Virtue is Intolerant: On Wise Restraints and Cultivation

“You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding you have fastened around your noon hour?”
Khalil Gibran

Is happiness the ability to fulfill desires without any obstruction? Is a good life one that is free from impediments? Should we seek to actualize every whim?

When I was learning to improvise on the electric guitar, my teacher would always repeat the same thing: through restriction we find freedom.

He was referring to staying within one scale while soloing — and that through limiting myself to only playing 12 notes, I was free to explore their limitless permutations. The restriction of the domain of all possible notes on a guitar to just 12 was hard for a young musician to handle. Yet, through this wise restraint, I was able to cultivate real musical insight. This lesson has stayed with me.

Restraint begets freedom.

In the age of consumption, the idea that one ought to limit their ability to fulfill their desires seems counterintuitive to happiness. Yet, this is precisely what great institutions and religions have prescribed for ages. On the level of the individual, in the Buddhist path of training, restraint plays a crucial role in laying…