Big Picture Zen

Category: Reflections

  • Life – A Fancy Dress Competition

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    As children we used to take part in fancy dress competitions. I remember having dressed up as an air force pilot in my 2nd or 3rd standard. Sometimes I wonder why we have those competitions – I guess grown ups like to see how their child will look in an uniform or how she would enact a specific role. So fancy dress competitions are somewhat like role plays. You get into the uniform and you kinda get into the character also. Such experiences tend to leave a deep impression. For a long time after that, my dream was to become an air force pilot.

    Most fancy dress competitions are a one time event. You participate and once it is over, you return to your normal life. But if I may take a leap into the world of fashion, I pretty much see the same thing there. All fashion is about coming up with new fancy dresses – new materials, new design, new colors, new this, new that.

    And then people live an elaborate fancy dress competition – going for a party, choose a party dress – going for a wedding, wear a fancy dress – going for a funeral – wear a plain dress – going to office, wear formals – going on a vacation – wear trendy clothes – and so on and on. Then there is summer fashion, monsoon fashion and winter fashion and spring wear too. Not to forget the festivals which all require a specific type of dress – Navratri, Diwali, Christmas, Halloween, et all.

    Hear some women talking and conversations are mostly about what someone was wearing the other day. And why not? The clothes we wear make a statement about who we are. They create an impression in other’s minds about us. So on one hand, we become very conscious about what we wear and how we look and on the other, we tend to draw some conclusions about people based on what they wear and how they look.

    Just note what you are wearing today and what made you wear that – what were you thinking? Look at people around you and note what they are wearing and listen to what conclusions your mind draws about them.

    So in this real life fancy dress competition, in which we are not supposed to be aware that we are participating or judging, we are actually all participants as well as judges.

  • You cannot know the purpose of the journey until you have completed it.

    You cannot know the purpose of the journey until you have completed it.

    Isn’t it obvious? Say you plan a vacation to Goa with the intention of having a good time but you miss your flight and then have to hitch hike your way, wouldn’t you get new experiences on the way? When you actually complete your trip, you will realize what that trip taught you. But if you are cursing yourself for missing the flight and are complaining of all the trouble you went through, maybe you will not learn anything new. Similarly in life. Welcome everything what happens in your life.

  • If you pay attention, you can buy enlightenment.

    If you PAY attention, you can BUY enlightenment.

    There is no free lunch in this world. So with enlightenment. It is not free. You can buy it. The price is attention. You have to pay attention every moment to what is happening inside you and around you. If you can pay this price, you can get enlightened.

  • A Poem by the Nameless One

    Now that I have woken up
    What shall I do

    Shall I go to the playground
    To run after the ball
    But the scores no longer matter to me

    Shall I go to the movies
    To watch the song and dance
    But I am no longer excited by fantasies

    Shall I go to the office
    To sit in front of the computer
    But that makes me sleepy

    Shall I stay at home
    To play with my children and talk with my wife
    But it does not give me any joy

    I think I should read a book
    But what will I do after I finish reading
    I think I should go to the restaurant
    But what will I do after I have finished eating

    I do not know what I should do
    Now that I have woken up

    I can see people around me sleeping
    Should I try to wake them up?

    But they get angry because they do not want to be disturbed
    Some can hear me but they talk in their sleep
    Others cannot hear me because they are fast asleep

    Oh how I long to look deeply into someone’s open eyes
    And listen to their unspoken words

    So I go along not knowing what I must do
    Now that I have woken up

    I run after the ball
    I watch the songs and the dance
    I sit in front of the computer
    I play with my children and talk with my wife
    I read a book
    I eat at the hotel

    But I do not know what I must do.
    Now that I have woken up

  • Man or Machine

    Human frailties are glorified so much that there seems to be no way of accepting a person who has overcome those weaknesses. “To err is to human” and other similar sayings tend to accept that humans are imperfect. Although, it is true, it also closes the door to perfection. It becomes an excuse to remain imperfect, remain mediocre.

    Man has always tried to make machines as intelligent or more powerful as humans. However, there is a general understanding that machines can never learn emotions. Rajnikanth may prove you otherwise.

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    Emotions are considered to be the touchstone on which to perform the Turing test (A test to differentiate between man and machine). In simple words, humans are humans because they have emotions, which machines can never have.

    The point most of humanity misses is how mechanical our emotions are. Emotions are simply reactions to external stimuli. And despite all the talk about emotional intelligence, very few people even think about the possibility of being free of emotional outbursts.

    Those who show little or no emotions are considered by other people to be mechanical. Emotions are seen to be so necessary to live and express oneself.

    Take the case of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day. He is shown to be a machine, yet when told by young John Connor, not to kill people, takes care not to do that. Now how many humans will be able to take such instructions and follow them? Obviously, we are not machines! We are emotional beings and we will not be able to do anything as perfectly as a machine can do, if we compare apples to apples.

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    By thinking of machines as inferior to humans and by thinking that emotions are the hallmark of human beings, we can never see how machine-like all our actions and behavior really are.

    Someone who realizes that his emotions are simply reactions over which he has no control whatsoever is in a far better position to understand himself than someone who believes she has a right to be angry to express her state of mind or a right to sulk when he does not get what he wants.

    Attainment of self knowledge refers partly to this truth about oneself. Take it or leave it. If you take it, you might observe your machine, set it right and be able to do far more marvelous things and have the opportunity to gain something real. If you leave it, you do not lose anything cause you do not have anything in the first place.

  • Is Good Better Than Evil?

    I am writing this with reference to the good and evil as depicted in Indian films. The hero or the protagonist is always shown to be on the good side while the evil is personified in the villain. The story is almost always a clash between good and evil and good is always shown to be victorious in the end.

    If you have seen films like Ghajini, you see that Aamir Khan, the protagonist is the good guy while Ghajini, the villain is the bad guy. Ghajini kills the girlfriend Asin and injures Aamir Khan. Now, Aamir Khan is so filled with vengeance, that he has become more evil than the villain – just see the way he goes and bashes up the goons and eventually kills Ghajini.

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    This kind of story is the norm in Hindi films. First the villain does some harm to the hero or the society and then the hero destroys the villain’s business. But in order to do so, the hero must learn the evil ways first. So if good starts behaving in evil ways, what is the difference between good and evil?

    Take another example – Sunny Deol. He becomes so angry in films that it becomes difficult to know whether he is the hero or the villain. You will seriously be afraid to associate with such a person (I am only talking of the character he portrays and not the person he is in real life) – I wonder how he even gets a girlfriend who would like to marry him.

    An eye for an eye and tit for tat kind of revenge seems very much acceptable to our society. When the villain beats up the hero, the audience sympathizes and when the hero beats up the villain, the crowd cheers.

    There are films where the protagonist plays a negative character such as Shahrukh Khan in Baazigar. He is taking revenge for the wrong done to his father and murders Shilpa Shetty (in the film of course). This violence is literally endless. It is possible that somebody from the villains family will one day kill Shahrukh Khan if the story would have continued.

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    Shahrukh’s justification in the film is simply – you started it first. It is a common dialogue in Hindi films – Yeh khel tumne shuru kiya tha aur main ise khatam karoonga. The film may end but the game never ends in real life.

    In order to get hold of terrorists, police have to start thinking like terrorists. The idea is to instill fear of police in terrorists so that they will stop their evil activities. However, in the process, the police itself becomes so fearsome that they resemble terrorists.

    In order to get hold of terrorists, police have to start thinking like terrorists. The idea is to instill fear of police in terrorists so that they will stop their evil activities. However, in the process, the police itself becomes so fearsome that they resemble terrorists.

    For Obama, Osama is the villain but for Osama, Obama is the villain. In films, the story is told only from the hero’s point of view. There is never, if any, any investigation in to the life of the villain – what kind of life he faced and what made him do the things he did.

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    This is not an easy matter to solve. Real Goodness cannot be equated with the mundane goodness of ordinary life. Mundane goodness as depicted by heros in the films is just as evil as the evil villains they are trying to exterminate.

    We must look for genuine Goodness beyond good and evil as normally understood.

  • Is There Anything To Be Done?

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    We wake up in the morning and as soon as we finish washing our face and brushing our teeth, we get busy in boiling milk, reading newspaper, getting ready for the office. Then the rest of the day we spend in doing whatever our office work demands – typing on the computer, reading and sending emails, attending meetings, tea, coffee, lunch… then we get back home, watch television, read books, spend time with family and go to bed.

    Day in and day out we do the same thing. On weekends we go to movies, do some shopping, eat at restaurants and go on a long drive to the countryside. That is what most of our life consists in.

    We do all these things but never wonder why we do them. we might have reasons like – in order to survive, in order to earn money, to support our family, and so on. But those reasons are not the real reason why we do things.

    We do things mostly by habit. We cannot do anything else. We are so used to doing things in the same way and same manner, it becomes a habit and we don’t realize what we are doing. Not only our physical actions like eating, bathing and dressing is determined by habits, even our psychological actions like thinking and feeling are driven by habit.

    In reality we don’t know anything. So we tend to follow others thinking that they know. But they are following someone else. So everyone is simply following others blindly without knowing the underlying reason. This is the way we take decisions on buying a house, a car, going for a vacation and so on.

    Fear is a strong motivator of actions. Based on experiences and memory we develop fear and that determines our actions in many situations.

    Another strong influence for our actions is our desires. Most people think their desires are their own. But where did they find those? They did not decide to have those desires. It came as a natural inclination without any conscious effort.

    So if we really look at the world and the people carefully, beginning with oneself, we find that everyone is sleepwalking, not realizing what they are doing, why they are doing, where they are going and so on. They meet with accidents, love, friendship, joy, grief and everything else without conscious effort. It happens to them. Their inner world of emotions and thoughts also happens.

    When we say – I am thinking… it is the thoughts which are going on in my mind. I don’t think anything. Neither do I have any control on my thoughts. And it is the same with everyone.

    Can you see how dangerous the situation is? People are living their life and dying completely unaware of who they are, what they are doing and whither they are going. They are dreaming happily with the story they invent of their name, education, job, achievements, children, family, love and friendship.

    If you see the danger of this situation clearly, you instantly become conscious and you stop doing what you are doing. You become alert, mindful, and watchful. Suddenly there are no thoughts in your mind. The mind becomes calm and sharp.

    And if you attain this state, you realize there is nothing to do. This non-doing is the real doing. All else that we normally call doing is only automatic reaction. No one is in control. The stopping of everything is the real doing.

  • What is the Purpose of Life?

    So that’s the main question. Is it not? It is easy to say that you must discover your purpose in life or that different people have their own purposes. But I am not asking this question in the superficial sense. And if you have reflected for some time on this, you would have found that superficial answers do not really answer the question deeply.

    Just to explain a little more. Is the purpose of my life to become somebody – a celebrity, a CEO, a wealthy person, a father, a grandfather, a good human being? Does my purpose lie in fulfilling all my responsibilities as a son, a husband, an employee, a citizen? Is my purpose gathering knowledge, learning how to do things, earning money, helping others?

    All of that! We are doing all of that all our life? Is that all and then we simply die and hope that others will remember us for ever for the sons and daughters we leave behind, the houses and companies we have built. I don’t know about you but to me, none of these things seem to have any meaning. It seems to me that I engage in all these activities only because I don’t really know what I am supposed to do. So I just do what I have been educated in and what I see others doing.

    The only way I can answer the question so that the question does not remain is to investigate where the question comes from and not by looking for an answer. The question is formed by the words – What, is, the, purpose, of, Life? Each word in itself has no meaning; neither does each alphabet of the word. Isn’t it true that I have composed the question simply because I can do so or have heard it or read it and then go about searching for the answer?

    My mind and your mind have been trained to find answers to questions. Whenever a question is asked we are supposed to find an answer or else we will fail the exam. But can you drop the question altogether? If you can do that in reality, you might come across something which you never expected and come face to face with life in its naked form.

  • Popo – Our Pet Parrot

    Popo was our parrot. He was a baby in a small little cage when we purchased him. With his round fluffy body, he could barely walk – hardly aware of his reality. We brought him up on the choicest of fruits and chillies. We used to whistle in front of him and teach words to him.

    As he grew up, we shifted him into a larger cage, so that he had more space to move about. He was a fast learner and soon started whistling at girls passing in front of our house (we never taught him that). We loved this bird very much and sometimes used to allow him out of the cage in the living room. We kept the door and windows closed so that he does not fly away. His cute parrot-walk on the sofa – a kind of a curious drunken joker-like walk – was always a sight to watch. He used to get a chance to fly around the room for sometime.

    But then he started to get restless within the cage and would always look for opportunities to get out. He tried his best to cut through the bars, damaging his beak in the process. He started biting some of us who were offering him food.

    One day he escaped.

    We were very sad to see the empty cage but were pleasantly delighted to see him back the next day sitting on top of the cage. We put him back in the cage and treated him with delicious food.

    Very soon he started to become restless again. Just a few days later, he got another opportunity to fly off, as the cage door was not shut properly. But this time, a passing cat pounced on him and he became the cat’s lunch!

    Makes me wonder whether I am in a cage too?
    Have I also been given the choicest of food?
    I also want to be free.
    But do I have the skills to survive in the wild?