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.

Hero-worship (Gandhi-jayanti special)

In the recent years there has been a lot of opinions and views against Mahatma Gandhi. There have been arguments and counter-arguments. When you listen to these they tend to give a deja-vu of atheists arguing with theists. You tend to find a lot of "opinions" and very little "facts" from both the quarters. One thing that both these arguing parties tend to do is to assume that Gandhi was a super-human and the pro-Gandhi try to fight to prove that yes he was a demi-god and the anti-Gandhi try to argue otherwise.

This reminds me of a movie (the title of which I can not recollect) in which the main actor was a teenager student who was very mature for his age and was depended upon by many of his friends and towards the end even by the school principal. Then something difficult happens for which even our hero has no solution and he says "common; am just a boy!".

How true! I am not going to tell anything in favor of against of the Mahatma. I shall just reaffirm that he was just a man. He had his limitations. But one thing that we should appreciate about him is something that is there in every great leader, which is that they absolutely totally believe in what they think and say. This total conviction about what they want from life gives them that charisma which then makes most others follow him.

So on this great occasion of the birth-day of the Mahatma let us try to think deep about what we want of our lives. (PS: I have been thinking of this very deeply for past few months...!). 

Inspiration to tryst with destiny!

I joined Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2006. With an attire of khaadi kurta and pony-tail I soon got the name of “Rocky-sir” amongst students. In 2007 August 15 I asked students to join us for a group discussion on the major problems in India and what “we” (i.e. you and me) can do towards it. The squirrel from the Ramayana has always been one of my biggest inspirations. For those who may not know the story, in the epic Ramayana Lord Rama builds a bridge from Indian mainland to Sri Lanka. All the mighty animals from the jungle came to help the Lord. Even a tiny squirrel did not let his size deter it and came to help. To have the maximum contribution it found a novel way. It would dip in ocean, then roll on sand and then shake off the sand on the bridge. Pausing the story here I an just say that I have always believed that irrespective of our size we can contribute in our own ways. Few days after that group discussion one student came to meet me with a lot of his ideas. We tried to work together on some of those which later gave rise to the Zero-Illiteracy-Zone (ZIZ) activities in the IIT where our students would teach the children from local schools over the weekends. 

Long after that phase a few weeks back the same student asked me to discuss and muse over the problems of the nation and what can be done. And we had the first meeting over which we tried to discuss the major problems of the nation. And on this independence day blog I shall try to put down what I feel as the major issues in the nation right now. 

One aspect we discussed was the range of welfare majors the government has been trying to take. Some tend to suggest that the government should not give anything for free. However, in a civilised society it is just inhumane to deny our own citizens the right to the bare minimum basic amenities like food and medical aid. However there are two major problems in these schemes. First of all many of these do not reach the intended sector because of corruption. And secondly many times those who get the benefit of things like free food choose not to work at all. Corruption is in lime light anyway. So we shall try to focus on the second problem of laziness. This comes when a person loses inspiration to improve his own lot. 

The second biggest issue we found was “inequality” be it based on caste, religion or sex. Female foeticide and infanticide are still happening as we muse. Caste based politics and discrimination is still a big deterrent in many regions. That made me think of how things are different in South Africa and India. In SA they tend to think that the white minority is still successful because they have inherited lot of capital over generations. In India (and also in many cases in SA) the real inheritance is not money, rather heritage. Because my ancestors were of high caste, learned and respected I "believe I can do it as well”. So the actual problem we found (besides the usual age old stigma and the lack of education) was that we need to inspire people growing/living under oppressive environment that they can do it. 

I do not want to tell that corruption or the lack of education is are not big problems. I just want to thrust that the real and the biggest challenge will be to “inspire” and make Indians "tryst with destiny”.

Foresight

Many want to know the future and that explains the market for fortune-tellers. Let us assume that we have a real fortune-teller who can exactly tell the future. Will that help us? The common answer will be yes, we will be more prepared for what is coming. However there is a small misunderstanding in this. In true sense if someone is with foresight then she can see what is going to happen. Nothing can change it. Because if you can change it then it is not happening then the forecast goes wrong! So let us accept that prediction by a genuine person will always happen.

Now let us analyse the two characters of a forecast. Either it is a good thing (that will happen) or a bad thing. If it is a good thing then we know it beforehand. It takes away all the fun, is not it? There is no surprise factor and hence no real joy in left in it.

And if the event predicted is a negative one then we worry about it from now (even when it has not happened) and our time till that event is miserable or at least not as joyful as it could have been. Again the lack of the surprise factor makes it worse.

So ultimately we can conclude that a foresight is a useless thing to go for. 

Curse in disguise

While discussing about the current debacle in Nepal with a Nepalese friend we mused over the following thought. (For those who are not aware of the issue, the plain southern districts of Nepal are striking for last many months. This means roads are blocked and system has almost stopped working. The reason? Well, they need more rights and resources from the valley based government and one of the major demands is to have some of the mines in the Tarai state in the new state formation procedure.)

If we observe closely, we will mark that almost universally mines have created more problems than solutions in developing and under-developed regions. Look at majority of the African countries. The more mineral rich a nation is the more militants and the more severe civil wars they enjoy! Look at India. All the states with lot of mineral wealth (be it Odisha or Jharkhand) are pretty poor when we look at HDI. Politically unaware general population, extremely self-motivated politicians and scrupulous contractors seem to be the norm in all developing regions with mineral wealth which ultimately gives rise to unsustainable exploitation of nature and highly unfavourable distribution of the wealth coming from the mines. This in turn keeps the land perennially under-developed and aids in increasing the Gini-index every passing year.

This is a vicious circle of curse coming from mines (which politicians tend to portray as boons). This can only be broken if the young intelligentia can observe this and start taking collective action in training the manpower. However, coming back to Nepal, the best option for Tarai region will be to "demand" no-mines in the new state of Tarai!

Musings on life

Assume you are faced with some unkind situation in life, something unexpected, something dangerous. How would you react to it? We are faced with such situations on a daily basis. Of course what appears to us as dangerous may seem a piece of cake to someone else. But that is not the point to be mused upon here. There are two ways to look at it, I guess.

First of all let us ask the broad question of if there is something called a divine plan or a God for that matter. We can answer it in two ways and both are unverifiable. Case one: there is a higher plan and it all occurs for some greater goal; in which case we do not have to worry. What does not break up will only leave us stronger and more suitable for the greater plan. Case two: there is no big plan and its all the play of chaos. In that case also where is the sense to fret? Relax and enjoy the chaos!

The second thing we may muse upon is how to deal with the "situation" at hand. There are two ways we can deal with it in our mind. We can deal with it using our "psychological" memory or "factual" memory. Factual memory is borne out of facts. For example, when it is too "hot" for me I go and seek a cold drink. And psychological memory is borne out of comparisons and judgements and this will make me to choose a particular brand of cold-drink from a particular shop. If we analyse the problem using our factual memory, then the problem boils down to a series of events and happenings, none of which in itself is "bad" or "good". Then we can deal with it with the best possible "real" action. And here I quote the great Jack Sparrow (!): "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do.". There is no choice, there is no judgement, there is no remorse. But when we start dealing with it using our psychological memory, we fret, we rejoice, we tense and are faced with the menagerie of emotions. I do not say that we should not do it. Let us also enjoy the pleasure and pain of psychological memory, but all the time aware of the cause of them!

Musings on corruption

For sometime corruption has been a major issue in most of the developing world. In this post I will try to put an alternate point of view towards corruption. As the title of my blogs go, this is not to profess anything. Rather this is just to give another point of view.

Many people claim that if there were no corruption (or less of it) the national treasury will have so much of extra money. My first question to this argument is what is the value of money? Does money actually mean anything? Money is just a convention. The value of money is by the productivity of the people nothing more nothing less.

My second argument is that as long as the money does not go out of the region (region here may mean the state or the nation), it is still in the system. Most of the black money end up being invested back in the market so that it can grow. Hence, the diligent and intelligent folks catch this black money and improve their standard of living. In this process the lazy and ungifted does suffer. But that, usually, is the norm.

Corruption is a problem and it should be minimised. But the bigger challenge is to train the manpower so that they can create real wealth and even catch back the black money and make it white. For as one of the Italian proverbs runs "money had no colour"!

Farewell talk for my last lecture to 5th semesterites!

Dear class. I know it's not usual for you guys to expect or to be forced through a farewell speech of this kind. Nor is it typical of me to spend this much time in something that may appear pretty meaningless to most with a myopic vision. I have prepared it after a lot of deliberation. There are several reasons for this farewell talk. First and foremost is the fact that till now I have been acting as a mere mouth-piece for the existing technology and engineering tricks. I have been talking to you as Amit the lecturer; whereas in this speech you will find Amit the lecturer entangled and engulfed by Amit the person. This is my scope to present my perspectives which, even though not scholarly, is just as humane. The second reason for the speech is the fact that engineering alone is not enough in the current era. We are in difficult and, yet, interesting times. And times like now need more than mere dry technical know-hows. 

Soon you guys will be 5/8th engineers. I will strongly urge you to seat back one day or night and relax and ponder upon the meaning and implications of this. Implications of becoming an engineer. As I have thrusted upon you again and again, we engineers are fighters, we are problem solvers and we are the makers of humanity's destiny. Someone aspiring to be all these three can definitely not come from a burgeon training. But, it is a pity that all you have been through till now is but a burgeon set up. However, a burgeon training does not and need not force you to be a mediocre burgeon elite! I have never been anything but a maverick myself. And I am sure I would have spilled off some of that over these months and affected some of you with that uneasy unsettling nausea which is the only way to creation and solution. 

The next thing I will talk to you about is on the skills that I would have tried to train you with. But these are soft skills and can not be framed within the frameworks of the modern education. Yes, I am talking about the art of doing engineering. Given that you are maverick enough to drive head-on to a stubborn problem, how do you solve it? As I would have repeated more than once in the previous lectures,  the simple modus operandi to solve any given problem, how-so-ever complicated and unthinkable, is to start from the beginning, step by step, without getting intimidated till you crack it open. 

We are the wizards of the modern era. We have never been subdued by anything and if anything I will want you to go away with is this simple mantra. Nothing is impossible. And this is not a mere rhetoric dry hypothetical thing I am saying here; this is real; this is a proven thing. Nothing is impossible and no problem is unsolvable. 

May you all continue to solve problems with an insatiable desire to never settle for a boring burgeon life. 

What you can do and can not do!

In the movie Pirates of Caribbean there is a nice quote "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do". Sounds pretty logical but is so difficult to follow at the same time. What can you do besides what you really can do? Nothing more nothing less. And mind that these decisions are all determined by our past, by the past of the creation. The past completely determines the present. Sorry my friends who believe in "free will", but "free will" is a scientific impossibility.

But the trouble is that we mostly start thinking of theoretical possibilities for each action we take. We start cross linking them to "beings, things and happenings". And finally we end up in a mental situation which we call "pain"! In stead if we think (at each moment) what we can actually do and what we can not, then we will find (surprisingly) that destiny offers us but only one least-effort best-potential path. And it also is the most obvious one.

Now how to make sure that we choose this path of discrimination for each action? That needs practice to see the "beings, things and happenings" the way they actually are (without bringing our prejudices and past-experiences into play). This is best appreciated in the Buddhist texts and I am really surprised at the way Buddhism makes a science of self-actualization. 

Education and degrees

Recently I was appalled by the fact that, at least in India, for a fresher it is almost impossible to get a job if not through campus placement! So much so that one of my friends decided to join an MBA program just to have access to the placement drama!! Which means that he is confident of doing well in a job; but needs a 'degree' and placement.

Do the conventional education and degree mean much? My views will be biased in that I am myself a product and benefactor of the system, and will be non-academic from the fact that I got no 'degree' in education or sociology!

If we look back, formal education was historically affordable and imparted only to the elite few. Most (if not all) old fathers of science and humanities are either from royalty or from clergy background. So, I guess, they tried their best to make education the business of the elite. And now we have something which breeds elitism! A mason puts more mental and physical effort than me, but gets paid less. This is morally wrong.

Besides the moral dimension, the other dimension to this whole debate is practicality. There was a time when the way (most) people got trained was through apprentice programs! This got different flavours in the orient and in the occident. But in today's world, without a piece of paper, you are not recognised. And that piece of papers needs years and years of effort and loads of money. It just does not make much sense to me.

What is the solution? Well I don't know and thats why this column is coined "Confusion"!!

Pancha-klesha (five miseries)

(The real meaning of yoga is the way to get united with the real knowledge. And Patanjali (2nd century BC) is well regarded as the father of yoga. His work the Yoga-sutras is a list of aphorisms, each worth hundred hours of meditation. In the current post I will explain one of the sutras from Yoga-sutra, as explained to me by my father.)

Very lucidly this sutra says that "agyana, asmita, raga, dwesha, abhinibesha: pancha-kleshah". The five miseries of life are lack of proper knowledge, I-ness, desire to get good things and not to get bad things, fear of death or time! It all starts with the lack of proper knowledge (agyana). Everyone, everything and every event is interlinked and interwoven in an amazing seamless manner. Open your eyes and try to find a single event without any cause. There aint any. Every event every thing and everyone affects every other event, thing and person. In such a creation, no one has any independent existence. Independence and choice are but illusions. Because many of us don't care to look out and think, we think  we are different and separate. We develop ego and I-ness (asmita). Ego is nothing but the accumulation of some past experiences, which in turn define our character and personality. When in an undivided wholeness we assume a separate entity, then we make an evasive boundary. This makes two type of choices. We either like (raga) a thing/person/event or dislike (dwesha) it. This in turn will bring us to the point where we start remaining scared of time! Why? Because we are scared that the desirable thing that we have now will be snatched by the flow of time or the thing we desire to happen or come in future will not happen. This brings us to the last misery, fear of time or death (abhinibesha).

So as we can see, all the miseries start step by step from a single thing, i.e. the lack of right knowledge (agyana). But how can someone who is within the miseries of asmita, raga, dwesha, abhinibesha obtain knowledge? Then this becomes like a vicious circle! The only way to break it is meditation!

An old story

I have heard this story long ago. There was a woodcutter who would go to the jungle everyday to cut wood. One day he was cutting a branch of a tree which leaned into a river and his axe fell into the river. Our poor woodcutter was devastated. He sat beside the river and cried. Then the river-Goddess could no longer see his plight, She came out and asked what has happened. On knowing the reason She went in and brought a big gold axe and asked him to take it. Our woodcutter denied that that was not his axe. Then She went in again and brought a silver axe which was also denied by our woodcutter. Finally she gave him back him old iron axe and he was happy. This pleased the Goddess and she blessed him profusely.

Many times in life because of circumstances we are separated from our loved ones and we  miss our loved ones. And people console that no worries, move ahead, you will get many better ones! I would say, thank you very much for your kind support but I need my old iron axe back. Because that was MINE and I could cut the woods with it. I want an axe to make a living and life, not some gold and silver!

Self reliance

It's a well known fact that if we start depending on others for our comfort zone, then our comfort becomes short-lived. E.g. if I derive my joy from staying near a loved-one, then when that loved-one goes far or does not react in a desired way, I get sad. I lose my peace. So what we are invariably advised is "try to be self reliant", try not to depend heavily on other (persons or stuffs) too much.

I think I don't agree with the above old wisdom. If we do not depend on anyone, then what is the benefit of a human life? If we do not feel pain then how can we feel pleasure? If we are scared of being too much dependent on someone then we will never be able to enjoy life to its fullest extent.

The above logic reminds me of a line from Narada's Bhakti Sutra (Formulas of devotion). For the uninitiated, Sutras in Indian philosophy are sets of very concise adages (sutra = formula)! This particular sutra  reads as "biraha-shakta". (As you can see it's just two words). It means "attracted to separation". One wise man explains this as the fact that the lover is attracted even to separation from the beloved one. Why? Because even if it's separation, separation from whom? From the beloved one! How can the lover not fall in love with anything related to the beloved one?

Philosophies aside, I think I will advise to continue being dependent! Separation makes you weak, but that also makes you feel the joy of reunion. Dependence makes your joy capricious; but then what is permanent in this nature? Embrace life to the full extent. Leave all inhibitions when you are in love. You have nothing to lose!

Swaraj vs. Suraj

Of late I am getting more and more convinced that like "organised" religion, nationalism is also one more opium for the masses. People just want to feel good for the fact that they belong to something bigger than a five to six feet tall body frame. And thats why they start believing in things like nation, country, state etc. And this sort of feeling is well moulded into making systems like democracy and notions like "swaraj" (self-governance). If I am being ruled by someone of my own type (and type can be anything starting from colour to caste) then I feel good! And if that someone can get a fake support like what we call "mandate", then the system becomes holy.

The hoipoloi really do not care about what is the colour of the skin of the president or what his religious beliefs are. We care about a good quality peaceful life, what we call as Suraaj or good governance. I have heard that in Saudi Arab, the young princes are trained as per the portfolio that they will take care of in their future life. They become trained to do a certain thing better. And given that he is not a tyrant (and believe me you can get tyrants of demonical magnitude in democracy as well), he can give a much better governance than democracy. Just because we do not know of a better system than democracy, does not make it the best. Just because some nations do well under democracy does not mean that its a panacea for all. I do not have an alternative. But I just can not stand the fake Swaraaj (self governance).

And today is India's umpteenth independence day. A day which should actually be observed as a black day, because this was the day when thousands of people were suddenly told that they are foreigners and need to leave the land; this was the day when neighbours killed, looted, raped neighbours. This was the day which showed the real demon in man. And what have we achieved yet? The inherently unapt system of democracy caused in highly concentrated growth. And the result is quite clear from our ex-home minister (Mr. Chidambaram)'s statement that currently around 30% of the nation's land is under some sort of parallel governance, like Naxals. It is high time, we should stop following the developed nations and seriously look for alternatives. Time to say "Thank you" to Swaraj and think of real "Suraaj".