Monthly Archives: November 2011

The Truman Show (1998)

Movies

Director – Peter Weir

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This movie is the mother of all reality shows on television. It takes the idea of Big Brother or Big Boss wherein participants are closeted in a house for 3 months, and extends it to the whole life of one individual.

Truman is born and grown-up on the sets of the reality show. A whole city is constructed as the set complete with neighbors, offices, and the beach. Everything including the weather is simulated. Except Truman, everyone else is an actor. The filming is done through hidden cameras and the show is televised round the clock to the world. Everything is fine until Truman finds some inconsistency about things happening to him and decides to investigate.

Now in the spiritual tradition, the world we live in is also a sort of a self-created reality show which sustains itself. Everyone is already hypnotized into believing what his identity is, based on which he or she lives. However, there are some individuals who find inconsistencies in the worldly affairs and decide to investigate the true meaning of life and become spiritual seekers.

Have You Found What is Lost?

On Knowing Oneself, Zen

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Finding something that you had lost brings great joy & relief. Even if it is a trivial thing like locating a misplaced TV remote or something significant like getting in touch with a lost friend after decades, there is that unique feeling when you find something you had lost.

Even when we see others finding their lost things, we experience the same joy. It is a universal feeling across nations, cultures & history.

We have enjoyed numerous Bollywood movies based on the “Lost & Found” theme. Manmohan Desai used it in many films & we were never tired of it.

Every time we lose something we feel the same anxiety & every time we find it we feel the same relief. The joy & relief is directly proportional to the time after which you find it multiplied by the value of the thing in your life.

On one occasion, I forgot my laptop bag in the train & I realized it only after reaching home. Imagine the anxiety! l rushed back to the station – a crazy 10 km drive – & was lucky enough to get it back. Imagine the relief!

There is tremendous anguish when you realize you lost something of great value. However, with time you adjust to the loss and come to terms with it. Things like lost keys, lost valuables & lost money can be replaced. If you find them after you got the replacement, the joy is not that much. As life goes on, you will even forget that you had lost something.

Awakening is similar to finding your true self – the original mind – the Tao – that which is, before anything else is. There is joy & relief of tremendous intensity. Because you simultaneously realize that you had forgotten who you are & that you had forgotten it for an infinite time & now you suddenly find it. You were lost in living & dying & have found back that which was never born & can never die. It cannot be put into words.

Paradoxically, you also realize that you had never lost anything. Just that, to explain to another, the theme of lost & found can be a metaphor.

Seeing Clearly vs. Clear Seeing

Nature of Reality, Science

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There is a difference between Seeing Clearly and Clear Seeing.

Seeing clearly means being able to see the differences between things, being able to distinguish between one and the other. This depends on sensory inputs. If your eyes have cataract, you will not be able to see clearly. What is true of the eye is true of the other sense organs including the ears, nose, tongue, skin and brain. When you understand a concept well, you can say that you see clearly.

Clear seeing is seeing the sameness in everything, despite apparent differences. This does not depend on sensory input. While sense organs provide you information to the contrary, there is the knowing that it is not as it appears to be. It is possible that a person with cataract may not be able to see clearly but he may be able to clearly see.

Clear seeing is an insight into the nature of things, into the nature of senses, into the differences, into the nature of seeing clearly.

What is better? Seeing clearly or Clear seeing? That depends.

In day to day life, people, schools, organizations and society gives more importance to seeing clearly. However, it need not be so always.

A close analogy is like the Necker cube which can be seen in two ways. There are some people who have difficulty in seeing the other perspective.

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Seeing clearly can mean being able to see one or both of the perspectives. This may sometimes lead to arguments between those those who see one perspective and those who see the other.

​Clear seeing can mean being able to flip between the two at will and empathize with the person who is unable to see the other perspective.