Juliet and her Romeo

So said the bard -

"For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”

There lay on the cold stony floor,

Stabbed, blood oozing body - dead and cold

Of Juliet and her diseased Romeo!

Romeo Montague – lovelorn for Juliet Capulet!

Mistaking her to be dead,

Lost the reason to be alive!

Drank he the poison,

At the bottom of his despair!

Awaken from her sleep the Capulet princess,

The queen from the heavens,

With the most beautiful eyes,

And golden heart,

Shocked seeing his lover dead!

Leaves the world of life,

For the hope to catch him

To the world of the Gods!

Dead was Romeo,

Dead was Juliet!

But what did not die,

Was the magic of true love!

The divine love,

Bound the Montagues and the Capulets,

In the embrace of friendship!

Love prevailed forever!

Ages to come!

Love – That pure and selfless Love,

That pristine feeling of being part of someone else,

That warmth of liking someone,

The strength of that awareness of being Loved!

That enlightenment to the profundity of Love,

When denied forever!

Lives forever, eons and eons!

Through the songs of poets,

Writings of bards,

Art works of Sculptors,

Paintings of painters,

Love always had been immortal!

Manifesting again and again,

Either through a Romeo and his Juliet,

Or through the Sonnets,

And Songs!

An extension of the worlds of the Gods,

Lightens the dark ages of the mortals,

The glow of love,

Keeps the hope alive

To eternity of being a human!

Countless civilizations were born,

Countless perished!

What never died,

Was the fervor of Romeo’s throbbing heart,

Enchanted with those Most Beautiful Eyes!

Juliet did die,

Romeo did pass away.

What never died

Was that love,

Which keeps the creation alive!

Till date that love keeps wandering,

Searching for those most beautiful eyes,

In an eternal quest,

Of celebrating,

The Bliss of being Human!

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Buddhism and the Essence of Being a Professional

Buddhism is based on the precinct that by design life blossoms on the context of the schema of suffering - "Dukkha". Ostensively it might appear to be pessimistic outlook. But going deeper into understanding  this model, one starts appreciating the pragmatic dimension of the philosophy. Left to itself life or any of its manifestations cannot escape the possibility of a failure mode. Accepting that aspect ingrained in the fabric of reality, establishes a person in the stance of taking as-is what life has to offer, and then working towards making things better. Having given one's whole self in making things better (or achieving ones goal), the person is fully aware that everything might go haywire, and she might have to start all over again. A person is not vexed at suffering, as she realizes that by design life occurs out of the womb of "Dukkha", and the foundation is of suffering. Any point of time, the real nature can show up. Having such awareness makes it possible for the person never to ask a question like, "Why me?". At the same time, it prepares the person to better equip herself to face any possible failure mode that might inevitably appear. This attitude is at the source of impeccability of human creation.

In the context of society, by definition, a professional is a person who has a special training and know-how to solve a specific problem, which ordinary members of the society do not have. A doctor, an engineer, a management professional, an architect, etc - all are trained to solve specific problems, or create something which common man is not able to. 

Bringing the concept of Dukkha of Buddhism into the anthropological context, a professional is a person who is paid by the society to alleviate a particular form of Dukkha from the society. The doctor is paid to cure the disease, and engineer is paid to solve engineering challenges, a management professional is paid to manage an organization, its mission and vision.

The important thing to be aware is that professionals are relevant till there are Dukkha's to be solved. If there are no diseased, a doctor loses her relevance in the society. Similarly if an engineering project does not have an apparent in-solvable problem, engineers are irrelevant to the society. If an initiative of a business organization is not faced with a complex problem, the existence of a management professional ceases to exist.

It is dis-heartening to see professionals vexed with problems at hand. It is something like a doctor saying, "What the heck! So many diseases exist. Those nut-headed people! They do not know how to take care of themselves!". It is not only about being aware that purpose of being alive for a professional is solving issues (Dukkha), but there is another grander essence of being a professional.

It is the responsibility of the professional to keep the society insulated with the reality of Dukkha. It might be either building a robust, safe and error-free Flight Management System, or doing a research in life science inventing a new drug. That is pretty interesting, honorable and significant task at hand, for which every professional should be grateful, and proud at the same time.

Another interesting aspect of being a professional is aspect of compassion. When a client at the psychoanalyst's office shouts at her and rebukes her, she does not retaliate immediately being defensive. She does not judge the client as grouchy. Rather she starts thinking of the root cause of such a behavior, having a problem solving stance. When a true engineer faces a problem in a system, the immediate thing that starts running in her head is what are the possible issues the system might be facing, and how to solve them. She does not think of the meanness of the user or the in-competency of the other developer who might have introduced the problem in the system.

Same thing applies to other professionals at their work. Most of the time stresses are caused when a person gets vexed with a problem, expecting that the problem should not have surfaced in the first place. There is an un-conscious belief that someone else is the cause of the problem. Utilizing the concept of Buddhism, accepting Dukkha as inevitable, and the ultimate truth, it relieves the person from anxiety and stress. The person is able to take a problem solving stance, making the world a better place to live in.

This applies to all the aspects of life. Both personal and professional. There is an urgent need for humanity to understand that the phrase - "They live happily every after" is the biggest hoax ever created by humanity. There is nothing like this in life in its most basic and real form. Then, is it not possible to create a life of celebration, meaning, fulfillment, elegance and wellbeing? Yes it is possible. Only through continuous action, vision, knowledge and working to alleviate the inevitable Dukkha, with a problem solving stance - Living life to the fullest.  

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A New Model of Reality

Most of humanity lives a life in an effort to reduce pain, increase ones well being, satisfying cravings and needs. This is something which is important and it has enabled the continuous evolution of mankind since thousands of years, towards higher complexity. 

But living intoxicated in this model, one develops an automatic attachment to pleasure and wellbeing. This takes a form of a pathological addiction. Problem is that these romantic destinations of pleasures are mostly transient. These sensual gratifications either weather away with time, or have a potential suffering inherent ingrained in them by design.

If one observes closely the way life unfolds, one comes to terms that it is suffering which is constant and real. And most of the greatest creation of mankind have happened in an effort to alleviate suffering. Nothing great has ever occurred from the passive cradle pleasure. There always have been pain which has straightened and carved out beauty out of human existence.

Having said that I do not mean to paint a pessimistic outlook of ones existence. It might be true that a person at the moment is experiencing absolute bliss. But then my point is two folds - one is that it is transient, and the other is that a passive pursuit of pleasure is useless by itself. It is a spending. Not an earning.

Having said pleasure is transient, it is also true that pain is transient too. But there is a unique attribute in pain. It presents an opportunity to human to create something beautiful, to be able to alleviate the pain. It is totally up to the personal choice of a person. Whether she wants to be drowned by the pain, or she wants to carve out something new to transmute the pain into a work of art. Pain gives a kick to the person - a push to the protagonist, to go for something new, something creative. That personal choice not to get perturbed by pain, and not surrendering to the biology, social conditioning or ignorance ingrained in human awareness, and standing with strong defiance against these lesser dimensions of existence, immersing oneself into creating something inspiring, makes life relevant.

Probably life might be considered as a canvas made of suffering and pain in the background. Along with this, human beings are provided with a brush and paints which they use to transmute the background of pain with strokes of human ingenuity and creativity. There is an ingrained urge to avoid/remove/transmute all these pains in the background, hardwired in humans by the natural selection.

Point here is about bringing to oneself the acceptance that the life indeed is born out of the darkness of suffering. This acceptance gives immense freedom, and an awareness that transmutes all fear, apprehensions, worries, hatred, stresses, and innumerable other negative states of mind. When a person knows that suffering is by design a universal truth, she does not get perturbed when disturbed by the same out of a blue moon. She accepts it as an opportunity to use her brain to do something about it. Typically manifest problem solving stance.

Another important outcome of using such a model of reality is that happiness and states of well being are taken up with more gratitude. No moment of bliss is taken for granted, and it is experienced with full veneration. At the same time there is an awareness that - "this shall also pass away". There is an added grace of gratitude, non-attachment and freedom complemented to ones existence.

As far as interpersonal relationships are concerned, such a stance brings about an increased level of compassion. It tends to remove the focus on the other person's in-adequacies, towards the actual problem, and what the mind of the self is going through. Similarly this added wisdom better equips a person to handle catastrophes that might land up out of a blue moon, in any form - natural, sociological or medical disaster. 

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Problem Solving Stance

Most of the life is spent dealing with emotional upheavals. These take form of heartburns, anger, hatred, jealousy, fear, worries, stresses, etc. Most of these are emotional eruptions triggered by one or more social situations. Paradoxically such eruptions are more severe when the situation involves people whom we are more attached.

In response to this psychologists proposed a mode of acting without fear on the one hand and without anger on the other. This brand of counseling goes under two headings –
1.    Problem Solving Therapy, and
2.    Emphatic Assertiveness Training.

The fundamental recommendation is : Treat any difficult social or interpersonal situation as a problem to be solved, by engaging the mind. The individual is trained to take a “problem solving stance”.
Most of the times we do not do this. We react only emotionally. Someone frustrates us and we lash out. With the problem solving stance the client is taught to consider strategies for resolving the situation. Using role playing the client is shown how to operate without emotional interference.

There is a very interesting direct consequence of having a problem solving stance. It presents before oneself a range of possible actions (solutions) that can be considered to get out of the situation. Allowing oneself to be winnowed by the emotions, leads one to a single narrow way of being. That way one typically focuses on just one type of the solution. For example, anger makes us think of punishing the other person (verbally if not physically), of threatening of seeking vengeance. In both cases a range of other possibilities are overlooked. When one takes a problem solving stance, the first step is to ask : What alternatives are available to me.

The easiest way to get away from the clutches of emotions (negative emotions to be specific) I find, is considering myself NOT as a noun – rather as verb. It helps when I think myself as a means, a medium, a link – trying to create something. In such a state of mind, it becomes less painful when the thought comes that someone hates me, or has hurt me, or I have lost something. The stance of the mind is always one of a problem solver. Fear gets transmuted into opportunities. Heartbreaks become arena to remind myself to go back being a verb, getting rid of the clutches of ego. Uncertainties of life, gives a tactile anticipation of something coming to be solved! Life thus becomes a saga of action – works of art – activities of creation – either solving a problem, creating something new, growing, learning and exploring. Everything becomes a verb!

Being in this stance, life is no more a waiting room for a beautiful destination. Nor it remains as a fearful and fragile anticipation that things should go right. Life becomes free and a carefree trip to adventure. It becomes a journey – and the person become a traveler. Each moment life becomes an arena to provide an opportunity for the person to leave out a mark – creating, solving, and fixing something that makes life more beautiful. Such a stance transcends the life of the person. It is eternal. It is not bound by the flesh and body of the person. Rather it is eternal! The best side-effect of such a stance is that the needs, cravings, and genetic urges of the person is automatically made less powerful, enabling to reduce entropy in the consciousness. This further enables the person to continue on a creative quest!

A stance that allows mankind to get a glimpse into divinity!
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The Bequest

An Angel's hidden within me.
I've studied every thought, mood, sense.
No, there is no evidence.
But something keeps eluding me,
Like fragrances from memory:
The scent of sacramental wine
And smells of yellowed scrolls. I know
An angel's hidden within me.

"The shift toward the red", the astronomer said, "reveals that space at every place we look expands. It's empty. Empty space is all the tallest telescopes can see. Oh, here and there's a galaxy, but each recedes predictably. There's nothing mysterious, nothing free; no hint of any divinity. Just cosmic dust spreading relentlessly through vast, black space."

An angel's found within me.
It lies inside a speck of light;
Relies on me. Day and night
It drifts and waits.
But I don’t know
The nourishment to make it grow.
I look for signs. What does it need?
How do I feed an angel,
The angel found within me?

"Inside the head", the biologist said, "are ten billion cells and nothing else. We study the brain thoroghly with electrodes and x-ray microscopes. Sorry to disappoint your hopes, but there's nothing mysterious, nothing free. A splendid machine is all we see, run on electrical energy. It's machine that does calculus, writes and sings.(Did you know that robots now do these things? They're based on circuits we found in the brain.)"

Behind the veil of daily life
On the far, dark side
A firefly blinked.
I had my first glimpse through
The glittering scrim.
In that instant the angel minutely grew.
Then I knew that wisdom
Was its bread and wine.
An angel smiles within me.

"God is dead", the philosopher said. "It's all explained historically. The threat of thunder, volcanoes, and death gave rise to myth. By well-known sociological laws, the myths become the essential cause of creation of God. Belief and worship then arise, and persist. All based on myth. With radical change in the myth, god dies. This change, of course, our science supplies. The death was predicted; there's no surprise. (I can explain it again, if you like, with slides.)"

The angel says,
"It's true, the ancient God is dead.
But as He lay there, as He bled,
He saw the endless years ahead,
Saw empty centuries stretched ahead.
Saw countless Thebes and Babylons.
He gestured, whispered that his will,
Long untouched, should be unrolled.
HE took a pen and mended then
His will; He scrawled a codicil.
To each of you He there bequeathed
A speck, a grain, an angel seed."

"The universe is dead and bare". The scholar justifies despair. An angel winks within me...

PS - This poem is taken from the book - "The Positive Psychology of Buddhism and Yoga: Path to Mature Happiness, By Mervine Levin"

MF Passes away

The Master In His Absurd Exile
Visiting MF Husain in Dubai, SHOMA CHAUDHURY captures his irrepressible spirit and poses the big questions his case raises

Painting in cloth MF Husain in his Red Light Museum in Dubai PHOTOS: SATISH KUMAR

ON 19 JANUARY, 2008, the day twenty men with hockey sticks smashed NDTV’s office in Ahmedabad, and beat two of the staff, for running an SMS poll on whether MF Husain should be awarded the Bharat Ratna, the master himself sat quietly on the floor of his home in faraway Dubai, rapt in a sketch of two ceremonial horses — a wedding card for Ustad Amjad Ali Khan’s son. A meditative silence enveloped the room, heightened by the rhythmic sound of his sketching pen. Nothing could touch him, immune in his concentration. The sun set outside on a brilliant skyline. The beautiful room acquired a sense of prayer. Husain had just spent hours outlining his love for Hindu philosophy and culture, a life lived in its worship. Eight years spent painting the Ramayana, as many painting the Mahabharata. Hundreds of canvases of Ganesha and Shiva and Parvati and Hanuman, the ragas, the natyas and Benaras. Seventy years spent as “Chobi Das”, a devotee of the image. Seventy years spent roaming the earth, seeking to enrich its understanding of India. And now, they were smashing offices in his name. Declaring him an apostate.

“It is just a moment in history,” says Husain. “Kya kar sakte hain (what can one do)?”

Exile, however, is not a dark experience for the 93-year-old. Not for him the stereotype of the bitter and the hunted. That would be a terrible defeat. His statement is to live in celebration. In Dubai, plush, ordered, but as he says with a laugh, “like a Hollywood set, a façade with nothing behind”, he has bought apartments for each of his children, and two giant 21st century apartments facing a quay for himself. In one, he lives in an affectionate nucleus with his nephew, Fida and his family, and two valets, Hasan and Imraan. The other, he has converted into a “Red Light Museum” — a name designed, he chuckles, “to make people sit up”. Here, exquisite red carpets drape the floor, exquisite red fabrics drape the walls — “a painting in cloth”, someone says appreciatively. Three rooms are dedicated to his art: one room houses 88 canvases from the late 1950s, his Maria Collection — a story in itself; another houses a series of paintings he calls Husain Decoded; the third has a series on Mughal-e-Azam. In between these two apartments, Husain lives his life, in an ever-widening flurry of excitement and action that people a third his age cannot keep up with. Wake at six, sleep at two. Hop into any of his many waiting cars: a Ferrari, a Bentley, a Jaguar, and in September this year, a Bugatti, worth Rs 7 crore. (“People buy sculpture, I buy cars,” Husain laughs. Mischief runs in his blood. “I plan to turn them into an installation.”) “When chacha is at home, there is no time to breathe,” laughs niece Sabiha, Fida’s wife. He has transformed their lives. Movies, caramel popcorn, concerts, guests, projects, lunch everyday at upmarket Noodle Bar, dinner at downmarket Ravi dhaba, tea at a Malabari takeaway — except when he is painting, Husain is in constant, infectious, prodigious motion, his fingers drumming restlessly to an imaginary tabla. One day in Abu Dhabi, the next in Qatar. Each summer in London. He is currently learning Arabic and working on four simultaneous projects: a series of 99 canvases on the Arab Civilisation, commissioned by the Queen of Qatar; a series of similar scale on Indian Civilisation, commissioned by Lakshmi Mittal; a series on the history of Indian cinema; and a series on Mughal-e-Azam. For all this, for all his Kubla Khan-like wealth, he sleeps on a mattress in the drawing room, as he has always done, and everywhere, he travels alone. A man of 93. Fluid, unfaltering, possessed of a mysterious joie de vivre — an embrace of life — that borders almost on the divine.

Installation artist Husain against his red Ferrari, just one in his posh stable of cars

He is a kind of living history, a national heritage site.

The evening twenty men with hockey sticks smash the NDTV office in Ahmedabad, we go for a concert by Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and his sons. People — Indians — mob Husain as if he is a film star. “Dubai is fortunate to have you,” they reiterate again and again, walking up merely to touch his hand, take a photograph, take an autograph, “You are a legend. We are honoured to have you in our midst.” The sound of the Ustad’s sarod still lingers in the air, his Ganesha vandana a sublime benediction. India’s proud composite culture lives in these men. It is impossible not to feel a lurch thinking of what is happening back in India. Sipping tea later that night in the Malabar restaurant, Husain says reflectively, thinking of events back home, “Ghalib once said in utter frustration, ‘Change the understanding of my listeners, or else, change my voice’.”
In Husain’s autobiography, Apni Zubaan Mein there is a fascinating cameo. A little boy is playing with mud, making figures of clay. A young man, Maqbool, comes and paints these in bright colours. No one’s interested. Next MF Husain comes along and signs his name. Suddenly there’s a stampede to buy the figures. “All three are me,” he says. “But ‘brand MF Husain’ was a very deliberate creation on my part. I wanted to raise the price of art. I wanted to raise awareness of it. It was like a mission for me.” This brand — a phenomenon people both love and accuse of gross commercialisation, a phenomenon that did, however, make Indian art world famous — began with Husain arbitrarily raising his price from Rs 40,000 to 1 lakh a canvas at a Christie’s sale in the early 90s. Suicide, everyone muttered. But Husain won. The canvas went for 5 lakh. Next, he priced himself at six. He went for 10. And then, audaciously, at one crore. To pull that off, he plotted hard. He got Citibank to sponsor his show and invite a super select audience. He then went about creating a spectacle: he mounted his canvases at ceiling height, and had them rolled down to live music, supported by dance troupes. Earlier, he similarly “orchestrated” a show with Madhuri Dixit, choosing the Living Media group as partner for “maximum splash”. “I asked Madhuri to partner me in my mission to make Indian art famous,” he says. “We had a painted white horse at the show, we came deliberately late in a limousine. People loved the tamasha.” “I saved myself though,” Husain laughs, with endearing self-awareness, “I became MF Husain, but I retained both the boy and the artist, Maqbool within me. Without Maqbool, MF Husain would not have lasted.”

Perhaps it is this refracted self that preserves Husain. Maqbool might feel the frustration of Ghalib — “change the understanding of my listeners, or else, change my voice” — but brand
Husain, the dramatic, flamboyant persona, associated more with the pursuit of wealth than the work, will never admit to a sense of betrayal in finding himself, at 93, hounded out of the country he has loved and promoted for close to a century. Perhaps he feels it is for others to intuit and correct the disgrace of such a situation. “Why is there no anguish, no political statement in Husain’s work?” asks Anwar Siddiqi, a close friend and admirer of Husain. “Why is he not painting his Guernica?” “I really feel no bitterness,” Husain responds. “My life’s work is my statement. I reached my peak as an artist in the late 1950s. All my other work is a manifestation of that. I do not feel called to make any other statement. When my wife, Fazila’s
brother went over to Pakistan during Partition, I forbade any correspondence between them for decades. I have always been very nationalistic, but I have no attachment to places. It is a mother’s love that creates a sense of home, ties one down. Since I lost my mother when I was one-and-a-half, I have never known such attachment. I lost my first child, Shabir, when he was three. I lifted his body out of a gutter. What is loss after that?” There is a kind of wisdom in his stance; a courage merely in relocating and reconstructing a life so lavishly at his age. He makes it look easy, so it is easy to mistake it for something shallow. Lesser men would have been far more querulous.

Yet, cast even a cursory eye over the span of Husain’s prodigious life, and the sad absurdity of his exile comes through with unnerving force. Here is a man who has borne witness — enshrined — every facet of Indian life for close to a century. By 1955, he was one of India’s leading artists and had been awarded the Padma Shri. By 1971, he was being invited to Sao Paulo Biennial with Pablo Picasso. He was Rajya Sabha Member in 1986. And these are merely surface things: cast your eye over the work: more than 10,000 paintings in celebration of India, and the absurdities gather greater and greater force. MF Husain is a kind of living history, a national heritage site. And what do we do? We drive him out.

BACK IN INDIA after three days spent with Husain, a phone call to Dr Ram Pratap Singh, an endocrinologist at Apollo Hospital and a petitioner against Husain in the Delhi High Court, jolts like an electric shock. There is no space for discussion here. Dr Singh is an angry man. He takes off like a rocket: “I know you people. Who are you to question us? You are just abusing us all the time.” “Which ‘us’ are you talking about, Dr Singh?” I say. “I am also a Hindu. It is fine if you disagree with Husain, but you are an educated man so I just want to ask if you condone breaking offices and burning paintings and galleries. And do you not know of the tradition of Tantric art and sexual love in depictions of Krishna, Radha, Shiva and Parvati, not to mention…” “You are calling me an educated man?! You are always abusing us, eh, who are you to question me? I will not answer you about Tantra or anything. Why can’t you live respectfully with us? You are just one percent of this country, we will do to you the same thing…”

Dr Singh’s petition is one of seven cases against Husain that his lawyer Akhil Sibal knows of. All of these are now consolidated in the Delhi High Court, and Sibal says,“There are now no coercive orders by any court to my knowledge. But often, we get to know of these only through the media.” Husain had left India for good in 2006, when an increasingly violent right-wing mood had precipitated a non-bailable arrest warrant against him by a Haridwar court, directing the attachment of all his properties in India. Though the Supreme Court stayed the order, the past year alone has seen several incidents of violence against Husain and his work. An exhibition at Asia House, London, was stalled and vandalised by a Hindu right wing group in 2006. Ditto for the Peabody Essex Museum in the US, which was exhibiting his Mahabharata series, Epic India. The same show was broken into at the India International Centre in Delhi, late last year, while the Raja Ravi Varma award from the Kerala government was withdrawn under pressure. ABN Amro Bank too was forced to withdraw his artwork from its platinum credit card in May 2007. In a frightening but farcical twist, a self-styled Hindu Personal Law Board (sic) based in Lucknow put out a bounty of Rs 51 crore for his head, Rs 11 lakh for his eyes and one kilo of gold for his hands. The attack on the NDTV office is only the latest in the line.

If one were to speak in Dr Ram Pratap Singh’s language, this does not comprise even a decimal percent of India’s population, and is by no means a spontaneous overflow of emotion. The Gujarat incident, for instance, was led by Ashok Sharma, an unemployed malcontent expelled from the Bajrang Dal, eager to make himself some name. “Mere riff-raff,” Joint Police Commissioner, Ahmedabad, Satish Sharma, calls him. On the Internet, it is a virulent and well-designed campaign. Despite this, only 20-odd people show up at any street incident. The pity is, this decimal percent — intolerant, disinterested in dialogue, brazen violators of law — has come to dictate our public life. And no arrests have been made in any of these incidents, though as Sibal says, the State, courts and police have not only the power but an obligation to intervene when any violation of law and order is brought to their knowledge. Ask Arun Jaitley of the BJP for views on this and he says he is on a self-imposed embargo on the media. Ask Abhishek Singhvi of the Congress, and you only get the workaday line: There’s no doubting Husain’s eminence, but India is a democratic country and everyone has the right to protest and dissent. He should not be harassed etc. But what about the violence on the street, you ask. If the miscreants can be found, he says, of course they must be arrested, but law and order is a State subject.

In being the most high profile of its kind, Husain’s case, in a sense, has become a litmus test for the country. Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, Mridula Garg, Habib Tanvir, Vijay Tendulkar, Deepa Mehta… the list of artists and writers vandalised by intolerant Hindu, and Muslim, fringes runs painfully long. Artists censored not by dialogue but by coercion. TEHELKA itself is facing a criminal case in Bombay for publishing photographs of nude women by reputed photographer Raghu Rai. Every time the hearing comes up, the editor-in-chief has to appear in court to take bail.

Four big civilisational questions underlie all these cases. What is the definition of “obscenity”? What is the threshold of “religious sentiment” — today an easily hurt thing — that should not be crossed? What is the role of the writer and artist in society? And, how will we conduct our dissent in a civilised society?

MF Husain came most vigorously into the line of fire in 2006, when an untitled painting, a depiction of the country as a naked woman — to a reasonable eye an inspired and beautiful work — was auctioned by Sharon Apparao’s Saffronart. Some Hindu groups took great umbrage to this. As Ravi Varma, who stalled Husain’s Kerala award, says grand iosely, “This work is deliberately calculated to hurt the time-honoured religious feelings of more than 800 millions of Hindus, in majority in India, and millions of Hindus abroad…” Pointless to ask him how he can speak for such vast numbers. Pointless also to point out to him that, as Sibal says, “Bharat Mata is not the preserve of any community. It is an anthropomorphic concept of nation. And by the law, Varma’s allegations themselves are divisive and communal.”

HUSAIN’S OTHER work, which gets the conservatives in a twist, is a Saraswati painted way back in ’88, sold privately, and published only in a limited edition of a book produced by Tata Steel. Again, it is a line drawing, well within “timehonoured” (sic) traditions of Hindu iconography, and not even a quarter as sensuous or voluptuous. But even if you were to put that aside for a minute, its publication details are significant because one of the crucial questions in any consideration of obscenity is: how public was the act? In Husain’s case — in the case of any artist — they are not thrusting their work on you, they are not splashing their work on giant hoardings that you must look at every day on your way to work, they are not leaving you in a choiceless universe. Common sense would say, if you don’t like their work, don’t look at it. Don’t go togallery, don’t buy book. Publish scathing counter articles in some sympathetic media. That would be a civilised response. Of their many functions, one of the most crucial roles an artist or writer plays in society is to push the boundaries of perception. If they are to be tied to the lowest mean, the most conservative bone, all artistic enterprise might as well stop. Hearteningly, what is little known is that in the past, the Supreme Court has been fairly nuanced in its considerations of what constitutes“obscenity” in public life. In several seminal cases like the Ranjit D. Udeshi vs State of Maharashtra (1965), Ajay Gosw ami vs Union of India (2005), Samaresh Bose vs Amal Mitra (1985), the court has ruled that sex and nudity in art, per se, cannot be deemed obscene. Nor does the merely vulgar equal the obscene. Only if there is an intention to deprave and corrupt, or arouse the lascivious and prurient instincts of the viewer can something be deemed obscene. Further, the Court has ruled that it will not use the“standard of a hypersensitive person” in defining what is obscene. Intention counts for much. Given this, the cases against Husain can never stand in court.

Barely three paintings, out of a body of over 10,000 canvases, are in dispute. Did he mean to insult? On the contrary, the entire body of his work has been a testimony of devotion. As art historian, Alka Pande says, “Husain is a true master. His draughtsmanship, the scale of his work, his self-learned gift — all of this is incomparable. As for the erotic, it has always been part of our philosophical and aesthetic culture. Husain has lived and breathed in this land. His art is a product of that. The opposition to him is a disgrace.” Such testimonies are piled pyramid-high outside Husain’s door, but they count for little until someone is willing to take on the battle. Arrest law-breakers. File a public interest litigation. Insist on civilised dialogue.
Husain himself will not speak. He lives by a dictum. “Never explain. Never complain.” Disraeli’s advice to Queen Victoria. In the meantime, the empty canvas above his bed beckons.
And the late dinner at Ravi’s.

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 4, Dated Feb 02, 2008
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I have a Dream...

It is nice to have a dream, and live it day in and day out. This becomes even more interesting when the dream is not about a specific destination; but about a journey.

When it comes to journey, there are primarily two aspects of it that qualifies it – direction and being in action. The moment any of these aspects cease to exist, the journey does not remain a journey. It transmutes to stagnation.

Another very interesting aspect about a journey is its sensuous seduction. Being in a journey, the traveler is absolutely seduced by what she is going to explore, see, experiment and learn. She doesn’t even have a passing reference to what she has left behind, when she started the journey. It becomes a unidirectional cruise towards present and future – towards the unseen, unexplored. Life transforms to a solo journey solely in the pursuit of learning, experience, and exploration. 

I see myself as a solo traveler in a dream cruise. I am in a journey in the pursuit of learning - in all its forms - what life has to offer - in terms of books, life situations, people, institutions, relationships, etc, etc. Yes, I am an eternal student. Life is my classroom. And all around me are my teachers. In process of learning, sometimes I brush on others something they too might in-case learn from me. Life becomes pretty exciting when it takes the shape of such a pursuit.

To be specific this pursuit is consciously directed to understand life, nature, humans, and civilizations. It is also directed towards learning and contemplating on what great souls of yester years had to say. It makes me feel very grateful when I find this vast plethora of wisdom left behind by thousands of great men and women since last thousands of years. Certainly life appears to have such a short duration to be able to read, contemplate and synthesize holistically all this universe of knowledge. To be able to do justice to this pursuit of knowledge, hence it is imperative for the traveler to narrow down to one specific domain. That makes things manageable.

For me I have chosen the domain of the cognitive world of Human Beings. It is about the way humans think, behave and create.  It is about what and how humans have thoughts, behaved and created since inception of human race, till the current era. Certainly this domain asks me to do deep study into psychology, brain science, anthropology, evolutionary sciences, history, evolution of various major religions, and other related humanitarian disciplines. Along with these I have chosen to also delve into the mind of the poets, writers and other literary behemoths. It gives me a great insight into various lateral thoughts and new ideas what the great poets and writers had to say. This certainly gives a deeper insight into how human beings think. Ofcourse I am just a pygmy infront of this vast possibility!

The best part of my journey I have chosen for myself is that it gives me an opportunity to know myself, and people around me better. The outcome of that is I get an opportunity to know life in a more profound way. I strongly feel it is a life being fully lived – about utilizing the grand opportunity conferred on me – by the accidents of nature – inform of my existence!

Another very important dimension to this journey is the overarching meaning attached to this journey. This is the most important aspect, which decides the value of the journey. The degree of sensuousness of the journey depends on how magnanimous the meaning of the journey is. For me I have chosen the purpose and the sole meaning of the journey of my life to achieve a victory for mankind. A victory dedicated to humanity itself. A victory that enables mankind to do something what it is not able to do at present.  Achieving this victory makes my life relevant. I feel giving my best in order to achieve such a victory would make me feel on my death bed – “WOW what a life I have lived!!”. At the same time I will feel that I did justice to countless such synchronicities the universe endowed on me in my life, giving me that invaluable vantage point to go to the next level!

Yes, I have miles to go before I sleep. I have already spent 33 years of my life. Almost half of the life is over. In the remaining part left, I have to scale mountains high, swim across oceans vast, allow deeper scars in my soul, explore uncharted lands, and also have to create a legacy – a meaningful legacy – for generations to come!

I have a dream. The dream is this journey I am in… 
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The Freedom of the Wind!

Carefree lived he a lofty life!
Cruising across the Sky, the Earth and the Ocean.
No limit had he,
Full of Energy, and Freedom!

Laughter was there in every breath of his,
Always in motion,
Busy creating things beautiful!
Either in form of colorful kites in sky,
Or carrying pollen across miles!
Flying high, taking the birds in his lap,
Back to their nests at twilight!
Drying the wetness of the land,
Or caressing and combing the golden hair,
Of the princess from the palace high!

He was fearless, he was free,
Far away from any clutches of heaviness!
No baggage had he,
Did what his heart felt!
With all freedom and delight!

He had nothing to lose,
For he had lost everything -
His Love, his Dreams, his Hope and Ambitions!
All his riches were taken,
Taken away was even his most possession –
Those dreamy Most Beautiful Eyes!

“ Nothing to fear, nothing to lose have I,
For gone is all!”
Said the blowing wind in all his speed!!
“None is here to stop me,
None is here to love.
None is here to keep me attached,
In the confinement of anything –
In the world of form!”
Continued the Wind!

Light as ever,
With dynamism dire,
Being the vital force of creation!
Although invisible and un-heard!
Busy was he in action –
Enlivening creation in all forms!
Lighting the spark of life,
To whatever he touched on his way –
In his eternal journey!
Loving, Giving , Caring and Creating!
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The Meta Mind

The way we behave and act in our conscious realm is guided by the way our mind works. Of course the way mind processes information, is shaped by many things - social conditioning, education, upbringing, value system, social circle, etc.
Also there is something very special in we humans. Psychologists call this as meta mind. Somehow, after continuous evolution for billions of years, the nerve connections between the neuron cells have gone so complex that, the mind system has started being aware of itself! This is something very unique.
The idea is that mind can observe its own thought. This aspect of mind can be termed as the "meta-mind" - a neural system that not only is an audience to the thought systems of a person, but can also act as a director of those thought systems.
This meta mind governs the quality of our existence. This is because it sorts out and refines our response to the stimulus we get through our five senses. This creates a sense of discrimination, a sense of choice, a sense of stance we take.
Now, it is very important to mentor the meta mind, so that it can work as a good director to the smaller mind - the little self - which is constantly under the push and pull of urges, propensities and external stimulus. So psychologically speaking the goal for an optimal existence is two fold -
1. Mentoring the Meta Mind
2. Establishing a strong link between the meta mind and the little mind - which governs our behavior.
 In Hindu philosophy meta-mind can be termed as Atman. Interestingly more than 900 years before the birth of Christ, in India there was a discipline which was prevalent which aimed at establishing this link. It used to be called as Yoga.
In Sanskrit Yoga means "linking"/"coupling" etc. So the aim of this discipline was to calm the little self, and thus allow humans to see the Atman (name used for the meta mind in this framework).
Once you are able to see the Atma - it meant you had a link established between your little mind - behaviors and actions with the meta mind.
The mentoring aspect for the meta mind was established with contemplation, reading, listening to gurus, etc.
In our daily life in 21st century, to be able to utilize this effective framework, I feel the mentoring part can be met by reading good books, writing and contemplating. I do not mean to be a loner, and not indulge into pleasures of life. I mean to be mindful and totally indulged in everyday life and its responsibilities and expectations, and the pleasures of daily life - with a deeper awareness, complemented with nurturing the mind with good books, knowledge and good influence.

The linking aspect can be effectively met by meditation and Yoga. All the sub-categories of Yoga – The Bhakti Yoga, The Gnana Yoga, The Hatha Yoga and The Karma Yoga can all be simultaneously exercised to be able to lead a more fulfilling life!
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The Boundless Pleasure!

Something simple, very simple
Occurred in this cosmos!
In one galaxy among the billions,
In one solar system, among the millions,
One of its multiple planets,
In a small country,
Around the small corner,
In one of its cities!
Something simple, very simple
But profound and blissful!

Such was the joy,
The Sky blushed crimson,
Late at night!
The moon turned red,
In the backdrop of the
Throbbing sky!
Stars twinkling with all glitter,
With intensity like never before!
The night sparkled,
Like the charming smile,
Of that special Joy!

The poet in all his happiness,
Strolled by the side of the Nile,
With a never before bump,   
In his heart!
The waves orchestrated,
The best ever symphony,
The Wind was in trance,
Dancing with his beloved –
The waves of passion,
In high tide,
From the bosom of the Nile!
The angels from the sky,
Peeped down below,
To see the elegant spectacle!

All were drugged,
All planets and all elements!
Intoxicated with limitless revel!
All were happy,
With bliss never found before!

The Gods felt envious,
Wondering why did not they
Born humans or the elements and the planets!
For such Happiness, such Joy,
Never ever they had known!

The poet thought,
Life’s purpose was met!
For he was so happy, He was so blissful!

Something simple, very simple
Occurred in this cosmos!
In one galaxy among the billions,
In one solar system, among the millions,
One of the multiple planets,
In a small country,
Around the small corner,
In one of its cities!
Something simple, very simple
But profound and blissful!
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On Pain

Buddhism does a good analysis of Pain as experienced by humans. It is so very interesting to discover that this in accordance to what the science of psychology has also investigated –
Going deep into the nature of Pain – Buddha found following are 4 dimensions of it has. I name these dimensions as - 
1.    The Reference Frame –
Whatever humans experience is out of this world – this life – Our Reference frame. By design life entails a great deal of sufferings. This ranges from commonplace feelings (grouchiness, fear, anger, boredom, depression, heartaches and pains, loneliness, etc) to acute forms (produced by wars, famines, disease, natural calamities, etc).
Buddha characterizes a world in which there is a great deal of unhappiness, ranging from abject pain, loneliness, anxiety, hunger, being with hateful people, lots of those we love, to unpleasant states of feelings as described above.
Having said this I am not propagating the idea that world is a hopeless land of limitless suffering. On contrary, I am by temperament immensely optimist. The idea is just to bring to ones attention that pain is inevitable in this world – by design.
2.    Transitoriness of pain –
Pain includes an idea of change, perpetual flux, what Buddha refers to as “transitoriness”. It implies that misery is always potential – in coming. For example if a person says, “All these suffering does not apply to me. I have a well paying, interesting job, a happy marriage, and good health.” The Buddhist thesis would be : All good the person sited is subject to change. For example, the man’s wife may one day stop loving him. Or he may wake up one morning realizing that he no longer loves her. And the loss of job, health, or stability is notoriously common. The conditions of our happiness are all subject to change. The idea is that there is nothing like – “live happily ever after”.
If one is happy – she is fortunate indeed. She should obviously savor and relish it. But she should have the awareness that pain in some form is always potentiona – either in the form of commonplace feelings or acute forms as described in the point 1 above.
Again the idea is play life fully. Cherish happiness as if this is the last day of one’s life. But when pain comes, accept it as natural and normal – by design.
3.    The Causal Matrix –
This idea being adopted as-is from Hinduism, Buddha establishes another dimension of pain. The idea is that we live in a world which is highly interdependent. The events in life are related to a matrix of numerous other factors and coincidences. This has been explained in the Karma Theory of the ancient Vedantic philosophy.
This dimension has been poetically articulated by the famous Buddhist monk – Thich Nhat Hanh. He describes one of Siddhartha’s insights as he was coming to enlightenment  -
“He looked up at a pippala leaf imprinted against the blue sky, its tail blowing back and forth as if calling him. Looking deeply at the leaf, he saw clearly the presence of the sun and the stars – without the sun, without light and warmth, the leaf could not exist. He also saw in the leaf the presence of clouds – without clouds, there could be no rain, and without rain, the leaf could not be. He saw the earth, time, space and mind – all were present in the leaf. In fact, at that very moment the entire universe existed in that leaf.”
This interdependence applies, of course, to all life, including each human life.
This causal nature of suffering brings the Buddhist conception closer to the western scientific world outlook. All of science has its foundation “this is like this because that was like that”. For example, the cause of the annoying behavior of a tyrannical and abusive boss might be the ill grooming of his during his childhood by an alcoholic father. The idea is that all forms of pain might have its seed in a remote an seemingly un-related event. Life is thus a mosaic of such varied interdependences.
4.    The last link within –
The Buddha places the ultimate cause of suffering squarely within the individual. This can be explained with the following example –
We may think that a person who cheats us is the cause of our suffering. In the Buddhist view, it is our anger at being cheated, our craving to retrieve our money, our brooding over the event that is immediate cause of our suffering. The fact of being cheated is an important event in the causal sequence, but is one step removed from the final cause of suffering. This view, then, focuses not on the external, more instant causes of our suffering, but on the immediate inner link of the causal chain, on our motivational and emotional makeup.
This emotional makeup – the final link to push us into distress – is dependent solely on the human being’s inner state of heart and mind. This is ofcourse an outcome of the social conditioning of the individual.
For example the 1930s middle class American culture, in which it was made to believe that promiscuous girls were bad, homosexuals were bad, and it was important that a girl should marry being virgin – were social conditionings – which cause vulnerabilities in a lady, causing not only pain in her internal psyche but also pain in others.
So, life can offer us as many touch situations as possible – as a result of many other interdependent happenings, on which we might not have least of control. But the best part of life is that the quality of our life – our inner state of bliss or un-rest is solely dependent on that critical and last link in the causal chain – how we take it. If we re-design our inner self such that it is not affected by these un-controllable outer causal happenings, we might have a way out of the suffering.

[This article is my synthesis of the initial chapters of the book - The Positive Psychology of Buddhism and Yoga by Dr. Marvin Levine]
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The Immortal Traveler

Ageless, timeless bright and sunny,
The Traveler is in his journey through eternity!

Once upon a time he was born as the river Mississippi,
Once he was born as the seagull of the seventh mountain!

Then there was a time when he was the Road to the clouds,
Guiding and taking countless Pilgrims’ caravans!

Then there was this time when he was born,
As the poem from the heart of the lovelorn poet,
Swinging in the rhythm of the Charm
Of those Most Beautiful Eyes!

There was one age, when he was
The rapture of the ageless sage having the glimpse of his God!

And then there was he born,
As the painful throbbing of the despaired heart,
Of the sculptor in love with his stone and indifferent sculpture!

Then he was born as the profound attraction
Of the droning bee,
For the nectar of the luscious flower red!

And again as the pious and peaceful prayer,
Of the silent nun behind the walls of the convent!

Life span varied of the traveler –
From the few moments of the lover’s moan
In the moments of those ecstatic unity!
To the eternal wait of the
The longing hearts of the banks of the Ganges!
Waiting in vain, since millennia
To kiss each other, To touch each other, To hug each other!

The traveler lived though civilizations many!
From the hunter-gatherers Shoshones,
To the Greeks and Romans!
To the barbarians,
To the New World,
Through revolutions many,
Civilizations after civilizations!
Wars after wars!

Each time he evolved,
He grew and flourished,
Using minds of men women,
Boys and girls,
As vehicles in continuum –
Ages after ages!

He was in the form of the
Human ideas, insights, and innovation!
Hopes, dreams and inspirations!
The longing love and compassion!
 Manifested in the world of form,
As poems, songs, scientific insights!
As religious raptures, paintings and sculptors!
As lofty bridges, Engineering marvels, forts and damns!
Spanning through eternity!

He was born as an innocent wish,
Of the little girl gazing the stars,
He lived through as the
Enthused heart of the lover
Held in tight embrace of his beloved!
Living in vigor and youth,
All through eternity
As the never ending love
Of the Sky and the Earth!

Men were born,
Both Great and Wretched!
Civilizations started, pinnacled and
The fated with the inevitable death!
Springs came, and Winter passed!
Many came, many went.

Remained but forever
The traveler – beyond the dots of eternity!
Throbbing with life,
Was the ardor of being Human!
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The uniqueness of Gautam Buddha

Being a creative social innovator, Siddhartha had a remarkable novel idea that he created on the top of his synthesis of his “Middle Path” based on the Hindu philosophy. This idea was his rejection of the concept of Atman/God. Unlike what he had read about and had been taught by his senior Hindu counterparts, he considered human to be a conglomerate of psychological propensities – like – joy, pain, love, hatred, jealousy, hunger, craving, etc. He always propagated the idea of meditation as a way to calm down these psychological pushes and pulls and knowing one’s own real self. The idea was to create peace for oneself by reducing the entropy in consciousness, by letting these temperamental disturbances settle down. This obviously causes an increase in perceptive and cognitive abilities.
Instead of preaching his ideas strictly as a series of sermons, Siddhartha invited his followers to go through their personal journey of self realization by doing meditation. This is very close to the western outlook of the science of psychology. The beauty in the thought process of Siddhartha was that he was disruptive in the sense that he felt that the need for the Hypothesis of God was not required to present a discipline for attaining Nirvana. For him Nirvana was not the attainment of the union with a Hypothesis of God. Rather it was about going to the depth of ones own self, knowing one better and better.
By abandoning the Atman concept, Siddhartha produced a change in the Hindu outlook, making it more akin to the contemporary scientific view. Siddhartha never invokes a Deity concept to explain the causes of Dukkha, indeed, of anything in the universe.
This was I guess a very important step forward towards a scientific and evolutionary outlook of life. I am not going to the correctness or in-correctness of the philosophy of Siddhartha. It is just that it was a disruptive innovation in the discipline of thought – in an attempt to explain life. Something as disruptive as the explanation of solar system to Napoleon, by the 19th century French astronomer – LaPlace – without the need of the Hypothesis of the presence of God, for any role to be played in creation of the solar system.
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The Verdict of History

They say that Rome was not build in a day. One of the richest civilizations every formed – The Romans were astounding in many ways – Their strong military, the economic system based on markets, Their effective governance and bureaucracy. All these were comparable in many ways to the modern system of society. It is commendable for humans to have reached that high level of sophistication around 500BC!

But then this dominant civilization became stagnant and decaying after reaching their pinnacle of evolution. Barbarians came and the great Roman Empire collapsed. To be precise the Western part of the empire went on the hands of the barbarians. There is one thing very interesting in all these. Till the Roman civilization was prospering and continuing to grow things were ok. But when it became stagnant, contributing little if anything to the march of its evolution, it was taken over by the Barbarians.
Barbarians had a great affinity to the civilized way of living that they inherited from the Romans. They immediately adapted the same, and continued the evolution of Roman memes.

The barbarian role of cultural demolition crew is especially important when you consider how often cultural reconstruction is needed. Many of Rome’s glaring defects – slavery, exploitation, authoritarianism, corrupt self-aggrandizement – flow from deeply human tendencies. Time and again these human vulnerabilities have transformed promising civilizations into decaying, oppressive monstrosities.

It is just not that Romans were now lethargic and were not being able to maintain their cultural supremacy. Rather things are a bit more involved. Romans were just not able to adapt to the technological evolution they themselves started. With coming of standard, universally accepted coins and fully phonetic alphabet, complete with vowels, the potential existed for a more decentralized economy than ever before. So, for example, slavery – the ultimate in exploitation – now carried a higher cost of forgone productivity; the better lubricated the market, the more it can benefit from untrammeled participation. A mind, as they say, is a terrible thing to waste.

The Eastern half of the Roman Empire which survived the collapse of the west, was less guilty of some of these sins. The east seems all along to have had fewer slaves than the west. In the east the economy was less afflicted by such stultifying policies as the virtual ban on changing convocations. And, for historical reasons, the east had a more integrated economy.

The historian Chester Starr once wrote – “Every so often civilizations seems to work itself into a corner from which further progress is virtually impossible along the lines then apparent; yet if new ideas are to have a chance the old systems must be so severely shaken that they lose their dominance”.
Of course, technology isn’t some extraneous force, visited on the planet from outer space. It is selected by human minds through cultural evolution; people are the arbiters of technology. But technologies – in a broad sense, at least – are in turn arbiters of social structures.

The same evolution of memes is so much apparent in the companies and their products. There have been a definite direction apparent in the whole drama in the computing industry – starting from mainframes, to ascent of the Windows, to the rise of Apple, Google, Amazon etc. There have been a directed evolution towards more and more freedom, openness, collaboration, higher sophistication and complexity in every product and service.

Its looks so amazing that these units of culture use humans as vehicles to expand themselves. When one meme becomes stale another meme takes its place, which is more vibrant and complex. The story of the evolution of civilizations after civilizations have been an artifact to this unique dynamics of ideas, information, dreams, hope, expressions, innovations – all creations of human mind!

Certainly it is our responsibility to keep the mind nourished with Newer Ideas, Bigger Dreams, Brighter Hopes, and of course every expanding Love and Compassion!
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An Interesting Experiment by a Prince

I was reading this book – The Positive Psychology of Buddhism and Yoga : Path to a Mature Happiness by Marvin Levine. Some of the illustrations in the following article are taken from this book. The theme of this article is to give an overview of cognitive approach Siddhartha took to formulate what was later called Buddhism. It was a unique experimentation by a creative man – trying to synthesize the esoteric philosophy of the then prevalent Hinduism – into a simple, practical and scientific approach towards living a peaceful and happy life. Interestingly the same thing has been the pursuit of the western approach of developing the science of Psychology.
Around 500BC northern India had certain religious and philosophical parallels to ancient Greece. This is probably no coincidence. Some 4000 years ago, the same people in the northern part of the globe drifted south, some towards Europe and Greece, and some towards India. Knowledge of the classical Greek language, is of great benefit in studying Sanskrit.
In Greece, religion functioned on two levels. There was the pantheon of Gods that was part of the popular religion, but there was also the abstract characterization of the world and of man’s place in it, which the philosophers were developing. The disparity between the two Greek views of the divine was made painfully clear by the death of Socrates. He, who taught the importance of contemplating the sublime essences, was executed for leading the young away from their (the popular) religion. The same duality of religious beliefs existed at the same time in India. There was a pantheon of Gods, with accompanying stories, symbols, rituals, and rules of worship. There was also, however, the more philosophical approach that saw deity in a more abstract form. It is this latter philosophical approach that gave rise to the movement we call Yoga and that influenced the Buddha. By first reviewing certain basic ideas in this philosophical context, we gain a better understanding of the Buddha’s teachings.
In the Hindu-philosophical view, the personalized gods are replaced by a universal spirit, referred to as Atman. Atman pervades everything – sun, planets, stones, trees, insects, monkeys, you and me. Our spiritual goal is to discover this Atman within ourselves and thus to connect with the all pervasive Atman. The Atman within is to be discovered in a deeper place than our cravings, fears, and agitations, deeper than such ordinary mind activity as brooding, daydreaming, and planning. The Atman could only be glimpsed when all this restless craving and mind activity is stilled. The mind is likened to a lake. When turbulent, it is opaque but, when calm, it is transparent. Yoga was founded on this conception of an all-pervasive, inner and outer Atman. The term Yoga means “linking”, and is usually interpreted to mean linking the inner Atman with the outer.
Drawing parallels from likes of Socrates from Greece, and proponents of Vedas and Upanishads from India, it appears that both these magnanimous civilizations of the world had their framework of civil psychology pretty robust. For people who were into day to day work, and had nothing much to do into the domain of contemplation, there was this easy story created of personalized Gods. There were thousands of Gods for both Greek, Romans and in Indian societies. And for the more contemplative class – people who had time to think and contemplate – there was this philosophical framework of an “Atman”.
The concept of Yoga – (literal meaning is addition or linking in Sanskrit)- was an interesting discipline created with all its ramifications – with the sole motive of establishing the connection with the Omnipresent, Omniscient – The Absolute. This abstract form of the Absolute was given various names – “Param-Atma”, “Param-Brahm”, etc. The sole objective of a spiritual journey was about establishing this connection. This was achieved through calming the mind, and detaching it from various stimuli of the external world. Having done that, there was a significant reduction of entropy in the human consciousness. No matter which path was followed – the general mass easy way of personal gods, or the selective high class philosophy of abstract power – the end goal of these civilizations was commendable – achieving peace of mind – reducing of entropy in the consciousness.
This pursuit of mankind was a threshold in the evolution of human thinking. Among many other factors [other memetic influences from other competing civilizations] this discipline of thought kept the human mind away from slipping down to the innate human tendencies of exploitation, authoritarianism, and self-aggrandizement.
Pain of the real world (Dukkha), Atman, re-incarnation, Karma – these formed the conceptual framework in the Buddha’s cognition of the world – as he was strongly influenced by this unique philosophy prevalent in India – around 500 BC. Synthesizing the abstract philosophical aspect of Hinduism, Siddhartha formulated a unique way of living based on Four Noble Truths. He called his way as the Middle Path – A path between being a selfish materialists and an ascetic. He laid out a unique framework which was mostly atheist – solely aimed at liberating humans from pains inherent in being a human.
The Four Noble Truth are outlined below –
1.    The Truth of Dukkha (Suffering) – We are vulnerable to a multitude of suffering such as hunger, pain, fear, loneliness, hatred and so on.
2.    The Truth of Tanha (Craving) – We are vulnerable because of the way human nature is constituted. Specifically, we are a bundle of urges that push and pull from within. Urges for example, to obtain food, drink, sexuality, companionship; to escape boredom, pain, irritation.
3.    The Truth of Nirvana (Liberation from Dukkha) – Our vulnerability can be ended. We can attain freedom from Dukkha. We do this by changing ourselves, by transforming our cravings. We can subdue those overpowering urges that push us now one way, and then another.
4.    The Truth of Magga (Eight fold path) – Liberation from Dukkha is attained by practice of eight disciplines. These disciplines entail the cultivation of
a.    Right Understanding
b.    Right Thought
c.    Right Speech
d.    Right Action
e.    Right Livelihood
f.    Right Mindfulness
g.    Right Effort
h.    Right Meditation
It looks amazing that how scientifically Siddhartha laid out a framework for humans to achieve a state free from suffering – he called Nirvana. It was about re-designing one’s understanding of the world, to make the forces of circumstances irrelevant in deciding the state of mind for a person.
Now, inherent in this 8 fold path is the ambiguity of what is “Right” in all these points. I see it this way. As Buddha followed the Hindu way of the goal of spiritual journey is to establish ones connection to that “Param-Atma”, which resides deep inside one’s self. Having this as the primary goal of life, everything else looks of secondary importance. This stance creates lots of freedom. This is because now, for the seeker, all the humane vulnerabilities are secondary to her existence. This stoicism creates a launch pad for the seeker to create something big, difficult, huge and unique – in defiance of the real limitations and inherent failure modes. There is a gradual elevation of human psyche – from the feeble self oriented fearful existence, to a robust, creative and fearless expression of humanity. When the primary goal is something non-cognitive (knowing the Param-Atma), any cognitive dilemma of life does not shake the seeker.
This formula helps in reducing entropy of human consciousness thereby bringing to ones disposal and extra psychic energy, which otherwise would have been wasted in dealing with human sufferings. This increases the probability of the seeker to enter to FLOW, getting into a domain of her choice, and thereby creating artifacts of creativity – which leaves a legacy for humanity.
To be able to continue the evolution of mankind towards an optimal direction, such a homework looks like a smart option. It is certainly a reasonable way to orient the mind and transcend the weaknesses inherent in being human. At the same time, it transmutes these weaknesses to absolute unique human faculties which play a vital role in beautifying further the evolution of human civilizations. 
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