The sages’ art of living

Antonio Meneghetti

The Sages’ Art Of Living

© Meneghetti А. L’arte di vivere dei saggi. Psicologica Ed., 1992, 1999.

© Antonio Meneghetti Scientific Foundation, 2014–2021 (http://meneghetti.ru).

The sage put his hand to his chest and withdrew a handful of objects which he threw to those present. Some were struck and suffered; they didn’t gather the objects, but rather followed their own shadows and remained in ignorance. Others gathered the objects and placed them between the heart and the mind. These became the light and continued the creation…

Antonio Meneghetti

Introduction

The history of a human thought does not know other such book about the highest esthetics.

After having followed many routes, from time to time considering absolute the one I had chosen, I reached the conclusion that each one forms an important part of the truth. Even today, when I meet people confirmed in their beliefs – some that are exemplary and others that are questionable – I have great tolerance, which allows me to understand people to be continuously beginning new paths that represent the many modes of life.

I don’t like to give advice to the so-called adults concerning the truth of some things, partly because they are already spoilt, partly because they are not able to renounce their historical identity, and partly because they are looking to have rather than to be.

However, when I think of young people (those who are fourteen to twenty-one years of age) my heart opens and my spontaneous desire to share knowledge manifests in a youthful way.

I once found that one of my daughters was crying. She told her mother later that she was suffering because she was not able to direct her life in a meaningful way. At first, I said nothing to my daughter. I said to her mother that it was a rather acute crisis, one of tension and anxiety of the metaphysical, something that is typical for a healthy and intelligent adolescent.

Most people, if not all, carry inside themselves a tomb that conceals the remains of their assassinated metaphysical potential. In essence, almost everyone reduces their existence to a biological cycle because they have not realized the ontic attraction of a metaphysical horizon (beyond the existence). The assassination of this call is systematically paid for with anguish.

I have written this book to reinforce that ontic call, to recognize it and to live it. So instead of living to die, life becomes living to be. Consequently anxiety, even when you are aware of it, is not experienced.

Chapter One

Three styles of life

1.1. The difference between living, mastery of living, and art of living

The verb

to live

 (in Italian “vivere”) means running like a force within a force. From the Latin

vis

 сomes force.

Vita

 (life) comes from

vis

 and from the Greek roots of the verb τιυηµι which means to post, give place or materialize; vita therefore means the place or the situation of living.

The term “living” (“vivere”) is formed by the identification of a force within a general force.

 Both the forces, the individual one and the general one, are moving like a curr