I've been thinking on exactly this since you brought up virtues at all some weeks back. You see, my deity assigned me long ago a bunch of "assisting spirits" to help train me in embodying different virtues. Until our discussion on your post, though, I wouldn't have called these "virtues."
You see, I was raised to think of virtues as social in nature: things like "benevolence", "righteousness", "sincerity", "justice", "faith", "charity", etc. all describe ways in which one party interacts with another party. But of the virtues I was given to train on, 70% of them are what I would consider "personal" (that is, having no social component whatsoever).
So, I've been pondering why this is the case, and I came to the same conclusion as you did in your previous post (on "hobbling the army") and this one: I am not yet in a position fit enough to assist others, so it only makes sense that my time go into strengthening myself. Perhaps one day, in this life or another, my deity will adjust the mix to be more social; but I'm simply not there yet. (Naturally, this had made a lot of once-close people pretty mad at me, but so it goes.)
And so which virtues one may attempt to embody are not just about what kind of person you want to be: they're about the niche that you are currently attempting to fill, and this can and indeed must vary in time. I should have known this already, of course, as there are quite a few parables along these lines: Jesus speaks of getting the log from one's own eye before inspecting their neighbors for motes, and here's one from the Majjhima Nikaya (quoting the Buddha):
A traveler once came to a river, its near bank dangerous and uncertain and its far bank calm and safe. Seeing this, they scavenged a raft from sticks and vines and crossed the river using it.
Suppose that traveler, after reaching the far bank of the river, said, "This raft has served me well; I shall now carry it around with me wherever I go." Would he be using the raft appropriately? Of course not! A more reasonable person would say, "This raft has served me well, but is of no further use for crossing land, so I'll continue on without it."
Similarly, all teachings should be used for crossing over and not for holding on to. You should let go of even the most profound teachings, and all the more so unwholesome ones!
In my defense, though, it can be difficult to generalize a teaching from one principle even to principles adjacent to it.
In any case, I suppose this is a long-winded way of thanking you for the post series.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2021-01-29 08:31 pm (UTC)You see, I was raised to think of virtues as social in nature: things like "benevolence", "righteousness", "sincerity", "justice", "faith", "charity", etc. all describe ways in which one party interacts with another party. But of the virtues I was given to train on, 70% of them are what I would consider "personal" (that is, having no social component whatsoever).
So, I've been pondering why this is the case, and I came to the same conclusion as you did in your previous post (on "hobbling the army") and this one: I am not yet in a position fit enough to assist others, so it only makes sense that my time go into strengthening myself. Perhaps one day, in this life or another, my deity will adjust the mix to be more social; but I'm simply not there yet. (Naturally, this had made a lot of once-close people pretty mad at me, but so it goes.)
And so which virtues one may attempt to embody are not just about what kind of person you want to be: they're about the niche that you are currently attempting to fill, and this can and indeed must vary in time. I should have known this already, of course, as there are quite a few parables along these lines: Jesus speaks of getting the log from one's own eye before inspecting their neighbors for motes, and here's one from the Majjhima Nikaya (quoting the Buddha):In my defense, though, it can be difficult to generalize a teaching from one principle even to principles adjacent to it.
In any case, I suppose this is a long-winded way of thanking you for the post series.