Be Bees, My Friend (Seneca - Letter #84: On Gathering Ideas)

You've heard of Bruce Lee's "be water," and you might have heard of Marcus Aruelius's "be fire," but do you know about Seneca's "be bees"?

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Title: Be Bees, My Friend (Seneca - Letter #84: On Gathering Ideas)

Season 14 Episode 4
Length: 25 minutes
Synopsis: You might have heard of Bruce Lee's "Be Water, My Friend" analogy, and if you're a listener of this podcast, you might have also heard of Marcus Aurelius's fire analogy, but have you heard of Seneca's BEE analogy? I know I hadn't! In this episode we review all three analogies, discussing how they integrate with Torah (thanks to Rav Kook) and how they can be applied to life.

(NOTE: This is a podcast episode, NOT an article! It is meant for LISTENING. The audio recording features me TALKING about these sources! Apparently, this was not sufficiently clear, so I’m spelling it out in big letters!)

Sources

Bruce Lee, Be Water, My Friend

Empty your mind
Be formless
Shapeless
Like water
Now, if you put water into a cup – it becomes the cup
You put water into a bottle – it becomes the bottle
You put it in a teapot – it becomes the tea pot
Now water can flow
Or it can crash
Be water, my friend.

Aurelius – Meditations 4:1

The ruling power within, when it is in accordance with nature, so confronts what comes to pass as always to adapt itself readily to that which is and that which is presented to it. This is because it requires no definite material; rather it moves towards its purpose with a reservation, and then makes the opposition which encounters it into material for itself. It is like a fire, when it masters what falls into it: whereby a little flame would have been put out, but a bright fire very quickly appropriates to itself the matter which is heaped on it, and consumes it, and rises higher by means of this very material.

Seneca – Letter #84: On Gathering Ideas

The journeys to which you refer—journeys that shake the laziness out of my system—I hold to be profitable both for my health and for my studies. You see why they benefit my health: since my passion for literature makes me lazy and careless about my body, I can take exercise by deputy; as for my studies, I shall show you why my journeys help them, for I have not stopped my reading in the slightest degree. And reading, I hold, is indispensable—primarily, to keep me from being satisfied with myself alone, and besides, after I have learned what others have found out by their studies, to enable me to pass judgment on their discoveries and reflect upon discoveries that remain to be made. Reading nourishes the mind and refreshes it when it is wearied with study; nevertheless, this refreshment is not obtained without study.

We ought not to confine ourselves either to writing or to reading; the one, continuous writing, will cast a gloom over our strength, and exhaust it; the other will make our strength flabby and watery. It is better to have recourse to them alternately, and to blend one with the other, so that the fruits of one’s reading may be reduced to concrete form by the pen.

We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in; these bees, as our Vergil says, pack close the flowing honey, And swell their cells with nectar sweet.

It is not certain whether the juice which they obtain from the flowers forms at once into honey, or whether they change that which they have gathered into this delicious object by blending something therewith and by a certain property of their breath. For some authorities believe that bees do not possess the art of making honey, but only of gathering it; and they say that in India honey has been found on the leaves of certain reeds, produced by a dew peculiar to that climate, or by the juice of the reed itself, which has an unusual sweetness, and richness. And in our own grasses too, they say, the same quality exists, although less clear and less evident; and a creature born to fulfil such a function could hunt it out and collect it. Certain others maintain that the materials which the bees have culled from the most delicate of blooming and flowering plants is transformed into this peculiar substance by a process of preserving and careful storing away, aided by what might be called fermentation—whereby separate elements are united into one substance.

But I must not be led astray into another subject than that which we are discussing. We also, I say, ought to copy these bees, and sift whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading, for such things are better preserved if they are kept separate; then, by applying the supervising care with which our nature has endowed us—in other words, our natural gifts—we should so blend those several flavours into one delicious compound that, even though it betrays its origin, yet it nevertheless is clearly a different thing from that whence it came. This is what we see nature doing in our own bodies without any labour on our part; the food we have eaten, as long as it retains its original quality and floats, in our stomachs as an undiluted mass, is a burden;[4] but it passes into tissue and blood only when it has been changed from its original form. So it is with the food which nourishes our higher nature—we should see to it that whatever we have absorbed should not be allowed to remain unchanged, or it will be no part of us.

We must digest it; otherwise it will merely enter the memory and not the reasoning power. Let us loyally welcome such foods and make them our own, so that something that is one may be formed out of many elements, just as one number is formed of several elements whenever, by our reckoning, lesser sums, each different from the others, are brought together. This is what our mind should do: it should hide away all the materials by which it has been aided, and bring to light only what it has made of them.

Epictetus – Enchiridion (The Handbook) 1

On the one hand, there are things that are in our power, whereas other things are not in our power. In our power are opinion, impulse, desire, aversion and, in a word, whatever is our own doing. Things not in our power include our body, our possessions, our reputations, our status, and, in a word, whatever is not our own doing. Now, things that are in our power are by nature free, unhindered, unimpeded; but things not in our power are weak, slavish, hindered, and belong to others. Remember, therefore, that whenever you suppose those things that are by nature slavish to be free, or those things that belong to others to be your own, you will be hindered, miserable and distressed, and you will find fault with both God and men. If, however, you suppose to be yours only what is yours, and what belongs to another to belong to another (as indeed it does), no one will ever compel you, no one will hinder you; you will find fault with no one, reproach no one, nor act against your own will, you will have no enemies and no one will harm you, for no harm can touch you.

ר' אליעזר מלמד

עוד באר מרן הרב קוק, שחלב ודבש הם שני מאכלים שנוצרים מדבר טמא. הדבש נוצר מדבורים שהם שרץ טמא, והחלב נוצר מדם שאסור באכילה. ודווקא מפני שהם מתהפכים מטומאה לטהרה טעמם מיוחד, שהם רומזים לתיקון העולם. וזוהי סגולתה של התורה, שמתקנת את הצדדים הרעים שבעולם ומתבלת את היצר הרע והופכת אותו לטוב. וזוהי גם סגולתה של ארץ ישראל, ועל כן היא נקראת "אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ".

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What thoughts do the water, fire, and bee mashalim bring to mind for you? How have you used them in your life?

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