On day two of the gathering, I had 30 minutes prior to the small group discussion. I walked across the road, through the gate and down the path towards the bench overlooking the Ganga. The points mentioned by the speaker that morning started my thinking engine. I felt that the outcomes from the thinking process should not be lost. So I sat down on the bench and started writing thus after looking at the Ganga for a few moments.
As I sit down to write, the words by Rage against the machine come to my mind.
It has to start somewhere It has to start sometime
What better place than here, what better time than now?
K's point on decisions startled me; it was a revelation. I don't remember his words exactly but the gist of his words were that decision is not a good word as it implies the existence of confusion. It means the person has not made up his/her mind. It implies that choices exist in the person's mind and choices, in turn, implies that the confusion resides in a person's mind. This thought goes against many of my beliefs. Decision making, I thought, is a quality that many of us desire to possess. But I had never really thought the choices itself as a sign of confusion. How can I! Are we all not encouraged to have choices to choose from? Why are we encouraged thus? An incident that took place the previous evening provided me with a response (I use "a response" and not "the response" - even here I see the existence of choice).
A mobile phone at home stopped working suddenly, which, in today's world, is equivalent to having a near death experience. I had to order a phone through Amazon, immediately. My own mobile phone was ignorant of the fact that it was residing in the constituency of the Prime Minister of India. It would not connect to the Internet. With great difficulty, I found an Internet friendly location by the Varuna river. I had made the decision on the model to be purchased right at the beginning but I did not buy it immediately. I desired to find something better. So I went through the reviews of a number of phones. Thirty minutes later, I realized there were no better phones to purchase and went with my initial choice.
I brought in the confusion of choice and spend thirty minutes of my life is searching for something better sitting in a dark, lonely and mosquito ridden place to ensure that my choice was the best one. The desire for being correct; not just being correct but being so correct that no one can discover even an iota of incorrectness seems to bring in the choice. The choice leads to confusion that results in a decision. The process of decision making itself results in a feeling of satisfaction. One gets the feeling of authority - "I had a choice and I decided to pick the best". The process of decision making itself is frustrating as one has to go through a set of conflicting and contradicting views. Ultimately, if one investigates the decision making process one would realize that it is more based on heuristic than logic. But one never investigates and ends up living satisfied with the decision and the process of reaching it.
This is the way most of us live. But K is trying to make us not live the way we live. All his talks try to move us away from our everyday confusions, which, at most times, results in confrontations. He is trying to bring clarity into our lives. Unfortunately, clarity is something I struggle to find in many of his talks. I have to think and think and think to get a glimmer of understanding. Frankly, many of the words I write here are not the ones I wrote in my book by the Ganga but required many hours of thinking.
We walk along the path of life and reach an intersection. Our life comes to a stop as we stand at the intersection wondering which path to take. We ask the people passing by on their opinions of the path. They give their opinion and based on these opinions we take the decision and choose a path. Our own experience of the path might be different from what we expected but we cannot go back. We continue on our path to get to the next intersection and the process repeats. As per K, by the time we get to the intersection, the path to be taken should be obvious. We shouldn't be waiting at the intersection looking at the choices. If we ruminate on this thought, we hear K telling us that our paths should be free of intersections. There should be no choices, no confusions and no decisions. But this does not mean that one should mindlessly go about living one's life. It means the opposite - one should be mindful of the occurrences in one's life. One should truly know where he/she is. Am I there yet? Obviously not. Will I ever get there? I don't believe I will but it is worth trying.
In the video, K also mentioned that one should be selfless in one's actions and should have a silent mind. During the small group discussion the next day, one of the participants appreciated the statement. All of us shook our heads in agreement. He continued that it would be impossible for him to have silent mind but from that moment he will work on making his actions selfless. I did not agree with the latter part of his statement though. I believe being selfless is next to impossible. The happiness one feels when one sees the happiness that has resulted from one's actions removes the selfless nature from one's actions. Actually, I don't think the happiness itself is the problem. When this happiness becomes an obsession, one starts doing good only to feel this happiness. I believe that becomes a problem - the act of selflessness becomes an addiction. The problem lies in this addiction as addictions of any form only leads to selfishness.
One should, I believe, act in accordance to the need. If the situation demands selfless action, do so. But do not go in search of it. More than anything else, it is the intent of the action that matters. I had written in my notebook that our actions should not cause harm to other but that's not right either. One cannot say "my actions should not cause harm to others". Every action we take causes harm in some form or other. The buildings we build, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the air we breath, the vehicle we use; almost every action of ours result in harm to others. Not just that, it is done for oneself in some manner or other and hence the element of selflessness is lost. I believe finding answers to the following question would help us.
1. Why am I doing it (the intent)?
2. What is the harm it causes and can we live with the harm caused?
3. Is this action really necessary?
The answer to the questions depend on one's personality. The search for selflessness should not lead one to inaction.
K talked about fear in another video. At the beginning of the talk he announced that by the end of the talk the people in the auditorium will not have fear within them. He then spent many minutes defining fear. He also spend an annoying amount of time to inform the audience to come along in the journey as partners and not as listeners. Ultimately, he spent three fourth of the speech in this manner. Finally, he got to the cause of fear. According to K, time and thought are the causes of fear. I did not understand why and how time and thought are the causes though. At the end of the video, I had no idea how to deal with these causes and ultimately with fear. The video was played after dinner. Some people dozed through it and others walked out. I did neither though I was tempted to do the latter.
At the end of the talk, K warned that one had to understand the concept as it is being said and it cannot be left for later. I felt disappointed and felt that K had not evolved the thought fully. It seemed he was not prepared to talk on that day but was forced to do it. This video was a taped in 1980. Another video from 1984, touches on the same topic, fear. In this case, I was able to understand K's explanations. He seemed to have developed the thought and was patient enough to explain it. In the talk, he maintained that thought and time were the main causes of fear. As per K, thinking about an event that occurred in the past and expecting it to happen in the future brought about fear. It could be a pleasant occurrence that you are worried will not happen again or an unpleasant event that you believe might happen again. Either way thinking brings in fear.
The other cause of fear is time. When K talks about time, he is referring to the time we take to act. We think we have time to change and don't start the process immediately. K continues that the future is now - what you are now is what you will be in future and what you were in the past. This means that if you want to change, change now - you are what you will be. In this video, K talked about our lives being a bundle of memories. Through our lives we add memories but memories are static. K went on to say that motives in our lives arise from our memories and hence they are static. Life is all about movement and static objects clash with objects that move. Hence we should find a way to live without motives and learn till there is nothing to learn.
Public speaking is a tricky business. I believe the speaker should combine knowledge with passion, language and wit to capture the audience's attention. Wit is not a necessity though. The tricky part in the above mentioned list is knowledge. It is a necessity else the speech would end up being hollow. Its existence does not guarantee a good speech though. It has to wrapped well prior to its presentation. It cannot be presented raw; one should not give a sugarcane to someone attempting to sweeten his/her tea. On the other hand one should not wrap it so much that the audience get tired unwrapping it; one should not provide a sachet of sugar to a person looking to sweeten his/her tea in a safe. As an example for a statement wrapped in complexity look at the statement "this control empowers the service provider to address the issues faced by one or more end users, by providing multiple packages that have fine-grained control on the end user’s network needs". It can be simplified as... Nevermind! I am sure it can be simplified. In between all these knowledgeable speakers lie a set of speakers who wrap words masquerading as knowledge in layers on complexity. Thus public speaking is not only a challenge for the speaker but also for the listener too.
One of the speakers at the gathering, spoke gravely with a stoic countenance. He talked on the topic of crisis in society (which demanded a stoic countenance from not just the speaker but from the listeners too). The crux of his talk was about our society being mired in the crises of greed and triviality. According to the speaker our society our society is involved in triviality in all spheres of life - Be it politics, sports, entertainment or social interactions. He also talked of our insatiable hunger for a lot more than our requirement, which has resulted in widespread disparity in our society. The point on the crisis of greed disturbed a few, including me, in the audience. One person talked about this discomfort in the ensuing small group discussion.
She was disturbed by some of the excesses taking place as a result of the gathering. She was referring to the number of people who traveled to attend the gathering. In many cases, the attendees used the luxury of an airplane or AC compartment in a train to travel. She continued that the attendees stayed in comfort and consumed sumptuous food during their stay. She felt uncomfortable with this indulgence. She wondered if we were being insensitive about the issue while we talked about it at length. Are we all not adding to the crisis of greed while we talked about it? The learned facilitator cleared his throat and responded. Unfortunately, his response was did not address the questions.
Group discussions are dependent on the facilitators. Some facilitators play the role perfectly by asking a few questions to enable the discussion and by taking part in the discussion as an equal member of the group. A few start off quietly like the previously mentioned facilitators but soon take complete control of the proceeding. By the end of the discussion, the facilitator has a response for almost all the questions and everyone ends up listening to the facilitator quietly. The third kind can be classified as the expert facilitator. He/She takes complete control of the discussion from the start. They have responses for every question and the group discussion ends up looking like an interview or press conference.
One of the group discussions, had a facilitator of the third kind. A senior and respected person at the gathering facilitated the discussion. He was an expert in many fields. So he started answering all the questions from the beginning of the discussions. Soon, every member of the group addressed the questions to him and not to each other. Though the facilitator's responses were informative and illuminating, the nature of the group discussion changed. One of the younger participants was offended by the manner in which the discussion was proceeding. He protested by reminding facilitator that this was a discussion and not an expert opinion session (of course, he was not this blunt). Now, it was the turn of the facilitator to be offended. He did not hide his vexation as he answered that the participants in such discussions are all at different levels of thinking. So the discussion will not be among equals and tends to be pointless.
The incident brought out interesting aspects of today's world (and maybe the world at all times). Members of the older generation are eager to bestow their learning and knowledge to newer generation. They authoritatively try to educate the younger ones. But the younger ones are not interested in listening. They want to explore and discover for themselves. They too want to share their discoveries. From their point of view, the world has changed and the rules are different. They believe that the older generation does not understand the world enough to advise them. The many generations that occupy our world brush against each other uncomfortably.
Such tussles between generations are common all over the world. But it disturbs us to see people, whom we consider learned, involved in such tussles. Their learnedness is seen in their talks but one can perceive gaps in their actions. The dichotomy between words and actions exists all around and the participants of the gathering are not above this dichotomy. K's messages bring in the additional complexity of being understood in many way or sometimes not at all. I think it is a blasphemy to think that K's messages has the absolute truth embedded in it. As a matter of fact, I don't think absolute truth or for that matter, truth exists. Everyone lives by their own truths but the trouble starts when one starts believing that their truth as the absolute truth.
We spend a lifetime building our truth and then go away.
PS: The GVK in the title stands for Gathering at Varanasi on K
This is the way most of us live. But K is trying to make us not live the way we live. All his talks try to move us away from our everyday confusions, which, at most times, results in confrontations. He is trying to bring clarity into our lives. Unfortunately, clarity is something I struggle to find in many of his talks. I have to think and think and think to get a glimmer of understanding. Frankly, many of the words I write here are not the ones I wrote in my book by the Ganga but required many hours of thinking.
We walk along the path of life and reach an intersection. Our life comes to a stop as we stand at the intersection wondering which path to take. We ask the people passing by on their opinions of the path. They give their opinion and based on these opinions we take the decision and choose a path. Our own experience of the path might be different from what we expected but we cannot go back. We continue on our path to get to the next intersection and the process repeats. As per K, by the time we get to the intersection, the path to be taken should be obvious. We shouldn't be waiting at the intersection looking at the choices. If we ruminate on this thought, we hear K telling us that our paths should be free of intersections. There should be no choices, no confusions and no decisions. But this does not mean that one should mindlessly go about living one's life. It means the opposite - one should be mindful of the occurrences in one's life. One should truly know where he/she is. Am I there yet? Obviously not. Will I ever get there? I don't believe I will but it is worth trying.
In the video, K also mentioned that one should be selfless in one's actions and should have a silent mind. During the small group discussion the next day, one of the participants appreciated the statement. All of us shook our heads in agreement. He continued that it would be impossible for him to have silent mind but from that moment he will work on making his actions selfless. I did not agree with the latter part of his statement though. I believe being selfless is next to impossible. The happiness one feels when one sees the happiness that has resulted from one's actions removes the selfless nature from one's actions. Actually, I don't think the happiness itself is the problem. When this happiness becomes an obsession, one starts doing good only to feel this happiness. I believe that becomes a problem - the act of selflessness becomes an addiction. The problem lies in this addiction as addictions of any form only leads to selfishness.
One should, I believe, act in accordance to the need. If the situation demands selfless action, do so. But do not go in search of it. More than anything else, it is the intent of the action that matters. I had written in my notebook that our actions should not cause harm to other but that's not right either. One cannot say "my actions should not cause harm to others". Every action we take causes harm in some form or other. The buildings we build, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the air we breath, the vehicle we use; almost every action of ours result in harm to others. Not just that, it is done for oneself in some manner or other and hence the element of selflessness is lost. I believe finding answers to the following question would help us.
1. Why am I doing it (the intent)?
2. What is the harm it causes and can we live with the harm caused?
3. Is this action really necessary?
The answer to the questions depend on one's personality. The search for selflessness should not lead one to inaction.
K talked about fear in another video. At the beginning of the talk he announced that by the end of the talk the people in the auditorium will not have fear within them. He then spent many minutes defining fear. He also spend an annoying amount of time to inform the audience to come along in the journey as partners and not as listeners. Ultimately, he spent three fourth of the speech in this manner. Finally, he got to the cause of fear. According to K, time and thought are the causes of fear. I did not understand why and how time and thought are the causes though. At the end of the video, I had no idea how to deal with these causes and ultimately with fear. The video was played after dinner. Some people dozed through it and others walked out. I did neither though I was tempted to do the latter.
At the end of the talk, K warned that one had to understand the concept as it is being said and it cannot be left for later. I felt disappointed and felt that K had not evolved the thought fully. It seemed he was not prepared to talk on that day but was forced to do it. This video was a taped in 1980. Another video from 1984, touches on the same topic, fear. In this case, I was able to understand K's explanations. He seemed to have developed the thought and was patient enough to explain it. In the talk, he maintained that thought and time were the main causes of fear. As per K, thinking about an event that occurred in the past and expecting it to happen in the future brought about fear. It could be a pleasant occurrence that you are worried will not happen again or an unpleasant event that you believe might happen again. Either way thinking brings in fear.
The other cause of fear is time. When K talks about time, he is referring to the time we take to act. We think we have time to change and don't start the process immediately. K continues that the future is now - what you are now is what you will be in future and what you were in the past. This means that if you want to change, change now - you are what you will be. In this video, K talked about our lives being a bundle of memories. Through our lives we add memories but memories are static. K went on to say that motives in our lives arise from our memories and hence they are static. Life is all about movement and static objects clash with objects that move. Hence we should find a way to live without motives and learn till there is nothing to learn.
Public speaking is a tricky business. I believe the speaker should combine knowledge with passion, language and wit to capture the audience's attention. Wit is not a necessity though. The tricky part in the above mentioned list is knowledge. It is a necessity else the speech would end up being hollow. Its existence does not guarantee a good speech though. It has to wrapped well prior to its presentation. It cannot be presented raw; one should not give a sugarcane to someone attempting to sweeten his/her tea. On the other hand one should not wrap it so much that the audience get tired unwrapping it; one should not provide a sachet of sugar to a person looking to sweeten his/her tea in a safe. As an example for a statement wrapped in complexity look at the statement "this control empowers the service provider to address the issues faced by one or more end users, by providing multiple packages that have fine-grained control on the end user’s network needs". It can be simplified as... Nevermind! I am sure it can be simplified. In between all these knowledgeable speakers lie a set of speakers who wrap words masquerading as knowledge in layers on complexity. Thus public speaking is not only a challenge for the speaker but also for the listener too.
One of the speakers at the gathering, spoke gravely with a stoic countenance. He talked on the topic of crisis in society (which demanded a stoic countenance from not just the speaker but from the listeners too). The crux of his talk was about our society being mired in the crises of greed and triviality. According to the speaker our society our society is involved in triviality in all spheres of life - Be it politics, sports, entertainment or social interactions. He also talked of our insatiable hunger for a lot more than our requirement, which has resulted in widespread disparity in our society. The point on the crisis of greed disturbed a few, including me, in the audience. One person talked about this discomfort in the ensuing small group discussion.
She was disturbed by some of the excesses taking place as a result of the gathering. She was referring to the number of people who traveled to attend the gathering. In many cases, the attendees used the luxury of an airplane or AC compartment in a train to travel. She continued that the attendees stayed in comfort and consumed sumptuous food during their stay. She felt uncomfortable with this indulgence. She wondered if we were being insensitive about the issue while we talked about it at length. Are we all not adding to the crisis of greed while we talked about it? The learned facilitator cleared his throat and responded. Unfortunately, his response was did not address the questions.
Group discussions are dependent on the facilitators. Some facilitators play the role perfectly by asking a few questions to enable the discussion and by taking part in the discussion as an equal member of the group. A few start off quietly like the previously mentioned facilitators but soon take complete control of the proceeding. By the end of the discussion, the facilitator has a response for almost all the questions and everyone ends up listening to the facilitator quietly. The third kind can be classified as the expert facilitator. He/She takes complete control of the discussion from the start. They have responses for every question and the group discussion ends up looking like an interview or press conference.
One of the group discussions, had a facilitator of the third kind. A senior and respected person at the gathering facilitated the discussion. He was an expert in many fields. So he started answering all the questions from the beginning of the discussions. Soon, every member of the group addressed the questions to him and not to each other. Though the facilitator's responses were informative and illuminating, the nature of the group discussion changed. One of the younger participants was offended by the manner in which the discussion was proceeding. He protested by reminding facilitator that this was a discussion and not an expert opinion session (of course, he was not this blunt). Now, it was the turn of the facilitator to be offended. He did not hide his vexation as he answered that the participants in such discussions are all at different levels of thinking. So the discussion will not be among equals and tends to be pointless.
The incident brought out interesting aspects of today's world (and maybe the world at all times). Members of the older generation are eager to bestow their learning and knowledge to newer generation. They authoritatively try to educate the younger ones. But the younger ones are not interested in listening. They want to explore and discover for themselves. They too want to share their discoveries. From their point of view, the world has changed and the rules are different. They believe that the older generation does not understand the world enough to advise them. The many generations that occupy our world brush against each other uncomfortably.
Such tussles between generations are common all over the world. But it disturbs us to see people, whom we consider learned, involved in such tussles. Their learnedness is seen in their talks but one can perceive gaps in their actions. The dichotomy between words and actions exists all around and the participants of the gathering are not above this dichotomy. K's messages bring in the additional complexity of being understood in many way or sometimes not at all. I think it is a blasphemy to think that K's messages has the absolute truth embedded in it. As a matter of fact, I don't think absolute truth or for that matter, truth exists. Everyone lives by their own truths but the trouble starts when one starts believing that their truth as the absolute truth.
We spend a lifetime building our truth and then go away.
PS: The GVK in the title stands for Gathering at Varanasi on K
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