MISSING THE MARK EVER

MISSING THE MARK EVER

The phenomenal capacity of the ordinary reader to misread into a post makes one wonder whether that is the reason why great spiritual masters are invariably misread by their followers which inevitably sets in the decay of the original movement within decades of the passage of the great one from their midst. Thus have the Buddha and Christ been misapprehended and thus have Ramakrishna and Vivekananda been misapprehended as well. And so has the legacy of the world-movers been reduced from high spirituality to material gain even as the import of a write-up is reduced from its deeper connotation to its surface reading -- shallow, superficial and removed from its root by miles.

There is a gap between the author's understanding and the reader's which is never filled, especially when the writing is loaded with mystical meaning or is philosophically nuanced. A flat sale price may be charged on a commodity but never so on an idea that is not quite out for seasonal sale to all and sundry. The author ever lives a Crusoe marooned on his island and, perchance, finds a Friday to seek rough solace in. Else, it is all self-communication as readers misread and misinterpret.

One cannot possibly leave behind voluminous commentary on every pithy post after all. So, let the literary festival of feeble understanding proliferate from eye to mind and mind to fingertip as 'fools rush in where angels fear to tread'. After all this is the age of democracy and mass misunderstanding. 

Written by Sugata Bose