Enlightened pursuit of pleasure
Enlightened pursuit of pleasure would entail something like enjoying caviar with caveat, with the knowledge that the source of the commodity and its consumer are both mortally endangered entities! But knowledge alone cannot be an antidote to angst...
By Vithal C Nadkarni, |
Farmer Smith bought a turkey poult for his yard. His young daughter became fond of the fuzzy little bird, which she plied with choice grains and greens. In less than three years, the cute chick had ballooned into a rotund bird that waddled around the farm like a feathered pumpkin.
After a thousand days of contentment, the very concept of fear had disappeared from the bird���s brain just as it had from the mind of the Dodo, another bird that became fearless on an island Eden.
Then calamity struck. That year, it was the Smith family���s turn to offer a bird for community Thanksgiving. Thus, the farmer Smith, who had otherwise been a paragon of virtue, became a mortal enemy of the poor bird.
The moral of the story is pretty stark: don���t be fooled by the past, or even the present: for that���s not the way to live in a world that one does not understand very well, says noted risk analyst and author of Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb in a recent essay.
Taleb was commenting on the current subprime crisis and on the limits of statistically-driven claims. By his take, when it comes to anticipating that comparatively rare event which can massively disrupt the predictable monotony of our lives, we humans seem to be as clueless about the future as ���little��� Tom Turkey! Buddhists have extended that insight into the Doctrine of Anitya, which can also be partly summarised by the well-known adage - in life nothing is certain except death and taxes.
So how does one conduct oneself in a world that has death as the one great certainty which ���cures��� the disease called life? Start by avoiding false attributions: which means we must not mistake what is essentially unstable and impermanent as something everlasting or perennial.
Does that demonise pursuit of pleasure, which is proverbially transient? Not really. Instead of blind pursuit we need an ���enlightened��� approach. This explains why Indian tradition ranks kama or desire alongside artha (money) and dharma (duty) with moksha (liberation) among the four principal goals of human endeavour.
Enlightened pursuit of pleasure would therefore entail something like enjoying caviar with caveat, with the knowledge that the source of the commodity and its consumer are both mortally endangered entities! But knowledge alone cannot be an antidote to angst. Nor is it enough to get us off the carrousel. For that you need detached but skilful action.
After a thousand days of contentment, the very concept of fear had disappeared from the bird���s brain just as it had from the mind of the Dodo, another bird that became fearless on an island Eden.
Then calamity struck. That year, it was the Smith family���s turn to offer a bird for community Thanksgiving. Thus, the farmer Smith, who had otherwise been a paragon of virtue, became a mortal enemy of the poor bird.
The moral of the story is pretty stark: don���t be fooled by the past, or even the present: for that���s not the way to live in a world that one does not understand very well, says noted risk analyst and author of Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb in a recent essay.
Taleb was commenting on the current subprime crisis and on the limits of statistically-driven claims. By his take, when it comes to anticipating that comparatively rare event which can massively disrupt the predictable monotony of our lives, we humans seem to be as clueless about the future as ���little��� Tom Turkey! Buddhists have extended that insight into the Doctrine of Anitya, which can also be partly summarised by the well-known adage - in life nothing is certain except death and taxes.
So how does one conduct oneself in a world that has death as the one great certainty which ���cures��� the disease called life? Start by avoiding false attributions: which means we must not mistake what is essentially unstable and impermanent as something everlasting or perennial.
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Does that demonise pursuit of pleasure, which is proverbially transient? Not really. Instead of blind pursuit we need an ���enlightened��� approach. This explains why Indian tradition ranks kama or desire alongside artha (money) and dharma (duty) with moksha (liberation) among the four principal goals of human endeavour.
Enlightened pursuit of pleasure would therefore entail something like enjoying caviar with caveat, with the knowledge that the source of the commodity and its consumer are both mortally endangered entities! But knowledge alone cannot be an antidote to angst. Nor is it enough to get us off the carrousel. For that you need detached but skilful action.
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