Do Your Best

[sdi]

䷇
8: Unity. First line moves. When there is confidence in his ruler, accord is blameless. When there is sincerity filling a plain vessel, ultimately there will come other blessings.

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[Socrates said to Euthydemus,] "Do you know that to the inquiry, 'How am I to please the gods?' the Delphic god replies, 'Follow the custom [νόμος] of the state;' and everywhere, I suppose, it is the custom that men propitiate the gods with sacrifices according to their power. How then can a man honor the gods more excellently and more devoutly than by doing as they themselves ordain? Only he must fall no whit short of his power. For when he does that, it is surely plain that he is not then honouring the gods. Therefore it is by coming no whit short of his power in honoring the gods that he is to look with confidence for the greatest blessing."

(Xenophon, Memorabilia IV iii.)

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Alas, to live in such times that the νόμος ("habit, law") of the state is blood-sacrifice upon the altar of Avarice! Surely that is not what the god means, and perhaps this is what the myth of Osiris is talking about: without a societal example, one cannot please the gods the way they ordain, and one has to cast about in darkness for any means they can. Everyone doing so on their own does not promote societal unity, and so it prevents the expression of divinity (which is characterized by unity).

Still, as Socrates says, the god is honored by one doing their best. Even if the most one can offer is brackish water in a waterskin, if one offers it sincerely, they are without fault.