The Sea, The Sea

Highlights

Page 72

In some Buddhist countries, a person may retire for a year to spend time in a local temple, taking refuge. When such people emerge, they are ready to resume life in ‘the outside world’, bringing a fresh strength and compassion to their relations with others. There is no doubt that such retreats are spiritually, morally and even physically beneficial: we need some such mechanism in our own, relentlessly secular societies. Yet only a small proportion of any population is fitted for the life of the monk or the hermit. The temptation to withdraw, to achieve a seeming detachment, to be above or beyond the cacophony of ‘the world’ may be an attractive one, but it usually has nothing to do with a spiritual path, or the search for wisdom, or – heaven help us – saintliness. To practise detachment one must be in the world, in the chaos of emotions and needs and conflicts that make up ordinary life. If that world is sometimes disappointing, so be it: a just life is one that must be lived in the midst of disappointment.

Page 9

Sidney Ashe once offered to initiate me into the pleasures of vintage wine. I refused with scorn. Sidney hates ordinary wine and is unhappy unless he is drinking some expensive stuff with a date on it. Why wantonly destroy one’s palate for cheap wine? (And by that I do not of course mean the brew that tastes of bananas.) One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.

Page 31

We enjoyed and craved for each other’s company. What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.

Page 36

Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. In the middle they are acted. This is why all the world is a stage,

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