“The sense of the sacred is the capacity to perceive, or feel, the presence of the Celestial in earthly symbols, whether sacramental or natural; and this implies the sense of dignity as well as of devotion.”
[2016, La conscience de l’Absolu, Hozhoni, 57, 978-2-37241-020-5]
Spiritual life, Sense of the sacred
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Frithjof Schuon 82
Swiss philosopher 1907–1998Related quotes
Tragedy and the Common Man (1949)
Context: I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing — his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his "rightful" position in his society.
Sometimes he is one who has been displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks to attain it for the first time, but the fateful wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity and its dominant force is indignation. Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.
Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)
Source: Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (1960), p. 12
Quoted in "Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance" - Page 173 - by Richard K. Betts - Political Science - 1987
Assorted Themes, What is Corporeality?
“I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.”
"A Bad Big Idea".
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)
Context: The issue here really is not whether international trade shall be free but whether or not it makes any sense for a country — or, for that matter, a region — to destroy its own capacity to produce its own food. How can a government, entrusted with the safety and health of its people, conscientiously barter away in the name of an economic idea that people’s ability to feed itself? And if people lose their ability to feed themselves, how can they be said to be free?
"Assorted Landmines", p. 148
Awareness (1992)
Context: As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life. But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made. Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.