(© RKP, 1960)Booing the Villain
It is as absurd to blame the historical personages for the parts they have played in history as it is to blame the personages of a novel or of a film.
It is no less absurd to blame our contemporaries in the moment of history in which ourselves are sustaining a role.
We may envy or pity those who have to play certain parts - that can hardly be called absurd, although ultimately we ourselves play every part and are the picture itself.
If to praise or to blame is evidently an example of failure to understand, is their extension, 'loving' and 'hating', any less idiotic?
Cock-a-doodle-do
The cock in Chantecler crows so proudly because he is convinced that it is his crowing that causes the sun to rise.
It would seem that Advaita Vedanta and the Lankavatara Sutra demonstrate that he is right and that it is indeed his crowing that causes the sun to rise. Did not that admirable philosopher Bishop Berkeley come to the same conclusion?
The Artichoke - Ecstasis
Every time our consciousness finds itself outside the range of domination by the I-concept, from whence the unreality of the ego, as of any concept, is apparent, a leaf is peeled off the artichoke.
The artichoke has many leaves, and the outer ones are coarser than the inner, but it becomes smaller at every mouthful. Finally nothing is left but the choke - and that is Reality.
