Alexander and a Yogi

Here is an interesting story:
http://andreaskluth.org/2010/03/12/alexander-meets-a-yogi-whos-the-hero/
Alexander the Great was busy conquering the known world once, when he saw, on the banks of the Indus river in today’s Pakistan, a naked guy sitting in the Lotus position and contemplating the dirt.
“Gymnosophists” (gumnos = naked, sophistes = philosopher) the Greeks called these men. We would call them yogis — as in: Patanjali, say.
“What are you doing?”, asked Alexander.
“Experiencing nothingness,” answered the yogi. “What are you doing?”
“Conquering the world,” said Alexander.
Then both men laughed, each thinking that the other must be a fool.
“Why is he conquering the world?”, thought the yogi. “It’s pointless.”
“Why is he sitting around doing nothing?”, thought Alexander. “What a waste of a life.”
____________________________________________________________________________
The question is, which one of the two appeals to you more. I think its obvious who appeals to me more and who I would laugh at.
Which of them is you and why?
Remember there is only one guarantee: You will die someday.
Think.



















Contd. 
From the same blog I pulled the story from:

As Devdutt says, Alexander grew up with the stories of Hercules, Theseus and Jason, which told him:
  • you live only once, so make it count, and
  • make it count by being spectacular!
The yogi grew up on up on different stories — the Mahabharata (which I love) and Ramayana and so forth. His heroes, such as Krishna and Rama, were not distinct individuals who lived once and made it count, but different lifetimes of the same hero.
The yogi’s stories told him that:
  • you get to live — nay, must live — infinite lives, until you get the point, so
  • stop wasting your time by conquering things that have been and will be conquered countless times, and try to see the point.
To approach this in a slightly different way:

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