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What are you searching for?

27 Saturday Oct 2012

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My little niece – we call her Chinu – has a couple of  videos and books. In some of the videos and books there is a story, in this story the main character – Lenny (in one story) – is searching/waiting for a friend. The idea is – Lenny wants a friend did not know how to identify the friend. Some of the dialogs of the story –

…”Oh Sorry! cheeped a little voice”

“Never Mind,” growled Lenny.

“My name is Tweek. And yours?” cheeped the voice.

“My name is Lenny, but I don’t have time to stop and talk,” Explained Lenny. “I have to get home and wait for a friend”.

“May I wait with you?” asked Tweek.

“If you want to, but don’t disturb me,” replied Lenny.

“So what does your friend look like? when is he coming?” asked Tweek.

“Don’t know,” said Lenny.

Believe it or not, the search/wait is on…. everyone of us is searching for something. TV channels are searching for next sensational singer or dancer. News channels are searching for next breaking news. Box office is searching for its next bigger hit or super star. Citizen of India in general for good governance and so on. Whatever said and done, search is on.

When we turn to individual, the search is for a better friend, good house, better life style, peace of mind, love or a superior job. No doubt search is on. Many a times what is observed is that the search is on but one does not know what is that he/she is searching for.

When an organization is on the journey of innovation, not knowing what is required becomes a very big problem. In my innovation consulting and TRIZ learning I used to have a framework for removing the problem of not knowing what are we searching for. The method is Ideal Final Result (IFR). The concept of IFR seeks the destination or best solution in the beginning itself. This method helps identifying what are  looking for and where we want to go?

So what are you searching for?

By the way, when the Buddha was searching (enlightenment), he could not attain that. However, when he even dropped the idea of “searching” he achieved it! To start off – the Buddha knew what he is searching for.

Image source – TRIZ Journal, article by Simon Dewulf and Darell Mann

Intentions

21 Saturday Jul 2018

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Once upon a time, there was a woodcutter, Ram. He was hardworking and had been doing woodcutting as a ancestral (family) profession. He was in this business for good about two decades. Ram’s daily schedule was to wake up in morning, get ready and go to the jungle to bring wood for selling in the village market as a fuel. His experience in all these twenty years were mixed, some days he found good wood and buyers with least heckling, other days neither of these.

In old days in India, seeing a saint meditating was a common siting, specially outskirts of town or in jungles. One day a saint arrived in the jungle where Ram used to go for cutting wood. This saint started meditating at an open space under a tree. A couple of days passed, he was in meditation.

Ram happened to cross this place and noticed the saint. Ram kept on cross this area daily for want of good quality wood. He noticed this saint meditating everyday. Ram was extremely impressed with the radiance of this unknown saint. The steady, unfazed and peaceful demeanor used to make Ram’s day calm, monetarily rewarding and merrier. When you’re around enlightened masters, your life changes for good, somehow things start falling in place.

One day, Ram felt that he must help the saint by keeping some food for him. It will help the saint continue practice without wasting his time on searching for food. So he brought honey from nearby apiary, without disturb the beehive much thus avoiding disturbance in the area. Once honey was available, he kept this honey and water near the saint and left for the day.

Saint was in deep meditation, completely unaware of the number of days passed by or someone keeping food for him. How long can you keep ants away from sweet? Ants came soon and rather than being a help; honey became a nightmare. Same evening some mischievous people also crossed this place. These people threw sugarcane sticks at the saint with full intentions to disturb his meditation. Thankfully instead of hitting the saint, these sticks fell nearby. Now, these ants got diverted to the sugarcane stick!

One must look at the intentions behind actions, it is not always the case that someone throwing a stone at you, he/she is likely to hurt you. Someone’s good intentions may be deterrent whereas bad intentions can be a boon.

Have you heard that one must not help caterpillar in it’s metamorphosis to a butterfly or should not break an egg to take chicken out? Good intentions but harmful outcome. Similarly –

Take the stones people throw at you and use them to build a monument. Quote Robin Sharma

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It happens occasionally that your colleagues help you. If this assistance does not make you learn, possibly the long term outcome is harmful to you. On the contrary if your colleague does not help you; may be it is good for you because you will learn harder way with mistakes. These mistakes can teach you many ways not to do something, or how to do other new things. Isn’t it? Perspective!

Bad things may not happen to good people. If you feel something is bad in your life, possibly you need to involve yourself in more of good work. My sister – Preeti – told me this story recently, I liked it and so I put it here.

Image source – http://tathaastu.com (via Google search)

Grass grows by itself

29 Sunday Apr 2018

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For last couple of years, I have been buying stuff (mostly grocery and vegetables) from where I get a bill (invoice), even if I have to pay a bit more. Reason has been straightforward – I am fine paying more because presumably the one who gives me bill pays tax. It reduces burden on my tax and thus country can improve and prosper. Straightforward logic. However, another thought runs in mind – things are getting automated, be it agriculture or industries. Technology based jobs are likely to get automated too. This will create a scarcity of jobs. We should support roadside vendors otherwise how will they sustain their livelihood.

Next level challenges for Governments and even for private sector will be job creation at grass root. The other thought says possibly there would not be a need of job creation. Things will happens automatically due to automation. On a philosophical level as Ramana uncle keeps on quoting – Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself. ~ Basho. This no one would require to do job, the same possibility suggested by Keynes.

The world thus would be a kind of utopia, we hopefully wont require ruling over the other. It would be a time of soul searching, digging inside doing inner revolution. I strongly believe prosperity of each individual is the best way to reach the Utopian world. Economics, fails at such Utopian world, because where there is scarcity there is demand and supply. However, if everyone is prosperous probably no one will feel wealthy. Feeling of being wealthy at that time would be defined by some other measures – not necessarily by money. Currently too we are on the verge of redefining wealth, money is not what you have in your pockets or home is no more the only wealth. Wealth is – stocks you have, count of zeros in your accounts, may be in future we would look at bitcoins in your electronic wallets.

Possibly, the Buddha was disillusioned by wealth – he was a prince after all, wealthiest of kingdom – when he saw a sick old man, a dead body etc. Likelihood of seeing a Buddha like person is far higher in prosperous economy. India was at peak of its economic, scientific and spiritual knowledge. The world now and in future needs to think about spirituality and economics in same plane. The world we are creating for our coming generations should have growth, livelihood, sustainability and spirituality together. This requires learning a couple of concepts of Buddha’s teachings deeper – i. interdependent co-arising ii. the middle path and iii. righteousness (speech, action, livelihood,efforts, mindfulness, concentration, view and resolve).

I think we need to think beyond jobs creation, wealth, we need to think about a holistic development of human race because the grass grows by itself.

Happy Buddha Purnima, may everyone become The One soon.

Angels and Demons – Possession

19 Monday Jun 2017

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After a long long time, I am sharing another interesting story from The Prayer of the Frog. Occasionally I read one of the other story from the book by Father Antony de Mello. The book is available in two volumes Prayer of the Frog Volume 1 and Prayer of the Frog Volume 2. This time I was searching for a story on “Angels and Demons”, I was confident to find some or the other story because Abrahamic religion have a deep rooted concept of angels and demons. I was taken aback when I could read more than one stories on angels but none involving demon! This is a very interesting story so thought that without delay I will share it here.

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An old woman died and was taken to the Judgment Seat by the angels. While examining her records the Judge could not find a single act of charity performed by her except for a carrot she had once given to a starving beggar.

The power of act of kindness is such that she was taken up to heaven on the strength of that carrot. The carrot was brought to court and given to her. The moment she caught hold of it, it began to rise as if pulled by some invisible string, lifting her up towards the sky.

While she was ascending a beggar appeared clutching on to the hem of the woman. He too was lifted along with her. Behind came another person holding the beggar’s foot and was lifted too. Soon there was a long queue of people lifted up to heaven by that carrot (act of kindness). The woman did not feel the weight of the people who held on to her; in fact she was not even aware about them.

The whole queue rose almost near the heavenly gates. The woman looked back to catch a last glimpse of the earth and saw this whole train of people behind her. She was indignant! She gave an imperious wave of her hand and shouted, “Off! Off all of you! This carrot is mine!”

In making her imperious gesture she let go of the carrot for a moment—and down she fell with the entire train. There is only one cause for every evil on earth: “This belongs to me’”

Angels and Demons was this week’s LBC topic where Maria, Rummuser, Ashok and Shackman write weekly. I had suggested this topic, you can read what other writers have to say in their respective blogs.

Source – Prayer of the frog Vol 1

Utsav movie

14 Sunday May 2017

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I was speaking about Utsav, a Bollywood movie, with my wife. I liked that movie and asked her what your take is? She said it was ok. I asked her to watch it again. She was curious – what was so special in in movie that you are asking me to watch it again? I told her –

In the movie there was a thief – Sajjal. Nothing apparently to learn from an outlaw. However, he was a creative thief. Wherever he stole from, he made creative designs of breaking-into a home. When he goes to steal, the hole he makes in wall is in some design. If he is not satisfied he improves it and once that is done, he proceeds to his actual job of stealing. Creative person can be creative in whatever situation. Not just that, when Sajjal was hired to rescue one of the leader of revolution (Aryak), there too Sajjal did things creatively. The hirer – Kulbhushan Kharbanda – had his heart in his mouth but the thief does not change his attitude and approach.

Kharbanda – one of the revolutionary – makes team out of some very random gems, the other lesson was this to me. Interestingly many of his team members were outlaws or for example – a chronic liar (Annu Kapoor) and the thief.  This liar creates stories to save himself from his tough situations – such as once he saves himself at Vasantsena’s (Rekha) the courtesan brothel by telling a lie about being a representative of Charudutt. I think there is another perspective –revolutionaries are always considered as outlaw! Isn’t it? What Annu Kapoor learns from this incident is another lesson in itself – Annu Kapoor learns – “If a man’s name can save him from going to jail, reciting almighty God’s name will surely save him from live and after lives and so on.”

Vasantsena has another interesting lesson to teach us. She falls in love with Charudutt a poor artist – who is already married and have a small baby boy. The last scene of the movie is the most stunning to me. Vasantsena is pursued by Samsthanak (Shashi Kapoor). Shashi Kapoor played the role of a mad lover of Vasantsena so well that I hated him in the movie, also I could not recognize him until I saw the list of artists. In the poster he is seen above the title of movie.

Samsthanak is so madly in love that he keeps on repeating her name at his various appearances on screen. However, Vasantsena is scared of him, she wants to run away from him – in Charudutt she finds solace. Both kind of fall in love, however, in the end when Charudutt is released from the death sentence – on the gallows literally – he runs to his family. Both his wife and Vasantsena are also running happily to hug him; he grabs his wife and not Vasantsena. It kind of breaks Vasantsena, what she learns from this is – i. accepting that Charudutt has a family, ii. She must accept their family and do not get into it, iii. She must love what she has and accept the love showered on him by Samsthanak. The last scene is very touching. After the revolution, Vasantsena’s brothel is empty. In last scene she opens the door and takes Samsthanak in – who has been beaten by citizen. Love needs to be unconditional, if there is a desire thats not love, that is business.

Needless to talk about Amjad Khan who plays the role of Vatsyayan author of Kama Sutra, he acted contrary of his image of a villain. Vatsyayan is searching for his different Kama Sutra asanas and therefore he is at the brothel. Indian philosophy had immensely different perspective even on super consciousness. Vatsyayan’ was from sex to super-consciousness. He says once – “Love, for me, is contemplation and not indulgence”

What did you learn from Utsav?

Perceptions and illusions

07 Friday Apr 2017

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Off late, I have – kind of – become forgetful. One of my friends shared someone’s phone number with me, a couple of days later, I bet with him that I ddin’t get that number. We checked Whatsapp, SMS, emails and not to miss address book too. I almost won the bet, thankfully it was not a monetary bet. I still kept on searching – in my “notes” app too I could not find. My friend told me the whole incident and I got a hunch, I think he did share the number! But to my utter surprise I could not find the number anywhere.

Well, I asked him that number again, he was bit annoyed yet gave me the number. I recalled – he had shared such number once – though I did not remember the whole number. It made me think about what happened in this situation? This incident made me understand that many a times we take things for granted, we tend to ignore many things. When we ignore things we are likely to be bodily at one place and mentally at another – in some fantasy or illusionary world. Isn’t it? The illusion we create through such mental images either become our perception or mend it and thus our limited (or at times incorrect) realities are created. For example – my forgetting my friend’s sharing the number with me as “You didn’t share the number”. If such incidents are not realities how do we know what is reality? In fact I think we need to ask ourselves – what is reality?

Life is simple – the illusions we assume as reality make it difficult. The fantasy we create are based on our perceptions or our belief of some reality. Our perceptions make our life difficult isn’t it? Let us say – an illusion – “our religion is under threat!” If a religion is one of the biggest in terms of number of followers – what is the threat?

We are so preoccupied with our own illusionary world that we miss many small things needless to say important or that which are the realities.

I suggested this topic for LBC, however for last couple of weeks I was not able to write regularly. You can read my fellow bloggers post on this topic at – Ramana uncelji, Shackman and Maria. I am trying to catch up with my backlogs of weekly blogs on spirituality, management and business.

Related blog – No judgement – its all about perception

LBC – Peace Of Mind

11 Saturday Jun 2016

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When I read the topic for Loose Bloggers Consortium, the very first thing came to my mind was this video from Kung Fu Panda 2. The other thought was that I have written a lot of blogs related to peace of mind earlier.

The conclusion of every blog post is that peace of mind comes from within and not outside. For example –

In the blog Peace of Mind – I started of thinking peace of mind comes from owning something or being at peace is independent of owning anything? I reasoned out that peace of mind is not in achieving something in life. However, peace of mind is being at peace with our mind in the present. Because the more we think more we complicate life – life is, simple!

In another blog Arrived… where? though peace of mind was not straightforward point of discussion, but something related was discussed. My brother in law asked me a very simple question – ‘what is home?’ ‘what is school?’ How do you define home/school etc” In that same discussion the conclusion was – home relates more to a feeling – comfort, peace.

In one more blog Dichotomy on happiness the question I ask was – happiness requires fulfillment of the CONDITIONS we create for being happy or it is a feeling irrespective of what happens in our life/to us? These conditions, to me, are never ending… as it happens to the squirrel in Ice Age-Trilogy and to Chaipau in Salaam Bombay“. Dichotomy of happiness is you decide on what you enjoy doing or you remain happy irrespective of the situation you are in….

In all these thoughts, the real peace of mind was understood when I first saw Dadaji (Dada Gavande), here is a tribute blog to Dadaji. “When I saw him for the first time, and later as well, I was completely awe stuck, everything, thought and feeling vanished. So much of serenity was flowing off his face that I had nothing to talk or ask.” If you want to experience such peace of mind, you either have to meet an enlightened master or be enlightened yourself.

There were about 10 or more blogs in which peace of mind was touched upon. For more of my thoughts on peace of mind, read What are you searching for? where really the question is to you. In another blog Is religion another organized crime? the point is have religion lost their meaning? In the blog Money what is it? I tried to create another fictitious currency. In another blog Fish will fly in its next birth how my sister tried pacifying her daughter whose fish had just died.

You can read all the blogs searched with “Peace of Mind” as searched term here

This topic for LBC was suggested by Ramana uncleji. You can read other blogs of other Loose Bloggers Consortium members at Ramana Uncleji, Shackman and Lin.

Shanti Mantra

04 Saturday Jun 2016

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I have always been very critical to Hinduism. When I was young, I used to feel – Ramayana and Mahabharata are well written novels. However, slowly my perception is changing. When I try to relate historical places (such as Panchavati, Nashik or Ujjain) and incidents around those places, you may call those incidents as stories, I think perhaps there is some veracity to these. The other thing I got to know about Sri Lanka tourism is places they show about the time of Ramayana Check Sri Lanka launches new product – Ramayana Trail – http://www.srilanka.travel/travel_news?news=267

Those all points apart, I have always been critical of Hinduism. However, recently, I was listening to some hymns in Sanskrit. The hymn sounds so different and interesting. I could only understand a part of it when I heard it for the first time. Naturally the hymn is in Sanskrit so it was not straightforward for me to understand. The part which I could make out was – “Vanaspateya shanti”. The hymn speaks about peace of biological life or plant beings. It had stanza for peace for everything.

I started searching for this hymn.

I would relate this hymn to another Sanskrit shloka –
ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः ।
सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु मा कश्चिद्दुःखभाग्भवेत् ।
Om Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah Sarve Santu Nir-Aamayaah |
Sarve Bhadraanni Pashyantu Maa Kashcid-Duhkha-Bhaag-Bhavet |

In the above shloka and Shanti mantra, the scholars are praying for peace for every living being. When we see the kind of violence around us – terrorism or wars – this kind of philosophy fascinates me. The religion evolved in India have the concept of inner search, peace and renunciation. This is something whole world needs to learn from Indian religion.

Flawed business model

27 Saturday Feb 2016

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There was a company Kingfisher Airlines which owed 7000+ Cr (70+ billion INR or well over 1B USD) to a consortium of banks in India. The company could not pay its debts; its owner/company recently was declared ‘willful defaulter’ by few banks. Now, the owner Dr Vijay Mallya is shifting to England with all funfair.

Indian Big Corporations debtThis event and the total debt (sourced from a LinkedIn post above) makes one seriously think – is it true that “The wall streets fraud” as Bernie Sanders US presidential candidate has said earlier? In India, we have very contrasting examples – one side there were many farmers who were committing suicide because they couldn’t repay loans and on the other side we have banks with NPA (Non Performing Assets) & professionals who do “Corporate Debt Restructuring” resulting in many if not all NPAs in future. At present Indian PSU’s NPA is more than their Market Capitalization.

Isn’t it “a subsidy transferring wealth from the rest of us to a select few” as the article rightly says?

Just imagine – the debts given above, tax evasion, Satyam case and many other cheating happening not just in India but in almost every corner of the world. For me ‘wall street’s fraud’ is just a metaphor, there are many more frauds we are confronting daily. I have written on a few earlier – Volkswagen & Toshiba, Rajat Gupta and Moral Markets! to name a few. Are we really maturing as human race? Or we have become more deceptive and satanic?

Just another example is the double speak of developed world on saving the earth – read Profit over the Planet.

The point, after lamenting so much is always – how do we solve these problems? Only way I see is spirituality – Paris attacks – solutions please moving towards being saint in suits rather than Thief in Tuxedo.

Related blogs – What are you searching for?

Image source – LinkedIn post of Mr Hariprakash Visant

Paris attacks – Solution please!

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

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PeaceHow would the Buddha look at the scenario of Paris attack? Or any other terrorist attack? I was wondering with the same sadness and anger as any other person. I twitted also regarding the Paris attack. However, there came an afterthought, what would the Buddha do? How would the Buddha react to such incidents? Well, I cannot think as the Buddha may think. So I started thinking on the basic lessons of the Buddha. There are four noble truths –

  1. There is suffering,
  2. There is a cause of suffering,
  3. There is an end to suffering, and
  4. Sufferings can end if one follows eight fold path

Everyone agrees, there is a problem of terrorism (suffering). What I think is – The Buddha will approach the problem of terrorism by analyzing it – what is the cause of this suffering. No doubt if there is suffering we can safely assuming there could be an end to it. In this case I believe the Buddha would try to analyze the problem and suggest a solution (as he suggested eight fold path).

So, I tried searching for possible reasons for Syria issue (I am not touching the terrorist activities of Taliban and Pakistan sponsored terrorist activities for this blog). There were various impacts I tried analyzing such as – why ISIS came into existence? A first level answer to it was Iraq war. Is it really an issue of 2003 Iraq war? Then I read this – You Can’t Understand ISIS If You Don’t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia so I started questioning on the very purpose of existence of ISIS? I started creating analogy of creation of Taliban (by USA) to fight former USSR and ISIS as one sub-section of Saudi Arabia. I may be completely wrong in the analogy however who gains if the ideology of ISIS gains more ground worldwide? Is it a problem of religious supremacy or political and power struggle? Perhaps it is both – I could not conclude on that with fair bit of confidence. I left the question aside for some time.

The other side I heard of Syria crisis is power struggle of Shia and Sunni faith of Islam which is contesting of supremacy. Sunni Muslims of Saudi Vs Shia Muslims of Iran are fueling the fight in a third country Syria. So, it is getting more garbled within the religion itself.

I moved to analyze the other thing – what is the impact of refugees fleeing to Europe? Does Europe need to show that much mercy to the fighting clans? Is Europe responsible for the mess and therefore it is moral responsibility of Europe to provide shelter to the refugees? Or it is economical requirement of Europe to have working hands for its economy? If these 500,000+ refugees are coming to Europe would it impact the religious balance of Europe? I think the growth rate of European Muslim population is already alarming. So, what is the impact? If the impact of this is intolerance and terrorist attack by fanatics, Europe may close the doors to refugees who knows?

Many refugees are coming to save their lives and other for improved standard of living. The – currently unknown – leaders sitting in their offices / mansions are letting people die (whether a Christian, Jew, Hindu, Sikh or a Muslim) to have a last laugh. All these are “craving” in the opinion of the Buddha. Method for working on these craving can be same (eight fold path) however for each type of craving the approach may differ.

The question is – would the leaders, refugees and the terrorists follow the path of the Buddha?

  1. Perfect Vision,
  2. Perfected Emotion,
  3. Right speech,
  4. Right action,
  5. Right livelihood,
  6. Right effort,
  7. Right mindfulness, and
  8. Right meditation

If the answer is even a 1% “NO”, this is what an after thought could be –

Related Terrorist meets The Buddha.