There are moments when I feel like I am looking into sheer emptiness. I can see nothing inside me, no thoughts, no feelings, no memories nothing. It is as if some one has wiped my mental-slate clean of everything. I can’t even say that I am dull at those moments. May be I am not fully alert, fully in that moment, but yet strangely I feel present in my self. These are not moments of abstraction. They are live and real, but there is a gap in the realization of what is happening on the out side as well as the inside. May be this is due to a dullness of brain. But what causes this dullness I do not know.
Apathy? Could be. My detractors would probably say that it is the natural state of my mind. Well may be they are right. All else I do might be impositions, things forced on me by life, by others, society, world. You are expected to do certain things in your life and even the tiniest of them requires some mental activity however modest. Even habits need be carried out, performed so to speak.
All this requires energy and that is what I don’t find in me sometimes. I would feel enervated, spent and vacuous. There is no pleasure in the situation. Those are the dumb moments of life. It is at such moments that we feel the utter futility of living, the total meaninglessness of things. This is not an intellectual perception; it could be an emotional reaction.
What is more primary, intellect or emotion? There are people who talk about several separate bodies that we have. The Annamaya, Prranamaya, Manomaya etc. That is, the Physical, the Etheric ….and so on. It rises through Vignanamaya kosa (The vehicle of intellect) to Anandamaya kosa, the bliss body. In this system of belief the mind body comes before the vehicle of intellect. Perhaps that is so, the intellect is primary.
If that is the case this feeling of futility has nothing to do with life. It might even be something physiological, a dissipation of life force that people call prana. But then who can tell. Normally we think that intellect is a function of our brain. But the people we were talking of might be meaning something else by those kosas they were concerned about.
Well who knows for certain? Nothing is very clear in our lives is it? Schopenhauer says that the fruits of intellect are more enjoyable than the fruits of labor. The pleasures of the flesh and of the material things are ephemeral according to him. The real pleasure resides in the intellectual pursuits. He was speaking about the “The Wisdom of Life”. But he also realizes the limits imposed by our individual nature, that is, the things that we come by in our birth. These acts as a restraint on us. We can’t break their limits and go beyond them.
There is no cure for being dull witted or for being handicapped in any way so to say. You can’t cure it with medicine or diet. No one can do anything about it at all.
Yet there is something sinful in being unintelligent isn’t there? (Don’t take it to heart, these are mere words. They don’t mean a thing. They are here to fill up the space, nothing more. Who cares about being intelligent other than a few simple souls? Yet I have to finish this piece, so a little more on the same vein!) Perhaps all crimes are the result of a dullness of brain. Imagine a situation where a person can’t know what is happening to him. They are all at sea in an environment of the more intelligent. They are confused and worried. Everything is beyond their understanding. Others take them lightly.
Naturally they would become agitated and would do things which to their mind are a reaction to save their frightening situation.
Can they be blamed, the poor souls? They are taking the life so seriously as to believe in others and their silly opinions and deeds. The really intelligent would take the route of Camus and Kawabata (or Beckett? He was murdered but did he not invite it in some way?). I don’t know if Hemingway was as intelligent as them. His act had always surprised me. Well perhaps he too saw the world for what it is. It is people like us who continue the charade because we are less intelligent and we should be thankful that we are so.
Or else we can turn into a Buddha. Some intelligent souls among us would say that it is pessimism. Well I have seen skeleton like children and fat kids side by side on one of our busy town. One group was beggars and the other group was disappearing into an air conditioned van. I have also heard the tale about a famished African kid who could not understand why his mothers belly was full while his wasn’t. Does it rend our hearts? Oh no. We are intelligent aren’t we?
Only the stupid can pretend that they are doing some great service to the universe by going on with their meaningless lives.
That is the secret of our zest for life, our innate stupidity.
No comments:
Post a Comment