The Eternal Duel – Life and Greatness
I often recall
that grotesque old man who lived three thousand years ago. His head was bald,
his face round, his eyes sunk deep into their sockets, his nose broad and flat,
and the skin seemed to hang loose from his cheeks. To look at him, one would
never mistake him for a philosopher. Ordinary people, upon seeing him, would
have thought he was no more than a common porter or a servant. Yet he was born
in that very land where the gods were believed to dwell. Draped in a shabby
cloak that hung awkwardly over his ungainly frame, he wandered the streets.
Children, mistaking him for a lunatic, hurled stones and pebbles at him. For
though his body walked the earth, his eyes betrayed the truth—that he had never
truly dwelt here below. And so when ordinary men mocked him as a madman, he
would not even glance their way.
What we know of his life comes only through the words of his disciples, preserved above all in his philosophy. In those days, a band of curious Athenian youths followed him wherever he went. Wealthy young men like Plato and Alcibiades, as well as restless middle-class wanderers like Antisthenes and Aristippus, listened with equal fascination to his words.
It is said that there was no subject in the world that lay beyond his grasp. This old man’s name was Socrates—the first true prophet of humankind. From Plato’s account we learn that this “good-for-nothing idler” was often driven out of his home by his own family. “He is a good-for-nothing idler who brought to his family more notoriety than bread,” wrote Plato. And yet this very man, dismissed as useless, baked for the world its first loaves of democracy, morality, and humanity. Centuries after his death, for two thousand years, the study of philosophy began with his name. His disciples carried forth his values, laying the very foundations of the edifice we call philosophy.
It seems that this old man first revealed the eternal distance between the ordinary life of man and the grandeur of higher deeds. Between the domestic joys of the commoner and the self-consuming solitude of the philosopher yawns a gulf that few men dare to cross. For the small-minded heart of man was never made to bear such weight. Most live their lives in a haze of mythomania—a mixture of nostalgic recollections of the past and fanciful dreams of the future. Bound by this illusion, the average man drifts from birth to death.
For the artist, however, solitude is the very condition of growth. Freedom from bonds is his inescapable destiny. The life of the ordinary man is ruled by the gross and the tangible; the subtle and delicate withers away in neglect. He delights in crude pains, in imagined sufferings, and lets the finer fibres of existence decay unused. What he desires he must obtain in this world, and what remains unfulfilled he consigns to the afterlife. Life, he says, is but one; materially he affirms it, spiritually he denies it. Everyone knows this truth—whether they admit it or not. Pleasure, luxury, and satisfaction must be tasted with the body, here and now. The gardens of heavenly reward belong to scripture, not to sight. Therefore, in this life, whatever can be enjoyed must be seized. All obstacles to well-being are branded as enemies of life.
A group of self-proclaimed wise men declared that only fools embrace renunciation, for there is no heaven; the afterlife is a fraud, a story woven by priests and churches. There is no such thing as sin or virtue; the tales of piety are but contrivances to keep coins flowing into temple coffers. And if we know nothing of a thing, how can we prove its existence? By this logic, since we have no knowledge of our time in our mother’s womb, how can we even be sure we truly dwelt there for nine months? To this the theists replied: when we sleep, we have no perception of existence—yet do we cease to exist in sleep? Thus the worldly man remains trapped in the snares of his own logic, each holding to his own.
Yet one thing is certain: the age is gone when an idle philosopher, half-mad, could be the subject of excited devotion for a handful of educated youths. And another truth is equally certain: these days, the world lacks Swami Vivekanandas far more than it lacks Ramakrishnas. There may still be a few Ramakrishnas scattered in the dust, rolling unseen in the margins. But no one comes forward to interpret their wisdom to the world. For men are busy chasing fine jobs and beautiful wives. Above all, they dread martyrdom. In modern times, failure itself is martyrdom. And for martyrs, only three paths lie open: to be forgotten, to be mocked, or to be exploited by others for profit.
Hence the old belief, “Knowledge has made life possible,” no longer holds sway. In its place has risen the new creed: “Life is made possible by money.” This is the true capital of our existence. And here, “money” may be interpreted by each man according to his own condition.
At this point Albert Camus’ plain yet piercing prose comes to mind: “Our society seems built for bankruptcy. Have you heard of the little fish of the Brazilian rivers, that swarm in thousands upon thousands and strip a bather’s flesh until nothing remains but a gleaming white skeleton? So too is the law of our society. You too wish to live a ‘healthy’ life like everyone else? Of course you will say yes. Good, then here is your healthy path. Here is a job. Here is wife and children. Here is scheduled rest and security. And then will begin the attack of those countless tiny teeth—upon your skin, upon your flesh—until you are reduced to bone before your very eyes.”
Man is a creature tormented by appetite. He feels in his very skin the rift between immediacy and eternity. His longing for comfort has never been restrained by his feelings. Thus livelihood becomes life, knowledge becomes mere information. Today, man no longer distinguishes between the two. A “learned man” means one who has passed exams, one who is educated, or perhaps one who is successful. To him, life means a circle of wife and children, job and pleasure, scheduled rest and security. Hunger for meaning has been replaced by hunger for money. Information gets all work done; knowledge is of no use—except in the pursuit of life’s meaning.
In contrast stands the life of the eternal sage. Recall the tale of the bandit Ratnakar who, in chanting a single name in ceaseless meditation, was transformed into Valmiki. Such is the life of the true knower. His axis rests upon the hunger to uncover the unknown, to pierce the mystery of existence. He has no family, no society, no politics, no nation. He dwells only within himself. From him radiates knowledge, and with that light his disciples illumine the world.
The colossal enmity between life and greatness may not appear in their separate stations, yet it remains. As Baudelaire sings, man’s fears and delights, curses and ecstasies, mingle into one endless procession—sighs, cries, lamentations, oaths—all reverberating down the corridors of eternity, bringing the spirit the narcotic comfort of opium. What greater proof of our tragic grandeur is there than this—our tears flowing across the ages, at last to be dissolved in the infinite shore of God?
On the other hand, greatness inspires another kind of vision: success in life and the power to savour it. The first is full of the terror of being crushed, like the intoxication of opium; the second grants the bread of light, sustenance for the spirit, food for the times. The one inscribes the image of morality, the other weaves the garland of material prosperity.
But in truth, whether a man’s moral character be good or bad, it matters little to society. What truly matters is his economic condition; poverty is existence itself in peril. To step beyond the narrow circle of one’s apparent being, to dwell in the vast existence of higher knowledge, to sit in meditation beneath the Bodhi tree of awakening—this is not the work of the ordinary. It is the path of great deeds, where life itself is consecrated. Society may dismiss such a man as “good-for-nothing,” the state may hand him a cup of hemlock, but he alone can tread this path.
Socrates bore that crown of madness. His disciples, knowing the corruption of Athenian administration, bribed every level—from magistrate to jailer—to secure his release. But Socrates refused to flee. He chose instead to drink the poison of hemlock. Before dying, he whispered his last wish to Crito: “I owe a cock to Asclepius; pay the debt, and do not forget.”
Thus the philosopher left no debt unpaid to society. Rather, he left society forever indebted to his greatness. To win such a chance, a man must spend his whole life in tireless devotion. It is a path of life, and it is a path steep and arduous—one upon which not all men can walk.
What we know of his life comes only through the words of his disciples, preserved above all in his philosophy. In those days, a band of curious Athenian youths followed him wherever he went. Wealthy young men like Plato and Alcibiades, as well as restless middle-class wanderers like Antisthenes and Aristippus, listened with equal fascination to his words.
It is said that there was no subject in the world that lay beyond his grasp. This old man’s name was Socrates—the first true prophet of humankind. From Plato’s account we learn that this “good-for-nothing idler” was often driven out of his home by his own family. “He is a good-for-nothing idler who brought to his family more notoriety than bread,” wrote Plato. And yet this very man, dismissed as useless, baked for the world its first loaves of democracy, morality, and humanity. Centuries after his death, for two thousand years, the study of philosophy began with his name. His disciples carried forth his values, laying the very foundations of the edifice we call philosophy.
It seems that this old man first revealed the eternal distance between the ordinary life of man and the grandeur of higher deeds. Between the domestic joys of the commoner and the self-consuming solitude of the philosopher yawns a gulf that few men dare to cross. For the small-minded heart of man was never made to bear such weight. Most live their lives in a haze of mythomania—a mixture of nostalgic recollections of the past and fanciful dreams of the future. Bound by this illusion, the average man drifts from birth to death.
For the artist, however, solitude is the very condition of growth. Freedom from bonds is his inescapable destiny. The life of the ordinary man is ruled by the gross and the tangible; the subtle and delicate withers away in neglect. He delights in crude pains, in imagined sufferings, and lets the finer fibres of existence decay unused. What he desires he must obtain in this world, and what remains unfulfilled he consigns to the afterlife. Life, he says, is but one; materially he affirms it, spiritually he denies it. Everyone knows this truth—whether they admit it or not. Pleasure, luxury, and satisfaction must be tasted with the body, here and now. The gardens of heavenly reward belong to scripture, not to sight. Therefore, in this life, whatever can be enjoyed must be seized. All obstacles to well-being are branded as enemies of life.
A group of self-proclaimed wise men declared that only fools embrace renunciation, for there is no heaven; the afterlife is a fraud, a story woven by priests and churches. There is no such thing as sin or virtue; the tales of piety are but contrivances to keep coins flowing into temple coffers. And if we know nothing of a thing, how can we prove its existence? By this logic, since we have no knowledge of our time in our mother’s womb, how can we even be sure we truly dwelt there for nine months? To this the theists replied: when we sleep, we have no perception of existence—yet do we cease to exist in sleep? Thus the worldly man remains trapped in the snares of his own logic, each holding to his own.
Yet one thing is certain: the age is gone when an idle philosopher, half-mad, could be the subject of excited devotion for a handful of educated youths. And another truth is equally certain: these days, the world lacks Swami Vivekanandas far more than it lacks Ramakrishnas. There may still be a few Ramakrishnas scattered in the dust, rolling unseen in the margins. But no one comes forward to interpret their wisdom to the world. For men are busy chasing fine jobs and beautiful wives. Above all, they dread martyrdom. In modern times, failure itself is martyrdom. And for martyrs, only three paths lie open: to be forgotten, to be mocked, or to be exploited by others for profit.
Hence the old belief, “Knowledge has made life possible,” no longer holds sway. In its place has risen the new creed: “Life is made possible by money.” This is the true capital of our existence. And here, “money” may be interpreted by each man according to his own condition.
At this point Albert Camus’ plain yet piercing prose comes to mind: “Our society seems built for bankruptcy. Have you heard of the little fish of the Brazilian rivers, that swarm in thousands upon thousands and strip a bather’s flesh until nothing remains but a gleaming white skeleton? So too is the law of our society. You too wish to live a ‘healthy’ life like everyone else? Of course you will say yes. Good, then here is your healthy path. Here is a job. Here is wife and children. Here is scheduled rest and security. And then will begin the attack of those countless tiny teeth—upon your skin, upon your flesh—until you are reduced to bone before your very eyes.”
Man is a creature tormented by appetite. He feels in his very skin the rift between immediacy and eternity. His longing for comfort has never been restrained by his feelings. Thus livelihood becomes life, knowledge becomes mere information. Today, man no longer distinguishes between the two. A “learned man” means one who has passed exams, one who is educated, or perhaps one who is successful. To him, life means a circle of wife and children, job and pleasure, scheduled rest and security. Hunger for meaning has been replaced by hunger for money. Information gets all work done; knowledge is of no use—except in the pursuit of life’s meaning.
In contrast stands the life of the eternal sage. Recall the tale of the bandit Ratnakar who, in chanting a single name in ceaseless meditation, was transformed into Valmiki. Such is the life of the true knower. His axis rests upon the hunger to uncover the unknown, to pierce the mystery of existence. He has no family, no society, no politics, no nation. He dwells only within himself. From him radiates knowledge, and with that light his disciples illumine the world.
The colossal enmity between life and greatness may not appear in their separate stations, yet it remains. As Baudelaire sings, man’s fears and delights, curses and ecstasies, mingle into one endless procession—sighs, cries, lamentations, oaths—all reverberating down the corridors of eternity, bringing the spirit the narcotic comfort of opium. What greater proof of our tragic grandeur is there than this—our tears flowing across the ages, at last to be dissolved in the infinite shore of God?
On the other hand, greatness inspires another kind of vision: success in life and the power to savour it. The first is full of the terror of being crushed, like the intoxication of opium; the second grants the bread of light, sustenance for the spirit, food for the times. The one inscribes the image of morality, the other weaves the garland of material prosperity.
But in truth, whether a man’s moral character be good or bad, it matters little to society. What truly matters is his economic condition; poverty is existence itself in peril. To step beyond the narrow circle of one’s apparent being, to dwell in the vast existence of higher knowledge, to sit in meditation beneath the Bodhi tree of awakening—this is not the work of the ordinary. It is the path of great deeds, where life itself is consecrated. Society may dismiss such a man as “good-for-nothing,” the state may hand him a cup of hemlock, but he alone can tread this path.
Socrates bore that crown of madness. His disciples, knowing the corruption of Athenian administration, bribed every level—from magistrate to jailer—to secure his release. But Socrates refused to flee. He chose instead to drink the poison of hemlock. Before dying, he whispered his last wish to Crito: “I owe a cock to Asclepius; pay the debt, and do not forget.”
Thus the philosopher left no debt unpaid to society. Rather, he left society forever indebted to his greatness. To win such a chance, a man must spend his whole life in tireless devotion. It is a path of life, and it is a path steep and arduous—one upon which not all men can walk.
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