About the movie "The Village"

I happened to watch this movie called "The Village" by Manoj Night Shyamalan a long time ago. The plot had a lasting impact on me. 

The basic plot is like this (as far as I can recall): A bunch of adults unhappy with the way things were going on around the society, setup a commune in a forest and raise their families together, in order to keep the members not influenced/effected by the bad things in the outside world. They try by all means to keep the younger folks not get into the outside world, as they fear that their small commune would be influenced/corrupted by the bad things in the outer world. They keep their contact to the minimum with the outside world. 

But a few of the young folks are adventurous and inquisitive and want to explore the world outside their commune. And no amount of rules or emotions (like fear) can stop them from venturing out. 

In the end the elders have to give in. 

Many a times I felt myself in a similar situation. When I find some bad things in the world, I think what can I do. I am limited by my capacity to change the world, but being part of a society I find it difficult to make the compromises to my values. Then the thought emerges how about we find a group of like-minded people and live in a commune, the way it is shown in the movie. Then at least the number of internal conflicts would be far less. But the problem is that you slowly start to preserve the commune and want the next generation to live by your rules/values. Now you have created a society that others (the next generation) find difficult to be part of.

They don't share your experiences and your world view. Let them find what resonates with them. Let them be free. 

Solving a problem : Why vs How

Sometimes when we get stuck in a problem we can take two approaches. 

Try to find out "why" that problem has happened, go to the root cause of the problem and address that root cause. Sometimes this takes a lot of time and you might get stuck digging deep into the root cause. 

There's another approach that I read somewhere is about the "How". You don't have to know the root cause of the problem. As there are different solutions for a given problem, one can ask : How can I solve this problem differently? Is there any other way of overcoming this. 

I find this useful in some situations when I get stuck on the approach of Why. This gives a fresh perspective and results in progress. Sometimes you don't need to address the root cause. 

 An example: The problem of procrastinating. Why do I procrastinate vs How can I stop procrastinating.

The external is the reflection of the internal

It seems so true. The way we perceive the world is through our senses/mind/experiences/ideals. There is a lot of relativity there. When one is happy the outside world looks beautiful/hopeful, but when is down the whole world seems ugly/meaningless. Our state of mind seems to dictate our perception. Two different people with different personalities view the same thing differently. 

It's like a bunch of blind men, each feeling (for lack of a better word) a different part of an elephant and describing an elephant as what they feel. (And often coming to the conclusion that their definition of the elephant is correct). 

So if you want to see a positive world, you need to change your internal mental state accordingly. As many people in the past have told, if you want to fix the world, first fix yourselves.

Being in the present

Although "Being in the present" is prescribed as the source of happiness, it's very hard to follow that. Maybe meditation helps, but I am not sure as I haven't given it a try. 

Another approach that is often suggested is to be totally involved in the activity that you are currently doing, whether it's simple things like bathing, cooking, listening to music, working etc. But the monkey mind keeps hopping onto from one thought to the next and gets distracted very easily. I have failed at this miserably. I don't know if I have tried enough though. 

But I do observe that my daughter very often gets deeply involved in the activity that she is currently doing. Sometimes she gets so involved for a couple of hours in doing one thing that she isn't thinking of anything else during that time. 

As a kid, she doesn't have a good sense of time. She doesn't have to take care of common chores or do something based on a given schedule. Although she has an end-goal for that activity, she does not have a timeline associated with it i.e that she does not think that I need to get this activity done by this time. And she enjoys doing it. Maybe all these things help her remain focused at what she is doing. There is not a big WHY/REASON for doing that activity. She has nowhere to go. She enjoys the journey more than the destination. She just does it.

I am pretty sure most kids are like that. And I was probably like that when I was a kid. As we grow up we have tasks to do, run per schedules and live by some external assessments and then now there is social media, which make you live a life of pursuit, distractions, anxiety. Maybe as UG Krishnamurthy says, thought is the cause for all this, a thought of a better state, a thought which compares/evaluates/judges/reasons.... But without thought there is no life. 

I am 20

Recently saw this documentary on Youtube, in which someone interviewed people in the year 1967, (across the country) who were born around the day of independence Aug 15, 1947. And that's why the name of the documentary is : I am 20. It's nice documentary to look (without judging) what these people thought of India and its future and also their personal ambitions. If you observe you will still find many people in India (or in any other country) still having similar thoughts. So, inspite of being shot ~ 50 years ago, it still feels relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA8h74ZW8Ok

It's hard not to get impressed with one person who is very optimistic about the future of India and energized to be part of the Indian experiment. He appears to be very matured for his age and also so eloquent in conveying his thoughts.

Going through the comments led me to this article Midnight's Grown-ups. Someone did watch the video and was so impressed by it that they went on a search to track the people in that video. It's an interesting read. Apparently that likable/energetic chap settled out of India, and although the author was able to track him, he couldn't talk to him.

Coincidently, I came to know about Shailesh Gandhi while volunteering with AID. 

The conversation of Shailesh with her daughter, that he recalls was quite interesting to me:-

I quoted one of the young girls in “I Am 20”. “What do you want me to do for the country? I think I do enough by being an honest citizen, by doing my job to the best of my ability, by working eight hours a day.” Shouldn’t that be enough?

Gandhi mulled over this. “You know, my daughter talks the same language.” She left for America a decade ago, and on the eve of her departure, Gandhi told her, “Your life is yours, of course, but I hope that, after a few years, you’ll come back.”

“I want to live an honest, decent life,” she said, “and I think it’s difficult to do that here.”

“Many things are wrong in India,” he replied. “They need to change. But we need to change them.”

“But you’ve wanted to do that, and I don’t think you’ve been very successful,” his daughter said. “I don’t want to do that.”

Gandhi recounted this conversation to me. “She’s settled there now, with a husband and a child. But my feeling still is that it’s up to us citizens. Look, I love my wife and child not because they’re the best people in the world, but simply because they’re my wife and my child. If you feel that bond, then you say you’re responsible.” His voice cracked and shook. “Why should I believe in India? Because it’s mine.”

I'm free

 A couple of days back, on my morning walk I found a poem written on someone's memorial card lying outside. I liked it very much. Later when I searched for it online I found that, that poem is used for many memorials. Don't know who the author is though. 

Here it goes:

Don't grieve for me, for now I'm free. 

I'm following the path God has laid you see.

I took His hand when I heard Him call.

I turned my back and left it all.

I could not stay another day,

To laugh, to love, to work or play.

Tasks left undone must stay that way.

I found that peace at the close of the day.

If my parting has left a void,

Then fill it with remembered joys.

A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss,

Oh yes, these things I too will miss.

Be not burdened with times of sorrow.

I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow.

My life's been full, I savored much,

Good friends, good times, a loved one's touch.

Perhaps my time seemed all too brief.

Don't lengthen it now with undue grief.

Lift up your hearts and peace to thee.

God wanted me now; He set me free!

I like these lines very much:

I turned my back and left it all.

Tasks left undone must stay that way.

Don't lengthen it now with undue grief. 

I interpret this as someone who has lived a content life. They don't have any qualms of the unfinished work, and ready to bid adieu at a moment's notice. At the same time happy for the happy moments that life has offered them. And advising the others living not to dwell on their death, as it's natural and part of life.

I am fine as I am

 For long there has been a discontent in me that I am not following my "perceived passion". I call it perceived because in order to know that it is indeed my passion I should have tried doing it... but I never did. But I know my heart yearns for it. That discontent only grew as I continued on my current path and I grew older. But as I read and thought more I realized that the passion is itself an attachment when you give it so much importance to it. 

If not following it creates so much discontent it sure is going to be a part of your identity when you pursue it and you will pursue it with so much vigor and passion, that everything else becomes secondary. But is there a problem with following your passion... I don't know. As Gita talks about "Nishkama Karma" i.e work that you do dispassionately but sincerely. There is no desire of some personal gain from that work. Then you know you are an instrument and not the subject and you will not attach much significance to you or your identity and it will not lead to the growth of your 'self'. Also, when you are in a pursuit you are always seeking something which is in the future and giving up your present.

That was a digression from the main point of this blog. 

I recently came across UG Krishnamurti and I found him interesting. Although I don't seem to understand much of what he says and hence can't follow, but there are a few things that are true. Following is text from JSRL Narayana Moorty's Introduction to U.G and his Teaching.

There is no problem with our present life. For thought there seems to be one because it extracts certain knowledge out of past pleasures and pains, compares the present with it passes judgments, avoids the present by concocting a future and pursuing it. But for the comparisons that thought makes there is no problem with our life as it is; and there is no other life. It is precisely our thought of a better state that prevents us from coming to terms with our life as it is.

And towards the end of the article he writes: 

In this muddle of U. G., ourselves, and his conversations or talks with us, we get all mixed up, get separated and get mixed up again, and we haven't the faintest idea of where this is all leading. Where does it, U.G.? 

It does not have to lead anywhere. U. G. constantly reminds us that it is the urge to know and to create a state of permanence that makes us ask all these questions, and when we quit them, everything will be all right, as it should be. You take what comes, and no questions asked. No one is there to keep a tally. No accounts kept. And what's wrong with that? Where is a problem there? What happens, then as U. G. says, would be none of our concern. 

 After reading this and some of what U. G. says, I have realized that I don't have to do anything great or achieve something to say that I have lived a fulfilled life. I am fine as I am. 

Granted, the society gives a great importance to people who have achieved something and they continue to live beyond their death because of what they have done, but it's the individual's thoughts/desires/aspirations or some other reasons that made them do what they did. Not achieving something does not trifle your life. It should not cause me discontent and inner turmoil. Just being is good enough. After all from nature's point of view, just being is good enough like a tree or a creature. You have fulfilled your role by just being there/just living. Rest all is the creation of human thought and societal conditioning.

This does not mean that I will voluntarily stop doing the thing I am passionate about. It means that I will not call it passion, but instead do it because I feel like.. not because it will give me a purpose to my life... not because it's a noble thing to do ... not because it will make me feel important in the eyes of the society.

Freedom of Inconsequentiality

The freedom that comes when you are aware of your inconsequentiality is limitless

An excerpt from Toni Morrison's Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address

It is possible to live without defending property or surrendering it, but we will never live that way unless our thinking is shot through with dreams. And it is necessary now because if you don't educate the unschooled with the very best you have, don't give them the help, the courtesy, the respect you had in becoming educated, then they will educate themselves, and the things they will teach and the things they will learn will destabilize all that you know. And by education I do not mean hobbling the mind, but liberating it; by education I do not mean passing on monologues, but engaging in dialogues. Listening, assuming sometimes that I have a history, a language, a view, an idea, a specificity. Assuming that what I know may be useful, may enhance what you know, may extend or complete it. My memory is as necessary to yours a you memory is to mine. Before we look fro a "usable past" we ought to know all of the past. Before we start "reclaiming a legacy" we ought to know exactly what that Legacy is--- all of it and where it came from. In the business of education there are no minorities, only minor thinking. For if education requires tuition but no meaning, if it is to be about nothing other than careers, if it is to be about nothing other than definiig and husbanding beauty or isolating goods and making sure enrichment is the privilege of the few, then it can be stopped in the sixth grade, or the sixth century, when it had been mastered. The rest is reinforcement. The function of tewentieth-century education must be to produce humane human beings. To refuse to continue to produce generation after generation of people trained to make expedient decisions rather than humane ones.

Betrayal of Love

What is the punishment for "Betrayal of Love". None !!! I am guilty of that.