Buffalo
9 May, 2022
Buffalo……..
“To be truly ignorant is to reject with a dull heart any offer of a way out of the mud flats of nescience. The truly ignorant, in their stupor, ask no questions of life, and recognise no opportunity for self-improvement even if it offers them everything.
Worse than being ignorant is the inability to feel devotion. High aspiration eludes such a person. Aspiration of any kind, indeed, seems to him foolish and unnecessary. To what (he asks) is there to aspire? Why strive for anything? The less energy he expends, the less energy (he believes) will be demanded of him, the fewer challenges life will throw in his way, and the more, in consequence, he will be left alone. How can those not ultimately perish who, buffalo like, insist on wallowing in the mud of passivity? Stupidity, sloth, lack of any vital interest in anything. For people who cling to such mental sluggishness, the mechanism of their life cannot but run down very quickly. They refuse their minds and bodies even proper maintenance.
The worst case, however, is that of the confirmed doubter. He has all the intellectual equipment he needs to rise to the heights, yet his compulsion is to keep listing all the shortcomings, the drawbacks, and the mischief by which others might try to undo him. He has the devotion, and the desire to rise to the heights, yet a cynical inner voice keeps whispering in his subconscious, “What will the end be - treachery? lack of appreciation? opposition? ingratitude?”
Paramhansa Yogananda once commented, “The doubter is the most miserable of mortals.” He was referring, not to constructive questioning, but to the nagging tendency to oppose every constructive idea, to prejudge it for no real reason at all, and to be disposed to reject everything wholesome or constructive. “It cant be right - therefore it isn’t right! It cant work - therefore no matter what happens, it cant really work - even if it seems to be doing so. People cant know what they are doing - therefore they must be wrong!”
The determinedly ignorant person can only be left alone to his own plodding rhythms. Eventually he will emerge from his self woven cocoon: when he has suffered enough, and when, through suffering, he begins to care and, in the caring, to make the first, faltering attempts to develop his own latent abilities. Then he will emerge from his self confinement.
The apathetic may at least be aware that there are clouds of unknowing to be blown away. Although they’ve imagined that life has nothing more to offer them, when their dreams of passive contentment or resignation fade, they begin to look around anxiously for viable answers.
It is the doubter, alas, who suffers the most. His thinking processes, despite his longing to be good and do right, become paralysed. He yearns to find something on which he can fix as his ideal, but then tells himself that, for one reason or another, that ideal cannot exist. His tragedy is that he yearns for bliss, but finds bliss denied him by a compulsion in his nature that he can't understand. How can he overcome this self damning tendency?
He must tell himself, “There is no road back. I have no choice but to go forward, even if it means only trudging heavily, one slow step at a time.” He can expiate his karma by helping others to resolve their doubts. He can concentrate on his own yearning for truth, until the very yearning pulls him out of the dense fogs of doubt into the sunlight of a faith all the more certain because it has rejected gloomy speculation as a waste of time and energy. Helping others to resolve their doubts and uncertainties becomes, for him, a way of affirming his own solution orientation. For him at last, supreme bliss becomes the only possible solution to every problem and difficulty in life!”
Extracts from Chapter 16 “The Supreme Science of Knowing”
The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita explained by Paramhansa Yogananda
We can all be a bit of a buffalo at times I guess.
Be nice to clean off, dissolve some of these layers of mud.
Some layers of fresh mud recently added, some layers of old mud dried on after being carried around and baked in the sun for a while.
Cleaning off, dissolving some of these layers of mud, that would be a start, that would be nice.