences and humanities, arts,
  sports
• Internal and external goods
• Internal various excellences (skills, virtues,
  etc)
• External rewards

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The art of living

• Practices and institutions
• Search for knowledge vs. universities, music vs.
  orchestras, spiritual practices vs. churches
• Institutions require and distribute external
  goods power, status, and money
• No practices unsustained by institutions can
  survive or flourish for long.
• But practices may be corrupted by institutions.

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The art of living

• Sometimes the pursuit of internal and external
  goods dont go together
• Pursuing external goods but sacrificing internal
  ones (academics, artists)
• Goal displacement

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The art of living

• How to value external goods (power, status,
  money)
• No one can despise them altogether without a
  certain hypocrisy (Macintyre, p. 183)they are
  characteristic objects of human desire.
• Rewards for excellence

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Spirituality

• But, set clear priorities
• Confucius
• ?????,??????????,????????? 4.15
• Do not worry about your lack of official
  position. Worry about what would earn you a
  position. Do not worry about the lack of
  appreciation of your abilities on the part of
  others. Seek to be worthy of appreciation. (The
  Analects, 4.15)

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Spirituality

• How to look at success in pursuing values
• Put yourself in larger contexts
• Maintain a certain detachment to things you care
• Nature
• Poem
• Music

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Spirituality-nature
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Spirituality-music (The Mission, 1986)
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Spirituality-poem ?? (1488-1559)

• ???????,??????
• ???????
• ?????,??????
• ???????,??????
• ???????
• ?????,??????

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Zhaungzi-accepting his wifes death

• When she first died, do you think I didnt
  grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her
  beginning and the time before she was born. Not
  only the time before she was born, but the time
  before she had a body. Not only the time before
  she had a body, but the time before she had a
  spirit.
• In the midst of the jumble of wonder and
  mystery a change toke place and she had a spirit.
  Another change and she had a body. Another change
  and she was born.

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Zhaungzi-accepting his wifes death

• Now theres been another change and shes dead.
  Its just like the progression of the four
  seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter.
• Now shes going to lie down peacefully in a
  vast room between the heaven and earth. If I were
  to weep over her death, it would show that I
  dont understand anything about fate. So I
  stopped.
• Zhuangzi, Ch.18.

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Zhaungzi-accepting his wifes death

• As a small part of the whole, he is a man who
  must feel the loss of his wife.
• But as a man embracing and identifying with the
  whole, he can come to accept the inevitability of
  her death and its place in the ceaseless changes
  of the universe.
• See David B.Wong, The meaning of detachment in
  Daoism, Buddhism, and Stoicism, Dao, 2006.

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Spirituality

• Deepen your awareness
• Have deeper appreciation of values
• Heighten your awareness
• Place yourself in the largest of perspectives