Choosing the Right Path

The ways of life, in any given generation, always fall under two categories: the secular and the sacred.The former, the secular, is pursued by those who feel that food, clothing and shelter are the absolutes and the fulfilment of life lies in the satisfaction of the largest number of physical and emotional sense ticklers, and whose intellects are cold and satisfied, feeling no urge to seek anything nobler and diviner.The latter, the sacred, however, is pursued by those who can feel no encouragement in their bosom, when the sense objects giggle and dance in front of their sense organs, and whose intellects are ever on fire with a great seeking of something beyond, something deeper than the mere surface existence in life.The former path, the path of darkness or the path of saṁsāra, takes the travellers into the dark abyss of devolutionary sorrow, while the latter path, the path of light or the path of mokṣa, to the brilliant heights of evolutionary success. However big the ocean may be, a drop of it taken anywhere from its infinite expanse should taste saline. In the same way, whatever be the motive behind the courting, once we allow ourselves to be courtiers of the world of objects, we are doomed to taste the saline tears of sorrow, because of the very ephemeral nature of the objects of our love.The more the individual meditates upon the finite, strives to gain the changeable, and gets choked by the sorrows of the perishable, the more he comes to worship and court the lower nature of the Self, the prakṛti.Such men of extroversion, meditating upon the sense objects and bartering away their intellectual capacities, emotional powers and physical strength for seeking, acquiring and possessing the implements to work out their sensual satisfaction, must necessarily return to the path of rebirth, fraught with death.It is an illusion to think that more comfort means more happiness.

Choosing the Right Path

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