Hospitality begins in the soul.
Hospitality is more than a rational, deliberate act. It is a way of being.
Hospitality ought to be built into a people’s way of living.
A people can only live the art of hospitality if they transform what they are.
Hospitality is not a habit. It is a genius of self that recognises the genius of other selves.
Hospitality takes us back to the root of humanity, the source of rivers.
Hospitality is not tolerance or charity, nor is it weakness. Hospitality can only come from the true strength of knowing what one is, and the tranquillity of allowing other people the strength of what they are.
Hospitality is a secret affirmation of the oneness of humanity, a sort of secular kinship. Hospitality is something we should be able to extend not just to our friends, but even to our enemies.
The idea of hospitality is challenged most when we are dealing with the unknown. It means that we have faith first even before we have evidence.
The ideal of hospitality does not die even when it has been betrayed, but is only made wiser.
Hospitality requires courage and wisdom.
According to Lao Tsu the truest hospitality is when the host is like a guest, and the guest like a host.
The limits of hospitality were revealed most in colonialism. We all know what happened to the hospitality of the Incas towards the Spaniards, and the Africans towards the Europeans. The Incas were slaughtered, robbed, and became victims of genocide. And the Africans still have not recovered from that early foolish kind of hospitality where the host is ignorant about the world and the true intentions of the visitors.
Hospitality has to be both wise and sane.
Philosophically there is no such thing as hospitality because we are all guests on this planet, we are all guests in life.
Didn’t Auden say about Yeats when he died, ‘Earth receive an honoured guest’?
In fact it is quite possible that we are guests in the universe and guests in the condition of mortal consciousness.
Hospitality is therefore temporary, finite, and subject to the continual changes of the human condition.
Today I am a guest, tomorrow I am a host.
There is also intellectual hospitality, the hospitality to ideas, to dreams, to ways of seeing, to perception, to cultures. We will call this invisible hospitality. This is the most important hospitality of all and it includes all other hospitalities.
Beyond that we are talking about the hospitality of the infinite, which should be pursued in silence and through initiation, following a secret path towards the eternal.