Business to the Buddha

Tag: Jatak tales

  • Teaching virtues to Adviti







    We were blessed with a baby girl a couple of months back. We have named her Adviti. Adviti from a Hindi / Sanskrit word Advitiya which means unparallel, peerless or no other can be like her (him). As they say in Chinese catch them young, now, I am parenting Adviti and teaching her virtues.

    In last couple of months life has changed. A lot has changed for me and specially for my wife – Simple. Having a baby is a huge responsibility and taking care of her has changed us both in many ways. A dimension is added in all these personal, psychological and emotional changes – how do we provide good upbringing to Adviti?

    Being bit spiritual, though she is just turning six months, I started reading Jatak tales to her. At times I laughed at myself – I am reading these stories to her in English. I wonder if she understand Hindi (native language) forget about English (non native language). Isn’t it difficult to figure out approach for correct (better) upbringing of kids? Has anyone figured it out?

    When I started reading these stories to her, I asked myself, should I teach certain virtues – taught in the stories – to her? I wonder in next couple of years how our society will change.

    As a kid I lived around a lot of Jain followers. During those days not eating onion and garlic was natural to me. In fact I am trying to practice their eating habits now too. Besides other concepts, the Jain philosophy teaches a concept – Asteya meaning non stealing. However, in today’s society where morally corrupt make the law and loot are mostly legalized, what is the meaning of a parent teaching such lessons to his/her children?

    I have examples of previous 70 years of corruption cases of India alone, forget about the rest of the world. The law gets bent such that corruption – even though it is evident – of these lawmakers become legally correct. It is so difficult to prove – something that looks so evident – that many corruptions happened but we cannot prove it easily – case in point is – case on son of previous finance minister. Our (specially Indian) legal system is so slow and lopsided that it takes 20+ years to get someone jailed (read Sanjay Dutt or Lalu Prasad Yadav) and prove someone innocent (A postman).

    Here, it is needless to say that Indian film industry tried proving Sanjay Dutt innocent with all the flaws. Isn’t it possible someone in future will try to paint these current politicians also as innocent? If our culture is getting a narrative that is distorted parents may have doubt in teaching virtues to their kids. Asteya – non stealing – is it just a good concept in books or religious sermons? Does it make sense to teach virtue’s to our next generation?

  • The fish will fly in next birth







    The phone rang for unusual number of times today. My sister or her daughter is generally not that late to pick up a call.

    When I heard my sister on the other side, I said – “Hi! didi, what are you doing? Where is Chinu?” Her response took me aback. She said – “Chinu and her dad is going to burry our fish, there were two both died today.” Chinu is my niece, who is ~5+ years currently.

    I saw surprised, “when did you bring fish? Last time also the same happened.”

    My sister responded – “Yes, we bought these two about a month back. Last time also the fish could not survive more than a month. Chinu was so attached to these fish that when these died she was very upset and felt very low.”

    My sister continued – “when I could not handle here sorrow face, I told her, Chinu, both the fish were bored of swimming they both wanted to fly. Now they would become birds.”

    FishMy sister reads Jatak tales to her these days. Chinu was satisfied that both the fish are on their way to accomplish what they want to do. When her father called, she informed him also (this time with relatively more happily) – “daddy, both of them will fly now, they wanted to become birds.”

    Chinu was at peace, she went to bury the fish as she did last time also. However, this time she was content. She did everything possible to have the fish and provide them with special fish food and good quality aquarium, but these could not survive.

    Chinu was not upset. When I heard what my sister just said, I remembered an interesting scientific research published recently. This research was done at Stanford University. It falls under Social Psychology using priming as an approach. These things sound very complicated, let me elaborate these points –

    According to psychologists social psychology is usage of scientific methods “to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other objects.”

    Priming is a phenomenon about exposing people to certain words or images that then subconsciously influence their thinking or behavior.

    According to that research, if people are exposed to Buddhists concepts (experiment group included Western Christians, Western Buddhists and East Asian Buddhist individuals) people reacts to things positively more often.

    QUOTE Huffington Post

    Across all groups, people who were exposed to words like “Buddha,” “Dharma” and “awakening” in a word puzzle showed fewer negative associations with African and Muslim people than those who were exposed to Christian or nonreligious words.

    Participants who were primed with Buddhist words also scored higher on a test measuring prosocial behaviors. These effects were particularly pronounced among people who scored higher on tests measuring open-mindedness.

    UNQUOTE

    Though, I myself have questions on the way research was done, what is the impact Kanakia 7on before priming vs after priming etc yet when I relate this research to my niece I believe this must have some correlation.

    I think that is why Kanakia ‘Sevens’ – a residential project – is advertised like this. Also I have been seeing a lot of photos/status etc of the Buddha at various places as “fashion” perhaps having subtle – unknown – meaning.

    Image source – Kanakia Sevens

    Aquarium Image source – Flickr