The creator

Long back my mom once recited me the following Sanskrit couplet. It has made a fundamental imprint in my mind and has been a source of solace in difficult times.
Yena shukli-krita hansa;
Suka-scha harita krita;
Mayurah chitritah yena;
Sa tei britih bidhasyate!
(One by whom swan was made white; parrot was made green and, yet, peacock was made colourful; the same power also guides your actions and dispositions.)

This takes away the doership from you in a very subtle and elegant way. It gives us the power of self-love. It helps us to be little less harsh on ourselves. It told me many a times that my actions and dispositions have been fixed and determined by something way more powerful than me. What is this power? What is that power which has made parrot green, swan white and, then, peacock colourful? I was not sure.

Last year during spring I was in a guided tour of the famous Kirstenbosch garden. The theme was pollination. The guide was a frail petite lady in her late 60s who came with her partner (another petite lady in her 60s). The energy of the duo was infectious. One of the flowers she showed us is the one whose picture I have attached below.

It is an enchanting flower with intricate patterns on it. Then she told us the reason behind those patterns. Apparently the pattens help the pollinator (a tiny insect) to find its way to the nectar and pollens. The insect and the flower have co-evolved for millions of years giving arise to this splendid beauty.

It was like an "Eureka" moment for me. I could clearly see the force that made swan white, parrot green and peacock colourful. It is the ages of evolution. In the same way, the way we act, react and interact are all decided by long chains of causal events and coevolution. Everything depends on everything else, everything has affected everything else. How can I blame myself for my dispositions or actions when those have been determined by events occurring in time-scales way beyond my comprehension?

And when we see the interdependence and coevolution of the whole creation it becomes a bit easier to develop love and compassion for one's own self and for everything around. 

Brahmavihara

I am lucky to have friends who understand me. One such friend is Darryl who gifted me an amazing book as my birthday gift. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29496453-the-book-of-joy
The book is a guided dialogue between His-holiness Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Presented in a very methodological way it discusses many real life stories from the lives of both these men; stories which brought me lot of tears. But the book helped to me gather some new insights, insights which changed me fundamentally.

This made me revisit something which I have been looking at for a while now, viz. the four Brahmaviharas of Buddhism. These are four things professed by Buddhism as goals reaching which you can have consistent joy! Achieving these is difficult. But we can just try in bits! What I liked the most is that it is presented in increasing levels of difficulty! There are many write-ups on these. Still I could not resist myself from putting my personal understanding.

1- Metta: This means feeling oneness with others. The Sanskrit root is "Mitrata" which loosely translates to friendship. This is the easiest step amongst the four. Though it is not easy for many of us who have never fallen in love; who are too scared to feel the vulnerability of love. However, this is still the easiest feeling to develop. Something like Kim whom Kipling describes as "the friend of all three worlds"!

2- Karuna: This means compassion. This is another easy emotion to develop. You see someone suffering and that makes you feel bad. That is sympathy. If you feel the pain yourself as well then it is empathy. And if you are motivated to do something about it as well then it is "Karuna". Our lives are so full of miseries and sadness (I do not know why though) that when we see another person in pain we immediately relate to it. That makes sympathy an easy goal.

3- Mudita: I have written a blog on this. This is when you see someone happy and you feel happy as well. It is the opposite of jealousy. Most of us are so far from joy that we can not feel it when we see another person happy. It is one of the most difficult emotions. However, if one can achieve it then there is no lack of sources of joy for that person. And if we note carefully we shall see how extremely difficult it is to develop Mudita. I find it the single most important way to achieve perennial joy. 

4- Upekha: Loosely translated this means ignoring. So we have tried to be friendly with everyone and every thing; then we tried to feel the pain of others and then the happiness of others. Pain and happiness are both addictive! We get attached to them and as soon as we get attached we want things not to change. However Anica (another Buddhist term which means change) is a fact of life and if we get attached then we are back in pain (for others). So the last goal is to not get attached. This is the most difficult emotion to achieve and I do not understand it fully to tell more about it.

I believe, if exposed at the right phase of ones life, the four Brahmaviharas can start us in the path of eternal joy. 

Mudita

Coincidences are interesting. Two weeks back I was having an argument with a friend about the difference in the meaning of compassion and empathy. Few days after that one of my close friends from my engineering college sent a note.

"You asked me once in college, "when was the last time you felt happiness?" I said, "when i got into Infosys in campus selection". You said, "every other day some one else or other gets a job. Imagine if you can feel similar happiness when others get jobs as well. Wouldn't  it feel great?"
That was one of the best advices I have ever got."

I have completely forgotten this conversation and it was like a new advice for myself as well. I mused on it and remembered my uncle (my father's elder brother). He is one of the very few guys I have met in real life who would get genuinely overjoyed at the good fortune of just about anyone! Then I thought what is this emotion? I tried to find a word for it. I searched a few languages and none seem to have a word for it. If we describe it as "feeling joy at the good fortune of others" then the antonym of this is simple. Its jealousy. I asked many people about the antonym of jealousy. No one had an answer.

It was a shock. We as a culture have developed very complicated emotions and thought processes but we lack a word for this emotion. I ran another simple experiment. Many of my friends are in Bangalore where the local language is Kannada. For daily interaction most of my friends have picked up a few Kannada words. It was surprising that "all" of them knew the Kannada for NO (which is "illa") but hardly anyone (not even many who have stayed in the city for decades) knew the Kannada for YES (which is "haudu").

Finally I found a word which represents the exact opposite of jealousy. Its MUDITA, a Pali word from Buddhism. Just thinking of the meaning of the word feels blissful. It has been prescribed as an emotion which can reduce all other negative emotions. And like every other aspects of Buddhism this has also been developed in a very scientific manner. There are prescribed set of steps and practices which have been prescribed to help develop "mudita".

How beautiful it would be if we can vicariously feel the joy of every person. Whatever gives us joy we can try to find people experiencing the same feeling and try to draw joy from it. And there is no dearth of people feeling blissful (for fractions of second) every second. Like Emelie counting the number of orgasms in Paris in an instant which mounts up to 15!

How Sweet is the Berry!

I have read this story long back. Over the years I have told it ample number of times to many friends and also ample number of times to myself (when situations seem out of my hands).

Once upon a time a man was wondering in the woods. He was chased by a tiger. Chased so, he ran and finally found a cliff and a strong vine running downhill. He took hold of it and started descending down the cliff. The tiger stood at the top of the cliff looking at the man with interest. Half through the descent the man looked down. There was standing another tiger looking at him with expectant eyes. Stuck between these two tigers the man just hung by the vine hoping for one of the tigers to move away. Suddenly, he could hear some noise and looking above saw one black and a white mice trying to cut the vine. It seemed like imminent death.
Hanging thus the man suddenly could smell something sweet. Looking sideways he saw this wild berry plant bearing a bright ripe red berry. The man was mesmerised by its beauty. He pulled it gently and put it in his mouth. It had the divine test as of the wild berries which get ripe in wilderness. He exclaimed, "how sweet is the berry"!

They interpret the tiger up the cliff as past and the awaiting tiger downhill as future. Both may seem scary. The vine is like the time-line. The mice are the Yin-Yang forces playing their roles. And the berry is the "present". In spite of everything the berry is sweet...

Violence and Morality

Last weekend I was reading a nice book while on my way to the beach (very early in the morning). The book was explaining how internal violence (or conflict-inside) gets manifested in the form of external violence. Just the other day I was arguing with my friend how wrong it is to kill someone for his food-habit (ref: mob lynching in India killing people who were accused of eating beef). And in a moment of inspiration it all seemed to fall into place. How disturbed one must be to kill another person? How loveless his life must be? How unsettled, dry, and melancholic his life must be? Then followed an instant surge of pity and sadness for the men who did such a barbaric deed. 

Then I was trying to think, what might be the reason of internal violence? I think most of internal conflicts arise when the way I am is different from the way I am expected to be. Why that might be the case? It can be the case because of two reasons: viz. A- I have not understood myself and my natural tendencies carefully and deeply. B- I try to follow certain accepted standards set by peers, parents and priests. That externally enforced morality creates tension within myself. 

Morality is natural. No one should have to learn morality. And when we start teaching morality we create both of the above conditions for internal conflict. We stop the internal independent inquiry of a person and we enforce external rules. The more morale a society tries to be the more hypocrisy it fosters and that in turn create more internal violence which is reflected in external violence. 

I shall give one simple (but macabre) example. Child sex abuse is a horrible skeleton in the cupboard of our society. India is one of the very few developing nations to have done a proper exhaustive study on this and the results are shocking. The percentage of minors facing sexual abuse in India is much higher than that in a developed country (development defined by economic advancement). Not only this, also India is the only nation (I could find) where the prevalence of male-minor sexual abuse is higher than female-minor abuse. 

When shall we realise that we need to stop “following” moral rules and start looking deep into our own selves? We do not need a police to keep morality; we do not need a God to teach us morality. The more morality we preach the more chaos we shall bring upon ourselves. 

Taking Personally

One of my good friends was telling about some of her experiences. It seems to happen often with her that people advise her “why do you take it personally?”. This is mostly when they have to tell her something cold or callous about her work. And my friend gets stressed by this. So the question was how can one not take personally when one has put all her effort and keenness into a certain thing? For example if you cook with all your love and care for your partner and the partner just says its not tasty enough. How does one deal with it? How does one not  take it personally? When you have put hours of earnest and passionate effort into a report and your colleague brings some stupid unthought argument to show that its not good enough. How do you stay impersonal and unaffected and go with the same colleague in the evening for an official supper? 

So how do we not take things personally? 

I think there are two ways we can look at it. First of all not taking it personally means one has to be detached from it. And this means not getting too much engaged in what you do. If I do not put my best effort then I won’t get so attached to what I do. However this actually means I have to get less passionate about what I do. I lose passion and, hence, I also lose taking comments personally. This is a good plan but not a very positive strategy. There has to be a second way. A more joyful and interesting way. Not this bleak passionless way. 

If we think a bit more then we can see where the real culprit is in all this confusion. In a situation there are two kinds of participants. The first kind of participant is physical consisting of impersonal inanimate things. It includes our work our effort our tools and our product. The second is living things that can judge. 

And there are two kinds of information that we can get from those who judge. One is factual and the other is judgemental. For example factual information will consist of the real characteristics (which is the same for any observer). The judgemental information is something that is given by a person without much thought. These are mostly affected by the person’s own issues and mental state and not by what he or she might be observing. 

So while doing something we should get passionate and personal with the work (which is the nonjudgemental impersonal participant in an event) and not with the ones who may/will judge. And when my product is being judged I have to focus on the factual information I get about it. If someone says that my report is crap then I have to think is it a factual comment or a judgemental? If it is a factual comment then this will be observed by everyone and will be with some reason. If someone says the cake I baked was not tasty then to make it a fact the judge should give me factual reasons about what went wrong. If the comment is without reasons and facts then it is just a “judgemental” information. A judgemental information, as we discussed, does not depend on the product. It just depends on the psychological-condition of the person passing it. If someone did not like my cake (without any apparent reason) then may be that someone has got a headache or some such health problem. Or may be he had a terrible fight an hour before with his friend and is not in a mental state to appreciate anything nice. 

To summarise, I think, the recipe to not take things personally is two fold. Get attached to the work and not to the persons who may be judging it. And while getting information about the work try to discriminate between factual comments and judgemental comments. Factual comments are universal (can be seen by anyone with similar experience) and come with reasons. Judgemental comments are mostly because of the state of mind in which the commentator is (and hence just reflects his mental state and not any attribute of your work). And someone with a bad state of mind just needs our compassion and may be a jaddu ki jhhappi (magical hug)!

Line from a wise mother!

        I recently met an interesting person. Somehow into our discussion came the topic of having babies. In that he quoted his mother who would say "when you decide to have a baby be prepared to raise the baby on your own!" Do not rely on a partner to help you or to be with you in this process. Many things can happen; relations can change and (heaven forbid) the partner may also meet with some unfortunate end. Among all these uncertainties one should not take the responsibility of a kid if he/she is not strong enough to do it on his/her own.

      I found this extremely intriguing. The more I think on it the more interesting it appears. First of all it means one should not rely on the assumed future benediction while starting something new. And if we contemplate further this line of thought we can have many interesting conclusions.

     Just like a baby when one starts seeing a potential partner one should be ready for any future. One should not start with the rosy assumption of "forever together" where "forever" is such an ill-defined phrase. But does it mean that we start a relation with lot of anxiety and negativity? Not necessarily. In fact its exactly the opposite. When starting a date we can assume that the love is already there. I remember in one of the movies the main character meets a girl in a club and asks her "can we fast forward to day-3?" Similarly when we are seeing anyone why can we not fast forward to day-N? What stops us from having the intensity of day-N on day-1? Because I have decided to give up relying on future-benevolence I can as well forget the impact of time all together. If I am not trying to trust on the existence of day-N then why not have day-N's intensity and excitement on day-1? Here N can be the day when your love would have been the most intense and beautiful.

     And if we project it a bit further then having a baby is like starting a new endeavor. And as the wise mother said let us not assume the presence of the partner in future and be ready to carry the endeavor forward on our own. Can we not assume "love" as this endeavor? Can we not, then, not assume the presence of the willingness or presence of the partner in this project as well? Then the love becomes free-standing depending only on my own willingness and earnestness. A love that is not depending on the other. The other is a (sweet) desirable part of it but not the necessary part of it.

    The more I ponder on the line of the wise mother the more beautiful and enlightening it sounds. If we can jump to day-N when we meet someone and jump on our own (without necessarily having his/her support) it is bliss, is not it?

Personalisation of Justice

Travelling from Chennai to Hyderabad I was offered the opportunity to be stranded in the airport for almost three hours. Not knowing what to do I was shifting my place of waiting and thereby witnessing different passengers doing different things. Thats when I marked a group of laud-guys and their families. The thing so conspicuous about this bunch was the way they were talking in English to each other and to their kids trying to put a civilised aura around them, or so they might be thinking. Except the skin colour and their attire there was nothing Indian about them. I was feeling amused when a teenager girl in very plain cloth came to this group with a kid. I was thinking this might be a different set of passengers all together. In a little while I could understand that the kid belonged to this group and the girl was a maid; a girl who might be barely 11 or 12. And then their boarding gate number was announced and they moved as  a team. And then the “owner” of the maid handed her three carry-bags and the whole party shifted. It made me mad to see how such educated and (hopefully) well travelled guys can be so insensitive. To me it was gross injustice.

This led me to think ob "what is justice?”. Can we really have a universal definition of justice? If the apparent victim does not mind is it still injustice? Like in the above situation the teenage-girl did not seem to mind (though she was obviously not enjoying it). Trying to generalise I think the lack of equality fosters and gets manifested as injustice. However, is not inequality highly personal? Is not inequality impossible to remove? Those who argue otherwise may try to protest against any economy or business class seats in aeroplanes. Those who argue otherwise may try to convince the auto-makers to have only one brand of vehicle in market. 

Of course, there are gradations in inequality and injustice as well. Some, like lack of food in one pocket and wastage of luxury food in another, is a severe form of inequality or injustice. But then does the human hormones know these? Do we feel a kind of envy, when we see someone with a cuter partner, and a different form of envy when we are hungry and someone else is having a party? 

I do not think so. Of course to know for sure one needs fMRI kind of analysis taken from different classes of human beings. From my personal experience I can confirm that the envy I felt as a kid seeing some other kid with better stuffs than me is not any different from the envy I feel now in different circumstances. And the more interesting observation that I can make is that it is rare that I feel envy. And its true for most. Our brain is wired to focus on things that are positively engaging than things that are depressing. 

I think it can be concluded that injustice is personal and the feeling of pain is because  it is a relatively unexplored field of speculation.