Selfness!

Jean Paul Sartre said that: “saints are vigilant against sin, but what they should be guarding against is not sin but their saintliness. This is to say that to be good, and to do good work is admirable. But not if you fall into the trap of admiring the image of goodliness that has been created around you and which enhances your ego, your sense of self-worth.”


Everyone says that I do great things. Therefore, I must be a great man. As a great man, I can do only great things. Therefore, everything I do must be a great thing, because it is I who am doing it.  This is the dangerous logic of self-justification, born out of an ego-gratifying public persona that others have created for you and which you have come to believe in yourself.

An man is said to have visited the court of a king who prided himself on all the many public projects he had undertaken for the benefit of his people, including the building of a large number of magnificent places of worship. The king invited this man to look at all his works and asked: “What merit do you think I have gained from all this?”
The gruff answer of the so-called ‘Barbarian from the West’ was: “Absolutely nothing.” The outraged ruler then demanded: “Who is it that dares to speak to a king like that?”
The sage replied: “A no-one who speaks to another no-one.” With this answer the king is said to have gained enlightenment. He realised that all the good works he had done for his subjects had really been only for himself, for his own glory, for his own sense of ego. And the more he was hailed as the great benefactor the greater grew his ego, his attachment to his belief in his own goodness, which was acclaimed by everyone.
It took the ‘Western Barbarian’ to rid the king of his lust for ‘goodness’, for the moral grandeur which he wore like a cloak of gold which dazzled the eyes of world and his own eyes as well. By saying he was ‘no-one’ speaking to another ‘no-one’, The man meant that when we lay claim to possess goodness, or wisdom, or high reputation, we become enmeshed in the ego, in the ‘i’ which must be surrendered before the true state of spiritual grace can be achieved, a state in which there is ‘no-i’, ‘no-one’.
The moral of the story? Perhaps it is that we shouldn’t attach too much importance to our sense of moral accomplishment. Do good works by all means, but do them un-‘self ’-consciously, without giving undue credit to the ‘i’ who supposedly is doing all these good things.
It’s like riding a bicycle. If you do it without thinking of how you’re doing it, you’ll be fine. But if you keep thinking of how you’re maintaining your balance, chances are you’ll fall off.
There shall always be a need to improve despite stratospherical success.
May I always be guided by the simple conducts of life … of the need to think that tomorrow shall be another challenge another day, another rival. No one is perfect and neither am I. We shall all be tempted and subjected to capricious behaviour. Unpredictable and sudden. The test of time is always whether we shall be able to live up to our proclaimed status or being. Let that status be upon us always … struggling for it, and hopefully winning eventually.

My love as ever ..

DiL