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PARTISAN REVIEW
Time was a cycle of pain, because life was made up of hungers
and desires, and all these hungers and desires could only be satisfied
at the expense of suffering, as we were all members of one being.
All suffering was therefore our suffering, and the delight of devouring
was paid for by the suffering of being devoured.
Under this conception there was no longer a question of being
rewarded or punished after death; the only reward was to escape.
But where could one escape to, if time was a circle? In a two-dimen–
sional universe nothing exists outside the plane on which the circle
is drawn. To escape from that plane is to escape into nothing.
If
the
circle is infinitely great, to escape beyond it is to escape into nothing.
Therefore the only solution is to withdraw from the perimeter of the
circle to the point which is the center of the circle. Or, to put it
more concretely, to withdraw from the rim of the wheel to the hub
of the wheel. The nearer one gets to the hub the quieter it is. There
is less motion and less change. This is the blissful state of Nirvana, the
state without pain. Therefore withdraw from life, from the busy rim
of the wheel. Break the bonds of selfish appetites that bind us to the
rim, and withdraw into the blissful hub.
This is the profound thought of both the Vedanta and Buddhist
philosophers. This thought contains a conception of time which is two–
dimensional. It implies the possibility of withdrawing from the
rim
of
time, which is moving, to the center of time, which is motionless. But
there is still something lacking, for salvation here is only for the in–
dividual, and salvation is impossible for the individual on his own,
for we are all parts of one being. It was for this reason that Gautama,
having reached Nirvana, returned to the world of pain to help other
creatures along the way.
The next great conception was the conception of Tao. Lao-tze
thought of the good life as completely flexible and rhythmical. To be
rigid was to be evil. To impose laws was to do evil. Lao-tze was the
great anarchist, the great anti-Egyptian. The right way of life, was to
go along with the rhythm of life without effort. And instead of virtue
lying in the struggle to climb upwards to the heights from which we
had fallen, true virtue lay in giving up all striving, in allowing our–
selves to flow downwards, back to the vast ocean out of which we had
been drawn.
The great Chinese philosopher, unlike the great Hindu Buddha,
