Baudelaire and awareness of others.

You can think that you are very close to someone but you may be quite unaware of what they're thinking and feeling. There's a famous prose poem by Baudelaire dealing with that subject, where a young man takes his beloved out to go to a restaurant, and they've got a table for themselves by the window. He's full of emotional love for this woman, and he feels so close to her that they have only got one soul. He knows every thought of hers and she knows every thought of his, they're just one. And he happens to just look out of the window, there's a poor woman begging, and he's in such an emotional mood he feels really sorry for this woman, overflowing with compassion. Just as he's feeling this, the voice of his beloved breaks in and says, "I really do wish these ugly people wouldn't come begging so close up to the window." Now in other words he is totally out of sympathy with her and she with him, and despite his feeling that they're all just one soul, he didn't really know what her mental state was at all, nor did she apparently appreciate his. They were really at cross purposes all the time. So one can train oneself to become more aware of other people, how they're feeling, how they're reacting, how they're responding, and this is of course what mindfulness, or one aspect of mindfulness, is all about.

You can read Sangharakshita’s thoughts and reflections on:
Nietzsche, Milton, Handel and artistic inspiration.
Nietzsche, Goethe and the enemy.
Nietzsche, Zen and Sudden Enlightenment.
Kant, the Buddha and the limits of reason.
The limits of space and time.
Baudelaire and awareness of others.
Spiritual friends.
Giving style to one’s character.
Anarchism.
Schopenhauer and the will to live.
Schopenhauer and aesthetic appreciation.
Mozart and pauses.
Mozart and the unpredictable.
Mozart and the concentrated mind.

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Dernière mise à jour:
21 juillet, 2008.