My Path

Evgeny Onegin: Can't you see where this leads? A declaration, a kiss, a wedding, family, obligation, boredom, adultery.

- from the 1999 movie Onegin, directed by Martha Fiennes

I'm single and intend to remain so for the foreseable future. Some may think that I'm a bit cynical in my attitude towards love and marriage. Some even say, I'm selfish.

Let others think what they like. I've always believed that we all have an obbligation to find our own path towards Truth and Understanding. For some, it is the path of marriage (and possibly divorce). That is the course that they have to attend to graduate from the School of Life. For some, it is the path of monkhood.

I'm neither a householder nor a monk. I'm just a fellow explorer, trying to learn and understand as much as I can about life and our place in the larger scheme of things. That to me, is the whole purpose of existence. The rest are just coursework and exercises that you choose, based on their suitability to your temperament and nature, to help you progress towards this goal.

The path of marriage is a good path. Because it has a challenging mix of pain and pleasure. And there are useful lessons to be learnt from both types of experiences. At the end of the journey, your soul advances.

To become a monk is to become a spiritual athlete. You are a professional. You live in a controlled lab environment where special experiments and trainings are performed to slowly perfect the mind and soul.

I'm not a worldly person. The everyday cares of marriage and family bores me. I'm also not fond of organized religions. Hence I'm not eager to become a spiritual athlete in any of the traditional orders.

I've chosen a path, which is kind of like a kind of spiritual humanism. I'm a student of all the spiritual traditions in the world. I believe in tackling issues the rational and scientific way, with a liberal application of Occam's Razor.

Nothing delights me more than understanding. I seek to understand. Understanding gives me a high. Life is but a quest for greater understanding. To read and to converse with people is to seek understanding. The more I understand, the more compassion and love I feel for the world around me.

I enjoy life because the pleasures that are crave for are easily attainable. I don't need a lot of money to enjoy life. Books, art, knowledge and Nature itself--these are my playthings and objects of my lust.

A lifetime is finite. The challenge is to make every moment and every experience in life count. Every moment and every word that I type brings me insight and clarity.

And I shall end this blog entry, with the satisfaction of knowing that I'm a better person than who I was when typed the first line:

"I'm single and I intend to remain so for the foreseable future..."