The result is that we take
life in a kind of haphazard way, taking it as it comes, thinking not
very much about it until, perhaps, pushed by some bitter experiences,
instead of moulding it, through the agency of the inner forces, exactly
as we would have it. We need to strike the happy balance between the
custom in this respect of the Eastern and Western worlds, and go to the
extreme of neither the one nor the other. This alone will give the ideal
life; and it is the ideal life only that is the thoroughly satisfactory
life. In the Orient there are many who are day after day sitting in the
quiet, meditating, contemplating, idealizing, with their eyes focused on
their stomach in spiritual revery, while through lack of outer
activities, in their stomachs they are actually starving. In this
Western world, men and women, in the rush and activity of our accustomed
life, are running hither and thither, with no centre, no foundation upon
which to stand, nothing to which they can anchor their lives, because
they do not take sufficient time to come into the realization of what
the centre, of what the reality of their lives is.
If the Oriental would do his contemplating, and then get up and do his
work, he would be in a better condition; he would be living a more
normal and satisfactory life.
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