THE SENSUAL MAN, THE MORAL, AND THE SPIRITUAL.
1. From their birth, men exercise their senses, earlier than their intelligence,106 and they are by necessity forced to direct their attention to sense-objects. Some stop there, and spend their life without progressing further. They consider suffering as evil, and pleasure as the good, judging it to be their business to avoid the one and encompass the other. That is the content of wisdom for those of them that pride themselves on being reasonable; like those heavy birds who, having weighted themselves down by picking up too much from the earth, cannot take flight, though by nature provided with wings. There are others who have raised themselves a little above earthly objects because their soul, endowed with a better nature, withdraws from pleasures to seek something higher;107 but as they are not capable of arriving at contemplation of the intelligible, and as, after having left our lower region here, they do not know where to lodge, they return to a conception of morality which considers virtue to consist in these common-place actions and occupations whose narrow sphere they had at first attempted to leave behind. Finally a third kind is that of those divine men who are endowed with a piercing vision, and whose penetrating glance contemplates the splendor of the intelligible world, and rise unto it,103 taking their flight above the clouds and darkness of this world. Then, full of scorn for terrestrial things, they remain up there, and reside in their true fatherland with the unspeakable bliss of the man who, after long journeys, is at last repatriated. (Plotinus, Enneads, V, 9)
The discerning person, learned,
doesn't sense a (mental) feeling of pleasure or pain:
This is the difference in skillfulness
between the sage & the person run-of-the-mill.
For a learned person
who has fathomed the Dhamma,
clearly seeing this world & the next,
desirable things don't charm the mind,
undesirable ones bring no resistance.
His acceptance
& rejection are scattered,
gone to their end,
do not exist.
Knowing the dustless, sorrowless state,
he discerns rightly,
has gone, beyond becoming,
to the Further Shore.
(Buddha, Tipitaka, SN, Sallatha Sutta)
Did any other Plotinus work survive besides Enneads?
>>1498434
He didn't write anything. The Enneads are student notes. So no, unfortunately.
>>1498446
Damn, what a shame.
Probably the most based wise men ever tbqh family
Wisdom is wisdom.