by falakvasa on Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:49 am
Ganesh - I may not have an answer to your question about the point of view he takes but I appreciate longer discussions more than short comments, and will take this opportunity to quote directly from the text to throw more light on what this image made me think of for quite some time.
"We then cast our glance forward far into the future, and try to picture to ourselves future generations with the millions of their individuals in the strange form of their customs and aspirations. Where are they now? Where is the abundant womb of that nothing which is pregnant with worlds, and which still conceals them, the coming generations? Would not the smiling and true answer to this be: where else could they be but there where alone the real always was and will be, namely in the present and its content?- hence with you, the deluded questioner, who in this mistaking of his own true nature is like the leaf on the tree. Fading in the autumn and about to fall, this leaf grieves over its own extinction, and will not be consoled by looking forward to the fresh green which will clothe the tree in spring, but says as a lament: "I am not these! These are quite different leaves!" Oh foolish leaf! Whither do you want to go? And whence are the others supposed to come? Where is the nothing, the abyss of which you fear? Know your own being, precisely that which is so filled with the thirst for existence; recognize it once more in the inner, mysterious, sprouting force of the tree." - The World as Will and Representation, book 4, "on death and its relation to the indestructibility of our inner nature"
I think this direct quote explains better what I wanted to say than my own words.