Sacrifice the Results

Learn only for the sake of learning, love only for the sake of loving, and live only for the sake of living. - Vishnu Pendyala, BE(CSE), MBA(Fin.), MS(CE), SMIEEE, SMCSI, DTM

True Economic Forces are Philanthropy and Benevolence

"Philanthropy and benevolence, rather than greed and avarice should be the driving forces for a sustained economic growth devoid of bubbles and bursts." - Vishnu Pendyala

Laugh is life pronounced with the right vowels

"Laugh is life pronounced with the right vowels, both having to do with breath." - Vishnu Pendyala :)

Happiness

"It is a pity if one has to depend on basic needs such as food and sex to be happy. True happiness is a product of higher aspects of life" - Vishnu Pendyala

Change

How many of you want to look old? And how many of you want to remain a child for ever? Change is sure inevitable. Change Management is a very important topic in books on Organization Behavior. But is change really welcome? We’ve heard people speak fervently for change. They strongly inspire you to change. That’s the worst part of change - everyone wants the others to change. They try to change everything but themselves.

Spirituality tells us that there is happiness in stillness. Mind is in its best state when it is still. The whole purpose of life is to be happy. We cannot be happy when the things around us change rapidly. Rapid changes only result in anxiety, stress, and depression. Many good things in life never change. Human values haven’t changed. The concept of happiness hasn’t changed. The concept of lie and perjury have changed, but the concept of truth has always remained the same. The concept of marriage is changing, but the concept of conception and mother haven’t changed. God is described as changeless. A few good things that indeed changed, have changed very slowly. Nature changed very slowly. It took millions of years for earth to change. So, my conclusion is that the best never changes. Better are the ones which change very slowly.

There have been so many changes in our lives over generations. There are many more comforts now. But can we claim to be happier than our parents in their time? I read a letter in the Wall Street Journal sometime back, where the reader described how, even after being much better educated and better placed than his father, he was having a tough time leading a decent life. Don’t most of us echo those feelings in our heart?

Change is of course inevitable. We cannot but be part of the change. But we can also slow the change. For instance, diet and exercise slow down the aging process. Great Chefs will hopefully agree with me that tasty dishes are the ones that are cooked slowly on medium heat. Romance is best when it is slow. Economic growth is best in moderation. Technology should only grow at the rate our natural resources can support it. Competition and greed are ill-founded and are harmful in the long run. Other motivators such as job satisfaction, customer appreciation, and the innate desire to be challenged should be the driving factors to help kill idleness and serve the humanity.
Change begets change. If your neighbor changes, you have to change. A country flexes its nuclear muscle, its neighbor reciprocates. The whole world becomes an unsafe place. So, best is not to change in the first place. That implies being largely content with what is bestowed upon us and staying focused inwards, whether as an individual or as an individual entity.

In summary, take it slow, and take it easy. There is lot to life than racing against change.

Golden Lessons

There's a lot to learn from the metal, gold. That's why gold plays a great role in spirituality. One important lesson is to forget the pain and remember only the lessons we learn. Gold undergoes tremendous torture as it is shaped into an ornament. It is heated to melting point, beaten, and bent until it learns its lesson (shape of the ornament). When it learns its lesson and appears as an ornament, however, there is no sign of the torture gold underwent. Gold only remembers the lesson and forgets every trace of the torture. Had it remembered even a bit of that torture, it would not have had its value as an ornament. Same in life. We need to remember only the lessons we learn from experiences and forget all the pain and hardship that life takes us through to teach us those important lessons. Gold is highly flexible, malleable and ductile, so should one be - ready to adapt and change. Gold does not easily react and so should a man remain calm and unperturbed in pain or pleasure. There's a lot to learn from gold - just think and you'll see a lot more to learn!
"The way one thinks is what sets him apart." - Vishnu Pendyala :)

Discussion on Simple Harmonic Motion

Greetings!

A good communication should never be one-sided.
I'm appending some interesting replies I got for last
weekend's mail which I thought would be useful to others
also.

One more point that I forgot to add in my last week's
mail is this: The swing stops because of earth's pull.
Life's swing from good to bad probably stops because
of God's pull. The stronger the pull, the faster it stops.

Ok, here are the replies with my thoughts too..
Responses I received are in italics and bold.
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The life cycles have been well written in many
sanskrit verses too.

"Chakravat parivartante dukhanicha sukhanicha"
Happiness/Sadness change like a wheel

"Chakrara panktiriva gachhati bhgya panktihi"
Strokes of luck/bad luck goes like spokes of a wheel

I am sure many others too.


Thanks once again, Ravi for sharing the wisdom.
---------------------------------------------------------
...
just think of ahimsa kind of behavoir in workplace..
i think it is impossible even to keep a job, with
being so nice..
everyone takes advantage of u.


Here's what I think:

No principle, no faith teaches us to give up what
it demands for us to live and do our duties in this world.
One of the prices we have to pay for centuries of civilization
and evolution is to tackle unnecessary complications in very
indirect ways, every day. So, If our job demands shrewdness
as I understand some jobs do, we better be shrewd, but only
to the extent of the job and as a self defence. If we can't
live without being tough with the people around us, then we
better do what makes us tough. Even Buddha preached
this as is explained in one of his stories about a snake
who troubled the village.

Most of these good thoughts are certainly not the
'get-rich-quickly' kind. But these will definitely
help to lead a better life. The song clip from
the movie 'Pardes' goes, 'Jeene ka hai shouk tho
hoja marne ko tayyar'. These are some of those ironies
of life. If we want to gain money in stock market, we must
be prepared to lose money first, if we want to live
a great life, we must be prepared to die first. So they
may sound a bit absurd initially, but I think they are
profound truths.

There are many people who live by these principles,
knowingly or unknowingly, to some extent or to a great
extent. An example I can think of is Sri. PV Narasimha Rao.
To a great extent, he did what it requires to do his duty
without getting attached to the results. If you remember,
that's what made him win over Sri. Sharad Pawar in the
first place. Also, he never overreacted to anything during
his tenure. His critics may call it procrastination or
inaction, which may be true in some cases, but in most cases,
it helped - time solved his problems - all he did was to
co-operate with time.

In the cases it did not help, it must've been because of his
misjudgement. It happens with us also many times, like it
happened with Arjuna in Mahabharatha. We get confused with
what it takes to "co-operate with time". That mostly
happens when we get attached to the results, like Arjuna
did. One guideline I try to follow is go by what is liked
by time - that which finally wins. We all know, time likes
only that is good. Eventually, good alone wins. "Satyameva
Jayathe" (truth alone wins) is the motto of the
catholic-christian school in which I did the first 12 years
of my schooling.

We will know what is good and what is not, only by deeper analysis,
detachment, practice, maturity, and most importantly, by getting
a great teacher - a "friend, philosopher, and guide"
like Arjuna got. To me, the last one is the most difficult
of all. Fathers fit the bill in many cases and I lost mine
when I was 18.

I must also point out that what I'm attempting is more of a
combined study. I do not claim mastery on all the lessons that I'm
writing here. I did gain mastery over some and some others are my
intrinsic nature that I got by birth. But most others, I'm still
anlaysing, reasoning, learning, and practising.

For e.g., the "live by the moment" principle that I talked
last time, is presently the most difficult for me to implement.
It's the easiest to do when we are kids and the most difficult
to do as we grow older. I "lived by the moment" for most of
my first 18 years. I still remember how no one could win over
me in arguments; how "sharp" I was then. After my father's death
at 18, most of the time I had for myself was spent either in the
past or in the future.

I did not realize how much damage this caused me until I was 25,
when my "momentary" skills were put to severe test after a gap of 7
years. This time, I could not win over simple arguments
or tackle simple tricks that people played with me. And these people
were not any great - they're not even worth their salt. They
achieved nothing in their lives. But still they fooled me and tricked me
in unimaginable ways. I could never react to any of them
appropriately at that moment.

I always had to wait till the insults became past to recover
from them, because by then, I was only good at handling past
or future, not present. Ironically, the recovery was not by
correcting what happened in the past, but by trying
to forget or erase the past from memory. Unfortunately, the
great excuse people have to escape from their past is this
word "sorry". I'm sorry to say, "sorry" is the sorriest invention
of our civilization. People who are really sorry don't use it
so freely, as they do now. So, these people always got away
with a "sorry."

This went on until about a year ago, when part of
one of such arguments (or attacks, because over the years,
I started silencing myself during these "arguments" - that's
the best I could do, anyway) actually took place in front of
an elderly couple who were trying
to do some good in the world in their "akhari majili"
or "last stage", as told in their own words.

They opened my eyes. "We are easily able to see through
what is happening. You are so good in your academics but
you could not handle such simple situations and allowed it
grow to such extent?", they wondered, and
told me a few things that I could've said / done at that moment
to save myself. I realized that I could not say / do those things
later on.

There is nothing new in what they said. I always said
such things to myself, but hearing it from an external source
makes a huge difference. That's why the importance of a teacher.
That's why teacher is considered as "Brahma, Vishnu, Maheswara".
That's why we pray to the teacher even before we pray to the Lord
of obstacles. Those words were like a small stick that
an external person could pass on to someone getting sucked into
a muddy trap (i forgot what we call it - the more we try to
get out of it, the more we get sucked into it) to save his life.

That's when I started my introspection, this analysis,
and realized how important it is to live in the moment. After
spending over a decade and half in past and future, I'm now
finding it very difficult to focus on the present once again,
but am trying.

So, what I mean to say is, it is certainly not easy to practise
these good ideas. It will take time. Also, it is very important
to practise these ideas in full spirit. For e.g., if we try to
live by the moment without practicing to focus our energy on the
present, it could be disastrous. If I stop thinking about past,
future and just live by the moment with the same energy as before
(like how I failed in those arguments), I would be totally
invalidated.

So, I should first learn to focus more energy
on the present and slowly shed the passion for past and fear
for future, which I think will automatically happen. I always
tell people - to remove bad from mind, fill it with good - bad
will automatically go. That's the only way to get rid of bad.
Otherwise, if we keep thinking on how to get rid of bad, we
get attached to it more and more, instead of getting rid of it.
Remember the story of the monk and the monkey? This monk was told
a mantra and was asked to recite it in any state of mind, except
when a monkey came in his thoughts. In his anxiety to keep the monkey
away from his thoughts, the monk remembered only the monkey and
forgot about the mantra.
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Thanks, Sreekanth!
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Enjoyed your SHM reasoning. Where from u quote from Hindu
scripture to Japanese Reiki? I am sure this philosophical
bent of mind would have helped u a lot to come out unscathed
from all the problems.


I learnt about Japanese Reiki during my
visit to India. Most of the times I quote from
my memory, which, going by some of the feedback, has faded
quite a bit now. My apologies for that. The source of inspiration
for my forays into religion and spirituality are my grandfather
and his brother who was a noted religious poet. That's why I
always feel that the first 5 - 7 years of life shapes the rest
of it (my grandfather passed away when I was 7; how I wish he
lived longer to see how his lessons helped me in all the tough
times I faced). Incidentally, I heard that one of my close
friends in school, our batch topper, renounced the world and
joined Ramakrishna mutt after completing his MBBS.