Plotinus' Ennead I.3: On Dialectic translated from Ancient Greek by Eric S. Fallick What skill or method or practice brings us back to where it is necessary to journey? Where it is necessary to go, that it is to the Good and the First Principle, let it be assumed as having been granted and having been shown through many things—and indeed even through which things that is shown there was a certain bringing up. But who is it necessary for the one being brought back up to be? Is it not then the one, he says, having seen all or most things who in the first birth takes birth as a man who will be ..read more

 Q.  Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā contains various refutations of causation, change, "self-existence"/essence/svabh̄ava, and that perceptions and conceptions thereof are illusory and there is only "thusness"/tathata. For example, his tetralemma about causation comes to the conclusion that a thing could neither arise from something identical nor from something different, nor from both or neither (I will ignore the last one as I'm not sure anyone actually believes something can be derived from nothing). Therefore causation cannot actually take place. This is not only an attack on c ..read more

On Being Truly Liminal by Eric S. Fallick  A true contemplative ascetic, a renunciant, a real monastic, a Platonist philosophos is in core and essence and essential nature and in the deepest depths of his soul a truly liminal being.  He has definitively and consciously set out from and left behind this shore of individuated sensate existence in space-time, of the endless cycle of rebirth and redeath and misery, of becoming, genesis, samsara, and is striving with all his might to reach the other shore of re-union with the Good or the One, the telos, of escape from individuated spat ..read more

  Q. We talked about the cenobitical vs. the eremtical life approaches.  A point that I didn't think of while we were talking, but was hovering in the back of my mind, is that cenobitical approaches live in accordance with a rule (like the Rule of St. Benedict).  That is to say that every member of a cenobium has to align their daily activities in accordance with an objective rule that is the basic structure of that way of life.  I think this has advantages for spiritual practice.  It means that those who participate in this way of life have abandoned personal choices ..read more

 Q. We had a conversation about the experiences that Plotinus had of ultimacy.  There is a passage in Porphyry's biography that suggests that Plotinus had such complete experiences four times, or roughly four times, in Plotinus's life.  As I recall you argued against that kind of reading and suggested a more steady and complete realization.  I hope I remember your views correctly.   Apropos this discussion, Ennead 4.8 begins with a rare autobiographical comment by Plotinus on just this topic (Gerson translation, page 512):   "Often, after waking up to myself from ..read more

 Q. I wanted to bring something up; a few calls ago we talked about 'Buddhists' who don't follow a vegetarian regime and you commented that you would say 'they aren't really Buddhists'.  This is a sentiment I concur with, but I was wondering why most people don't see this kind of connection?  The question arises because if someone says they are a piano player one infers that they regularly play the piano.  If someone says they play poker, we assume that means that they sit down with others and play poker.  If someone says they are a gardener, again we assume that they ..read more

 Q.  To better understand how Plato thought, I want to learn more about how the Greeks in general thought about metaphor and analogy.  Plato's philosophical style I characterize as heavily analogical. The way the dialectic in general unfolds is never linear or logical.  What are your thoughts?  Are there any texts on analogical reasoning that can help me get a better grasp on the dialectic?     A.  I’m afraid that this is one that I can't help much with.  I don't know of any texts on analogical reasoning, and have never looked for any such, nor any ..read more

Platonism is a spiritual or religious or soteriological system that offers a path to release from the endless cycle of reincarnation and its concomitant misery. It belongs to a family of such systems, comprising Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and Platonism, that all accept the facts of reincarnation, the cycle of repeated birth and death, that this works by karma, that this state is wretched and painful and unsatisfactory and a fallen and mistaken condition, and that it is possible through great and correctly directed effort to be released permanently from this state. Al ..read more

Q. I have a question about Ennead I.2, On Virtues. Plotinus argues that the higher virtues are not the same as the civic virtues; though he considers the civic virtues important to establish for the spiritual quest. And Plotinus further states that the ultimate is unlike its emanations (I'm paraphrasing). To understand this I use metaphors like a blueprint for a house. The actual blueprint is not like the house: you can sleep in the house or eat in it, etc. The two, in that sense, are not alike. And absent an intelligence that can interpret the blueprint the house would not come into existence ..read more

An understanding or insight came to me to help me better understand two seemingly different things that I was not altogether clear about for some time. The two things are how to understand the fire and the objects being moved along the wall with the people moving them also talking in the cave in the Parable of the Cave in the Republic and how to understand my Buddhist practice and realization in this and previous births (and my practice and realization in other related systems in other previous births) in relation to the Path and Platonist practice. I have always found the Parable of the Cave ..read more