Why I read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The last three paragraphs of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: How they analyze the ultimate reality of being dependent rather than being inherently independent but leaving like saying it as the best of far depth knowledge or reality and welcoming sharper challenges. How his hold corresponds with our Middle-view notion of Dependent Origination in terms of laws of causality for impermanent phenomena—such laws covering both impermanent and permanent phenomena don’t seem to come along his way of such sharp analysis. His term ‘inevitability’ gives such strong stress on the fact of the conditions giving a certain complex reaction rather than taking ignorantly as created by an unknown absolute entity. His term ‘free will’ ‘freedom’ of personality catch the same vivid depth of what is regarded as the direct opponent to the fact of causality.

“As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition or non-recognition of something absolute, serving as the measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality—free will.

Thanks Yeshi and Dechen for this wonderful gift! 

As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth’s fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one’s own personality. But as in astronomy the new view said, ‘It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws’, so also in history the new view says, ‘It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time and on cause, we arrive at laws.’

In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.”