Mind, the fourth circle of practice, tries to answer these questions:
- What am I interested in, or curious about? What holds my attention?
- What is good, or true? How can I increase my knowledge and understanding of the world?
- How can I appreciate or create what is beautiful?
Once we begin to find our answers to the questions of the spiritual domain, we naturally begin to raise these questions of the mind. We want to spend our time, and find purpose and meaning in, those things that interest us, that pique our curiosity, and that fully engage our attention.
We want to pursue those things we perceive to be good, and believe those things we know to be true. It brings pleasure to the mind to grow in knowledge and understanding. It also gives opportunity to apply that knowledge and understanding in the world around us, from which come reputation, compensation, and power.
Beauty arrests our attention, whether by symmetry, or rhythm, harmony, or melody; whether visually, aurally, tactilely, or fragrantly. In some respects it is subjective; in others objective. We know it when we experience it. It fills us with awe, with longing, with desire. To appreciate it is to grow, like a plant toward the sun. To create it is to bear fruit that blesses the world, like an apple that falls ripe from the tree.
When we can answer these questions with clarity and confidence, then we have marked out an intellectual path before us as plain as the yellow brick road. To read about and apply those ideas which fully engage us, to grow in knowledge and understanding, to appreciate and create beauty, is to walk the Elysian Fields crowned with laurel.
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