On your walks you have noticed a long , narrow pool beside the river. Some fishermen must have dug it, and it is not connected with the river. The river is flowing steadily, deep and wide , but this pool is heavy with scum because it is not connected with the life of the river , and there are no fish in it. It is a stagnant pool , and the deep river , full of life and vitality , flows swiftly along.
Now don’t you think human beings are like that? They dig a little pool for themselves away from the swift current of life, and in that little pool they stagnant die; and this stagnation , this decay we call existence. That is we all want a state of permanency ; we want certain desires to last forever , we want pleasures to have no end.
We dig a little hole and barricade ourselves in it with our families, with our ambitions, our cultures, our fears, our gods, our various forms of worships and there we die, letting life go by – that life which is impermanent , constantly changing which is so swift, which has such enormous depths, such extraordinary vitality and beauty.
Have you not noticed that if you sit quietly on the bank of the river you hear its song – the lapping of the water, the sound of the current going by ? There is always a sense of movement , an extraordinary movement towards the wider and the deeper. But in the little pool there is no movement at all , its water is stagnant. And if you observe , you will see that this is what most of us want; little stagnant pools of existence is away from life. We say that our pool existence is right, and we have invented a philosophy to justify it; we have developed social, political, economic, and religious theories in support of it, and we don’t want to be disturbed because, you see what we are after is a sense of permanency.
Now don’t you think human beings are like that? They dig a little pool for themselves away from the swift current of life, and in that little pool they stagnant die; and this stagnation , this decay we call existence. That is we all want a state of permanency ; we want certain desires to last forever , we want pleasures to have no end.
We dig a little hole and barricade ourselves in it with our families, with our ambitions, our cultures, our fears, our gods, our various forms of worships and there we die, letting life go by – that life which is impermanent , constantly changing which is so swift, which has such enormous depths, such extraordinary vitality and beauty.
Have you not noticed that if you sit quietly on the bank of the river you hear its song – the lapping of the water, the sound of the current going by ? There is always a sense of movement , an extraordinary movement towards the wider and the deeper. But in the little pool there is no movement at all , its water is stagnant. And if you observe , you will see that this is what most of us want; little stagnant pools of existence is away from life. We say that our pool existence is right, and we have invented a philosophy to justify it; we have developed social, political, economic, and religious theories in support of it, and we don’t want to be disturbed because, you see what we are after is a sense of permanency.
