Nurturing the Neighbor (Lent 3)

Lent is a beautiful occasion for us to ask ourselves, who is my neighbor! Actually the question that is often on the tip of our lips is nothing new; there are thousands of seekers ahead of us, who have asked the same question, and some 2000 years ago, Jesus had already answered this question with a story, the parable of the Good Samaritan! Here in this story we shall find the elements of the previous two notions, of listening to one’s inner spirit, expressing unconditional empathy, and it leads to yet another level of making the other person as an extension of oneself. The good Samaritan does not see a stranger on the road, but a reflection of himself, part of his own Being. He could not help but reach out to him with spontaneous willingness to suffer.

If there is so much of division, conflict, violence and bloodshed in the world, the most important reason why these things happen is because we have not known who is the other! We are used to looking at the other as someone outside of me! Martin Buber made popular the notion of ‘we’ and ‘they’ and we have cleverly managed to look at ourselves as different from the others. Linguistic groups, religious sects, ethnic communities, thrive because they convince the masses that “we” are different from “they”, and that they cannot sacrifice their group identity at the expense of the other, and that would only lead to their suicide, so they are brainwashed, and the result is conflict, violence and bloodshed.

The Vedas had taught us to look at us as ‘aham brahmasmi’ (I am Brahman), and if I am Brahman, then what about the other? Of course everyone is Brahman; the Greeks had proposed the theory of ‘demigods’, that everyone is an extension of God, or part of Godhead. If I see God in the other person, would I dare to cheat him, look at her with lustful eyes, attempt to rob the little he has, shed his blood in order to rob the house? The very moment I look at myself as God, and so are others, then the entire outlook changes, and I cannot do most of the things that I often take it for granted. And that is where the final judgment scene of Matthew 25 makes sense.

What do I think about my neighbor, especially those with whom I do not feel at ease, people who do not entertain my views and ideas, people who think very different from mine, people who often outshine me in several fields? Until I get out of my own self, I would not be entering into the spirit of Lent, which necessarily invites me to get out of my self, in order to enter into another self, the Self of the other. The world unfortunately, has taught us to love our own self, shower the greatest encomium to our own self and its image, forgetting the other persons are but extensions of my own image and likeness, which again is the image and likeness of God himself.

But is it possible for me to look at the other person, especially my rivals and enemies as extension of my own self? It is, and the season of lent may be a good occasion for us to practice this : all that I should do is to look at the other person as a looking mirror; that is all I need to do! Now when I look at another person (and if he is a looking mirror), what would I see? Of course, the image of my own self, and if that is the case, would I dare to harm him or her? Would I dare to rob his/her possessions? Here I would go beyond all narrow categories the world has created for me, the linguistic, regional, religious, cultural, ethnic, everything will come to a naught as soon as I place a looking mirror. Let us carry this mirror wherever we go, and we can be sure, we are safe, and others are also safe with us!

Engineered Expectations

How I wish the world was behaving exactly I wish it to; and how delighted I would be if all the people around me do exactly what I would want them to! There is a hidden “I” in each one of us, who wishes to assert that s/he is the center of the universe, and that everything should go round her/him. When things do not go according to my calculations, then I feel my world crumble before my very eyes, and I am frightened of facing it. It is painful and agonizing to witness my expectations are thrown into pieces and I am nowhere in the picture. When I expect that the world goes round me, and I do not find the world is nowhere close to me, it is a frightening thing to even imagine, leave alone facing it taking place before my naked eyes.

But this is a predicament that everyone has to go through, and no one may be spared from facing the dreams, aspirations and expectations evaporating into thin air. The superior I in me would always assert that s/he is right, whatever be the case, and I can find the truth factor of this statement, if I observe how I argue with a friend or companion. What is the goal of any argument – to win; but it is not merely to win, but to win OVER the other person. If two parties win in a competition, then there is less joy, than when one party wins and the other loses. Psychologically I feel great when I am able to throw down someone either through reason or by muscle power. And when I am defeated by others, my world shrinks, and is even on the verge of disappearing.

We shall have a thousand and one reasons to blame the whole world around me, and in most of the cases we may even be justified, and there may be many others who would think that our remarks are based on facts. We may have just expectations, and common sense might not prevail in many cases, and we may be left in dark. We may have to live with people who take things for granted, and do not even behave as a human person, and we may be wounded on seeing how such persons treat and respond to us. They can become a real pain in the neck, and we may find ways of either getting round the problem and make life miserable for the person, or not permit the person make our life miserable.

It is not always possible for me to make the other person aware of the kind of harm s/he is creating to me, and on many occasions the person may not even be in a position to respond to my allegations. I should understand that I do not have the pill for the ills of the world; I cannot change the way my companion behaves, which annoys and irritates me. Even if I take courage to explain to him/her that his/her actions hurt me, there are little chances that s/he will take it seriously and do the needful to accommodate me. But just because the other person is not going to buy my views or change the color glasses s/he is wearing, I cannot stop living my life!

Today I would like to ask myself, how many times have I dared to doubt my expectations? Not all of my expectations can be easily justified; if I were to scratch most of my expectations, I may find that they put a lot of demands on the people around me. I become the judge, who determines how others should relate and respond to me. If only I become suspicious of most of my expectations from others, then there would be less reasons for me to get annoyed with them. That would also open new windows, which would remind me constantly that just as I have expectations on others, others too could have similar kind of expectations on me, and do I pause to note their expectations?

Passion with Com-passion

In the entertainment world, which is dominated by commercial films and videos, a film of this sort is rare and rather unheard of! I am not talking about the films of the sort which Indian film doyen Satyajit Ray made, which ran empty halls in the city, while acclaimed all over the world. I am talking about Bommalattam (Doll's play), a full-length feature film in Tamil made by the famous film director Bharati Raja! It is not that I am fond of the films of Bharati Raja, who always had a social issue to present in his films, but as I sat to relax in front of the television, I found something very different in this film, very different from the usual soap-operas and the tear-jerkers!

The fact that Nana Patekar, whom I consider as a serious actor, happened to act in a Tamil feature film meant that it was not going to be yet another love story! The theme looked so very complicated, but after the denoument, one realizes that the plot has been weaved in such a way that the story was hanging together, and one could vibrate with the hero fighting a fierce battle against a society which only knows how to condemn the vulnerable! The director had handled the characters in the film not only with the usual passion, but more with com-passion, and that made this film a very different sort for me!

I consider myself a person who has limited, selective memory! In certain cases, my memory is shart, though I cannot claim it is photographic, but fairly good; but when it comes to storylines, novels, and even blogs, I have a bad memory! Sometimes when I go back to some of my old writings, I feel amazed and ask myself if I had done it! I might have read a novel some years ago, but when I read it again, without realizing that I had read it earlier, I can vaguely remember some isolated characters, but not the story. I feel terrible when many of my friends can remember the storyline of a novel or a film they had read/seen many years ago. I even envy them.

In all walks of life today, the slogan is 'passion', and if there is one life-force which is keeping the present world alive, it is the passion of a handful of people, igniting the lives of others. Passion in life, passion in workplace, passion in relationships, and passion in being. What perhaps the today's world lacks is com-passion! I am not talking about charity or gift or obligatory social commitment corporate houses are expected to fulfil, in order to get the tax exemption! Compassion goes beyond all scales and measurements, and one gets countless number of opportunities to show one's compassion today: it would be wrong to consider that only the human beings demand our compassion, the plants and beasts, the earth and the universe - all are in need of human compassion.

Compassion also demands that we throw away our law-books in order to uphold humanity, or life in one form or other. If the law of the land becomes the most important criteria for judging people (and I would not belittle the importance of the law of the land in any way), then we would be forced to throttle true justice, which goes beyond laws and regulations. The Doll's Play fortunately upholds such a kind of compassionate justice, which can change the face of the world sooner than we think! Every human person is invited to become agents of compassion, and the day when even a toddler looks at the plants and beasts, other toddlers with compassion, then we can see a thousand suns and moons rising around us!

The Twelfth Hour Virgins

There are some people who cannot foresee things, and would love to keep things pending until the last hour, and when the hour has come, they get so worried that they either get stomach ache [a psychosomatic disease], or head ache [result of tension in the body and mind], and so would have to be relieved. Yesterday when one of my friends told me that she was wanted to help out a companion of hers to organize the inauguration of a new Formation House, and today my friend said that there were far too many things left undone, kept for the last hour. If my friend had not gone to help her companion, then probably many of the important works would have remained undone. We cannot blame the people who cannot plan out things well ahead of time, and execute them one by one; they may have their own limitations, but we also need to look at the other side of the spectrum.

It may sound judgmental if I were to say that if people who keep important things for the last hour are perpetual procrastinators, a definite sign of disorder in their personal life. This may also imply a tendency to distrust companions and co-staff, to delegate the works that need to be accomplished. Ultimately such people may find enough and more excuses to say why they were not able to complete some of the important works on time, one of the most common and vital is what is known in psychology as the ‘blame game’. They may blame everyone on earth, not sparing even God and nature, the wind and rain.

There is another group of people who prefer to give their best shot when they are kept under pressure. If they are given a month to complete a particular job, probably they may not be able to do it, or their output may not be as satisfactory as when they are given just three days to complete the work. How and why this happens is simple psychology: when they are given a month to complete a job, their energy is diffused and so is also their attention and concentration. When they have just three days to finish the job, then their energy is concentrated on the job, and thus they are able to do a better job. I find myself under this category, and that is not to say that I can work only under such pressure. There are certain jobs which may require on-going monitoring and supervision, which cannot be asked to be done within a few days.

Those who wait for the last minute to get things done, can be very well compared to the five foolish virgins, who had taken their lamps but not the oil, and they realize this only when the hour has come. This parable of Jesus has a lot to teach us. If we had to complete a work or two, because of sheer ignorance or circumstances, it is understandable, and at such circumstances people may not find excuses to justify their failure to do the job. Whatever be the logic or rationale that the people who keep things for the last hour give, we cannot forget the fact that the order and discipline that people have in their personal lives is reflected in their social and community life.

It is said that one of the main reasons for people to keep things pending until the eleventh hour is because they starting addressing a particular task or work from ground zero, and what may bring out better result is when they begin to start from the final result and start working from the end backward. That is what is so very obvious in God’s creation of the world and the history/mystery of salvation. Keeping the end in mind always [and keeping a visual representation of the end in some form or other at a place where the eyes will fall on several times a day, such as in front of the study table or beside the bed,] can be highly rewarding. That may also give the person satisfaction that the end is slowly taking shape, and that itself maybe enough reason for him/her to hasten the completion of the work.