Antoine Bourdelle’s Herakles the Archer (1909) captures the Stoic ideal: complete commitment to the action, complete detachment from the outcome.
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
Whereas depression weighs upon life as it is, anxiety points towards the future: what might happen, what might go wrong, what might be expected of us.
Of course, some concern for the future is necessary. It motivates us to do what’s needed, pay our bills, and avoid danger. So the aim cannot be to abolish anxiety altogether—simply to prevent occasional alarm from becoming a permanent state.
Modern Life
The modern world makes this difficult because threats are seldom all-or-nothing. Our ancestors faced a predator, or did not. We have emails, deadlines, mortgages. And when we look on social media, we feel we are falling behind.
Because the pressure is diffuse and continuous, we internalise it. Eventually, nobody needs to chase us; we carry the pursuer in our head.
Once the pursuer is inside us, we try to outrun them by keeping busy. Activity gives us a sense of control, but often we are not addressing the anxiety so much as preventing ourselves from feeling it. We run faster and faster so that we never have to ask where we are going.
There is a Zen story about a horseman galloping down a path at speed. It seemed as if the rider was on some urgent and vital mission. “Where are you heading?” hollered a bystander. “I don’t know!” came the already distant reply, “Ask the horse!”
How to Reduce Anxiety
The first step, then, is to stop running and name the anxiety. A vague anxiety can fill the whole sky; a named fear becomes one object within it. Once identified, it can be worked with, accepted, or dismissed.
In particular, we can determine what part of the anxiety is actually within our control. The ancient Stoics emphasized this distinction between what is and is not in our control. What is not in our control must simply be let go.
The Stoics had this image of an archer. The archer does all he can to shoot accurately. But once the arrow leaves the bow, its fate is no longer within the archer’s control. So the right-thinking archer focuses on the action, not on its result—because the first is in his control, whereas the other is not.
When dealing with our anxiety, we should all become like the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, who wrote, “Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.”
The Surprising Way to Taste Wine More Honestly—and Enjoy It More
Blind tasting begins with wine. It ends by changing the way we pay attention to the world.
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
Most people assume that blind tasting is about showing off. They picture wine experts sniffing theatrically at a glass before announcing, ‘Château Margaux 1999’ to the admiration—or irritation—of everyone around the table.
In reality, blind tasting is almost the opposite. Its purpose is not to demonstrate superior knowledge, but to remove everything that gets in the way of seeing the wine clearly. Far from being an affectation, it is the fairest, most honest, and ultimately most enjoyable way of tasting wine.
It also teaches us something unexpected: not only about wine, but about the workings of the human mind.
Allow me to explain.
Pure Objectivity
Wine is a combination of acids, alcohols, sugars, polyphenols, and other biochemicals—up to one thousand of them. Together, they create its colour, aromas, flavours, texture, and structure. Grape variety, soil, climate, viticulture, winemaking, and ageing all leave their imprint on the liquid in the glass, and the experienced taster learns to read these clues.
Unfortunately, we rarely taste wine alone.
Instead, we taste the label, the bottle, the reputation of the producer, the prestige of the region, the price on the shelf, the opinions of critics, and even our own expectations. We may think, ‘I once had a wonderful holiday in this vineyard,’ or, ‘I don’t like Sauvignon Blanc.’ We may be influenced by the grandeur of a château, the atmosphere of a restaurant, or even the temperature of the room. All these things can enrich our enjoyment of wine. But they can also distort our judgement.
Blind tasting strips these influences away. The wine is served anonymously in a standard glass, ideally in a neutral setting, without flourish or fanfare. Nothing remains except the liquid itself.
Rather than asking whether we like a famous label or a prestigious appellation, we ask a much simpler—and much more interesting—question: What is actually in the glass?
Beyond Objectivity
Blind tasting is often presented as a way of eliminating bias. It is certainly that. But reducing prejudice is only the beginning.
There is immense pleasure in focusing entirely on the wines before us; in stretching and refining our senses; in applying judgement rather than preconception; in searching our memories for forgotten aromas and flavours; in comparing our impressions with those of fellow tasters; in getting it exactly right, approximately right, or even wrong for the right reasons. Above all, there is the pleasure of discussing the wine and learning not only about that particular bottle but about wine itself.
Blind tasting encourages curiosity over certainty. Instead of asking whether we guessed correctly, we begin to ask why a wine tasted as it did. Every bottle becomes an opportunity to learn.
In refining their senses and aesthetic judgement, blind tasters become much more conscious of the richness not only of wine but also of other potentially complex beverages such as tea, coffee, and spirits, and, by extension, the aromas and flavours in food, the scents in the air, and the play of light in the world.
For life is consciousness, and consciousness is life.
Wine and Consciousness
In philosophy, phenomenology is the study of the structures of conscious experience. Blind tasting is phenomenology in one of its purest forms. It returns us from our ideas about the world to the world itself, while revealing just how readily the mind colours our experience with expectation, memory, and suggestion.
Wine, then, becomes a remarkable instrument for studying not only the world but ourselves.
The more practical among you may rest assured that blind tasting also serves more immediate purposes. Winemakers need to taste a wine as they are making it; buyers before adding it to their stocks; journalists, critics, and sommeliers before recommending it to their readers and patrons; and wine lovers before sharing it with their friends. Blind tasting also forms the basis of many wine qualifications and competitions, and may even open the door to a rewarding career in the wine trade.
‘My genius,’ wrote Nietzsche, ‘is in my nostrils.’ Many years ago, I called the police to force entry into a neighbour’s house, on the basis that I could smell through the letterbox that the neighbour had died—rather than just gone away, as everyone else thought.
Our senses are capable of far more than most of us ever ask of them. Blind tasting begins with wine. It ends by changing the way we pay attention to the world.
Continue Exploring
If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy my book The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting, which explores not only how to taste wine, but why it matters. Combining practical guidance with philosophy, psychology, and the science of perception, it will help you taste with greater confidence, objectivity, and enjoyment.
Yoga is one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy.
A darshana is an outlook, a philosophy, literally, a “vision.” The term darshana is especially associated with the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy, the so-called shaddarshana, or “six visions.” What makes them orthodox, and therefore Hindu, is that they accept the authority of the Vedas. With good reason, the shaddarshana are often presented in pairs: Samkhya-Yoga, Nyaya-Vaisheshika, and Mimamsa-Vedanta. In this post, I shall, of course, be focussing on Samkhya-Yoga.
The Samkhya School
The founder of the Samkhya school is held to be Kapila, who lived, perhaps, in the sixth century BCE. Little is known about him. He is sometimes described as an avatar of Vishnu or the grandson of Brahma. He is mentioned by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita as the greatest of sages: “Amongst the gandharvas I am Chitrath, and among the siddhas, I am sage Kapila.” According to Puranic lore, his meditation produced such intense inner heat that, when they disturbed him, he incinerated the Sagarputras, the 60,001 sons of King Sagara, simply by opening his eyes.
In the Buddhist tradition, the students of Kapila built the Shakya capital of Kapilavastu. The Buddha, who was raised in Kapilavastu, was therefore steeped in Samkhya philosophy, explaining the affinities between Samkhya and Buddhism.
Kapila is held to have authored the Samkhya Sutra, although the extant text appears to be medieval in origin. Instead, the school’s primary text is the Samkhyakarika by Ishvarakrishna, who lived in the third or fourth century CE.
In the first verse, Ishvarakrishna states the aim of Samkhya: to eliminate the three forms of dukkha (suffering): internal, from physical and mental disease; external, from outside threats, especially other people; and divine, that is, from natural disasters.
Samkhya is a radical dualism that holds that the universe is made up of two independent, infinite, and eternal realities: Purusha (souls) and Prakriti (matter or nature). The Purushas are conscious but have no attributes. They are pure ‘witness consciousness.’ Prakriti is composed of the three gunas (qualities or tendencies of matter), sattva (preservation, harmony), rajas (creation, passion), and tamas (destruction, apathy).
Initially, the gunas are in equilibrium. But at its approach, Purusha disturbs this equilibrium in favour of rajas, and this imbalance sets off material creation.
Comparisons With Western Dualism
Unlike Western dualism, which is between mind and matter, Samkhyan dualism is between self and matter—with “matter” encompassing most of what Westerners would consider “mind” (intellect, ego, emotions, etc.)—everything, in fact, except witness consciousness, of which mind is the instrument.
Also, unlike Western dualism, Samkhyan dualism is atheistic or agnostic. Although an orthodox school, Samkhya is remarkably silent about God and the Vedas.
The Samkhyan Account of Creation
At the approach of Purusha, undifferentiated Prakriti evolves 23 tattvas (elements, aspects), first buddhi (intelligence), and from buddhi ahamkara (ego or self-consciousness).
Under the influence of sattva guna, ahamkara yields the five organs of sense (eyes, ears, nose, skin, tongue), the five organs of action (arms, legs, speech, organs of elimination, organs of creation), and manas (mind).
Then, under the influence of tamas guna, ahamkara yields the five subtle elements (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste), from which the five material elements (earth, air, water, fire, ether) emerge.
Notice that the material world is last in the order of creation. Its evolution from the five senses suggests that the world is an illusion, although this is never explicitly stated.
Manas has a special role in mediating between the ten organs, the five senses, and the world without. Being of Prakriti, buddhi, ahamkara, and manas are not conscious. However, they appear to be conscious and are set into motion by proximity with Purusha—functioning, as it were, by reflected consciousness.
The Samkhyan Account of Liberation
Adding Purusha and Prakriti to the 23 tattvas makes a total of 25 tattvas—of which 24 are of Prakriti. Nonetheless, it is for the sake of Purusha that the differentiation occurs, to provide it with experience and, in time, with liberation (moksha). By reflecting the consciousness of Purusha, Prakriti is showing Purusha to itself.
Purusha and Prakriti are like a lame man and a blind man, lost in the wilderness. The blind man carries the lame man, who guides his steps. Both are looking for their way home, to moksha, when they will part ways. But having never traveled, the lame man is avid of experience and so enthralled by his adventure that he forgets about his destination.
To be consistent with the universal law of karma, Samkhya assumes that a Purusha that is bonded to Prakriti (that is, a jiva), has two bodies: a gross, mortal body, and a subtle body made up of the higher functions which transmigrates according to past merit. The continuity of the subtle body enables the Purusha to keep on learning through numerous incarnations.
Final liberation consists in the realization of the separateness of Purusha and Prakriti. This involves a process of involution, or “going back to the womb”—that is, reversing, through intellect and understanding, the process of evolution from the material elements back to undifferentiated Prakriti and beyond.
In short, salvation consists in counting backwards.
The Yoga School
Samkhya exerted such a profound influence on Yoga that the two schools are sometimes merged as Samkhya-Yoga. But whereas Samkhya emphasizes knowledge and discrimination as the path to liberation, Yoga rather emphasizes discipline.
Although Yoga essentially borrows the metaphysics of Samkhya, it introduces a twenty-sixth tattva, namely, Ishvara, or “the Lord”—for which reason it has been called “Theistic Samkhya.” The nature of “Ishvara” is open to interpretation, but it may be regarded as a special Purusha that is unentangled and, therefore, inactive.
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali
In the second century BCE, or perhaps the fifth century CE, Patanjali collected the ideas around yoga in the Yoga Sutra. These 196 verses became the foundational text of Yoga, which, towards the end of the first millennium, began to be mentioned as a separate school.
Patanjali’s synthesis influenced all other schools of Hindu philosophy, which regard it as authoritative. It is sometimes referred to as Raja Yoga (Royal Yoga) or Ashtanga Yoga (Eight-Limbed Yoga) to distinguish it from the many other forms of yoga, such as Jnana, Karma, Bhakti, Mantra, and Tantra—which are, of course, more complementary than mutually exclusive.
The Yoga Sutra has four sections: Samahdi (Concentration), Sadhana (Practice), Vibhuti (Yogic or Magical Powers), and Kaivalya (Isolation or Liberation). In the first section, Patanjali defines yoga as “the cessation of mental fluctuations” (chitta vritti nirodha)—with chitta (mind) assimilated in the Samkhyan system to buddhi, ahamkara, and manas. In the third section, he warns against practicing yoga for the perverted purpose of acquiring yogic powers—suggesting that this sort of thing may have been common.
Ashtanga or Eight-Limbed Yoga
The eight stages of Patanjali’s Yoga are:
Yama(abstinence or restraint)
Niyama (discipline or observances)
Asana (‘seat’, posture)
Pranayama (breath control)
Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses)
Dharana (concentration of the mind on some object)
Dhyana (steady meditation on that object) and
Samadhi (absorption, ecstatic union with the ultimate).
The first two stages are ethical preparations. Yama involves abstinence from injury, falsehood, stealing, lust, and avarice. Niyama involves purity or cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study, and devotion to God.
The next two stages are physical preparations, each involving a series of exercises to remove physical or bodily distractions.
The fifth stage involves taking control of the mind by emptying it of impressions.
The remaining three stages, which may take several lifetimes to perfect, aim at increasingly heightened states of awareness and return.
According to Patanjali, the five kleshas (poisons, obstacles to Yoga and liberation) are ignorance, ego, attachment or desire, aversion to unpleasant things or truths, and fear of death and desire to live.
Final Remarks
The aim of yoga, and ascetic practice in general, is essentially to react against ordinary human habits, which entangle us, or our Purusha, with Prakriti, to the extent that Purusha identifies with Prakriti and more particularly with the restless chitta and its manifold modifications.
This is a far cry from the yoga practised in the West as a form of physical culture, with postures borrowed from Hatha Yoga and optional spiritual sprinkling for stress relief. Even Hatha Yoga is about a lot more than that.
The labyrinth symbolizes the winding path of life: not a puzzle to be solved, but a journey to be lived.
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
Essay substantially revised on 22 July 2026.
What’s the difference between a maze and a labyrinth—and why are they making a comeback? Once thought of as little more than decorative curiosities, they are increasingly being rediscovered as places of reflection, meditation, and healing. To understand why, we must go back to the most famous labyrinth of them all.
The Cretan Labyrinth
In Greek myth, King Minos, to consolidate his position on the Cretan throne, asked the god Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull as a sign of divine favour. But instead of sacrificing the bull as he ought to have done, he decided to keep it for his stud farm. Poseidon punished Minos by making his wife Pasiphaë lust for the bull.
Pasiphaë pleaded with the master craftsman Daedalus to build her a hollow cow in which to hide out with the bull. Daedalus’ cow seemed so true to life that the bull mounted it. Some time later, Pasiphaë gave birth to the Minotaur, a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man.
The Minotaur, as he grew, became increasingly violent and even began eating people. Fearing that his subjects would rise against him, Minos sought to contain his stepson in a series of ever stronger cages; but after he broke out of the strongest cage, he asked Daedalus to build a maze of tunnels beneath his palace.
The Labyrinth, as it came to be called, was so intricate that even Daedalus, having built it, struggled to escape from it. The Labyrinth served Minos well, enabling him to intimidate and dispose of his enemies while also hiding and feeding the Minotaur—who now would eat nothing but human flesh.
Theseus to the Rescue
Minos, Minotaur aside, was a great king. Under his rule, Crete prospered and grew into a naval power. When his eldest son Androgeus came of age, he travelled to Athens to partake in the Panathenaic Games. Somehow Androgeus died—or was killed—and Minos held Athens responsible for his loss.
In reparation, and as the price for peace, King Minos required that King Aegeus send him, every nine years, a tribute of seven of the most noble youths and seven of the most virtuous maidens of Athens. These unfortunates, drawn by lots, would be sent to Crete in a ship with black sails, paraded before the people, and cast into the Labyrinth.
When the time came for the third nine-yearly tribute to Crete, Theseus, the son and heir of Aegeus, volunteered to take the place of one of the fourteen unfortunates and confront the Minotaur. He sailed for Crete in a ship with black sails, promising his ailing father that, if victorious, he would return on white sails. As he was paraded through the streets of the Cretan capital, Minos’ daughter Ariadne saw him and immediately fell in love with him. He and the other Athenians were locked up in a dungeon to await morning, when they would be fed to the Minotaur.
That evening, Ariadne begged Daedalus, until he relented, to disclose the secret of the Labyrinth. Under the cover of darkness, she ran past the guards to Theseus and slipped him a sword and a clew of crimson thread. She instructed him to tie the thread at the mouth of the Labyrinth and unfurl the clew as he went along, ‘always straight, always down, and never left or right.’
Before leaving, she made him promise that, if he came out alive, he would take her with him and marry her.
As Theseus descended into the darkness, the air became putrid and he began tripping over what must have been human remains. He could hear the thumping of the Minotaur, but could not locate him until he could also hear his breathing. He may never have seen him had it not been for the blood-tinged ivory of his eyes and horns.
With his head down, the Minotaur made to gore him, but he leapt in Cretan style over his horns, rolled over, drew out his sword, and drove it up to where he imagined he had his heart.
He then picked up the clew and wound it back up to find his way out of the Labyrinth… and into the waiting arms of Ariadne.
History or Myth?
In the early twentieth century, the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, working on Crete, uncovered the remains of a complex civilization whose people he called the Minoans after the mythical King Minos.
Minoan Crete flourished from around 3000 to 1500 BCE and came to revolve around a series of palace complexes, the largest of which was at Knossos in the north of the island. The palace at Knossos covered an area of around six acres (or three football pitches) and contained some 1,300 rooms connected by various corridors and stairways, leading Evans to speculate that the mythical Labyrinth was none other than the palace itself.
Pottery and frescoes unearthed by Evans and his team featured bulls and bull-leaping, and the most common symbol on palace walls was the labrys, or double axe—and it has been suggested, including by Evans himself, that Labyrinth might mean something like ‘Sanctuary of the Double Axe’.
The reconstructed palace at Knossos. Its network of rooms and corridors may have inspired the legend of the Labyrinth. Photo: Neel Burton.
Maze or Labyrinth?
Although the Labyrinth was clearly a branching, multicursal maze, it has long been represented—for example, on Cretan coins—as a single-path, unicursal maze in which it is impossible to get lost.
As a result, the word ‘labyrinth’, although essentially synonymous with ‘maze’, has come to connote unicursality, while the word ‘maze’ has come to connote multicursality.
In short, a maze offers choices; a labyrinth offers a single path.
A Universal Symbol
In his Natural History, the naturalist Pliny the Elder (d. 79 CE) describes four ancient labyrinths—in Egypt, Crete, Lemnos, and Italy—all of which seem to have been enclosed multicursal complexes, confirming that this is the ancient, original meaning of the word ‘labyrinth’.
In the Histories, the historian Herodotus (d. 425 BCE) claims that the Egyptian labyrinth surpassed even the pyramids in scale and ambition:
I myself have seen [the Egyptian labyrinth], and no words can tell its wonders: the sum of all that the Greeks have built and wrought would be a matter of less labour and cost than was this single labyrinth…
Far from a mere folly, the labyrinth is, like the serpent, the flood, and the trinity, something of a Jungian archetype, found in prehistoric rock drawings at, for example, Pontevedra in Galicia (Spain), Val Camonica in Lombardy (Italy), and Rocky Valley in Cornwall (England).
In medieval Europe, cathedrals sometimes contained a labyrinth traced out in the nave from contrasting paving stones. Those that have survived, such as the striking one in Chartres Cathedral, can still be walked today. Cathedral labyrinths were not simply ludic or ornamental but represented the spiritual path to God and provided a substitute for going on pilgrimage. Cathedral labyrinths were therefore unicursal, as were the first hedge mazes, which evolved from Renaissance knot gardens.
The Journey of Life
As I argue in The Meaning of Myth, mazes and labyrinths are in fact spiritual tools. Multicursal mazes such as the Cretan Labyrinth may have been built not only to guard against gold diggers but also to deter or trap evil spirits, including the Minotaur. Unicursal labyrinths, on the other hand, may have been traced to guide rituals or dances.
The circular unicursal labyrinth symbolizes the cosmos, completeness, and unity, and, by extension, the spiritual path or journey of life. More than a simple garden, it is a removed, secluded, and liminal space that serves to calm and concentrate the mind—which is why labyrinths, often simply mown into a summer field, are increasingly to be found in therapeutic settings such as hospitals and hospices. Labyrinths, especially single-path, unicursal ones, serve not only as a thing of beauty but also, above all, as an aid to meditation and mindfulness.
Ariadne’s Thread
To walk the labyrinth is to re-enter the womb and travel inward, and to come back out is a kind of rebirth. Ariadne’s crimson thread is thus an umbilical cord that ties Theseus to the world while he undertakes the hero’s journey into the underworld and slays the monster.
To escape the Labyrinth, Theseus simply followed the clew, or clue. This revised spelling of clew, ‘a ball of thread or yarn’, underwent a sense shift from around 1600 in reference to Theseus and the Minotaur, giving us the modern word clue and, more recently, clueless.
The path to wisdom is never a straight one; every twist and turn, every up and down, is part of the journey.
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