On Love and Freedom

Love is not a trade or a transaction. A quid pro quo. An exchange, a barter. Love is not a reaction. If you love someone because they love you then it is merely a transaction, a favor returned. You scratch my back and I scratch yours. Neither does love know that it is giving something, nor does it ask for anything in return. And in such love there is tremendous freedom. Bereft of any expectation from the other party, you love freely, you love unconditionally. There are no shackles of expectation. Expectation creates a bond. Neither there is disappointment on non-reciprocation when the expectation is belied, nor there is the elation or delight or in some cases relief when the expectation is met. Freedom comes from not caring about what happens. You are immune and oblivious to the potential probability distribution of outcomes and a particular realization within this distribution. All this is within the realm of how it affects "you". But when it comes to the expected probability distribution for the other person and any realization within, you care deeply.

A loving parent does not care what the son or daughter will do for him or her. This is not a consciously cultivated decision. Such thinking is preempted by true love for the child because the only concern is what happens to the child. In this there is no room for self concern. You care deeply about what happens to the child for the child's sake not for what that would mean to you. If want your child to excel academically or socially for what it will mean for you then you are just trying to live your life through your child. But if you care about how the child will feel, react or what will become of it certain adverse scenarios to materialize then you truly love.

In this fashion love binds. Love is pure agony because you suffer with the beloved. It is like a fusion where you empathize with the beloved and suffer when he or she suffers. You carefully manage the affairs, shape the future so that the beloved does not suffer. You know you will suffer when the beloved suffers but this suffering of your own is not the driver behind your preempting the suffering. You can deal with it. It is the suffering of the beloved that you want to preempt. This is the love we can see from parents towards children.

How poetic or ironic it is that true love is incredibly free and yet completely bound. How is that possible? It can be only understood if one comes to the realization that in true love there is no self. When the self is not, the true love is. No expectation and free giving. Complete acceptance of suffering without a complaint. Is that not self abnegation, self annihilation, self decimation that is completely natural in true love. This is absence of the self. Since self is absent, there is no cognizance of either the delight or the suffering. Making this phenomenon explicit through words such as delight and suffering is due to limitation of language and are needed to explain this state but within the state itself there is no recognition of the either state.

I am not talking about co-dependents who self-sacrifice themselves in order to preserve the object of love. That is not love. That is taking abuse. Situation I described has no element of abuse in it.

All our notions of love prevalent in the modern society are wrong. They are all transactional. Transaction makes mockery of love. If there is any element of a transaction in true love, it is that it flows only in one direction. From lover to beloved. Any reciprocation is merely incidental and not germane.

What is meditation

Meditation is a very unique tool that allows mind to settle and gain clarity. This also results in increased awareness, assurance and happiness. In the daily hustle and bustle of modern life, we have lost touch with our deeper self. We are always busy with tightly packed schedules revolving around family and work that we have no time for ourselves or in other word 'our self'. Thus we lose touch with our feelings, sensations and thoughts.

Meditation is basically taking time aside from our daily routine and ruminating over things as they are. It is an act of observation. Meditation as is commonly practice and understood is flawed. Meditation has become an act of concentration where people force their minds to focus on a particular object or thought. Some focus on their breath, some on a spot on the wall and some on their favorite deity. The mind of course wants to wander and one forces the mind to restrict itself to the object of meditation. This is a very futile activity. One usually comes out of this kind of meditation rather fatigued and a severe mental strain. All this nonsense as it widely practiced and taught is not meditation.

Meditation is a state of mind rapt with attention. An attention that is all inclusive and looks at everything in utmost detail. It looks at everything in its totality and not on the various parts that make the whole. Mediation is to be aware of every fleeting thought and feeling without condemnation, judgement or correction. It is observing to find out what the reality is. Any condemnation, judgement or delight in what one observes is due to one's conditioning and thus a movement away from the reality. As you do not condemn or take delight in but just purely watch the thought and move with it, you understand the whole significance of every thought and every feeling. This brings great understanding and understanding brings the mind to a stand still.

Meditation is not control of body, senses or thought as people worldwide are practicing. It is also not some system where you focus on an image, a word or thought and keep on repeating it ad nauseam. The body must be relaxed, still but without any strain and should be in a comfortable position. One should be sensitive to various thoughts and feelings that arise. Mind with its constant chatter, diversions and forking in multitude of directions must settle down and become still.

Meditation needs a stupendously alert mind. It requires an understanding of the totality of life without any compartmentalization or fragmentation. For one to see and understand this totality, the mind should flow freely before it will eventually settle down on its own accord. If one forces this stillness of mind by controlling thought usually there is conflict in mind and a battle ensues between the mind's propensity to chatter and the forced control. If one does induce some stillness of the mind through this control, this stillness is short lived and dull. Not vibrant and alive in which every thought and feeling comes and goes against the backdrop of an active, alert mind which is silently watching as an aloof observer.

Lack of any identification with the various thoughts and feelings lets us see them for what they are and this brings tremendous energy, relief and liberation. The mind constantly chatters because it seeks to resolve its thoughts and feelings through experience, through understanding. When this experience, understanding comes about the mind becomes astonishingly alert and silent. It is in such a mind that creativity is born.

Dissolving Suffering

Knowing the facts is first step to recovery. Suffering alone can bring an end to suffering.

Staying busy with activities, goals and ambitions is a good thing but please be aware that these do not become means of escaping from your suffering. If focusing on these activities alleviates the pain or the trauma then it is there to resurface again given the right environment. Suffering alone can bring an end to suffering. Anything that moves you away from suffering is not its resolution but merely an escape. We don’t really suffer since we have been so afraid of it. We invent so many escapes that allow us to directly meet our sorrow. We even derive utility from suffering by calling it bhog and depletion thereof. We want to understand the cause of suffering and why the other hurt us. We blame ourselves for what we did or did not do. Most of all we find an escape in an activity, a person or a hobby. But we rarely ever truly meet our sorrow and suffer. What I am talking about is feeling the psychological pain through and through with the bodily sensations it creates. Have you really felt the numbness, the deep melancholy, the imperceptible longing for how things could be different, the total lack of motivation and desire, the various uncomfortable bodily sensations, the breaking of the edifice you so carefully sought and cultivated, the amputation that must be done and regret of letting go. Suffering must be felt along all these dimensions and more. The more you suffer every time it comes up and not escape, not rationalize, not give a motive or meaning to your suffering, the freer you will become.

Every feeling, every thought must be scrutinized. Feel and think out issues that bother you. Please make sure that you allow yourself to suffer. What I am talking about is gut wrenching suffering that you never allowed to take place. More than likely, what you have felt all along is the anger at having been wronged, betrayed, molested and abused. Anger is mostly where it stops. But you can take it further than this and put an end to this suffering by logically going where your psyche wants to take you if you were to not erect any defenses. The unresolved is seeking expression and if you will let the suffering and sorrow flower they will reach their logical conclusion and will be no more. What will remain after that is a certain, quiet sadness at why fate dealt you this hand but sadness is not suffering. People in the slums are inherently sad about their lot but many live a life of laughter and accomplishment. Sadness is the residue of suffering. I am not sure if it can be removed endogenously.

Endogenously one can only go so far. Comfort and truth are at odds here. This is almost a curse. One wishes for comfort but that cannot be had if you want the truth. This is ego at play that won’t surrender. But then what are you if you surrender. But then is that just ego expressing or claiming its identity. Can the ego somehow annihilate itself? Then what will you be. Nothing. There might be a place in our minds where we are beyond mind itself.

What is Truth

Truth is "what is" because truth cannot be what is not. "What is" is every "thing". So every "thing" is what is. So truth is every thing. What is not is false. Since all that is is what is. All that is is the truth. If the whole is the truth and the "not" is not there is nothing false. Since it is all truth it is all one and since it is all one there is no duality.

Nature's Magnanimity

Nature is very magnanimous. This is a most comforting fact. Though the concepts of good and bad are normative and will vary from person to person and from culture to culture. There is a certain goodness that defies or goes beyond person specific or culture specific value attribution. These are self evident things that we inherently find 'right' or 'good' based on our nature. Some examples would be: generosity, teaching, loyalty, love, compassion. It is hard to think that these values could be seen as 'not good' by a certain individual or culture. It seems that there is a certain psychic payoff one derives when one indulges in such virtuous acts. Nature is very magnanimous when it comes to correcting one's path or direction when it comes to these virtues.

You may have gone a hundred miles in the wrong direction but a U turn will set you on the right path. You may have been hungry for seven days but the next meal will fulfill you. You may have been a jerk all your life but a single stroke of asking for forgiveness will wipe the slate clean and liberate you and the other party. You may have been guilty all your life about what you did but in a single act of making amends you can set yourself on the path to recovery and forgiving yourself. You may have been a free loader all your life but in a single instant you can make up your mind to contribute and set on that path. Incidentally, the wronged party does not want anything else from you but a recognition of what you have done and an apology. Is it not nature's ultimate love for us that a single act of acknowledgement can liberate both parties?

Even though the wrong may have been committed for a period of time, it does not take an equal amount of time to correct it. A single instance of correcting your path, admitting your mistake suffices. We take this for granted. We know it is so. But we have never marveled that it is so. While the wrong is accumulative, the right is instantaneous. Why should a system be such? It is conceivable that system could have been such that right had to be undertaken for an equal length of time or even more for the wrong to be corrected. Why it could not be that you have to eat for seven days to get fulfilled? Why it could not be that you have to apologize a million times and make amends before the wronged party could move on, could forgive you, hug you and say 'All my life I waited for you to say sorry and now I can die in peace. I love you'.

These alternative designs are possible to imagine. But nature is what it is. It takes a second to set things right. This is perhaps nature's biggest gift to us. 

The Wilderness Years

The wilderness years will come. The genesis of the wilderness will come sometimes like a bolt of lightning, sometimes surreptitiously, stealthily  but surely gradually sneaking up on you. If you are one of the lucky or fortunate ones and are past forty and have tried something worthwhile rather than taking the beaten down road, you have experienced it or going through the agony of it. The world passing you by, new kids on the block upsetting the incumbent and changing the world order and there you sit experienced, educated with talent far beyond what is rocking the world. It is nauseatingly reminiscent of your shot at changing the world order a few years back. You were then unabashed, energetic, cocky with a 'take no prisoners' attitude. You believed that you will change the world, make loads of riches and opposite sex would fantasize about you and envisioning a line of dames and husseys, knights and jocks vying for your attention was not far fetched.

But then it all fell apart. Market conditions, lack of funding, key executives leaving for competing firms or your small business quite not being the darling of the crowds you had fantasized it to be. Sometimes it came with the thud of a colleague through WSJ on your desk; Microsoft is going to give away Outlook for free. You remember that sinking, sick feeling in your stomach, your head swimming, you wondered if you were about to die. Here you have an engineering and marketing team selling this contact management and scheduling solution and MS will give it for free. How are you supposed to compete?

Or you just bled to death. Emotionally in terms of motivation or financially after years of subsidizing your effort through second mortgage, overloaded credit cards, forgone vacations. Hell, you even stole from your kids the basic luxuries of life. You rationalized that an austere and ascetic life style will give them character. Plus it is only a matter of time before things turn around. By Jove, I am gonna make it upto you, my little precious darlings. But then you reached the breaking point. Accounting just ceased to work, you had been spending far more than you were taking in far too long and something had to give.

It's been sometime now. You took a corporate job but the entrepreneur in you refused to die. Race horses have to run. You were never content with strolling leisurely and your daily ration. Can you block the sun with a coin? But self doubt has crept in. Times are inimical. You are caught up in a dead end job. Kids have to go to college soon and that college fund is looking pretty short. You tried playing the stock market and are sorry for it. You there well spoken, well read, smart, dedicated and persevering have been left behind the college buddy who took the steady government job. You try to reconcile that in expectation you were supposed to lose but you believed that hitting the right tail of the probability distribution was your destiny.

But it has happened to the best of us. Steve Jobs spent 15 years in wilderness before coming to Apple again. Larry Ellison, given up for adoption by her mother,went through 12 years of anonymous drudgery before Oracle took off. I know someone personally who built a fortune, gave it all back and is building it all over again.

Point is that wilderness years were statistically highly probable. You met the mathematical expectation. It is not an individual reflection on you. This is how it was supposed to turn out. Hitting the tail is rare. However, your experience and fortitude has fattened the tails of the distribution of your next venture.

Question is will you stand up and get counted.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends once more!

On Thinking

What a reflexive problem it is to talk or think about thinking where the very mechanism of investigation is thinking itself. Can thought investigate itself? In any investigation there will be a subject and an object. The subject carries out the investigation on the object. Usually there is a clear demarcation or separation between the two. This independence between the subject and the object allows the subject to operate upon the object in a non self referential manner. This allows for objectivity. Yes, subjectivity creeps in due to identification with the object in any manner. Here identification need not be positive but can have shades ranging from pure hatred to intense liking. This subjectivity is prejudice. Prejudice is conclusion without information or investigation. This is the realm of like and dislike, love and hate, seeking and avoiding, egress and ingress. This is conditioning. Conditioning inherited perhaps genetically. I am not sure. There is a huge nature versus nurture debate in the field of psychology. The nature school of thought believes that a child is born with certain temperament, a certain personality, certain likes and dislikes all of which he is predisposed to right from the moment of birth. The school of nurture debates that a child is a clean slate and his early interaction with mother, father and other care givers where he or she is passionately loved and taken care of or in a most horrifying specter imaginable is ignored, neglected, abused by its very parents. A precious little living thing struggling for survival in an inimical environment of the making of the very forces that engendered it. The nurture school further discredits the nature school by contending that this condition occurs in the very first few days and months of an infant's life thus reducing the time frame surmised that is enough to condition the child. This short time period in which the conditioning can take place could be seen as genetic traits by the uninitiated is their argument. This nature versus nurture debate is just a transformation of the religious debate between reincarnation and lack thereof. Because if one investigates where temperament in a child would come from one hypothesizes previous lives, samskaras and karma. Some argue that conditioning is passed on through genes but then the honest question is how come the occurrence of children with personality traits diametrically opposed to their parents' is statistically very high to be dismissed as mere chance. But we digress, for matter at hand, we can state with confidence that this conditioning exists. How does this conditioning manifest itself? This conditioning manifests itself as thought - whether unconscious or conscious. Likes, dislikes, love, hate all being functions of thought.

This conditioning prevents us from purely looking at the object as it is. Our conditioning imbues the object with characteristics it does not inherently possess. Since the thought about the object is conditioned it is incapable of looking at the object as it is. Now, the thought can say that I am conditioned and try to move away from that conditioning but that movement of thought to a different place is within the realm of conditioning because it has to move some place. I will not be conditioned itself is a conditioned state because you will create a map or a territory of your conditioning and try to step out of it. But this map or territory itself is a projection of your own conditioning.

So can thought look at itself unconditionally and drop the conditioning? No, it is the same movement. It is still a movement within the field of thought.

But there is a state of mind beyond thought where thought comes to naught and nature reveals itself. It's been like this for eternity but we just could not look.