Randy Pausch, Steve Jobs - What Do They Have in Common?

You don't speak ill of the dead.
You don't speak ill, even more so, of the near-dead.


So far, my gold standard of a lecture at a university - any commemoration lecture that is - is Steve Jobs' convocation address at Stanford in June 2005. Recently I was one of those who added up to the curious 10 million who've hit youtube to see Randy Pausch's Last Lecture.

And you know what, my Steve Jobs gold standard has just become platinum.

RP's talk was painstakingly gung-ho. For some reason it had the same effect on me as when a stranger had once begun to cry opposite me in the local train. You know, you are taken aback, then you want to reach out, mumble some pacificatory stuff, put your arm around the person with what you hope will be taken as compassion rather than pity, and when the stranger disembarks, there is a curious sense of being touched yet untouched - I would even say achievement rather than sadness - like the feeling just after doing a good deed or participating in charity.

What else can you feel anyway?

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture (note the capital L's - it's already an epigraph) was so much 'Look at me, I am OK, Don't pity me' - esp the push up part, remember? that contrarily, 'pity' starts becoming the overriding theme of the viewing. And also it was somehow nerve wracking in the speech's intensity of dotting every unfinished 'i' of life, and crossing every 't' junction he is now never likely to reach.

In Steve Jobs speech, otoh, the quiet 'I've seen death face to face' moment (incidentally both touch on pancreatic cancer), is not reduced in any way just because he managed to get out of it providentially... In his talk, there is a sense of expansion, of breathing deeply and savoring every transient moment of life - that gets infectiously communicated.
So much so that you expand, reach out. Want to send the talk to all your loved ones. And this is surely the story of 9999 of us in every 10000 perhaps, who have no idea how long or short is going to be our Future, with a capital F. We, who have no idea when and how we are going to die. There is one day in every year that posterity will know as my Death Day, but we are blissfully unaware of it now. What comes across in Steve Jobs' Stanford speech, with its minimal number of words, is the sense of quiet and monumental creativity that will always find an outlet whatever the circumstances doled out by fate - of a person whose genius is surely one in a billion.

And so. In the years to come, give me the June 2005 lecture of Steve Jobs anytime -and I will draw sustenance from it. Randy Pausch's?
Well... All I can say is, we all have to die one day, don't we? So many of the 10 million who hit youtube are perhaps already dead, for that matter. Who were vicariously trying to figure out this 'death' thing from afar.

Recall the first week after Princess Di died? In 1997? It was like the world came to a standstill, every minute, every hour in that first week was encased with Diana, enshrined on every channel. But after the stirring funeral, there was a sense of closure, of in fact feeling a bit abashed at having spent so many hours glued to the TV, and of everyone in the world wanting to get back to the daily routine.

I have this peculiar habit - and I know it is peculiar - of clearing up my tables, finishing my backlog of work, and sort of ensuring that my paperwork is in order, when it is time to go abroad (not as often as some, but often enough - say once a year). Yeah, yeah, I know more accidents take place on the streets in your local town blah blah blah. But bus, waisi hi hoon.

So right now, have made lists of all payments made, future payments to be made, cheques, bills to be cleared, pending dues... I mean the domestic and home related stuff. Not work of course. That has a semblance of order courtesy income tax and the chartered accountant.

All my keys are now neatly labeled. I mean the tangible ones. Kaun jaane cyber space passwords ka kya hoga... where no duplicates can be made either... Preparation, preparation, preparation.

In one respect, am way behind Chhotokaka. When Baba, my father in law passed away so suddenly back in 1991, we were all caught unawares. Shocked. Everyone, and especially the soft hearted Chhotokaka, in disarray. The religious sanskars came to the rescue keeping the mind occupied - the rituals, the preparation for the shraddha. Attending to the hundreds of well-wishers who came over in Calcutta. And in the midst of it all what did Chhotokaka - Baba's youngest brother - do?

Having witnessed the chaos in locating a good photo of the departed soul (ultimately a group photo was enlarged, spliced and a part again blown up - this was way before the ease of the digital times).
He suggested to all the siblings and his gen to go to the nearest photo studio and take the right photograph. With proper lighting etc. To be garlanded in the future.
'At least when our time comes, we'll rest in peace knowing what everyone is sadly staring at', he said.

Msg for Gaurpriya

During my three time sent-for-repairs cell phone, have lost your tel number.

Please do call :-)

Black or White... Sons and Moms.....

The magazine Time has decided to tell us about Obama’s mother who was this (white) PhD in anthropology. After all these days of building up the story of the first ‘black’ candidate who’s reached so far, the media finally wants us to think of him as legit as if we can now talk of his ‘acceptable’ side or something? Crazy.

Anyway, no point in agonizing over this duniya’s sense of do's and don'ts, rights and wrongs. Have had a nice lazy morning reading the meandering blogs of Abhinav Jain. He loves to talk of his loving 52 year old mom ( the shape of things to come in a few years when my daughter starts to announce the parental age with impunity. I mean the age by itself is not the problem, I wouldn't mind some more grey as I wouldn't mind waist length hair. In the hope that it makes one look suitably distinguished - and sexy. It is the way the nextgen carelessly shunts the parent over to a sort of passion-less territory :-)). And here’s the interesting bit – he has a persistent gang of ‘commentors’ who are all almost equally entertaining. Like there’s this continuous hyperventilation over Abhinav’s punctuation marks and why he always leaves a gap before his commas and full stops. Then there's this gang who wants to score points by being the first (or the 50th or the 100th) to post a comment. Quite a fan following of girls – has this young and single 26 year old namesake (Munnu). Each of his string of blog comments always seem to end with some anonymous haplog mail that goes blah blahHindi.haplogdotcom Malayalam.haplogdotcom kannada.haplogdotcom music.haplogdotcom radio.haplogdotcom tv.haplogdotcom (Tamil.Haplogdotcom)

I am sure there was yet another mom and son combo I had been meaning to write about – before I got called away on dire emergencies at home. By bai (‘didi, istri wala keh raha hai ye kapde aapne diya pur maine ye pehle kabhi nahi dekha’), by Ganesh (‘didi, kachra wala terrace ka kachra nahi lega, kahan phenku?’).

Was it about my hubby and his mom? My younger bro and his mom (mine too?). Nah I I don't think so…

May be this is the onslaught of early Alzheimer’s. Am not sure how deeply I should agonize over the memory loss. Worse is what if the retrieved memory is quite a let down. Perhaps it is better to stay in this stage of ‘let me see if I can recall’…

Like nostalgia. And mushy sentimentality. Wonder if this is a necessary side-effect of blogging. Am sure everyone keeps getting called away. The other thing I wonder about is if everyone has this feeling of being vaguely guilty. At taking time out to blog. As if there are more important things to do and I am shirking from the things that make the planet go round....

(Three hours later)...

Yaad aaya. Two more combos actually. Richard Branson & his mom, and SRK and his mom - both pairs as gleaned from resp autobio and bio. Anupama Chopra displays her usual assured sense of the heartbeat of Bollywood. As usual her books are total paisa-vasool and sometimes she uses phrases that resonate long after the book is over and done with. Here I love her take on Hindi movies esp of Yash Raj films that she says are never about 'the inexplicably untidy debris of relationships'. SRK's mom completely endorsed all that the son planned to do and was not around to see the heights he reached.

Richard Branson's autobio is rivetting. Am on page 136 now. The SRK book gives a great feel for the superstar's life, especially its unreality. It even has a 'cast of characters' in the beginning - that theatrical it is... The 'cast of characters' has real people as well as Gabbar Singh listed.
Otoh, RB's is so real so down to earth that you feel you can be one of his friends too, invite him over for dinner to your home for potluck perhaps and he'll come.

And his mom. The sort of things done thru childhood to instill values - make him bicycle 50 miles to make him independent, continually find things ('work') for the kids to do, ensure that the company at dinner was as interesting (often more interesting) than the food, always valued the children's opinion....

My indefatigable mom is no less come to think of it. (Don't want to tell her I'm writing this. She may get a heart attack or something what with our constant 'loggerheads' way of reaching out to one another!) She made me and my bro human and whatever we have achieved today is as much her level of motivation. Right now, she is resident at the village of Kamarpukur, all the time going after families of beggars ensuring they send their children to come to school. Since the state schools give lunch on the other days, she feeds them breakfast everyday plus two hours of morning tuitions, and on Sunday, lunch. Busy, busy, busy with her Spoken English classes as well as Computer classes (we sent our old desktops over to her) for the youth of the village. Her logic to go off into the boondocks was that we grew up and did not need her services any longer. Needless to say, they all adore her. The streets resonate with 'amma' , 'amma' wherever you go with her. She loves this name far more than her own - Nivedita.

As Gerald Durrell has said of his mom in 'My Family and Other Animals', our mom is a credit to how well we have brought her up :-)

And now that I am reading RB , let me surf the net for what I wanted to check out - the sound of Tubular Bells.

The Reader-Author Jugalbandi

Some 5000 read my Jab We Met review. In 2 days? Bollywood topics sure attract the readers, no?

MSN allows the reader to rate it, some 49 of these readers have taken the pains to mark a very middling 3 out of 5 in their rating. It only means this: Next time, shall keep in mind that the saamnewala is - right this moment - scoring me a low grade :-) when I hold forth at gatherings and parties.

Did the scores get averaged out? If I give myself a low rating of 1 out of 5 now... wonder how that'll get reflected in the overall scheme of things...

Earlier today, I seemed to come across the Dalai Lama everywhere. (In every paper and magazine I mean, aam aadmi jo hum thehre). Here is one revered individual who we get to meet, mediated by the skew and tilt of the newspaper and the lens of each writer. Newsweek, just arrived at our doorstep, for instance, starts off the entire interview by asking Dalai Lama straight out something like ‘What happens when you die?’

??

One can even hear the casual Amriki twang in the tone of this question & little matter if there is an Indian journalist Sudip Mazumder who’s also supposed to be partially taking this interview. He speaks Newsweekean. Ultimately, it is what 6 billion plus non- Amrikis see as the inward gazing ‘I don’t give a damn’ attitude. The overall article is full of innuendos and quotes on the Dalai Lama... The way he is spoken of, is full of 'He said he was driven to tears' (instead of - 'he was driven to tears') or look at this line : 'Meanwhile the Dalai Lama is losing his ability to rein in his militant followers' . Or this one: The Dalai Lama's 'great respect' (quotation marks of Newsweek as if let's begin to doubt if this is real) for Hu Jintao etc. Newsweek just a week or so back had this article on how 'we' are oh-so-unbiased, but in the overall sum and substance, is the media's new smart and sneaky way, to go out and be as biased as you wish.

The magazine ‘Time’ was lying in the HSBC waiting area. Here, the magazine does the ‘We know Dalai Lama the best – after all, it is Asian Pico Iyer who writes on His Holiness for us, over the years, 1987, 1997, and now in 2008’. (Thus kal- ka - chhokra Pico Iyer shares his name and almost equal space on the cover, with the revered DL). More of a sense of deep respect evident through the article, beginning with how the young Pico kept a picture of the Lama on his desk all through his childhood, and yet, Time is another magazine out of the US. Bending backwards the other end.

And Vinod Mehta of Outlook does the ultimate Indian reverse snobbery thing – the ‘I-don’t believe-in-these-spiritual-types-though-I-am-an-Indian’ . But one who reveals his totally dehati and desi roots when he owns up to touching the Dalai Lama’s feet, before he leaves his presence!

Am reminded of Foucault’s ‘What Is An Author’. The author as the origin of something original is deconstructed by Foucault. Right now, how we plebeians view the exalted soul, depends on what we read in the media and who writes about the Dalai Lama.

The only point of view is that each medium presents a fragmented point of view. The truth is, there are no universal Truths, even when His Holiness is involved. Perhaps even more so when Buddhism is the central theme. Each author is nothing but one more manifestation of the current social dynamic. Each one somewhere deep down dwells in and revels in his (his magazine’s) own ‘Will To Power’… to quietly swell his chest in his role of mediator in moulding and creating a reader perspective. (Aside: I use the pronoun 'he' purposefully in these politically correct gender times we live in :-) )

The identity of the Dalai Lama then shifts from the reader perspective – from author to author. All we get to see - in today’s media-exploded, internet enabled world, is that the author-function is murkier than ever before.

And if we hapless readers give a low ‘grade’ to the media spewed output, like I'm doing at this moment, all we are doing is deluding ourselves on having had a say.

Jab We Met... And DDLJ

Is there any rule that states reviews of movies need to be written as soon as the movie is out? Thing is, I've just seen Jab We Met, five or six months after it got released (courtesy Moser Baer – still cannot believe DVDs cost Rs. 49/- !). Adored the movie like all met so far.

And compared it to DDLJ – again as any Bollywood moviegoer ought to have already done.

At the risk of talking about what everyone has seen and heard, here goes my forty nine paisa worth … and like a good myth and story, hope you don’t mind if the movie is rehashed once again.

I am going to first begin with comparing moms and dads. Then I’ll go along to compare trains. (Can’t help it, trains are the leit motif of my current life… indeed, have always been so… trains have taken me to known destinations, have taken folks away to destinations unknown…)

We shall also talk of acronyms. When Jab We Met is already so succinct and wonderfully Indinglish, why make a much- longer- in- phonetic-terms JWM (Jay-Double U-Em) out of it, right? Unlike Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, a local language mouthful, that just needed to be ruthlessly downsized to DDLJ, and so what if the vistas were London and Switzerland. (Already the so called younger gen Adi Chopra and Karan Johar with their KANK, KKHH, K3G sound passe, the speed at which things move in today's planet!). And if there is time (which I am sure I’ll find since I am procrastinating in the writing of my forthcoming international presentation), we shall talk of Hindi movie ishtyle ‘pyaar-vyaar’ in the ‘90s versus the ‘00s. If not of earlier.

I begin with a question to Javed-saab. After all, you & Salim wrote the ever-eternal and cult-following line ‘Mere Paas Maa Hai’ in the ‘70s.

How do you place the character of Shahid Kapoor’s mom in the story? Is she present or is she absent? If she is present, why is she voiceless? If she is absent, why is she present at all? At this rate, where do you think, is the ‘mom’ likely to be headed in ten or twenty years time?

And which one was the bride’s dad exactly? In DDLJ, Amrish Puri was the hugely larger-than-life, humungously louder-than-life father-figure. Here, in Jab We Met, for someone who was not paying all that much attention to inessentials (me), there was some confusion between Kareena’s ‘dad’ and ‘chacha’ with the two characters seeming quite interchangeable. It was grandpa Dara Singh as created by Imtiaz Ali that had a firm grip, and always stood out, ancient deer antlers above him, true relics of a bygone era.

Point kya hai, you ask? Point yeh hai, ki grandpas are always putty in grandchildren’s hands, and if we now celebrate ‘family’ by blissfully rubbing out the beech-wala generation, it only means what we have all always known but never been ready to face. The face of future India is one in which we parents shall be present if we sort of fit in, within the youth’s scheme of things! And never you mind all that gyan about Indian tradition that reveres age and experience.

And so. While both movies celebrate the ‘no cause to rebel in life, everything is so hunky-dory’ post-liberalization phenomenon, chronologically the initial one that had to come along and pave the way was DDLJ. This movie indicated that prior to boy and girl coming together, huge labour pains in the form of garmagaram family dialogues, even painful and gory violence was necessary. Whereas by the time we reach the more recent Jab We Met, we see that we can conveniently brush off all family objections by a simple ‘Oh, they’ll come around, give them time’. Conservative attitudes of the girl (remember Kajol?) are passe, and as long as she is 'true' to her love, the family is with her. We can even 'happily run away' from reality. It is the modern pyaar version… If the guy and gal truly script their love together, other family members merely provide the much needed props and the backdrop. Along with Bollywood things like the fun Pritam soundtrack, halt-in-the-tracks lines such as 'Manzil se behtar lagne lage hain yeh raaste' and endearingly choreographed dances. Where the bottomline is Jo kuchh insaan real mein chahta hai na, actual mein, woh usey mil jata hai.

And then the whole train thingy. Today, we stand proud in our own Indian skins, and Laloo-land railways is good enough for us, thank you very much. London and Switzerland give way to Ratlam, Kota and Bhatinda. And although we laboriously lock and chain our belongings in real-life trains, sleeping fitfully and waking up with a start to check if all is in place every few minutes, in reel-life it is absolutely possible that we have all our stuff carefully delivered at the next station by a station-master we rude-talk to.

Am I beginning to sound whiney now? It is true I pretty much thought DDLJ was over-hyped, once upon a time. But believe you me, I loved, absolutely was smitten by Jab We Met, and have now seen it four times in three days (the new Rs. 49/- pricing feels even more paisa-vasool - value for money, the more you see it) and with the round-the-clock presence of a movie at home that has an eleven year old in it... it may actually be more than 4 times.

Imagine. If we extrapolate this to my fellow Indians, who are all much quicker off the mark than I have been, I cannot even begin to imagine the number of times we have all met up with Jab We Met so far.

A final curious question – do they still run that DDLJ daily single matinee at Maratha Mandir, as proudly as ever? God! What an anachronistic contrast! :-)

In the Holi Interstices of Life

Tough to know if I'm coming or going - this frenetic month. But experientially rich nonetheless. Moving from the left to the right of the country. To top everything, my letter ‘a’ of the new E series cell-phone decided to go defunct & hide itself. With life and business being conducted on the sms, I find I do figure out w'ys to keep ‘a’ out of the picture. Soon, even seem to think with no ‘a’ in it! This write-up till now, title et 'l, without ‘a’... But most irrit'ting. Vowels r essent'l like so m'ny other ch'r'cters, in life. Not complaining too loudly since this cell-phone is one’s client too!

West Bengl, Krntk, Mhrshtr… Brdwn, Kolh’pur, Sol’pur, Bij’pur. Unilever project in smll towns, plus PhD fieldwork. Not to mention qlty time with mom in her vill’ge school in the birth village of Sri Ramakrishna, Kamarpukur, district Hooghly, where she is now resident past one year. And then, b'ck to short interv’ls at home when - here - m comfort’bly living out of suitc’ses.

Just bck fm an outstn trip – t’ken with family in tow ( me on work at Sol'pur… dtr on her spring break in school, hubby's decided to recruit in sm'll town desh, pretty successfully I might add... he got some excellent engineers). Str’t eleven hours drive b’ck from Bij. But wh’t a wonderful 2 day get’wy. 3 of us roadies on the Golden Q’dril'teral highway. Not knowing who we will meet next, where we'll stay at next, eat next, see next. Qlty bonding within. With everything im'ginable b'ck in the boot – why am i pushing this non-a business to the extreme?? You want a fan? We hve a mini electric p'nkha. Pillows? Hai na. Ordin'ry nahi chalega - bolster hi ch'hiye? Woh bhi hai. Gifts to give junta? 300 of them (OK, this one ws for the Sociology PhD fieldwork). ‘Discovered’ this new archaeological marvel at the Mhrshtr-Krntk border, tks to the excellent archaeologist Dr. Jadhav of Solapur University for pointing the place out.

KudalSangam, next to the coming together of the two tributaries of Krishna river, Seena and Bhima, and here an unbelievable eleventh century temple. Surrounded by miles of untouched greenery. Two garbha-gruhas side by side inside the temple that has emerged just six years ago, from centuries of being hidden – one for Shiva and one for Vishnu … with novel frescos on the ceiling carved out of single stone representing the bala-krishna, that you can twirl around 360 degrees and look at. Sunlight that reaches deep inside through seven doors in a direct ray, only on the solstice of 14 - 15 Jan every year.

And what a magnificent sight.... the 360 torsos each jutting out from the lingam - together in the shape of this large elegant shivling. Never seen anything like this anywhere. 360 is the number of days in the Marathi calender. The two huge Naga wall frescos were equally mesmerizing. Snakes have always held our fascination down the millenia. Sudhir Kakar has an excellent analysis in 'Intimate Relations' - what a book in every which way.

I tell you, what a country we belong to. Hidden treasures everywhere. Spotted by just a few. In the people, in its towns, in its digs. Folks ever smiling in spite of the worse possible struggles and situations in life, in the eternal and somehow assured wait for emerging triumphant. The Shaikh family in Solapur, that gamely moves along debts and all. The Nagane family hit by yet another tragedy after the third daughter's wedding. This other woman just met, with three children, who makes beedis and earns Rs. 35 for every 1000 made (and if the raw material provided by the factory owners runs out before the magic figure of 1000 is reached, she is expected to replenish at own cost) who wants to give us 'sherbet', yet another family who makes the cylindrical paper package covers that cover the tobacco sold in villages. She gets Rs. 5/- for every 1000 such covers made. We time her. She takes 6 seconds to make one.... Average of 9 per minute, that is 500 per hour, and thus two hours of working like a machine with no break gives her rupees five. My daughter is awed. By the value that the same money that carelessly passes through our hands, can command.

Bijapur – one more town that is so much a part of this nation, yet not quite on the beaten trail – with its Gol Gumbaj of the Adil Shahi sultanate. The original geodesic dome. HUGE. Made around 1640. A whisper at one end of its inner ring verandah that is at 7 floors height - we go up the minaret on its outside, what a view! - and this can be heard at the other distant end of the cavernous inner diameter. Even the rubbing of the palms (as instructed by a helpful fellow tourist, what would we do without them) is clear, and I as I walk to the other end, I overhear my daughter quietly negotiating the next Coke with her dad, even as they wait for me to reach the other end. I whisper a 'No thanda' firmly, and they are both startled at the clarity. The Adil Shahi must have turned in his grave deep down there below at mundane Coca Cola conversations.

If he hasn't already done so that is. He has his wife tombed on one side and his 'Hindu dancing consort' entombed on the other :-) , so we were told - again by yet another helpful chap .

Right now, back here on this holiday, every neighboring apartment building worth its brand new sturdy foundations is strenuously playing up the loudspeakers. The one to our West is playing ‘Harre Ram Harre Ram Harre Krishna Harre Ram’ from the movie Bhool Bhulaiyya. Our lobby – building friends have by now called at least 5 times asking us to come down and join the community celebration – is playing Nagara Nagara Nagara bajaa. The reverberations of the hits of 2007. A building further away is playing a more ghisa-pita old Holi song. Some silsilays are best erased yet remain a burr deep in the mind. What to do. Sounds of actual drums also. The mishmash in total – surprisingly – is not cacophonic. Ek ajeeb sa festive sa mood hai. Sounds. Colours. Smells...

Home reverberates with the khandaan. The three musketeers – Isha, Anupama, Ishani – ages 11, 10 and 9 – have at last managed to pester their Ron-kaka to wake up, leave home and bring abeer and pichhkaris. Their two grandmoms from Kolkata - Thamma and Bubu have at last located enough purana kapda for all to wear. Chhod-dada, their favorite grandpa visiting from Kolkata, insists on sleeping through it all to their chagrin. Aja, the other favorite and resident grandpa has refused to step out of his home at Powai Park. Bulpi-pishi is busy dishing out cheese omelettes, and Tina-kaki has just got the terrace ready water pipes et al, for the imminent dunking session. Breakfast has also triggered IAI to go make a ‘fruit-chaat’ for all. 3 bachchas plus 2 adults in the kitchen (not me) – it is a happy and holy mess all around. I love it!

But I digress. Where was I? Yes, in Bijapur. My holiday reading was ‘The Routledge Companion to Post-Modernism’. My attempt to make sense of subjects such as Critical & Cultural Theory and my life – not necessarily in that order.

And my daughter Isha was reading Skellig.
Her homework assignment from school. I tried reading it. A play with a 12 year old protagonist Michael. Who discovers this creature in his garage. Who loves Chinese food, but could be an archaeopteryx. Or is it all in his imagination? His friend Mina can see it too anyway.

And does having the main character as a child, make the book a children’s book? More so, a padhai wala book? Talk of post-modern works. If I began the book clueless, have ended it even more mystified. Can’t imagine our Indian boards – ICSc, CBSE, any of our state boards ever recommending a book like this as part of academic reading. What is this book?? Is it weird, or what!

Yet it is a compelling play. Compelling also in its lack of a clearcut narrative (belied by the presence of a ‘narrator’ on every page). The only aspect that makes you do a double-take is that this book is supposed to have won quite a few awards. It's a very recent book released in 2003. And the ultimate paradox - it's a recommended book for 11 and 12 year olds in an IB school. Post-modernism turned upside down. Have asked my daughter to explain life as the book and the character Skellig sees it. If this is essential reading, I am surely missing something - perhaps need to understand life as the nextgen sees it, once explained to me.

And with this general delicious feeling, I now go back to catch a much needed and well-earned snooze. On this lazy frenetic, noisy day of Holi, life is quiet.

Managing Hurt...

This is something Swami Chidananda sent - as usual his timing is impeccable! (More on him in www.fowai.net)

When a blade hurts us physically, there are medical means to heal the wound. Let us consider here psychological hurt, and see what can heal the injury.

This topic is of utmost importance. All spirituality is essentially about being free from hurt. When our mind is totally cleansed of all the scars of the past, that itself is moksha, liberation. The root cause of hurt and of its continuation is one and the same in the cases of other common psychological ailments such as fear, worry, greed and jealousy.

We say, “I am hurt.” The wise ask us, “Who is hurt? Who or what is that ‘I’ that is hurt?”

The entity that is hurt is a conception of I. Many thoughts, born of memory, build this concept. If I have enjoyed fame and name for years, there is a large bundle of memories of all that and I carry a ‘me’ that expects special regard and attention from others, who are common men (and women) in my eyes. When I do not receive any special consideration, it hurts me. Even in the case of a relationship between just two people, it is the attachment to memories that keeps certain expectations arising and, when they are not fulfilled, there is hurt. Go anywhere in the world, you will soon be caught in the net of expectations. Spiritual centers are no exception. You expect the so-called gurus to constantly pay attention to you; what is more tragic, some (unripe) gurus seek attention or continued admiration from a good number (if not all) of their followers.

A mind that expects nothing cannot be hurt. Such a mind is an empty but alert mind.

We cannot go far by merely deciding not to expect. Willpower is a charming aspect of mind’s capabilities, which actually is utterly incapable of blessing us with true freedom. Intelligence and willpower are poles apart when it comes to how they influence the human mind. The former is born of total seeing while the latter breeds on partial consideration. With willpower, we may win battles but are sure to lose the war. Its glories are short-lived and it puts no end at all to any human misery. Will power gives us energy in a chosen direction and helps us achieve tasks but we are back to square one very soon. Intelligence removes basic misconceptions and leads us to illumination.

We need to give up our hurried ways that often border on panic, and take a dispassionate look at how we think. What drives our thoughts? Does a certain self-image act as the basis of all our reactions to situations? Is this image closer to facts or is it sustained by fancies?
Do ideas of ‘what we should be’ have a great power to shape our thoughts? Is the fact of ‘what we are’ on the back seat, helpless and hapless?

True intelligence is the ability to see through the games that our own thoughts play. It is about gaining basic understanding of how the machinery of thought functions within us. It is not a matter of generating great thoughts; it is rather made of insights into the structure of thought.

Self-observation, carried with intelligence, dismantles all the images in the mind. The walls of the hall then shine brightly without the clutter of too many framed pictures upon them. Such a mind comes upon silence. It has transparency. Old hurt leaves it and new hurt cannot then be.

Swami Chidananda

Monday, March 17, 2008