On the Grand Design

Suffering is always tragic, often random and mostly senseless.

It is a worldly endeavor to lessen suffering, while the other-worldly pursuit is to "transcend" suffering since suffering is a "noble truth" from which there is no escape, only transcendence.

A friend of mine, with a network of well-heeled people in his network, writes on LinkedIn:

Seemingly adverse things appearing in abundance and without warning could be arising for one of two reasons. First, it may simply be that dealing with them is a necessary step in our development and without them our life journey will be a superficial success. Relatedly and importantly, these circumstances appear because prior volitional activity or accumulated karma making them the birth child of thoughts or actions we have taken in the past, whether we can directly recall or correlate to the present incidents.

Whatever the specific reason, I take great comfort in the fact that there is zero randomness in how my life’s events unroll and I look ahead with optimism and enthusiasm, knowing that the temporal map of these occurrences is accurately following the karmic load that I carry and strive to purify.

I quote an incident from an earlier article of mine:

Abandoned in Life and Death
Parents leave baby boy undergoing treatment at PGI

In a blatant display of extreme callousness, parents of a seriously injured baby abandoned the child midway through treatment in the PGI Intensive Care Unit.

Faced with absence of support in a critical condition, the infant breathed his last on January 7 and no one has even come forward to claim the body, which is kept in the mortuary of the hospital.

...

Although he started stabilising in the ICU, his parents suddenly vanished. After unsuccessful attempts at locating the parents, doctors informed the police.

...

Ruby passed away on January 7. 

...

The religiously-inclined might say that the child must have come to this world with his karma and that divine justice is infallible. And thus we avert our eyes from what must have compelled the parents of this poor child to desert him, and what must be improved in the hospitals, and in the mind-sets of doctors of this country for these events never to happen again. God forbid.

Truth is not comforting, it just is.  The truth is that this baby, Ruby, died of injuries and from lack of care, not of Karma.

Tragedy is not confined to the suffering of children, though it is perhaps easier to see that they did not deserve it.

I imagine the suffering of Ruby's mother as she abandoned him.  I imagine her compulsion, or perhaps her desensitized debasement.

I imagine the suffering of a father and a mother as their child is kidnapped and never found, as they imagine him or her to be amputated and made into a beggar or be raped by those who do not deserve to be called human beings.

I imagine the suffering of a noble warrior like Jaswant Singh Khalra, who, for protesting against others' killings, was himself tortured and killed by Punjab Police.

I swear, to my last drop of blood, and to my last breath, ... I swear on the still smoldering, in my heart, funeral pyre of Ruby who I never met, ... I swear on the courage of Jaswant Singh Khalra, that I will never forget your suffering, or justify it as part of a grand plan, or rationalize it as what you deserved because of your karma, but that I will hold your injuries as mine, that I will fight against what killed you, and that I will reject the abject nonsense of the eastern "wisdom" that claims that the world is perfect as it is, only if we would see it that way.

 

Though Lovers Be Lost, ...

There is no love like the love of a mother for her child, and the child assumes that love, and abides in it, and lives in its shelter and warmth.

The child leaves the mother first, to go forth in this world.  The mother holds her tears, but lets the child go.  For that is in the nature of things.  She wishes happiness and fulfillment for the child more than the child wishes for itself.

And one day, the mother, old and frail, bids her final goodbye to this world.  And only then it dawns on the child what a fragrant presence the mother was in its own heart.  When it is no more possible for the child to reach out to its mother outwardly, then the child reaches in, within, and finds the love whose intensity was so far hidden to it.

And that explosion of love and grief creates an intensity about an absence that the presence perhaps never could.  The world of the child is now absent the mother, but strangely its heart is full once again with her presence.

From being inside the mother before its birth, the child now nurtures the mother inside itself.

Though lovers be lost,
Love shall not.

And Death shall have no dominion.

On Being Well-Adjusted, part III

First seek an understanding of human affairs, THEN seek to integrate, adjust or withdraw.  Too often, whether in the case of Buddha or Krishnamurti, young, ignorant minds go off into seeking "the highest truth" while not understanding why clothes dry or why an interest is charged on a loan.

Too often, maladjustment starts at the very beginning of one's adult life.  From living a sheltered childhood, to a sudden exposure to the harsh realities of a competitive adult life.  Many are horrified at the prospect and withdraw.  But that is a failure of the adjustment process, not an indictment of society.  Parents are responsible for slowly exposing their children away from fairy tales and into the world of millionaires and courts and real estate.

After an adult has successfully navigated, to a reasonable extent, the "real world", it is permissible for him to seek to withdraw to focus on another kind of pursuit.  Not everyone has to be an entrepreneur.  One could as well be a mathematician, an artist, or an astute generalist.  But to be maladjusted, to never understand the world, and then to withdraw is not renunciation, it is an admission of failure.

Society is indeed sometimes brutal.  But the brutality is not mystical (due to "ignorance of one's true nature" or suchlike), but tangible, due to material and historical conditions.  It may indeed be justified for someone to run away from a war zone, to be a deserter, but then, he cannot live in honor as the town mayor when the war ends.  You can escape the obligations of a "sick society", but you do not, if you are moral, then get to reap the rewards of that same society.

For a sensitive individual, I recommend very much that they should seek to become financially independent, to live with thrift and wisdom so that they may have enough money to live the kind of life they want.  And to become financially independent, it is important to understand society.  Not from a guru, but from study as well as lived experience.

Innocence of spirit can be maintained only by living a life of integrity, where one does not deceive oneself.  If one has to compromise on one's integrity (say, by paying a bribe to get a driving license), it must be with complete self-awareness, and with a feeling of tragedy.  Continuing with this analogy, a morally compromised man (that Krishnamurti would consider well-adjusted) would feel happy that he was able to cunningly achieve his aim, a morally integrated man would feel dejected despite having achieved his aim, and a defeatist (but moral) man would hang himself to death at the state of affairs.

The society is rarely totally evil.  It is made of all kinds of people.  In a very decayed society, or even in jail, you may find exceptional individuals.  You must aim to understand and navigate the circumstances that you find yourself in, and then overcome those circumstances with your strength and acumen, WHILE preserving your innocence and inner moral compass.

And then, having achieved mastery over the earthly affairs, to enjoy your freedom from the shackles of an allegedly "sick society".

That, if you can manage, will be a life well-lived.

On Being Well-Adjusted, part II

 (part 1)

If we disregard the esoteric notion that the goal of human life is unearthly, then living happily and wisely on this earth has to matter.  In this earthly living, what kind of "adjustment" is worthwhile, and what kind of adjustment is a surrender of one's integrity?

Krishnamurti was well-provided for right from his childhood, when he was adopted by the Theosophists.  He never had to struggle to make a career or to make a living.  Though he had romantic engagements, he never married or had children.  He lived a cocooned life, where important politicians and rich people kept him safe and free of worry.  He lived an aristocratic life despite his claims that he "gave up" the mantle of the world teacher.  He kept enough funds of the original "Order of the Star in the East" to keep himself comfortable, and his rich friends continue to support him.

Krishnamurti could rail against "society" and the pursuit of wealth and being career-focused while he himself lived comfortably and flew first class.  By all material indications, he was well-adjusted in society.  He never went to jail.  He never considered the tax laws as unjust.  He never fought in a war while letting others fight for him and his freedoms.

It is also a surrender of one's integrity to amass riches while misleading other people that one is the world teacher.  The integral act would have been for Krishnamurti to completely disavow his world-teacher status and be a common man.  But he did not do that.  He did not start working in a factory and find a rented accommodation.

All this is to say that criticism of the society as being profoundly sick, and stating that adjustment to such a society is a disease, can only come, ethically speaking, from someone who is not enjoying the fruits of such a sick society.

Let us leave aside Krishnamurti then, as he, being a hypocrite, is not worth responding to, and consider afresh how a man with integrity ought to live in this world, a world that demands the subjugation of his intellect, his strength and his insight.  How must a man live comfortably while still not allowing his soul to be sold, and his mind to be corrupted beyond recognition.

How to preserve one's innocence while being clever enough to navigate the traps of this world?

Is it doable?

(to be continued)

On Being Well-Adjusted, part I

Jiddu Krishnamurti famously said: It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

What is "society"?  What does it mean to be "well-adjusted"?  In what sense is society "profoundly sick"?  What kind of "health" are we talking about here?

If we take Krishnamurti's statement to be true, what is the recommendation for a modern human being?

Society is the structure of human interaction.  Whether it be financial, educational, religious, political, ethical, historical, legal, kinship, sexual, habitual, pertaining to manners, ...  The various kinds of interactions between human beings, and the burdens and benefits thereof, is society.  The structure is a behemoth of rules, implicit and explicit.  You are born in a family, you spend the first twenty odd years getting educated as per the norms of your society, you form friendships and relationships, you earn and spend money, try to be on the right side of law, and so on.

Nobody, anywhere, claims that their society is ideal.  But one can evaluate the health of a society in many ways.  Does it show signs of "low-trust"?  Is there a lot of hypocrisy (people asking you to follow certain rules but flouting those rules themselves)?  Is there a general sense of well-being and safety?  Is the environment healthy and clean?  Is there beauty?  Are people able to have a comfortable, dignified life?  Is there freedom of expression?  Are the institutions overburdened and inefficient?  Are hard work and ethical living rewarded or punished?  Do people feel empowered, or powerless?  Is there disease, or good health in the majority of the population?

But even in the best societies, as per our metrics, an individual faces a certain burden of socialization.  He cannot just do as he pleases.  There are rules and responsibilities, rewards and punishments, those who like and love oneself and those who are strange or hostile.

Spiritual people like Krishnamurti advise that the only true goal is salvation, and earthly and social goals are quite secondary.  Their focus is not on material conditions, but on inner growth.  To them, a man who is poor or one who is jail but elevated in his consciousness is far better than a cunning man who is comfortable and powerful, but otherwise commonplace in his thinking.

We can all agree that the former man is maladjusted, the latter is well-adjusted.  The former man has not adjusted to the rules of society and is suffering materially, while the latter has mastered the rules of his society and is prospering.

Is it possible for a happy and wise man to be materially well-adjusted?  Or is maladjustment the inevitable fate of wisdom?

Was Krishnamurti himself well-adjusted?

(to be continued)