Long ago a friend asked me why Buddhism attracted me so much, as if the main focus being: "Existence is sorrow," then why I felt life was worth living and why suicide was not my easier and more pragmatic choice.
I thought and have thought about this very basic cornerstone of Zen thought. What did make me have drive to live?
My very first cogitation was that the fight must go on and that watching those with little to create and nothing to say in life, to me, was worse than a decided life that is taken by itself. Apathy creates nothing--it actually creates a vacuum effect of good and charitable feelings and actions. Nothing is done, things go unfixed and people begin to surmise that the inaction as hate and division.
Even the philanthropic and best of the idle rich can make visual and lifestyle statements that can be taken as good for society or not, but there is also a third interpretation: a festering apathy and inaction that makes culture step back and incrementally regress to a strange recreation of what we imagine was a lazy, easier and better time.
We fool no one except ourselves.
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