Madusala: Ladies and gentlemen, Which burning heart has been pacified by drinking?
Every drinker repeats only one chant, “More! More!” Madusala knows through hard-earned experience that drinkers are seekers, every drinker hankers after something. Is it happiness, some ideal, power – what is it that the drinker craves for? Madusala has always opened new avenues for the seekers to travel through poetry sessions, debates, symposia, etc. Today we have a debate between two historic personalities, two opposite poles, Hitler and Buddha. Madusala welcomes you to this exhilaratingly intoxicating debate on power versus renunciation. Madusala is obliged to Professor Will Durant for kindly consenting to moderate this debate.
Will Durant: Friends, ultimately there are but three systems of ethics, three conceptions of the ideal character and the moral life. One is that of Buddha and Jesus, which stresses the feminine virtues, considers all people to be equally precious, resists evil only by returning good, identifies virtue with love, and inclines in politics to unlimited democracy. Another is the ethic of Hitler and Machiavelli, which stresses the masculine virtues, accepts the inequality of people, relishes the risks of combat and conquest and rule, identifies virtue with power, and exalts a hereditary aristocracy. A third, the ethic of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and people like me and Madusala here, denies the universal applicability of either the feminine or the masculine virtues, considers that only the informed and mature mind can judge, according to diverse circumstance, when love should rule, and when power; identifies virtue, therefore, with intelligence; and advocates a varying mixture of aristocracy and democracy in government.
We are indeed thrilled – or should I say intoxicated? – to have before us today a very eminent exponent each of the two diametrically opposed ethical systems. Power or renunciation – which is the right way? A very relevant motion in our times that’s excessively troubled by religious militants who seem to be on a futile quest to yoke power with renunciation.
Let me begin this debate by putting a question to Hitler. Hitler, do you think power will bring happiness?
Hitler: Happiness? What’s that? Who wants happiness? Only fools and drunkards want happiness. Real men want power. What else is it that men seek in life but power? If they want money, it is but for the power that accompanies it. It is power again that men strive for in all the knowledge they acquire.
Durant: Buddha, do you agree?
Buddha: Yes and no.
Durant: No middle way here, please; this is a debate.
Buddha: It is power that I too looked for; but not the kind of power that Hitler speaks about. It is power over myself, power over evil – and not power over other people.
Hitler: What’s the use of that kind of power? All real power is power over other people.
Buddha: Exercising power over other people is immoral.
Hitler: [to Will Durant] You’re right, this man is effeminate.
Durant: No personal attacks, please; attack only ideas with ideas. We are not terrorists, we’re debaters.
Hitler: Ask Columbus why he went on his adventurous trips. Was it for happiness? Bah! Months of excruciating struggle with the diabolic forces of nature – just for a moment’s thrill at the end! No. Ask why Edison went on experimenting with his bulb or whatever. Years of rigorous research and staunch refusal to yield to failure – don’t tell me it was all for a moment’s glory at the end. If it was happiness that your old sages hankered after in the chilling snow-deserts of the Himalayas, I can only say they were mad. But they were not mad; they were looking for power.
Buddha: That power is different from the power you’re speaking about. The joy of the adventurer lies not in the final moment of reaching his destination; the strenuous journey is his joy. The joy of the scientist is not in the glory his invention brings; the research itself is the joy. The joy of the sage does not lie in the power brought by his renunciation; the renunciation is the joy. And that joy is their power.
Hitler: I cannot debate with a man who thinks that sitting for years with your bums buried in freezing snow is joy. Madusala, give me a drink of your best whisky.
Buddha: Madusala, I can share Hitler’s joy though you can give me any whisky you think fit.
Durant: Ladies and gentlemen, those who remain at home may grow richer and live more comfortably than those who wander, said Paracelsus. Paracelsus found joy in wandering. Most of us find joy in staying at home and growing richer and living more comfortably. Some come here at Madusala in search of joy. The mount of joy can be ascended through different paths. I gladly leave you to your own path – but with this exhortation: When we have learned to reverence liberty, ours as well as others’, then we shall have the real joy.
