In every morning, new ideas knock the door. To whom it approaches? The self or to itself? This question appears to be so simple but profound. In our daily reality, we find acquaintance with the self or the image of the self? In Buddha's vision there is no soul, no essence, and of course, no quintessence. What is, then, the meaning of I, you, We, and Them? Whether language has any compulsion to indicate self through these denotational practices? Or it indicates something in our conventional experiences, but to stretch the language further, it is reduced to that zero level from there on there is hardly anything representable in speech, word, thought, or experience. There is silence. Silence is not void, in fact. It is the supreme intelligence to recognize the enslavement from thought in form of conditioning. There is well known saying that whatever comes passes away. It is a fact. If things are so momentous; how can anyone be so sure about quintessence? In our daily life, many people, creatures, plants, thoughts, emotions, actions come and pass away. Invisible becomes visible and vice versa. Cacophony of existence passes away into the silence, the complete void. The existence of void is also a form of existence. But it also passes away. Nature fills the voidness with the music of existence. We crave for happiness, peace, and security and if fact we get it. But it also moves away into the direction of unhappiness, fear, and insecurity. If anything has any quintessence why does it move? This is one of the business of life to appreciate this fact and to accept the thing as it is. To desire a thought to enslave or mechanize our life with permanency is a desire to invite fear, insecurity, and a sense of competition against the world. The psyche of evolutionary imagination has reduced our life into some stimulated thoughts, which claim to be so ingenious in discovering the law of nature in form of evolution. It's easy to fill the basket of imagination with some thoughts, but to preserve it for so long is an unbearable task. Aristotle gave the idea to inculcate our minds with good habits. Habit is here central to his thought so as to develop virtue and happiness; two essential ingredients for good life. Aristotle never questioned the idea of self. If it is manufactured by thoughts and past experiences? Or is it a supreme reality? He presupposed self and then went onto suggest to imbibe good habits. Habit is nothing but enslavement in a pattern to make mind dull, lazy and to ensure conformity to certain habits or ideals. To recognize its limitation is the supreme intelligence. It's easy to desire but to live with its expectations is the first crucial test of every achievement. Aristotelian vision of life is about progress towards virtues.But every virtue was once vice and vice versa. His vision is to embrace happiness, but no happiness is achieved in vacuum. And no happiness remains so long. It is as momentary as a spec of dust. You want to hold it. Fine! The archive of time has witnessed many dreams, its realization, and its decline into nothingness. You want to forget or conceal nothingness so as to carry the burden of expectations. But nothingness is not a distant dream. It's happening here and now in everyone and everything. Just you question about yourself you will find a stranger living as you.
Aristotle once wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are four significant virtues for human beings, namely Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage. There are a few judges who have courage and sense of justice, both. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Rohinton Nariman has been truly an exemplar judge and erudite historian, theologian and philologist, a great scholar of music as well as a courageous and meticulous jurist of our country. He did his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1980-81 and taught by one of the finest jurists of the last century, Roberto Unger. He became Senior Advocate in 1993 in the age of 37 and also served as Solicitor General of India in 2011 before he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2014. He delivered many landmark judgments, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. There are a few people with whom time moves too fast, but to count that experience takes ages. Justice Rohinton Nariman is one of those great jurists with whom a meet
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