Friday, September 20, 2013

लल्लापुराण 112

The idea and practice of goodness and truth does not naturally come to a "civilized man" naturally but is inculcated with the application of reason and conscience. One's "natural" self id product of one's natural socialization that contains "natural" duality. The civility introduces duality. One wants to look what one is not, leading to perennial inner contradiction of essence and appearance. By the virtue of the fact that we are living in a "civilized" world we are acting any way. Our acting must be a well thought with the consent of the conscience. Most visible example of "civilized" duality is family. Parents and children live under the same roof without ever transparently interacting, they only communicate. And the exceptions only prove the rule. This duality of civility is also quite visibly exemplified  in love affairs under genderised thought structures. To be transparent, to look what one is and trying to be what one ought to be, needs unceasing acting (in a metaphorical sense) against one's "civilized" self in order to know and practice good and truthfulness. What came as good and truthfulness in my particularly socialized behavior as a Brahman boy in a Brhmanical feudal social structure, were the inhuman Varnashram values. I had to apply my mind to comprehend them and combining mind and conscience I had to constantly act against them and internalize them. Asharam and Ramdev kinds are not acting to be or do good but they are living their normal behavior to look what they are not. One's mindset and conduct is formed by 2 elements- reason and conscience. Reason tells us what is good or bad but cant move us to do this or that. It is conscience that moves us to do good or bad but does not know by itself what is good or bad. Therefore with harmoniously coordinated dialectical unity of reason and conscience is necessary to be or do good. With proportionately combined application of mind and conscience, one must constantly act to do and be good by dialectical unity of the theory and practice. By continuously doing so, goodness is internalized in the personality as guiding principle.        

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