A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

152 MAYA AND ILLUSION.and we have to work in and throughit. It is a mixtureof this existence and non-existence.Coming from abstractions to common, every day details of our lives, we find that our whole life is a mixtureof this contradiction of existence and non-existence. Thereis this contradiction in knowledge. It seems that man canknow everything, if he only wants to know ;but before hehas gone a few steps he finds an adamantine wall whichhe cannot move. All his work is in a circle, and he cannotgo beyond that circle. The problems which are nearestand dearest unto him, are impelling him and calling onhim day and night for a solution, but he cannot solve them,because he cannot go beyond his intellect. And yet the desireis implanted strongly in him. Still we know that the onlygood is to be obtained by controlling and checking theseimpulses. With every breath, every impulse of our heart asksus to be selfish. At the same time, there is some power beyondus which says that it is unselfishness which is alone good.Every child is a born optimist ;he isdreaming goldendreams. In youth he becomes still more optimistic. It ishard for a young man to believe that there is such a thingas death, such a thing as defeat or degradation. Old agecomes, and life is a mass of ruin. Dreams have vanishedinto air, and the old man has become a pessimist. Thuswe are going on, from one extreme to the other, buffetedby Nature, without hope, without limit, without knowingthe bounds, without knowing where we are going. It reminds me of a celebrated song as written in the LcditaVistara^ in the biography of Buddha. Buddha was born,says the book, as the saviour of mankind, but he forgothimself in the luxuries of his palace, and some angels cameto sing a song to rouse him up, and the burden of thewhole song is, We are floating down this river, continuallya