21 Maxims

Hello there...

Please consider this version of the 21 Maxims to proposed to supersede the current version.

21 Maxims - Final  Draft:


    1. Training - The purpose of training is to accommodate error without consequence. It is the key to learning and the Jedi Teachings are dangerous without guided practice.

    2. Teaching - Love what you teach and love who you teach. Teachers affect eternity - who can tell where their influence stops ? The Jedi mentor is there to challenge the learner, but never to pose an obstacle to their progress.

    3. Discipline - A disciplined mind will lead to peace, an undisciplined mind will lead to suffering. Indeed, for the mind without discipline, the Jedi Way will be impassable.

    4. Dedication - Inspiration lasts a week, motivation will fade after a month, disciplined dedication lasts a lifetime. The way to do great work is to love what you do and who you work with.

    5. Meditation - You have a treasure within you. The key to this treasure is meditation. It is not evasion, meditation fosters a serene confluence of the symbolic with the imaginary : reality. To the Jedi with a quiet mind, The Force will be felt and It will inform us.

    6. Clear Intention - The Force follows intentionality. With a quiet mind, we direct our clear intention through the ocean of possibilities and allow The Force to work through us.

    7. Balance - When we allow peace, harmony, and balance in our minds, The Force manifests in the world. In art and dream, we may proceed with abandon. In waking life shared with others, we must proceed with balance and discretion.

    8. Humility - Our perpetual trial is humility. We understand our agency is not solely from us, but through us : it is of The Force. In feeling The Force in ourselves, we see It in everyone and everything.

    9. Agency - Jedi are active in the world, acting as people of thought, and thinking like people of action. Be aware that beliefs become thoughts, thoughts become words, words become actions, actions become habits, habits become values, and values determine destiny.

    10. Capability - The Force does not ask of our ability, only our availability. In opening to The Force, Its capabilities flow through us. Indeed, clear intention is not enough, Jedi do.

    11. Self-Control - To control intention, the Jedi use The Force to tame the passions. In self-control lies the seed of freedom. We work to control our passions, lest someone exploit us through them.

    12. Discretion - For the Jedi, discretion is the better part of valour. Indeed, agency without discretion comes invariably to a tragic end. True wisdom is found in knowing when to raise the eyebrow, rather than the voice or the sword.
    13. Integrity - Taking the right action even when nobody's watching, integrity is easier kept than recovered. There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity.

    14. Fairness - The ability to rise above prejudice, all virtue is summed up in fairness. Indeed, lack of fairness is essentially a mark of weakness.

    15. Charity - In brightening everything on which it shines, Charity is love in action. We live on what we are given but build our lives on what we give.

    16. Compassion - Via compassion, The Force exhibits its true power. In seeking peace for others we practice compassion, in seeking peace for ourselves we practice compassion.

    17. Empathetic Joy - The necessary counterbalance to compassion, empathetic joy prevents the waters of compassion from draining away. We aim to feel the joy of others just as keenly as their pain.

    18. De-escalation - Between uncontrolled escalation and passivity, there is a demanding path of responsibility that we follow. Whenever we perceive monsters we should see to it we do not become monsters ourselves.

    19. Valour - True valour lies between cowardice and rashness. It is a delicate skill, those having it never knowing for sure until the trial comes. In any case, valour that struggles is better than recklessness that thrives.

    20. Honour - Acting with honour through The Force preserves peace. Always remember : if peace cannot be maintained with honour, it is no longer peace.

    21. Decency - Through decency, we render happenings tolerable. Decency is not derived through faith but precedes it. If decency could be easily found in reality, would we have need of myth ?

Notes:
    1. From Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
    2. From Alexandre Orion and Scott Hayden.
    3. From words attributed to Gautama Buddha. Adapted from Katherine Hepburn.
    4. From John Bingham. From Steve Jobs.
    5. From Eckhart Tolle. From Thich Naht Hahn. From Rumi.
    6. From Maia Toll. From Deepak Chopra.
    7. From Louise Hay. From Patti Smith.
    8. From C.S. Lewis. From John Ruskin. See definition of ‘Hierophany’.
    9. From Henri Bergson. From Mahatma Gandhi.
    10. From Neal A. Maxwell. From George Bernhard Shaw.
    11. From Parahansa Yogananda. From Anon.
    12. From Shakespeare. From Leon Gambetta. From Boonha Mohammed.
    13. From C.S. Lewis and Thomas Paine. From Tom Peters.
    14. From Wes Fursler and Aristotle. From Emma Goldman.
    15. From Confucius and Dinah Craik. From Winston Churchill.
    16. From Gautama Buddha. From the Dalai Lama.
    17. Inspired by Tim Ferris.
    18. From Dominique de Villepin. From Nietzsche.
    19. From Miguel de Cervantes. From Tacitus. From Hegel.
    20. From Brandon Sanderson. From John Russell.
    21. From Joseph Marie. From Christopher Hitchens. From Thomas Hardy.

 

Hello again...

I may not have been very clear in my last post. Please let me try again

Please read through these propositions to replace the current 21 Maxims.
We'll present to Council in 1 weeks time barring any big issues

Hi

Bump

I am ready

Not sure if I'm allowed to have an opinion but looks good to me Master.

From what I posted elsewhere:

The first half of #17, I can't make it make sense. The second sentence is fine tho.

And #5, again only the last sentence makes sense to me.

“Jedi Teachings are dangerous without guided practice.”

I think this makes us look really bad. It makes us seem like a violent or aggressive organization/cult. Can we not call our own teachings dangerous in the first maxim?

Otherwise I am broadly in support.

Thanks for these questions. Before responding it may be helpful to define what a maxim is, as it does place fairly heavy constraints on what can be said!

Definition: A maxim is a succinct formulation of a principle, rule, or basic truth about life. Usually clever, maxims are like great sayings everybody knows.

By their nature, they tend to be sweeping statements that inevitably overlook the exception that proves the general truth of the rule.

Alex will probably chip in but this is my understanding of what we were thinking / trying to say within these maxims:

Atticus post:
From what I posted elsewhere:
The first half of #17, I can't make it make sense. The second sentence is fine tho.
And #5, again only the last sentence makes sense to me.

17: Compassion fatigue (and weaponisation) is a common and serious problem for anyone looking to increase their circle of compassion. Cultivating empathetic joy (the Buddhist concept of Mudita, also known as Compersion in English – although that has some unfortunate alternative meanings!!) is the natural polar balance to compassion. It can prevent your well of compassion from running dry.

5: The ‘treasure’ within you is access to infinite and eternal peace – but this is normally locked-up in a metaphorical safe, deep inside people. Meditation is the key to unlocking the safe and accessing the ‘treasure’.  However, finding this treasure can lead to quietism and even hermeticism (a recurring theme / tension in the Star Wars mythology) – it doesn’t have to though (meditation is not evasion of reality). Depending on your metaphysics and definition – reality is a confluence of the symbolic and imaginal (e.g. see Predictive Processing Theories – probably the most popular group of cognition theories amongst neuroscientists, and see psychologists such as Jaques Lacan.). Meditation allows one to develop control of the mind and your relationship with ‘reality’.

TheDude post:
“Jedi Teachings are dangerous without guided practice.”
I think this makes us look really bad. It makes us seem like a violent or aggressive organization/cult. Can we not call our own teachings dangerous in the first maxim?
Otherwise I am broadly in support.

You make a good point. I had the same concern initially but we felt strongly enough to put this at the top.

There is no getting away from it:Meditation can be dangerous ( Too Much Mindfulness Can Worsen Your Mental Health (verywellhealth.com) ).

As already illuded to, compassion can be dangerous ( Compassion Fatigue | Psychology Today ).

Unconditional love can get you into all sorts of trouble (if taken too literally).

Even integrity can be dangerous.

Then there are other problems which shouldn’t arise, but can do: following some of the teachings (awareness of The Force) and not others (e.g. humility), thinking that lightsabre forms are genuine self-defence etc.

Religions have widely promoted the need for sangha, congregation, and teachers for these reasons and many others. Furthermore, the notion that there is an inherent danger to Jedi training is fundamental to the SW lore.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to replace ‘are’ with ‘may be’ or ‘can be’ – would that soften the phrase enough? We should discuss further . . .

Perhaps it would be more accurate to replace ‘are’ with ‘may be’ or ‘can be’

I do like " can be," it gives room for development AND failure. 

Thank you all for the feedback. Andy has pretty much explained concisely what I probably would have drawn out into a long diatribe full of footnotes and with a more extensive bibliography (which most of you would have found pedantic).

Rubin, as Andy has shown, yes, our teachings and practices are dangerous when incorrectly, incompletely and/or haphazardly attempted. Witness any conflict among Jedi and one sees the misapplication of at least one of our principles, usually more than one. In short, people get themselves in trouble by trying to dress up the ego in disguises of compassion and integrity which fit badly ("the do-gooders are the thieves of Virtue" ~ Watts paraphrasing Confucius).

Let's keep the declarative "is/are" rather than changing to the conditional "can be". Failure, as it were, is inevitable. It is better to let them know (and remind ourselves by the same) right upfront that these principles take actual practice, not just hearing about it ; enlightenment cannot be permanently acquired, invested in or capitalised upon... 

These are not written to make anyone feel good, build confidence (except the confidence that we all have an effort to make) nor guarantee success. They are, like any and all aspects of doctrine, set too idealistically high for perfection in them. But we all ought to be mature enough to not set perfection (or some shoddy simulacrum of it) as a goal. Certainly not a "goal" for others.

They are however written to show us that by practising these principles, even imperfectly, we can be worked on by the Force and thus find our lives a bit more fluid and quite a bit less "righteous". Don't choose a hill to die on, but rather one to live on.