What it means is that happiness resides not in the car, but in ‘not
wanting anything’. ‘Not wanting anything’ is an inner state to be cultivated,
not a goal automatically reached by fulfillment of desires. The conclusion is
that happiness is within us, not in the object outside. Let us take another
example. A person goes and donates a unit of blood. That makes him happy. He
has not got anything – in fact, he has given something. The person is happy
because while donating blood he thought of another individual in need. In the
process, he got so completely absorbed in somebody else’s need that he forgot
what he himself wants. In other words, he was once again in a state of ‘not
wanting anything’. Thus, to be happy, we need not get anything at all. In fact,
the joy of giving is much greater than the joy of getting.
The above discussion exposes the two major flaws in the popular
notion that happiness comes from getting things. One, happiness resides
not in the things outside but within us; and two, true happiness comes
from giving. But what we generally do is to look outside for happiness –
in the objects that we want, in the work that we do, in the people to whom we
are attached, in being healthy, and so on. All these are entities
which are inconstant, unreliable, erratic and unpredictable. The objects that
seem to give us happiness are perishable, the happiness they give is
short-lasting, and the list of still more objects that we may want is endless.
In case of a few fortunate ones, the work that they enjoy doing coincides with
the work that they have to do for a living. Even these fortunate ones cannot go
on doing the same work for ever: enforced ‘superannuation’ or bodily disability
might force them to give up the work. People to whom we are attached do not
always behave the way we would like them to.
Understanding
Medical Physiology - Page 876 - Bijlani -
2004 - Preview - More
editions The basic text of
integral yoga is The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo. CONCLUSION Yoga is an
ancient system of Indian philosophy. Although its metaphysical aspects are
complex, the fundamentals, as applicable to daily life, are quite ...
The
meeting of the East
and the West in Sri Aurobindo's
philosophy - Page 165 - S.K. Maitra - 1956 - This statement we can look upon as containing the
essence of Sri Aurobindo's conception
of yoga, as, in fact, the text of
integral yoga. The first thing which it asserts is that yoga is a birth.
It is not a dissolution, nor an
absorption, nor a swooning away into the Divine, but it is a birth. That is to
say, the human being retains his character as a human being, which means as a
being with a body, life, soul and mind, and having a part to ...
Leather, Fur, & Legendary Joy: A Response from Joshua Ramey to Beatrice
Marovich’s “‘We Dance These Beasts’: Capitalism, Animism, Believers of the
Future” from An und für sich by Joshua Ramey
As anyone who knows me knows, I spend as much of my time as I can
drumming or dancing (when I’m not reading and writing and teaching). Part
of why I was drawn to Deleuze in the first place was that he seemed to be one
of the few philosophers willing to lend some language to what was crucial for
me about movement and rhythm, conceptually as well as at the
affective level, and willing to take the emendation of the affects as far as
the emendation of the intellect toward the composition of a philosophical
life. Deleuze was always, in a typically French way, reticent about being
anecdotal, and I think he knew how to be revealing enough without
anecdotes. I’m not quite that refined. Beatrice has moved me to
relay, anecdotally, an experience that, for me, forms a kind of legend for the
defense of spirituality Beatrice is drawing attention to between the lines of
my book…
At any rate, I have often thought to myself that from the 1960’s to
2013 the spiritual stakes of experimentation have changed: what was an
aesthetic choice, then, has become a survival strategy, now. For those of
us with anything left to experiment with, survival itself has become
experimental. In the context of endless and irremediable debts, of a
totally debt-leveraged existence, everything is improvisation, everything is
experimentation. Existence itself is spiritual ordeal, for those who
manage to survive the imperative to “invest in oneself” at the cost of
everything, and at the cost of everything manage to pretend to be an
“entrepreneur of the self,” while in fact this means to take on the weight of
the world, the burden of the global, ever-imploding debt.
On the Occasion of the Ordeal: A Response from Joshua Ramey to
Dan Barber’s “Experimental Life and Ordeal’s Necessity” from An und für sich by Joshua Ramey
I would argue, however—with Laruelle’s theory of the fundamental
autonomy of heresy and gnosis—that the reverse is the case, that it is
orthodoxy that is more or less parasitic, in the long run, on religious
experiences that are too wild, too intense, too idiosyncratic to regulate,
order, and habituate. (It’s true that Bergson’s view of religion is
similar, but I don’t hold to Bergson’s ontology of development, which
overemphasizes continuity). From that perspective, let me engage in some
heretical theology. The logic of exemplarity in standard Christian
philosophy is a logic that attempts to provide limits or conditions for
possible spiritual experimentation, in advance of ordeal.
But from my perspective, and the perspective that I call “the hermetic
Deleuze,” since every ordeal potentially is unlimited, any ordeal can exemplify
any other, to the degree that it resonates with any other ordeal. This is where
Bruno did not so much reject incarnationalism as rather accelerate it into a
kind of terracarnationalism or cosmicarnationalism, a becoming-divine or
being-divine of everything in relation to everything else. This has
obvious overtones of mystical theophanies such as Eriugena’s, and in alchemical
theologies like Boehme’s. The problem with the “standard Christian philosophy,”
as Bruno saw it, and as Deleuze put it borrowing a phrase from D.H. Lawrence,
is that it is not yet ready “to have done with judgment.”
[Ito Kichinosuke, one of my teachers at university, studied in Germany in 1918
immediately after the First World War and hired Heidegger as a private tutor.
Before moving back to Japan
at the end of his studies, Professor Ito handed Heidegger a copy of Das
Buch vom Tee, the German translation of Okakura Kkuzo's The Book of
Tea, as a token of his appreciation. That was in 1919. Sein und Zeit was
published in 1927, and made Heidegger famous. Mr. Ito was surprised and
indignant that Heidegger used Zhuangzi's concept without giving him credit.
Years later in 1945, Professor Ito reminisced with me and, speaking in his
Shonai dialect, said, "Heidegger did a lot for me, but I should've laid
into him for stealing." There are other indications that Heidegger was
inspired by Eastern writings, but let's leave this topic here. I have heard
many stories of this kind from Professor Ito and checked their veracity.] [The
meaningfulness of the tea cup, in 1919. P. 83]
