Alexander the Great, his conquest complete:
We dine this evening, my officers and I, on a terrace of teak overlooking the river. The talk is of an incident earlier today. My party had been crossing that quadrant of the camp that abuts Oxila village. One of my Pages, a bright lad named Agathon, was striding ahead to clear the lane, when he came upon a troupe of gymnosophists talking the sun in the public way. These declined to vacate for my passage. An altercation broke out between the boy and several vendors, who took up the cudgel on the renunciant’s behalf. A crowd gathered. By the time I arrived, a full-blown incident was in progress. The nut of the quarrel was this: Who was more worthy to possess the right-of-way – Alexander or the gymnosophists? As I reined-in, Agathon stood in spirited exchange with the eldest of the wise men. Indicating me, the lad declared, “This man has conquered the world! What have you done? The philosopher replied without an instant’s hesitation, “I have conquered the need to conquer the world.”
I laughed with delight. At once our party yielded. I asked the sage what I could do for him, declaring that he could name any boon and I would grant it. “The fruit in your hand,” he said. I was holding a fine ripe pear. When I gave it to him, he handed it, to eat, to a boy at his side.
This dialog is from Steven Pressfield’s novel The Virtues of War. It comes from the author’s imagination. As the author tells it, the ascetic is speaking in a way comprehensible to the great general. But the sage and the general understood the meaning of “the world” quite differently.
“I have conquered the need to conquer the world.” What would this mean? Could it be claimed by someone lazy, affecting ennui, pretending not to care? No. They have not conquered anything.
“I have conquered the need to conquer the world” in this story is intended to represent the claim of someone who has finished the path – finished with desire, with craving; finished with the pursuit of money, power, wealth and status, in the vain hope of gratification and stability.
Although it makes dramatic sense, it is not quite the claim that people who have achieved this condition made.
In a way they made the opposite claim. As they saw it, they did conquer the world. Neither Alexander nor any tyrant, titan, general or king had done anything remotely on this scale. The sages conquered worldly enchantment, worldly confusion, ignorance – the world made of desire and craving, mistakes and mystification – not the world made of earth and earthworks, armies missiles, the bodies of men, and women. They understood that the plane of lasting conquest is not the plain of battle. They understood that killing people and taking their stuff, no matter how complete the destruction of cities, how deeply the fields are soaked in the blood of the vanquished, no matter how miserable the cries of the defeated and the captives, no matter how grand and glorious it feels in the moment, does not yield a conquest that will endure.
The wealth, power and status seized on the plane of the outer world will slip from your grasp and vanish, like blood or water on desert sand. Like wind. That is what happened to Alexander’s conquest. And to every other worldly conquest in history.
The Buddha was known by his followers as “the Sage” and “the Awakened One.” He was also known as “the Conqueror.”
Writing in the 2nd century CE, in his “Letter to a Friend”, philosopher-monk Nagarjuna advised his friend the king:
Of those who triumph over the six ever-unstable and wavering senses,
And those who triumph over a host of enemies in the face of battle,
The first are viewed by the wise as being the greater heroes.
The leader of the Jains, the Mahavira, who lived at the same time as the Buddha, a century or two before the time of Alexander, was also known to his followers by the epithet the “Jina”, the Conqueror.
What did these people conquer? The disturbance and ignorance in their own minds. They broke and then obliterated the chains of greed, hatred and delusion which bind us all to disturbance and pain.
They pursued their conquests by training. Not by magic. Not by wordplay.
The Buddha’s and the Mahavira’s understanding of the problem of life in the world, their diagnosis of the reasons for our difficulties, their prescriptions for its remedy through training, were different. But their location of the battlefield – in the mind – was the same.
2,500 years ago, in India, one of the sects of the Jains were literally naked ascetics. Some still observe this way of life. Some live in the forest. Some come to the cities for alms.
Gymnosophists was Greek for “naked philosophers” or “naked wise men” (gymnós “naked”, sophía “wisdom”). That was they called the ascetics whom the Greek armies encountered in India. It is possible that there were many sects referred to by this term: Jains, Buddhist monks, Hindu Sramana, Zoroastrian magi and others.
To these ascetics, their quest for inner mastery was greater in scope than a country, a continent, a world. It was universal, without boundaries in space or time, and benevolent. The moral equivalent of war, you might say. It can’t be faked. It can’t be lost. It can’t be taken away.
In the incident above, the master’s request for a gift of food for the boy, his example, to the boy, to Alexander, to the author, to the reader, is the seed for all that follows in this quest.
NOTE:
Alexander encountered some of these ascetics in India, on his travels through the lands he conquered. The source for this imaginary encounter in Pressfield’s novel may be from a dialog between Alexander and the gymnosophists, cited by Plutarch, preserved by the Cynics, also likely imaginary.
The dialog includes ten riddles to be answered on penalty of death. Telling truth to power is risky. It may be, as we can see in these examples, the consequences of not telling truth to power is worse.
It is significant that one of Alexander’s tutors, when he was a boy in the court of his father, King Philip of Macedonia, was Aristotle. Alexander, throughout his short life, appreciated people who could think as well as act boldly and skillfully.
From Plutarch:
In this voyage, (Alexander) took ten of the Indian philosophers prisoner – those who had been most active in persuading Sabbas to revolt, and who had caused the Macedonians a great deal of trouble. These men, called Gymnosophists, were reputed to be extremely ready and succinct in their answers, which he made trial of, by putting difficult questions to them, letting them know that those whose answers were not pertinent, should be put to death, of which he made the eldest of them judge.
The first being asked which he thought most numerous, the dead or the living, answered, “The living, because those who are dead are not at all.”
Of the second, he desired to know whether the earth or the sea produced the largest beast; who told him, “The earth, for the sea is but a part of it.”
His question to the third was, “Which is the cunningest of beasts?” “That,” said he, “which men have not yet found out.”
He bade the fourth tell him what argument he used to Sabbas to persuade him to revolt. “No other,” said he, “than that he should either live or die nobly.”
Of the fifth he asked, “Which was eldest, night or day?” The philosopher replied, “Day was eldest, by one day at least.” But perceiving Alexander not well satisfied with that account, he added, that he ought not to wonder if strange questions had as strange answers made to them.
Then he went on and inquired of the next, what a man should do to be exceedingly beloved. “He must be very powerful,” said he, “without making himself too much feared.”
The answer of the seventh to his question, how a man might become a god, was, “By doing that which was impossible for men to do.”
The eighth told him, “Life is stronger than death, because it supports so many miseries.”
And the last being asked, how long he thought it decent for a man to live, said, “Till death appeared more desirable than life.”
Then Alexander turned to him whom he had made judge, and commanded him to give sentence. “All that I can determine,” said he, “is, that they have every one answered worse than another.” “
Nay,” said the king, “then you shall die first, for giving such a sentence.” “Not so, O king,” replied the gymnosophist, “unless you said falsely that he should die first who made the worst answer.”
In conclusion he gave them presents and dismissed them.
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Post copyright © 2024 Jeffrey Brooks, MountainKarateNC.com, Yamabayashi Ryu, Mountain Karate, Saluda, NC
Photo by Ron Lach via Pexels
Quote from The Virtues of War, by Steven Pressfield, published by Bantam Books
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