One of the early chapters that was poignant in my opinion was Chapter 4: What Are the Instruments of Good Works. This chapter is a thorough list of ways to behave in accordance with the will of God. It immediately reminded me of my class on the Buddha, because the Buddhists are obsessed with lists. The Buddha's lists are definitely more concise; many of Benedict's bullet points same nearly identical things.
Even conceding the redundancies, and approaching the text without a real religious backdrop, many of these decrees are still worthy endeavors. For example: "not to become attached to pleasures," "to keep constant guard over the actions of one's life," and "then not to murder" are all pretty decent tid-bits of advice. Some, though, are a little more heavy handed, like "to love fasting" and to attribute to God, and not to self, whatever good one sees in oneself... but to recognize that always that the evil is one's own doing, and to impute it to oneself."
I do believe it is important to bear responsibility for one's own shortcomings in life, considering we all have a handful, but I do not think that it is healthy to internalize everything bad you do and externalize everything good.
I think you make a good point about how internalizing the bad and externalizing the good without the vice versa leads to an emotional imbalance. It makes me wonder how people in this society would find peace if they have to hold things in. But, like we talked about in class, maybe it is just the idea of having self-control with the bad things. If that is the case, maybe the self-control would be the practice of not letting the bad overpower the good, if that makes sense? I think they might look at it as more of a practice and not a cut an dry expectation. I know someone in class mentioned how sometimes people can live the way of a monk for a short period of time, and that they practice certain parts of the "Rules" on certain months, so maybe it is the "all in moderation" concept again too, but I agree it does sound more black and white.
ReplyDeleteI actually really liked the inclusion of "to love fasting" on the list, because that is also very common in the Islamic religion. Fasting is supposed to bring you closer to God because it pulls you away from a lot of the unnecessary things in your life and also makes you greatful for things you normally take for granted.
ReplyDeleteI'm almost wondering if when St. Benedict writes on attributing the good qualities in yourself to God his intentions are really for the monks (and all believers) to understand that their talents were bestowed upon them for the purpose of fulfillment through glorification of the Lord.These gifts are something that should be practiced and delighted in, but they should also have a purpose that aligns with the heavenly kingdom somehow. The phrasing in the passage might miss a little bit of the authorial intent in that sense.
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