The Road was Broad but Blind

The road was straight and smooth, wide and broad, and gay and bright too.

When I came on it from my abode inside a narrow lane, my eyes opened with wonder, and what a thrill of joy ran through my frame! I saw so many here, laughing, playing, moving and talking.

This is life, I thought, what else could it be? There was stir on all sides, vigour in all movements, and the blowing breeze brought an urge todo and act. I thought of the lonely quiet corner in my lane from where I had emerged into this life and light. There, if I was getting lost in reflections over my I, myself, who it is, wherefrom, and how and why it comes and where it goes, what it needs, what it wants–here, as I look out, it seems that my I is but one of the so many other things around me, and that there is nothing to know about it. Life seems to be so many impulses, so many urges, which activate us and living means following them. Happiness does not seem to come from inside, but from following the urges of the body as they come and from serving the many desires as they form and demand. On the road of life all things are there to satisfy my wishes and fancies. They are only to be gathered and possessed, and if I have the means it looks so easy to obtain them.

And, so, my one absorbing thought now is to procure the means–the money. I go to earn; I labour to earn; I run on the scent of money; I sit up in the night thinking and dreaming of money. When I have the money I shall get all; I shall eat and drink and enjoy as I like. On this broad road all are to be found.

As I think so I do. Thinking and doing here go together. There’s no halting, no hesitating, no questioning; otherwise I shall be left behind. I have left the reins to my mind, which is carrying me merrily on the wide boulevard of life. I never knew that I could go like this. How the fancies come and how each one blows me from one place to another. I run to things which attract me, and, when I can, I catch and possess whatever catches my mind. This is what everyone here is doing. Running and picking, storing and possessing, with all the vigour and animation of what life seems to be. I begin and try to do likewise. I must go with the rush. I follow the swelling urges and desires and, as I do so, they swell up more and become stranger and make me run faster with the dash of impatience. Before I have attended to one desire there’s another looking in; but there is an exciting pleasure each time which leads me through wear and tear, fatigue and uncertainty. I fall and get up again; I get rubbed and bruised by strong and zealous people, but I am healed by a show of pity and a smile of love which they throw at me.

Sometimes, when the occasional falls and bruises disconcert me and turn me to the thoughts of my old abode my mind argues – “But these only make life the fuller and more joyful. Rise from a fall brings a fresh impulse and a keener desire; healing of a wound brings another urge.”

The argument is good and true, for, on all sides that’s what I see. A fall makes one run faster; disappointment makes one more ardent in desire; a loss makes one grip and hold on to  what is left with teeth and nail; a coin stolen makes one bury underground the money in hand. And, not only that, it is from such doings, running, re-desiring that they derive the joy of life.

I follow and more on. I don’t want to get behind in the sweeping march on the broad road of life. I go as my mind directs and desires urge. There’s little to gain from arguing and disputing with them; for, as I progress onward my desires become stronger and my I, my self, the weaker. I have yielded to their call throwing away the hold that I ever had on them, and, now, I am riding on without the reins in my hand. But the prospect is cheerful and I dispell the misgivings which sometimes peep in.

“After all my mind cannot betray me, for, it is only following the nature of things, the ways of life, the steps of so many others who have gone ahead and who are going in my company” – so I say to myself and relax into the lightheartedness that comes when one leaves oneself in the hands of another to be led and guided, and frees himself from the anxiety of looking after himself. But, though I have made myself light by throwing down that anxiety, I have weighted myself with what I have been collecting and putting into my pocket and on my head. My possessions have been increasing and so also my craving for them. They have given me joy and pleasure and satisfied my aims and desires. And so also the many charms and attractions of life here which have given thrills and excitements and allured me on and on.

Yet, sometimes I am distracted and feel out of sorts. With all that I am not feeling the happier. My capacity to be happy in the way in which I had thought I would be is weakening. Obedience to desires is leaving me in fatigue and lassitude. The happiness that I had sought is missing, What I have is but a burn, to cool down which I have to run again for something and again for something. I look around to see if the feeling that is coldly creeping in me is also troubling others who are similarly walking on with me and I notice that things are getting wrong with them also. Bonds of love and attachment, which had grouped them are wearing. The road onward is narrowing and the ground can no more keep together. They pause; the path looks like coming to an end. Is the road blind, the road we have come, the road of life as we had thought it to be? The question worries them all as their vision is blocked by a boulder which lies across and cuts off the narrowing lane. The haziness of late afternoon is hanging down from the sky above.

I halt with the rest, tired and exhausted, out of breath. I looked and wished to return to my little abode in the narrow lane where I had opened my eyes in the morning and seen flash of gold on the east. There the sky was clear, the air was light and soft, and my inside, my feelings, my thoughts, were un-torn by pulls and shifts and struggles, hankerings and cravings, fears, excitements, ever burning worries and uncertainties. There, there was no competition to push and beat and win and no impatient impulse to do what another did and to get what shone and glittered in another’s hand.

How free, how light I was in my little place and what abundance of leisure was there to look above, to think, to imagine, to reflect. How freely and extensively my vision could stretch out there over the wide blue sky. O, the sweet little corner which I left to come out on this wide road, which proved to be blind. Where is the company that I had sought, and whose joys and pleasures I had wished toshare? And, where are those colours that had thrilled me, that splendour which had beckoned me to come out on this blind road?

I feel so lovely, so vacant, so hollow now. Where’s my I, my self? I lost that on the way. That must have dropped out and returned to the quiet, little place where I was, while I looked out on the glittering things on the way and kept my eyes on them and on the road which I treaded. I sit down at the end of the blind road and wonder how I can be happy without my I, my self. I eat but get no taste; I see but no light; I touch but do not feel. I desire, I long, I wish, but the body cannot satisfy. I had tried in vain to get pleasure, joy, satisfaction, fulfilment, happiness all from the body. But this body of flesh and bones – what can it give?