santu
Ever tried to resort to Upanisads?
A few years ago, while wondering around a book fair, I bought copies of The Principal Upanisads by S. Radhakrishnan and The Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. Unfortunately both the books having been lying virtually unread in my library ever since.
Reading has been my major hobby, pastime and addiction since childhood. Earlier it used to seem easy to finish reading a book like War And Peace in 4-5 sessions. But lately I have lost the habit of reading big books. One chapter of Plato or Neitzsche or a few poems by Neruda, Baudelaire or Pessoa is the most I can manage in one session. And even these sessions have become quite infrequent.
One reason may be that I require reading glasses for a comfortable reading experience but I seldom use them. But a bigger reason is that surfing on the global-village-web for 6-7 hours everyday has reduced my attention span and destroyed my ability to concentrate. Skipping through our favorite websites requires considerably less effort than reading Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. A computer does not entirely reduce you to existing like a couch potato in the way that television or a newspaper can do but it does damage and deplete your physical and mental energy. It enables you to quickly and effortlessly gather the information that you want but in the process one loses the habit of slogging away at a book or a reference text. We may have become better informed but perhaps less knowledgeable in the process.
"The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust."
-T.S.Eliot
