..續本文上一頁conceive oneself equal to another ("I am as good as you"), or as inferior (which often comes from frustrated pride) — these, too, are rooted in conceit, in an egocentric evaluation of oneself in relation to others. All three are modes of conceit: the superiority complex, the equality claim, and the inferiority complex. This urge to compare oneself with others springs from an inner insecurity that deep within knows and fears the shakiness of the delusive ego image.
This triple conceit entirely vanishes only when even the most subtle ego reference disappears. This comes only with Arahatship, when the last vestige of the fetter of conceit (mana-samyojana) has been eliminated. The arahant no longer needs the shaky bridge of ego conceit as he has given up "both sides," the discrimination of self and others, and has transcended both the here and the beyond of worldly existence.
5. He who does not find core or substance
in any of the realms of being,
like flowers which are vainly sought
in fig-trees which have none,
— such a monk gives up the here and the beyond,
just as a serpent sheds its worn-out skin.
Like ignorant people who want to pick flowers where none can be expected, since time immemorial men have sought in vain for an abiding core and substance within themselves and in the world they inhabit. Or they have hoped to find it beyond their own world, in celestial realms and in their gods. Man is driven to that unceasing but futile quest for something immortal by his longing for a state of security, living as he does in an entirely insecure world which he constantly sees crumbling around him and below his own feet. Not that the vast majority of men would care for the boredom of living forever in the immobility which any stable and secure condition implies. But they long for it as a temporary refuge to which they can resort, as children resort to the soothing arms of their mother after becoming sore and tired by their wild and reckless play.
Behind that longing for security, be it temporary or constant, there looms a still stronger driving force: the fear of death, the desire for self-preservation. This holds true for the coarsest as well as the subtlest form of that search for permanency, be it a wish for the perpetuation of sense enjoyment in a sensuous heaven, or the expression of a "metaphysical need," or the deep yearning for a unio mystica. This quest for permanency and security may also manifest itself as an urge for absolute power or for absolute self-surrender, for absolute knowledge or for absolute faith.
Since man”s early days, as soon as he first started to reflect upon his life situation, he turned his glance everywhere in search of something stable in a world of instability. He looked for it in the personified forces of nature, in stellar bodies, in the four great elements of matter, believing one or another to be the ultimate matrix of life. But chiefly he sought it in those changing forms and symbols of the pine which he had created in the image of his own longings, within the scope of his own understanding, and for the furtherance of his own purposes, noble or low.
Firm belief in an Absolute, whether a god or a state, has appeared to man to be so absolutely necessary that he has used all subtleties of his intellect and all autosuggestive devices to persuade himself to accept this or that form of religious or political faith. He has also used every possible means, fair and foul, either to coax or to coerce others to recognize and worship his religious or political idols. Often not much coercion was needed, as there were always those who were only too glad to sacrifice their intellect and surrender their freedom at the altars of those idols, to win in return a feeling of security and doubt-free certainty.
Men h…
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