Spiritual friends.

There is a certain amount of overlap between teachers and spiritual friends. The very greatest poets, artists and composers can help us rise to spiritual heights. They can inspire us with spiritual values. In the course of the last few hundred years, great changes have taken place, at least in the West. Previously, Christianity as represented by the church was the great bearer of spiritual values, even the sole bearer of spiritual values. But many people have lost faith in Christianity, lost faith in the church and they look elsewhere for their spiritual values. They find those values in great works of art. They find them in the plays of Shakespeare, they find them in the poetry of Wordsworth, Baudelaire and Rilke, find them in the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, find them in the great painters and sculptors of the Italian Renaissance. These great masters become our spiritual friends, especially if we remain in contact with them and with their work over a period of many years. We learn to admire them, to love them, we feel intensely grateful to them for what they have given us. They are among our spiritual friends in the broadest sense.

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.

[En français] [Auf Deutsch].

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Dernière mise à jour:
21 juillet, 2008.