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February 2016: Started
August 2016: Finished
This follows from this.
"Therefore, Ananda, be a lamp and refuge to yourselves, seek no other refuge. Let the Truth be your lamp and refuge; seek no refuge elsewhere."
In times of being original and innovative, it is possible to misunderstand the advice above (more correctly, a dictum) to mean, well, being original, unique and innovative. Those gifted with originality sometimes have the habit of overlooking things that are banaly (sic) repetitive but profoundly critical. There are three words that are so repetitive that the cynics have gained a complete hold over them because those pre-occupied with being original have willingly ceded complete control, busy as they are trying to re-engineer and re-interpret these words in an oh-so-original fashion. The three words are: god with a capital g; truth with a capital t; and beauty with a capital b. One such 'cynical' word, truth with a capital t, is also present in the advice of the Buddha above. Since all men agree, including the most ideological and dogmatic ones, that there is only one truth with a capital t, it should dissuade all and sundry from being overtly original with the meaning of Buddha's sturdy and practical dictum.
No lesser mortal than Dante would agree with adopting this attitude. For,
The thirteenth century scholars, and Dante with them, were still under the spell of the recent and greatest feat of medieval philosophy --- the final reconciliation of Aristotelian thought and Christian dogma worked out by Thomas Aquinas. To his immediate heirs, the "perennial philosophy" of Aquinas looked like a perfect cathedral that would require centuries to explore, and which no cultural earthquake could ever shake. Dante gloried in being among the first of its learned visitors. To maintain the truth might be changing or plural would have seemed to Dante more than a heresy, it would have been a philosophical absurdity. Once a truth has been revealed or established, to accept it and to comment upon it, with none of our modern concern for personal originality, was for Dante a plain intellectual duty.
~ The Portable Dante, edited by Paolo Milano
Those who still are in a mood to quibble and take issue on the singularity of truth-with-a-capital-t are requested to unlearn and relearn the distinction between experience, essence and expression. This maybe deemed a little too pre-Enlightenment for the taste of some. They are then redirected to meditate on the distinction between signifier and signified. So, hopefully we can leave aside the quibbles for now and move on.
Evidently, Buddha's advice is not an exhortation to subjectively, innovatively, originally and uniquely stand apart from the crowd. It is an exhortation to seek refuge, which in itself entails acceptance of a certain vulnerability and fallibility about oneself. The question of course is why seek refuge? Or is the question more about what kind of refuge to seek? For at the moment of birth every individual has already sought refuge, if no place else, then in the womb of her mother. And eventually during the course of life, we all turn to different kinds of refuge.
A man of no lesser stature than Mr. Ratan Tata too sought a refuge. Those who are keen to start-up India, were no less guilty of paying 608 pence a share for a valuation of 455 pence a share for Corus in 2006 because they sought refuge in the faith (rather fiction) of 'the ability of great brands and great nations to unlock synergies from any kind of merger, even ones most egregiously priced'. In the process, they ensured that Corus, re-christened as Tata Steel, had to sit-down in March 2016. Not much of starting-up India there.
We are talking about important business personalities here, who in these heady times have supplanted god-with-a-capital-g. As a self-evident corollary, we run the risk of inviting the ire of learned and self-assured advisors and commentators. These advisors and commentators would be bristling at the edges since we have infringed on their god-with-a-capital-g. They would dismissively call into question the credentials of those who dare question the valuation of a deal. Valuations, they would presumptuously assert, are not for the plebeians to comment upon.
Fortunately, investment bankers do not count upon those who view business personalities as gods with a capital g. They are the one's who view them as one's to be milked to the core to secure their own livelihood, much like the priests of yesteryears. As a result, they are not one's who would call out the fact that the Emperor is usually, bordering on almost always, without clothes. In private though they would certainly concede that at 455 pence a share Mr. Tata was making a speculative bet, and at 608 pence a share he was being, well, foolish at best of times, and foolhardy at worst of times.It is another matter altogether that these same investment bankers, having just conceded to this in private, would revert to their terminals and concentrate their creativity on what "Terminal Value" to input into the final cell of their excel sheet which would set the tone for the final valuation of the next IPO, or the next acquisition.
So we must rely on someone with more credibility, someone would would agree with Buddha on sticking to the essence of truth with a capital t, yet having the balls to be independent in experiencing and expressing it.
"Investment Value, Speculative Value, and Intrinsic Value. The foregoing discussion suggests an amplification of what was said in Chap. 1 on the concept of "intrinsic value," which was there defined as "value justified by the facts." It is important to recognize that such value is by no means limited to "value for investment"---i.e., to the investment component of total value---but may properly include a substantial component of speculative value, provided such speculative value is intelligently arrived at. Hence the market price maybe said to exceed intrinsic value only when the market is clearly the reflection of unintelligent speculation."
~ Chap. 4, Distinctions Between Investment and Speculation, Security Analysis, Benjamin Graham, 1940 ed.
The master would say that even at 455 the world was still speculating, but probably it was speculating intelligently. At 608, the master would certainly disapprove, and in fact, feel sorry for the fools who partook of the apple from the Garden of Hope falsely believing it to be from the Garden of Eden.
Of course, Mr. Tata (his coterie of advisors, especially the investment bankers, would have surely deserted him by now after the entry of Mr. Graham) would beg to differ arguing that the 608 pence a share value was arrived at in good-faith after some intelligent speculation. But the fact remains that that value could not very effectively hide the incipient megalomania, which (keeping in with the fashions of the time to assign everything to the office of the Honourable Prime Minister) is also something that was given a well-rounded and robust expression in India's choice of its Honourable Prime Minister in 2014.
Mr. Tata (and India) sought refuge in speculative hope. When confronted with the consequences of taking such a refuge, the same men then take refuge in the arms of self-pity. An illustrative response goes like this in front of the MP's of the House of Commons of UK: 'In this room, today, it is only Tata that is bleeding and suffering, and millions of its shareholders along with it.' This response by the highest ranking officer of Tata Steel, UK, while justifiable, reeks of a certain unconscious forgetfulness about the ever present law of cause and effect. When you do overpay, you expose yourself to vulnerabilities of factors beyond your control and it will likely take its toll sooner than later. The fact that Environmental levies, cheap Chinese steel and higher labour costs played a crucial role in the financial weakening of Tata Steel UK goes without question. What, unfortunately, is not questioned is the fact that had Tata not overpaid would the sensitivity of Tata Steel UK to these factors be so acute? Or the even more profound existential question: Had not Tata overpaid, would there be a Tata Steel UK? The millions of shareholders were surely high on the 'soma' of speculation back then. It is bit of a pity to pity them now. Sympathy-Yes. Compassion-Maybe. Pity-No.
Admittedly, we must give credit to Tata where it is due. It is after all a one-eyed king in the land of the blind, to use a contemporaneous phrase of the governor of RBI, who again has assumed the stature of god with a capital g. What do the blind really look like? Since we are presently situated in the UK, let us stay there a bit more and fish around. We immediately find the blind man we were looking for. He is called Sir Philip Green, who, it seems, by all accounts, bought an ailing retailer BHS, took away nearly 500 million pounds in rents, dividends and interest over a period of 15 years leaving a nearly equivalent deficit in the employees pension fund, and then had the generosity to sell his child for pound 1 to a consortium of equally hungry chartered accountants and lawyers, who quite promptly filed for bankruptcy, not before caught playing a prank like a boy who has recently discovered his masculinity: transfering out 1.5 million pounds to a Swedish bank account before being caught in the act and returning the money less 50,000 pounds (being fees for the intra-country transfer). In the words of The Guardian, Sir Philip Green was proposed for knighthood by a fawning Tony Blair in 2006. The newly knighted gentleman shortly repaid 'New Labour' for its generosity by backing David Cameron in 2010.
For the mildly perceptive reader, Sir Philip Green should remind them of a curious breed of blind men at home (and yes, not the one that would immediately impinge on your consciousness, for he is a small fish in an invisible frying pan) who revel in expanding their balance sheets by courting the public sector banks and working out an intricate labyrinth of inter-connections between business and politics that eventually the taxman is left to twiddle his finger at. Sir Philip Green represents taking refuge in speculative hope at its best. And when speculative hope is at its best, we can see that morality is admitted for symptoms of severe depression in a psychiatric ward. So much for blind gods of today. It seems the qualification 'blind' is even not necessary, it is implied. As Dylan remarked: Steal a little and they throw you in jail; Still a lot and they make you a king.
In mythology, the Gods usually reported to an all omniscient One. So is the case with reality. All the gods with a small and capital g of today take refuge in some One. That One happens to be a cocktail of economic ideology and opportunism. The unstinted faith in the theory and practice of markets that drove Mr. Tata to seek refuge in speculative hope was supplemented by the opportunism of Mr. Sajid Javid, who most appropriately, was reinforcing, nay proclaiming with a relish, his loyalty and commitment to the One (free-markets) to an audience in Australia, while his godly colleague in Mumbai was pulling the plug on the operations of Tata Steel UK. Informed columnists satirically remarked that Mr. Sajid Javid's dilemma stemmed from having read too much of The Fountainhead in his impressionable youth, and of course, his companionship of the other gods in the Tory establishment.
Thus, there are refuges and then there are refuges. Taking refuge in Benjamin Graham's 'natural process of reversion to the mean' is different from taking refuge in the somewhat uncouth process of 'winner-takes-all exponential growth with no checks'. This latter kind of refuge falls into the category of assumption, extrapolation, generalisation, and which, when stretched to its logical extreme, is called superstititon in the theory and dogma of a certain kind --- in this case the ability of the markets to be right at all times and, more importantly, at all costs.
While the gods were busy seeking refuge in a dogma, what about the mortal men? More particularly, the steelworkers in Port Talbot and other locations along with the employees of BHS? Where should they seek refuge, especially the ones closer to their retirement, and for whom the Omniscient One Market is as abstract as the Brahma is for the average Hindu or the Trinity for the average Christian? They would probably take refuge in pleasant memories of the past, back when they were adolescents or young adults. When the mind thought that life was good, men were nice, and there was always hope which found it most poignant expression in the belief that every man will marry the girl of his adolescent fancy. That hope stands crashed when an ex-middle-aged steelworker has to openly admit that he has been to 8 job fairs and is presently extremely scared of landing a job that provides for him and his family.
The middle-aged steelworker certainly does not have the luxury of taking refuge in false dogmas. That is why he is more likely to take refuge in the belief of the 'principle of natural justice', a long-hand for 'what goes around, comes around'. Certainly the steelworker does not have to look afar to vindicate his faith: the example of Tata Steel UK makes him feel a little reassured about his own belief. This is unlikely the predicament of today's gods-of-the-market who desperately need the refuge of ponderous and aggravating writings of Fountainhead or profound theories of economics. The steelworker has his own experience and senses to rely on. In the lilting verse of Paul Simon, the 'words of the prophet (of the plebeians) are found written on the sub-way wall'. Isn't is it a relief when your prophet is ever present in the location you walk by every day on your way to work as opposed to having to get a very expensive education to barely understand (mostly misunderstand) what you mistakenly take to be prophetic words? After spending a bomb on such an education wouldn't it seem eminently a little daft to admit that the words you studied were actually quite plebeian and not prophetic at all? But then who will run the markets if the gods-of-the-markets admit to their daftness? Is it a sheer coincidence that the terms 'market', 'Mara', 'myths', and 'maya' begin with 'M' and that they are opposed to the biggest M of them all 'Morality'?
The expert and learned advisors who worship today's gods are likely to scoff at what they may perceive to be the idealized fantasy of the plebeian and snigger at the comments we heap upon their temples and sources of learning. But the Buddha is likely to categorically support the plebeian in very strong terms by asserting that plebeians are likely to fare far better by seeking refuge in in the principle of natural justice than the theory of markets. He would not fail to wryly observe that by falling into the trap of the latter they have been led, unwittingly, straight into the arms of the neo-liberal mafia, who, as times would have it, were caught naked sun-bathing on the beaches of Panama and other sultry islands which Mara loves to frequent. The most tempestuous amongst them is most humorously called British Virgin Islands as it makes one wonder what is so virgin about an island that has been stuffed to the brim with stealth (and in some cases illegal) wealth? Tempestuousness and humour make for incompatible bed-fellows. Vatsyayana would certainly protest.
There is a singular 'gullible poignancy' about this faith in fairness, natural justice, the law of cause and effect. It is a repeatable kind of gullible poignancy---one that refuses to depart inspite of the severe downs of life. A gullible poignancy is not a stupid poignancy. Neither is it a sleep-inducing poignancy which men with faith in logic of science (a paradoxically stupid phrase you might add) have mistakenly attributed in the past to a secular and poor conception of religion. It is this poignant faith that holds back many men at many points in time from taking the wrong step. It makes for 'silent masses who move on with the daily grind of life'. It makes the pliant quite compliant. The gods-of-today should be thankful that they do not have a rebellion at their doorsteps every other day.
[The astute amongst the gods would not fail to note and appreciate the distinction between 'gullibility' and 'credulity'. However, their astuteness will not still be sufficient enough for them to see that while the plebeians live the former, the gods unknowingly practice the latter.]
What happens when this poignant and sacred refuge of the plebeian is threatened? What happens to the steelworker who has a hard and a near fatal landing? Where will he turn to? Will he have the ability to wait out for the law of kamma to play out?
His gullibility will turn into credulity and make him probably take refuge in the rhetoric of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. The result could be a Brexit. This will lead well-read, well-heeled and fortunate observers to shake their heads in despair at the 'loss of British common-sense and reason'. However, for the disempowered and threatened average white English man, reason will place a significant demand on his mental powers which he desperately needs to conserve to earn his daily bread to survive. He does not reason not because of he is not intelligent enough to see the truth. But because no man can actually convert what is effectively a convoluted intellectual mesh (or mess) of economic ideology, political opportunism and simple bad misfortune into a series of logical and straight chain of cause and effect. Any such effort is fraught with the surity of intellectual failure and getting further knotted into a thinking process from which there is no clear escape. It is asking too much of an English man, or, for that matter, even a more optimistic, and many say, more liberal Scot.Though one is not sure how being Conservative or Liberal really matters when faced with a housing crisis, unemployment, diminishing returns on savings, gradual erosion of government benefits, and seeing many move past you at a blinding pace which makes you question yourself whether you have been a responsible child, husband and parent.
Well, the English man at least had an opportunity to give form to his frustration into a Brexit. Whether or not he would stand to gain from it is an imponderable question. Having overcome the bump of Brexit, we must now brace for a tougher tsunami. For that we would need to jump over the Atlantic and transport ourselves into the American farmlands of yore and ask ourselves: What if you happened to be Dylan's Hollis Brown? In whose arm would you seek refuge when those who chose to be tempestuous on British Virgin Islands did turn tempestuous and incestuous to the hilt? When your cries to the Lord are unlikely to be heard because your pockets are empty? In a pathetic and heart-wrenching turn of events you maybe forced to seek refuge in the seven shots of a shotgun; when the last dollar in the pocket simply went towards 'buying off' that ultimate refuge.
Hollis Brown
He lived on the outside of town
With his wife and five children
And his cabin broken down
You looked for work and money
And you walked a ragged mile
Your children are so hungry
That they don't know how to smile
Your baby's eyes look crazy
They're a-tuggin' at your sleeve
You walk the floor and wonder why
With every breath you breath
The rats got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
If there's anyone that knows
Is there anyone that cares?
You prayed to the Lord above
Oh, please send you a friend
Your empty pockets tell ya
That you ain't a-got no friend
Your babies are crying louder
It's pounding on your brain
Your wife's screams are stabbin' you
Like the dirty drivin' rain
Your grass is turning black
There's no water in your well
You spent your last lone dollar
On seven shotgun shells
Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That's hangin on the wall
Your brain is a-bleedin'
And your legs can't seem to stand
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That you're holdin' in your hand
There's seven breezes a-blowin'
All around the cabin door
Seven shots ring out
Like the ocean's pounding roar
There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There's seven new people born
~ Times They are A Changin'
After experiencing a moment of mortal horrification, which is a natural first reaction even for gods-of-today, they would sound out a note of comfort and display a business-like concerned relief for the fact that the arithmetic was left undisturbed. For the seven dead, there were ready seven new future consumers, though the greedier amongst the gods would have hoped for more than 7 to feed that godly obession called 'Growth' The gods are likely to feel an equanimous composure at seeing their theory of equilibrium of markets being impeccably unharmed.
Rather than recite The Ballad of Hollis Brown they would prefer to exclaim that it all actually makes absolutely perfect sense.
Can't you see
It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollars and cents
Pounds, shillings, and pence
Can't you see
It all makes perfect sense
~ Perfect Sense II, Roger Waters, Amused to Death.
The desperate and degrading refuge of Hollis is likely to invite, but a moment's consideration, from the millions of sufferring shareholders. One is certain that in the realm of suffering, Hollis is small change, for there are far more urgent issues to attend to such as inclusive growth and 'JAM'ming the Trinity while stirring the wildfires of division on one hand and simultaneously dousing the more physical and rampant ones making a meal of the forests up North because, well, again the gods applied their supreme intellect on believing that the Forest Department is superior for protecting forests than the innate intelligence of the locals who have forests flowing in their God (note the capital G) given veins.
Of course, not all gods are of the same order. Some are likely to be a tad closer to humans than the heavens. So what if, before taking the final refuge in the shotgun, Hollis had turned to the compassionate capitalists? Would he have found greater sympathy towards his unbearable misfortune? Most likely yes. They would have dissuaded him from solutions raised on passions as it would have driven him into the arms of the masses that comprised erstwhile Soviet Union and that still comprise China and North Korea. Instead they would have advocated a certain clear-headedness and administered him a dose to focus on producing more and sharing that 'more' more justly.
When a man is in the final clutches of the throes of suicidal passion brought on by social and economic deprivation, what would an injunction to stay away from passion and instead engage himself in economically productive work do to him? Fearfully, not much. Provoked, Hollis could go on a rampage against the world, shedding the blood of others, but ultimately he would have to make peace with his fate which would have something to do with some kind of a shotgun: except that, this time around, the shotgun will not be in his hand but he would be staring straight at the barrel held in another man's hand. That hand in most cases will be the iron and, supposedly impartial, hand of the law, and the place could be the controlled environments of the prison, if Hollis is lucky; or the streets of a city which lend themselves snuggly to an encounter killing; or worse still, the relatively pristine interiors of the 'tribal forests' where the tacit pact is that none shall look and none shall tell.
If Hollis were to wean himself away from passion (how the hell is he supposed to do that the gods do not bother to answer), and see with the clear-headedness that the compassionate souls enjoin, he may avert the route of the shotgun altogether, and move on to the duly suggested one of engaging himself in productive work. The only trivial issue with this piece of sound advice is that poor Hollis is no position to produce. Always ready with an answer, the supposedly compassionate souls would nudge their super-god (the government) to pay heed to Hollis' well-being. But we all know how well emperors, feudal lords and governments have heeded to 'unintended consequences' of their own actions.
The net result: with access blocked to the shotgun, Hollis with his family (or whatever is left of it after facing pangs of starvation) would be admitted to the general ward of 'societal unintended consequences' never to leave it and never to be taken care of but simply to be forgotten as time passes by, much like the charge of depreciation applied with precision to a fixed asset in the rule-book of the taxman. Hollis though would not fail to discern that his condition is no different from the 'Cancer Ward' of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. For him, the difference between Compassionate Capitalism and Communism is the difference between deprivation and degredation. Or, if we wish to be more temperate and sober in our choice of words: the difference between being casually but systemically forgotten and being willfully and systemically forgotten. A sumptuous choice in either case.
But never ones to accept defeat, the Compassionate Capitalists will make Hollis a personal object of their success and failure. They are likely to call a grand meeting of the council and ponder at lengths on how to save the berieved and grieving souls. After much thoughtful deliberation, someone has a Eureka moment: what if some of us were to reincarnate ourselves as impact investors and social enterpreneurs? That way we could continue to produce more, hopefully this time with better distribution. 'Uhh...', one compassionate soul amongst the melee of the Compassionate Souls, who is clearly repelled with this afterthought interjects, 'But what is wrong with all of just giving it all away?'. The others are horrified at such a blatant expression of demand-side economics.
Among the Compassionate Capitalists those who vote Democrat and Labour equals those who vote Rebulican and Tory. Nonetheless, there is a tacit agreement that when push comes to shove, the reified philosophy that everyone must rally around is supply side economics. Bonded to economics that resembles maths more than english, the rest of the gods drown out the odd protesting voice with a simple assertion: 'When you have worked hard to earn enough of a good thing (read money) does it make sense to get more out of it or to just squander it down the rabbit-hole?' Here we must casually remark: Alice had more fun and fulfillment in the rabbit-hole than outside of it.
And so, undeterred, the compassionate-gods take rebirth as impact investors and ensure that Hollis is taken out of the general ward of unintended consequences and forced to produce. They make him an automaton (euphemistically called a social entrepreneur) who works 9 to 6, honestly, eagerly, with passion mind you (for without passion which soul can endure a workplace 9 to 6) to bring home some little bread to eat to his shrunken family. In the process, they fail to note the fundamental distinction between asar (gujarati for impact) and laabh (gujarati for benefit), giving rise to the doubt that the term impact investment was chosen more for its alliterative merit.
Having put Hollis to work, the compassionate capitalists pat themselves on the back. Given none of these gods have reached enlightenment, they are still entrapped in the realm of 'fabrications of the mind', er, like all mortals. Hence, their minds cannot cease to work, to ponder at length. Accordingly, the gods continue with their thougthful deliberations which can apparently happen only when the gods meet, greet, wine and dine in expensive restaurants; or at the very least in air-conditioned rooms to sustain all those expensive computers without which the gods today are quite infertile. All of this pondering is of course how to save more Hollis' from starving to death. The situation reeks of foul irony.
By now Hollis has had enough. What he first vaguely discerned and struggled to articulate, he now finds clear words for. He distinctly makes out that the consenus amongst the gods (irrespective of the dispensation they belong to and mental disposition they hold) is the one that John Wycliffe propounded way back in 14th century with great degree of reluctance and discomfort, being a priest who wanted to reform and not a capitalist who wanted to redeem: "All good things of God ought to be in common. But in practical life, there is no alternative to acquiescing with inequality and injustices and leaving wealth and power in the hands of those who have done nothing to deserve it" (paraphrased from The Rise & Fall of Communism, Archie Brown, 2009, paperback edition, pg. 12)
Hollis Brown raises his feeble finger. 'Yes our dear Hollis', the gods benevolently thunder. 'I would like to add a phrase which completes what John Wycliffe said', says dear Hollis. 'You may', gesture the gods, glad that Hollis is now starting to fall in line with the consensus. 'Can you please put on record that the following be affixed permanently to the quote of John Wycliffe: '...those who had done nothing to deserve it, except being born in the right place at the right time and being so fortunate as to gain a timely and fortuitous entry into a coveted educational institute and vocation', sighs Hollis and signs-off. The gods are a little edgy now, and some more than a little irritated. Much like a potential American Presidential candidate when asked an uncomfortable question which delicately punctures his or her superlative narrative.
Or if 14th century seems quite over-the-top, one can take comfort from a bit of poetry from 1983:
You know, capitalism is above the law,
I say, "It don't count 'less it sells"
When it costs too much to build it at home
You just build it cheaper someplace else
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way
...
But they used to grow food in Kansas
Now they grow it on the moon and eat it raw
I can see the day coming when even your home garden
is gonna be against the law
...
Democracy don't rule the world
You better get that in your head
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that's better left unsaid
From Broadway to the Milky Way
That's a lot of territory indeed
And a man's gonna do what he has to do
When he's got a hungry mouth to feed
~ Union Sundown, Infidels, Bob Dylan (1983)
Hollis has permanently and duly punctured the carefully crafted narratives of a spectrum of gods, starting from Sir Philip Green, to Mr. Ratan Tata and now the army of the Compassionate Capitalists. Of course, the emperors, feudal lords and goverments (of various hues including fascist, communist, democratic) were already punctured to begin with. Hollis teaches us a simple truth with a small t: choose your gods with care, for they may just turn out to be vain, vulnerable and fallible beings around whom our lady-love Fate had enveloped a miasma of god-hood.
In short, Hollis has affixed the first of the millstones in the path towards understanding the meaning of Buddha's dictum: Move away from taking refuge in the fascination with the false (in today's times, media-created & sustained) gods. Be careful whom you choose as a point of reference, a source of inspiration for the mind 'becomes' what it aspires for. Redirect your aspiration away from the titillating to the more sober pastures. Or, as put pithily by Dylan: do not mistake Paradise for that home-across-the-road, which in Dylan's song could be interpreted to be a covert brothel. The analogy holds up surprisingly well outside of Dylan's song.
Take a pause and replace Hollis by Rohith Vemula. Nothing changes. Capitalism converts to casteism. But the vile stains --- of discrimination, differentiation, taking opportunistic advantage of initial endowments, haughtiness, presumptuousness, condescending charity --- they all remain unwashed. The forms they take change. Ultimately the beggar must beg and the outcaste must stay outside, momentary strategic accomodations notwithstanding. There is no known cure for a greedy violence that houses itself in forgetfulness; sports a gait of conceit of superiority; smiles a sweet smile; speaks words that sound profound but mean little; wears an Armani that shields an automatic ready to fire salvos of identities at the first excuse; all the while having a stupidly self-conceited smirk woven into the muscular fabric of a hardened and soulless face.
It is doubtful if Hollis (and Rohith) can save himself in this lifetime with the lessons his own predicament fortell. For those who are observing him from a distance, and feeling an unspoken, and even an unfelt sadness, he leaves behind a progressive legacy, one in which the term progress means something far more immediate, individual and in some sense mystical. We use the word 'unfelt' deliberately. For in times
when talking is tweeting, meeting is face-booking and nuancing is news-talking;
when momentary sensations are mistaken for pleasures of the senses;
when the term 'cool' stops having any relation with 'calm';
when a hug is taken to be an embrace;
when to willingly surrender & submit means to give up and lose the competitive spirit;
when adherence to a principled approach is deemed idealism and its sophisticated and deceitful abdication pragmatism;
when investment gets equated with speculation and speculation with gambling;
when climate change makes it either too hot or too cold cutting the legs off of 'warm', 'balmy', 'breezy', 'rainy', 'pleasant';
when trees are meant to be planted and counted but not whose shade is to be savoured for quiet contemplation;
when what used to an imperturable mass of solid in the arctic needs immediate saving from dissolution,
when the ability to discern between islam, Islam, Taliban and ISIS is lost, along with the ability to see namaaz as an embodiment of the former two and not confused as the political symbol of the latter two;
when confession long ceased to be a means to cleanse but a customary conduit to preemptively counterfoil and cancel the sins;
when an accident of times can be interpreted to be a invisible-hand-of-the-markets or an-error-of-mankind depending on which side of society one rolls over from;
when domination by the privilege-once-commissioned-by-scriptures-and-inherited-by-tradition-is-for-keeps-sake-party wears the ugly, badly embroidered and see-through garb of national development;
when bigoted bums banding cheap bravado triumph over the banished braves;
when a closet-zealot-sold-as-progressive-Emperor has his name stiched onto his clothes to make doubly sure he is not without clothes;
when in the pecking order of condemnation of sins, stealing-of-the-corruption-kind supersedes killing-of-the-mass-murder-kind;
when there is a pecking order even in the killing-of-the-mass-murder-kind where killing 600 in 2002 is a justified act of compassion compared to killing 3,000 in 1984 and 2,000 in 1983;
when the choice for the most coveted power-seat in the world is between one who initiated the sumptuous wrecking of Libya and one who wishes to wreck a few more of them with an ever increasing appetite;
when Radiohead performing Idioteque on Saturday Night Live stumps American viewers who expect an alternative rock song from an alternative rock band;
when it is fine to put an arm around a saadhu outside a temple to click a selfie and blithely walk away, but not notice and put a 10 rupee note in the very visible begging bowl held in his hand, to say nothing of not noticing the very agitated expression on his face when such crass & careless mockery is on full public display inside what maybe considered legitimate precinct of a place of worship;
when conceit gets confused for vanity, vanity for haughtiness, haughtiness for arrogance, arrogance for pride, and pride for self-respect then mademoiselle dignity and monsieur propriety are left to fend for themselves all alone;
WHEN the roots of such behaviour can be traced to ignorant reactions and habits of mind -- both in themselves a product of inveterate insenstivity and corrupted carelessness -- 'progress' has little choice on what definition to apply to itself. To progress is left to mean, by process of elimination, to develop a sensitive, attentive and attuned mind as the most valued precious commodity left to be excavated, extracted, ferried and forged every living moment. After expoiliting what is there to be exploited outside, now is the time to unearth what is buried deep inside.
Hollis makes possible this change of attention (more correctly, an initial deflection) from that which is seemingly logical, superficially plausible, progressively regressive but seriously and really repugnant in its essence to, that, which really matters, is substantive, tangible and of sound lineage. From trying to become a valued 'Unicorn', the attention can now shift to the invaluable and innumerable humans surrounding us. (For a domestic version of this proposal you could try this.)
In an era of an expanded, amorphously-defined and opportunistically malleable notions of progress, such a change in attitude is hard to appreciate, attain and sustain. It means to leave behind some things, in fact many things, and to get back to some old things. Above all, it means to wake up from a careless slumber.
Now, then, monks, I exhort you: All fabrications are subject to decay. Bring about completion by being heedful.
The last documented words of the Buddha before his death take a quality of the mind and pitch it as the key to unlock the path to the higher truth. Buddha could have selected any other set of words to be his last, but apparently he chose these specific ones for a reason.
Just as the footprints of all legged animals are encompassed by the footprint of the elephant, and the elephant's footprint is reckoned their chief in terms of size; in the same way, all skillful qualities are rooted in heedfulness, lie gathered in heedfulness, and heedfulness is reckoned their chief.
...
Just as all the light of the constellations does not equal one sixteenth of the light of the moon, and the light of the moon is reckoned the foremost among them; in the same way, all skillful qualities are rooted in heedfulness, converge in heedfulness, and heedfulness is reckoned the foremost among them.
...
Just as the great rivers -- such as the Ganges, the Yamuna, the Aciravati, the Sarabhu, & the Mahi -- all go to the ocean, incline to the ocean, slope to the ocean, and the ocean is reckoned the foremost among them; in the same way, all skillful qualities are rooted in heedfulness, converge in heedfulness, and heedfulness is reckoned the foremost among them.
~ Appamada Sutta: Heedfulness, Angaturra Nikaya 10.15, translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, accessible here.
After all the initial excitement and pregnant expectation, it seems bit of an anti-climax to boil it all down to heightened and intelligent attention: for those who wish to nail it down with uncontested precision the right phrase will be mindful discernment. There is not much of a philosophy to expound on such elementary concepts. Little to do with grand theories of social and political change, place of man in cosmos, truth, justice, science, rationality. It seems that this insistence on heedfulness has severed the entire magnificent edifice of both theoretical and applied religious philosophy. But this disagreement seems a minor quibble, when heedfulness seems to portend the difference between a religious birth and religious death.
Heedfulness: the path to the Deathless;
Heedlessness: the path to death;
The heedful do not die;
The heedless are as if
already dead.
~ Appamadavagga: Heedfulness, Dhammapda 21, translated from Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, accessible here.
Suddenly, the elaborately constructed cosmologies of Gods are left with not much business to transact. The entire onus is put on the already busy working class soul.
Mindfulness of death, when developed & pursued, is of great fruit & great benefit. It gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its final end. Therefore you should develop mindfulness of death.
And how do you develop mindfulness of death?
1. O, that I might live for a day & night, that I might attend to Blessed One's instructions, I would have accomplished a great deal. This is how I develop mindfulness of death.
2. O, that I might live for a day, that I might attend to Blessed One's instructions. I would have accomplished a great deal. This is how I develop mindfulness of death.
3. O, that I might live for the interval that it takes to eat a meal, that I might attend to the Blessed One's instructions. I would have accomplished a great deal.
4. O, that I might live for the interval that it takes to swallow having chewed up four morsels of food, that I might attend to Blessed One's instructions. I would have accomplished a great deal.
5. O, that I might live for the interval that it takes to swallow having chewed up one morsel of food, that I might attend to Blessed One's instructions. I would have accomplished a great deal.
6. O, that I might live for the interval that it takes to breathe out after breathing in, or to breathe in after breathing out, that I might attend to Blessed One's instructions. I would have accomplished a great deal.
'Whoever develops mindfulness of death, thinking, "O, that I might live for a day & night...for a day...for the interval it takes to eat a meal...for the interval it takes to swallow having chewed four morsels of food, that I might attend to Blessed One's instructions, I would have accomplished a great deal" --- they are said to dwell heedlessly. They develop the mindfulness of death slowly for the sake of ending the effluents.
'Whoever develops mindfulness of death, thnking, "O, that I might live for the interval that it takes to swallow having chewed up one morself of food...for the interval it takes to breathe out after breathing in, or to breathe in after breathing out, that I might attend to Blessed One's instructions, I would have accomplished a great deal" --- they are said to dwell heedfully. They develop mindfulness of death acutely for the sake of ending of effluents.
~ Maranassati Sutta: Mindfulness of Death (1), Angattura Nikaya 6.19, translated from Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, accessible here.
At first glance it seems that the standard set is well-nigh impossible for most mortal men to meet. For it demands a level of attentive commitment to betterment that is simply outside the stamina of most able-bodied and minded men, busy as they are with more able and noble persuasions. Indeed, one is well placed to ask: can such a continuous remembrance and practice of the truth alleviate the memories of passion of Hollis, of watching his wife and children wither in front of him on a farm in South Dakota?
Not unless he was Spinoza. Or, if he was a devout Quaker who truly and, in the words of Russell, ardently, believed in the words of Christ: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do': then too yes. Or, if he was a man named Job --- not the Californian Yankee (sic) but the one living in the land of Uz --- who worshipped God and was faithful to him and whom God tested hard, then maybe yes. But even Job had to undergo excruciating and suicidal self-doubts for him to last through the ordeal. It would require an order of devotion that Meera lived, Narsinh cultivated, and Vallabacharya recommended in his Pushti Marg.
It will always seem a daunting task if we make our mind an object of academic study to be palliated (literally drugged) with over-the-counter medicines. On the other hand, if development of an attentive, attuned and discerning mind is viewed as an exercise which requires persistent practice, there is hope. For,
Dante's is a visual imagination. It is a visual imagination in a different sense from that of a modern painter of still life: it is visual in the sense that he lived in an age in which men still saw visions. It was a pyschological habit, the trick of which we have forgotten, but as a good as any of our own. We have nothing but dreams, and we have forgotten that seeing visions -- a practice now relegated to aberrant and un-educated -- was once a more significant, interesting, and disciplined kind of dreaming. We take it for granted that our dreams spring from below: possibly the quality of our dreams suffers in consequence.
All that I ask of the reader, at this point, is to clear his mind, if he can, of every prejudice against allegory, and to admit at least that it was not a device to enable the uninspired to write verses, but really a mental habit, which when raised to the point of genius can make a great poet as well as a great mystic or saint.
~ Views of T.S. Eliot's from his main essay on Dante, reproduced from The Portable Dante (pgs. xxi)
In the age of twitter, what is a mental habit, will always seem like an endowment of genius. Genius can be wished away in 140 characters, but a habit of mind, unfortunately, requires practice at intervals of breathing out and breathing in. It is a question of responsible choice. Boringly tough! In the age of T-20, a defensive stroke to a full-length delivery on a greenish wicket under cloudy sky on the second day of a Test match is hard to appreciate and applaud. It is even more difficult to accept that a century made up of only carefully crafted singles in 200 balls ranks far higher than that made in 20 balls. To not play to the T20 gallery is not indicative of a lack of capability or genius; it is a question of deliberative and persistent choice.
For heedfulness does not arise on its own. It is not something that one can tap into once one has defined it, read about it, and intellectualized it. To be heedful about something requires viscerally experiencing that something. It is in fashion to deride intellectuals. The gods who deride intellectuals are men (sic) of intelligence-without-intellect. For without one class of intellectuals we would not be able to start our journey of being heedful. Because, as a saying in the hindi heartland goes: joh dekhe na koi, soh dekhe kavi (What all fail to notice, a poet will).
The other tenuous episodes of this record of a soul in love and the death of Beatrice's father, and Dante's dream of the impending death of his Beloved, which occurs short time later. After the passing of Beatrice, Dante shared for a while his sorrow with a "compassionate lady," to whom he addressed a few sonnets, "and my eyes began to be gladdened overmuch with her company"; but soon he felt this to be a lapse, and renewed his dedication to Beatrice alone. The book ends on a "wonderful vision" of "such time as I discourse more worthily" of her, and on the hope "yet to write concerning her what has not been written of any woman." This is the announcement of the great work to come, and with it the Commedia is born.
The poet is a man with the luxury of an ability that no mortal man has: the ability to turn his expression into divinity, even if that 'Divinity' is prefixed to the 'Comedy' of life. Only a poet could help us get within Hollis. To get within the thicket of his anguish to come face to face with the sensations that pervade his entire body and mind at the point at which he was about to fire the shotgun. To bring us to the point where we have no responsible choice left but to be heedful.
Will the sensation in the mind of Hollis be that of a loss of loved ones? Not completely. Will it be a sensation of utter impotency to do anything about the situation? Not completely. Will it be a sensation that arises on account of a nagging and persistent question: Why me and why now? Closer. Will it be a sensation of whirling, swirling, muddled, agitated, rapidly vibrating thoughts running helter and skelter at the highest speed imaginable? Yes.
Hollis was a man at the precipice of uncertainty: he was staring directly into the eyes of mortality. Staring hard enough he realized he was staring at a black hole. However hard he stared the black hole refused to reveal any answers. Deep inside his mind his consciousness would have stirred to ask a very simple question: Please explain to me what is going on. Hollis would have been desperate to evade the uncertainty, to find refuge in an answer that could help him banish all his confusions, to help him see things clearly, to explain and satisfy his mind that things do not happen without a reason. That, indeed, there is a principle of justice at operation, and no, it is not acting against Hollis.
This agitation of his mind would have led to an ache in the head like no other. Slowly it would descend into the heart to morph into an unspeakable sadness and quietness. A quietness that evades and avoids. It goes way beyond being melancholy and soulful; for by this time the soul has been completely knitted through leaving behind threads scattered in all directions. Slowly that sadness and quietness would descend into the belly, to stay there forever as a certain numbness where in the last drop of motivation and desire is caged. Mind you, desire is not conquered, it is caged.
If we look at Hollis through the eyes of a poet, we would realize what it means to be at pain. And this pain begs no further categories of explanation --- no economic constructs, no sociological constructs, no political constructs, no pyschological constructs. It is pain in its sheer nakedness. An aching and burning sensation like no other. Internalizing Hollis will be as close as we will get to experiencing the pain ourselves: when we are in absolute physical agony due to a ravaging road-accident; when we are faced with the death of a loved one, and are caught in the grip of a sense of sudden regret at all the past misdeeds with reference to that person --- a regret that literally clings to the flesh; when we are faced to confront the pre-mature loss of a child; and worse of all, when some of us (more precisely, nearly half of us) in old age are confronted with the hauntingly chilly spectre of loneliness.
A heart that's full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won't heal
You look so tired, unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us
I'll take quiet life
A handshake of carbon monoxide
With no alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
Silent, silent
This is my final fit
My final bellyache
~ No Surprises, OK Computer (1997), Radiohead
This is not an exercise in wallowing in pain; neither is it about romanticising pain and making it a mould to shape all other experience. It is about genuinely acknowledging its ever lurking presence so that we can form an informed escape from it. For most people when confronted with a a mildly disconcerting description such as above, or even powerful ones found in writings of poets and authors tend to recoil from such descriptions. It is a dangerous, but dexterous, shift of attention that they practice. It is a self-deception with no parallel.
One can understand why people would prefer to look at the front page advertisement than the op-ed on refugee crisis. The latter reminds every person, somewhere deep down, of the certainty of pain, suffering and death. The practical attitude would be: "There is no point lamenting the ills of the world, else one cannot look at the brigher side of life. We will tackle these ills when they knock at our door. Till then all we can offer is selective and hardened sympathetic understanding." Problem is, the ills do not knock at the door. They simply barge in when important guests are at home.
Then there are those who simply settle all arguments with a simple waive of the hand: while this is wrong, but if everyone does it, that makes this right. For what grander and surer law exists then the law of selfish survival? As a result, few have the wherewithal to observe pain, chase it, fight it, study it and finally, domesticate it through a process of trial and error. Why shy away from the 'mindfulness of death at the interval of breathing in and breathing out?'
Because it means, to begin with, making Hollis a centre of attraction, a frame-of-reference to evaluate our thoughts, speech and actions against. To recurringly ask ourselves: will this act of mine benefit Hollis or not? With this, Hollis has stuck the second millstone in our path of seeking refuge. The grinder is now in place where in our daily actions are to be finely grinded for us to analyse for ourselves.
An act of evaluating our acts against Hollis is not to save Hollis (or, Rohith Vemula). It is to save ourselves. It is to change our behaviour for our own good. Because to really save Hollis and Rohith Vemula today requires an order of effort which seems to elude Nature herself. Because the story of Hollis and Rohith is a story of the laws of Nature herself seemingly gone awry. Our aims are necessarily more sober.
And the sobriety is precisely the reason the reader will willfully skip the refugee crisis, the habitually dreary drought and the suicide of Rohith Vemula. It is easier to join a movement to change the world than to change oneself. When heedlessness is a conveniently accepted shield, carefully crafted under society's tacit approval, heedfulness seems like a mystical religion. Mysticism we can do without. But religion of the real kind we do need. Not one that saves souls in the next life, but one which forces a change of behaviour in this one.
So, where have our sober aims taken us? From starting on a caravan to seek refuge in the Truth, we stopped seeking refuge in the enticements of the modern capitalist, communist, casteist and what-have-you-not socities. We sought refuge in Hollis. Hollis led us to heedfulness. Heedfulness forced us to seek refuge in the poet. The poet forced us to again seek refuge in Hollis --- nay he exhorted, encouraged, compelled us to seek refuge inside Hollis. Inside Hollis, we realized what it could mean to be mindful of death.
At this point, the words of Buddha ring true: pain, suffering and stress evoke only two responses. Bewilderment or a searching question. It is a monumentally responsible choice to make. Bewilderment will lead us back to the enticements we momentarily managed to deflect. Or, death. Searching question, well, will leave us with exactly that: a searching question, along with a tablespoon of a hint of heedfulness as an entry-point to the answer to that question.
If we choose to remain heedful, the searching question will force itself out of the rabbit-hole at its own beckoning and calling. With an air of grave self-reflection befitting a philosopher, it will ask in a plaintive note (not befitting a philosopher): is there a way out of this zero-sum game we call living?
The modern, or for that matter ancient, notions of material progress have to be firmly and finally discarded at this stage. They do not yield a categorical escape from this dilemma. Along with the notions of material progress relegated to the wastebin, all the associated ancillaries must also shut down their operations. Constantly remembering Hollis while we unshackle, un-hinge and un-cling ourselves from these ancillaries & decoratives will make for a smoother surgery.
See Part 2 (under construction).
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