Can we have more than one true friend?
Friendship is a topic that has been discussed for many centuries, with major theories about it dating back to the likes of Aristotle. An interesting scholar addressing the question of friendship and its true nature was the French philosopher Michel de Montagne (1533â1592). In one of his key works, The Essays (Essais), de Montagne lays out his concept of the idea of friendship in âOf Friendshipâ (Book 27).
Where Aristotle distinguished between three types of friendship, namely friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of the good, de Montaigne focuses on only one of these types: the third typeâŚ
An open letter from your autistic friend
Youâve done it again! Deleted me. Blocked me. Friendship terminated. Without giving me as much as a clue why.
See ya! Or maybe notâŚ
Letâs roll things back a bit. Yesterday I wanted to tag one of my acquaintances in a post about a new local cafĂŠ opening because itâs in her area and I figured this was a great opportunity to catch up again at last. Itâs been a good ten months since weâd last caught up, but Iâd enjoyed reading her Facebook posts and seeing new photos of her little daughter a few times a week. âŚ
âŚand their relationship to meditation
Yoga is a set of ancient spiritual practices that originated in India, where it remains a strong tradition and is seen as a tool to achieve liberation to this day, in particular in Hinduism. Yoga is first mentioned in many direct and indirect references in the Upanishads between the fifth and third century BCE. In the early Vedic religion, yoga mainly emphasised performing rituals and ceremonies to obtain the favour of the gods. Over time, however, as the concept of liberation or moksha became more rooted in ancient Indian Hinduism, yoga gradually shifted from a focus on purely outward ritualsâŚ
A brief discussion
Rather than rely on prayer, the Buddhist path to salvation is based on deeds including cultivation of the mind in the form of meditation, whereby it is important to maintain the right balance between the three components of wisdom, morality and mental culture. Meditation is thus an essential Buddhist practice, with a distinction being made between mindfulness mediation and insight meditation.
Whereas the quality of mindfulness as such is not considered something inherently Buddhist, the function of mindfulness as one of the awakening factors, on the other hand, is, as these factors are considered to be indeed something only revealedâŚ
A brief analysis
Utilitarianism is a moral theory which posits that an action is morally right only if it produces the most utility (i.e. pleasure or happiness) for the greatest number of individuals. Unlike other utilitarians at the time, Jeremy Bentham strove to devise an exact method to calculate utility and turn economics, legislation and ethics into genuine sciences. He believed that the morally right act is the one act among all those the individual can choose from, which will, or is likely to, lead to the greatest amount of pleasure overall in the world. âŚ
