Is Your Commitment Total?

Is Your Commitment Total?

We were discussing Karmic ramifications of our actions. There is so much that is said, can be said and will be said on this subject I suppose; all hearsay at best and no one really in a position to contradict each other. So it is one of the best conversation topics where you can expound as much as you feel like and as every action is particular to itself and special to the next individual, the discussions can go on and on safely with no change resulting in any form except the expounder goes home very proud of himself, of his grasp of life’s essentials and his wisdom with somewhere at the back of his mind this thought that he has impressed his listeners and made a mark!

Then I came across these few words from OSHO(RAJNEESH) of Pune. He says we suffer because we do not live whole-heartedly. All our actions tend to be incomplete and sort of hover around us waiting for their culmination. What I understood from this and concur is that we are busy doing too many things at the same and doing all of them badly; thereby laying ourselves open to negative karmic points with pending files remaining open and following us like baying dogs.

This, if I am not mistaken is called Multi-tasking nowadays. A way of working that I abhor. Nothing is done with focus and proper application. Till the last generation this was not a problem as it has become today. The culprits that have brought on this state of affairs is squarely the mobile phone and the laptop. Earlier we had to be in the right place at the right time to do whatever was needed to be done. Now we can be everywhere at the same time and do whatever we want at any given time. I think this is awful; the idea should be to do less, live luxuriously and here we are pushing ourselves to an early burn-out by doing more. Humans really need to reorient their philosophies.

One positive aspect of this change in our lives is that it imposed on us the need to ask some questions and therefore some research projects on this subject were undertaken. It was well known before that the average human mind can hardly process more than one activity at a time. Now it seems this is clearly proven by case studies. So this business of multi-tasking is all a lot of nonsense. Let us see how long it will take for the human mass to understand it and use this information in their working styles.

Concisely and precisely it means that the mind can focus on one activity alone at a time; it can listen or talk or drive or type or eat or kiss or whatever. The problem comes when we do certain things by habit and allow the mind to wander all over the cosmos. We then leave “undone” karmic footprints that drag us back, vociferously demanding that we finish the job or at least learn to do it differently and well the next time or pay for the consequences.

Would you like some examples? Say a man is eating. The food is of his choice and normally he would have savored it to his entire satisfaction. But he is in a hurry because his mind is on the meeting in his office where he aims to make a definite point and he hopes to get a raise from it. There is also the need to be aware of what goes on in the world so he opens up the TV to watch the news. His wife on the other hand has some complaints and reminders and may even be talking to him which as can be imagined he is saying yes-yes to without listening. By the time he leaves, settling down in his car, his phone to his ears his mind is already properly muddled. He has no idea what he has eaten; he has no memory of having eaten at all. He has not grasped any of the news and totally forgotten about his wife. And in all this he has hasn’t had a quiet moment to fully work out his presentation in the meeting which he then does not do too well. The eating, driving and listening in the above episode being totally mechanically habit driven; Is this multitasking or multishucksing?

As Osho(Rajneesh) explains, the mind not being wholly satiated or satisfied, continues to crave. This may show in excesses like binge eating, passionate affairs, show-off purchases and the like. A veritable vortex is created that can envelope us in its negative impact which then has the effect of creating stress, bad decisions/attitudes and even more stress and eventual misery.

I remember my grand mother with her rosary beads coaxing the Lord to pay heed to her woes with her mind on the pot of lentils on the fire, giving commands to her daughters-in-law. With what result; the Lord not being addressed to properly did not answer her prayers, the pot of lentils boiled over, the daughter-in-law went to into sulks every now and then which had chain reactions in the households and often tragic tantrums.

The scenario has changed a bit but not the pattern.

Was it, is it all worth it; now, then or ever?

Cocksure and Prejudiced

Whatever be our education, we still permit ourselves the luxury of some prejudices and totally unjustifiable generalizations. Some obvious ones are such mistaken assumptions like the one that only women can teach children, or Sikhs are not bright enough or that all south Indians make good secretaries.

Similarly, there are fixed ideas in all the other fraternities too. The police begin with the notion that all are basically criminals. They haven’t just yet caught them yet. The lawyer is not very far away from this thought either. The painful point of discord is in the idea that every lawyer thinks that he can get his client off and this is blindly seconded by his client. In general life disaster strikes when mistakenly perceiving ourselves as brilliant we play a tricky one and are sure that no one can see through our machinations.

Mankind is prone to many foolish operations based on their even more stupid cocksure thinking. No superhuman genius is needed to avoid these pitfalls. All errors can never be avoided but definitely minimized.

Whatever the subject, if the matter is such that it can be settled by observation, then take care to observe yourself instead of depending on the hearsay of others.
This occurrence is not as rare it may logically sound. If you read the literature of long ago, you will notice that writers would speak about unicorns and such with such definite purpose that you almost would believe them. It seems unicorns were everywhere but no one had seen one.

Most assumptions are unfortunately less easy to resolve. Most people have passionate convictions. Like I was brought up on the information that we should be wary of Muslims because they steal children and make easy murderers. The women of our household very passionately believed in this idea and there was no shaking them out of it. That my best and most reliable friends are Muslims, still does not make the elderly ladies who brought me up, feel that this proves anything.

The best way to realize your own bias is to pay attention to yourself. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, it is a sure sign that you have really no basis for your own convictions. If somebody maintains that the earth is flat, today, do you get angry? No! You rather pity the person and laugh it off. But in the matters of religion where there is no argument that can be proven either way, the chaos and stupidity results in behavior and acts that are stupendous and shattering.

Shall we use a little logic and try to become more rational? Be wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. Do not believe in the superior excellence of your prejudices.

Contradicting Lovingly

When I was young, in college and still sorting out the everyday contradictions in terms of human relationships, one of the features of my life was to understand the attitude of my parents towards me. From one angle it was clear that I was precious to them and from another angle, they seem to take me for a nincompoop. At one end of the spectrum I was supposed to do them proud by coming up to some standards that were never clearly defined while at the same time I was not supposed to show any initiative and do what I was told. On this point the directions were clear: as if the parents were saying “We are here and know what is best for you. We are doing the thinking for you, all that is needed will be provided; you; just be a nice, sweet chubby child, the apple of our eyes.” As if they had never bargained for the child to grow and assert some of his own personality.

When this time did come, it changed into a period of confrontation. It became a competition between two diametrically opposite tendencies. One set in their ways, afraid of change and the other experimenting and exploring, feeding and thriving on change. Eventually the situation came to a pass where all listening came to a stop. Every sentence of my father began with a “NO”. This puzzled me to no end and unfortunately nobody was giving me the right honest answers either.

Then one day I went to somebody’s house and there I saw a sticker. It showed an older cranky looking man shouting at an obviously younger child: “The answer is No. Now what did you want?” This was the beginning of wisdom finally coming into my life. I realized that a sticker made in the USA, if so universal in its character, is floating around then certainly this attitude of my parents which was puzzling me, is more universally prevalent than is honestly accepted. A little more close observation of all the parents around me, backed by reading The Reader’s Digest made the answers come tumbling into my life.

Today into my late adult life, I am astonished to see how much this tendency to negate and contradict permeates life in general. As I see it, the seeds are sown when the child is growing into an adult and the parents are not grasping this fact in its entirety. They want to protect him and shield him. In their zeal they don’t want him to act at all, as if this way they can protect him from all adversity. The child on the other hand begins first by seething inside and then hiding his true self and living a double life; so to say. The parents get more and more strongly into the denying and the child starts even more vehemently saying No to it. Is it any wonder that the adult who results is afraid that his life will be taken over and therefore learns to say No to everything. His relationships are all difficult; whatever kind it may be- professional, amicable or amorous. This way he gets into a perennial “denial” mode. This perverted character then gets passed on from generation to generation.

Look around closely. How often do you see people agreeing and accepting each other and in comparison how often we are crossing each other out?

I remember when I was just entering teenage; I was trying to paint a sunset. My father’s comment on seeing my attempts was that I being a child should try to paint subjects more suitable to my age. But I kept on which upset him and finally got what I wanted, appreciated by others or not. In my case the story has a happy ending. Eventually, many years later, I painted a canvas which before even it was dry; my father took it and hung it in his room. This was appreciation of a high order.

Fate had a hand in my upbringing. I had the good luck to grow into an adult far away from the restrictive and limited scope of my home. I had an international exposure and had teachers who were always listening and ready to help me find the answers to MY questions; without the bias of social norms restricting our exchanges.

Yet sadly my father never got over his habit of taking the opposite side to any exchange of idea, conversation or suggestion. It was so sad. I wanted so much to converse and share my life with him. But he would not accept me as anything but his child who should in all good sense let him run his life. He never outgrew my childhood and this contradiction always showed in his behavior.