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THE PHILOSOPHY OF DUTY
"when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." 21 Herein lies the secret practical joke of reality, working itself out like a chain-effect, world without end-the cruel point of the gods' Olympian laughter.
But, on the other hand, anyone who, in order to be closed to nothing, takes in all without distinction is equally fooled and guilty; for then it is the distinction between things that is being disregarded, and the hierarchy of values. The intoxicating, devastating "All is God" of the Bhagavad Gītā, though it recognizes that there exists a difference in the degrees of divine manifestation, yet so insists upon the colossal fact of the divinity of all things that in contrast the distinctions may too easily seem negligible.
There has never been found any definitive, general theoretical solution to this world dilemma, with which one might safely rest. Truth, validity, actuality, subsist only in actu: in the unremitting play of enlightened consciousness on the facts of daily life as expressed in the decisions made from moment to moment, the crises of sacrifice and laying hold, the acts of Yea and Nay: only in the work, that is to say, wrought by a being in whom Enlightenment is continuously alive as a present force.22 And the first step to the attainment of such redemptive alertness is to leave behind, with an irrevocable decision, the way, the gods, and the ideals of the orthodox, institutionalized dharma.
So it was that Jesus while treading the soil of Palestine seemed a temperamental, whimsical savior, in his violent repudiation of the petrified sanctimoniousness, hard-hearted ritualism, and in
21 Matthew 6: 2.
22 This idea is represented in Mahāyāna Buddhism by the ideal of the Bodhisattva, the "One whose quick is Enlightenment," and in Hinduism by the Jivanmukta, the "One released in life." (Cf. infra, pp. 441-455, 534559.)
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |