Talking to myself (On denial)

"I am going to give up smoking."

"But you don't smoke...bumming a ciggie once in six months does not count."

"That's the point. I want to give up what I don't do. What I do is a choice."

"What about bad choices?"

"There are no bad choices - either the chosen becomes bad for one or the process of choosing is bad."

"Either way, something can be wrong."

"It is wrong with respect to the right."

"Right."

"How do we know what is right? Whose idea of right is it?"

"There are general parameters and specific needs."

"The idea behind both is selfish. In general, people are herded into believing what is right because it helps keep things in place. As for specific needs, do we ever see another point of view?"

"The other point is not always necessary."

"So rightness is not necessary."

"Where does giving up what you don't do figure in this?"

"One gives up the very idea of wrong not because it is wrong, since one has not enjoyed it to the fullest, but because it may well be right."

"So the giving up means not having a preconceived notion about it?"

"Yes."

"It could also result in ignorance, for you won't discover."

"Discovery is in the mind. The cigarette is itself a bundle of nicotine but is that all?"

"Pretty much."

"No. There is smoke, there is ash, there are the stubs and there are ways of smoking - how do we hold the cigarette, how do we inhale, exhale..."

"Are you saying right and wrong depend on how we do something rather than merely doing it?"

"Yes. So if I tell myself I won't smoke, it does not mean I will not hold a cigarette or light it."

"But why would you do that?"

"Because it takes me to the source."

"Does it make the denial more potent?"

"No! Pleasure lies in the essence, at the centre. A bloodied knife need not denote murder."

"Then how do you explain the blood?"

"While touching it one may have hurt oneself."

"How right is it or how wrong?"

"The weapon is indifferent which means that it is neither right nor wrong."

"The weapon is inanimate, it cannot feel."

"The murderer does not feel."

"Of course, vengeance, anger, violence are feelings."

"They are feelings within, not for."

"You have to be angry towards something..."

"The anger is against yourself; the stimulus is outside."

"And denial?"

"It is like stubbing out an unlit cigarette."