Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Was Voltaire a Buddhist?
Brigid
Veteran
Was Voltaire a Buddhist?
Though one sits in meditation in a particular place, the Self in him can exercise its influence far away. Though still, it moves everywhere... The Self cannot be known by anyone who desists not from unrighteous ways, controls not his senses, stills not his mind, and practices not meditation.
-Voltaire
Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.
-Voltaire
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
-Voltaire
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
-Voltaire
As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
-Voltaire
Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.
-Voltaire
Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
-Voltaire
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
-Voltaire
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
-Voltaire
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
-Voltaire
When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
-Voltaire
The more he became truly wise, the more he distrusted everything he knew.
-Voltaire, in his Dictionnaire, describing a theologian
The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool.
-Voltaire
I think the best way to fall on the infamous [l'infâme meant the Church for Voltaire] is to seem to have no wish to attack it; to disentangle a little chaos of antiquity; to try to make these things rather interesting: to make ancient history as agreeable as possible; to show how much we have been misled in all things; to demonstrate how much is modern in all things thought to be ancient, and how ridiculous are many things alleged to be respectable; to let the reader draw his own conclusions.
-- Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, quoted from Jim Herrick, "Écrasez l'Infâme," in Against the Faith--
Struck me as interesting. It's not exact, of course, but close. I don't know much about him. Any thoughts?
Brigid
Though one sits in meditation in a particular place, the Self in him can exercise its influence far away. Though still, it moves everywhere... The Self cannot be known by anyone who desists not from unrighteous ways, controls not his senses, stills not his mind, and practices not meditation.
-Voltaire
Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.
-Voltaire
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
-Voltaire
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
-Voltaire
As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
-Voltaire
Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.
-Voltaire
Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
-Voltaire
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
-Voltaire
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
-Voltaire
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
-Voltaire
When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
-Voltaire
The more he became truly wise, the more he distrusted everything he knew.
-Voltaire, in his Dictionnaire, describing a theologian
The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool.
-Voltaire
I think the best way to fall on the infamous [l'infâme meant the Church for Voltaire] is to seem to have no wish to attack it; to disentangle a little chaos of antiquity; to try to make these things rather interesting: to make ancient history as agreeable as possible; to show how much we have been misled in all things; to demonstrate how much is modern in all things thought to be ancient, and how ridiculous are many things alleged to be respectable; to let the reader draw his own conclusions.
-- Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, quoted from Jim Herrick, "Écrasez l'Infâme," in Against the Faith--
Struck me as interesting. It's not exact, of course, but close. I don't know much about him. Any thoughts?
Brigid
0
Comments
Voltaire.
Every possibility he might have been... the phenomenon is not recent...!
Though quite how he would have been intensely exposed to Buddhist teachings would be interesting to know... Unless he travelled a lot, one wonders how, in such an anally-retentive country as France (when it comes to other religions) he would have been privvy to it....?
That's a great one, too.
I'm fascinated by the history of thought and how it travels.
May not have been a Buddhist but maybe a Buddha.
I would recommend Candide, and, in particular, the chapter on the Lisbon earthquake (compare and contrast with Tsunami 2005, LOL). Another good read are his Lettres Sur Les Anglais. This particular text can be found, free and in English, on Prtoject Gutenberg:
Letters on England
I don't know if Voltaire was a great Buddhist or not 'cuz he could be really bitchy at times, don't you think? But funny...! "Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor Empire." Love that one. And was it Voltaire who said " France is a land of 1 religion and 100 sauces. England is a land of 100 religions and 1 sauce."? But don't you think he could be a little bitchy?
Brigid
Perhaps the Right Speech of the bodhisattvas sounds 'bitchy' to us, the sleep-walkers. Sometimes we have to be shouted at the wake us up. And, yes, he was wonderfully bitchy!
I have often wondered what he would have written - and how long he would have survived - if he's lived into the Revolution! I can't imagine that he would have shut up, even under Robespierre. Could Trotsky have been his reincarnation?
That's good. LOL! Maybe!
I've thought about Voltaire during the Revolution as well. I wonder if he would have thought it was a new descent into the dark ages.
Brigid
He would have approved of the fact that the theatres satyed open! And I'm sure he cackles every Quatorze juillet when we rabble could get into the Theatre francais free-of-charge. He did so love the theatre. Indeed, he thought that the state of theatre was a good measure of the height of a nation's civilisation.