Examples Please
How about a racist? She feels exalted by virtue of her inclusion in a certain race. Other races aren’t as good as her race, as proven by ‘history’. How does she sustain this belief? By ignoring the ten thousand truths that prove the ‘history’ (and thus the belief) is incomplete and wrong.
And a Sexist? He feels exalted by his status as the ‘stronger’ sex. He is bigger, faster, stronger, smarter than a woman. In addition, his religion and his tradition says it’s so. How does he sustain this belief? By ignoring the ten thousand truths that prove his religion and tradition are incomplete and wrong.
Why Yoga?
Then why do I have a person practicing Yoga in the drawing instead of a drawing of a racist or sexist?
Good question. What’s your answer?
© 2015 Marty Coleman
Quote by Alexander Pushkin, 1799-1837, Russian author and poet
“The illusion that exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths”
Well, many of the things we do, we do because we think it makes us better people. Life is way too complicated to know for certainty that is really does. We can’t even define “better” let alone keep up with the 1000 truths towards enlightenment. So, we take short cuts – live under illusions. From what I know, yoga surely has some benefits, but possibly not as many as yoga practitioners think it has. I dunno, but comparing it to being racist or sexist, if that’s what you’re doing: I happen to believe those things mean missing out on much of what life has to offer and have the significant added detriment of being hurtfull to others – which generally leads to more problems beyond faith based ones like karma.
How do you draw a racist or a sexist? What do they look like? For all we know, maybe you did draw a racist. Racists, sexists (is that a word?) and every other “ist” out there look like everybody else around them. They only reveal themselves once they start talking.
Kathy, the woman doing Yoga may or may not be either one of those, very true and I hadn’t thought about that. I love when something is brought to my attention that completely slipped by me. It may have slipped by me because I was focused on creating a visual identity of someone doing an activity. As I was drawing I was thinking about the quote and how the illusions we hold on to can even be when we are doing a supposedly eye-opening and enlightening activity such as Yoga.
However, when I started writing I was thinking something different and had sort of disconnected the specifics of the drawing from the idea of illusion. Then I started thinking about more concrete examples that made sense to me, sexism and racism. It wasn’t the best continuity between drawing and text I’ve ever had, that’s for sure.
Thanks for the comment Kathy, I appreciate it! M