BUTTONS AND ROSETTES

The cause of sorrow is the desire of the One to the Many, or of the Many to the One. This also is the cause of joy.

But the desire of one to another is all of sorrow; its birth is hunger, and its death satiety.

The desire of the moth for the star at least saves him satiety.

Hunger thou, O man, for the infinite: be insatiable even for the finite; thus at The End shalt thou devour the finite, and become the infinite.

Be thou more greedy than the shark, more full of yearning than the wind among the pines.

The weary pilgrim struggles on; the satiated pilgrim stops.

The road winds uphill: all law, all nature must be overcome.

Do this by virtue of THAT in thyself before which law and nature are but shadows.

COMMENTARY (MF)

     The title of this chapter is best explained by a reference to Mistinguette and Mayol.
     It would be hard to decide, and it is fortunately unnecessary even to discuss, whether the distinction of their art is the cause, result, or concomitant of their private peculiarities.
     The fact remains that in vice, as in everything else, some thing satiate, others refresh. Any game in which perfection is easily attained soon ceases to amuse, although in the beginning its fascination is so violent.
     Witness the tremendous, but transitory, vogue of ping-pong and diabolo. Those games in which perfection is impossible never cease to attract.
     The lesson of the chapter is thus always to rise hungry from a meal, always to violate one's own nature. Keep on acquiring a taste for what is naturally repugnant: this is an unfailing source of pleasure, and it has a real further advantage, in destroying the Sankharas, which, however "good" in themselves, relatively to other Sankharas, are yet barriers upon the Path; they are modifications of the Ego, and therefore those things which bar it from the absolute.