Questions and Meditations

relatively little interference and tension intervenes: there is balance and health and a kind of natural gratefulness for the abundance and goodness of the earth and the body, once replete, has no regret. But can one even realize the sheer, formidable sequence of operations that precedes this instant when one buys a “hotdog” at the nearest “MacDonald” outlet?

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Indeed one becomes aware, with a degree of awe, to what extent and degree our activities and most of our movements are effectively determined by our animal impulses, instincts and functions. Identified in our physical consciousness with the animal body, we must perforce feed, clothe (since in the passage to humankind our bodies have lost the capacity of thermal adaptation) and shelter ourselves day in and day out and, during the entire active adult period of our existence, we must also procreate and reproduce. Of course, unlike the other mammals, we are provided and equipped with a more developed vital instrument and with an immaterial mental instrument which influences and bears upon the terms of our physical and emotional existence and strives to fashion us according to its more powerful, adventurous and glorious image of the thinking master of the Earth. But in actuality it is the array of our animal necessities that determines the edification of our way of life, our societies and institutions, our commerce, industry and economy.

And what would happen to our philosophies if we were actually free of these needs?

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The sublimation of desires and pleasures, the aesthetics of the senses, the ennobling of emotions and feelings, the discipline and illumination of thought, the acquisition of knowledge, the education and development of faculties and aptitudes, all of these pursuits and explorations allow us to

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