ACTION AND REACTION

Viktor Frankl, the existentialist philosopher, said “Between a stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and happiness”. Are we aware of this space at all times? I am afraid not. The word “responsibility” means ability to respond. But are we always in a position to appropriately respond? My personal experiences say otherwise.

I was driving one morning to work and had to drive through a narrow lane to reach the building entry gate. As always, people were walking on both sides of the road and I was literally crawling at 5 Kmph speed. I accidentally brushed a person – perhaps his trouser – and I immediately raised my hand in apology and moved on as it apparently did not bother him. As I moved past him, he suddenly opened the passenger side front door with raised fists and shouted at me “I am going to thrash you. You hit me and are driving ahead!” However, I calmly looked at him and told him in a gentle voice “Please get into the car” as I did not want traffic snarl that being a peak hour. He was taken aback and he profusely apologized for his behaviour. I gently urged him to sit in the car which he did. Till I entered my building which was only a couple of minutes away, he was pleading sorry for his behaviour.

Once inside the building, I stopped the car and asked him gently “Are you going for an interview?” He replied in the affirmative. I told him “Imagine what will happen if you come to my company for an interview?” He was now literally in tears and continued to plead. I patted him on his back and told him to calm down and advised him to take rest for 15 minutes before going for the interview. All this happened in a few minutes and even now I am amazed at the way I handled the entire episode with full awareness, clarity, calmness and compassion. I could have also shouted at him and created a scene etc.

Now fast forward to another incident. The same Zen master “me” drove to a wedding hall. The entry gate was farther away from my house and I took the easier way out and tried to enter the hall through the exit gate as it was nearer to my house and as there was no traffic at all. The security chap, quite rightly, refused permission stating the obvious and I would have turned back the car when he let a scooter pass through the same gate – perhaps it was an employee for all you know. On seeing this, big “ME” was hurt and I exploded at the poor chap shouting expletives at him. And if you have your wife by your side at such scenes, you know what happens. She feels deeply embarrassed and as always tries to drive sense into you. But the big “ME” could listen to sagely advice when so badly hurt. I parked the car outside and stormed into the hall still fuming and menacingly looking at the security as I went past him.

Now, if you are with me so far, such incidents do make your day unpleasant and the whole atmosphere becomes vitiated, if you know what I mean. I went through the motions in the wedding and as I returned home, better sense prevailed. The Zen “me” took over and blasted “ME” as to how I could behave in such a fashion at a hapless security chap – perhaps he was doing his duty. He must have been earning a few thousand rupees to secure his livelihood. And you are right – I did not sleep well. I got up in the morning drove down to the hall and there he was discharging his duties. I hugged him and profusely apologized. He was magnanimous and said “It is OK sir. I would have let you in but if my supervisor sees me, I will lose my job!”

Now if you look at both incidents, the former was action and the latter was reaction! Unfortunately most of us react and hardly act. Once you act you are in control, focused and your chances of succeeding in an endeavor are pretty bright. More than anything else there is peace and happiness all round. And your life is but a series of actions (or reactions) and this determines your quality of life. As Jean Paul Sartre said “You are your choices!”

Do you normally act or react? 

STORY TELLING - TO YOURSELF

“I am always at a loss as to how much to believe the stories I tell myself!” said Washington Irving. How true! While we may not be great story tellers like our ancestors of the yore, we are adept at telling stories to ourselves – and negative ones at that. There is a constant chatter in our minds and if you step back and analyze these thoughts, you can see a familiar pattern. Most of it would be repeating things that you need to do (doing nothing about it and increasing your tension!), and a lot of it would be some “scripts” that you are playing out repeatedly. It could be some perceived injustice done to you in the past or how the world is unfair to you or how you were denied opportunities to grow and the list is endless. Unfortunately, by repeating the same thing over and over again, we perpetuate these stories thereby making them more and more real. This is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Cheri Huber said “That voice inside your head is not the voice of God. It sounds like it thinks it is!”. The worst critic you will ever encounter is the one who lives inside your mind. The way you talk to yourself has a profound impact on your emotional state and the resultant behaviour. For example, when you make a mistake, consider the tone of voice you use when you talk to yourself. We never say “Great, it has been a good learning experience!” Instead, it invariably would be “You, stupid idiot, you really screwed up this time” or “You will never learn” or words to that effect! Most of it would be critical or angry or sarcastic or even resigned. This is one of the primary reasons for low self-esteem, globalizing local events leading to depression etc.

In corporate life, it is next to impossible to avoid people who come up and say “Why does this always keep happening to me?” or “People only hurt me” etc time and again. There is lot of self talk going on in their minds and by repeating them time and again, it impacts their behaviour and the way people perceive them. Hence it is important that such negative self talk and scripts are avoided and rephrased so that we do not manifest circumstances that would fulfill our script!

I am sure all of you have seen “The Lion King”. It is a brilliant movie. The lion cub “Simba” leaves the forest and lives with a meerkat and warthog – Timon and Pumbaa. It lives a carefree life of “hakuna matata” meaning “no worries”. It starts to think and behave like other animals with which it is associated forgetting its true nature. Then Rafiki, the wise monkey adviser to Simba’s father tricks him saying that his father is alive and takes him to a pond. Simba sees his father’s apparition in the sky which tells him that Simba was born to rule and that he must take his pride of place among the lions. This changes Simba and he later claims the kingdom which is rightfully his.

Do we see parallels between this story and our life – at least I see a lot of truth in this narration. We do not rightfully understand who we are, nor the world around us – primarily because we are constantly running the “wrong scripts”. All we have to do then is to rewrite the faulty script just as Simba did. Is that possible – yes it is. Is it easy – maybe not? But remember that "One of the greatest of all principles is that men can do what they think they can do!"

How and when do we get our “Rafiki”, the wise one?

STORY TELLING

Last week I sat before the idol of Lord Ganesh – one that was made of clay – to perform Ganesh puja. As I started looking at the idol, I was amazed at the features of the idol – the sharp eyes, large head, small mouth and large ears et al. I recalled, with amusement, the number of stories that I had heard about Lord Ganesh. I instantly admired our forefathers who were great story tellers – who wove facts, fiction and spun stories with lot of inbuilt symbolism so that we remember them forever. The fact we regale children with such colorful stories even today, after aeons, is quite remarkable.

Looking again at Lord Ganesh I wondered at the symbolism embedded. The large head symbolizes his enormous wisdom and the large ears – quite obviously because he has an elephant head – indicating that we need to listen more and be very attentive and correspondingly a small mouth, perhaps signifying that we need to talk less! One of his tusks is broken reminding us to retain the good and discard the bad and also representing that sacrifice is necessary for learning and gaining wisdom. His small eyes ask you to concentrate and focus on your goals. His large trunk represents the discrimination and the ability to discern between good and the evil. In modern parlance perhaps it signifies flexibility and adaptability! His large stomach conceivably contains all things the known and unknown universes or possibly indicative of the fact that we need to digest the good and the evil! Funny enough, a mouse is supposed to be his “vahana” or vehicle. The rationalists may taunt at such an impossibility but again remember all this is symbolic and allegorical – it symbolizes all our desires. Just as a mouse is restless and keeps running all over the place, our desires run amok and if we are to be at peace with ourselves and the world, we need to keep this under control! I can go on and on – but I guess you get the drift.

Stories about Lord Ganesh abound and who can forget his ingenious move of going round his parents thrice and claiming the coveted mango fruit? Lord Ganesh came to my rescue once – albeit in unusual circumstances. I was in an overseas location to attend a difficult project meeting with the client (who said project meetings with clients were fun?). I had to defend some bad deliveries from our side. We introduced ourselves and one of the clients asked me “what does Ganesh mean?” That was my chance and I immediately replied “It means remover of all obstacles and I am here to remove all the obstacles in solving your project issues!”  Most of them at least had a smile and the meeting, needless to say, went off much better than what I had anticipated.

Like I said, our forefathers were great story tellers – I love to watch Mahabharata on TV even now. It is still fascinating and several people have written different interpretations of that epic. A modern story teller like Craig Jenkins says Epics are holistic depictions of life – and continues that stories in The Ramayana and The Mahabharata are metaphors and allow us to raise questions! However, have we now lost that art of storytelling?  Is it meant only for grandmothers to narrate stories to their grand children? I don’t think so.

Robert McKee in a HBR article entitled “Story Telling that works” says “Trying to convince people with logic is tough for two reasons. One is they are arguing with you in their heads while you are making your argument. Second, if you do succeed in persuading them, you’ve done so only on an intellectual basis. That’s not good enough, because people are not inspired to act by reason alone.” Recent studies have empirically shown that people’s beliefs can be swayed more effectively through storytelling than through logical arguments. The researchers say that persuasion is most effective when people are "transported" to another place using a story. And corporate world is getting onto this bandwagon in a big way. Our forefathers knew this all along. So if you are not a good story teller, start right away!

And coming back to our Lord Ganesh, after completion of the celebrations, I was saddened to bid him farewell. It was no ordinary farewell for I will be immersing him and losing him. But again on second thoughts, I marveled at the symbolism of this whole ritual. The idol that was worshipped as GOD the previous day is completely dissolved – maybe it signifies that this entire creation is nothing but names and forms behind which there is an unchanging essence. The names and forms are ephemeral and we need to transcend these and look for that unchanging reality.

What is that unchanging essence? 

FAITH

After the advent of Internet and emails, we receive a spate of mails enclosing a whole lot of material – most of them that you can trash after a desultory glance. However, a few of them are worth preserving and reading time and again. I am reproducing one such material – a conversation purported to be between a Professor (Pro) and a Student (Stu). It unfolds as follows:

An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem science has with GOD, The Almighty. He asks one of his students to stand and asks him:

Pro    : So you believe in God?

Stu    : Absolutely, Sir.

Pro    : Is God good?

Stu    : Sure

Pro    : Is God all powerful?

Stu    : Yes

Pro   : My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn’t. How is God good then?

Stu    : Student is silent

Pro    : You can’t answer, can you? Let’s start again young fella. Is God good?

Stu    : Yes

Pro    : Is Satan good?

Stu    : No

Pro    : Where does Satan come from?

Stu    : From… God

Pro    : That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?

Stu    : Yes

Pro    : Evil is everywhere, isn’t it? And God did make everything, correct?

Stu    : Yes sir

Pro    : So who created evil?

Stu    : No Answer

Pro   : Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don’t they?

Stu    : Yes sir

Pro    : So who created them?

Stu    : No Answer

Pro   : Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me son, have you ever seen God?

Stu    : No, sir

Pro    : Tell us if you have ever heard your God?

Stu    : No, sir

Pro   : Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any sensory perception of your God for that matter?

Stu    : No, sir I am afraid I haven’t.

Pro    : Yet you believe in him.

Stu    : Yes, sir.

Pro   : According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol science says your GOD doesn’t exist. What do you say to that son?

Stu    : Nothing sir. I only have my faith.

Pro    : Yes. Faith. And that is the problem science has.

And the fun really starts now.

Stu    : Professor, is there such a thing as heat?

Pro    : Yes

Stu    : And is there such a thing as cold?

Pro    : Yes

Stu    : No sir. There isn’t

The entire class becomes quiet at this turn of events.

Stu    : Sir, we can have lots of heat, even more heat, super heat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is not heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. It is a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat sir, but the absence of it.

There is pin drop silence in the class.

Stu    : What about darkness Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?

Pro    : Yes, what is night if there isn’t darkness?

Stu    : You are wrong again sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light…but if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and it is called darkness, isn’t it? In reality darkness isn’t. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?

Pro    : So, what is the point you are making young man?

Stu    : Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.

Pro    : Flawed? Can you explain how?

Stu   : Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue that there is life and there is death, a good God and a bad God. You are viewing God as something finite that we can measure. Sir, science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of life. Now, tell me Professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

Pro    : If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.

Stu    : Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes sir?

Pro    : The professor shakes his head with a smile realizing where the argument is going.

Stu    : Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an ongoing endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist, but a preacher?

Pro    : Silence

Stu    : Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor’s brain?

The class is in an uproar now!

Stu    : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor’s brain, felt it, touched it or smelt it? … No one appears to have done so. So according to the established empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?

Pro   : (The room is silent. The Professor stares at the student, his face unfathomable). I guess you will have to take them on faith, son.

Stu   : That is it sir. The link between man and GOD is faith. That is all that keeps things   moving and alive.

This may be an imaginary conversation, hilarious at times, but certainly has some profound messages that need a deeper contemplation and discussion. It is a good exposition of dualistic thinking, a malady which all of us are afflicted with. A closer scrutiny is warranted! 

HAPPINESS - THE WAY

One of my favorite heroes is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. An oft quoted axiom of his is “After eliminating all possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth!” So also, it is very clear that HAPPINESS cannot be found outside – in “things” as we have seen. This has been echoed by many a philosopher and it was Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, who said “It is difficult to find happiness within oneself but impossible to find it elsewhere!” There are several perspectives to this and we can discuss a few of them.

I enrolled for a spiritual retreat about a decade ago. During one week end, the teacher asked all the participants to assemble in a ground for a game. It was a simple game. We were divided into two groups – one group forming a circle and the other at the center of the circle. The objective was for the group forming the circle to throw a foot ball at the group at the center and hit them below the waist. If there was a hit, the person was out of the game. The game was played till the last man was left standing. Then the process was reversed with the groups interchanging positions. There was lot of noise, shouting, jumping, shouts of “cheating” et al. It was an assorted group with age ranging from 17 to 70 and you can imagine the commotion! (And in case you are curious, I was not nimble – was out!)

After the game, we all assembled in the hall and the teacher asked a very simple question “How many of you were happy when you were playing?”  Much to our surprise almost all hands went up. This was followed by a simple question “Why?” People came up with their own theories – but the simple reason was we were all so involved in the game that nothing else mattered. No one “got” anything tangible but were happy for no reason at all!

A few months ago, I was going for a morning walk in the beach. A husband and wife with their son – perhaps a lad 5-6 years old, were approaching me. As they came near me, the boy swung his arms in a bowling action as if to deliver a cricket ball. Instinctively I swung my arms using my “imaginary” bat and hit the ball towards mid wicket. The boy again reacted swiftly, jumped and caught the “imaginary” ball and shouted “Howzzat!” There was joyous laughter all around. What did we get now to be happy? – Not the much awaited increment or the promotion or any “thing” that we normally call valuable!

If I reflect on these two incidents it is clear that we tend to be happy when we are “involved” in our day to day life with our heart and soul. It could be any activity like gardening, reading a book, cutting vegetables or even watching a game of cricket on TV. Psychologists call this “Flow” – more of it later.

Happiness, they say, is like a cat; if you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you will find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.

Bertrand Russell one of the greatest thinkers of modern times talks about this very eloquently in his book “The conquest of Happiness” as follows:

“The happy man is the man who does not suffer from either of these two failures of unity, whose personality is neither divided against itself nor pitted against the world. Such a man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle it offers and the joys that it affords, untroubled by the thought of death because he feels himself not really separate from those who will come after him. It is in such profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the greatest joy is to be found”.

There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way! 

HAPPINESS - CAUSES

These days I am confronted with the inevitable question “Are you happy?” And on hearing my emphatic answer, “Yes”, most of them are a little skeptical and disappointed. They expect me to confide in them about my current state of affairs or shall I say “no affairs” and how I am bored, how no one bothers about me, how I have lost all the power and position I used to enjoy etc. I hate to disappoint them, but the truth is I am really happy.

Have you ever pondered over this question – “What is happiness?” While I was about to retire, a colleague of mine bought a fancy car – a trifle expensive one for his position in my humble opinion. So I asked him as to why he went in for such a fancy car and could have reduced his EMI by going in for a smaller car. He was quick to respond “I want to enjoy, sir!” Somewhere in the deep recesses of our mind, we all believe that external “things” – be it comforts, relationships, objects etc give us happiness. Since almost all of us believe this, there must be something in it, I guess.

Belonging to a generation that believes it is rational and of a scientific temper, I thought we should investigate this further. In scientific research they always postulate a hypothesis, collect data, analyze it and prove or disprove the hypothesis. Therefore it is only fair that we investigate this matter following the same methodology. I can think of the following hypotheses.

Hypothesis # 1 – Happiness may be an inherent nature of the “thing” (like a car or a situation etc.)

Hypothesis # 2 – The external “things” are the real cause for the happiness – that is external “things” are the cause and happiness is the effect.

Let us examine these two one by one. If, as per hypothesis # 1, a quality (like happiness) is inherent nature of an object, then it follows that the object should really give happiness all the time – at all times, at all places, for all people, in the past, present and future. For example the inherent nature of fire is to give heat. It has been hot, will continue to be hot, it burns you, me, an innocent child, during summer or winter and we can go on and on. If you subject any of the objects that we feel has an inherent quality of happiness to this test, it will surely fail. For example a thing which gives you happiness at one time does not give you happiness at other times (like a sweet for a diabetic) - forget about giving you happiness at all times. We need not even bother about the rest of the conditions. You can test this against anything that you feel gives happiness and it is bound to fail. Hence we can safely assume that happiness is not an inherent quality of a “thing”.

Now coming to the second hypothesis, say if A is the cause and B is the effect, logically it has to satisfy two conditions. The first one is whenever A is present, B should also be present. This is called the positive condition (Anvaya in Sanskrit). The second one is, whenever B is present, A should not be absent. This is called the negative condition (Vyatireka in Sanskrit). So let us apply this test. For example if wealth is the cause of happiness, then whosoever has wealth has to be happy. But that is not true. In fact most of the wealthy chaps are miserable. Similarly wherever there is happiness, wealth should not be absent. In today’s HINDU, I was reading an article about a person who cleans the fridge and Air conditioners (in the weekly column on men and women who make Chennai what it is). His parting words in the interview were “Right now, I have no debts; I am old, a little poor but am happy”. So our second hypothesis has also failed the test on both counts.

Lord Byron said “It is true but strange for truth is stranger than fiction!” Could it be that happiness is not in any of these external "things"? Is that a possibility? 

FREEDOM

When you retire, people assume you have all the time in the world – and I for one do not deny it. How do you spend your time is the constant refrain from people who know me well. Coming to think of it, I have retired almost a year ago and much to the amusement of the questioner, I tell them that I am practicing the fine art of doing nothing! It is not all that hard provided you are mentally prepared. To shatter this peaceful existential bliss, a colleague called me and asked me a rather simple question – “How do you create a blog?” She presumably thought that I, having worked in the IT industry, will do it in a jiffy. But alas, I was not one of those nerds but one who had accidentally strayed on to the IT field. But I was not one to be pinned down by such challenges. I enquired about it with a few friends and then suddenly an idea (is it a good idea – only time will tell!) struck me – why not write a blog myself? Like a five year old kid I ran to my wife and said “I am going to write a blog!” She was quiet for a moment and hurled a question that hit me like a yorker sent down by Malinga to an unsuspecting batsman. It really hurt and the question was – “Who will read it!” My wife being more pragmatic than I am had me there! While it was a valid one, being a psychology student I consoled myself and rationalized – even if no one reads I can write one if only to reinforce some ideas to myself! So was born this wonderful blog.

The next key hurdle was – what do you write about? Being a dreamer that I am, I thought of writing my first blog about Freedom – here we go.

All of us want freedom. The key question is from what? Some of us want freedom from boredom, from relationships, poverty, politicians, insecurity, fear of old age and a zillion other things. If we manage to free ourselves from one thing, then the next one crops up. Is there no end to this? How would this be if we are to free ourselves from one thing and the rest of the problems disappear? Sounds very interesting and tempting, is it not? Well here is a story first.

A shepherd was taking a cow belonging to a Swami for grazing daily. He used to untie the cow and spend the whole day, return in the evening and tie the cow back in its place. This was happening day-in and day-out. One fine evening when he returned to the shed, he did not find the rope to tie the cow. He was worried that the cow might run away if he did not tie it. He went to the Swami and sought his opinion. The Swami said the cow being a cow will not really know if it is really tied or not. He asked him to go through the motions as if to put the rope around the cow’s neck. Now our friend was very skeptical and was almost sure that the cow would run away at night.

The next morning the shepherd returned and found the cow in its place. He happily went near the cow and tried to drive it away for grazing. The cow did not budge. Now the poor shepherd thought that the Swami must have performed some magic to tie the cow down – why else would she not move without the rope tied around her neck, he thought. He went to the Swami and told him of his experience. The Swami told him to untie the rope that he had tied the previous day. When the shepherd remonstrated that he did not tie the rope the previous evening, the Swami reminded him that he had pretended to tie the rope. Now he requested him to pretend as if he was untying the rope. The shepherd did as he was told – and presto the cow started walking!

Now all of us are like this cow (don’t take umbrage that we are being compared to a cow a-la Modi and the Puppy – this is only a story). We think we are bound to this world and its attendant sorrows but the truth is we are not bound. Like the cow, we are already free but we don’t know this. How do you get out of this illusion – only by knowledge, dear friends, knowledge. And how does one get this knowledge. Well some other time….