‘The Hindus were deeper than the thinkers of Europe, because their interpretation of the world was internal and intuitive, not external and intellectual; the intellect divides everything, intuition unites everything; the Hindus saw that the “I” is a delusion; that the individual is merely phenomenal, and that the only reality is the Infinite One- “That art thou.”
Whoever is able to say this to himself, with regard to every being with whom he comes into contact, is certain of all virtue and blessedness, and is on the direct road to salvation.’
Schopenhauers’s ascetic ideal can be summarized as to how engaging with the world sets the stage for all kinds of outcomes to be manifested, whilst the ascetic ideal deprives them all from being initiated.
Instead of being slave to desires and succumbing to them, you negate them, since the consequences that might follow could have been prevented. This has also to do with regret, be it in the context of relationshits or otherwise, since you are driven, according to him by a blind force that it only exists to generate and maintain momentum at all costs.
Those costs can never be compensated, and even if they could, that wouldn’t justify what you went through.
Ascetisism is not associated with happiness, but the reduction of suffering. It’s better to be in a neutral state, where you are not caught between the two, although impossible to maintain given the nature of existence, yet if we consider the deprevation as severing all strands that bound to potential misery and suffering, such negation is preferable, considering that the risk associated with pursuing every desire is problematic.
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