REDEEMING QUALITY?
It may be that the one redeeming quality of humankind is its discontentedness. Beyond the basic will-to-survive is an insatiable longing to know, and throughout human history this longing is the base motivation for all serious investigations concerned with pursuing knowledge and finding real answers to the perennial questions of philosophy, science, and religion. In the end, with all the scriptures underlined and all the sermons reiterated and grown old, uncertainty still remains and discontent persists just like a magnified shadow that follows along with us every day of our lives. The unknown something that no finger can definitely point to, that no intellectual analysis can seem to penetrate, and that no faith or surrender can fully rely upon – whatever it is that seems to be missing – that something persists in remaining missing. Even as I write this, the world we live in seems to be still searching for solutions to the most simple problems, always in a process of making some sort of “adjustment”. Eighty countries and a thousand cities are undergoing demonstrations, riots, and breakdowns. It is as if someone has pushed a collective reset button. “Enough of this unnecessary suffering,” people seem to be saying. Yet how much positive change can or will come if those who suffer do not know of the real origin of suffering? Only by eliminating the originating factors that produce suffering can relief be found. The basic cause and condition for what remains missing and for what subsequently goes wrong is our sense-based mind, that which maintains ignorance. However, no one need live a life saddled and constrained by ignorance and its consequential actions. So it is crucial to know. An awakened understanding of the true state of being allows freedom to anyone who is willing to see. Knowledge releases one from the bonds of ignorance and obsessions based on a false notion of self and other. An integrated, dynamic consciousness is a necessity for knowing the real situation of the human condition, whether individually or collectively.
©2014
