Siddartha

I recently read the book called “Siddartha” by “Hermann Hess”. It is a thin book of about 152 pages describing the essence of life. It is a story of a brahmin boy “Siddartha” who is seeking the answers to all the profound questions: What is this life about? Why are we here? What is our destiny? and many more. Siddartha internalizes the scriptures at a very young age and is soon ready for higher level of education. He leaves home, goes on his search, thinks, learns, experiences life and continues doing that. In his quest, he takes up different roles, becomes from a brahmin boy to a “samana” (a sanyasi) , from a “samana” to a “samsari”; gets older, wiser, continues his search for the profound questions. Finally, he settles down as a ferryman, rowing boat and helping people cross the river. He spends countless hours listening to the river, thinking and observing the river. Slowly, the mystery of life unfolds to him – he is enlightened.
One day one of his childhood friend, who left Siddarth to join Gotama buddha meets Siddartha after many many years. Both friends spend the whole night talking about their chosen paths to enlightenment and what they learnt in this journey. Their conversation is the basis of this book. Siddartha’s words of wisdom to his friend have great meaning and significance even at this age. It could be interpreted in various ways even in a non-spiritual context. I am quoting few of them and I am trying to interpret them in the context of our life.

Here is a quote from Siddartha:

“When someone is seeking, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding is to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. If you are striving just towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.”

My interpretation:

Having a no-goal as goal is an oxymoron. It seems contradictory to what we are all used to in our life. We consider not having a goal is equivalent to straying in life; having no meaning in life. We were taught to have goals in life and we teach the same to our kids. However, Siddartha says that having a specific goal prevents you from seeking the so many un-said goals. Maybe we are missing out so many things when we are so focused on our goals. Maybe when we are engrossed in reaching our goal, we miss out the pleasure of the journey. We do not see and realize the opportunities that we are leaving behind un-explored while we are in the pursuit of our goal. But does that mean that we should not have goal and just wander and be a finder? Maybe not. Maybe we should try to be a finder while we are a seeker!

Another quote:

“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. ”

Very true. It happens so many times that when we express a thoughts, it suddenly looses value and seems insignificant. It seems so small than what it was when the thought was in our head. What happened? Did we not express the thoughts well? Yes. The very act of expressing distorted it and conveyed a different meaning.

The golden quote:

“Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish. Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. On can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. ”

So so true. We often confuse between wisdom and knowledge. They are orthogonal. One can have abundance knowledge but still can be foolish in his action. If only our wisdom could be retained, stored and passed on like knowledge, the human civilization would progress at a much higher rate than what it is now.

A Weekday Evening

A friend read my blog postings and commented that I write serious stuff. It was not the first time I got this comment, even my husband said the same thing. Have I become a serious person? Have I started taking life too seriously? Actually not! I take life as it comes without worrying about how’s and what’s of life. Then why am I writing about serious topics only? Maybe I don’t know how to make a topic light, or maybe I do not appreciate myself writing about trivial stuff or maybe I just have not tried it.

So here I am trying to write something light and trivial …

tringa-tringa-tringa-tring…. my phone was ringing….. who was calling me? Oh yeah… It was my 5:00 pm evening alarm! The alarm that sets me free from the corporate world. It was time to change from professional role to the mommy role! I shutdown my computer, hurriedly packed my bags, dashed down the stairs, got into my car, started the engine and was off on the road. It was time to pick up my kid, take him to classes, get his homework done, get food ready for the family, prepare for the next day and finally read a bed time story and put him to sleep. phew… busy … packed schedule.

I drove down the busy highway slowly making my way through the crawling evening traffic that was moving at an average speed of 15 miles an hour. It took almost an hour to drive the 20 miles distance to reach my son’s school. I tried to make the best use of the time by calling my local friends who were all crawling in different highways to pick up their young ones. I dialed a number, got my friend on phone and happily started chatting about life and everything. Finally, reached school at 5:58, , just in time to avoid dollar-a-minute fine charged on picking after 6:00 pm. I entered his classroom and instead of getting a welcoming smile, I saw his sad and upset face. When I asked him what was the matter, I got a serious answer “I will tell you later”. Being an understanding mom, I kept quiet, made small conversation with the teacher and went to the car. Not able to hold my curiosity, I asked in the most caring way what was troubling him. He started with “I don’t like what the teacher said”, “Everybody is mean to me”, “Nobody likes me”, “This is a bad school”, “I don’t want to go here anymore”, “Nobody is my friend”, “I want to go to a different school”, “This is the worst day of my school” and on and on. The flood gates opened and tears started rolling down. I almost felt like crying seeing him so upset. Then I reminded myself that my son is a drama king. He probably was exaggerating his bad day. So asked him to tell me the incidents that upset him.

Apparently, he was the TA (Teacher’s Assistant) this week – a role that each student got a chance to be on a rotation basis. He was initially very excited with the opportunity to control the class, help the teacher and boss over his classmates. But two days in the role, he realized that this role had some major limitations. He was expected to be the role model and was not supposed to talk, shout or make mischief; instead control, warn and tell on other kids who did that. He realized that it was not an exciting role. But since it was supposed to be a privilege to be a TA, he continued without expressing his displeasure. That day he just controlled the class half-heartedly sitting in his place. The teacher sensed his low enthusiasm and told him that if he did not do his job right, she would change the TA for the week. It was the beginning of his bad day. I asked him that if he did not like the TA role, then how does it matter if he was not the TA. But then he explained that if the teacher replaces him as TA, then it is supposedly a “punishment” ; although in his mind it was a “reward”! Wow! What a clarity of thought for an 8 year old child! Well, then I told him that it was one incident that happened in the morning and so why he was so upset now. He continued that it was just the beginning. As the day progressed, one of his classmate with whom he shared a love-hate relationship started his usual bully tactics. This classmate of his (let me call him John as I don’t want to mention the real name) started recruiting his bodyguards today. John is an interesting child – he is very polite when he talks to elders, parents and teachers. But he is a bully when it comes to his classmates. He is a natural leader – he knows when to plead and beg and when to bully and threaten. So John self appointed himself as the leader, recruited his own bodyguards and was ready to put down anyone who was not in his team. My little son did not want to be his bodyguard; he wanted to have his own team but unfortunately, most of the class kids were already recruited by John. Another cause for a bad day. I totally sympatheized with him and wanted to help him. But there are certain things that the kids need to figure out themselves. They need to figure out when to “accept” and when to “fight”.

I asked him whether it was all or was there something else. Of course, it was not all. The last straw to his bad day was that he got into trouble with the extended care teacher. John and my son go to after school extended care. Irrespective of their differences during the school time, they become great buddies in the extended care when they are put up together with kids from other classes. Both realize that they can have more fun doing mischief together. He and John were spraying some room perfume. They were warned repeatedly. But after a while, the teacher spotted my son spraying the perfume again. He got into trouble – she put down his name to be given to his class teacher the next day to face the consequences for his actions. Apparently, John was the master-mind behind this activity, but unfortunately only my son was caught. So, he asked John to “own up” his fault or else he was going to “tell” on him. John, in his carefree manner told the teacher that he too was spraying the perfume. The teacher instead of punishing him, thanked him for his “honesty” and sent him back. My son just could not take that. Again tears started rolling over cheeks and he started wining “how can the teacher ‘thank’ him and ‘punish’ me for the same action”. John gets praise and I get punishment – that was not fair!

I just could not hold my amusement. I wanted to say “my dear, so is life”!. But looking at the situation, I wanted to be sensitive; actually, I wanted to be cautious as I was very well aware that anytime his anger and frustration could turn around and I could become the target. I first sympathized with him, explained to him that such things happen; consoled him and promised him that we would find a better school next year that has better students and un-biased teachers. He was not convinced but was satisfied for the moment.

No One Killed Jessica

I just returned from the movie theater after watching the movie “No One Killed Jessica”. A well taken movie with a good plot. Great acting and fast paced. The story started with a serious scene – a murder! The first half of the movie was heavy – it had a serious tone. In the second half, the plot thickened but the movie suddenly changed tone. It became lighter and at the same time did not loose focus.

The son of a politician kills Jessica in a Delhi pub. There are strong evidence and a number of eye-witness. There is no real case. The killer is evident, the procedure seems simple, the justice seems inevitable. Jessica’s sister Sabrina, a determined girl, takes it upon her to make the killer pay for his action. She is strong, determined and a fighter. She supports her parents, talks with the witness and fights the case not for days or months but for years. Finally, the verdict is declared – the killer is declared “not guilty”. The murderer is let scot free. The killer just gets away with the murder. How? The father uses his money and political clout to break the evidence, one by one, all of them.

Intermission! Indian movies always stop suddenly in the middle when the plot really thickens up. A forced moment for the viewers to take a break, go to restroom and buy more soda. Sometimes, these intermissions are blessing in disguise – gives a chance to escape from the rest of the movie if it is a bad one.

The movie continues. Sabrina, looses hope. Her faith is crushed. She gives up, accepts life with all the injustice and continues life. However, Meera, a journalist in NDTV reads the court verdict and boils with rage. She uses her wit and media to fight the case. She stirs up the public opinion, starts up a movement that finally forces the powerful and influential ones in the society to buckle down to justice.

This story was based on a real story, I believe. The movie did make an impact on me.

We read all the time in the news about murders and trials. Somebody killed somebody. We never find out if the killer got punished. We never really think what if the murderer was let free? How are the victims family fighting the case ? It is just a headline for us. Jessica could be anyone of us and so could be Sabrina. What did Sabrina lack? She was brave and determined. She was focused and did what she could do in her power to bring her sister’s murderer to justice. She failed. She gave up. She lost hope. She accepted defeat. We all do that. Many a times we see system broken and injustice around us. We fight and if we fail, we give up. We become Sabrina.

It is sad but true that most of the times we need a Meera to fight for us. Meera is an aggressive, smart and influential journalist. She was clever and knew the name of the game. She took over the case. Media was her tool. Public opinion was her power. She stirred up the case, uncovered the broken evidence and produced them in front of the public and opened up the phone lines to hear the voice of common man. The case got reopened in high court. Murderer got punished and Jessica got justice.

Sabrina got Meera to fight her case. Do we wait for a Meera to come and fight our cases? How long do we wait? Well, what did Meera do? Her success was in changing a mere “murder case” into a public movement. This is the message behind the story! In order to get success in anything that involves people and society, it is required to start a movement. Involve common man into the cause. Include more people to fight for the case or cause. Build up the case till, a tipping point happens. Things then start turning around. The case moves by itself and victory seems much in horizon.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

A new beginning – a new start – a new set of resolutions – another fresh chance to set life in order! It is a special day if you want it to be; else it is just another day!

A New Year gives a chance to think about how we spent the last year; good times, bad times, happy moments, big achievements, friends made, friends lost, books read, music enjoyed, art experienced, thoughts emerged and spirituality expanded! The holiday season prior to New Years gives us some time to ponder about these things and do some introspection! It gives us a chance to look at our everyday lifestyle and see ways to improve it. Habits that gave happiness and success needs to be continued to the next year; habits leading to misery, waste of time and energy needs to be weeded off. A New Year Resolution is a vehicle to start off this process. Making a New Year resolution is a ritual – it gives us another chance to declare our goals for the year and our plan to achieve them; a chance to make new habits, connect back with old friends and adopt ways to live a happy and prosperous life.

Do I have New Years Resolutions? Of course I have. Not just one but a list of resolutions – some public and rest personal. It is more than a ritual to me – it is time to look into my life, accept faults in my existing life style, identify ways to improve it and adopt changes to make it better.