Pursuit of the unknown is challenging. One can do it in any of the many ways. But whatever it is you are pursuing, a positive result is never a neccessary outcome. That we needn't worry about this is adviced in Bhagavadgeetha:
"Karmanyevadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana,
Ma karmaphalaheturbhurmate sangostva karmani" (II-47)
Meaning: Your right is to work only, but never desire the fruits
let not the fruits of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.
(I don't feel very good quoting from Bhagavadgeetha etc, because personally, I feel, one should devote complete attention to these texts and only then speak about them. My kind of piece-meal approach is not correct. But I am unable to do so now and believe "Something is better than nothing")
But even if it is true that we should not desire the result, in any pursuit there is no harm(I feel) in trying to find out whether there will be a result or not. For people who feel very confident, and have the feeling:"I am great, I know everything or I can certainly know and answer everything", please consider this:
Look at the world we live in Physically. We are in some country, on the face of earth, which revolves and rotates around a sun in a solar system, which is in a galaxy called "Milky Way", which is in a Universe. Sounds great. Hey but what is in the Universe in? Is it just hanging in cold air? Hanging?? Cold air?? Well you see when we bring together the concepts of:
The Physical World we are in,
The Quest "What is outside this?" and it's repeated use
we end up in an unanswerable question. Because whatever anything is in, what is outside that? This is unending, INFINITE. So either the Physical World is incomprehensible or certainly not lending itself to Questions like "What is outside this?"
OR
Our whole way of thinking is wrong.
By "our whole way", I am referring to the Western Scientific way. I have been taught in school to think scientifically and atleast as of now(maybe not before, maybe not later), this is the contribution of the Western world. And does this way of thinking answer my seemingly simple sounding question. No!
I arrive at two possibilities above - Incomprehensibility of Physical World AND wrong way of thinking. If it is the former then it points to the what I was trying to say "...whatever it is you are pursuing a positive result is never a neccessary outcome". Still I don't think we human beings have been born into this world for leaving things at that. We always pursue.
Even in the sloka above Lord Krishna didn't want us to give up, as can seen by the interpretation in http://www.vahini.org/downloads/geethavahini.html
"...The Lord has said in the Geetha, 'refuse the fruit' (maa phaleshu), that is to say: the deed yields results, but the doer should not desire the result, or do it with the result in view. If Krishna's intention was to say that the doer has no right for the fruit, He would have said, 'It is fruitless', 'na phaleshu,' (na, meaning no). So if you desist from Karma, you will be transgressing the Lord's command. That will be a serious mistake..."
So made confident by the reassurances, I pursue the INFINITE, a pursuit in which, as I said above, there is nothing much to be confident about. I like this, this brief look at pursuit, before one actually begins.
Time, Eternal, standing Still,
moves ahead, unending Will,
never to stop, no trace of chill,
till the summit of this Colossal Hill... Wednesday, April 03, 2002
