Only the simple believe that men argue and fight about ideas. Men argue and fight about genes. Men do not want enlightenment because they feel unenlightened, but because they feel irritable. That’s why simple seekers will give up rich foods, alcohol, hard labor and the riotous life in the name of gaining enlightenment…which is not their actual aim. What they really want is simply to feel better.
Anyone who seeks the Understanding, for any reason other than the mental pleasure it brings, is a fool. Everyone who seeks the Understanding starts out with entirely different reasons.
Query Revisited:
If trying to do This doesn’t give you pleasure – why do it?! Anyone who expects there is more to life than is physically apparent, is a fool in a handcart – but, he who still does not LOOK, misses the most fun of being human. The closest thing there is to, “a-point-to-life,” is discovering the territory and meeting the natives where the idea of life having a point originates.
Mind in man is a wandering lighthouse –
searching for the source of the light.
Had we grown up in a different universe, every name Adam tried to give to a thing would have been met by objection, (for instance):
Adam said: “That is a, ‘cat,’” and god would have said: “No it’s not,”
and when he pointed and said: “That is, ‘up,’” god would have said: “No it’s not,”
and when he said: “All right: that over there is ‘fallacy,’” god would have said: “No it’s not,”
and when Adam said: “Okay: this stuff all around us is the, ‘environment,’” god would have said: “No it’s not,”
until Adam finally would have said: “So why did you tell me to name everything if you are then going to tell me that every name I apply to something is not the right one? I don’t get the point?” And finally god would have grinned, and said: “Now you’ve got it!”
J.