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Homage to the Muses

I am desperately trying to remember an idea that I had earlier. It was so vivid, so good, that I was certain that I will remember it for years to come. A few hours later — nothing. Not a single shred of memory apart from the fact that it was good and important.  Where do our thoughts come from? Are they stored somewhere, and we just put our hands down, grab one by the neck and take it to the surface of our mind? No? Do we produce them? I guess that is the answer of most. ‘It is my thought! I built it myself’?  ‘Out of what’, I would ask. I always had the feeling that the thoughts do not belong to me. It always feels rather magical to have an idea and most of the time I don’t feel happy receiving the credit for it. I feel like a fraud, like a pretender.  People in older times were somehow humbler. They believed in the existence of the Muses, and I find this very agreeable. How wonderfully humble that idea is! I produce something, but only if I am inspired by the gods. So ‘...
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In the Spur of the Moment


Did Seneca write this for us, the dharma people, visiting Buddhist teachings, by any chance? Why does this sound so familiar?


'Some come not to learn but just to hear him, in the same way as we are drawn to a theatre, for the sake of entertainment. You’ll find that a large proportion of the philosopher’s audience is made up of this element, which regards his lecture-hall as a place of lodging for periods of leisure. They’re not concerned to rid themselves of any faults there, but simply to enjoy the full pleasure the ear has to offer. ... Some of them are stirred by the noble sentiments they hear; their faces and spirits light up and they enter into the emotion of the speaker, going into a transport just like the eunuch priests who work themselves into a frenzy, to order, at the sound of a Phrygian flute. They are captivated and aroused not by a din of empty words, but by the splendour of the actual content of the speaker’s words – any expression of bold or spirited defiance of death or fortune making you keen to translate what you’ve heard into action straight away. They are deeply affected by the words and become the persons they are told to be – or would if the impression on their minds were to last, if this magnificent enthusiasm were not immediately intercepted by that discourager of noble conduct, the crowd: very few succeed in getting home in the same frame of mind.'

Seneca, Letters to Lucullus, Letter CVIII.

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