Huxley, the West pursued so-called happiness; the East sought equanimous calm: A poem 

Did you see a vision in your sudden blindness 

that you needed to learn and teach, out of a raging pursuit 

out of a debilitation? And how you turned out to be (!)

prolific mentor in a dystopian world! Discovering that the piecrust of  

seeking happiness leaves one without tasting the meat 

within it. Like in the West, libido felt like a liberation, so 

that your soul would be stomped like it only inhabited 

the carpet under your feet. Would you have known that you 

may have been born with a hidden light that you pledged 

to rediscover early in your life; despite the blindness! 

That may have been your own catharsis towards 

discovery of yourself and a wisdom that was inherent, in rebuking a  

warring misdirected world. Often accusatory writers are made to feel ribald; 

And some of them had to face the utmost contempt! 

We are an age that believes finding favour with fortune 

and the bigwigs are a customary necessity. So many have found 

fame by being able to network in the right circles; and so many 

have lived in an oblivion in their undiscovered greatness! 

We are, in fact, all fated children in the gravity of circumstance,  

often its gravitas. Opportunity arises only at the decision of fate. 

An age determines which of its constituents deserve prosperity! 

So much for the West believing in carving 

out its own (misnomed) happiness or progress! Should it remember those eras of a Christian regime  

that considered everything out of the Vatican’s character as worthy  

of being excommunicated, branded heretical or worse, put to death! 

But humanity has been the subject of more fraud than just that, since! 

Did you ever believe, Aldous, that wealth is happiness?  

I think not, or would you have ever ventured into eastern mysticism and Tantra?  

Is Tantra the magical tactile violence that it is believed to be?  Would you think  

that one only needs to be brave in conviction to obtain a Tantric corporeality? 

Or does one, like the late discovery in the West, imagine that one can resort to hallucinogens to 

explore spirituality? One can, in such, take the easy way into the underbelly of spirituality 

or one can discover its overview through the difficult way of self-rigour!   

And then, there is only the way of belief, conviction, and a vindicative mysticism of sorts; 

that is the outward salience of the soul, the salubriousness of a monk 

in his omnipresent misery. Is there any more a halcyon vision than selflessness? Would you want to  

sandwich sagacity in the materialism of the powerful so that they actually 

make the world a better place. I believe, though, the world needs more cruelty than 

kindness in an age when we are so speedily being taken away from ourselves, from  

astuteness, discernment (your punch word, Aldous!). The whole lot of 

us will be lost in an illusion, with a few elite tampering with the switches of our minds! 

How does the East feel that the West contagioned or infected it with a materialism 

that snapped its earlier introspective equanimity and calmness?