In truth it is a series of choices made. Choices about how to perceive or relate to things. It is a way of ordering perception and of assigning meaning. It is obviously a way to deal with a fundamental fact: the transitory nature of all things and events. The backdrop of it is unstated: mortality. It is a way of thinking that is possible for anyone, and in this case is connected to the entire school of the Indian subcontinent, in all its different aspects. You cannot separate them from that 'tree'. And that whole 'tree' has achieved, in comparison to the Western modalities, nothing of any substantial value or use. How could it? It is a way of seeing that leads directly to non-activity. As a group of choices it leads directly to one conclusion: futility. An examination in their historical context of the cultural creations that have come out of the Indian Subcontinent shows pretty obviously where the doctrines of defined futility lead. In short it is a way and means whereby the individual and the person is rendered irrelevant and in one way or another that individual can only stare onto a giant Idea---a projection---that renders him useless, ineffective and utterly pessimistic."Objects in themselves are neither in existence nor in non-existence and are quite devoid of the alternative of being and non-being, and should only be thought of as one thinks of the horns of a hare, a horse, or a camel, which never existed. Objects are discriminated by the ignorant who are addicted to assertion and negation, because their intelligence has not been acute enough to penetrate into the truth that there is nothing but what is seen of the mind itself."
In contradistinction, the Western mind sees the same 'field' (transitory, etc.) but makes very radically different choices in respect to those facts. It is the difference between sheer asceticism that chooses to do nothing, and the Western modality of affirmation and valuation of the possibilities of life within exactly the same field! It is after all the same 'field'.
Perhaps for the utterly tired and exhausted Westerner these Eastern possibilities are inevitable? They are certainly deeply attractive and seductive. But one must recognize that they lead to impotence. For us they are 'acidic'.
---Alex Number Three