rramadass on Hacker News

===== The Problem: Realism vs. Idealism =====

“Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I, too, were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions. They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight, living is a worthless act. To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.”

He shook his head slowly, pondering.

“I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason. Dreams must be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling and lasting than intellectual delight; and, besides, you pay for your moments of intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate. I envy you, I envy you.”

He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips formed one of his strange quizzical smiles, as he added:

“It’s from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart. My reason dictates it. The envy is an intellectual product. I am like a sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too, were drunk.”

“Or like a wise man looking upon fools and wishing he, too, were a fool,” I laughed.

“Quite so,” he said. “You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools. You have no facts in your pocketbook.”

“Yet we spend as freely as you,” was Maud Brewster’s contribution.

“More freely, because it costs you nothing.”

“And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted.

“Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing. You spend what you haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have sweated to get.”

-- Wolf Larsen from The Sea-Wolf by Jack London.

===== The Solution: Egoless engagement with every moment =====

One should become aware of one’s deluded notion in which one thinks that "I belong to these objects of the world and my life depends upon them. I cannot live without them and they cannot exist without me, either" [here objects can be anything that the mind latches onto i.e. animate/inanimate/thoughts/memories/etc.]. Then by profound enquiry, one contemplates "I do not belong to these objects, nor do these objects belong to me" [i.e. the difference between the experiencer, the object experienced and the experience itself]. Thus abandoning the ego-sense through intense contemplation, one should playfully engage oneself in the [everyday] actions that happen naturally [whether due to environment or self-initiated], but with the heart and mind ever cool and tranquil. Such an abandonment of the ego-sense and the conditioning is known as the contemplative egolessness.

Live in the present, with your consciousness externalized momentarily [i.e. egolessly immersed in the current activity for however short/long a time period] but without any effort [i.e. without fixating on the outcome]; when the mind stops linking itself to the past and to the future, it becomes no-­mind. If from moment to moment your mind dwells [only] on what is [currently being done] and drops it effortlessly at once [when it is done but before moving on to something else], the mind becomes no-­mind, full of purity.

They who, though remaining established in equilibrium, do not let their organs function naturally as long as the body is alive, are obstinate and stubborn people. As long as there is sesame there is oil; as long as there is the body, there are the different moods also. He who rebels against the states that the body is naturally subject to, cuts space to pieces with a sword [i.e. a futile and foolish endeavour]. The equilibrium of yoga is for the mind, not for the organs of action and their states. As long as the body lasts, one should let the organs of action perform their proper function [naturally; without desire/intent/volition], though the intellect and the senses remain in a state of equanimity. Such is the law of nature, to which even the gods are subject.

-- The Yoga Vasistha translated by Swami Venkatesananda.

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