Sat-chit-ananda: the baker, the butcher, and the brewer

[In that slow and difficult emergence a certain semblance of truth is given to the dictum of Heraclitus that War is the father of all things; for each idea, force, separate consciousness, living being by the very necessity of its ignorance enters into collision with others and tries to live and grow and fulfil itself by independent self-assertion, not by harmony with the rest of existence. Yet there is still the unknown underlying Oneness which compels us to strive slowly towards some form of harmony, of interdependence, of concording of discords, of a difficult unity. But it is only by the evolution in us of the concealed superconscient powers of cosmic Truth and of the Reality in which they are one that the harmony and unity we strive for can be dynamically realised in the very fibre of our being and all its self-expression and not merely in imperfect attempts, incomplete constructions, ever-changing approximations. Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > English > The Life Divine Volume-18 > Supermind, Mind And The Overmind Maya]

[Selfishness and Adam Smith do not go together...The notion that selfishness was good came from a earlier commentator, Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), whose book, ‘The Fable of Bees’, which made him famous, began as poem and was fleshed out to a best seller..Take the famous quotation (Wealth Of NationsI.ii. pp26-7) about seeking our dinner from the ‘butcher, the brewer, and the baker’... Smith’s advice was not to expect our dinner from their ‘benevolence’ ... but to address their ‘self love’ and their ‘advantages’, not our own self love and our advantages, which is an unselfish approach on our part. In bargaining for our dinner, or whatever, from others the nature of our behaviour is to ‘propose to them: ‘Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want’. In short, the practice two-way bargaining, each addressing the self interests of others, and by considering the interests of other people, we address our own too! Ill-Informed Attribution to Adam Smith Of Views on Selfishness Mar 12, 2008 12:07 AM
from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy]

Adam Smith's trinity "the butcher, the brewer, and the baker" do represent the Sacchidananda, and, at least, the butcher instantly reminds us of Dharmavyadaha, the Enlightened butcher, of the Mahabharata. However, we may take the liberty of changing their order so that the baker producing bread comes first as Sat or Existence; the butcher comes next with his supply of meat denoting Chit or Consciousness; and finally comes the brewer, the Daroowala... Ah! Ananda...Bliss... (no explanation needed!).

What Heraclites termed as “War” and Sri Aurobindo interpreted as “Collision with others” may, in a modern day situation, be applied to “Competition” among the economic agents. While the rationalist and the secularist see them as separate, the integral approach is to look for the “unknown underlying Oneness.”. [TNM]