Goutham Palagiri Ramblings

(Following is an excerpt from the diary of a confused man who was born back in 20th century)

An epic battle has just ended, and I lost to the beast inside me. I sat on the couch and poured a drink in the glass to concede my defeat. The beast smiled, and I started to write.

Let me introduce the beast first. Some call him the inner demon, some call him the alter ego, and some even call him the monkey in the mind. I called him the beast because of the sheer power that he exerts to dominate me in all facets of life. He is the master of my body, and thereby my senses. In Bhagavad Gita, a human life was compared to that of riding a chariot driven by five horses. The chariot stands for the body. The five horses are the five senses. The reins stand for the mind, and the driver stands for the intellect. In my case the beast, more or less, is the driver and I am the rider. We travel together, but our destinations are different.

My life is nothing but a constant battle with him. My success purely depends on how well I overpower him on any day. I want to wake up early, he wants to sleep; I want to exercise, he wants to relax; I want to eat what’s healthy, he wants to eat what’s tasty; I want to aim higher in the spiritual path, he wants to aim higher in material gains; I want to push through the limits, he wants to sleep through the comforts. I am ever complacent and he is ever greedy. I have to face him first before I face the world.

A spiritual guru once advised on TV that one can tame the beast through meditation. I tried, but failed. However the meditation helped me to comprehend the true power of this beast. It requires more than just will to subdue him, which is a paradox in itself.

We have conflict over many things, so we agreed upon having some equal grounds – on the subject of eating meat, I have objection to killing animals. But he argued that the animals do not have purpose in life, and that the God has created them for our consumption with us being the higher ups in the food chain. So we agreed on subjective consumption based on certain types and certain days in a week.

There are certain concepts on which both our ideologies are misplaced – one day I was overwhelmed with compassion and donated few dollars to a homeless man on the way to office. The beast argued that this act was performed by him, and not by me. While compassion is a virtue, what I did was certainly a selfish act as the donation has helped in gratification of my senses. The subject was too complex, and I gave up from further retrospection.

Our debates continued –

“I am eternal, you are material” I poked

“You are a myth, I am the truth” he argued

“Your only purpose is survival, I pursue the higher truth” I mocked

“You are the confused soul, I am the pristine body” he retorted

On this reply, however, he wasn’t totally wrong. The body is innocent and pure like water – it is created out of biological reactions and takes the form from what it feeds upon. Its sole purpose is survival and it remains truthful to it. The so called human vices such as greed, ego, envy, anger and lust are its natural ornaments and are integral part of its survival eco system. The same cannot be said about me. I am confused on my purpose, and I suffer from existential crisis.

I see the physical world through his eyes, and he is my only foe. I can conquer the world, alas, only if I subdue him.

Back to the present, I sipped the last drop and placed the glass back on the table. The beast, now satiated, appeared to have retired to his dark corners. My thoughts flew like a perennial river as I typed this. The beast whimpered slowly “Enough writing this, no one will read this anyway”. I ignored, but he continued “Switch on the TV and check out the new titles on Netflix”. I replied “No way”. But then he winked.

Long ago, a wise man appeared in my hallucinated dream. His image was vague, but his voice was clear. He said “Beware of Karma. Your current life and its quality is the result of some of your earlier actions this life and the previous lives; your future will depend on the actions that you perform in this life”. This was my first introduction to the concept of Karma. While I had many questions about this definition, I subconsciously made peace with it. It made me God-fearing and helped to live a disciplined life. This also helped me to reason with many inconsistencies such as an unbalanced society – the differences between the rich and the poor, abled and the disabled. I had answers to many questions that a sane human wouldn’t have. My uncle once slipped while walking on the road and fell down. Seeing him disgruntled, I commented that he was being punished by Karma for some of his mistakes.

For the first time my interest in Karma was piqued by a story from Bhagavatam –

“A very long ago, there used to be a noble Brahmin. He was a good son, good husband and a good father. He lived a righteous life and performed his duties sincerely. He has the best life that his peers wish for. One fateful day while walking through a forest, he saw a prostitute romancing someone. As Karma would have it, he was smitten by her charms instantly, fell in love, and later married her by abandoning his own parents, wife and children. Out of dire need, he later became a thief, a liar, a drunkard, even a murderer. His whole life was ruined in complete contrast to his earlier life”

This story haunted me for the next few days. Was he predestined to be affected by a single event via his Karmic design? If my life too is already pre-written, where is the fun in living it?

As I brooded, the wise man appeared. I couldn’t see him clearly, but heard him say “the greatest gift to the human is free will. In the above story, the event was completely external with no relationship to the noble Brahmin. He could have ignored it, but he succumbed to his senses and chose the path of downfall. It was his freewill that was the culprit” and he added “by the way, your uncle fell down not because of his Karma, but because he didn’t use his mind while walking on the road”. This made sense and for the first time, Karma was contradicted by free will.

After reading my weekly astrology report on a website, I chanced upon a news – due to a doctor’s negligence a mother lost her life after giving birth to a child. The image of the bereaved husband holding his new born child struck to my mind. The dreams of a happy long life came to an end due to an unexpected accident. The child, oblivious of her loss, cried on perhaps out of hunger. She was going to miss many important things in her life – her mother’s hug, her lullabies, a greatest strength and most importantly, a lifetime opportunity of receiving unconditional love. What kind of morbid consolation can I get by linking this child’s deprivation with her Karma? I looked around for the wise man and found him in a corner. I gather from his hazy silhouette that he shrugged as if to suggest the world is a sad place anyway.

The concept of Karma went for a toss with the events of massive consequences such as natural calamities, tsunamis and the wars. For example, the World War II was a distinguished event in the recent history that caused grave repercussions, upheaval of geographic and economic conditions followed by massive exodus. Millions lost their lives. I expected the wise man to ask me to exclude such events from the scheme of Karma, but he said “Don’t look for reasons to all problems in this world. This universe is random at best, and many experts failed to understand it. Not every action that you perform will have a physical consequence. Some actions will have inherent mental reactions caused by positive or negative psyche of the event. For example, a murderer needn’t necessarily be punished by the police. The negative energy created in his mind will lead to subtle negative Karma leading towards his downfall. Do not try to understand it if it is too complex. To make it simple, let me give tell you the greatest mantra and the biggest secret that will solve all your problems – ‘Work sincerely and don’t expect results’. By denouncing selfish expectations, you will be impervious to all Karmic attachments, and you can still perform Karma (action) as it is your birth right”

As the wise man said this, his muzzy image started to become clear and he looked exactly like my conscience.

My blood test reports have come, and I was summoned to see the doctor. Many test results were out of range. Hemoglobin should be 13, but mine’s only 11. The doctor smirked and asked me not to bother about these ‘out of range’ results, and these ranges are only for reference.

We have an appraisal system at work. The performances of the associates are measured and normalised to be fit in a bell curve with the major area of the curve (peak) representing count of ‘Average’ performing associates. This also indicates that the organization expects majority of the population to perform average. The associates on either side of the normalised distribution curve are either appreciated or admonished based on what side of the curve they belonged to.

In an attempt to explain the standard normal distribution, our statistics lecturer gave us an example of heights of males in India. The average height of Indian male is 5.5 ft. So the major male population would fit in this height range between 5.3 and 5.7 ft. It doesn’t mean that the other minority representing lesser than 5.3 feet and greater than 5.7 feet do not belong to the society. They pretty much do, except that our minds are trained to see them with a difference.

What’s common to all the above said examples is the ‘range of values’ that we humans are measured against. It is wise to be in the reference ranges so as to not be questioned against.

Now, draw a bell curve among people across colour, creed, religion, ethnicity, practices and hobbies of the people. Think about those that do not belong to averages.

Life is created out of averages. There is a sublime democratic process through which we have trained and chosen our lives. We have to live life in a certain way – go to school, get a job, get married, bear kids, buy houses, create a socio-economic status, work hard towards material betterment of lives, and die peacefully. This gives a sense of settlement in lives, and we feel physically secured. Any minor aberration causes great discomfort, because we belong to the majority herd.

Now, let us further extrapolate this normalization to our emotions. Our emotions are automated too – we live to appease society, we are pleased when praised, we are angered easily, we fear for discomforts, we hate every other thing, and holler at every single disturbance in life.

We are the best hypocrites that the society can produce.

We know our emotions are momentary but we dwell a bit too much in them. We know worry doesn’t solve a problem but we worry much. We know that life is too short to stress, but we stress much in a day to day living. We know that ‘unconditional’ happiness is the best cure for many problems, but we seldom put that to use. We know that expectation is root cause of all misery, but we expect a lot. We know from the bottom of our hearts there is only God, but we create a divide. The only reason is that the society taught us to be in that way.

We have conquered earth and other planets, but can’t control our own mind and emotions. This assures me to believe that we are using our minds incorrectly. Just like we trace back a screwed-up stomach to some bad food eaten, the screwed up mind can be traced back to bad training imparted for centuries.

Somewhere in the normalization process, we seem to have forgotten the basics of human life and have created too many ‘unwarranted’ needs. We live in perspectives created by our society. Our minds are conditioned with these perspectives for centuries, decades and years. Any deviation will be seen blasphemous.

Much said in this context, let me call it a day. I am already stressed out and have to get a good night sleep for a respite from my flawed life.