We hear that “if you gain the world, but lose your soul, you have profited nothing”. This seems clear enough in greed, but what about other pursuits? For example, art? Or even morality? What if your pursuit of being the most moral person on the planet makes you into a nasty, intolerant person? For example, the Taliban, or Iranian mullahs, who inflict pain with pleasure, in the pursuit of a perverted virtue?
As I see it, our task is to recreate ourselves daily. In so doing, you create the possibility of new awarenesses. Morality is not that hard. It is not peforming heroics, normally, so much as asking from yourself common decency and the expression of the better parts of human nature.
And the question I asked myself this morning was this: is it worth commiting some small, real “sin”, in order to create, say, a great work of art? As an example, is it acceptable to neglect your kids or wife–to the point where it hurts them–to create something? Tolstoy, to take a concrete case, was quite cruel to his family, while praising the virtues of love. This is a not uncommon case.
In my own view, the answer is no. You always have a choice of moving towards the light, and away from it. “War and Peace” is a marvelous novel–I am told–but we have the Bible and other sources of inspiration already. Always, you are moving towards or away from light and goodness, and no half step in the direction of darkness is ever warranted. Better to do nothing, and profit by silence.
In a larger sense, could one not view the contents of his awareness as his or her greatest creation? What do we WANT from accomplishment? We want a feeling, do we not? Does it not follow, therefore, that the creation of that feeling of deep satisfaction, connection, and pleasure is the PRIMARY goal, and its cultivation directly, where possible, the most intelligent means of proceeding?
Could we not view our greatest religious teachers as in some way great artists, whose medium was perception?