Skip to main content

What is "Other" in me?

What is 'other' in me? Something which is not a part of me, someone who is separate and distinct from me? This separateness is often preached in every bit of discourses.

Otherness has a value which starts with the premise of self. Self, which is egotistic, selfish, and individualistic. The dichotomy of self-otherness is the genesis of chaos, violence, hatred, and contempt. In fact, no violence is violence in real sense if it does not affect self. Inflicting injury to others must be injurious to self. Can there be an action which affects the so called others without self? I doubt if any. I doubt if there is self-other dichotomy in existence. The moment people practice "I" v. You, or I v. They, that moment only the very possibility of life as harmony, beauty, and peace looses its fragrance amid chaotic-egotistical tensions. There is no self-other division except in my mind. And this division has resulted into catastrophic strains since ancient to modern time. Violence is not only what do  we know in traditional sense. Violence is also sometimes so subtle and soft that we often commit it even without knowing about it. 

The principles which must lead us should not come from this Cartesian division of mind-body, body-soul, friend-enemy, self-other, and transcendence-immanence, instead life itself is a collective whole. We never know if we are living, or mother Earth is living? Only a collective imagination is the name of life which deserves the name of life. The "island of life' is illusionary and deceptive. If you believe in premise of self, just look outside yourself and see what are the elements outside you which makes you alive. The tree which offers you fresh oxygen, help in conservation of waters, its fruits which are too dear to them but they offer you, the animals, crops, fire, water, Earth, Sky, Sun, and what not. Do you find any dichotomy in their existence? Do you find any isolation in them. Then, why are we so selfish and isolated? Why are we so near-sighted? Who baffles us? Who makes us uneasy? Why do we accumulate so many things without thinking a minute if it is a burden? Perhaps, we have killed a sense of collective imagination as humans. We heighten humans the highest and the wisest animal on this planet; the best possible creation of nature. In same line of thinking, we are burdened with binary, a doxa, which is a byproduct of mind, which is superimposed to  us to our senses so as to write a story of conquest over others in which self is defeated.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Imagination

Student: I want to excel in my life. Over the years, my graph of success is achieving a new height. I am doing hard work to become one of the smartest and richest persons on the Earth. Teacher: Wonderful! Who is  achiever and what is achieved? Student: I am the achiever. My name and fame are shining day by day.  Teacher: Who is this ‘I’? What is the material by which it is produced? Student: I is the ego which is the agent achieving successes and facing failures. Teacher: Whether ego is real or imaginary? Student: It is made of name, form, and function. Teacher: Whether name, form, and function are eternal?  Student: No, they are changing. Teacher: Anything changes does it exist? Whether these are real or merely fictitious images appearing and disappearing before the sightscreen of mind? Student: They are the images constructing my identity as a person. Teacher: Well said! What is the stuff by which these images are made of? Who is maker and what is made? Student: They ar...

पिरोता जाऊँ एक माला ज़िन्दगी का

पढ़ता हूँ हर एक दिन एक ही पन्ना, हर दिन हज़ार ये मालूम पड़ते हैं। जबसे होश संभाला है एक ही पन्ना सवांरते आया हूँ, लोग इसे ज़िन्दगी कहते हैं। इसपे लिखे हर एक लब्ज़ जो मेरे मालूम पड़ते हैं, ना जाने कितने जुबां पे चढ़े होंगे। आज हम भी कुछ पल के लिए ही सही इसके सारथी हैं, जाने से पहले कुछ रंग मेरा भी इसपे चढ़ जाए, बस इसीलिए एक ही पन्ना बार बार पलटता रहता हूँ। हर कोई अनजाने किताब की तलाश में बाहर निकलता है, जिसका हर एक पन्ना वो ख़ुद है। जब ख़ुद के रंग को समझ ही ना पाया, तो भला इंद्रधनुषी किताब के क्या मायने हैं? अस्तित्व में ना जाने कितने पन्ने बिखरे पड़े हैं, बस एक से ही अवगत हो जाऊँ, उसके हर एक शब्द को चुनता जाऊँ, कुछ पल के लिये सही, पिरोता जाऊँ एक माला ज़िन्दगी का।

Human's Rationality: Its Unfree-Freedoms

Cosmic energy is moving into various forms and patterns, its quest is to become, what Arthur Schopenhauer called 'will to live'.  (Arthur Schopenhauer, 1818). He is explicit that: “Thus the will to live everywhere preys upon itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as a manufactory for its own use. Yet even the human race...reveals in itself with most terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance of the will with itself…”. Every ‘will to become' is a movement, encompassing the history of past and future; the degree of rationality and its gradation are normativized by thoughts as hierarchy of souls and monads. Human being as likeness and image of God possess the highest truth, indeed! In fact, human being is the only species who possess and owns the truth, it is the only mode of being who puts truth at stake, constructs its horizons and claim of legitimacy and illegitimacy, defi...