P - In our last conversation about faith and experience, you dropped a comment that complete objectivity is a myth. What did you mean ?
Me- In the context of faith versus experience, we were talking about, what exactly is experience, facts or response to facts ?
P - What is the difference ?
Me – The fact remaining the same response to it varies from person to person. So the same incident might generate different responses from different persons. Different persons might experience it differently.
P - Yes, that is possible.
Me - Why is it so ? If the incident and experience are built into each other, then an incident should generate the same experience in as many people as are exposed to it. But it does not do so. Which means, experience of an incident is not inherent in the incident, but in the experiencer. The experiencer, consciously or unconsciously, determines the nature of their experience.
P - For instance ?
Me - Two persons went to see a huge waterfall. One of them was an artist, the other an engineer. When they stood before the waterfall, the artist whispered, “Ah, what awesome beauty !”, but the engineer exclaimed, “O, what a colossal waste !” The object before them was the same, but the experiencers had different tools for appreciation. The engineer did not have the artist’s aesthetic tool, not did the artist have the engineer’s utility tool. Therefore no experience proves a fact, an experience reveals what a person is capable of experiencing.
P - What does all this point towards ?
Me - That no experience is free from the interference of the experiencer’s mind. Even the latest thinkers on science acknowledge it. Fred Alan wolf, for instance, a professor of quantum physics, says, “you can not have a universe without mind entering into it; the mind is actually shaping the very thing that is being perceived”. The mind is only a set of previously stored impressions, gained through the senses, from environment, education, culture, society, desires, needs, and a variety of influences which determine the perception tool of the individual. All these impressions are like windows with coloured glass panes through which we view and experience the world. Therefore, the experience of a certain incident is defined by whatever impression is predominant in our mind at the time. Thus we experience whatever we are prepared for at the moment.
P - This leads us to a very disturbing conclusion that our experiences really prove nothing except our inbuilt biases !
Me - Yes, they are part of our cognition tools.
P - Then how do we get at unbiased truth ?
Me - The answer is very simple. We have to use some unbiased tool to get at the unbiased truth.
P - Where is that unbiased tool ?
Me - Use simple reasoning. The impressions are the infrastructure of the mind. So either we use a tool which is not built by these impressions, or deny the impressions influencing our experiences. Then to a great extent we shall be free from a biased view if life.
P - That appears impossible to me.
Me - Yes, appears. It appears so because we use the biased mind to judge .There is a faculty in man which is not dominated by sense impressions. It is Buddhi. Buddhi is not exactly intellect. It is an intuitive faculty of cognition, which draws its light from atma, the seat of pure knowledge. It creates a safe framework for unbiased experience. We have to develop this faculty.
P - What is the other way ?
Me - When you look into a water-filled vessel, you can see your face reflected in it. The reflection shall be as much closer to the original as much still the water is. Similarly, experiencing the world around us shall be as much closer to reality as less agitated the tool of experience is. When no particular impression is allowed to influence our experience tool, free from an overbearing boss, we go closer to a vision of truth. In other words, a state of peace, or equanimity, the non-agitated and balanced mind, is the alternative tool. We have a beautiful description of this state of mind in Patanjali.
P - Who is Patanjali ?
Me - He is among the wisest masters of ancient India, who worked on this subject of freeing mind from all biases in order that it can perceive truth. This method is called Yoga.
P – And how according to him can we arrive at this state ?
Me - He says, “Yogah Chittavruttinirodhakah”; which means, if the mind can be made to drop all its agitations, and remain calm, one can experience the truth which unites man with God.
P - That I must admit is a wonderful idea, and it appears quite rational.
Me - It is. But here I must caution you. If ‘rationality’ remains for you a faculty of mind, and you use it as a tool to assess truth which is inaccessible to an agitated mind, you shall be terribly tricked. True rationality is the nature of Buddhi, which is reached in a state of complete peace.
P - Now, now, let me get it straight. For unbiased experience of truth, we have either to develop an unbiased tool called Buddhi, or, free the mind of all previously stored impressions. And yoga is a way to do that. Correct ?
Me - Yes, that is so.
P - But the exercise of freeing the mind of impressions appears to me an impossible task.
Me - So did it look to Arjuna too, another seeker in the battle of life. Krushna gave him two methods to get past the difficulty. First, accept intellectually the possibility of an impression-free state, and then practise it. This is possible when you strongly believe that you have a spark of the divine in you, which is far more powerful than the ‘thought-bundle’ mind, and you can access it if you want to.
P - What is this spark ? It is a fact or fiction ?
Me - This power has been used by many people who have shaped human history. This power raises you above the power of environment, of society, even above your own weaknesses. When someone asked Mother Teresa why she was caring the dying and the leper whom the society had given up, she replied she was doing this to the sick Jesus, and the leprous Jesus. The little miracles she experienced in her life were caused by this faith in the inherent divinity of man. When Mahatma Gandhi embarked upon an apparently unequal fight with the British for the country’s freedom, he had to rise above the environment of fear, hate, violence, and his own weaknesses, to carry the country with him. His faith in this spark empowered him. When a prince named Gautam decided to leave a prosperous kingdom, a beautiful young wife and a very handsome son, in search of truth, the power of environment could not subdue him. When the young son of a prosperous merchant in Assissi threw away his father’s clothes, and the pleasures of youth, to turn to streets for the love of Jesus, he was obviously driven by a power far greater than mind. All of them were. It is their faith which came to them through a window different from that which opens through the kaleidoscopic mind. And I need hardly point out the value of their experiences.
P - Now I understand what a transforming experience really means. What was the second method Krushna taught Arjuna ?
Me - It is a tougher method, meant for more consistent seekers. When you are busy developing the right tool for experiencing truth, you can not really switch off other tools, the mental impressions. They keep on dragging you to their windows. This could easily disorient your search, unless you have built up strong defences. The second method is about this strategy of effective defence. You have to keep on rejecting the distracting suggestions as not useful for you, detach yourself from their temptations, if you must have a taste of the experience of truth. Krushna calls these methods abhyasa, and vairgya.
P - I watched Chopra’s Mahabhatata serial which tells the story of Krushna and Arjuna. I took it as an imaginary story. I did not know we come across such profound truths in such ancient tales.
Me - Therefore one way to prepare our tools to experience truth is to read and contemplate the scriptures, to find out how other seekers from other times, or other cultures faced these questions. But even if you do all that we discussed, an unbiased experience might yet be elusive.
P - That is alarming ! You have demolished in one stroke all that you built up so painstakingly.
Me - Yes, unless you an eager willingness to do what you do. If you feel forced to follow the discipline, and keep complaining about difficulties you face, you will not learn anything, and arrive nowhere. Therefore Krushna introduces another word in His conversation with Arjuna, Shraddha; He told Arjuna Shraddhavan labhate jnanam. Swami puts it so clearly when He says, “You must like to do what you ought to do”. Shraddha is the magic sword which cuts through all knots of ignorance. This is where search for knowledge, search for experience mingles with love. Love keeps the search in track, makes it relentless, saves you from disappointments and boredom. But there is a difficulty in this too.
P - What is that ? You are never tired of seeing difficulties !
Me - Because I am determined to reach the end of the road. All we have discussed is a method, though quite effective. But can you really love a method ?
P - Yes, I see your point. We can love a person, but a method…. I don’t know.
Me - Here walks in God. We can love God as a person, like so many have done in all times and all cultures. God too is never tired of coming as a person to love and be loved. So you see how faith, experience, truth, knowledge, love, all mingle for one purpose, take man to his own divinity. Faith in your own essential divinity leads you to exploration of unbiased tools for unbiased experience of truth. This can be as long or as short as you want. Tenacity is all.
P - Thank you. Now I have a good ground to work on.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Points to Ponder - 3
Recently I had an interesting dialogue with a 20 year old college student. It is all about faith and experience. Which comes first ? How can one have faith without experience ? It is the usual question asked at this age, for the tangible appears more real than the intangible at this stage of life. The more intensely we live, the faster we realize that there is a continuous interplay of the visible and the invisible in the shaping of our lives. Thoughts become things, ideas become incidents, experiments become experiences, and shadows become realities – as much as all that we hugged as reality melt into shadows. The important thing is, don’t go by brand names, go by what they mean to us. Search for meaning involves accepting that it exists; search for experience needs a ground on which that which was not, becomes that which is. How can one exist without the other ?
When we sit back, and exercise the wisdom of honest enquiry, at any stage of life, we reckon that we really can not draw a dividing line between the tangible and the intangible, the visible and the invisible.
For, faith and experience, in their healthiest forms, keep merging in each other.
Now let me record the dialogue.
P – They say, you must first have faith, then experience. But, how will you have faith in something which you know nothing about ?
Me - But you do just that in a thousand ways in real life.
P - How ?
Me - When you walk into a restaurant, and ask for a cup of coffee, you surely believe that it does not contain some deadly germs. When you occupy the back seat of your car and close your eyes to be driven to your office, you surely believe that you shall reach office to preside over a board meeting, and you believe, without doubt, the date of the day your watch tells you. When you choose a wife you surely believe that you are going to spend the rest of your life with her as a long happy day. When at middle age you sell all your assets to give your only son a very sound education, you have no doubts that he is going to take care of you in your declining years. If someone takes away these invisible faiths from your life, where will you be ?
P - Since I know nothing to contradict my faith in them, I accept them as facts of life; or it could also be a gamble.
Me – You mean to say, since you can not afford to question your faith in these so called ‘facts of life’, you take your faith for granted. Isn’t it irrational to use rationality when it is convenient, and drop it when inconvenient ? It could also be a gamble, and you believe that you are going to prove yourself a very clever player !
P - But there are precedences to guide me. Many have done this, so I also do this. You are not asking me to start from a blind corner, and walk a path which is just not there.
Me – There are also precedences of people who were afraid to take the road, stayed put, and saved themselves from an accident; there are also precedences of people who took the road, but failed to reach anywhere, because they always thought the other road might have been better . You chose one or the other according to your mental predilection and understanding. In other words, you stand on some form of faith before experiencing its veracity. Don’t you do almost the same thing in your science labs ? You accept a hypothesis before proving it.
P - Because it is a reasonable hypothesis arrived at from scientific data. It is not based on faith.
Me – By ‘scientific data’ you mean facts gathered and verified through the instrument of senses. If the instruments are flawed, facts would be flawed too, and their interpretation.
P - How ?
Me – A Marxist and a capitalist both come to their conclusions about a progressive society from scientific data about history. Why then do their conclusions basically differ ?
P - Why ?
Me - Their tools of gathering and interpreting facts differ. As long as they believed in their tools, they accepted their conclusions as the final truth. This led to great revolutions in the world. But experience taught them in time to question their tools, and develop new tools for reading facts. Then their conclusions changed. That’s how the old world USSR broke up, and in modern day China we have billionaires.
P - Then what is your conclusion ?
Me – Faith and experience go hand in hand. You need experience for faith, you need faith for experience. You can as well build your faith on the common pool of experiences of mankind..
P - How is that ?
Me – The classical example is burning your finger. Someone has burned his finger in fire, someone has experienced a shock in touching a live wire, someone has gone a particular road and has been robbed, someone has bought a certain brand, and got into problems; all this is stored in the common pool of mankind’s experience. You believe in these experiences, and save yourself a lot of unnecessary trouble. You have faith in a railway time table, in a calendar, in your stock broker, in your chemist, even in your astrologer… can you end the list ? If you start questioning your faith in them, can you run your life even for a day ?
P - But they are all products of a system called society, and we have to believe in it because we have put it in place.
Me – All systems can get corrupt, and then unreliable. So also individuals become corrupt, and unreliable. They are watchdogs for each other, aren’t they ? First you have faith in the principles on which a system is built, then build it. When your experience tells you that the system is now infected, you depend on your experience to reformat it. It is quite reasonable.
P - Suppose I replace experience by reason ? Isn't it the same ?
Me – No. Experience is the product, reason process. But again, they are related as the product and the process are related. Once again, their fields are very limited. Through reasoning you can solve a mathematical problem, not in faith; through reasoning you can recreate a Sherlock Holms, not in faith; through reasoning you can win a debate, not in faith; but this reasoning shall be powerless to justify your loves, hates, affection, sacrifice, devotion to God and all the softer and deeper feelings that make the endless story of life. You need to experience love, hate, affection etc. However, reason can prevent you from being a zealot, a fanatic, a bigot, a cultist, an egoist; it can help you in keeping a home in tact, keep a company together, and most often keep your head cool. But unless the heart nurtures faith in yourself and God, reason would prove lame.
P - How ?
Me – Unless you experience love for your family can you keep it together by reason ? Unless you experience comradeship with people working for you, can you prevent overbearing greed overtaking you and wrecking the company ? Unless you experience a sort of fellowship with humanity, can you stop all these insane wars and exploitations ? Unless you have great faith in yourself, can you rally forth from a hopeless all-lost situation to rebuild yourself ? Can you reason out how numerous people from all walks of life stand up to challenges of life because they have faith in God ? Can you really tell God, “If you give me at least 20 proofs of your existence, I will have faith in you” ? And when He apparently fails the 21st time, what happens to your faith ? You just kill it.
P - Are you trying to build up a case for God ?
Me – I am trying to build up a case for true rationality, and true faith. Even science has proved that complete objectivity is a myth. Mind can not reach all the areas a man lives in. So how can mind stand a judge and a guide for the areas it has no access to ? Man is a mystery unto himself. His powers are not yet fully fathomed, nor his weakness. Except spiritual truths all other ‘truths’ undergo serious overhauling in every century, sometimes every decade !
P - Don’t you think faith and reason are mutually exclusive ? In other words, if you follow the path of faith your reason becomes weak, and if you follow reason, your faith suffers ?
Me –You are a student of science, aren’t you ?
P - Yes.
Me – So you study physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and a language except English ?
P - Yes.
Me – Are they mutually exclusive ?
P - They are all parts of a whole course.
Me – Exactly. So, faith, reason, experience are parts of a whole course called living. They are the most balanced diet God has given us. A diabetic is advised a saltless and sugarless diet, while a person with low BP, is advised extra salt and sugar intake. Today mankind has a very low level of faith in sustaining values of life, so it needs extra faith intake. During the heydays of Vivekananda’s preaching dogma and superstitions were choking pure faith, so he stood up for rational spirituality. The whole problem lies with maturity, with growing up. Real growing up comes with experience. But experience does not manifest itself in a void. Self analysis, balanced living, and a powerful faith in our origin in God helps generate experience. Living of life is a complete course.
P - When it comes to having faith in God before knowing Him, I have some difficulty.
Me – Where is the difficulty ?
P - You see, God is just an idea. There are some who say faith in God can fulfill life; there are many more who say there is no need of selling yourself to an invisible idea called God. What do you do ?
Me – Who teaches you Physics ?
P - Prof. Rama Rao.
Me - And English ?
P - Prof. Raga Rao.
Me - Why can’t Rama Rao teach English, or Ranga Rao physics ?
P - What a strange idea ! They are qualified for different subjects.
Me - So if Rama Rao gives an opinion on Physics you believe it is authentic. But if he gives an opinion on modern poetry, you may not take him seriously.
P - Obviously.
Me - Then shouldn’t you also examine whether those who speak about God have the right qualification to do so ?
P - Probably one should, but how do you do that ?
Me – Oh, that is simple. One who has made billions from scratch is entitled to advise on how to make billions. So one who has made serious experiments with faith and experience, has a right to an opinion. God is however not a matter of opinions, He is the Truth. We can not talk about God as we talk about a new fashion, or a new political party, can we ?
P - Probably not. One reason is that God is a serious subject, which has retained its mystery throughout human history. Acceptance, or rejection of God can make a big difference in life. But the difficulty is, either acceptance or rejection has to be based on conclusive experience. Here is the hen-first-or-egg-first conundrum !
Me - Let those who want to debate the variety of mango before tasting it, do so; you go for tasting and enjoying it. So examine whatever experience you have, have faith in it, but move on. Sharpen your tools, acquire better and better tools for chipping out truth from untruth. Remain humble before knowledge, which comes from God. Ask Him for the best, the highest. Have faith you shall have experience.
P - Thank you Sir.
Me – Always welcome.
When we sit back, and exercise the wisdom of honest enquiry, at any stage of life, we reckon that we really can not draw a dividing line between the tangible and the intangible, the visible and the invisible.
For, faith and experience, in their healthiest forms, keep merging in each other.
Now let me record the dialogue.
P – They say, you must first have faith, then experience. But, how will you have faith in something which you know nothing about ?
Me - But you do just that in a thousand ways in real life.
P - How ?
Me - When you walk into a restaurant, and ask for a cup of coffee, you surely believe that it does not contain some deadly germs. When you occupy the back seat of your car and close your eyes to be driven to your office, you surely believe that you shall reach office to preside over a board meeting, and you believe, without doubt, the date of the day your watch tells you. When you choose a wife you surely believe that you are going to spend the rest of your life with her as a long happy day. When at middle age you sell all your assets to give your only son a very sound education, you have no doubts that he is going to take care of you in your declining years. If someone takes away these invisible faiths from your life, where will you be ?
P - Since I know nothing to contradict my faith in them, I accept them as facts of life; or it could also be a gamble.
Me – You mean to say, since you can not afford to question your faith in these so called ‘facts of life’, you take your faith for granted. Isn’t it irrational to use rationality when it is convenient, and drop it when inconvenient ? It could also be a gamble, and you believe that you are going to prove yourself a very clever player !
P - But there are precedences to guide me. Many have done this, so I also do this. You are not asking me to start from a blind corner, and walk a path which is just not there.
Me – There are also precedences of people who were afraid to take the road, stayed put, and saved themselves from an accident; there are also precedences of people who took the road, but failed to reach anywhere, because they always thought the other road might have been better . You chose one or the other according to your mental predilection and understanding. In other words, you stand on some form of faith before experiencing its veracity. Don’t you do almost the same thing in your science labs ? You accept a hypothesis before proving it.
P - Because it is a reasonable hypothesis arrived at from scientific data. It is not based on faith.
Me – By ‘scientific data’ you mean facts gathered and verified through the instrument of senses. If the instruments are flawed, facts would be flawed too, and their interpretation.
P - How ?
Me – A Marxist and a capitalist both come to their conclusions about a progressive society from scientific data about history. Why then do their conclusions basically differ ?
P - Why ?
Me - Their tools of gathering and interpreting facts differ. As long as they believed in their tools, they accepted their conclusions as the final truth. This led to great revolutions in the world. But experience taught them in time to question their tools, and develop new tools for reading facts. Then their conclusions changed. That’s how the old world USSR broke up, and in modern day China we have billionaires.
P - Then what is your conclusion ?
Me – Faith and experience go hand in hand. You need experience for faith, you need faith for experience. You can as well build your faith on the common pool of experiences of mankind..
P - How is that ?
Me – The classical example is burning your finger. Someone has burned his finger in fire, someone has experienced a shock in touching a live wire, someone has gone a particular road and has been robbed, someone has bought a certain brand, and got into problems; all this is stored in the common pool of mankind’s experience. You believe in these experiences, and save yourself a lot of unnecessary trouble. You have faith in a railway time table, in a calendar, in your stock broker, in your chemist, even in your astrologer… can you end the list ? If you start questioning your faith in them, can you run your life even for a day ?
P - But they are all products of a system called society, and we have to believe in it because we have put it in place.
Me – All systems can get corrupt, and then unreliable. So also individuals become corrupt, and unreliable. They are watchdogs for each other, aren’t they ? First you have faith in the principles on which a system is built, then build it. When your experience tells you that the system is now infected, you depend on your experience to reformat it. It is quite reasonable.
P - Suppose I replace experience by reason ? Isn't it the same ?
Me – No. Experience is the product, reason process. But again, they are related as the product and the process are related. Once again, their fields are very limited. Through reasoning you can solve a mathematical problem, not in faith; through reasoning you can recreate a Sherlock Holms, not in faith; through reasoning you can win a debate, not in faith; but this reasoning shall be powerless to justify your loves, hates, affection, sacrifice, devotion to God and all the softer and deeper feelings that make the endless story of life. You need to experience love, hate, affection etc. However, reason can prevent you from being a zealot, a fanatic, a bigot, a cultist, an egoist; it can help you in keeping a home in tact, keep a company together, and most often keep your head cool. But unless the heart nurtures faith in yourself and God, reason would prove lame.
P - How ?
Me – Unless you experience love for your family can you keep it together by reason ? Unless you experience comradeship with people working for you, can you prevent overbearing greed overtaking you and wrecking the company ? Unless you experience a sort of fellowship with humanity, can you stop all these insane wars and exploitations ? Unless you have great faith in yourself, can you rally forth from a hopeless all-lost situation to rebuild yourself ? Can you reason out how numerous people from all walks of life stand up to challenges of life because they have faith in God ? Can you really tell God, “If you give me at least 20 proofs of your existence, I will have faith in you” ? And when He apparently fails the 21st time, what happens to your faith ? You just kill it.
P - Are you trying to build up a case for God ?
Me – I am trying to build up a case for true rationality, and true faith. Even science has proved that complete objectivity is a myth. Mind can not reach all the areas a man lives in. So how can mind stand a judge and a guide for the areas it has no access to ? Man is a mystery unto himself. His powers are not yet fully fathomed, nor his weakness. Except spiritual truths all other ‘truths’ undergo serious overhauling in every century, sometimes every decade !
P - Don’t you think faith and reason are mutually exclusive ? In other words, if you follow the path of faith your reason becomes weak, and if you follow reason, your faith suffers ?
Me –You are a student of science, aren’t you ?
P - Yes.
Me – So you study physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and a language except English ?
P - Yes.
Me – Are they mutually exclusive ?
P - They are all parts of a whole course.
Me – Exactly. So, faith, reason, experience are parts of a whole course called living. They are the most balanced diet God has given us. A diabetic is advised a saltless and sugarless diet, while a person with low BP, is advised extra salt and sugar intake. Today mankind has a very low level of faith in sustaining values of life, so it needs extra faith intake. During the heydays of Vivekananda’s preaching dogma and superstitions were choking pure faith, so he stood up for rational spirituality. The whole problem lies with maturity, with growing up. Real growing up comes with experience. But experience does not manifest itself in a void. Self analysis, balanced living, and a powerful faith in our origin in God helps generate experience. Living of life is a complete course.
P - When it comes to having faith in God before knowing Him, I have some difficulty.
Me – Where is the difficulty ?
P - You see, God is just an idea. There are some who say faith in God can fulfill life; there are many more who say there is no need of selling yourself to an invisible idea called God. What do you do ?
Me – Who teaches you Physics ?
P - Prof. Rama Rao.
Me - And English ?
P - Prof. Raga Rao.
Me - Why can’t Rama Rao teach English, or Ranga Rao physics ?
P - What a strange idea ! They are qualified for different subjects.
Me - So if Rama Rao gives an opinion on Physics you believe it is authentic. But if he gives an opinion on modern poetry, you may not take him seriously.
P - Obviously.
Me - Then shouldn’t you also examine whether those who speak about God have the right qualification to do so ?
P - Probably one should, but how do you do that ?
Me – Oh, that is simple. One who has made billions from scratch is entitled to advise on how to make billions. So one who has made serious experiments with faith and experience, has a right to an opinion. God is however not a matter of opinions, He is the Truth. We can not talk about God as we talk about a new fashion, or a new political party, can we ?
P - Probably not. One reason is that God is a serious subject, which has retained its mystery throughout human history. Acceptance, or rejection of God can make a big difference in life. But the difficulty is, either acceptance or rejection has to be based on conclusive experience. Here is the hen-first-or-egg-first conundrum !
Me - Let those who want to debate the variety of mango before tasting it, do so; you go for tasting and enjoying it. So examine whatever experience you have, have faith in it, but move on. Sharpen your tools, acquire better and better tools for chipping out truth from untruth. Remain humble before knowledge, which comes from God. Ask Him for the best, the highest. Have faith you shall have experience.
P - Thank you Sir.
Me – Always welcome.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Love is a forgetting
Life never tires of teaching us lessons. These are signatures of God, verily, His insignia, which declare His presence to us each time they manifest themselves. When Sri Sathya Sai Baba says 'Awareness is life’, He wants us to take note of the Almighty’s signature all around us.
Someone has said, poets are those who can perceive things that we cannot. And, therefore, poets communicate to us the experience of what we have missed: the joy of exploration and discovery. God does just that. For, He is the Timeless Poet, the Kavim Puranam. Like a true creative artist, He takes great joy in showing His poems to us.
But when we fail to comprehend the surreal beauty of His poems, He sadly turns His face away. Sometimes, God undertakes to compose special poems to remove our special ignorance or answer our special quests. And when we finally begin to understand His poetry, we realise that there is no joy better than connecting to His joy.
I was sitting in the compound of the Primary School at Prasanthi Nilayam on a visitors’ day. The whole campus was a festival of joy: children meeting their parents and relatives while the others frisked about, playing games. There were kids enjoying the caper and tumble of the see-saw, some others shrieking delightedly on a swing, a few others disgorging themselves from the mouth of a slide that resembled an elephant trunk – the entire scene looked like a fairyland. I could see a couple of teachers walking around, keeping a watch on the children.
Suddenly I discovered an interesting scene. A boy, barely in the second standard, was standing a few feet from me, rubbing his eyes, and sobbing. An older boy came up to him, and asked him why he was sobbing. One hand still rubbing his eyes, he pointed out what was happening a little distance from him. A teacher was gently reprimanding a couple of children.
Non-plussed, the older boy asked, “What? Why are you crying?”
“Teacher is scolding them,” he replied.
“She is scolding them, not you. Why do you cry?”
“They are my friends, my class,” the boy replied, whimpering.
The older boy did not know what to say.
Then the scene changed. The teacher lifted one of the boys, a tiny, cute-looking chap, and carried him on her shoulder. Surely, she did not like to draw tears from his eyes. The boy who was crying until now suddenly leapt up jubilantly.
Bewildered at this unexpected change, the other boy and asked him, “Hey, what happened? Jumping in joy!”
“See, ma’m is loving my friend, she is carrying him.”
He jumped a few steps, and ran away.
I was not only speechless, but stupefied too! What an absolute identification with another’s tears and smiles!
A few days ago I had read a cryptic message of Sri Sathya Sai Baba in which He said, ‘Love is a forgetting’. I did not really understand how love can be a forgetting. Who forgets what? How can that be love? Now, Baba in His great kindness was showing me what is forgetting. It is forgetting oneself, forgetting one’s separateness, and identifying one’s self with the other, the object of love. This boy had so identified with his friend’s tears and smiles that he forgot he was not being scolded or being loved, yet he experienced both. It was perfect self-effacement, death of ego.
According to Swami love is egolessness, and ego is lovelessnesss. ‘True love is when I live in the beloved, when I forget myself in the beloved; when a river jumps into the sea and forgets its separate identity in the identity of the sea’. Swami wrote a little poem, a visible one, and taught me the meaning of a great lesson. The joy of learning is always immense. I was floating in joy for some weeks after this incident.
But that was not all. God is never satisfied with teaching only a segment or part of a lesson. And, no lesson that He teaches can be circumscribed. The dimensions of His lessons are always cosmic, expanding, and enveloping endless situations. A few weeks after the aforesaid incident came dasara. It was during the Veda Purusha Saptaha Jnana Yajna (the holy sacrifice performed during dasara celebrations), when we spent hours in Poornachandra Hall that I was shown, one day, another interesting and, for me, elevating scene.
The ritual was going on, and people were coming and taking their place in the hall. A father arrived with his three-year-old child and sat near me. She was a chubby little girl, with a heartwarming dimpled smile. They sat down, and the father wanted the baby to sit by him on the mat. But the child refused to sit on the ground. She sat on her father’s lap, one hand around his neck. Then she looked up at the pictures on the ceiling of Poornachandra, and started to ask her father about each.
Yet, all the while, she resolutely remained on her father's lap, clinging on to his neck tenaciously. I was so amused; I could not take my eyes off this child. After a few minutes, she got probably tired of looking at the pictures, for now she held her father’s neck in both hands, and hid her face on his shoulder.
Then it came to me in a flash. The Good Lord was teaching me an extension of my previous lesson. If I could hold on to my Father like this! Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa used to tell his disciples, “Tie non-duality in a knot at the end of your dhoti, and go wherever you would, you are safe”; which means, if one is established in the knowledge of non-duality, the attractions of the samsara (world) will have no power over him.
Sri Ramakrishna was using a word-metaphor to drive home a great lesson; now Baba was using a picture-metaphor to drive home an immensely profound lesson. I realized if I could hold on to my Father like this child, and refuse to budge from His lap to give way to the attractions of the world, seeking comfort and independence, I would be quite safe.
I may get interested in the many pictures of the world, but I must have one hand firmly around my father’s neck, and listen to how He explains them to me, forever ready to hold Him in both my hands, and take my eyes away from the world, to hide myself in Him. My whole existence, then, is centred in my Father, who is far more real than all the colours and shapes of the world. Needless to say, my eyes and heart were overflowing.
This was a great lesson in surrender, an extension of true love. Love is a surrender, and to surrender is to love. Both operate in the field of faith, of implicit trust. One need not denounce the world, nor be too attached to it. “Take it as shapes in shadow”, Baba says, “for God alone is the Sun”. Truly, God indeed is the Sun that illuminates all beings, all things sensate and insensate. And when we begin to see Him, the Divine Indweller, in every human heart, how can we not but feel and radiate the Love, that selfless, unconditional, forgetting Love, which seeks no rewards but is its own reward?
Someone has said, poets are those who can perceive things that we cannot. And, therefore, poets communicate to us the experience of what we have missed: the joy of exploration and discovery. God does just that. For, He is the Timeless Poet, the Kavim Puranam. Like a true creative artist, He takes great joy in showing His poems to us.
But when we fail to comprehend the surreal beauty of His poems, He sadly turns His face away. Sometimes, God undertakes to compose special poems to remove our special ignorance or answer our special quests. And when we finally begin to understand His poetry, we realise that there is no joy better than connecting to His joy.
I was sitting in the compound of the Primary School at Prasanthi Nilayam on a visitors’ day. The whole campus was a festival of joy: children meeting their parents and relatives while the others frisked about, playing games. There were kids enjoying the caper and tumble of the see-saw, some others shrieking delightedly on a swing, a few others disgorging themselves from the mouth of a slide that resembled an elephant trunk – the entire scene looked like a fairyland. I could see a couple of teachers walking around, keeping a watch on the children.
Suddenly I discovered an interesting scene. A boy, barely in the second standard, was standing a few feet from me, rubbing his eyes, and sobbing. An older boy came up to him, and asked him why he was sobbing. One hand still rubbing his eyes, he pointed out what was happening a little distance from him. A teacher was gently reprimanding a couple of children.
Non-plussed, the older boy asked, “What? Why are you crying?”
“Teacher is scolding them,” he replied.
“She is scolding them, not you. Why do you cry?”
“They are my friends, my class,” the boy replied, whimpering.
The older boy did not know what to say.
Then the scene changed. The teacher lifted one of the boys, a tiny, cute-looking chap, and carried him on her shoulder. Surely, she did not like to draw tears from his eyes. The boy who was crying until now suddenly leapt up jubilantly.
Bewildered at this unexpected change, the other boy and asked him, “Hey, what happened? Jumping in joy!”
“See, ma’m is loving my friend, she is carrying him.”
He jumped a few steps, and ran away.
I was not only speechless, but stupefied too! What an absolute identification with another’s tears and smiles!
A few days ago I had read a cryptic message of Sri Sathya Sai Baba in which He said, ‘Love is a forgetting’. I did not really understand how love can be a forgetting. Who forgets what? How can that be love? Now, Baba in His great kindness was showing me what is forgetting. It is forgetting oneself, forgetting one’s separateness, and identifying one’s self with the other, the object of love. This boy had so identified with his friend’s tears and smiles that he forgot he was not being scolded or being loved, yet he experienced both. It was perfect self-effacement, death of ego.
According to Swami love is egolessness, and ego is lovelessnesss. ‘True love is when I live in the beloved, when I forget myself in the beloved; when a river jumps into the sea and forgets its separate identity in the identity of the sea’. Swami wrote a little poem, a visible one, and taught me the meaning of a great lesson. The joy of learning is always immense. I was floating in joy for some weeks after this incident.
But that was not all. God is never satisfied with teaching only a segment or part of a lesson. And, no lesson that He teaches can be circumscribed. The dimensions of His lessons are always cosmic, expanding, and enveloping endless situations. A few weeks after the aforesaid incident came dasara. It was during the Veda Purusha Saptaha Jnana Yajna (the holy sacrifice performed during dasara celebrations), when we spent hours in Poornachandra Hall that I was shown, one day, another interesting and, for me, elevating scene.
The ritual was going on, and people were coming and taking their place in the hall. A father arrived with his three-year-old child and sat near me. She was a chubby little girl, with a heartwarming dimpled smile. They sat down, and the father wanted the baby to sit by him on the mat. But the child refused to sit on the ground. She sat on her father’s lap, one hand around his neck. Then she looked up at the pictures on the ceiling of Poornachandra, and started to ask her father about each.
Yet, all the while, she resolutely remained on her father's lap, clinging on to his neck tenaciously. I was so amused; I could not take my eyes off this child. After a few minutes, she got probably tired of looking at the pictures, for now she held her father’s neck in both hands, and hid her face on his shoulder.
Then it came to me in a flash. The Good Lord was teaching me an extension of my previous lesson. If I could hold on to my Father like this! Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa used to tell his disciples, “Tie non-duality in a knot at the end of your dhoti, and go wherever you would, you are safe”; which means, if one is established in the knowledge of non-duality, the attractions of the samsara (world) will have no power over him.
Sri Ramakrishna was using a word-metaphor to drive home a great lesson; now Baba was using a picture-metaphor to drive home an immensely profound lesson. I realized if I could hold on to my Father like this child, and refuse to budge from His lap to give way to the attractions of the world, seeking comfort and independence, I would be quite safe.
I may get interested in the many pictures of the world, but I must have one hand firmly around my father’s neck, and listen to how He explains them to me, forever ready to hold Him in both my hands, and take my eyes away from the world, to hide myself in Him. My whole existence, then, is centred in my Father, who is far more real than all the colours and shapes of the world. Needless to say, my eyes and heart were overflowing.
This was a great lesson in surrender, an extension of true love. Love is a surrender, and to surrender is to love. Both operate in the field of faith, of implicit trust. One need not denounce the world, nor be too attached to it. “Take it as shapes in shadow”, Baba says, “for God alone is the Sun”. Truly, God indeed is the Sun that illuminates all beings, all things sensate and insensate. And when we begin to see Him, the Divine Indweller, in every human heart, how can we not but feel and radiate the Love, that selfless, unconditional, forgetting Love, which seeks no rewards but is its own reward?
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Points to Ponder 2
007 – Welcome, my son.
008 - Who are you, old guy ?
007 - I am your father ! You don’t know me ?
008 - Well. You see, I have a lot of work to do. I am in a hurry, Nevertheless, thank you for being my father.
007 - True, you have a long way to go. It is precisely why you ought to stuff your knapsack well.
008 - That’s alright. I can stuff it on the way.
007 - My boy, you are very young, starting on your long journey ….
008 - Oho, you want to advise me.
007 - You need pointers on the way to keep on right track, don’t you ?
008 - Are the pointers always right ? And some fellow like you might have planted them there. I would rather do some research about their veracity.
007 - Old soldiers never lie.
008 - They are just OLD soldiers. I have no reasons to suppose their strategies would serve the purpose of the new generation soldiers. The world is new; goals can change, so also strategies.
007 - Certain strategies and goals never change, my son. When a bullet hits you, it pierces your chest, old or new, doesn’t it ?
008 - I will learn new ways to duck it. Anyway, why are you so insistent on pretending to be a guide for me?
007 - It is my duty to tell you whatever I have seen, and felt, so that you can start from where I left.
008 - Look, I think, I am capable enough to guide my steps. You had your time to grow, I must have my time too.
007 - I appreciate your self confidence. But one can not pretend to be so wise that they can not afford to grow a little wiser.
008 – You know, my old friend, sorry, a’ father, for that is what you are, I can not take a capsule from you called wisdom, swallow it, and jump a lifetime ahead !
007 - You lose nothing by smiling at those whom you are expected to overtake. Maybe you get a cue or two on how to tie your shoelaces.
008 - What is the power of your glasses ?
007 - Mine is bi-focal. The long distance is 3.5, and reading 4.
008 - And mine ?
007 - Why should you have glasses at this age ?
008 - Doesn’t that make any difference ?
007 - Well, it does. I got my first pair of glasses before I was thirty. Do you want them before you are twenty ?
008 - Why ?
007 - Because you refuse to take care of your eyes.
008 – How ?
007 - When I became 25, I developed a disorientation in vision, a strange kind. I would see something as a very handsome man, but someone else would see horns above his ears ! And a woman with sharp snake eyes would look to me as a rare beauty ! Sometimes I would not see a stile on the road, and stumble heavily over it; sometimes ditch water would look to me pure sea-blue !
008 - I haven’t heard of such a disoriented vision, as you call it !
007 - Yes, I too didn’t believe such a disease existed. But our family doctor, a ENT specialist, told me it is a common symptom at this age. It is called disorientosis. It seems there is mention of this disease in the ancient Indian , Egyptian and Chinese medicine systems.
008 - Why, I haven’t come across such a thing anywhere.
007 - Because there is no medicine for it. Besides, how many doctors do you know ?
008 - Then how did they cure you ?
007 - The doctor said the cure lies in not seeing what you like to see, but seeing what you ought to see.
008 - That is a very strange prescription.
007 - So did I think, and pooh-poohed him.
008 - That was very wise of you. I would also do just that.
007 - As a result, at 30 my eyes were giving me a lot of trouble, at 45 the damage was very deep, at 60, I wished I had no eyes, for they served no purpose at all. Now I cannot see anything front of me.
008 - So you take rest, and let me go. I have a lot of friends to meet.
007 - I remember a very interesting incident from my life.
008 - Really interesting ? How so ?
007 - Once a good friend called me to join him for a movie. Though I was not interested, I joined. At intermission we were strolling outside, some of his friends met him, and dragged us to a pub. The movie was of very bad taste, and now the pub ! I suffered from this aberration for weeks.
008 - I don’t have such friends.
007 - I am sure you don’t. How is your friend TOMORROW’s father ?
008 - O, he ? Looking for the best cardiac surgeon. He needs surgery.
007 - There is a doctor at the end of our street, why don’t you show him ?
008 - That guy ? just fresh from the college.
007 - Nevertheless, he is a gold medalist.
008 - But he has no experience. We must see an experienced surgeon.
007 - This man is going to be equally experienced ten years from now.
008 - Do you want him to wait for ten years to deal with a problem of today ? How stupid !
007 - No, he shouldn’t, if the ten tears’ experience is available now.
008 - That is obvious.
007 - Yes, naturally obvious. Experience is a great teacher. A wise man learns from even other’s experiences, for you can not master every know-how you need to run your house well.
008 - So what do you suggest ?
007 - I was just thinking about your football coach.
008 - Football coach ? What nonsense. What a FC has got to do with it ? Rambling.
007 - Ramesh Pal, isn’t that his name ? Is he good ?
008 - The best. He was the best player of the club for ten years, and now a coach for 5 years. You rarely get such stuff.
007 - People listen to him ?
008 - Listen ? Players worship him.
007 - Oh, really ! It is strange, isn’t it ?
008 – Strange ? Why ?
007 - Isn’t that a handicap for others experiencing ?
008 - On the other hand, if you listen to him you can avoid years of needless experimenting.
007 - I believe in the wisdom of your statement. I wish mankind, and the youth in particular, was as wise as that.
008 - Well, for a change, I don’t want to disagree with you. I guess there is something in a football coach you should accept to build upon.
007 - Today I remember my father more than any yesterday.
008 - Why ?
007 - Three-fourths of my life could have been saved if I had asked for his opinion. While it was available for me to start where he left, I started again from square one.
008 - His knowledge couldn’t have been yours, anyway. You have to work for it, and you did.
007 - The other day I was reading about the first computer, and I was terribly amused.
008 - Of course, the first computer was an amusing thing. It was such a huge thing, and it took nearly two minutes to add a 4 digit number with another 4 digit number !
007 - And mod computers ?
008 - How can you compare ! Billions of numbers are overhauled in million ways in a fraction of second.
007 - Suppose the man who made it first appears before you, you will have a good laugh at him, won’t you ?
008 - You must have lost your mind ! Senile.
007 - What do you propose to do with him ? You have jumped far ahead of him.
008 - But he is the father of computers. We have built on his knowledge. You ought to have some respect for him, and the generations that followed. You are what you are because of them.
007 - I thing it is a very sensible way of looking at your past, and you put it rightly.
008 - Did you think I would kick him out of my history books, and go through all that again ?
007 - Surely not. History teaches us many wonderful lessons, and we should learn them well to build afresh. Our mistakes, our weaknesses, our strengths, our immortal thoughts, dark deeds, and our enduring experiences are all enshrined in the past represented by people like the old cardiac surgeon, the football coach, and the father of computer. You and I could ill afford to regard them as scraps fit for the dustbin, and pretend to build a better world.
008 - Well ……er… I think there is a lot of practical thinking in what you say…Father. I will just go, say hello to a couple of friends, and come back to you for some more tips. I should say .. I am sorry for being so rude to you.
007 - Never mind my son, I am always available to give, whenever you are ready to take.
………………………………………………………………………………………….
008 - How are you my son ?
009 - Who are you old guy ?
008 - I am your father, son. You don’t know me ?
009 - Thank you for being my father. But I have little time for you.
--------------------------------------------------
008 - Who are you, old guy ?
007 - I am your father ! You don’t know me ?
008 - Well. You see, I have a lot of work to do. I am in a hurry, Nevertheless, thank you for being my father.
007 - True, you have a long way to go. It is precisely why you ought to stuff your knapsack well.
008 - That’s alright. I can stuff it on the way.
007 - My boy, you are very young, starting on your long journey ….
008 - Oho, you want to advise me.
007 - You need pointers on the way to keep on right track, don’t you ?
008 - Are the pointers always right ? And some fellow like you might have planted them there. I would rather do some research about their veracity.
007 - Old soldiers never lie.
008 - They are just OLD soldiers. I have no reasons to suppose their strategies would serve the purpose of the new generation soldiers. The world is new; goals can change, so also strategies.
007 - Certain strategies and goals never change, my son. When a bullet hits you, it pierces your chest, old or new, doesn’t it ?
008 - I will learn new ways to duck it. Anyway, why are you so insistent on pretending to be a guide for me?
007 - It is my duty to tell you whatever I have seen, and felt, so that you can start from where I left.
008 - Look, I think, I am capable enough to guide my steps. You had your time to grow, I must have my time too.
007 - I appreciate your self confidence. But one can not pretend to be so wise that they can not afford to grow a little wiser.
008 – You know, my old friend, sorry, a’ father, for that is what you are, I can not take a capsule from you called wisdom, swallow it, and jump a lifetime ahead !
007 - You lose nothing by smiling at those whom you are expected to overtake. Maybe you get a cue or two on how to tie your shoelaces.
008 - What is the power of your glasses ?
007 - Mine is bi-focal. The long distance is 3.5, and reading 4.
008 - And mine ?
007 - Why should you have glasses at this age ?
008 - Doesn’t that make any difference ?
007 - Well, it does. I got my first pair of glasses before I was thirty. Do you want them before you are twenty ?
008 - Why ?
007 - Because you refuse to take care of your eyes.
008 – How ?
007 - When I became 25, I developed a disorientation in vision, a strange kind. I would see something as a very handsome man, but someone else would see horns above his ears ! And a woman with sharp snake eyes would look to me as a rare beauty ! Sometimes I would not see a stile on the road, and stumble heavily over it; sometimes ditch water would look to me pure sea-blue !
008 - I haven’t heard of such a disoriented vision, as you call it !
007 - Yes, I too didn’t believe such a disease existed. But our family doctor, a ENT specialist, told me it is a common symptom at this age. It is called disorientosis. It seems there is mention of this disease in the ancient Indian , Egyptian and Chinese medicine systems.
008 - Why, I haven’t come across such a thing anywhere.
007 - Because there is no medicine for it. Besides, how many doctors do you know ?
008 - Then how did they cure you ?
007 - The doctor said the cure lies in not seeing what you like to see, but seeing what you ought to see.
008 - That is a very strange prescription.
007 - So did I think, and pooh-poohed him.
008 - That was very wise of you. I would also do just that.
007 - As a result, at 30 my eyes were giving me a lot of trouble, at 45 the damage was very deep, at 60, I wished I had no eyes, for they served no purpose at all. Now I cannot see anything front of me.
008 - So you take rest, and let me go. I have a lot of friends to meet.
007 - I remember a very interesting incident from my life.
008 - Really interesting ? How so ?
007 - Once a good friend called me to join him for a movie. Though I was not interested, I joined. At intermission we were strolling outside, some of his friends met him, and dragged us to a pub. The movie was of very bad taste, and now the pub ! I suffered from this aberration for weeks.
008 - I don’t have such friends.
007 - I am sure you don’t. How is your friend TOMORROW’s father ?
008 - O, he ? Looking for the best cardiac surgeon. He needs surgery.
007 - There is a doctor at the end of our street, why don’t you show him ?
008 - That guy ? just fresh from the college.
007 - Nevertheless, he is a gold medalist.
008 - But he has no experience. We must see an experienced surgeon.
007 - This man is going to be equally experienced ten years from now.
008 - Do you want him to wait for ten years to deal with a problem of today ? How stupid !
007 - No, he shouldn’t, if the ten tears’ experience is available now.
008 - That is obvious.
007 - Yes, naturally obvious. Experience is a great teacher. A wise man learns from even other’s experiences, for you can not master every know-how you need to run your house well.
008 - So what do you suggest ?
007 - I was just thinking about your football coach.
008 - Football coach ? What nonsense. What a FC has got to do with it ? Rambling.
007 - Ramesh Pal, isn’t that his name ? Is he good ?
008 - The best. He was the best player of the club for ten years, and now a coach for 5 years. You rarely get such stuff.
007 - People listen to him ?
008 - Listen ? Players worship him.
007 - Oh, really ! It is strange, isn’t it ?
008 – Strange ? Why ?
007 - Isn’t that a handicap for others experiencing ?
008 - On the other hand, if you listen to him you can avoid years of needless experimenting.
007 - I believe in the wisdom of your statement. I wish mankind, and the youth in particular, was as wise as that.
008 - Well, for a change, I don’t want to disagree with you. I guess there is something in a football coach you should accept to build upon.
007 - Today I remember my father more than any yesterday.
008 - Why ?
007 - Three-fourths of my life could have been saved if I had asked for his opinion. While it was available for me to start where he left, I started again from square one.
008 - His knowledge couldn’t have been yours, anyway. You have to work for it, and you did.
007 - The other day I was reading about the first computer, and I was terribly amused.
008 - Of course, the first computer was an amusing thing. It was such a huge thing, and it took nearly two minutes to add a 4 digit number with another 4 digit number !
007 - And mod computers ?
008 - How can you compare ! Billions of numbers are overhauled in million ways in a fraction of second.
007 - Suppose the man who made it first appears before you, you will have a good laugh at him, won’t you ?
008 - You must have lost your mind ! Senile.
007 - What do you propose to do with him ? You have jumped far ahead of him.
008 - But he is the father of computers. We have built on his knowledge. You ought to have some respect for him, and the generations that followed. You are what you are because of them.
007 - I thing it is a very sensible way of looking at your past, and you put it rightly.
008 - Did you think I would kick him out of my history books, and go through all that again ?
007 - Surely not. History teaches us many wonderful lessons, and we should learn them well to build afresh. Our mistakes, our weaknesses, our strengths, our immortal thoughts, dark deeds, and our enduring experiences are all enshrined in the past represented by people like the old cardiac surgeon, the football coach, and the father of computer. You and I could ill afford to regard them as scraps fit for the dustbin, and pretend to build a better world.
008 - Well ……er… I think there is a lot of practical thinking in what you say…Father. I will just go, say hello to a couple of friends, and come back to you for some more tips. I should say .. I am sorry for being so rude to you.
007 - Never mind my son, I am always available to give, whenever you are ready to take.
………………………………………………………………………………………….
008 - How are you my son ?
009 - Who are you old guy ?
008 - I am your father, son. You don’t know me ?
009 - Thank you for being my father. But I have little time for you.
--------------------------------------------------
Saturday, January 3, 2009
The Story of a car
Once a friend told me a story. In fact it was a dream he had years ago. But he said it had changed his life profoundly. I will cut out the frills, and tell you the basic story.
“I dreamt that I was an old Ambassador car. What a strange dream ! An ambassador car, of all things ! But who can help dreams ? They have a fancy of visiting you when you least expect them. And as if that was not enough, I was in a repair shop. I had no idea who had got me there, and when. I had a feeling I was parked in the repair shop for a fairly long time.
“There were a lot of cars around me, in every stage of repair, both imported, and deshi. They had sad, long faces. Some of them were forever groaning, some coughing, some had skin problems, for they had patches of all kinds of colour. I was wondering, I do not seem to have any problem, why should I come here then ? If the chief Mechanic comes, I would ask him to have a look at me, and discharge me.
“That evening the chief Mechanic came to see the imported car parked near me. He was not very tall, but very handsome, with a winsome smile playing in his lips, and very knowledgeable eyes. Look at him, and you know you can depend on him. When he was examining the other car, I coughed, and said, ‘Mr. Mechanic, I don’t seem to have any serious problem. So if you have a look at me, and discharge me, I could go home. I have a lot of work at home, and have to see a lot of places. So I am rather in a hurry’.
“The mechanic looked at me and said very curtly, ’You are a terribly damaged car. It would take a long time to repair you. Right now I have no time for you’.
“I was going to burst forth in indignation. But I controlled myself. I have to be here till he sees me. So what’s use getting cross with him. But I grumbled and groused for a long time. Look at that mechanic ! He was with the imported car for nearly an hour, all smiles, tightening a screw here, replacing a nut there, giving the gentlest stroke at another place, and within the hour sent it to the paints division to be painted and then released ! What an outrageous idea of priorities ! I started boiling inside.
“The next day a deshi car came there to park, and while doing so banged me from behind. I shrieked, ‘hey bungled knot of battered bug, what do you think of yourself ? Some imported Beauty ? I have been standing here before you were born, and you come and run into me !’ That car was really sorry for this accident, and told me, ’I am very sorry, sir. I am really a battered mass of steel, come for repair. This mechanic is the best in town, so I came here. Please forgive me for your inconvenience’. Well, I felt someone poured a bucket of water on me. I wanted to hide my face somewhere.
“The next day the mechanic came there. He worked on him whole day for two days, and told him, ’Now you are fine. Go home, and drive around the world with self confidence. Any problem, give me a phone call. I will tell you what to do with yourself.’ When he left, the car also left with a big smile, and my smile was lost for ever. This time I did not request the mechanic. I thought, before leaving he would look at me, and say, ‘You have been here for a long time, I will come tomorrow, and fix you.’ But he left without even turning at me. As if there was no one there. I cried the whole night.
“The repair shop was always filled with all kinds of sounds, hacking, cracking, dragging, beating, heating, screeching, welding – all kinds. And I became reconciled to my inconsequentiality. Gradually my tyres deflated fully, exposed to the vagaries of weather, my skin withered and assumed all colours, the windscreen was so much full of dust that no one could have seen anything through it. I forgot where I came from, and if I had anywhere to go. I was a rusted piece of junk.
“One day I discovered that a stray dog had made his home inside me. When long ago the car had jammed into me, the door on one side had been jerked half open, and the dog discovered it. He found a comfortable bed inside, and made it his home. Strangely enough, I did not get angry with it. I felt a sort of sympathy for it, and told myself, ‘Poor fellow, let him sleep in peace’. Another day a motor bike came to the repair shop, and while parking in front of me hit one of my headlights, smashing it to pieces. But the impact smashed his headlight completely. I became really worried, and told him, ‘Aha, what did you do ! It will take a lot of time to repair your front, and money too ! I pitied the bike lying there in a limp. But that night I had a great sleep.
“No, I could not. To be exact, I was not allowed to sleep ! At the dead of the night, I woke up to someone flashing his torchlight on me. He was coming closer. When he started examining my headlight, to my greatest wonder I discovered he was the chief mechanic ! I could not believe my eyes. The chief mechanic here, at such an unearthly hour, near me ! I was so stunned to a wonderful feeling that not a word escaped me. But he continued to examine me, my tyres, my discoloured body, the broken door…and I could no longer keep quiet. I whispered, ‘Mr. Mechanic, how come you suddenly found time to come and examine me after ages ? And at such an hour ?’
“Then what he said would always sing in my ears. He said, ‘Ambassador, it is not that I did not have time for you, but I could not work on you because you were not ready. First, you thought you need not have come here at all. Therefore you were filled with arrogance. Then you had the canker of jealousy, the cancer of anger, and the T.B. of impatience. If I have to repair you I might have to burn you, cut you, hammer you, scrape you… and you couldn’t have tolerated that. So I gave you a lot of time to partially repair yourself. Now you have forgotten your anger, given up your arrogance, changed your jealousy into compassion, and above all, learned patience. You are ready for me. Then why should I delay ? I am starting my work on you from tomorrow.’
Thus ended my dream.”
My friend kept quiet. There was a light in his eyes, and an unheard song in his lips. He smiled at me, and left me rooted there, where I stood, for a long time.
“I dreamt that I was an old Ambassador car. What a strange dream ! An ambassador car, of all things ! But who can help dreams ? They have a fancy of visiting you when you least expect them. And as if that was not enough, I was in a repair shop. I had no idea who had got me there, and when. I had a feeling I was parked in the repair shop for a fairly long time.
“There were a lot of cars around me, in every stage of repair, both imported, and deshi. They had sad, long faces. Some of them were forever groaning, some coughing, some had skin problems, for they had patches of all kinds of colour. I was wondering, I do not seem to have any problem, why should I come here then ? If the chief Mechanic comes, I would ask him to have a look at me, and discharge me.
“That evening the chief Mechanic came to see the imported car parked near me. He was not very tall, but very handsome, with a winsome smile playing in his lips, and very knowledgeable eyes. Look at him, and you know you can depend on him. When he was examining the other car, I coughed, and said, ‘Mr. Mechanic, I don’t seem to have any serious problem. So if you have a look at me, and discharge me, I could go home. I have a lot of work at home, and have to see a lot of places. So I am rather in a hurry’.
“The mechanic looked at me and said very curtly, ’You are a terribly damaged car. It would take a long time to repair you. Right now I have no time for you’.
“I was going to burst forth in indignation. But I controlled myself. I have to be here till he sees me. So what’s use getting cross with him. But I grumbled and groused for a long time. Look at that mechanic ! He was with the imported car for nearly an hour, all smiles, tightening a screw here, replacing a nut there, giving the gentlest stroke at another place, and within the hour sent it to the paints division to be painted and then released ! What an outrageous idea of priorities ! I started boiling inside.
“The next day a deshi car came there to park, and while doing so banged me from behind. I shrieked, ‘hey bungled knot of battered bug, what do you think of yourself ? Some imported Beauty ? I have been standing here before you were born, and you come and run into me !’ That car was really sorry for this accident, and told me, ’I am very sorry, sir. I am really a battered mass of steel, come for repair. This mechanic is the best in town, so I came here. Please forgive me for your inconvenience’. Well, I felt someone poured a bucket of water on me. I wanted to hide my face somewhere.
“The next day the mechanic came there. He worked on him whole day for two days, and told him, ’Now you are fine. Go home, and drive around the world with self confidence. Any problem, give me a phone call. I will tell you what to do with yourself.’ When he left, the car also left with a big smile, and my smile was lost for ever. This time I did not request the mechanic. I thought, before leaving he would look at me, and say, ‘You have been here for a long time, I will come tomorrow, and fix you.’ But he left without even turning at me. As if there was no one there. I cried the whole night.
“The repair shop was always filled with all kinds of sounds, hacking, cracking, dragging, beating, heating, screeching, welding – all kinds. And I became reconciled to my inconsequentiality. Gradually my tyres deflated fully, exposed to the vagaries of weather, my skin withered and assumed all colours, the windscreen was so much full of dust that no one could have seen anything through it. I forgot where I came from, and if I had anywhere to go. I was a rusted piece of junk.
“One day I discovered that a stray dog had made his home inside me. When long ago the car had jammed into me, the door on one side had been jerked half open, and the dog discovered it. He found a comfortable bed inside, and made it his home. Strangely enough, I did not get angry with it. I felt a sort of sympathy for it, and told myself, ‘Poor fellow, let him sleep in peace’. Another day a motor bike came to the repair shop, and while parking in front of me hit one of my headlights, smashing it to pieces. But the impact smashed his headlight completely. I became really worried, and told him, ‘Aha, what did you do ! It will take a lot of time to repair your front, and money too ! I pitied the bike lying there in a limp. But that night I had a great sleep.
“No, I could not. To be exact, I was not allowed to sleep ! At the dead of the night, I woke up to someone flashing his torchlight on me. He was coming closer. When he started examining my headlight, to my greatest wonder I discovered he was the chief mechanic ! I could not believe my eyes. The chief mechanic here, at such an unearthly hour, near me ! I was so stunned to a wonderful feeling that not a word escaped me. But he continued to examine me, my tyres, my discoloured body, the broken door…and I could no longer keep quiet. I whispered, ‘Mr. Mechanic, how come you suddenly found time to come and examine me after ages ? And at such an hour ?’
“Then what he said would always sing in my ears. He said, ‘Ambassador, it is not that I did not have time for you, but I could not work on you because you were not ready. First, you thought you need not have come here at all. Therefore you were filled with arrogance. Then you had the canker of jealousy, the cancer of anger, and the T.B. of impatience. If I have to repair you I might have to burn you, cut you, hammer you, scrape you… and you couldn’t have tolerated that. So I gave you a lot of time to partially repair yourself. Now you have forgotten your anger, given up your arrogance, changed your jealousy into compassion, and above all, learned patience. You are ready for me. Then why should I delay ? I am starting my work on you from tomorrow.’
Thus ended my dream.”
My friend kept quiet. There was a light in his eyes, and an unheard song in his lips. He smiled at me, and left me rooted there, where I stood, for a long time.
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