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- The bigger the desire to live, the bigger the fear of death, and the
smaller the desire to live, the smaller the fear of death. An extremely
strong desire to live represents a flourishing desire to live, while the
absence of a fear of death establishes that the desire to live has been
lost.
Different kinds of problems of life and death are dependent
upon different degrees of the desire to live fully. When one plunges
completely into the limitless realm of life and death it is as though
one were in the field of mathematical concepts of plus, minus, and
infinity in which there is no longer the problem of life and
death.
For example, when anger or love is at its peak, one totally
forgets about death, and when the extreme of astonishment or dread is
reached, one cannot stand or move and loses completely the desire to
live. This occurs because the anger and love explode one's life , and
the astonishment and dread are the dead-end destruction of life.
- At that time, what must always be kept in mind is that subjective
and objective observation are different. In this case, the degree of
one's own desire or self-awareness is measured subjectively, but when
one becomes one with anger or astonishment one has no consciousness of
life and death any more. Put another way, when you travel at the speed
of light the magnitude of objects disappears, and when you are on a
train you cannot judge how fast the train is going.
- In daily life, people want to eat tasty food or have money or obtain
power. Fulfillment of such desires may involve substantial simultaneous
effort and distress. Reflecting on our past experiences, we presume how
things will develop in the future in human society so as to take desire
and distress into account. Then we apply this thinking to our notions of
life and death, and we construct a view of life and a life
philosophy.
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Then, when the desires are our focus we become optimistic, and when
the distress is our focus we become pessimistic. Giving thought to this
matter, it may appear to be an objective observation of human life, but
it might be merely subjective, or a mixture of subjectivity and
objectivity, or an error in calculation of the relation between desire
and distress. Both the optimism and pessimism are words that represent
subjective feelings. Mr. James anticipated this by saying that a variety
of philosophies such as active and passive philosophies have been
created by the temperaments of the originating philosophers. The
optimism and pessimism may support the idea that life is desirable but
difficult or that success is desirable but requires hard
work.
Various views of life are formulated about life and death or
desire and distress. Those ideas will be handled on the level of
cognition when they are criticized objectively and logically.
Alternatively, they will lead to bewilderment when stern life reality
confronts mental constructions like fantasies, worldly desires and
suffering, as the Buddhists point out.
Subjective and objective
observations often result in discrepancy or inconsistency, and so I
designated their interaction a contradiction in thinking. It is natural
to distinguish between the two.
For one thing, one's own perspective
keeps changing. In accordance with the principle of relativity, unless
the standpoint of an observer has been fixed, phenomena cannot be
observed at all. I often criticize philosophy by saying that many
philosophies are only playing with thoughts. An armchair theory
consisting of a mixture of subjectivity and objectivity is not at all
useful for our daily life. In fact, it is a detriment because it
deviates from reality due to the contradiction in thinking.
Shoma Morita.
THE COMPLETE CURE FOR NERVOSITY AND
OBSESSION.
Hakuyosha. |