Finding your way

In a conversation with a dear person a few days ago, I made a few observations, which I would like to report with great pleasure in sharing them with you.
In Shakespeare's tragedies, but also in the first Book (Inferno - Hell) of Dante's Comedy, we meet characters who consider the world as devoid of ontological sense. Only power makes sense for them; only lust and greed are the engines of the world. This same concept is expressed in the sixteenth chapter of the Bhagavad-gita, when Krishna describes the characteristics of benighted people: they neither know the art of acting, nor that of renunciation; neither purity, nor good behavior, nor truthfulness can be found in them.
They say that the world is the result of chaos, without foundation, without the presence of an ordering intelligence, only moved and governed by libido, by "concupiscentia carnis", by greed. But to this perspective we can and must oppose another one: the perspective in which the world, time and history have their meaning; in which everything makes sense according to the project of the universe, aimed at ethical and spiritual evolution. This perspective does not certainly lack in Dante and in the Bhagavad-gita. In this typical vision of traditional cultures, a great responsibility has been given to the human being.

In the beginning of his “Confessions”, St. Augustine says: "Men and women are responsible for their own death", meaning that everyone is responsible for everything he/she does, even for what appears to be an inevitable force of destiny, beyond any human control. Even in the perspective of the Hindu-Vedic tradition, through every action the Being can choose between the Good and the Bad at any moment. People always have the faculty to decide whether to turn towards the dark or towards the light. They are always called to take responsibility for their choices. For example, those who exceed in sleeping or idleness should be aware that they are losing an important portion of their limited lifetime. On the contrary, when they choose to renounce all that is ephemeral and make commitments and sacred vows, they are renouncing their pseudo-freedom, in order to conquer the true freedom, the one that transforms men and women into heroes, who have dominated instincts and passions. Pleasure-seekers are affected by inattentional blindness, since they take into account only immediate and fleeting pleasures, losing sight of the Good, which is true and lasting; thus, the value of life slips inexorably away from them.

Marco Ferrini