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Hamilton Arts & Letters
The Indian teachers of yoga say that when a novice sits down to meditate, all the demons for miles around come to distract him, because they are terrified of the power of a concentrated intelligence.
"I often think of Bunyan’s Christian, plodding through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and having to listen to all the silly gabble of the voices in that valley, which, says Bunyan, 'he verily thought had proceeded from his own mind.' You may have had your demons too, some telling you to go in for relevance, which means trying to educate yourselves by echo, by listening to the sound of your own prejudices; some telling you that there are no goals in society worthy of your efforts; some telling you to become radicalized, or to transcend your ego-consciousness, or whatever other synonym of goofing off is currently fashionable. There is always something more exciting and picturesque to do than to cultivate the intellect and imagination. But whatever issues demand commitment without critical intelligence today will be stone dead tomorrow, and it is always disconcerting to discover that one has been embracing a corpse.”
(Northrop Frye, “A Revolution Betrayed,” 404)
[Distillate © HA&L + Joseph Adamson {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]
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