Zendo for the heartmind

kokorozendo

Recipe of Getafix’s magic potion!

Recipe of Getafix’s magic potion!

by | Dec 17, 2024 | Compassion, Empathy, Joy, Sports, Zen

Those who still wonder who Getafix is!! 

Getafix is the druid and creator of the secret magic potion, which gives all the strength and ability to those Gaul’s to bash up those stupidly authoritarian Roman Empire. And he is one of the central characters of the Asterix series cartoons by Uderzo and Goscinny.  ASterix , Obelix and Getafix came to my life through my  good friend and engg college hostel mage Goofy Sudhakar Raju. Both of us were members of the Dagar gang in our hostel and were real experts in whiling away time. We always had so many good interests other than Engineering subjects. We both did read quite a bit. I remember, once we got a copy of the novel “Gone with the Wind” just before a final exam. Still, we both found time to read it end – end and then went for that exam.  During those days, I happened to get a big poster of Obelix from the pages of The Sunday Observer and it adorned the wall of our room in Second hostel.  That name stuck to me and still many of my  Engg college friends call me by the name of Obelix, after all these years !

Just a few days back, after I returned from a trip to hometown, I told my sons, Manu and Rishi , that I wanted to send some books to Saanvi, bibliophile daughter of Dr. Anju. Since my sons knew very well that both Anju and Appu are quite dear to me, they happily handed over their Asterix book collection to be shipped amongst some other books.  While trying to pack those books in carton boxes, I ended up reading those great comic books again.  It was kind of going to back to our dear room ( Next to Partha’s room   That is another great story  ) in  Second hostel.

 

 

Getafix Photo Courtesy: https://asterix.com/en/portfolio/getafix/

The very next day, I read the below LinkedIn post , really early morning, as I was sitting in rest room..It was posted by a X Partner from one of the premier Consulting firms in the world. In it, under the photograph of Vinod Kambli and Sachin Tendulkar

Pic courtesy: SM Linkedin Post

The global “thinktank” wrote and I quote,

“Talent + Luck = Vinod Kambli

Talent + Luck + Discipline + Determination + Commitment + Humility + Learning ability + off field behaviour + Ability to digest success and failure both + Treating the game as bigger than self +++ = Sachin Tendulkar

The gap between cricketer Tendulkar and cricketer Kambli is the gap between talent alone and greatness. “.

I really wanted to send in a blood red hot stinger reply to it. Those who had seen Vinod Kambli bat , in his prime, with those silken touches and left handed graceful elegance , really owe it to him.  It is like G R Viswanath vs Sunil Gavaskar.  Sunny might have scored a way too many runs than Gundappa.  But those who have seen GRV bat still vouch for him.  But then Zen practitioners , practice meditation beyond the Zendo and Zazen. We try to carry the calmness and compassion from sitting meditation to walking (kinhin) to working (Samu) and then even to rest rooms.   Infact   Japanese Zen practitioners belief toilet gods, guard toilets and we got to snap our finger to request them to move on… … So can’t  let oneself  be less compassionate to any one even while in rest room.:-) 

Also, it is a bit difficult for me key into , the small phone screen without my specs and I ended up typing in “Let us be compassionate and let Kambli be ! We don’t have to use every life as a tool to dish out management theories .”

By looking at the responses of many, it was not difficult to conclude, many were in sync with that thought.

In our relentless pursuit of success has created a cottage industry of how to be success.  As a leadership and life coach who tries to make my living out of it, I too plead guilty of it.  Book shops / internet / Social pages etc. are inundated with magic potion/formula for success.    Four steps for this and 6 steps for that !  “ Walk 5 steps in front looking east, turn 30degrees to left, move forward another 6 ft , take u turn .. There you get your success” types !   Osho tells a wonderful story about a meeting between Henry Ford and Napolean Hill, the author of “Think and Grow Rich”.   It is worth listening to.

Secondly and most importantly, we live in a standardized world.  Some amount of standardization is necessarily to keep our life simple.  Like distance in cm, m or kms. Time in seconds, minutes and hours, alcohol in small, large and extra-large etc.

But when that standardization we bring into the spheres of success, love, national pride and spirituality, then it ends up a great disaster.

Some one’s benchmark of hard work for the nation is putting 70 Hrs per week. And someone else standard of being a successful batsman is being a Sachin Tendulkar. And. Someone else’s benchmark of being rich may be Ambani.  No less!

Those who are sports aficionados and soccer enthusiasts, still rate Brazil football team (of Zico, Socrates, Falcao, Eder etc.) as the greatest football team ever assembled. Though they lost out.  George Best, whose life almost rhymes with Kambli still reckoned as one of the best footballers ever played.  There was even a wonderful article/obituary on him by Nirmal Shekar in The Hindu titled, “It was Best, could have been better”.

My Zen Master Ama Samy, who walked on a spiritual path for more than 70+ years, whom many consider as an authority in Zen , Buddhism, Advaita and other religious streams and philosophy, may have around a few hundred disciples.  And we struggle quite a bit to run our Zendo, Bodhi Sangha and affiliated social work we are into. That surely pales in comparison with the other “Gurus” , in numbers, power and wealth ! And I am sure there are many evolved individuals who live low key and anonymous.

 

The moot point, is there a one shoe size fits all kind of measure for success for all beings ?   If there is one, if everyone else becomes a roaring success and there are no “failures” in our world, what will be labelled as success and whom we will call as successful???

 

And lastly, I did ask that ex Big % think tank, that if there was a sure shot recipe for success and Sachin did have it, why he could not hand it over to his son and why someone like Yashasvi Jaiswal would find that recipe by the side of the tent, he used to make and sell chats to make ends meet!

 

It is not just the spiritual world a path less land (as Jiddu Krishnamurti had famously said), even the ordinary life is indeed a pathless land. Each one got to create our own paths and lead our own life as per our standards. Many a times, regardless of our talent and capabilities, privileges we are born with, choices we make for ourselves and the probability of luck in this world clears our way.

 

When we really starts to live by the standards we  set in our own heart, mind and soul, be content with what life gives that day, be compassionate and loving to others , and do our value contribution to the world ( 1 or 70 hr /week) and take care of our and our dear and nears needs ( and not wants), and can rest with a good night’s sound sleep… then that is what I would call it a Life… Who cares whether someone labels it as a success or failure.

 

And that is the recipe of Getafix’s magic potion and my realisation.

 

 Though in the comic strip,  Getafix, the venerable druid always  say firmly to  Obelix: “No, Obelix, not you!”, when Obelix insists on having a portion of the magic potion. !

Karpov’s World championships in Thenkara

Karpov’s World championships in Thenkara

by | Dec 15, 2024 | Empathy, Peace, Sports, STRESS, Uncategorized

Maybe I might have been just around 4.5 years old.  Might have been a troublemaker for my parents. They chose to edit my Date of birth by 6 months so that I started going to school. 1st standard in ALP School Mannarkkad. One evening my father got a chess board in Mannarkkad and he taught me the moves.  On the very first game, I happen to win.  That might have boosted the early ego of a very young boy.  It took me some 30 more years to understand, my late father Sankara was a great parent and that was his way of motivating his son.  I too chose to lose games, when I was teaching my sons Manu and Rishi the rules of chess game.

 Soon we moved to Thenkara, a small village on the road to Silent Valley national park. There me and my brother Sasi went to a Govt Upper primary school. A good 2 – 2.5 km walk from our home. There was no electricity there in when we moved.  As I had shared , the village was closer to Silent Valley national park. And people out there, protested and stopped a hydroelectric project across Kunthipuzha river in Silent Valley national park. So KSEB wanted to punish us for that transgression. It took a long constant fight with the authorities med by my father to ensure  the village got electricity. By then I was at 7th standard. Though the school did have big ground, it was uneven and there was an old dilapidated open well in one corner of the ground. So we were allowed to play only during PT hours supervised by teachers.   Leave alone other organized games such as football etc., the school did not have even a proper urinal those days.  But Sasi and me tried to make that up in our neighborhood in our own innovative ways.  A few years back, someone who lived there during those times had written a FB post, in which he narrated, how two Kannadiga boys brought the game of Cricket to Thenkara.  And someone else posted the inauguration of electricity connection in Thenkara, where my father was speaking. 

But this isn’t about him. This is about the Chess rivalry between Sasi and Me. Those were the days of Karpov and later Kasparov came to picture. There were no Indian greats in the game of Chess before Vishy Anand. There was one Pravin Thipsay and another Divyendu Barua if I remember rightly. What I remember absolutely is we, Sasi and I got to toss to decide who is going to be Karpov. And then started our best of 5, 7 or 9 game series.  Usually, it came after my mother’s warning. No more fights. But the great World Championship in Thenkara always ended in major fight. My father had bought us a chess book in Malayalam, which had rules of games plus a few opening, middle and end game strategies.  And the fight was always started by the player who was losing against Karpov.  Sometimes me and most of the times by Sasi.  There would be a challenge on legality of some move. Since there were no FIDE referees to oversee, that book was our judge and jury.  But then it never ended in a proper judicial process. One of us , the losing side, will throw the board and pieces and would storm off.  And my mother, strict disciplinarian as she was, would ensure the probable winner, to collect the pieces and board and keep it back. And winner too cried while collecting the chess pieces, like Gukesh did when he won the World Championship recently, but mostly in pain.

As we grew up, our Chess rivalry ended and the passion for the game too. Much later, I tried to teach Manu the game rules. Manu was much smarter than I was and he picked up the game quite fast.  But then, I was not as good as a parent like my father. After one game, he stormed out and there ended the chess coaching.

Much later, after he had moved to Jindal for his graduation, we noticed, he always used to play in his phone… While he is travelling with us or even at dining tables.   Yesterday morning, he came with me to Little Flower Zendo. He wanted to see for himself, where his Papa is going to live for the rest of his life. And I had plans to take him out and show around Kodai Kanal. But it was raining so heavily here, the Little Flower Zendo waterfalls was roaring like Niagra and we could not even spot the nearby mountain due to mist. We stayed indoor. And he was into his chess.com.  I was watching him play for some time. And after the game, he was telling me about how it works.  He has a very good rating, which means quite an Advanced player. And in Chess.com 2000+ means a GM. I was quite impressed, and I was pushing him to go to tourneys etc. and how it can translate to building a good portfolio for him to apply for his MBAs.  But the boy had Zen like clarity. HE told me the difference between 1800 and 2000 in Chess is like the small mountain in front of our Zendo and Mt Everest.  In Chess, you improve your rating only beating players with a higher rating than yours.  And it is not easy. Secondly, he plays Chess as a de-stressor.   If one start playing it seriously, it really ends up as a stressful act. It is not easy.

 

Then he talked about the recent World championships. He was following every game minute by minute in Chess.com. He pointed out to me, how Ding was crestfallen immediately a microsecond later after he made a bad move and how Gukesh was crying as if to let go of the tension after winning the crown.  According to him Ding Liren too have a very good name in Chess circle as a gentleman and good human being. He seems to have faced server mental health issues and he kind of stopped playing Chess, which had hit his ELO rating badly. People were expecting him to not to even come for the final match. And he did show up and played very resiliently.  May be if he was fully ok, he might have won again too.

The second point he shared was much more incisive. He said “Ding is almost like V Anand.  He is one of the first player form China to play in Candidates or Chess final like V Anand from India.   Gukesh had the guidance from  Anand , being trained with him at WACA.  And in Chess, the advice and inputs matters a lot, while it is important to recall those inputs at the right moment.”

After that, he slept, and I did not. I started googling on Ding Liren. As someone who had suffered depression and who was on the verge of an abyss, for me, both he and Gukesh were Karpovs. The player with the black pieces was/is black shade of our own mind.  

Just a few months back Chessbase reported, “The Ding Liren of a few years ago, who reached a fantastic 2816 Elo, may not return. This is in the Chinese player’s own words, but what happened and what does this mean for the forthcoming title match? The opinions and rumor mill have been in full swing, and everyone, and we do mean everyone, has an opinion.In January 2023, the World Champion’s rating was still at a fantastic 2811, second only to Magnus Carlsen, but things have taken on a dark and dire drop and in the latest list he has plummeted to 2728.”

And in another interview with a German news paper he says and I quote , “

Normally, a title like this boosts the ego. You feel great. It was different for you. You fell into a deep hole and were away for months.

I had a few problems, that’s true. I was exhausted, but I still couldn’t sleep very well. That led to depression. I was treated twice in a clinic. Fortunately, things are slowly getting better again. Chess is mentally exhausting – and if you can’t sleep well, that’s fatal. At least I’ve been able to reduce my tablets from four a day to one at the moment.

Are you the sensitive type? It was also said that you cried after winning the title.

Yes, the world championship duel lasted so long and was so exhausting. I did my best and after winning the title I thought about all the work I had done before the competition. The emotions and memories overwhelmed me. That’s why I had to cry.

You are surprisingly open about your feelings. Doesn’t a professional athlete have to be tough on themselves and others?

I was probably so tough before I had my mental problems. That’s why I suddenly showed emotions. Now I’m trying to become more balanced again. I now also have a doctor who helps me mentally. I discuss all sorts of things with him. I don’t have a mental coach like the table tennis players, who prepares you for the things that are relevant to the game.”

Today morning, it was all bright Sun shine here at Kodai, though the wind was more chillier. Manu and I went to outing with Prakash our Zendo manager. As  Prakash was talking about the Suicide point , between 3 pillar rocks and Guna Caves, Manu was asking him, why would people want to kill by jumping into the abyss from there.

I told him , from a first person account, that when people gets severely depressed, they first jump into the deep abysses of their own mind.  Only when they are not able to get them out of that place, they jump here.  In the games inside our mind, where our dark side plays against us, no Sicilian or Slav  defences work against it.

For those who survive, by getting out of that abyss in their minds, usually have sound Seconds , in the form of good dear and near and Doctors.

As we were heading back home, in the FB page of  FIDE  there was a quote from Ding. “ I  think I played my best tournament of the year.  It could be better, but considering yesterday’s  lucky survive it is a fair result to lose in the end. I have no regrets.”

While, I feel so proud of Gukesh as a fellow country man winning such a great accolade at the world stage at such a young age,  what bring real smile in my heart, when a fellow human being , win against himself in the arena of his own mind.

No world championship is worth that much, when we we successfully turn our back towards   those  low points, including suicide points to face life and live on…

 

The spoke of work in my wheel of life…

The spoke of work in my wheel of life…

by | Nov 26, 2024 | Compassion, Empathy, Harmony, Joy, Management, Uncategorized

(Picture courtesy: Team-BHP.com)

Sometimes, the metaphors that commonly used are an indicator on the conditioned and ingrained way of thinking.

The spoke in the wheel literally means, making it very difficult for someone to achieve something they had planned to do.  When we integrate work , wisely , as a spoke to the wheel of life , then the spoke of work starts working harmoniously with other spokes in the wheel of our life and ensures joy and peace of mind in our way of life. 

 I have two points of view regarding this.

 First about the term Work – Life balance.

 The term Work life balance triggers the image of a weight scale or balance with two trays which separates life from work.  Rather it is more helpful to imagine a wheel of life with multiple spokes.  Spokes of relationship – to self, dear and near, org and society, taking care of oneself (exercises for mind and body), recreation and entertainment, silent time, work etc.  Each spoke is as important as any other spoke, if we wish to keep the wheel of life rolling, without toppling to one side, on the Way of life.  The spokes are important so are the space between those spokes.  And each spoke is a relationship we have with one facet of our life.  All those spokes consist of what can be called living.  We cannot take living out of our life.  Likewise, you cannot take out of those spokes out of the wheel. (Though the concept of maglev was invented by a German engineer more than a century back.  )

 As Lao Tsu wrote

 “Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape the clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes that make it useful.

There benefit from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.”

     Chapter 11 Tao Te Ching Lao Tsu (Translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English )

 

If we let any one of the spoke out grow other spokes, then  wheel or circle cease to be  one and there ends  its journey in the way of life, temporarily or permanently.

 Then it is not about just over working, even people can get negatively impacted on overexercising or overeating or  binge-watching Netflix as a way of entertainment.  There is a limit our brain can take glucose or our heart oxygen.  More or less is not only , not beneficial it can be harmful.  

 Secondly, it is important to note that, certain professions, need utmost focus and attention from us, such intensity can be sustained only a few hours at a time /stretch.  It could be the role of a  surgeon, or a truck/bus driver, or a pilot  or even a cook etc.  They all do need a total cut off from work and need absolute rest of body and mind for rejuvenating.  But for many other professions, still if people think, they need a totally segregation of work from rest of their life, it does indicate, their environment in which they work contributes to their stress rather than the work itself.  It could be toxic culture, toxic boss, or overcompetitive coworkers etc.   If I am not too to keen on finding out, or annoyed at, Or feeling stressed out, why my  Boss or my colleagues at work or my customers tries to reach me , when I am at other spokes of my wheel of life, then it could stem more from their images I have “Built” in my mind . I can surely bet that it is not too positive.  We could reverse that question.  If a dear and near, a loved one, tries to reach us during our work hours, what would be our response.

 

To take this argument forward, If  someone , still really thinks the spoke of Work has to be separated form his wheel of life,  s/he got to really got to really evaluate, whether that particular spoke fits wheel with their wheel of life , in values and principles.  Each one of us may have different types of wheel of life.  While I still consider my wheel of life as that of a bullock cart, there could be people with a wheel of life of a Ferrari.

T(w)o-Gether-Ness !…!

by | Oct 20, 2024 | Change, Compassion, Empathy, Gratitude, Harmony, Joy, Trust

A few weeks ago, after morning Zazen, the below quote popped up in my InsightTimer meditation app. A famous quote attributed to Rumi, it said “Tie two birds together. They will not be able to fly, even though they now have four wings. ”

Gether, is a dialectical variant of the word gather.

Oxford dictionary says, last recorded usage of that word, “Gether”, dates back to 1500s. Now it is absolutely obsolete. At least as a standalone free bird word. It often tries valiantly to stick its neck out from its , buried alive / incarcerated state, among other words, when we play a game of Scrabble.

I had quite forgotten about it altogether. At least Consciously. But only when i started getting similar insights from everywhere, i realised it got etched in my brain. That is the way ,our minds work. We don’t see the word as it is. Rather we see the world as we are. IT Cortex , a brain part decides what we got to see. That is why u notice all the grey Suzuki Swifts on the road, if you had recently bought a new Suzuki Swifts car . Grey coloured. Again i ended up reading Gibran’s The Prophet. The Nth time…

I had read it first , before i got married. And i used a pale take off from a passage from that book to sweep Thara off the feet, when i went to see her first time in Mysore. “You can have as much freedom as i have in my own life. I can give only what i have. And if you want more freedom than that, you got take it yourself.” When i finished , by that 100 W bright shine and effervescent smile in her eyes, i knew it is a YES. 🙂 . And that was the only time i was a successful salesman. I should hasten to add , at that point i was not aware that , though she was born with a silver spoon and brought up in a well to do business family, her life was like that of a parrot in a gilded cage. Her father, though a loving, generous to a fault, over-caring and well-meaning person, was as conservative as a conservative can be, in body, mind and soul. After our marriage, on our way to Kumarakom, we landed at Kottayam railway station a bit late in the morning. As i was thinking about, where to have breakfast, Thara noticed a salon just across the Kottayam railway station and got cut her hair short then and there, while our cab driver to the Kumarakom resort waited. and Me too waited with an hungry and growling stomach.

That was her way of reclaiming her freedom, her life and herself .

,After that i would have shared the passage on Marriage from that book at least with 50 people as a wedding gift wish. Just a few weeks back, i shared that passage to my Wipro colleague Hema’s Daughter as a wedding gift. I think , i remember the last para of that page as vividly as Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra. It sings like this,

” Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.    For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts . And stand together yet not too near together, For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow. “

But even then,those scattered sprinkler thoughts never penned itself into a blog. Blogs gets written not by ink or pixels, but blood from the wounds of one’s heart. And this got written in my mindscape, as i drove to Bangalore from Ramapura, a small village near.Kollelgal, while my mother narrated her life story for some 4 hours, last Saturday 30 June 2024. Ramapura was the place where she was born and brought up until she got married to my father and moved to Kerala. She chose to return to Ramapura and live there , alone all by herself, after my father had passed away, all of a sudden in 2006.

Again, that was her way of reclaiming her freedom, her life and herself .

Have heard those stories, in bits and pieces , many a times from many people who are dear and near to Amma. By any yardstick, she did have a tough life.She might have carried more crosses than even Jesus Christ.

My late father too had many crosses to carry in his eventful life. May be slightly less in number than that of Amma and Jesus. He grew up quite poor and had to start working at the age of 15 to take care of his siblings. He was honest, very generous and caring to all. And very courageous too. He fought many a battles for the people around him regardless of who is on the other side. Whether it was a local liquor baron or a cabinet minister.

One of my vivid memory about him was when we were staying in a village named Thenkara which was around 6- 7 km away from the small town and high school. There were just 2 -3 private transport buses passing through our village in the morning school time and there were many a students who was commuting to the town school for their education. The buses wont stop for us. And many a times, my father used to stand in the middle of the road , get the bus stopped and ensure all the children are taken care. I remember when once someone asking him, “Sankara, are you not scared ??”. And he was not. He did earn a good name for himself and the crowd which came home when he had passed away was a testimony to the kind of life he led.

But Amma had a different perspective about it now. She was telling me that when some one tries to be too good for others, some people around the dogooder got to sacrifice a lot and suffer. And She suffered in that.

And the clarity with which she conveyed that me, just pierced into my heart.

Though Amma does not read my blogs, she know from my sister about my penchant for being a scribe of life stories that’s come my way. So when i had shared with her that i am writing a blog , she had put her foot down and said clearly and sternly that i am not allowed to write the stories she shared with me.

Again, that was Amma exercising her new found freedom…

I left this blog incomplete, till a conversation i had with a friend last week triggered it again. When i shared my plans of moving to Zendo, he asked me , whether Thara too is joining me. I tried to explain, Thara is not into Zen and she makes her own choices in her life.

23 years later after we “tied the knot”, we are still in love and deeply care for each other. Like two circles (enso ?!) in a Venn diagram, though there are many things in common in our likes and dislikes, we also have many things not so common. We respect that space of each other and strive to ensure that space does not shrink in anyway. Marriage is a clever institution foisted upon the fairer sex by a patriarchal society. And often it ends up a gilded cage for a woman.

Even the word “tying the knot” signifies it. As Rumi had asked, if we tie two birds together, they will not able to fly, even though they have four wings.

I dont know how successful i was on the promise i gave to Thara, “You can have as much freedom as i have in my own life. I can give only what i have. And if you want more freedom than that, you got take it yourself.” As in any other life, we too had our lows and highs, ebbs and flows.

May be she will share and write her side of the story, like my mother did !

Understanding Distress and DeSTRESS in Life

Understanding Distress and DeSTRESS in Life

by | Oct 3, 2024 | Compassion, Empathy, Joy, Management, Sports, STRESS, Uncategorized

Over the last few days, air and internet waves were filled with two tragic news.

                   One related to an untimely death of a young professional at a very well-known consulting firm and another a suicide at the premier Management school of India. Regarding the death of the young management professional, the reports said, “stress from a toxic workplace”, while the suicide was attributed to “Stress from organizing The Red Brick Summit is suspected as a contributing factor”.!

 The first one drew a lot of comments and opinion in social media, many of them (even from successful business leaders and public figures) reactionary (imv), while the second news did not elicit that kind of traction.  The world in general, and people (we) in particular, does not have that kind of appetite for tragedy per se. As quite addicted Netflix and Hot stars, we want everything in episodes. One at a time.

 As a primetime member of the social media mob, after scapegoating and fixing the responsibility right there, for those tragedies in a hurry, I too was moving on.  Till I observed two different ways of living and looking at the word from my teenaged sons.

 Before narrating those incidents, it will be pertinent for me introduce them to you.  Both, Manu and Rishi are quite smart, intelligent quite well read and worldly wise beyond their ages. And most importantly they are their own masters. Me and Thara, my better half, had made it a point, to let them choose what they want or need in their life. Whether it is in the matter of career, education, food or even God.  They also had the good fortune to be educated in one of most stress free, supporting, empowering and nontoxic schooling environments the current world can offer.

 Manu is a second-year graduate student of Economics in a premier university. And he had represented his Uty team in an intercollegiate Taekwondo tournament. He was/is very passionate about marital arts.   I was attending a sesshin at Zendo, while he was at the tournament. When I did not see any message from him for 2- 3 days, I was a bit worried. And was quite relieved, when he called me one evening.  He narrated quite happily, how he cleared 4 tough rounds and lost in the quarter final.  To quote his own words, “Papa, he was too fast and good for me, and I got pummeled a bit and I will take a day or two to recover. But my Coach told me, I did well, and I got to be ready for the tournament at IIT Kanpur and i got to practice. Am going there. “

 As a parent, I was quite happy and proud to hear that. Not many things can be as stressful for a youth as an intercollegiate martial tournament. What more a parent, a life coach and Zen teacher can aspire from his son than the way young Manu took a physically hurting (and possibly mentally too) defeat on his stride, and was looking forward to his next stint at the arena !

 

But that pride did not last that long. Just two days later, Thara called me to say, Rishi, our second son, who is in 12th standard, seems to be bit stressed and it is reported he did have some challenges wrt sleep.  And that was a total surprise for me.  I had considered myself as one of the coolest cucumbers in the world as a student. I had shared quite a few times with my children, how as a final year Mech Engineering student in 1994, I chose to watch all the world cup soccer matches held in USA and chose to skip quite a few exams.  Due to time difference often, the matches started early morning and myself and my roomie and good friend. “Goofy” Sudhakar used to be only two idiots in the hostel TV room.  Sudhakar, stopped being a partner in that, once his favorite team Germany lost. And I continued that very valiantly till Brazil won the final against Italy.

Rishi is one up on me on the coolness quotient, so that he will wait even if someone raises an alarm that sky is going to fall down his head. As the news about him being stressed was a bit amusing to me.  I was suspecting some romance in the air, when I spoke to him after I came back home.  After doing his two-week internships at Rahul Dravid Academy, he does talk a bit of about joining a sport management course and his dream job is to work for ManUnited his favorite team.  But he had not applied his mind on how to reach his goal. And that would have hit on the head, when he happened to hear all those clear-cut plans of his hostel mates about what they are doing next year + when he had realized that he did not have any such plans.  May be, for the very first time in his life, my son was worried and stressed.  He did manage to hide that within himself, till it started affecting his life and behavior. Fortunately for him and us, we noticed in time and could help him out.   All it took was just a 5- 10 minute “Reframing the perspective” exercise Thara and me had learnt from venerable NLP Guru Dr. Richard McHugh some 20 years back. That did the trick and sooner he was back to his normal self. The very next day, Tuesday, I had to wake him up so that he won’t miss his bus to school and his term examination. 

It is not my case that the world in which we live and environmental factors don’t play a role in making our life miserable and stressful. It does. But the real villain is the 3 pound of human cells behind our eyes and between our ears. Nature/God/Natural Selection/Evolution have ended up in designing we human beings for survival than for our wellbeing.  They don’t give a damn, if we are left scared, fearful and miserable, as long as we last one more day more in our account of life and manages to pass on our genes to the next gene. That is their common minimum program and nothing more. We are all wired and programmed for it.

 To quote from one of the foremost  modern texts on the matter : “The individual’s perception of environmental demands and personal coping resources is the critical variable in determining the nature of the stress response. The objective conditions of the environment are important only to the extent that they influence these processes of primary and secondary appraisal. (Evans and Cohen on Environmental Stress) .” That is written in academic English for psychology professionals.

 But from my Epistemology classes of Prof. Indrani Bhattacharjee at Azim Premji Uty, I know that is no different from  rajju-sarpa-nyaya of  Indian philosophy.  As per that when there is less light, a curled up rope is mistaken for a snake.  And that happens due to the inbuilt programming  Nature had written inside our skulls which results in fright and fear and anxiety.  But when the Light returns, calm and peace comes back due to the accurate perception of it being a mere rope.  And the gap between destress and distress is  approximately 23.7 mm. That is the sagittal vertical (height) of a human adult eye.

No wonder, Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, the noble one, chose Samma Dhitti,( Right view ) as his first core teaching in his eight fold path to wisdom.  And we will be able to perceive this reality as it is only when we are aware of the programmed filters Nature had put in us, with which we look, hear and feel this world.  

Even if the “Rope” is a real poisonous snake, remember that Stephen Covey’s quote,

 “it isn’t the snake bite that does the serious damage; it’s chasing the snake that drives the poison to the heart”. 

un”TIE”d for Humanity

un”TIE”d for Humanity

by | Sep 3, 2024 | Communication, Compassion, Empathy, Harmony, Joy, Zen

3 September 2024 at Manthari.

Way back in 2012, I had a wonderful opportunity to travel on work to Joburg, South Africa twice in two months.  Those travels are etched in mind for many reasons. I travelled to Joburg shortly after South Africa Police Force opened fire on protesting workers who were striking for wage rise and killing many.  It became has become notorious as Marikana Massacre.  The Rose bank square which was very close to the Hotel in which I had stayed, was a wonderful place, where many amateur but superb groups performed during weekends.  I still remember the performance by a young group from the ghettos of Soweto.  That year I was lapping up books on Adamson’s (Joy and George) and Lawrence Antony the famous conservationist who wrote that wonderful book The elephant whisperer.  Last but not the least, for the friendship of Terrence of Terrie’s taxi.  Kaushik Sanyal, who was my manager then at Wipro Consulting and who had been Joburg before, told me, Joburg is a crime ridden place and best way to be safe and secure is to go with Terrie. Terrie was a wonderful person.  The moment he understood I am from South India, he put the Tamil FM radio as he drove me from Airport to the hotel. The way he used to connect with his customers is really a masterclass. ( I am still connected with Terrie in Facebook and still we wish each other on our birthdays after some 12 years! The same with my ex-Boss Kaushik Sanyal who is a dear friend whom I have not met for many many years  )  That time the only leader from SA I knew of was Nelson Mandela. But Terrie spoke mostly about Desmond Tutu.  As i read further, i understood while Nelson Mandela was the key figure head in the fight against apartheid, Desmond Tutu was the soul of South Africa.  Because Tutu, did not stop his fight for humanity even after apartheid was abolished in RSA. He continued to voice and act for the betterment of the oppressed across the world in his own compassionate way. 

A few more years earlier than that, I worked in a major bellwether IT company in Bangalore. They were the poster boys of Indian IT world. They had kind of Disney world type campus in Blr and they took the upkeep of that campus a lot more seriously. Almost at any point of time, one could see housekeeping staff keep cleaning and looking for that invisible dirt on the walkways. I meant Disney world because, they had all strange looking glass buildings in that campus. 

Another aspect of that life was Tie culture. They took it very seriously.  Weekly two days, tying up tie was compulsory.   Then HR head thought that is the only way one can be professional by tying one down. Security guards were instructed to note down the male employees who violate that Tie Code and employees were fined. Rs 200 which was automatically deducted from salary. To be fair, that tie code and rule was applicable to all.  Top to bottom.  I always had an allergy to anything that ties me down and I always tried to avoid wearing one.

 It was my habit from early days in Wipro to wish and connect with our guards and receptionist and the boy who used to make tea and serves us at M.G.Road office. (there was a legendary story,   that Tea Master was so famous for his tea, when Mindtree had opened their first building in Banashankari , Ashok Soota ensured he too joined their pantry.  Once those days, when Kalyan Kumar Banerjee their HR head, invited us to their office to initiate a Toastmaster club, I did meet him there.)

 Probably I learnt to treat others well and with courtesy, regardless of their position, from one of my early bosses at Wipro, Bala who headed the IBM UK account. And Bala led a small team to Germany for a pilot project and I was one of those fabulous 4 selected for that trip.  Bala had a way of connecting across the hierarchy and he treated everyone with the same care and compassion. Maybe that is one the reason, I still stay connected with him and I do call occasionally. Regardless of whether he is in Blr or London, he does answer the call and still talks to me in the same manner.  (Incidentally when I landed with him for that project in Ludwigsburg I did not how to tie a tie and he taught me.  He also taught us PL/1 a programming language in Mainframe which was the mainstay of our client’s programs.)

  That habit of being in touch continued at that “company” as well. And they never noted my employee id and I never got fined. That ended up an issue in another way for me.  My then Boss there, who usually do dress up very prim and proper, got fined once and as he shared that, a teammate pointed out me never wearing one. When asked, in my utter foolishness, very euphorically I shared my secret. Everyone else in that meeting room had a hearty laugh.  But later I realized that was the start of my trouble there. 

 Today there was good incident as I walked into work early morning. Which I had shared with my Dear and Near group.  I do have a small group of dear and near in WhatsApp, where I keep sharing my life. I just would like to share verbatim…

“Good morning 🌞 Welcome flower 🌸 at  Wipro Corp office …

A few months back, I was allocated the work of cleaning meditation hall and flower arrangement at Zendo. Cleaning was easy, but flower arrangements! So, I wanted to from Surya, a Korean national and longtime resident of Auroville. She is too good at calligraphy and ikebana!  It was very wonderful… and ikebana is almost meditative.  So, when I saw the same pattern at Wipro front office, once  I walked in, I wrote a small note and asked the receptionist to handover to the person who is coming in to do this every other day … and isn’t it wonderful to see as you enter workplace … now Thara and me do at home as well. And every ikebana is beautiful as every flower in this world. nothing is better than other things. S/he seems to have replied with that arrangement. Btw the receptionist told me, she was working there as a receptionist for many years and this is the first time someone leaving a note of appreciation for the person who does that 😄

We with our discriminating judgement mind, value one and devalue another …  And what difference does it make whether it is a Billionaire or someone who does a ikebana arrangement for making living!

 Btw you won’t believe it . The flower arrangement is done by a young housekeeping staff . Bhagya Lakshmi. Today receptionist introduced me to her she thanked me for my note of appreciation 😄😄😄

 As saying goes there are things in life money can’t buy, for the rest of the things there is Master card.”

 All of us would have read that, Chicken soup for the soul story about a college professor giving his class a quiz.  And the last question of the test was “what is the name of the woman who cleans your classroom?”.   When a student asked the Prof, whether the last question would count toward the quiz grade.

“Absolutely,” said the professor. “In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say “hello”.

I would change that Career word to Life.  In Life, we will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care.  

Desmond Tutu once said   “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together”.

 There are a lot of layers of meaning and spiritual essence in that one quote. It is almost like a Zen Koan “The Sound of one hand clapping “.

 

Skip to content