The seeker is never satisfied. Therefore a seeker cannot be committed to a path of action. To be on path is always to aim for the known. For all his confusion, Jiddu Krishnamurti was right in that Truth is a pathless land.
Karma yoga and bhakti yoga, and the whole system of yoga is for the ambitious, not for the seekers.
Anyone who tries to decide a path for a seeker sets him up for resentment. A seeker's true guide is life itself. Unpredictable, challenging, never the known.
A seeker feels happy only with a fellow seeker. Ambitious people find him unbalanced but the seeker sees death in the balance of the known.
Often a seeker can become disillusioned with the search for perfection. In that jaded frame he wants to dull himself with what he knows is not going to satisfy him. But if we believe in the essence of the seeker, he will always have a faint sense that he has betrayed himself.
The ambitious man is afraid of failure while the seeker is afraid of getting stuck. For the seeker the journey is paramount while for the ambitious it's the destination. The seeker is happiest when untied and free to explore. The ambitious man is happiest when in sight of his goal.
Entrepreneurs and social reformers are usually ambitious. But writers and philosophers, the non-royalty kind, are usually perennially discontented and therefore more likely to be seekers. And there are many philosophers and thinkers who aren't good at writing and whose thoughts and discontent remain unexpressed.
(to be continued)
6 comments:
Which category are you in Harman? :)
Very nice to see the seeker's status has been exonerated - as I think Krishnamurti for one, and a few others like UG have characterized (spiritual) seeking as another type of ambition. Though of course I have read that he praised the burning discontent and asked us to stay with it rather than move away into various form of escapes. To me, seeking results in not compromising oneself with anything less and trying to attain one's best; ambition is still short of this, as you point out, as no worldly achievement could be called one's best however venerable that might be. And I believe that the seeker has no single destination in sight and lateral progress even if it is infrequent can differentiate this from a state of plain endless despair.
"For all his confusion, Jiddu Krishnamurti was...." What do you mean when you say "his confusion"?
A seeker is a fish who hasn't found water yet.
> "For all his confusion, Jiddu Krishnamurti was...." What do you mean when you say "his confusion"?
Jiddu Krishnamurti was scientifically illiterate. He was a mystic who didn't really understand economics, evolution, sociobiology, the value of tradition and instincts and ego and reputation, etc. He was a traditional spiritualist in a modern garb.
It was rich of him to suggest people shouldn't care about money and power since he was himself quite privileged due to his trust fund and his connections, and was a hypocrite and a bully in may ways, but that is besides the point when it comes to criticizing his ideas.
> A seeker is a fish who hasn't found water yet.
Interesting spiritual adage of the ilk of the koan-like nonsense of "You only need to realize you are already realized."
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