This blog is a reaction to an sms I received from you when in Tirupathi the other day. Your sms wished us and mentioned that life is hell and where we are going after life is also going to be hell.
1: that we are "living"
2: that the living is hell
3: that there is an after life for which we need to strive now
4: that the consequences of our actions here can result in a hell there as well.
I want to share my views on the first assumption
What is living ?
Is it breathing in and breathing out ... which we are never conscious of- but which we certainly conclude is the end of "life" if it stops. Not only are we unconscious of breathing we are oblivious to the body as we gorge on food a slave to the palate.
Is it the striving for a living...is there a difference between the woman carrying bricks on a construction site and someone in an air conditioned office making deals? The end results in both are the same-earning some "bread" ( my cousin Rangas word for work).For the brick carrier her efforts go to meet her biological needs , whilst for the executive, Mr Maslow would want us to believe that there is striving for "self actualization", a pursuit beyond the basic deficiency needs rising to a Metamotivation-a need for "being".
Let us dwell on this a bit.Is the metamotivation that resulted in Ratan Tata leaving behind an enterprise vastly larger than when he took over, the same kind of metamotivation that drove Swami Chinmayananda to build a Foundation for religion and education? Who is more meta motivated-. Swami Ramakrishna who lived in his own world, though an enlightened soul-a Paramahamsa equally at home in realms of matter and spirit,( like a hamsa equally at home on land and on water),or his followers who built an Institution carrying his name and known for its service orientation?
The question, the answer to which I am grappling is -"Does a human being have to be metamotivated to live a wholesome life?" If the answer is Yes then I have a ready response to your adjective "hell" added to the verb "living". The response is -no- living is not hell. It becomes hell to a person with a lack of metamotivation.
What if the answer is is NO? What if all this motivation is contrary to living? How are we to know?
A Gautama took to deep enquiry and concluded that living is stressful. It is a pain that must be endured and the Buddha thereafter formulated an eight fold path. (Is not the Enlightened one tacitly admitting that stress must be minimised?)
The Bard viewed it in equally negative terms and it is worth quoting the passage in full
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in its petty pace from day to day
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death
With death a certainty the Bard mocks at our actions in the living world - Fools, he sees us, pursuing futile goals. Life is after all ....
...a tale told by an idiot
Full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing !
and so we go through life with all the sound and fury ,battling the mind with the acrimony of petty prattle and the idle gossip charged with the venoms of envy and hatred. A dreadful potion that blanks us off from any remote possibility of happiness.Lady Macbeths greed to the throne, her envy of Banquo, can make her kill to calm her heated brain. Finally the mind cracks ..
Or have we completely misunderstood "living"?
In the next few paragraphs permit me to share my takeaways from a book from Mukunds excellent collection "The Quantum and the Lotus".
Turn to the Buddha again and reflect on his proposition that we "live" or exist only in relationship to others . Else we are not living ! Life is mutual causality. Another way of defining the idea of interdependence is summarized by the term “tantra” which stands for a notion of continuity and the “fact that everything is part of a whole , so that nothing can happen separately.”The interdependence includes consciousness. The reality of a given object depends on a subject that is aware of the object.Perhaps this understanding of interdependence should demolish the wall of illusions that our minds have built up between “me” and the “other”.It makes a non sense of pride , jealousy, greed and malice. If all things are interconnected we should be concerned about the happiness and suffering of others.
This line of thinking I find interesting. If we were to truly appreciate and concur with the Buddha on the "interconnectedness" of everything, we suddenly view our position in this world very differently! We are not our egos! Where did this ego come from? Einstein seems to concur
“ A human being is part of a whole , called by us as the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The delusion is a kind of prison for us , restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty
Einsteins last statement I find appealing and perhaps giving a lead to understanding the verb "living". Is living about the pursuit of giving happiness to others as contrasted to the pursuit of happiness of the self? Perhaps in this switch top the approach of life is the transformation of living from a hell to a harmonious existence.
Mention the word harmony and we must recollect the Poet Wordsworth. To this philosopher poet life is worth living only if it is harmonious with nature. It is as if all our troubles are linked to this attitude of treating nature as separate from ourselves.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting."
To Wordsworth, infants have some memory of heaven,
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy!"
As children this connection with heaven causes us to experience nature's glory more clearly. Once we are grown, the connection is lost. As we grow , as we get to earth, everything conspires to help us forget the place we came from: heaven.
"Forget the glories he hath known, and that imperial palace whence he came."
The Poet goes on ( Ode to Immortality) to conclude that we go through life in endless imitation.He is unable to fathom why a child so close to heaven would rush to grow into an adult.
"Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke / The years to bring the inevitable yoke, / Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?"
Why , he asks do we take pains to bring this inevitable yoke on ourselves and thereby struggle against our inherent blessedness?
To me, living is to realise that we are separated from Nature, that we are all all part of a dependent entity and our individual happiness lies in bringing happiness to others.
Last evening I visited my favourite temple in Madhapur. As they hurried to clase the temple I enquired and was told that the founder had passed away suddenly that afternoon. I remember the gaunt tall man who having retired from AP Government Service had donated his land for the temple. His pastime was to visit the temple daily and enjoy the sight of numerous bhaktas. To me this charitable act made his "living" purposeful.
A line from an old movie song brings to end this blog
"Tum ek paise doge woh Dus Lakh dega" Who is that "Woh"? It is nature. It all comes around !
7th December 2011
