A Fight for Love

Dear readers,

Today’s inspiration is something epic, grotesque, comic, and sublime. Philosophers would rise from the past, only to strike with the right theory the wrong person.

Enjoy the read and have fun!

With love,

Ana Paula Arendt

A Fight for Love

Ana Paula Arendt

All the philosophers and wise men gathered together

to try to make me stop loving you.

At last! A legendary battle!

Simone Weil¹, kindly precise, struck the first blow,

declaring attention the purest form of human action.

She gave warning that, when attention is captured, suffering grows.

To free oneself, then: not by suppression, but with detachment.

Love demands attention, not its possession.

Then came William James ², with the second punch to my face–

practical psychology, delivered in a direct declaration:

my experience is shaped by what I choose to embrace,

emotion deepens through persistent concentration.

With ruthless calm and impeccable correction,

he said my love would change if I changed its direction.

Montaigne³ seized me by the back, lifted my feet from the floor,

and hurled me against the wall, leaving me almost dead–

the most human, the most learned, the least technical of them all.

“Observe, observe!” he said. “See how your mind ruminates even more!”

“But interruptions, occupations, rules, and displacements set

could make you stop thinking of your beloved”– and the grief I bore.

Blaise Pascal⁴ raised me up and then struck me in the stomach:

his hand was steel-hard, implacable, yet lucid:

every mind searches for something upon which to fix its gaze.

Suffering comes when it fixes itself on what it cannot erase.

Diversion, therefore, should be better for my mind– facing love is stupid.

Epictetus⁵ cast a fierce light directly into my eyes, then sand:

“You suffer not because of things, nor because of anyone!

The cause is the way your mind has bound itself to what is done”

“One must withdraw one’s automatic assent,

not follow every thought that comes, nor grant it consent”.

All of them kicked my poor body: “Do not stop sensing,

only do not surrender all your attention to your feeling.”

Then I looked to the East.

But Gautama Buddha ⁶, Patanjali ⁷, and Nāgārjuna⁸ threw me out.

They floated around me, saying that I am not my desire;

then hung me with a rope above the fig tree, ouch,

my hands suspending my neck between death and fire…

They said I could see my desire without feeding it,

that yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind;

that my beloved is my own improper act of reification.

That mindful breathing would keep me present, attentive, and kind,

that you, my love, exist only inside my mind…

Thich Nhat Hanh⁹ approached me with a stick:

and as I escaped the rope, he struck me on the head.

“Feelings come and go like clouds, so swift!”

“Love is not feeling, but presence: dissolving you is bad!”

Ramana Maharshi ¹⁰ gave me the final blow,

He shouted to his disciples to never read a book of mine!

Then, with all the strength in his hand, he slapped me across the face.

“Suffering is a problem of ill-trained attention, absence of a guide!”

No metaphor! Love not a suffering from wishing your embrace…

Now I fell, humiliated and unconscious, to the ground,

beaten and abandoned by all those among the greatest.

But suddenly my life has become a painless dream.

In my dream, my love, you find my life, to you bound,

and you tend to all these wounds, your care supreme…

Your beautiful open smile, vanquishing

all the greatest and wisest men of the world.

You say you see the feeling for you that I hold,

and you tell me what I feel is love untold.

A love that you had never known…

¹ Simone Weil: “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer”; “Attention consists of suspending our thought...” (Gravity and Grace, section “Attention”). Attention entails emptying oneself in order to receive reality and shapes one’s relation to what is real and to the other (Waiting for God, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies...”)

² William James: “Attention is the taking possession by the mind... of one out of several possible objects.” (The Principles of Psychology, 1890, Vol. I, Chapter XI, “Attention”.)

³ Michel de Montaigne: On the mind’s tendency to feed upon and ruminate its own affections, and on the necessity of voluntary distraction: “the soul agitates and feeds from its own disquiet.” (Essais).

⁴ Blaise Pascal: Fragments on divertissement: the human being flees from himself through distractions, while the mind seeks constant occupation. (Pensées).

⁵ Epictetus: One does not control everything that arises in the mind, but one can withhold assent and choose what to follow mentally. (Enchiridion).

⁶ Gautama Buddha: “The mind is the forerunner of all things.” (Dhammapada, v. 1.) A central practice is to observe thoughts, sensations and states of mind without identifying with them: “there is desire,” rather than “this is me” (Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta).

⁷ Patanjali: “Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.” (Yoga Sutras, I.2.) Vṛtti refers to mental movements: thoughts, images and desires.

⁸ Nāgārjuna: Things do not possess a fixed, independent existence; experience is constituted relationally, while the mind tends to fix and reify it. (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.)

⁹ Thich Nhat Hanh: “Feelings come and go like clouds... Mindful breathing is my anchor.” See The Miracle of Mindfulness and True Love.

¹⁰ Ramana Maharshi: The mind becomes attached to objects, and suffering arises from identification with its movements. The formulation “Suffering is a problem of ill-trained attention” is a poetic condensation of this idea. See Talks with Ramana Maharshi.

(Ana Paula Arendt, the Golden Book of Faith).