Philosophy of Śrī Madhvācārya - B.N.K. Sharma

Notes from today's reading.

VII. DOCTRINE OF MUKTI

CHAPTER LIV NATURE OF THE RELEASED STATE AND ITS STAGES

He talks about Maitreyī - Yājñavalky's samvada - "न प्रेत्य संज्ञास्ति इति" on how Maitreyī could not understand that there is no consciousness after death.

Madhva holds that the released retain their individual consciousness as released and rest in full knowledge of their deliverance from all misery:

आजन्ममरणं स्मृत्वा मुक्त्वा हर्षमवाप्नुयुः

According to Madhva, Aparokṣajñāna or direct vision of God in his aspect of one's Bimba, opens the door to spiritual redemption.

Madhva distinguishes four states of the fruits of Aparokṣa: (1) karmanāśa (2) Utkrānti or Laya (4) Mārga and (4) Bhoga

Madhva distinguishes between two kinds of anārabdha karma (karma that has not yet begun to bear fruit) viz., इष्ट and अनिष्ट. अनिष्ट is destroyed and इष्ट is credited to the account of released in mokṣa. The प्रारब्ध alone remains to be worked out. According to Brahmasūtras iii.4.16 reductions and concessions are possible wrt प्रारब्ध.

अपरोक्षज्ञानिन्/जीवनमुक्ता continues in his phyiscal frame till प्रारब्ध gets over.
The destruction of linga śarīra takes place along with four-faced brahman's

Jayatīrtha defines mokṣa in dvidalātmaka: आत्यन्तिकदुःखनिवृत्ति (destruction of sufferings) परमानन्दावाप्ति

Madhva system accepts fourfold distinction of mokṣa into Sālokya,  Sāmīpya, Sārūpya and  Sāyujya taught in Bhāgavata purāṇa. Vyāsatīrtha in this Nyāyāmṛta, mentions that these represent and ascending order of blessedness.

CHAPTER LV CRITIQUE OF THE CONCEPTION OF MOKSA IN OTHER SYSTEMS

Jaina: ceaseless upward flight in Alokākāśa (nothing spiritual/divine about it to kindle heart of seeker)
Buddhists: nirvāna entry into mahāsūnya (forbidding in aspect)
Advaithic: same as buddhists except for absorption into Brahman (kartṛkarmabhāva)

CHAPTER LVI MADHVA'S VIEW OF MUKTI

Madhva discusses the famous text of Chāndogya अशरीरं वाव सन्तं प्रियाप्रिये न स्पृशतः
and establishes that it is only the material joys and pleasures that are regarded as disagreeable to mukta and ruled out while the intrinsic bliss of selfhood adn its enjoyment are accepted without reserve.

Sūtrakāra says that released souls can fashion at will (in conformity with God's will) suitable bodies of śuddhasattva or enjoy themselves with their own spiritual bodies composed of cit, ānanda etc. The released may rest in the contemplation of their own blessedness, contrast their present with past and feel thankful for deliverance. They may adore the majesty of God and sing his praises in thousand ways, offer sacrifices, only that nothing is obligatory there, no punishment if not done. Unlimited scope for spontaneous creative work of any kind - karma, jnana, bhakti

It is freedom from all conditions that distinguishes the life in Mokṣa from ordinary life. बन्धप्रत्यवायाभावे हि मोक्षस्य अर्थवत्तवम्, अन्यतथा मोक्षत्वमेव न स्यात् (Brahmasūtra bhāṣya iii.3.3) 

भक्तिर्ज्ञानं तथा ध्यानं मुक्तानामपि सर्वशः।

साधनानि तु सर्वाणि भक्तिज्ञानप्रवृद्धये।

नैवान्यसाधनं भक्तिः फलरुपा हि सा यतः॥ 

(Madhva, commentary of BrhUp i.4)

Madhva has brought together certain texts beraing upon nature of life in the released state. Most important being:

सर्वे नन्दन्ति यशसागतेन सभासाहेन सख्या सखायः

अक्षण्वन्तः कर्णवन्तः सखायो मनोजवेष्वसमा बभूवुः

Some enjoy with women, some praise lord, some exclaim words like hāvu, hāvu, some practise yajya as per purvaabhyasa, some have darshan of pitradi, some play with suddhasattva nirmitta sarira, some dance, some play instruments - 11 such points as per author of Madhvasiddhantasara.

Next weekend:
CHAPTER LVII RATIONALE OF ᾹNANDA-TᾹRATAMYA IN MOKṢA

The rights and liberties of the freed are constitutionally defined and properly safeguarded by the principle of undictated harmony (satyakāmatā) of their nature. There is no room for discord or jealousy there. Each one has his reward and each feels so happy and full to the brim: like bowls and pitchers, rivers and seas filled to capacity.

Concept of svarūpānandatāratamya. Every released soul is perfect in its own way; but the perfection (pūrṇatva) of each is distinctive, sui generis. It is an expression of self hood.

It is a conception which applies to spiritual life the principle of peaceful co-existence and fellowship to the whole community of the released souls and guarantees to each one of them the fundamental right to exist sui juris and to be in a position to have complete and distinctive enjoyment of its own selfhood and Svarūpānanda in communion with Brahman.

Old Sport!

F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yet another Libran who had trouble with his finances. After Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, I am hunting for Libran authors who were neither associated with insanity nor had had pecuniary troubles. Short and sweet.

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, 
Till she cry ‘Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!’ - Summarized it all.

After reading wiki about Fitzgerald, it was only Leonardo de Caprio playing Gatsby in my mind.
I learnt about mojito, mint julep, musical instruments, postern, pompadour, flowers like jonquils, hawthorns, Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate, dog breeds like Airedale and therefore puli.

Few lines that I liked, few lines that amused me, few lines that touched something somewhere…

‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’
 
‘Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently’ and ‘intimate  revelation ‘ reminded me of my situation. With rahu in cancer, many a times, I feel like a sink, when people, grandmas and grandpas, even 2 psychologists, 2 non practising advocates, pour out; and I listen; trying hard not to let that tear drop trickle down my cheeks. And the moment, it is a cancerian girl, I feel like running away, but I sit and smile my silly smile.

… ‘a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.’…
 
‘I  wanted  no  more  riotous  excursions  with  privileged  glimpses into the human heart.’
…. I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War.’
 
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler.
just as things grow in fast movies—I had  that  familiar  conviction  that  life  was  beginning  over again with the summer.
 
It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
 
They  were  both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if  they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.
 
Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
 
It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.
 
Tom  Buchanan  compelled  me  from  the  room  as though he were moving a checker to another square.
 
It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things.’ made me curious about ‘The Rise of the Coloured Empires’ by this man Goddard
 
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll  be  a  fool—that’s  the  best  thing  a  girl  can  be  in  this world, a beautiful little fool.’
‘Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!’
... as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me
 
You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the  other  hand  I  had  no  intention  of  being  rumored  into marriage.
 
About Tom’s mistress….The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known.
 
The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.
….but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some  women  can…
 
Taking out my handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the remains of the spot of dried lather that had worried me all the afternoon…
 
…..whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums.
…..introductions  forgotten  on  the  spot…
 
About Gatsby’s smile….It  understood you  just  so  far  as  you  wanted  to  be  understood,  believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best,  you  hoped  to  convey. 
 
‘And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.’
...... Most  of  the  remaining  women  were now having fights with men said to be their husbands.
 
But I  am  slow-thinking  and  full  of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that  first  I  had  to  get  myself  definitely  out  of  that  tangle back home.
 
Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
 
The smile comprehended Montenegro’s  troubled  history  and  sympathized  with  the  brave struggles  of  the  Montenegrin  people.
 
I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.
If I were to collect any precious stone, it would be a golden yellow sapphire, kanagapushparagam. 
Decades ago, I liked diamonds, but venus’ excess scares me, its jupiter’s wisdom that I need.
 
cuff buttons… composed of oddly familiar pieces of ivory. ‘Finest specimens of human molars… made me squirm.

He  had  waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed star-light  to  casual  moths  so  that  he  could  ‘come  over’  some afternoon to a stranger’s garden.
 
There are only the  pursued,  the  pursuing,  the  busy and the tired.’
 
Once more it was pouring  and  my  irregular  lawn,  well-shaved  by  Gatsby’s gardener,  abounded  in  small  muddy  swamps  and  prehistoric  marshes.  There was nothing to look at from under the  tree  except  Gatsby’s  enormous  house,  so  I  stared  at  it, like Kant at his church steeple, for half an hour.

……a dishevelled man  in  pajamas  was  doing  liver  exercises  on  the  floor…wonder what those exercises were…
 
I  think  he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of  response  it  drew  from  her  well-loved  eyes.

ONE THING’S SURE AND NOTHING’S SURER
THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET—CHILDREN. 
IN THE MEANTIME,

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
All the while, I have just heard of woman’s heart being as deep as the ocean.

The  truth  was  that  Jay  Gatsby,  of  West Egg,  Long  Island,  sprang  from  his  Platonic  conception  of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything,  means  just  that—and  he  must  be  about  His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a  seventeen-year-old  boy  would  be  likely  to  invent,  and  to this conception he was faithful to the end.

Human  sympathy  has  its  limits and  we  were  content  to  let  all  their  tragic  arguments  fade with the city lights behind.

I disliked him so much by this time that I didn’t find it necessary to tell him he was wrong.

They had never been closer in their month of love nor communicated more profoundly one with another than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.

his eyes leaking  isolated  and  unpunctual  tears.  He had  reached  an  age where  death  no  longer  has  the  quality  of  ghastly  surprise, ....

....So  we  beat  on,  boats  against  the  current,  borne  back ceaselessly into the past...

You  said  a  bad  driver  was  only  safe  until  she  met  another bad driver

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then re-treated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….

I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child.
So we  beat  on,  boats  against  the  current,  borne  back ceaselessly into the past

.........................

I read the ebook leisurely, dragging over 2 days and it was sheer coincidence, when my kutti friend listened to this book in 2+ hours today. I never cease to be amazed by his memory, to recite the lines flawlessly after listening just once. He is perfect with pronunciations, seeing this world with only 20% vision.

Beyond the Last Blue Mountain - A Life of J.R.D. TATA

Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (29 July 1904 – 29 November 1993) – (Could be avittam)

In the epilogue ‘He said that though at moments when his beloved ones had died he had said a word of prayer that their souls rest at peace, he had not prayed all his life, not for any other reason but that he felt the Creator of this world had so much to do that one did not intrude with small personal requests’ made me think about my never ending trivial prayers.

The message of his former company on his death on 29th November 1993

He touched the sky and it smiled.
He stretched out his arms
And they encircled the globe
His vision made giants out of
Men and organization

summed it all.

JRD Tata, the visionary man who took India forward, strengthened it and gave it its lasting foundations. To give alms is very easy, but to motivate that beggar, provide him a livelihood requires something beyond generousity and philanthropy. The fact that he wanted to die abroad, so that he would not bother people here; made him the epitome of a leader, against the present day politicians, and leaders for whom the state stops functioning, or riots break up. When I die, except for my eyes and any other organ that others might want to use, I would want to be incinerated in a jiffy, I would not want vultures or worms and rats nibbling this body, I think I will feed them with something else in my lifetime. It is no wonder that JRD did not like Zoroastrian funeral rites as well.

Part I Childhood and Youth

His passion for flying, made me go back to my dreams of travelling fast as well. I always liked the thought of flying, experiencing the high speed rush of air on my face and experiencing the thrill of speed, going zoom and zig zag in small planes up in the sky, used to envy the birds that they could fly. And came this science magazine when I was around 5th standard, believe it was a magazine 2020, that described the space ship accident where astronauts died in burning oxygen inside the space craft and I restricted my dreams to zooming fast in an open trax. Flying still brings the child in me, but my dream stops with enjoying a thrilling flight rather than pioneering an aviation industry, that JRD did in his time.

“What I remember most vividly is that we always seemed to be on the move, and that my lovely and cultured mother had to uproot herself every two years or so to find a new home – alternatively in France and in India”
He would feel bad, when his guests would add salt to his mother's french cooking. Reminded me couple of other son moonies who doted on their mothers.

JRD’s experience with Japanese typhoon, made me remember the only time, I experienced what I thought was an earthquake that turned out to be a tsunami on Dec 26th. 1918, aboard a ship, JRD spent learning typing on an old Remington machine. 82 years later, I learnt typing in Remington machine in women’s association building and later forced to key in question papers for my brother’s 12th board exams on dad’s insistence.

I was not comfortable with JRD’s poor chap remark on the Elkingon kid. I would not have joked on his embarrassment. He was 19 years old, when he lost his mother, who he had admired so much. So impressionable then. Young Jehangir being presented with a French racing bicycle suddenly reminded me of Harry Potter getting a fancy broom which was the awe of his school friends.

When the introduction of Steel Industry Protection Bill came in 1924, when JRD was 20, RD was going through turmoil. The crisis was at the highest when Sir Dorab pledged his entire fortune for 10 million towards the loan of 20 million to pay out the salaries and other needs.

There was a period in 1924 when a good friend of R.D. Tata would call on him every day to ask when he was going to close down the works. Each day R.D. would reply: Ask me again tomorrow. We will be able to manage for today….He went on dancing in the evening and mixed with friends. But when the children had retired to sleep, in the still of the night, Rodabeh recalls her father pacing up and down on the veranda of “Sunita” overlooking the Chowpatty. He was praying.

What tests a man’s greatness is not how he carries himself when the times are good, but how he carries himself when the whole world is against him. To keep going, amidst all odds, no matter what brought out my memories of crisis as well.

Jamshetji, appointed Peterson under his employment. The way he recruited Charles Page Perin and Perin’s recollection of that moment that says ‘I was dumbfounded, naturally. But you don’t know what character and force radiated from Tata’s face. And kindliness too.’ And that reminded me a favourite Abraham Joshua Heschel’s quote: 'When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people’

‘I had no inkling that I was not going to see him around…’ He was just 22. ‘His responsibility as the head of the family began to dawn on him’.

When JRD missed Cambridge and the book says - ‘Of this period of self-study Churchill said – First we shape our dwellings and then our dwellings shape us.’ Wish this society, did not play emphasis on formal education for suitable employment; let people come up based on their abilities rather than going by the certificates of formal education. Even when JRD was caught up with typhoid and paratyphoid, he read business magazines instead of resting. ‘I want to be worthy of Tatas.’ If I could inspire this for the small kids in my large family, then I can consider a part of my life worthwhile.

‘I like everything that is a little on the edge, on the verge of disaster – living dangerously…The car was the love of my life then’ sounded like my own words.

Reading about Humata, Hukhta, Hvarashta (Good thoughts, good words, good deeds) inscribed on Lady Meherbai’s mausoleum made wonder about Zoroastrian faith.

Part II Eyes on the Stars

“When asked what has been the most satisfying experience of your life? he replies instantly: ‘the flying experience has dominated. No other can equal the excitement of a first solo flight” for me the most thrilling one was when I raced over 100 kmph in my driving school’s trax after I had missed my college bus by matter of few minutes.

Speaking about his flying, JRD replies “The fact that you found yourself totally alone in the immense space made you feel very humble and made you see of what little consequence you were. And you identify God with the immensity of nature. These are the only times, I feel totally alone and was conscious of that loneliness.” Made me wonder about how truly small I am in the bigger scheme of things. Imagine how huge a solar system will be for that universe, where earth’s solar orbit is of the size of the existing atom’s orbit.

JRD’s issue of not sharing promised one third of aviation profit with Nevill made me reflect on Forrest Gump where Gump shared half the profit with the Bubba for just the idea of shrimping business.

It was really amazing to know that at 78, having just had a heart attack few weeks earlier, JRD actually repeated his inaugural solo flight and says “This flight of today was intended to inspire a little hope and enthusiasm in the younger people of our country that despite all the difficulties, all the frustration, there is a joy in having done something as well as you could and better than others thought you could.” True indeed, joy of achieving something is indeed has its own alluring charm, especially, when people say it is too difficult for you do it.

Part III Captain of the Industry and Patriarch

Speaking of aviation JRD says “With Air-India I was the creator. I was the founder so I could afford to make mistakes without undoing the good that was done by others in the past” made me think about Atlas Shrugged and the strike by the creative people.

JRD’s love for Other Men’s flowers made me go to poemhunter and search for “The Hound of Heaven.” After reading the first few verses, I decided, I will stick to Blake for now.

For almost half a century two men held the commanding heights of the Indian industry: JRD and “GD Birla” made me reflect on leaders who came without peers like Alexander and Ashoka; and those who came in pairs like say Gandhi and Hilter, cine actors MGR and Shivaji Ganesan, Rajni and Kamal, who brought in the contrast and complemented each other and yet had their own identity.

Wavell finds JRD supercilious which he mentions so. There are many instances in the book, where JRD’s high handedness comes to light. But beneath all that is the caring generosity, benevolence and the will to do good for the greater masses, by achieving something significant. Right from punching his brother and then regretting mon petit frère; JRD is kindness beneath a cloak of tasking pursuer of excellence.

“In a more general context JRD told me, ‘If I have any merit, it is getting on with the individuals according to their ways and characteristics. In fifty years, I have dealt with a hundred top directors and I got on with all of them. At times it involves suppressing yourself. It is painful but necessary… To be a leader you have to lead human beings with affection.” brings out the great leader in him.

Reading about the relations he had with Nehru, Gandhi and Patel, where he describes how he feels after coming from a conversation with them, made me curious about Patel. Had Patel been the prime minister, things would have changed so much.

JRD’s support for Ratan as in “when you are confident he will question you and grill you, but if you are fighting with your back against the wall, he will come and duel beside you” only demonstrates time and again the causes he took up and kingly manner of caring for his citizens, be it for a family member or an outsider.

The fact that JRD states to his driver “whom are you fooling” on keeping watch fast in order to be punctual reminded me of dad who was punctual to the dot. Even if he had made someone resign, he went out of his way to do something for the other person. It was indeed a pleasure to know JRD through Lala.

The Hour of God

source

Aurobindo (Aravinda Ackroyd Ghosh) August 15, 1872 - 5 December 1950. (Moola). I had to read this book to understand Involution/Evolution and Integral Yoga for an exam. This booklet is a collection of 24 essays, divided in 4 sections, published posthumously. This 124 page booklet had been lying in shelf for quite some time. Since Sugi was once a Senior Housie in JIPMER, Pondicherry this should have come home anytime after 2004. Am not agreeing or disagreeing with his philosophy or pitting them against other Indian or RoW philosophies. Just culling out few lines here and there in addition to my own ramblings.

The Divine Superman
The joy of the way is because that which is drawing thee is also with thee on thy path and the power to climb was given thee so thou mightiest mount to thy own summits …one who saw but through a veil and mistook the veil for the face…
Certitudes
To enter into relations with God is Yoga, the highest rapture and the noblest utility. To the materialist He disguises Himself in matter. For the Nihilist He waits ambushed in the bosom of Annihilation.

Initial Definitions and Descriptions
Yoga has 4 powers and objects, purity, liberty, beatitude and perfection.
Why shouldst thou hunger after departure from manifestation as if the world were an evil?...neither desire nor shun the world, but seek the bliss and purity and freedom and greatness of God in whatsoever state or experience or environment. …for all these ideas of world and not-world, of transcendence and immanence and relation are expressions of thought by which mind puts it own values on the self-manifestation of Parabrahman to Its own principle of knowledge and we cannot assert any, even the highest of them to be the real reality of that which is at once all and beyond all nothing and beyond nothing.

The Object of our Yoga
The object of our yoga is self perfection, not self-annulment.

Two paths:
1 asceticism – withdrawal from Universe – receives us when we lose God in existence
2 Effected by Tapasya – Perfection in Universe – attained when we fulfill existence in God

Aurobindo compares Buddha and Shankara. Both of them supposed world to be false and miserable and therefore escape from world was wisdom to them.

…the world is God, the world is Satyam, the world is Ananda; it is our misreading of the world through mental egoism that is a falsehood and our wrong relation with God in the world that is a misery. There is no other falsity and not other cause of sorrow.
यदाऽतमस्तन्न दिवा न रात्रिः न सन्नचासच्छिव एव केवलः |
तदक्षरं तत् सवितुर्वण्यं प्रज्ञा च तस्मात् प्रसृता पुराणी ||4.18|| Shvetasvatara Upanishad

When ignorance is gone, then there remains neither day nor night, no existence or non existence, but he alone the absolute and imperishable. From him proceeded the ancient wisdom. That savita is indeed worthy of adoration.

He quotes from Shvetasvara Upanishad - प्रज्ञा प्रसृता पुराणी
… the vedic meaning of Maya is not illusion, it is wisdom, knowledge, capacity, wide extension in consciousness… Omnipotent Wisdom created the world, it is not the organised blunder of some infinite dreamer… We also can enjoy this truth and bliss, called the Veda amrtam, Immortality, if by casting away our egoistic existence into perfect unity with His being we consent to receive the divine perception and the divine freedom.

The Entire Purpose of Yoga
He is also Absolute and Supreme Personality playing in the universe and as the universe; in the universe. Purpose is not to dispute this or that philosophy or religion… But to realise and become all of them, not follow after any aspect to the exclusion of the rest, but to embrace God in all His aspects and beyond aspect.

He mentions the 7 principles of existence as the basis of the world of Puranas (Satyaloka-world of highest truth/Being, Tapas-world of infinite Will/conscious force, Jana – world of creative delight of existence, Mahar-great world or supramental, Swar-pure unobscured mind, Bhuvar-world of pure vitality and Bhur-material world)

Lila of creation with Matter as lowest and Pure as highest form
1. Mind and Life stand upon Matter (Manas and Prana on Annam) and make the lower half of the world-existence (aparardha)
2. Pure consciousness and pure bliss proceed out of pure Being (Chit and Ananda out of Sat) and make the upper half of the world existence.
3. Pure idea (Vijnana) stands as the link between the two.

Our life on this earth is a divine poem that we are translating into earthly language or a strain of music which we are rendering into words. I kind of liked his choice of words.

• Under the conditions of mind, life and body, ahamkara is born
• the subjective or objective form of consciousness is falsely taken for self-existent being
• the body for an independent personality;

the one loses itself in us in its multiplicity and when it recovers its unity, finds it difficult, owing to the nature of the mind, to preserve its play of multiplicity. Therefore when we are absorbed in the world, we miss God in Himself; when we see God, we miss Him in the world.

He further goes on to state what is our business wrt Sat, Chit and Ananda. To come out of dualities and multitude and realize God in universe, transcendent of universe.
Parabrahman, Mukthi and Human Thought-Systems

Parabrahman being Infinite can be known in a way, so far as the symbols reveal it. Akin to mathematical infinity… but even the knowledge of the whole of symbols does not amount to real knowledge of the Absolute.

Aurobindo states, how different people reach different states as a result of their quest for release – Gods to Shunya, sushupti etc.
…to lust after becoming Parabrahman is a sort of luminous illusion or sattvic play of Maya, for in reality there is none bound and none free and none needing to be freed and all is only God’s Lila… (I badly need this pointer, because, i quit living and went on pondering about life and afterlife for ever. Have to just live now, paying heed to the inner calling - Svadharama as BG says)

… aim of our Yoga is jivanmukti in the universe, not because we need to be freed or for any other reason,……..we have to live released in the world, not released out of the world.
As with other philosophies, the indescribable is finally made – That is and we are that
Lining with Bacon’s read not to contradict…, Aurobindo calls for realization and experience alone are alone of importance. And not to bother about disputants questioning your system on the ground that is not consistent with this or that shastra or this or that authority…

The Evolutionary Aim in Yoga
He quoted BG 8.1, 3.35, 3.33 and proclaimed that the aim of yoga is Supernature; possess and enjoy nature as free and lord, svarat and samrat; being still a figure of humanity, a man among men...

Maya
What I liked the most was that he did not renounce the truth of Maya and perceived it as a partial explanation of existence. The way he analyzed Buddhist and Sankara’s view on Maya was intriguing. Now I understand, why many told me not to ever try Vipassana (its hollow body meditation etc). Learnt the meaning of new terms like Teleology.

As usual, i started intending to write, everything, i marked in the booklet, but once I completed my notes for the 2 questions, this too got impatiently shelved.

Astro analysis:
SJC
BarbaraPijan
Wonder what happened to his wife of 14, when they married at 28. A letter to her. He mentions India before Independence - a demon sucking blood from the breast of my mother (India). Enlightenment after 1year solitary confinement 1908-09.

few pics

Anandmath

As kids, we were encouraged to write poems. We ended up with ridiculous rhymes – even on trivial issues like the first time, I fought with my best friend, elephants, birthdays for siblings and parents. My sister and brother would also compose loving rhymes and write them on b’day cards. Gone are the days of innocent creativity. Now no matter how much I rake my head, I can’t replicate the ease with which, I wrote a 6 stanza amusing rhyme which I composed when I was 10 years old.

So composing rhymes - we did. Singing other’s songs - we did. My sister and I used to sing in unison, while my dad drummed the tea poy to add some music. But I found only in novels like ‘A Suitable Boy’ where people composed rhymes spontaneously as a matter of conversation.

While going through Indian National Movement, I was curious to know about Vande Mataram and hence Anandamath. This will be more of an eisegesis. I downloaded the hindi translation from scribd. In Anandmath, the protagonists, the instigators breaking into singing now and then, kind of made the whole affair theatrical. Yet in those times, Vande mataram was THE, the song. It set the stage ablaze with other patriotic words like Tum Mujhe Khoon do... Yet to antagonize one section of the junta (muslims) till the very end was kind of discomfiting. Shanthi actually says to the englishman, we don't have enmity with you, it is the muslims we are targetting. Set in period of famine, oppression and exploitation by various factors, the confusion was understandable.

Kalyani chose not to eat till she saw her husband! What sanyasins - to lit fires to muslims’ houses, where young babies, women and old folk might be there? How could they wrongly identify their oppressors? What use of personal sacrifices with personal moral values citing larger causes? Yet, to realize that there were herbs to revive those who had taken poison or suffered fatal wounds in a battle is revealing. Bhavanand atoned for his misdemeanour, yet the leader of the brotherhood had to die with such open secrets. Nehru's story is well known, but i was surprised to see even Mahatma had wanted a spiritual marriage. Well history is mostly written by the victors, it is so hard to discern the truth.

Feisty Shanthi's childhood was quite a surprise. Her calmness in the face of her husband's mistaken infidelity, her physical and moral courage, yet towards the end of the battle, her lamenting like an ordinary woman, made Shanthi quite a lady. And Shanthi and Jeevanand were hailed as the exemplary couples. Well, wrongly channeled patriotism. Of course, being a minority in those days, they retaliated for the sufferings, yet it was towards the fag end that the author chose to reveal the futility of their efforts.

In school days, we sang this song numerous times, as part of prayers, competitions, classes, dramas. In Bengal, there is something about glorifying Shakthi - be it Ramakrishna Paramahamsa worshipping Kali, Aurobindo attributing all creative endeavours to The Supreme Mahashakthi (Mahamaya, Paraprakruti), or BC Chatterjee visualizing Mother India as Malayajasheethlaam, Shasyashyamalaam... etc.

In the this nationalist novel, wish the heros and Shanthi had directed their zeal and vigour in a better way.

Vellore-Walaja - At the Feet of the Master

The Trip
While travelling, I always carry something either to memorize in acads without straining my eyes or just casually read when the bus stops moving. This time for my weekend Vellore-Wallaja trip, i took a very tiny pocket booklet 'At The Feet of The Master' by Alcyone better known as JK (theosophical society). It was given to me by my pranic healers in April 2008, and i could completely read it only yes'day night. Hardly takes 20 minutes to read it. I am in the process of getting rid of all my excessive luggage (mental to physical - jewels to silk clothes to everything), and so am wary of even buying books, frequently resorting to libraries or borrowing from friends and getting rid of the book once i finish it. In fact most of the only special books i am having difficulties giving up are those that came to me without my asking for them, gifted by pisceans-acquarians decades ago. I need to stop my astro bucketing of people, even though it helps me interact with them better.

This pocket book was inspiring and it has re-iterated, what i always tried to follow in day to day life. 4 qualifications JK calls for in the path of evolution -

1. Discrimination (between real and unreal, see goodness-god in everything and every being) - way of life for folks with Hamsa MahapurushYoga
2. Desireless-ness (not even freedom from rebirth)
3. Good conduct (a) Cheerfulness - being thankful to lords of karma, rather than lamenting b) non interference in others affairs - let people lead their lives, c) tolerance, d) one pointedness, e) confidence - trust in good force above f) Self control as to mind and action (Now Ramana Mahrishi and my pranayam instructor - Sridhar Deshmukh sir say - just BE, for any form of control is nonsense, for it fuels vanity of self) Love (don't hurt others, no gossip, see only the goodness in others, speak out - only if what you say is true, kind and helpful)

Desirelessness has always been a bone of contention for me. For once i set - write down any mundane goal, i have always attained it, no matter what - be it a promotion, IIMB seat (in fact i had actually set my goal for IIMK seat for the love of Kerala), Au medal or a CG or any possession. But i have never had any sense of satisfaction once i reached any goal, and would always think in terms of the having used my time and efforts for something else. After I got my As, when my friends feel bad that he/she didn't get it, it does not give me happiness, after my promo, when my friend cried on my shoulders on her appraisal rating, it didn't give me happiness.

Everything loses its charm the moment its yours. For instance, many married guys, would realize what am speaking about. I can't imagine stepping out my posh Villa with a swimming pool, in yellow sapphires and satin, in a red Ferrari, fly internationally and feel elated, when images flash - of that poor old toothless leper shriveled granny crushing a beeda with a stone with the only 2 fingers left in her hand by the road side). I used to wonder between Goal Setting and Gita's right only to action and not fruits of action. For I always find, my goal - i.e. end results guide my action. I find it difficult to do, just for the sake of doing, not for the end result.

I had actually given up all my actions all these months, waiting for apple to fall on my lap, like Newton. I find cheerfully working for that job, that designation-title, that salary, that location, those perks, that exit option, that retirement corpus, that XXX too mundane. I don't want to base my life's happiness on having that job, working for self or others, owning this or that, knowing this or that. I was just taking life as it comes, giving up all action. Now to work, without bothering about end result, is something i need to work on. I will work, for the sake of work, nothing else - probably now, for making my employers life simpler and happier. My taurean-piscean IPS mentor who has malavya yoga would always counter me - Thinking small is a crime, if a person says, he does not want money, he will lie for everything else as well.

Why I took this trip?
I travelled 700 kms just to see the smile on my CMC Vellore Dr Isaac Jebaraj's face when I gave him the bouquet of roses carefully packed from Koramangala. I agreed to attend my juniors wedding in Walaja that evening just because, my 60+ yrs old doctor was retiring and it has his b'day as well on Feb 20. I always need to see everyone around me healthy, happy and peaceful. To even give up that desire, and just give (As vivekananda says - the law of nature is to give) is something i need to practice. My family folks, always scold me for my thoughtless giving whenever anyone comes to my place.To be an emotional jhadam and just be eternally cheerful is something i need to work on.

I am going to cut off all manthras and just do plain surya namaskars, am going to give up mugging Gita and VishnuSahsraNamam. Because I felt superior since i had memorized Lalitha. Your mental body wishes to think itself proudly separate, to think much of itself and little of others. Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Shiva Vishnu, my saviour saint Ramana, all have always been the same to me. This body is your animal - horse, JK says - treat it well, and don't over task it. Horse or whatever. :-)

If you go to ortho department of CMC Vellore, any day, there will be at least a 100 cruelly amputated limbs and tortured souls - young and old. When i read Garuda puranam, which gave the cause of each disease and disability, (take stroke/paralysis in many biz men, mental issues/cerebral palsy in brahmin kids, cancer in those hurt their own blood relations etc.) I always used to wonder, why do accidents happen? I got the answer long before, right during my 10 day vipassana meditation. It was our own THOUGHTS. Thoughts are indeed so powerful. Fate or kundli/jadhagam is not responsible, but thoughts are for every fortune, misfortune, disease and accident on this earth. In my case, my trimsamsha (1/30th div just like navamsha is 1/9th div) says, it was anger accumulated over many lives and now that is what i need to watch out for. An idea can indeed change the whole world. I have learnt the importance of morality, purity of thoughts, for that guides my words and actions. I am 100% confident, after these 6 RTAs and 9 surgeries, no matter what, i won't ever have another RTA or any form of accident for that matter without my explicit invitation. For I have learnt, am still learning to analyse my thoughts and chop off the root of originating thought whenever i catch myself meandering. (Thanks to Vethathri Maharishi's Kaya Kalpa yoga program - folks please visit Aliyar's Temple of Consciousness at least once in your life)

We talk about that pollution, this pollution. It is high time, we thought about purity of thoughts. No more thought pollution with the 6 internal enemies - kama,krodha,Loba, moha, mada and mathsarya.

Back to IIMB
I could not get to cancel my Sunday morning interview session. So i had to travel back right after my junior's reception on Saturday night. Thanks to God's grace, within minutes, a direct bus to Bangalore came at Walaja which dropped me right at Diary circle. Jolly good reception it was and nice food, comfortable AC room to take rest. Had a great time. :-)

Atlas Shrugged

I had read this book years before, but now I was forced to read it again for an essay competition. Ayn Rand is too rajasic for me. Yes, most of what she says makes sense. But to generalize all Indian sadhus as mystic mucks is a bit antagonizing. Am wondering what she would say, to the current organizations, which in addition to making profit (skinning of customers as she would say) have CSR to shoulder, with climate change, sustainability, inclusive growth and green production. The money speech of Francisco d’Anconia made absolute sense. The following of some of the lines that caught my attention in this hurried second reading.

"What you think you think is an illusion created by your glands, your emotions and, in the last analysis, by the content of your stomach."

"That gray matter you're so proud of is like a mirror in an amusement park which transmits to you nothing but distorted signals from a reality forever beyond your grasp."

"The more certain you feel of your rational conclusions, the more certain you are to be wrong. Your brain being an instrument of distortion, the more active the brain the greater the distortion."

"The giants of the intellect, whom you admire so much, once taught you that the earth was flat and that fallacies, not of achievements."

"The more we know, the more we learn that we know nothing."

"Only the crassest ignoramus can still hold to the old-fashioned notion that seeing is believing. That which you see is the first thing to disbelieve."

"A scientist knows that a stone is not a stone at all. It is, in fact, identical with a feather pillow. Both are only a cloud formation of the same invisible, whirling particles. But, you say, you can't use a stone for a pillow? Well, that merely proves your helplessness in the face of actual reality."

"You see, Dr. Stadler, people don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue—a highly intellectual virtue—out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt."

Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don't respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?"

"I've never despised luxury," he said, "yet I've always despised those who enjoyed it. I looked at what they called their pleasures and it seemed so miserably senseless to me—after what I felt at the mills.

"Are you saying," he asked slowly, "that I rose in your estimation when you found that I wanted you?"
"Of course."
"That's not the reaction of most people to being wanted."
"It isn't."
"Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them.".

I'm Mrs. Taggart. I'm the woman in this family now."
"That's quite all right," said Dagny. "I'm the man.”
"We are at the dawn of a new age," said James Taggart, from above the rim of his champagne glass.
"We are breaking up the vicious tyranny of economic power. We will set men free of the rule of the dollar. We will release our spiritual aims from dependence on the owners of material means. We will liberate our culture from the stranglehold of the profit-chasers. We will build a society dedicated to higher ideals, and we will replace the aristocracy of money by—the aristocracy of pull

Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire
philosophy of life.
Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself.
You're the man who's spent his life shaping matter to the purpose of his mind. You're the man who would know that just as an idea unexpressed in physical
action is contemptible hypocrisy, so is platonic love—and just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool's self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one's code of values.

Now you're willing to do it at the price of accepting the position of a criminal and
the risk of being thrown in jail at any moment—for the sake of keeping in existence a system which can be kept going only by its victims, only by the breaking of its own laws." Reminded me of the court scene in the movie Guru.


So he waited, holding his love in the place of the hope which he had no right to hold.
From then on, people helped Wesley Mouch to advance, for the same reason
as that which had prompted Uncle Julius: they were people who believed that mediocrity was safe.

"I know that everything is relative and that nobody can know anything and that reason is an illusion and that there isn't any reality.

"Mountains . . ." said Gilbert Keith-Worthing, with satisfaction.
"It is a spectacle of this kind that makes one feel the insignificance of man.' What is this presumptuous little bit of rail, which crude materialists are so proud of building—compared to that eternal grandeur? No more than the basting thread of a seamstress on the hem of the garment of nature. If a single one of those granite giants chose to crumble, it would annihilate this train."

Then she understood that what she needed was the motion to a purpose, no
matter how small or in what form, the sense of an activity going step by step to some chosen end across a span of time

But the looters—by their own stated theory—are in desperate, permanent, congenital need and at the blind mercy of matter Eddie?—we're on a dead planet, like
the moon, where we must move, but dare not stop for a breath of feeling or we'll discover that there is no air to breathe.

the belief that disasters are one's natural fate, to be borne, not fought. I can't accept submission. I can't accept helplessness. I can't accept renunciation. So long as there's a railroad left to run, I'll run it."

we were taught that some things belong to God and others to Caesar. Perhaps their God would permit it. But the man you say we're serving—he docs not permit it. He permits no divided allegiance, no war between your mind and your body, no gulf between your values and your actions, no tributes to Caesar. He permits no Caesars."
To me, she was not a person and not . . .not a woman. She was the railroad. And I didn't think that anyone would ever have the audacity to look at her in any other way.

"Any man who's afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who's in a business where he doesn't belong. To me—the foulest man on earth, more contemptible than a criminal, is the employer who rejects men for being too good. That's what I've always thought and—say, what are you laughing at?"

. . . There is reason, she thought, why a woman would wish to cook for a man . . . oh, not as a duty, not as a chronic career, only as a rare and special rite in symbol of . . . but what have they made of it, the preachers of woman's duty? . . . The castrated performance of a sickening drudgery was held to be a woman's proper virtue—while that which gave it meaning and sanction was held as a shameful sin . . . the work of dealing with grease, steam and slimy peelings in a reeking kitchen was held to be a spiritual matter, an act of compliance with her moral duty—while the meeting of two bodies in a bedroom was held to be a physical indulgence, an act of surrender to an animal instinct, with no glory, meaning or pride of spirit to be claimed by the animals involved.

Only if some one is there, i cook elaborate meals, experimenting with various recipes from internet. Left to myself, am too lazy to cook most of the days, and even if i do, i end up eating green things, horse gram, mostly fruits for dinner and veggies, noodles and things that can be cooked in less than 5 minutes.
Just yes'day i had to listen to a 3 hour crib session over phone of yet another husband who was complaining about his wife, who never cooked food for him in time. So much hoopla over food.


"I did love you once," she said dully, "but it wasn't what you wanted. I loved you for your courage, your ambition, your ability. But it wasn't real, any of it."

"You fear the man who has a dollar less than you, that dollar is rightfully his, he makes you feel like a moral defrauder. You hate the man who has a dollar more than you, that dollar is rightfully yours, he makes you feel that you are morally defrauded. The man below is a source of your guilt, the man above is a source of your frustration. You do not know what to surrender or demand, when to give and when to grab, what pleasure in life is rightfully yours and what debt is still unpaid to others—you struggle to evade, as 'theory,' the knowledge that by the moral standard you've accepted you are guilty every moment of your life, there is no mouthful of food you swallow that is not needed by someone somewhere on earth—and you give up the problem in blind resentment, you conclude that moral perfection is not to
be achieved or desired, that you will muddle through by snatching as snatch can and by avoiding the eyes of the young, of those who look at you as if self-esteem were possible and they expected you to have it. Guilt is all that you retain within your soul—and so does every other man, as he goes past, avoiding your eyes. Do you wonder why your morality has not achieved brotherhood on earth or the good will of man
to man?

Random females with causeless incomes flitter on trips around the globe and return to deliver the message that the backward peoples of the world demand a higher standard of living.

What permits any insolent beggar to wave his sores in the face of his betters and to plead for help in the tone of a threat?

1984

George Orwell was born in Bengal during the British reign over India. It is intriguing as to what made him imagine such a dystopian world. Minitrue, miniplenty, minipax, miniluv – nice names for the 4 ministries.

Here goes couple of lines that interested me.
It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.

The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already

The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again.

Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters. history as a cyclical process and
claimed to show that inequality was the unalterable law of human life.

Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly.
Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. “‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,’

A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

Noel Stachan the trustee starts this story of the modification of a will, inserting clauses.

When I was reading about the Three Pagoda’s pass as Dr. Ferris recollected after mentioning Donald Paget’s death, I wanted to go there as well. Again I was wondering, these were the British who ruled over India and Malaysia.
“she liked to have something to look at while her ears were assailed.” Amused me.

If I had all the worlds money what would I do? I would sit and read the novels, I want to. I would go traveling all over the world. I will cook and take care of mom. I will learn astrology properly. I will sit and meditate and join some ashram. I will teach in a village school and live in a simple village eating fresh farm produce. Rearing gardens with beautiful flowers. Now Jean Paget wants to go to Malay and dig a well. Am curious why?

Should know about the history of lifebuoy soap. Am surprised it was there from war times.

Good lord, the Nips crucified Joe Harman for stealing 5 black cockerels.

Kuala Telang and the place filled with casuarinas trees reminded me of the Schneider party we had at the Casaurina place in ECR. It was the first time I had a sip of Champagne the Schneider guy had got for the whole team. Someone took a snap of me drinking Champagne and threatened to send it to my parents then.
Kota Bahru reminded me of Pudukottai which means the same in Tamil.

Dulce ridentem lalagen amabo, Dulce loquentem. What does this mean? Okie found it
will love (my) sweetly laughing, sweetly chatting Lalage...

Joe Harman traveling half across the world to see Miss Paget reminded me of the tamil movie where Surya goes to US for the Reddy girl, believe it was Athavan.

Jean inspired in me to start something of my own. Reminded me of Nayana. Page turner it was. The title made sense after all. Everything that goes comes around, be it the gold of Hall’s creek or words or deeds. As they said in Vipasanna, everything comes back to you in thousand folds, because of the seed you sow.

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

I had a charming massively chubby svelte Mallu senior who called herself Heidi. A scorpio I believe. She has escaped miraculously without a scratch a bus accident where the bus she was sitting in overturned into a valley. I started reading this BBC collection ebook thanks to her nickname. After Les Miserables and War and Peace this seems lighter. Let me see.

Oh, this is the very same novel, I have seen as a hindi movie. Cute story indeed. Alluring by its simplicity and innocence and pristine purity. Reminds me of the only German exchange student who used to study with me for quizzes, who laughed for everything in term IV.

Why this book just flew by in matter of hours. Nice charming story. All is well that ends well. Simply divine, simple and divine. For simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

War and Peace

My childhood days saw Mishkas, and my prize books were Russian folk tales, tales of prince and princess and czars, thanks to the friendship between Nehru and Soviet Union and mom being a central government employee and me studying in Kendriya Vidyalaya. My sister and I tried so many times to get this czar/tsar pronunciation clumsily back then. I distinctly remember the collection of short stories on the friendship between wolf and man, Siberia tiger and a child, a tiger that ate sausages every time. I remember reading Anna Karenina, but that was a looooooong time ago. So with nothing else left to do, am just reading BBC’s top 100 novels, some of which, I have already read. I started with the bottom and War and Peace came up. It was absolutely unintentional that I picked this up just after reading Les Misérables.

Princess Mary Bolkonski’s character was the first to impress me, for it distinctly reminded me a girl in college. She had the same attitude of attributing everything to god. German, French and English peppered throughout this book initially made me wonder about polyglots in India who know minimum 4 languages.

As the war progressed between Russia and France, 150 thousand French men and 40 K Russian (Kutuzov’s) men, I was thinking, why that is the size of a software company. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. One man at the top playing with the lives of so many people made me painfully aware of the cruelties of a war. Cheiro mentions that the palm lines of 2 soldiers were not there just 2 days before they died in the war. I have been trying in vain to see the palm lines of corpses to confirm this.
With the war in the background, Mary sees Prince Vasili’s son’s blatant behavior with her friend Bourienne and still deals with her in her own pristine way.
“Said Prince Andrew; ‘ on the contrary one must try to make one’s life as pleasant as possible. I am alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best as I can without hurting others”


Then again came the scene where Natasha begs Nicholas to take her for hunting. This immediately brought in images of a young girl whom I had interviewed. She had cat eyes. She had this way of looking outside while talking anything. She described driving big racing cars was her passion and I was wondering how, until my partner asked if it was because of her elder brother.

“Natasha had too much of something and because of this she would not be happy… “ and the story’s twist to make her so made me sad as well. Tolstoy’s ploy of not giving everything to everyone. The generous Rostovs were lacking in riches. The Bezukovs in morality. The Bolonski’s in happiness and moderation of temper. Julia let Boris marry her because of flattery and Boris married her for her fortune. How very true as always.

“…because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion-science, that is, the supposed knowledge of the absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing does not want to know anything since he does not believe that anything can be known. “


I still remember my 7th standard history half early examination. It was scheduled in the afternoon session and I was leafing through the history text book pages in the last minute and out of exasperation of not being able to remember the dates and events, I threw the book towards the door around noon, a fact I sincerely regret now. During childhood history bored me because of the teachers, now history rather the lives of people in history interests me the most. In vain, am trying to find that of Indira Gandhi after reading Dom Moraes’, hope someone lends me Aandhi some day.

Slaughter of 80k men at Borodino…as I read this, I was shocked, rather I should not be any longer. I wonder, how people managed to bomb Japan even after this, persecute jews even after this. None of Napolean’s orders were executed Tolstoy says, common will… well…hmmm.

Hugo had a nice way of describing to the minutest detail possible, setting things up to a climax and resolving thereafter, (that was not precisely history, but fiction). And Tolstoy like me, put the end results first and there after went on explaining about Napolean’s cold and all trivia, at times rather mostly sarcastically.
Why on earth do they call Peter Kirilovich as Pierre? These Russian names and different forms of their names and pet names and their being addressed by different persons in different ways never ceased to amuse me. Pierre being accepted amongst the soldiers and everyone around him in earlier chapters, reminded me of my brother who is 120 kgs, always smiling, intending no harm to anyone, being the object of somebody’s soft raillery.

When everywhere, there were reports of gruesome death and horrors, I was wondering, how come Tolstoy spared the princes and then came Andrew and Anatole Kuragin’s saga. It is quite sad, that we need such misery and intense pain and torture to experience happiness and boundless love even for the worst of enemies.
The mathematical tinge in Tolstoy’s explanation reminded me of my professor. Tortoise and Achilles problem. Infinite collective force vs. one strong individual will. The laws of History! Is it the actions of the kings and the important men or the path. Latter on it reminded me of the course we had Corporate Strategy and Environment, where our professor would describe Bhopal Gas Tragedy or Nile Perch, and other such issues, point out all issues and say no solution is possible finally satisfying all criteria and constraints.

Guess, Tolstoy likes lilac, Natasha wore a lilac and black dress while going to the church and Count Rostov came out in lilac dressing gown the day of departure from Moscow. Rostovs generosity of letting all their carts for the wounded though seemed chivalrous on one side, seemed so sacrificing too on the other hand. I have all my clothes and things strewn in 3 places, Trichy, Bangalore and Chennai and am at times aching that they are not within reach, when I need them. For Rostovs to leave the packed things for outright looting seemed too magnanimous.

“A town captured by the enemy is like the maid who has lost her honour,” I always wonder, why such honour is never attributed to a guy. Girls like flattery, dolls and flimsy material possessions and guys indulge in girls, taking it all, supplementing with larger material possessions.
“Moscow being empty as a dying queenless hive is empty. …..”
Rostopchin ordering Vereshchagin’s death and later repenting it, mentally preparing to address Kutozov….
Monkey getting trapped with hands grabbing nuts inside a narrow necked jug…thus the French soldiers became marauders and disappeared with their loot.

“love of clodhoppers” for Helene and” love of simpletons” for Natasha vs. L’amour which the Frenchmen worshipped consisted principally in the unnaturalness of the relation to the woman and in a combination of incongruities giving chief charm to the feeling.” Well so much for the French love.

When I read about Moscow burning, I wondered, what victory were the Russians celebrating, when they let Moscow burn, losing their capital for looting that too without fight. Strange victory indeed.

Andrew’s death reminded me of the deaths I had to witness. I could never cry in any of them, later I cried in solitude thinking they were no more, occasionally when thoughts about them came.

“The mining of the Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling Napolean’s wish that is should be blown up when he left Moscow- as a child wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to be beaten.” I started liking Tolstoy’s way of story-telling. Wish he was my grandfather to tell me bed time stories.

I am here resting on a comfortable bed, with proper shelter and eating food which I like and I have inner peace. I go out and see a beggar or some invalid, I feel bad that she has to suffer so at such an old age. Now Pierre finds “peace and inner harmony only through horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev. “ Does man have to experience peace only through privation? Well different things for different people. There is no panacea for inner peace. What might seem the antidote at one time may turn out to be the poison few years down the line. Pierre’s ability to sit still and think without doing anything reminded me of my Vipasanna days. It was tranquil back then.

Pierre being rescued by Dolokov and Denisov, was bound to happen, especially since Tolstoy made Pierre shoot Dolokov in a duel. Irony of fate. Especially since Tolstoy made Andrew and his brother-in-law see each other after being wounded.
“While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity.”
“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one’s sufferings, in innocent sufferings.”

“The activity of Alexander or of Napolean cannot be called useful or harmful, for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or harmful. If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it does not agree with his limited understanding of what is good.”

“It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrives at laws, ‘ so also in history the new view says: It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.” Interdependence others would say now.

War and Peace, between nations, between people, between entities eternally happens like waves forever beating against the shores, now resolving, now again arising, and then finally dissolving into the mighty ocean. Hiranyagarbha should I say?

Les Misérables

We had a course called CARTS (creativity in arts and science). The prof circulated 2 handouts from this book which I read and felt I had read the complete book some time earlier. Now as I read this book afresh, everything seems so profound. For instance,

"Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in prayer."

How commensurate is each word for we indeed carry this body based on our own wants and desires. Now I understand why child is the father of the man. All we need to do is watch our thoughts, for they translate into words and deeds, or even simpler, watch our breath and merely observe it.

Now I realize why my sister who is a dentist can do the things (deal with blood and teeth) that i merely say, while she does it. I see the world with rose tinted glasses, seeing only the positive and the beautiful, while she sees it as it is. I left biology because of dissections, to go beyond this flesh and blood for healing the sufferers is something that doctors do and now I respect her even more and all doctors. To be completely aware, without being involved is the greatest mastery of this birth. And so Hugo’s lines as compared to Wilde’s lines (All art is quite useless) in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” makes a distinct impression on me:
The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a pause, "More so, perhaps."

Senator’s lines on it is better to be a tooth than the grass, loud proclamations over existence have such inner meaning as well.

When Jean Valjean aka M. sur M says the following:
“The kindness which consists in upholding a woman of the town against a citizen, the police agent against the mayor, the man who is down against the man who is up in the world, is what I call false kindness. That is the sort of kindness which disorganizes society. Good God! it is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just.” It again raises the eternal struggle underneath, how different is this external perception for every individual.

“One can no more prevent thought from recurring to an idea than one can the sea from returning to the shore: the sailor calls it the tide; the guilty man calls it remorse; God upheaves the soul as he does the ocean.” I am wondering what beckons people to beaches, why does it sound musical to some and disharmonious to others – these waves.

“That light called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it is wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had hitherto beheld rays; from the same man it constructs two different phantoms, and the one attacks the other and executes justice on it, and the shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader.”

Why do very few people see the coin as a whole, while others confine only to the brilliance and yet others focus on the darkness? What is that one needs?

And again, the war history is overwhelming and the connection to explain where the post man Joseph drives the post wagon “What is Waterloo? A victory? No. The winning number in the lottery.”

“The peculiar property of truth is never to commit excesses. What need has it of exaggeration? There is that which it is necessary to destroy, and there is that which it is simply necessary to elucidate and examine. What a force is kindly and serious examination! Let us not apply a flame where only a light is required.” How can Librans and Sagittarians learn to apply this to their daily lives?

“To roam thoughtfully about, that is to say, to lounge, is a fine employment of time in the eyes of the philosopher;…. end of the divine murmur, beginning of the human uproar; hence an extraordinary interest.”

Almost every chapter had paragraphs of wisdom and the fact that he was a (Feb 26, 1802) moon scorpio, sun-piscean further intrigued me. When I did a wiki and found his 19 year old daughter dead, another daughter in an insane asylum and sons dead, somehow made me wonder about the fate of the children he had in spite of achieving such greatness in literature. Ok, let me not mix astrology with literature.

His book made me laugh, made me cry, made me go through all emotions. His way of building up a huge background for the players to enact was at times painful to read. At times, it made me wonder about his methodical nature. How assiduous he was in describing each and every detail, right from the wars to the sewers.

Jean Valjean’s life of untold miseries and hardships and divine interventions and finally to die with just a moment’s relief before death made me feel what life is this to die thus. Fantine’s death was depressing enough. Only Cosette’s AndTheyHappilyLivedEverAfter gave some relief. It took me 2-3 months to read this book. Why Vikram Seth’s Suitable Boy hardly took little more than a week. That was like reading an mega tv serial. India why the half the world lives below the poverty line. The story of African orphaned children, widowed women with AIDs in the documentary on Nile Perch, makes one acutely aware of the conditions of the miserables everywhere in this world. But what is being done about them? It pains me and something will be done soon with god’s grace.

The Idea of Justice

When i returned back to my room after term 5 vacations, i found this book, freshly still wrapped in its polythene cover lying on the table and i remembered Paul’s words that i could freely open it and read it. I was wondering about, Amartya Sen, it is a heard name and later i realized he won Nobel prize in Economics and I was reading Justice, it is more like Social Sciences and went on to do a Wiki on him. A book by a scorpio, possibly a Bharani or Krittika, 76 years old and he won his Nobel prize when he was 65 years old. He must be a great great grandpa. So here is the review:

Introduction

Lord Mansfield, the powerful English judge in the 18th century, famously advised a newly appointed colonial governor: ‘consider what you think justice requires and decide accordingly. But never give your reasons; for your judgement will probably be right, but your reason will certainly be wrong’. The argument for tactful reason vs. doing right things made me wonder, do people ponder so much over reasoning and justice to write a book on this. Why can’t people just be sensitive to the people sitting next to them, the poor people around them while doing anything, justice will be then inherent in everything else that they do once they have that thought in their mind. How is my studying going to help the poorest of the poor lady i saw begging on the way to the railway station? Well that thought will make me study with sincerity, because, i know i have the privilege to change lives in ways feasible sometime down in future.

After two years of reading economics where professors give the ideal demand supply curve for one product and based on explain stuff, the fact that Sen ponders about why to have the concept of ideal
justice, when actuality is not so, is seriously worth pondering.
“The distance between transcendental institutionalism, on the one hand, and realization-focussed comparison, on the other is quite momentous.” Why bother about “the characterization of perfectly just institutions has become the central exercise in the modern theories of justice” when reality is sky earth distance apart.

An illustration of how difficult things can get with the three children and a flute, gave a different benefactor every time I analyzed. If Anna had to get the flute, what if Carla and Bob learnt to play it with equal or more dedication than Anna later or were already in the process of learning to play the flute and possibly become more expert than Anna. Then Bob or Carla would get it. What if Bob had petitioned that he was poor to many and others were willing to give him not just a flute but other toys as well, and bob was not keen, then Carla would get. If the labourer who constructed the building claimed that he built it with great love and care and hence it should be his, then what would the home owners do who paid for it all?

Sen’s obsession with rather stressing on plural reasons for any of the competing principles is just enough. “If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choices of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient” strikes a chord.

“It is of course possible to have a theory that does both comparative assessments between pairs of alternatives, and a transcendental identification (when that is not made impossible through the surviving plurality of impartial reasons that have claims on our attention). That would be a ‘conglomerate’ theory, but neither of the two different types of judgements follows from each other.” The analogy of selecting a painting and having Monalisa as the perfect picture made me recollect of Oscar Wilde’s “All art is quite useless.” (Not that I consider art as useless, on the contrary am quite an admirer of such mesmerizing creations.) Nevertheless, Sen’s explanations with such examples drives home the point with such lucidity unlike his usage of jargons like comparative justice and transcendental theory that can be interpreted in as many ways as there are thoughts fleeting in a split second in one’s mind.

“The need for an accomplishment-based understanding of justice is linked with the argument that justice cannot be indifferent to the lives that people can actually live. The importance of human lives, experiences, and realizations cannot be supplanted by information about institutions that exist and the rules that operate.”

True, quite often we have rules all made in the best of the intentions by the law makers and we find people to smartly find loop holes to do exactly opposite to the spirit of the law while strictly following the rules. What use of having justice, which obeys the letter, yet fails the very purpose and soul of justice?

“We may do the right thing and yet we may not succeed. Or, a good result may come about not because we aimed at it, but for some other, perhaps even an accidental, reason, and we may be deceived into thinking that justice has been done.” Processes and outcomes, the never ending debate and the role of dumb luck, well, has always been a never ending deliberation.

PART 1: THE DEMANDS OF JUSTICE

1. Reason and Objectivity

Lack of smartness can certainly be one source of moral failing in good behaviours. Reflecting on what would really be a smart thing to do can sometimes help one act better towards others. Made me remember one of the panchathanthra tales which expostulates that it is better to have a wise enemy than to have a foolish friend. True indeed, if everyone were to think of others as self, find oneself in others and find others in self, then the world would be a better place. Today the politicians are talking of imposing GST and contention over it, while all the politicians want to do is get more for their share while the masses in the villages anguish over the exorbitantly raising prices of basic commodities.

“Indeed, one of the main points in favour of reason is that it helps us to scrutinize ideology and blind belief.” Am yet to meet a single person in this world, who does not have even one single blind belief. It could be wearing a particular shirt for interview or why even believing in god. If one were to reason out everything, there would not be this thing of falling in love. Does everything have a reason. Vivekananda might say, reason out and only then you ought to believe in even your own teachers. However, we do have numerous instances of miraculous healing due to sheer blind faith and belief. Now we could understand the distinction between faith and belief. One says faith healing and not belief healing.

For those who are eternally optimistic and believing in fluke success - a very dubious procedure accidentally giving a more correct answer than extremely rigorous reasoning compared with a stopped watch giving the correct time 2 times a day was simple yet profound.

The seemingly simple case of redistributing food during preventable famines made me remember P. Sainath’s lecture. He surely has a way of speaking that makes an everlasting impression. Having queens feast while millions were dying of starvation outside, having a feast in Nero’s time while convicted criminals were burnt alive to provide light for the feasters still sends a shiver down my spine.

“Indeed, in celebrating reason, there is no particular ground for denying the far-reaching role of instinctive psychology and spontaneous responses” I believe that in addition to reason, one should ignore the gift of intuition and gut feeling.

2. Rawls and Beyond

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!”
Verses from Wordsworth’s and other poets here and there suddenly transported me to Hitler’s Mein Kampf where he talks about these elitists who use flowery words and things that are of no serious value to community at large and the art of talking to masses – public speaking, instigating them and inspiring them with plain common words and rousing them for collective action. And page 3 sequence where they show the masses crave for vulgar stuff and the class for finer.

Indeed, in his Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Rawls notes that “there are indefinitely many consideration that may be appealed to in the original consideration and disfavoured by others, and also that ‘the balance of reasons itself rest on judgement, thought judgement informed and guided by reasoning.’

‘If the justice of what happens in a society depends on a combination of institutional features and actual behavioural characteristics, along with other influences that determine the social realisations, then is it possible to identify ‘just’ institutions for a society without making them contingent on actual behaviours?

Since no one has argued more powerfully and more elaborately than John Rawls for the need for ‘reasonable’ behaviours by individuals for a society to function well, he is clearly very aware of the difficulty in presuming any kind of spontaneous emergence of universal reasonable behaviour on the part of all members of a society.


3. Institutions and Persons

Ashoka says, ‘He who does reverence to his own sect while disparaging the sets of others wholly from attachment to his own sect, in reality inflicts, by such conduct, the severest injury on his own sect.

Social Justice – advancing the welfare and freedom of people in general is an important role for the state as well as of the individuals in society, but also that this social enrichment could be achieved through the voluntary good behaviour of the citizens themselves, without being compelled through force.

Ashoka’s nyaya vs. Kautilya’s niti

Paying attention to the purpose and consequence in interpreting a democratic constitution – Justice Stephen Bryer…

To ask how things are going and whether they can be improved is a constant and inescapable part of the pursuit of justice.

In the inclusive perspective of nyaya, we can never simply hand over the task of justice to some niti of social institutions and social rules that we see as exactly right, and then rest there, and be free from further social assessment (freedom from morality)

4. Voice and Social Choice



5. Impartiality and Objectivity

Classical Utlititarian in disguise as Rawls puts or Smith's impartial spectator: - the strength of his approval is determined by the balance of satisfaction to which he has sympathetically responded.

The impartial spectator can work and enlighten without being either a social contractor,or a utilitarian in camouflage.

Impartiality need not always take the form of being linked with mutually gainful cooperation and can also accommodate unilateral obligations that we may acknowledge because of our power to achieve socailal results that we have reason to value (without bnecessarily benefiting from thsoe results).

Limitations
(1) Exclusionary neglect:
(Closed impartiality) this isse can be particularly problamtice for 'justice as fairness' in dealing with justice across border,s since the basic social structure chosen for a socitety can have an influence on the lives not only of memebers of that society, but also those of others (who are not accommmodate in the orignial position for that society). There can be much vexation without representation.

6. Closed and Open partiality

Why, then, the need for an agreement when there are no difference to negotiate? The answer is that reaching a unanimous agreement without a biding vote is not the same thing as everyone’s arriving at the same choice, or forming the same intention. That it is an undertaking that people are giving may similarly affect everyone’s deliberations so that the agreement that results is different from the choice everyone would have otherwise made.

Rawls shows with powerful reasoning why judgements of justice cannot be entirely private affair that is unfathomable to others, and the Rawlsian invoking of a ‘public framework of thought’, which does not in itself demand a ‘contract’, is a critically important move: ‘we look at our society and our place in it objectively: we share a common standpoint along with others and do not make our judgements form a personal slant.’

International justice is simply not adequate for global justice. Again reiterates the inadequacy of institutional justice. The notion of human rights builds on our shared humanity. These rights are not derived from the citizenship of any country, or the membership of any nation, but are presumed to be claims or entitlements of every human being.

Indeed, when leave the world of locally confined ethics, and try to combine a procedure of closed impartiality with otherwise universalist intentions, procedural parochialism must be seen as a serious difficulty.

Even in a single classroom, with comprises of brilliant graspers and kind of tardy slow learners, the teacher is caught between going to higher levels for the benefit of top level students while the rest struggle or going slow and taking up easy tasks, while the super studs get impatient and bored.
There is nothing like equal equality. Even though the hand is one, the fingers are all different, each with its own strengths and weakness.


After this PZ returned from his Vipasanna meditation. He liked the dates and walnuts cake i had baked along with my friend in the microwave. When i told him, i still had half the book to complete, he rushed to bookstore to buy me another copy. Since he didn't accept the money i owed to him from thiruvannamalai trip, i was glad, the book shop was closed. I hurried for my yoga classes. After yoga, i asked PVS to come taste the cake i had baked. When he came, there was hardly any cake left, instead someone had kept groundnuts in black polythene cover.

Well, this was one book, that took quite some to read. Hope i get to read the rest sometime soon.

PART II: FORMS OF REASONING

7. Position, Relevance and Illusion
8. Rationality and Other people
9. Plurality of Impartial Reasons
10. Realizations, Consequences and Agency

PART III: THE MATERIAL OF JUSTICE
11. Lives, Freedoms and Capabilities
12. Capabilities and Resources
13. Happiness, Well-Being and Capabilities
14. Equality and Liberty

PART IV: PUBLIC REASONING AND DEMOCRACY
15. Democracy as Public Reason
16. The Practice of Democracy
17. Human Rights and Global Imperatives
18. Justice and the World