The Activities of Vatican Saying 41
This essay continues some of the deliberations from the previous essays on syggenis hedone and how it compares to similar Buddhist ideas.
The teaching that I will expound here comes to us from the Kathegemones (Epicurean Guides). We know this because they were compiled after Epicurus died, as VS 36 mentions him in the third person as if his life had already become a legend. This teaching was lost to antiquity and found again in Vatican City in the year 1888.
The Saying
Let us now turn to the teaching.
One must laugh and seek wisdom and tend to one's home life and use one's other goods, and always recount the pronouncements of true philosophy.
γελᾶν ἅμα δεῖ καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ οἰκονομεῖν καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς οἰκειώμασι χρῆσθαι καὶ μηδαμῇ λήγειν τὰς ἐκ τῆς ὀρθῆς φιλοσοφίας φωνὰς ἀφιέντας.
gelan ama dei kai filosofein kai oikonomein kai tois loipois oikeiomasi chresthai kai medame legein tas ek tes orthes filosofias fonas afientas.
For many years I have nurtured this teaching. I had a google document on it that I would update with notes over years, and I eventually organized my notes into five precepts or activities, and two portions (ama dei and medame legein) that refer more to a mode of operation or manner of practicing, rather than an activity.
Gelan: We must laugh
The first precept constitutes a thought-provoking ethical challenge that initiates us into the lineage of the laughing philosophers and indicates that part of our ethical education involves managing our disposition, our attitude.
In the past, I have cited Lucian as a role model for this practice, but he’s not the only one. Nietzsche, in Thus Spake Zarathustra, also teaches laughter as a philosophical practice, saying “all good things laugh”. He does this more than once, treating laughter as medicine, and even advises a daily dose of dance. In fact, from the very beginning (TSZ 1.2) when Zarathustra leaves the godly hermit, he is “laughing like a child”. In the Worship of the Ass chapter, he gives his reader permission to laugh at himself and his old naive ideals; and he says that laughter even has the power to kill gods.
The Epicurean Scholarch Zeno of Sidon seems to have artfully woven laughter into his practice. When we studied Philodemus’ Method of Studying and Cultivating the Virtues, we learned that we must recruit the emotions in order to ensure our moral development. This is something he learned from his Scholarch Zeno of Sidon, about whom we learned in a previous essay that:
Philodemus says that he never ceases to praise his master the Scholarch Zeno of Sidon’s kauchai (which the author translates into French as celebrations exaltés, to boast or to glory in a thing) and theoforiai (which the author translates into French as transports enthusiastes) whenever Zeno narrates the pastimes of Epicurus, Metrodorus, and their companions.
This makes me think that Zeno was not just helping his students to cognitively and rationally assimilate the doctrines, but also training their (non-rational) dispositions by encouraging wholesome, happy emotions and by celebrating friendship.
Following on our previous discussion on the non-conceptual nature of the salvific insight in both Epicureanism and the hongaku interpretations of Buddhism, it seems to me that an Epicurean who wishes to awaken their innate pleasure faculty, would have to move from too much thinking and too little feeling to a place of greater feeling and less thinking. This does not mean that rational methods are not useful. The therapeutic process to heal the soul (as seen in Philodemus) is mostly logocentric (it relies mostly on words), but this is not complete on its own. The main point to remember here is that Zeno was not just teaching cognitive assimilation of doctrines: he was nurturing healthy emotions in his disciples and helping them to train the muscles of their feelings.
Ama dei: On the Simultaneity of Practice and Pleasure
This is not a precept, but a mode of operation or method. It indicates that these things must be done at one and the same time.
The dei portion of “ama dei” is tied to the root deo, the original prolepsis of which means “to bind”, and this translates as “one must” or “it is necessary to”.
The ama portion means “marking the simultaneous occurrence of two events; simultaneously; at once; at the same time”.
This simultaneity instruction rejects false dichotomies that claim that we must choose between one practice and another, instead arguing that we need some measure of many ingredients for a complete life (as we see in Principal Doctrine 5).
I wish to return here to our previous discussions on the parallels between Buddhist and Epicurean practices. “Ama dei” reminds me of what Buddhists might call instant enlightenment (satori), which is a feature of salvific interpretations of Buddhism that do not posit an afterlife or a liberation in the far-off future or after many lifetimes.
“Practice and realization are identical”. - Zen Master Dogen
Dogen, founder of one of the Zen lineages in Japan, held that practice and enlightenment are inseparable and that there can’t be enlightenment separate from practice. This reminds me of our present precept that laughter must be practiced at one and the same time as philosophy. It also reminds me of Vatican Saying 27:
The benefits of other activities come only to those who have already become, with great difficulty, complete masters of such pursuits, but in the study of philosophy pleasure accompanies growing knowledge; for pleasure does not follow learning; rather, learning and pleasure advance side by side.
Both sayings 27 and 41 use the word ἅμα (ama), which has two (adverb and preposition) groups of translations:
marking the simultaneous occurrence of two events: simultaneously, at once, at the same time
marking general concurrence (spatial, temporal, etc: together)
at the same time with
together with
I believe that this simultaneity (“ama”) is a key to understanding the salvific power of Epicurean philosophy. While studying the similarities and differences between Buddhism and Epicureanism, I noticed that this simultaneity (ama) is a feature of salvific doctrines of this world and that we see doctrines of simultaneous salvation in the strains of Buddhism that are interpreted as referring to this world, rather than promising the attainment of Buddhahood in a future lifetime. Doctrines of instant salvation accentuate the simultaneity of cause and effect, while doctrines that promise salvation in the afterlife or in a future, far-away lifetime reject simultaneity of enlightenment and practice to the extent that they reject achievement in this life.
“Because liberation is said to be directly accessed in the moment and thus can depend on only one factor, both the moment of liberation and the factor on which it depends—whether defined as faith, insight, or exclusive commitment to a single form of practice—are typically said to contain the whole of enlightenment.” - Jacqueline Stone, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism, page 232
In other words, the practice IS the content of pleasure, the context of pleasure, the cause of pleasure, and the pleasure itself. This aligns with both PD 5 and VS 27 and 41, the latter two of which employ the word “ama” and point the finger at simultaneity: a straight path that delivers in an instant.
I wish to share here one example that illustrates both the simultaneity of praxis and pleasure, and the immanent nature of enlightenment. Epicureans celebrate a feast on the Twentieth of every month with their friends of like mind. In a previous Eikas celebration, we explored the practices related to theoxenia, where friends and guests are fed and treated as god-like.
“You should know that suchness is to be contemplated with respect to all things … When you provide for your wife, children, and retainers, or even feed oxen, horses, and the others … you have in effect made offerings to all the Buddhas and boddhisattvas of the ten directions and to all living beings … And this is not only true of offerings made to others. Because we ourselves are precisely suchness, one’s own person includes all Buddhas and boddhisattvas of the ten directions and three time periods … And because cause and effect are nondual, all practices, which represent the causal stage, are simultaneously the myriad virtues of the stage of realization.” - Tendai hongaku ron, pages 133-134, cited in Jacqueline Stone, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism, page 195
If we juxtapose this to the logic of Eikas, we see that the feast offered to the sacred fire in the bellies of our friends is a sacrament, a sacrificial offering to the makaria zoa (Epicurean bliss-beings) here and now, in this world. Transcendental categories collapse, and we make fully immanent the techniques of piety.
The easiest way to ensure that we are practicing “ama dei” is to find the intersections between these five precepts and to practice in those intersections. When we place this before our eyes, we see that this entails bringing laughter into the spaces where we manage our household or business and affairs and bringing philosophy into our home and workspace. By this technique of practicing in these intersections, we start to observe the redemptive powers of laughter and philosophy in our environment and in our activities.
We must practice philosophy
The second precept sets the expectation that the student will practice philosophy. Without this premise, this entire saying would not make sense or be useful.
I believe that the importance of this precept lies in the need for an inner practice in addition to the external expression. This is because the first and fifth precepts involve self-expression, both non-verbal (laughter) and verbal. But in order to express laughter habitually, we must first cultivate a certain attitude, mentality, or lightened-up disposition that nurtures laughter. And in order to utter out loud the words of true philosophy, we must first cognitively assimilate them. And so there seems to be an inner work that precedes these other precepts, which is why they must be practiced together with philosophy, which (in my view) furnishes the inner practice that must precede these two forms of non-verbal and verbal expression.
Oikonomias: We must manage our household and other affairs
The third and fourth precepts revolve around issues of autarchy and make me think that this adage perhaps originated in Metrodorus of Lampsacus, our second founder, who was known (as per the report of the biographer Laertius) as a great administrator. Philodemus also reports that Metrodorus had an interest in economics and helped students to carry out hedonic calculus concerning the management of one’s household and property. For more on Epicurean economics, you may read my most recent outline of the Epicurean doctrines on wealth (… and furthermore, you may compile your own, since Philodemus encouraged all students to gather their own epitome on wealth and property management).
O.F.F.A.: Uttering out loud the words of True Philosophy
I memorized the fifth precept within Vatican Saying 41 by the acronym offa, which derives from the words orthes philosophias phonas aphientas. Medame legein speaks of ongoing, constant, long-term effort, ergo this is to be the most persistent of the five efforts and all the other activities within VS 41 must accompany this main activity of constantly uttering the healing words of true philosophy. We are to weave our enlightened self-expression into the other activities we engage in.
In the past, I’ve speculated that this might have utility in terms of passive recruitment of potential Epicureans. Incorporating philosophy into our casual self-expression also has the effect of advancing true culture: the creation of art and values that are not nihilistic but rooted in authentic and enlightened Epicurean values. But the main utility of uttering out loud the words of true philosophy probably lies in the didactic value of the practice: by repeating or paraphrasing (like Philodemus does in his Tetrapharmakos) the words of correct philosophy, they become strong in our minds and in our memory. This is a method of learning and teaching.
Philodemus insisted that the healing properties of music were in the words, the content, and some modern members of the Society of Epicurus insist that we should repeat the Doxai in our native language.
The Contractual Method of Exegesis and VS 41
In a previous essay on the four methods of exegesis for studying Kyriai Doxai, I discussed a contractual method of interpretation of Epicurean teachings. If we apply this method to VS 41, we can begin to consider the activities of VS 41 as an agreement between the Kathegemones (Epicurean Guides or teachers) and their sincere students–or, alternately, as an agreement between two very sincere friends who practice together and who are willing to hold each other to a noble standard. This helps us to make sense of the utility of this saying.
If we place before our eyes what would happen if this saying became an agreement between a teacher and a student of philosophy, we’ll see that the teacher will then have a right to expect a certain dignity in the expression of the student, who will have to perhaps express himself clearly, and balance candor with suavity, as these are the things that the Kathegemones insisted on. VS 41 thus initiates a process of correction of speech by which the Epicurean Guide holds the student to a certain standard of clear and correct speech that does not confuse or contradict the facts and is not delivered out of ill will.
Why would a Kathegemon need to see laughter in a student, and set it as an expectation or precept? The Kathegemones said (in Vatican Saying 27) that, in philosophy, the activity and the pleasure happen at one and the same time. Therefore, if we are not laughing, we are not practicing correctly. Also, the Kathegemones are materialists who judge things by concrete signs. Laughter is a clear sign of pleasure in the body of the student, bubbling up in the belly. This, I believe, is why laughter makes sense as part of the agreement of practice, since it allows the guide to see that the student is practicing correctly.
Conclusion
The activities found in Vatican Saying 41 point to practices that are verbal or rational (via offa, or the out-loud expression of the words of philosophy), as well as non-verbal or dispositional (via gelan, or laughter practice). It also includes an inner and outer practice, and can be used to set up noble expectations between teacher and student (or between two highly committed students) that help sincere practitioners of Epicurean philosophy to advance.
This concludes the three-part essay series on awakening innate pleasure, which I will continue to refer back to in future essays. I invite you to practice these precepts, and to write your own outlines and commentaries on these teachings, and to share your insights and feedback with us in our Garden of Epicurus FB group.
