It's worth bowing down to greatness, at least once in a while. This thing called the heart flutters with an abandon with every such bow. In these experiences, I find the grey areas between the hedonists and the stoics.
Maugham writes that identifying what-is-what is the lowest of aesthetic pleasures, which, I believe, is in conflict with stoical ways of living. For Maugham, the key to aesthetic pleasure is, perhaps, in the experience of the Object, and not just in identifying the object, which, to my mind, seems to be a stoical path.
Does the heart soar because it felt the greatness, or was the experience of bearing the soaring heart, for that atomic spell of time, indicative of greatness? Was the greatness a precursor for the joy, or was it the joy that identified greatness?
Krishnamurthi does not solve our problem. He differentiates between Joy and Pleasure, over the number of experiences - joy being the substrate of the first experience; pleasure, possibly, of every repeatitive experience - and leads us, in his characteristic Nihilistic, yet 'disciplined' ways, towards joy, rather than pleasure.
But the experience, itself - does joy arise out of the world? Is there no better solution to this problem than the trivial, and yet, the most mellowing existential Being-in-the-world solution?
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