Sticky in Chennai

Yes, the cover looks hokey but I am going to make a passionate plea for everyone to get a hold of this book.  In particular any American readers who happen to reside in New York City.  Yes, you.  READ THIS BOOK.

I won’t waste your time arguing why you should read it. Instead let me simply share with you a choice passage:

“There is a wealth of humbug in this life, but the multitudinous little humbugs have been classified by Chinese Buddhists under two big humbugs: fame and wealth.  There is a story that Emperor Ch’ienlung once went up a hill overlooking the sea during his trip to South China and saw a great number of sailing ships busily plying the China Sea to and fro.  He asked his minister what the people in those hundreds of ships were doing and his minister replied that he saw only two ships, and their names were “Fame” and “Wealth.”  Many cultured persons were able to escape the lure of wealth, but only the very greatest could escape the lure of fame.  Once a monk was discoursing with his pupil on these two sources of worldly cares, and said: “It is easier to get rid of the desire for money than the desire for fame.  Even retired scholars and monks still want to be distinguished and well known among their company.  They want to give public discourses to a large audience, and not retire to a small monastery talking to one pupil, like you and me now.”  The pupil replied: “Indeed, Master, you are the only man in the world who has conquered the desire for fame!”  And the Master smiled.    

From my own observations of life, this Buddhist classification of life’s humbugs is not complete, and the great humbugs of life are three, instead of two: Fame, Wealth and Power.  There is a convenient American word which again combines these three humbugs into the One Great Humbug: Success.  But many wise men know that the desire for success, fame and wealth are euphemistic names for the fears of failure, poverty, and obscurity, and that these fears dominate our lives…

Yet there is a secondary social humbug quite as powerful and universal, the humbug of fashion.  The courage to be one’s own natural self is quite a rare thing.  The Greek philosopher Democritus thought he was doing a great service to mankind by liberating it from the oppression of two great fears:  the fear of God and the fear of death.  But even that does not liberate us from another equally universal fear: the fear of one’s neighbors.  Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man.  Consciously or unconsciously, we are all actors in this life playing to the audience in a part and style approved by them.”