“Ascetics are both the children and elders of society at the same time, childlike in maintaining their idealism and wise as a result.”
-Swami B.V. Tripurari
Idealism is considered to be something belonging to youth, after which we grow over it and get on with the “real world”. I’ve seen so many leave their idealism behind along with their thinning hair, and I’ve left a bundle of it behind myself (both of them, actually). The reality of survival becomes apparent when your parents stop paying your bills. It’s hard to be a dumpster diving squatter if you have three kids to take care of and a mortgage and a student loan. Unfortunately idealism is often no more than a utopia that’s not really grounded in how the world works and that’s one reason why people comply in their adult lives.
There’s something very attractive about the youthful idealism, as much as it can be silly and juvenile as well. Despite being often misdirected and not too well-informed, the feeling of it, the urge to fight and stand for something, is very attractive. Faith in itself is beautiful. To be ready to lay down your life for something, give your all-in-all, is to really be alive. But how fulfilling is it really to reach the goal of idealism that concerns only the material existence? If we’d save all the oceans, turn over all the evil governments, burn down every slaughter house and feed every hungry person in the world, what to fight for then? Would the peaceful dayt-to-day life in the perfect world satisfy us? I know it wouldn’t satisfy me.
The root of exploitation is much closer to us than we dare to think, and social activism doesn’t really have the weeding tools to pull it out. According to eastern philosophy our materially tinged view of reality is the cause of injustice. It’s not a circumstantial problem. We are the problem. So it’s not very surprising that most idealists get totally frustrated and bury their weapons under their couches and home theaters . We’re chaining ourselves to a wrong tree, so to speak.
I’ve always thought that spiritual life is the essence and the source of idealism. It’s revolutionary in a sustainable way. Since morality is at its basis, it doesn’t abandon responsibility in the name of a higher ideal (when in a lot of the cases the real motivation may be laziness or selfishness). But when the time is right, all duties in relation to the world will be left behind, and one is free to live exclusively to one’s ideal. The cool thing about Gaudiya Vaishnavism is that it doesn’t suffocate the soul in the name of ending exploitation or suffering. It talks about refocusing our view of what reality is and how we fit in. It’s not as much preoccupied with changing or doing away with the externals rather than expanding our understanding of what we are. Real idealism is actually just about seeing the full picture of reality.
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