Contemplation
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: The starry heavens above me, and The moral law within me.” Immanuel Kant
This inscription can be found on the headstone of Kant’s grave and it encompasses his entire philosophical endeavour. He was driven by two awe-inspiring life phenomena; the external world (the starry heavens) and the internal world (the moral law). The "starry heavens” refer to everything we observe with the senses outside of our inner existence, while the "moral law” refers to what we observe with our "inner” eye. We should consider, just as Kant did, to be driven by the perusal of and reflection on how we interact with the world around us, and how we go about striving to live our moral lives.
Unfortunately, many people find it rather difficult to maintain a healthy balance between how they perceive the external world and how they interact with that world in relation to their internal world. They tend to neglect the one or the other, in some cases even both; they adorn their homes and gardens and focus on outer appearance; they spend a lot of money and time safekeeping their possessions but they neglect a very important facet: their inner being. Sometimes the exact opposite is true, people work so hard on their inner selves while knowingly or unintentionally neglecting their external worlds.
Make it a point to balance the scales of your external and internal worlds by way of continuous and conscious awareness of these two spheres, an awareness that can be attained by way of contemplation.
The complexity and greatness of the cosmos above
compared to my moral inner going-on,
made me realize how much I love
to contemplate this dual phenomenon.
Comments
Post a Comment