(SECRETUM, 1350)
Aug. Rite discernis, atqui verificatum est in vobis illud apostolicum: «Corpus, quod corrumpitur, aggravat animam, et deprimit terrena inhabitatio sensum multa cogitantem.»
Conglobantur siquidem species innumere et imagines rerum visibilium, que corporeis introgresse sensibus, postquam singulariter admisse sunt, catervatim in anime penetralibus densantur; eamque, nec ad id genitam nec tam multorum difformiumque capacem, pregravant atque confundunt. Hinc pestis illa fantasmatum vestros discerpens laceransque cogitatus, meditationibusque clarificis, quibus ad unum solum summumque lumen ascenditur, iter obstruens varietate mortifera.
S. Augustine. You discern rightly, and the words of the Apostle are fulfilled in you, which say, 'The corruptible body presseth down the soul and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things. Of a truth the countless forms and images of things visible, that one by one are brought into the soul by the senses of the body, gather there in the inner center in a mass, and the soul, not being akin to these or capable of learning them, they weigh it down and overwhelm it with their contrariety. Hence that plague of too many impressions tears apart and wounds the thinking faculty of the soul, and with its fatal, distracting complexity bars the way of clear meditation, whereby it would mount up to the threshold of the One Chief Good.
Tenzin Nanette Miles: "Hence that plague of too many impressions tears apart and wounds the thinking faculty of the soul," This seems to be the type of ideology that establishes an importance of ignorance.
RispondiEliminayea, but Petrarch was talking with himsef (via Saint Augustine) and trying to find a way out of a chaos of his own. And Augustine himself,in his Confessions,left one of the very first examples of PSYCHOLOGY. So things are muddled; you may wish to detach yourself from 'the world' (like in Bardo Thodol, where you are in fact detached) but images/fantasms do arise anyway, and keep arising. Looking in another direction, away from them, just does not solve the problem, often. So you have to come to terms with them (some terms).
RispondiElimina