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?