CHAPTER 12
There was nothing unusual about the three friends meeting late evening and talking past mid-night. This had been a practice since their college days. However, Utkarsh had an intuition that this meeting had something unusual; at least what it would end up with. He had sensed trouble as Mayank insisted that the meeting was very crucial and could not be delayed even for a day. He dropped in early to have a one-to-one talk with him before Ashish arrived. He sat quietly till Mayank made coffee.
“For years now, we have sat together to discuss issues and then reach on a key decision but I have a feeling that you have already decided something very important and called us to just announce it. I think Monku you should come clear on that. I am not complaining but it is important for me to know. I have always trusted your decisions and you know it very well that I also respect your freedom to make them. But, I need to be told as honesty and transparency has always come first in our relationship.”
Mayank did not say a word. He had lowered his eyes, looking at the steam rising out of the coffee cup. He shuffled his memories to find the right reply. Being a journalist, he always remembered how important it was to have a good content as introduction of an impacting story. A good content was one which could have a smooth navigation.
“You remember the cricket match we played against the St. Xavier’s school when we were in class six”, Mayank asked still looking at the coffee cup. “You were at the non-striker end and screaming at me as I was continuously missing the ball outside the off stump. From the non-striker end, you could easily see the out swing that the bowler was able to get but I was new to the crease and realized it only after you told me at the end of the over. You later told me that you thought I knew the ball was swinging and still playing dangerously.”
Utkarsh could not resist his tears. He took his arms and hugged him. Both friends washed their guilt.
“Monku, I am still scared when I feel you play and miss it outside the off stump. I do not care whether you make a century or not. All I want is both of us remaining together at the crease till the end of game.”
“What if the bowler bowls a really good ball? I can only assure I won’t be out on a bad ball.”
“This is exactly my concern. If you play to the merit of the ball and not commit yourself to a stroke even before the ball leaves the hand of the bowler, I am over confident you will never be out.”
“I have not committed to a stroke... not made a decision as yet. But I can admit that I am drifting fast towards a decision. There are some missing links. Things have unfolded in such fast pace that I could not acquaint you and Ashu with them. That is why; it seems to you that I am not being honest. The reality is in the making and we are sitting together to talk about all these.”
Utkarsh could not be sure how he felt after Mayank’s explanation. He still felt some unease as he could sense that Mayank had already half committed him to some important decision. He had an intuition that this decision would change things in their friendship and would bring up an adjustment which would be difficult for him.
“I have a feeling that you have breached the G-3 constitution of collective decision-making. I have enough reason to believe that there is another person in your life who is replacing me and Ashu in the collectivity. Who is this girl”, Utkarsh said, sounding, as if he was complaining.
Mayank smiled. This is the magic of transparency. The two friends were so honest and unambiguous to each other that they could see through their minds.
“How could you know there is a new person in my life; that too a girl and influencing my decision”, Mayank asked, still smiling.
“This is no Sherlock Holmes stuff Monku. I know you are not gay. I can see a new confidence in you and that comes only when a female is involved in the decision-making process of a man. I am married for the last six months, you know that.”
Both the friends laughed heartily. Mayank told Utkarsh everything about the woman in his life and the influence of her being an enormous enterprise for him.
“You know Utta, I am being challenged. And it has exposed me completely. I can say this to you with complete innocence and self-aplomb. Love does different things to different people. It has exposed me. Her love for me has dwarfed me, made me feel what a pauper I have been all these years. But look at the goodness of love; I don’t feel ashamed nor is my pride hurt. I am exhilarated, deeply satisfied that I am such a stupid. Love has stripped me off the pride of the useless possessions and as now I stand naked, I am truly happy because I can see what is to get and that seems gettable.”
Utkarsh knew, Mayank did not need a prompt to continue. The two had such trust between them that there was never a need of confirmation from the other. He could feel Mayank was on song. He would call him Utta, only when he would be emotionally too high. He ensured closing the world to his five senses to be in complete audience of the song of life.
“I think you remember Utta, we had a serious difference of opinion and our friendship was threatened when we were in class three. We were discussing what we would become when we grew up and you had declared that you would run a shop selling kites and its accessories. I had grave objection as I told you I had decided much before that such a shop would be mine. I even offered you to drop your plan in favor of mine and instead settle for a pastry shop but you didn’t accept. We had quarreled over the issue and for three days we did not speak to each other.”
“Yeah Monku”, he said with tears lining up in his eyes. “We were too stupid not to understand that we both could have opened similar shops or we could have done it on partnership basis.”
“That’s it…this exactly is it! Even now Utta, we are in similar state of stupidity. At all stages of life, wisdom always escapes us by what looks like a short margin and life-long, we chase stupidity. Wisdom is always round the corner but seems a step ahead of us. For most people, wisdom is available only in retrospect but we have only one life to live. If I were to relive my childhood, I would give that kite shop to you and would also agree to be with you in the shop all the time. Being with you and having common joys is the wisdom I can now understand but could not do it then because we did not then understand love. Love holds the wisdom, does not allow it to slip away.”
“You’ve got it right Monku, even I’m not embarrassed to admit that being in love is the true satisfaction, if not the right wisdom?”
“No…no! Not being in love but love itself. And it is because it exposes you to the stupidity of the world and yours. When you become love, you see the wisdom. Oh my God…how can I express it…it is like….! I can say that…you know, what we all do basically is chase our shadows throughout our lives. The source of light coming from behind, our shadow is always a step ahead of us. The source of light being the social expectation, or to say the world view created by our contemporary social definition of success and goodness, coming from behind, creates the shadow of personal benchmarks for us. And in sheer madness and stupidity, we chase this personal shadow to attain the benchmarks. We die tired and exhausted but fail to understand that shadows will always be unreachable as it will always walk a step ahead of us. What love does to you is put a new light in front of you and suddenly, your shadow shifts behind you and starts following you. You become a step ahead of your shadow and this is the ideal situation, the wisdom. The shadow of your personal success and goodness, defined by social expectations should always follow you and never the vice-versa. We quarreled in childhood over that kite shop because we put our personal success ahead of us. Had we understood love then, we would have known that wisdom was not in owning the shop but it was in being together in any shop, whoever owned it.”
“Monku, I really miss Ashu to know what he takes out of your wisdom thing. I have always found myself close to your ideas but even you would admit that ours is not the world view that majority of people have. Ashu probably holds the common man’s world view, which is also the popular one.”
“Yes, I accept that. Human mind is all about societal training
. We were all trained the way our parents and their forefathers were taught and trained by their societies. We quarreled in childhood because we were trained to the idea of ownership as benchmark of personal success and goodness. If we were trained in childhood in the tradition of love and compassion, we would have understood that ownership was not the joy thing; the joy is in just being there…together. It is redundant who possesses a rose garden. Important it is that we have the mental training to enjoy the beauty and fragrance of roses and share the joy and satisfaction together…not own it.
“But Monku, you cannot simply trash all that we have acquired and the world is so inclined in acquiring. There must be something of real worth in what we have done so far as billions of people are doing the same.”
“It is a matter of the world view. I am saying it that you have to understand the basic problems in our existing world view to realize why it is not serving us right. The very training of minds as per the existing world view is flawed, if you see it from the view point of love and compassion.”
“Where do you think we have gone wrong in our mental training?”
“Uttu, I am not saying I understand everything. If you ask me specific details then I am bound to sound stupid. I sincerely feel crippled; I am shocked at the mediocrity of my mental and physical faculties. Even the languages I have learnt are not helping.
“Express your ideas Monku; there cannot be things which human words cannot describe. You need to put your feelings and ideas in words.”
“This exactly is the mediocrity. There is a whole universe that needs to be described and expressed but falls outside the scope of human words. There is also a life outside the popular world view that needs to be lived and enjoyed but we are not mentally trained for it. I remember, when I stood at the point in Kanyakumari where the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal merge, I was overwhelmed by the expanse of blue and green water all around me. I did not want to possess it, it could not be. All I wanted was to stretch my hands to the farthest limits of the sea, hold the expanse and huddle it to my bosom. There was an initial fear…the immensity of the expanse triggers off a fatal fear…the first sign and symptom of a bad and faulty mental training…then gradually I could sink in into the song of serenity of the waves. I wished to describe my feelings, I wanted to write poetry on it…I wanted to paint the landscape...many things I recollect I wished to do but I could not. I was crippled; I was not trained for that. Similarly incapacitated I felt when I was on top of a mountain cliff of the Himalayan ranges at Rohtang pass, around 12,000 feet high. The suffocation, the debilitation of having an untrained mind is hundred times more when I am with her and feel being love. The passion, the joy, the satisfaction is beyond my capacity of expression…and the compassion loves fills your heart with…it needs expression Utta but we have not been trained for that. It cannot be expressed through words. Uttu, we have missed a huge learning in our lives. The faulty training led us to accept the mediocrity of words and languages as mode of expression. We missed the far superior and divine modes of music and dance. I am in love Uttu…and as I reach the high point of joy, compassion and exhilaration, words become useless for me. I wish to sing, I want to dance and paint to express myself. I need to express myself; express it not for others but for myself, I need a talk within. I feel suffocated…deeply defeated. I feel I am losing out. I feel wasted. We did not learn the song and dance…everyone must learn them.”
Utkarsh could see the pain in his eyes. He dabbled in poetry and knew the suffocation of the inadequacy of appropriate expression through words.
“I realize it only when I am deep inside love that there is a huge unlearning process that I need to go through. Then only I can think of developing the faculties that are needed for what I have understood as wisdom. The languages that we have learnt are very mediocre. They have been designed for social economy. They put us in somehow manageable situation when we need to express ourselves as social beings in the collectivity business of mutually agreeable survival mechanism. But we also need to express individually. There is a world of love, the universe of compassion, the cosmos of spiritualism where this language we have been taught loses significance. The society where we speak is only one small part of our individual universe. We need a language for other parts of our universe too. There is a talk going on inside us. We need to reach at different dimensions…different state of beingness…distinct from our social state…! We need to reach there and how can we? Our minds are not trained to understand what happens to us. My mind must tell me what and why it is happening to me. I need a language, a mode of expression to tell me constantly what is happening to me. This expression is required not for the collectivity. It is not required for social interaction. It is altogether a different need. I am so poorly trained that I feel incapacitated. But look, what love has done to me…it has landed me into a harmony of sorts. It has taught me to stop and take my new journey to the positives of life. It has given me the courage to unlearn the redundant and accept the unknowable.”
“Whatever is your current state of mind, is it primarily because love has happened to you or you would be same even if love did not happen?”
“I am not sure; should I give the whole credit to love or not. You know; we all basically attempt to be a comfortable person out of the inertia. We are socially trained like that. Throughout your life, you think you can do lot of better things. You always look for better alternatives to your current position in life. But, we have been trained to reject an existing thing only when we have a better alternative in hand. We do not drop out of a chaos simply because we think it is not good for us. We wait till something good or better comes to us. This also is the case with me. As I told you, I knew it well that my current state of things was not good for me. I had already rejected it mentally but physically I was continuing with it, as my social training of comfort of inertia made me to. When love happened to me, I found an alternative. I already had the reason to move out of the world where I was. Love provided me the will and a beautiful refuge. If love did not happen to me, maybe I would have lingered in inertia. But, I think I can say that may be late, but I would have done the same, even if love was not there as a powerful catalyst.”
“Okay, I accept what you say but there is still something you have not made clear.”
“What.”
“What is so bad and faulty about our mental training and contemporary world view that makes you so critical of it? You seem to completely reject it.”
“You think I know the answer?”
“That’s why I’ve asked you Monku. We have always shared all good things in life. If you are confident about your position and thinking, I will have all the ease in accepting it as my truth too.”
“I truly appreciate your feelings Utta but I am not sure of the answers. What I have been telling you is about my discomfort with the world view which leads us. I feel my mental training is letting me down when I want to fly and reach to the expanse ahead of me. That makes me feel that there is something terribly wrong with it. All I can say is about my own perception of things. Are they answers? It will be stupidity to think so. But yes, I can say, my perceptions are my truths as I think now I am much better qualified to say that, as I have love and compassion in my heart.”
“Let us not waste time and energy on the terminologies Monku. Let us say, what you understand are your perceptions and personal truths and not universal realities… okay with me! Now give it to me. At least I can decide they are my truths too or not. The world and its seven billion people have their own truths and we are not here to decide for them. I want to know what you think and that is my universe.”
“Uttu, there are larger questions in our lives. Why are we born? Why and for what we live? What is the ultimate aim and end of life – money, status, power and prestige...or for that matter attaining spiritualism and moksha (liberation)? Since thousands of years, the questions have remained with humanity and the struggle to find the right answers. I am also not an exception. I
also spent sleepless nights over the questions. I know that I still don’t know the true answers. But, now I have realized something that makes me comfortable with the questions and this is because of the wisdom love has brought in. Well and good if we humans find the ultimate end of life, the final destination of all of us and most important is that we should all agree to that. However, if we see the larger picture and accept facts objectively, with whatever knowledge humanity has so far evolved and understood, we shall have to accept that all life on earth, including humans and its evolution is one huge random and multi-dimensional event-cyclicality. On the other hand, what we humans make out of it and charter our own ways for survival, purpose and excellence is another multi-dimensional cyclicality. Both forces, though inter-dependent only at the core and having some patterns, which can be replicable, still, they remain highly and intricately randomized. The element of unpredictability, inadvertence, accidentality and asymmetricality in both largely sovereign forces of the cosmos only ensures that humanity can never ever remain in perpetuity of singular purpose, peace and order. Especially in contemporary situation, when humanity long before evolved and acquired the criticality of conscious intelligence, which is bound to lead it to ever-growing entropy (degrading randomization) and ultimate extinction in the long run. Finding a purpose and purity of singular pattern or model of culture and virtuosity for global community is out of question. The mechanism of cosmic realism never ever allows it. It is more impossible now. The wise can only understand that and find its own subjective peace. However, not all these are what look important to me now, especially when love and absolute intimacy has completely absorbed my consciousness. The destination is not important; important is that we all, you me, all our closed ones, travel the path with love and compassion and together, so far as possible. If we all travel with love and compassion all throughout our journeys, wherever we will reach will be the desirable destination. Moreover, even if we do not reach anywhere, our path itself is so beautiful and satisfying that there is no need for a destination. It is love that has shown me this simple wisdom. Love does not look for ends of life. It believes in the simple fact that life is one endless drive and on the way look for no signposts to reach anywhere…the joy and satisfaction of journey is more important than the nobility and utility of destination. There is no need to reach. Be on an endless journey and make it your destination where you tire. But always remember to travel with love and compassion in heart and why I say this? Because, when love and compassion are with you, the path and the journey becomes the theatre of infinite song and dance. When song and dance is with you, journeys are full of incessant joy and satisfaction. If you reach the stage; if ever there happens to be one, you will automatically lose the question of destination. The question of meaning of life and its purpose will be lost. Love makes you understand the futility and redundance of the intellectual concerns of life’s larger purpose and the material desire of life’s acquisitions. Love and compassion makes you understand that the true wisdom is not in reaching but in traveling well. May be also because, there is no destination and reaching. Love and compassion and its accompanying innocence is the greatest intellectualism, it is the best acquisition, if one defines life’s purpose in terms of acquisition and possessions.”
“And where do you think our current world view and mental training puts us away from this realization?”
“I have the feeling that our mental training to see the world as a stage for perpetuity of action, aimed at personal acquisition, based on societal and cultural notions of utility, possession and consumption is major trouble. This somehow engenders a consciousness in all of us, which is majorly and perpetually reactive, as against the need of being receptive. This makes us refuse to see the mechanism of cosmic realism all around us. To only a few, who have this highly receptive higher consciousness, the cosmic mechanism of asymmetrical randomization is unraveled. That is why the wise have said, wisdom is always in the domain of unknowable, something which can be realized but not known. First of all, the idea of meaningful action, what we term as our karma, has become such a misinterpreted thing that our world view has become majorly faulty. I rate myself a super idiot but even then I feel there is so much stupidity attached to the word karma. I fail to understand why we humans attach so much physicality to the notion. Most people confuse karma with physical labour. Karma is not labour, it is nowhere associated with action, as most people conceive it as. Shram (labor) and karma are two distinct things. I have always wondered whether this association of a pure idea like karma with daily life shram has been the basic fault with our world view and the resultant mental training. It seems, the cardinal error is associating human duties on earth as an actionable entity. The problem is that there is an over emphasis on one’s karma but most people follow what looks like the misinterpreted version. I have read that most great people in the long history of civilization have said that the purpose of life is to perform his or her karma but what I feel is that what most of them actually meant to have associated the golden word with is not action but a mind positioning. I know, all goodness are ideas and they need to be converted into action to be of larger good for humanity but the problem is; you need to understand the idea in its purest form then only a suitable and commensurate action pattern can be devised.”
“But Monku, you know it very well that average people have their own limitations. You must have read the philosophical premise that most humans have such limited mental levels that they only understand matter and not the idea. They need to be told all ideas of goodness in actionable terms only.”
“This makes out a case for change in our mental training since early childhood. You know Utta, all major questions of humanity are thousands of years old and that is why I presume, the right answers of all these questions must also be around for thousands of years. Reason and rationality have been there since ages to guide all generations of humanity. What I have told you about love and compassion may be my own personally acquired and experienced wisdom but there is nothing new about it. Millions of people before me have realized this and many have even practiced it successfully. What I have said about love and compassion has also been told time and again. Millions of more will realize the same in coming years. Read the ancient scriptures, read the ideas expressed by great humans, read the Holy books of all religions of the world. All of them have given common answers to all major questions of life. The answer is love and compassion. But this commonality of goodness is only at idea levels. When it comes to practice them, when the idea descends down to the actionable platform, it changes meaning and seven billion people on earth start practicing eight billion ways to attain the good. Loads of hypocrisy creeps in. The problem of humanity is not the idea but the action. That is why; I always say hypocrisy is the greatest malaise on earth. People in general know the idea of goodness but they rarely put them in action; or, they make bad actions out of good ideas. There is something majorly faulty with our mental training and current world view as it fails us in converting the right ideas into good action and practices. The knowledge of science makes us good doctors and engineers. But when we start prescribing unnecessary drugs and treatments to our patients for acquiring money and status, when we mix sand in cement in making a bride to acquire luxuries of life, can we blame the goodness of the idea of education? There is something terribly wrong with our mental training as social beings. Our world view, created since childhood, has something faulty. The goodness of idea loses out on the actionable platform.”
“What is the way out then? Any remedies…?”
“You may blame me for what you may call a eulogy of laziness and there may be some semblance of truth in that… my growing age must be behind it, but I really feel that overemphasis on karma as an action entity needs some close scrutiny. And I truly feel that it is because of male world’s obsession with seeing life as an enterprise. You know Uttu, what is the most popular definition of life? What has been termed by many greats as a synonym to life? They have sai
d, ‘life is a battlefield’. The scientists say that man’s predator gene of ancient times, when he survived by killing animals in deadly battles in jungle, still rules his actionable decisions. I wonder; this battlefield obsession with all human actions has been the most corrupting influence on the idea of karma.”
“You cannot at least blame Indians for that Monku. The very concept of karma was born in a battlefield. Lord Krishna should not have revealed the idea of karma to Arjuna on the battle field of Kurukshetra. He chose the wrong occasion. The context too was wrong. He urged Arjuna to understand his karma and go to battle with his relatives and friends. Had he chosen to do it when he and Arjuna were enjoying a coffee like you and I, the idea of karma would not have been so intrinsically attached to hard-fought actions! The life too would have been defined as something simple”, Utkarsh said jocularly.
“You never know Utta. You may be right. Religion is such a huge influence on most humans. And as I was telling you, the mental training of our society is passed on from one generation to another in such a way that there is very little chance of a wrong interpretation getting filtered out for centuries. Then, you have so many self-acclaimed teachers of religion who assure that all good ideas of ancient scriptures are poorly misinterpreted. The stupidity also becomes a venerated ideal.”
“But Monku, there must be a remedy to it. There has to be a way out of this stupidity.”
“I have already told you Uttu that I have come to believe that this world would be better off if we all accommodate and subscribe to the alternative world view of compassion, instead of passion. It’s a male world Utta and the problem also lies with the typical male view of life and karma. I really cannot understand why life’s view accommodates so much action and continuous struggle for activity. Why make life a battlefield. Why cannot we all settle for life as a mental thing, aloof from the physical action? Why cannot we define life as a beautiful mind experience or a mental journey, as against a struggling physical activity? You are right Uttu when you said most humans have the faculties developed only to understand matter and not the idea. That is why most humans understand body entities and not mental ones. But what I just wish to add is that this is basically because of our wrong mental training. You remember, when we were kids, we were told, ‘study hard and do well in your class. You will get all pleasures and comforts of life only when you toil now to have a successful career’. Nobody told us to study hard so that when we grow up, we would be in a better position to understand the conflicts of life and would be successful in discerning good and bad. People told us that if we became successful persons, we would get beautiful and wealthy wives. Nobody told us what we would then do with our beautiful wives. We were not trained how to love our wives well, how to make her happy and how best to become a caring and successful husband.”
“Yup Monku, there were many who were offering us expertise in sex to have good times with our wives but nobody trained us in the art of love and compassion which we need most when we get our wives finally.”
“The matter, the body, the action are so obsessively part of our karma and world view that the idea, the mind and the golden leisure gets no place. I firmly believe Uttu, when we will have a world view, which will be adorned by the feminine principles of love and compassion, we will find in place an alternative mental training mechanism. We will be trained not about the joys of consumption and ownership of matter in life and the resultant struggle for action but about the satisfaction of the beautiful ideas of love, care, emotions of togetherness, compassion and the very essential leisure to attain them.”
Utkarsh could not say anything. His mind was full. He was not very sure what Mayank was saying truly meant but he had always trusted his view point. He needed time to put all these in perspective to say anything concrete. He could however fear that Mayank had made up his mind for something which would leave him in disadvantage. He could not resist his query.
“What is then the final word Monku? What are you up to?”
“I am not sure Utta. May be I am reacting too much. May be I am biased in my stated positions because I have landed myself into a particular groove. But one thing I am very sure and confident of. I am not comfortable. I cannot think of continuing with what I am currently in. I refuse to accept that. I must say I am not saying that I sort of rebel against this chaos of the world I am in but can’t I demand a small non-intruding space for myself and my beliefs? This world view based on personal utility and consumption is not acceptable to me. I feel very incapacitated and suffocated in it. I am doubly sure that I do not want to bequeath this chaotic world view to my kids. This mental training of counting pleasure and discounting pains defined in terms of utility, possession and consumption kills my real joys, it shortens my horizon of satisfaction, it does not allow me to be what I am born for. I am sure I cannot survive with so many wrong benchmarks of goodness defined by this chaotic world view. You know Utta, a lover says to his beloved, ‘my dear, I would pluck the moon and stars and stitch them on your silk bodice, I would buy all the flowers of the world and pour them on your feet…’. Oh my God! Why can’t he say, ‘my love, join me, be in my arms so that together we see the beauty and exuberance of the beautiful moon and stars, come and breathe the fantastic fragrances of the rose, the different flowers that God has been so kind to bestow us with...let us pray together, thank God for such joys in our lives and beseech his blessings for making us together…allowing us the satisfaction’. Why is this mind training to pluck a beautiful rose from the Garden of the God and tuck it in the locks of our beloved? Who trained our minds to define the worth of things on the basis of our personal utility? Why does our mind understand pleasure only in possessing things for our personal utilities? Why success and status is defined in terms of how much we have available for our personal consumptions? Why do people value and respect a man who has million dollars in his pocket but knows no poetry, no music, no dance, no decency to respect fellow human beings and not even a language of respectability for others? Why is it that love and compassion in mind is considered a threat to individual success? Can’t you see Uttu, this is our faulty mental training! And then, people are full of complaints with their lives. Most part of world is faced with chaos. How sad and pathetic it is that we have been so poorly trained by this current world view that we cannot even see and recognize the Frankenstein in our lives.”
“But Monku, you miss the golden rule. If what you say is ultimate goodness and we all know goodness must be something that has inherent and all-pervading power of prevailing ultimately, why is it that large majority of people are still with this world view which you call as chaotic and unlivable for you?”
“It is not easy to explain it Uttu. There does not seem a straight and singular answer to it. I can think of multiplicity of factors and they probably happened over a space of time in the evolution of humans. You can say; there might be a mix of biological pre-disposition, neuro-chemical system of human body and socio-psychological factors in the long history of our evolution as social beings. Then there is this big conundrum called brain! There might be an answer which comes after assessing the impact of all these on intrinsic human nature. Huge initiatives are being made to unravel the mysteries of the functioning of mind and its connection with our multi-dimensional consciousness. May be, some day, we shall have the right answers as why we are what and how we are.”
“I don’t take this for an answer Monku. If we know the trouble, we should also very well know what causes this trouble so that we head for a clear cut solution.”
“You know Utta, I always feel the language which we have learnt are not good enough to express the deepest and truest of feelings and realizations. That is why; the real intellectuals prefer to keep quite. The greats have said that wisdom cannot be known, it is unknowable. Wisdom cannot be known but can only be realized. This is the core trouble of humanity. Science, information, knowledge can be passed onto generations of humanity. It is said that social habits based on contemporary know
ledge get registered in gene and pass onto next generations. The core wisdom however cannot be passed. Every human born on earth needs to go through the individual travails of life to understand it. That is why, only few men and women reach the wisdom. Wisdom is personal and very individual realization. You can make the wisdom as an opening line in all the books that our children read but still it cannot be understood. Tell it to the world that love and compassion is the only wisdom and make it the opening lines of all books of knowledge of the world but still only one out of a billion will understand it. It is because, love and compassion is useless if it is just knowledge. It is useful only when it captures your heart and mind and in tune with it, your entire consciousness reflects it. It is personal realization and useless as a community knowledge. That is why, transcendental wisdom cannot be part of the eugenics. ”
“So, you see little hope. We can say that there is no practical solution in hand for us?”
“No Utta. The reality is just the reverse. There is great hope. We may say that things look so bad at this moment but when we see the positives, it is amazing how satisfying the situation seems for future.”
“How can you explain that? You already said wisdom is personal realization and not something which could be taught as a subject of knowledge like science and history.”
“You just see the positives. You know what is the best part of this chaotic world? It is the universal acceptance of goodness and wisdom across civilizations and cultures. This world we live in is so big, so diverse and so dynamic. There is huge diversity of culture, mental conditions, stages of social evolution, economic conditions, spiritual sense and religious beliefs and practices. But all religions, all cultural blocks and all humans across geographical and historical layers accept one common goodness and wisdom. All humans accept that love, compassion, peace and brotherhood are the ultimate attainable aim and ends of humanity. The trouble is the wisdom is seldom put to practice. Think it Uttu, it is such a huge satisfaction that at least all men and women accept one goodness. Can you believe that! Seven billion people on this earth subscribing to one single belief across all diversity of religion, cultures and socio-economic realities! My God! It is huge hope for humanity…at least we all know and accept what we all need to do in our lives. The only small trouble is that most of us fail to achieve this desired aims in our lives. And why do we fail? You can ask that. But the answer, which my foolish brain understands is that our world view is faulty as over the years, we have created for ourselves very wrong benchmarks of personal success and goodness which dominates our world view. And this is because; the typical male view point dominating the world view. We need to change our world view and the mental training that we impart to our new generations. And as I had told you earlier, I have great hopes on the women-centric life-view, which is slowly but assuredly emerging as a beautiful alternative to the prevalent male world order.”
“Is that all about your positives? Are there more good news for us?”
“Yes, there are more positives, if you accept patience as a big virtue.”
“I still have to live a few decades more and I think I can afford some patience. Do tell me what are they?”
“Not only is there a singularity at the idea level about ultimate goodness and virtue of humanity; you will be amazed that there is concurrence even in practice, which is where we think most men and women fail. If you take a survey of old people, who have led a comfortable life or a luxurious life, you would find them closer to this goodness in actual practice. One such person, who happens to be a close relative of mine, had told me. He was then above 65 years of age. He said, ‘I regret that I could not love my own son well but I am able to compensate it with my love and affection for my grandson. When my son was a kid, I was then young and my own senses were also young demanding too much attention and time. I was busy making money, enjoying sex, indulging in habits, making merry with my friends and peer group and seeing the world. I could find little time and could devote very little attention to my son’s emotional and other needs. Now when I am old, my senses do not give me the same kick and my doctor tells me not to indulge them, I have the time and mental state to see and derive pleasure from the growing up of my grandson. Now I realize what gold I missed and wasted all throughout my life foolishly collecting pebbles. The love, the satisfaction and the joy that my grandchild gives me is my real asset. But I have to run after him to be with him always and this is really tiring. This little bastard is a real tornado’. He then said the golden word, ‘Now I understand why interest earned is always better than the principal amount acquired. You have to toil hard and waste your precious time and energy earning it but interest on the principal is something you get without making any effort and you have the time and energy as well as the mental state to enjoy the interest’.
“You mean to say that we all understand wisdom only when we grow old enough to see our graves in front of us. What is the positive about that? I am a banker and I appreciate the theory on principal and interest as we are trained to keep an eye primarily on interest earned. Still, I see only negatives. If we are such fools that we cannot see something so important when we have time and energy and what we finally do when we approach the end of it, then what good I can take of that?”
“Uttu dear, don’t see things from a banker’s perspective. The interest earned no doubt sounds a better thing but you know it better that there cannot be an interest gained if you do not have a principal amount. The principal has to come first and then only an interest becomes eligible. Earning a principal in life to gain interest later is not the negative thing. It is a great positive. Everyone has to earn his principal. The negative is that we have a world today, where creating a principal has become such a tough and humungous physical and mental exercise that it squeezes any possibility of enjoyment of leisure. We humans must have a system in place in contemporary world where earning a living should not take away everything from youthful period of life. Secondly, the world view that we have must also throw away such competitive and stupid benchmarks of success and goodness of life that makes us toil more than what is necessary for creating a principal amount for our lives. Anyway, let us not miss the real issue. I was talking about the real positives which are there, the silver lining in the dark cloud.”
“Yes Monku, tell me the final thing. I am very happy and eager that we still have a hope. If there is a positive, at least I will have peace of mind that Ashu would someday become a gentleman…come on, give it to me!”
“You can even think of being successful in changing the world view of rest of the world but not Ashu. I think he will be here any moment and it is better we wrap up this talk quickly. Sometimes, the virtue is in patience. We need to take into account that all good things take time to mature. Hope is also a close cousin of patience. The real positive is that ultimate and universal human wisdom is a very simple reality; very much apprehensible and easily executable. You don’t need a doctorate degree for it. Even an illiterate person can handle it well. The fact that I wish to tell you is that we have practical evidence that when people have their senses stabilized, poised and receptive in the long journey of life, they are in better position to understand and accept the wisdom. It is therefore a big positive that wisdom is very much attainable by our senses which are always referred to as the core trouble-makers for humanity. But in a particular state of time and space, the same five senses tend to become less reactionary and become receptive, capable of attaining wisdom. The positive, if we can make of is that we will someday have a world where humanity will attain this particular mode or state of things greatly amenable for overall wisdom. We need to accept the fact that as civilized beings, we humans have just grown and matured above the state of animalism. This world we live is still very nascent. Four or five thousand years of civilization is a tiny bit time frame in the overall clock system of the cosmos. It is really pity that we die in less than 70-80 years but the cosmic time-scale is huge, in billions of years. We humans in it a
re in a world which is a just born, in the cosmic time mechanism. I am very sure that in coming few hundred years, humanity will mature and its senses would reach the stage where an individual reaches when he is 70 or 80. If you study the evolution of living beings on earth, you will find how a time frame of a few thousand years is just too little to effect any substantial change. But humanity today is far better off. We have reached a stage of evolution where things are happening real fast. The next few hundred years will do things to humanity which the previous one million years could not do. We have the technological edge now that holds the potential for future. But, if you think things will be there for your kids and their kids, we can see nothing but doom. This transition, humanity is in, shall take some time to wither away and this shall lead us to the era of sanity. That’s why I told you earlier that a desire coming true in a lifetime is a bad idea.”
“Okay Monku, no thanks for giving me a solution that even my imagination cannot foresee. I really thought we have something, even a tiny bit for my generation and my kids. Are you sure we, in the meantime cannot do anything?”
“God…! Why should you sound so pessimistic Utta! Everyone has a chance to understand the wisdom and lead his life according to that. Millions of people in the past have acquired this wisdom even when they were kids. And, we all can work towards a better future for the humanity by attempting to bring about a positive change in the world view which we currently hold and suitably change the faulty mental training that makes our senses not understand and accept the wisdom. We and our kids certainly can opt our truth. We can at least refuse to be part of this world view and opt for an alternative mental training for our kids. The charity must begin at home.”
“Is this all we can do?”
“Yes, this is the only thing we should do. There is a famous story. A great man was dying and his close acquaintance was by his side. He asked him to say something so that he could learn from the great man. The dying great said, ‘when I was young, I thought I would change the world. When I grew a bit older, I realized I could do nothing so I decided I would change the society. I grew old to understand that nothing could change and that is why I thought it would be easy to change my family. Now when I am about to die, I realize that no one even in my family changed and it would have been ideal had I decided in my youth itself to change only myself. That probably would have been possible but I am dying, I even cannot do this.’
Utkarsh did not say a word more. First time in many years, he felt he was alone in this planet. He could not remember his family, his friends or his own being. But he felt light. He felt a void inside him. He realized the zero shaping inside him and usurping all space.
**