The four requisites upon which human life depends — food, clothing, shelter, and medicine — are indispensable to existence. Yet even though these four are genuine necessities of life, they carry within them an inherent allure and desirability. This is a matter demanding careful and vigilant attention. For when any of these requisites pleases and delights the heart too greatly, one finds oneself wanting far more than is truly necessary.
And yet to obtain the four requisites, one must have something with which to exchange for them — whether it be money, or the labor of one’s body and hands.
When one desires beyond necessity, one must toil beyond necessity. One must exhaust oneself beyond necessity in order to obtain beyond necessity what one then brings back for use. Yet it pleases and gratifies — and so one toils, however wearisome the effort, and goes forth to acquire — only for there to be, not infrequently, things brought back that are scarcely ever used at all.
Should this seem difficult to believe, look no further than one’s own bedroom. Are there not things purchased and left unused — bought three or four years ago and yet untouched to this day?
There is an allure and a covetousness concealed within things. To desire beyond necessity is to exhaust oneself in pursuit beyond all reason. To exhaust oneself in pursuit beyond all reason is to wear down one’s health — and to find oneself prone to agitation, easily and frequently disturbed. And from this habitual agitation there follows, as a natural consequence, the cultivation of a disposition that insists upon having its own way in all things.
Without even being aware of it, one has become a person who is governed entirely by self-will. And so one comes easily into friction and conflict with others — and whenever such friction arises, one is convinced that one must be entirely in the right, whilst all the rest of the world is entirely in the wrong.
April 30th, 2014
