You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean — Idries Shah
The quintessence of every creed is: Just as we cannot survive without food and water, we humans cannot survive without a sense of the meaning or ultimate purpose of life — of life in general, and of our own life in particular. Human beings are meaning-seeking creatures. Starved of a sense of ultimate purpose in life, we are doomed, sooner rather than later, to fall prey to alienation, cynicism, anarchy and even worse — to madness and suicide.
“Life has meaning,” as Robert Browning reminds us and “to find its meaning is my meat and drink.” We are like Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov, “One of those who doesn’t want millions, but an answer to his questions.” We keep reinforcing our ideals with Friedrich Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow.”
We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us. “Seek ye first the good things of the mind,” Francis Bacon admonishes us, “and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.” The truth may not make us rich, but will certainly set us free. That is the capstone of our inherited wisdom. It is futile to dream of a monastic life, adrift from the whirl of society.
One point as a matter of realisation for each of us is that religion is something so sublime that it can give meaning and context to our lives. There has always been an inscrutable mystery about the origin of man and the cosmos, and the enigma of life and death. The mystery is as baffling today in the space age as it ever was in the past millennia. However great their aspirations may be, people have to seek God or the sacred in the world. They feel they have a duty to bring their ideals to bear upon society.
Similarly in case of spiritual leaders, even if they lock themselves away, they are inescapably men and women of their time and affected by what goes on outside the monastery, although they do not fully realise this.
“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest,” Albert Einstein is supposed to have said. With age comes wisdom, and in the autumn of our life we increasingly realise that reason must prevail over emotions. We have to make a few hard choices that may go against the grain of our conscience which has been shaped by the eternally held cherished values.
People may give lots of advice — that positive thinking and big dreams can help us accomplish great tasks. But one has to bow before the altar of destiny and realise that we have to navigate our ambitions within the realms of divine will. Each of us has a moral compass that shows us the limits of our talents and abilities, that is a more accurate and authentic guide than the barometer of public advice.
