really tell if the whole point of the karmayoga is to produce automatons. not being attached to the results of the action is precisely what a robot does best. indeed what makes us human - our anger and our attachment - are precisely the things that we have to fight against.
i think it's time to draw a mirror image of darwin's tree of life - with bacteria - those closest to non-life - at the top, representing the spiritual high ground of not being attached to any action. all the bacteria does is its action of finding food, and if it does not find food, it tries again, and again, and again. there is neither emotion nor expectation...just as krishna would have us be.
4 comments:
I don't agree... there is no detachment that exists where there is per se a lack of feeling, no bravery without fear, or composure without chaos. They are necessarily relative.
To know real detachment, you need to first know how to feel. And the two concepts are, in my head, so intertwined that the control of ones emotions seems sometimes to be like learning a technical music skill. It helps you better explore the world with your senses, without becoming victim to them.
but why learn how to feel if the whole point is to inhibit it - both good and bad feelings- completely ('tulya-ninda-stutir-mouni')?
it's like taking hours and hours of driving lessons, and then being told that you should not drive as it pollutes the environment.
I think you're confusing the process with the destination. You know as well as I do that tulya ninda stutir mouni is near impossible to reach in absolute terms... I think of it more like one of those cleansing diets which are soooo hard to survive. You eat only vegetables, then only fruits... etc, over an x day cycle. It flushes out the toxins and improves metabolism and feels like hell. But if you ever do manage to get to the end, you start tasting food differently.
The purpose of learning detachment appears to be to lead us to that place where emotions are not transient or brought on by the trivialties of a conflicted world, to teach us to sit back and experience unadultrated, unconditional joy and peace without letting the signals clutter in. At the end of the day, a gloriously selfish - or if you prefer, self preserving - philosophy, as you would know if you've ever seen detachment play out. Hard not to get taken in by.
PS. You do realise this argument has been going on for several years now, with sides switching every now and then :-) Maybe it's a practical joke that book is playing on us :-p
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