I appreciate your grappling with what I'm trying to say in the article, but I'm not quite sure you're getting the main point. I'm not really saying that ancient and modern sages are comparable because both engage in quiet contemplation. I mean, their common naturalism is the starting point of the analysis, but the analysis ends in a contrast. And I don't dismiss transcendentalism or metaphysics. I leave it out in this article only tactically to make for a cleaner comparison (apples to apples).

What modern sages build on isn't just more and more empirical knowledge of how nature works. The ancient sages could have assimilated much of that knowledge, especially if it confirmed, as you say, that life is absurd in Maya. What the ancients couldn't have appreciated, though, is the social progress that underpins modern humanistic dualism. Our faith in ourselves increases as we appreciate the extent to which we can solve our problems not just by taming our egos but by conquering nature with technoscientific know-how. This isn't mere abstract, illusory conceptual proliferation, but a real-world advance in human empowerment at nature's expense. That kind of progress sustains the humanistic dualism between the natural and the artificial, and that dualism, in turn, makes for a noble kind of suffering that's at odds with the ancient, monistic sense of enlightenment.