The Sadoo and Temptation

The sadoo, naturally, has many temptations, some of which he should definitely succumb to, some of which he is unsure about, and some of which he should definitely avoid.  These are not classic temptations—the sadoo can be permitted drunkenness, debauchery, indolence, neglect, insolence, arrogance, heaps of red meat, superciliousness, and disregard for the law in all its ossified, liquid, and gaseous forms—but rather focus on whether the activity in question unduly misaligns the sadoo with his essential vocation, whether it makes him feel smaller than the universe he seeks to mirror.

The great heaving masses devote their lives to the usual disciplines:  amusement and all its circus tricks, money and all its verdant relatives, mirrors and all their little validations, political power and all its random surges of bliss and Schadenfreude, sex and all its petty cosmic dramas, movement and all its pretensions of progress, possessions and all their simulations of security.  The difference between the sadoo and the heaving masses is not that he avoids these activities, but that he does not seek them … if they happen, they happen.  Whether he’s rich, homeless, celibate, polygamous, admired, despised, active, still, amused, bored—it’s all really the same to him, for all states are just different forms of energy and the sadoo excels at transforming whatever is given to him into useful forms of bouncing joy.  The only potential advantage of boredom, poverty, obscurity, powerlessness, and stillness is that they do not tend to threaten to deceive as significantly as their opposites as to the nature of the universe.

Why then does the sadoo say no?  Simply, if any activity, person, thing, or idea demands to be more than what it is and so reduce the sadoo’s ability to be receptive to all things—it is evil and must be avoided; if an activity, person, thing, or idea enhances the sadoo’s ability to be receptive to all things, it is good and must be embraced.

The sadoo has one god and it is life.  Anyone acquainted with life knows it accepts all manifestations with equanimity and the sadoo’s one goal is to emulate life’s equanimity.  Why?  Because this is better than gathering things and lovers to oneself?  No.  Because it is what the sadoo does and what he is made to do.  The sadoo is committed to one thing—even as all creatures are committed to one thing—to be himself; to deviate from this is to transgress and leads to spiritual death.  But the sadoo must remain fully animate and if this should cost him his physical life, it is a small cost.  For all things, though beautiful and eternal, are transient and small.