Category: think

As a beginning to this year 2009 I would like to post one law a week from a simple, wonderful book I’d read a few years ago by Deepak Chopra. The radical ideas expressed in powerful words are pretty motivating. In fact I liked it so much that I gifted several people on many occasions a copy of the book (now I need to get another one myself again!)

Below summary/excerpts are not really a substitute to actually reading the book. However if you could contemplate on each law it would be great to hear your thoughts about the ideas in it.

The Law of Pure Potentiality

This law is based on the fact that we are, in our essential state, pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is pure potentiality; it is the field of all possibilities and infinite creativity. When you discover your essential nature and know who you really are, in that knowing itself is the ability to fulfill any dream you have, because you are the eternal possibility, the immeasurable potential of all that was, is and will be. This law could also be called the Law of Unity, because underlying the infinite diversity of life is the unity of one all-pervasive spirit. There is no separation between you and this field of energy. One way to access the field is through the daily practice of silence, meditation and non-judgment. Spending time in nature will also give you access to the qualities inherent in the field: infinite creativity, freedom and bliss.

—Share Guide

What it seems to remind us is that even though it may at times appear to be, life really isn’t a rat race… There’s enough for everybody’s needs, and maybe just that we haven’t tapped into it…?

Once up on a time even the terrorist had surely started off as an innocent man. Somewhere in some circumstances, maybe holding on to some past incident, someone exploits him – manipulates his intelligence. Makes him believe he’s fighting for some noble cause. To the extent that he rationalizes his merciless butchering of his fellow human beings. How much he has to steel his own heart, ignore its crying and try and stamp it out, and act like a machine to be able to do this. What a terrible burden of anger and hatred this unfortunate man is carrying… where did it come from… so much of it? He cannot escape the fact that he too is human, he too has a heart that can love – yet he is moving further and further away from it…

What kind of ’emotional insensitivity’ training they go through to ‘inhumanize’ themselves. They may
celebrate their ‘success’, but how long before it hits them – the true the gravity of what they’ve done – not just to the victims, but to themselves.

I’ve always found a lot of benefit in open, honest communication. This was a really nice article that highlights the advantages and definitely something worth attempting…

Living With Radical Honesty, Brad Blanton

Monday, July 28, 2008 5:30 AM

I learned that the primary cause of most human stress, the primary cause of most conflict between couples and the primary cause of most both psychological and physical illness is being trapped in your mind and removed from your experience. What keeps you trapped in your mind and removed from your experience is lying and we all lie […] all the time. We’re taught systematically to lie, to pretend, to maintain a pretense because we’re taught that who we are is our performance. Our schools teach us to lie, our parents teach us to lie. We’re all suffering from mistaken identity.

We think that who we are is our reputation, what the teacher thinks of us, what kind of grades we make, what kind of job we have. We’re constantly spinning our presentation of self, which is a constant process of lying and being trapped in the anticipation of imagining about what other people might think. Our actual identity is as a present tense noticing being. I’m someone sitting here talking on the telephone right now and you’re sitting there talking on the telephone and writing or doing whatever you’re doing. That’s your current identity and this is my current identity and when you start identifying with your current present-tense identity you discover all kinds of things about life that you can’t even see or notice when you’re trapped in the spin doctoring machine of your mind. So radical honesty is about delivering yourself from that constant worrisome preoccupation of, “Oh my god. How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing?” Then you can pay attention to what’s going on in your body and in the world and even pay attention to what’s going on in your mind. […]

Just look at what you notice in front of you right now, your environment, wherever you are in an office or wherever it is. Noticing is an entirely different function than thinking and what we do all the time is that we confuse thinking with noticing. When we think something we act as though it has the same validity as something that we see. I’ve got a bumper sticker on my truck that says, “Don’t believe everything you think.” It’s like your thinking just goes on and on and on and on.

–Brad Blanton, Center For Radical Honesty

~ Charityfocus.org

While helping my newphew-in-law with a physics astronomy assignment, and came across this amazing video of something that I’d posted earlier.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home, That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. … There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
– Carl Sagan

Posting a forwarded email below about Myanmar: Cyclone death toll soars above 22,000

India is greatly indebted to Burma for an invaluable service and hopefully Indians and all people of the world may discover it by themselves over time. Let us pray for the strength and well beings of all our brethren affected in the terrible disaster. .

——-

Dear friends,

In the wake of a massive cyclone, at least
22,000 Burmese are dead. More than 40,000 are missing. A million are
homeless.

But what’s happening in Burma is not just a natural
disaster – it’s also a catastrophe of bad leadership.

Burma’s
brutal and corrupt military junta failed to warn the people, failed to
evacuate any areas, and suppressed freedom of communication so that
Burmese people didn’t know the storm was coming when the rest of the
world did. Now the government is failing to respond to the disaster
and obstructing international aid organizations.

Humanitarian
relief is urgently needed, but Burma’s government could easily delay,
divert or misuse any aid. Today the International Burmese Monks
Organization, including many leaders of the democracy protests last fall,
launched a new effort to provide relief through Burma’s powerful
grassroots network of monasteries–the most trusted institutions in
the country and currently the only source of housing and support in many
devastated communities. Click below to help the Burmese people with a
donation to the monks’ effort:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/3.php?cl=86168938

Giving
to the monks is the smartest way to get aid directly to Burma’s people.
Governments and international aid organizations may not be allowed into
Burma, or they may be forced to provide aid according to the junta’s
rules. And they will spend huge amounts of money just setting up
operations in the country. The monks are already on the front lines of
the aid effort – housing, feeding, and supporting the victims of the
cyclone since the day it struck. The International Burmese Monks
Organization will send money directly to each monastery through their own
networks, bypassing regime controls.

Last year, more than 800,000
of us around the world stood with the Burmese people as they rose up
against the military dictatorship. The government lost no time then in
dispatching its armies to ruthlessly crush the nonviolent democracy
movement–but now, as tens of thousands die, the junta’s response is slow
and threatens to divert precious aid into the corrupt regime’s
pockets.

The monks are unlikely to receive aid from governments
or large humanitarian organizations, but they have a stronger presence and
trust among the Burmese people than both. If we all chip in a little
bit, we can help them to make a big difference.

Click here
to donate:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/3.php?cl=86168938

With
hope,

Ricken, Ben, Graziela, Paul, Iain, Veronique, Pascal, Galit
and the whole Avaaz team

PS: Here are some links to more
information:

For more information about Avaaz’s work to support the
Burmese people, click here:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/burma_report_back/

For more information
about the cyclone, the humanitarian crisis, and the political dimension,
see these articles:

New York Times: “A
Challenge Getting Relief to Myanmar’s Remote Areas.” 7 May
2008.

BBC: “Will Burma’s
leaders let aid in?” 6 May 2008.

India’s Economic Times:
Indian
meteorological department advised junta 48 hours in advance, 6 May
2008.

BBC: “Disaster tests
Burma’s junta.” 5 May 2008

Times Online: “Aid
workers fear Burma cyclone deaths will top 50,000.”

6 May 2008.
_________

ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent,
not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that
the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making.
(Avaaz means “voice” in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from
governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in
London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington DC, and
Geneva.

Don’t forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo
pages!

You are getting this message because you signed “Stand with the Burmese
Protesters”

——-

Also see…

BANGKOK — As hungry, shivering survivors waited among the dead for help after a huge cyclone in Myanmar, aid agencies and diplomats said Wednesday that the delivery of relief supplies was being slowed by the reluctance of the country’s secretive military leaders to allow an influx of outsiders.

Myanmar Faces Pressure to Allow Major Aid Effort

If someone close to us is sharing his grievance with us, are there different ways to empathize?

We can take the side of this person, really sympathize with him (or
her), console and comfort her agreeing that the situation is so shockingly bad, what has the terrible world come to, and that
offender who caused the grievance deserves hell, and agree about how
hard his life is. Then maybe share some similarly miserable
experiences and make him feel justified about his behavior and
attitude.

We can also take an other approach, where here too we show that we
support the person, listen attentively, but the difference would be to
refrain from overdoing consoling and comforting the person. Any comments we
make could be to try to help the person get alternative perspectives of the same situation – maybe
the viewpoint of the others involved as well. Maybe gently encourage the
person to see if he might have missed something himself.

In the first approach, you are sure to get into the person’s good
books. The person will like you better! Its definitely much easier and
more entertaining – doesn’t require too much effort from you. It gives
short term relief for the person, though his problem remains.

But with the second approach, that prospect of winning the person’s
appreciation may look
dimmer 😉 It may not be a short-term solution, but it may well be one
small step
towards helping the person figure out a positive solution. This
approach might be a bit more difficult – and it requires a deep sense
of genuine concern for the person.

Any thoughts… please share them…

My wife was expected to be at my house to receive my sister, and usually she’s pretty punctual but today she just wasn’t around.

Maybe she’s left her mobile behind. Try to forget it and get back to work – either she’ll get back to me seeing my missed calls, or my sister has anyway said that she’ll let me know.

Trying to work… but long time… no phone.

Called my mother in law who was busy with my son, and said her daughter had left. Then her brother who was at work and had last spoken to her quite a while ago. She was absolutely untraceable.

Waiting… waiting…

Called my mother-in-law again… what was the last thing Vijetha had said before leaving… any clues about where she’d gone? There was some talk about buying a new dress for the baby but not possible that it could take so long and no contact with anyone… She had left on a small moped. Contemplation of all kinds of possibilities became inevitable.

Waiting… waiting… finally cancelled a conference call I had in the evening, and left the office on a bike with a colleague. I didn’t know what I could do. Maybe go along the same road and see if she’d gotten stuck anywhere. But atleast do something… anything…

All these things are going on, and suddenly life presses on this Pause button. Everything that may earlier have felt good or bad or grand or mediocre, now was distant and irrelevant. Suddenly it felt like someone had switched off all the noise of life and there was just this one thing that mattered more than anything else.

Finally on the way, the call came from my sister’s phone and it was my wife. It seems she’d kept the phone somewhere in a cupboard by mistake (inside her purse) and couldn’t locate it. She was surprised to know that I’d been looking for her, and so I just keep it to a short hi and bye. Returned to office, and sent a follow up mail to my conference call asking them to ignore my previous cancellation message.

We might already be familar with the story of Angulimala from our childhood. I recently came across it again, and was able to appreciate it more now! 🙂

I found a very readable version, and edited it with a little detail. Original reference links are provided at the end.

———————————

Angulimala: A Story of the Power of Compassion
———————————————-

There was once the son of a Brahmin (the highest “priestly” caste in India) in the court of King Pasenadi of Kosala, whose name was Ahimsaka. He was
sent to Taxila for his studies. Ahimsaka was intelligent and obedient to this teacher; therefore he was liked by both the teacher and his wife. This made
the other pupils jealous of him. So they went to the teacher and falsely accused Ahimsaka of having an immoral relationship with the teachers wife. At first,
he did not believe them, but after hearing it a number of times, he thought it was true and vowed to have revenge on Ahimsaka. He thought that to kill him would
reflect badly on him. His rage prompted him to suggest the unthinkable to the young and innocent Ahimsaka. He told his pupil to kill a thousand human beings and to
bring the right thumb of each as payment for teaching him. Of course the youngster would not even think of such a thing, so he was banished from the teachers
house and returned to his parents.

When his father learned why Ahimsaka had been expelled, he became furious with his son, and would hear no reason. On that very day, with the rain
pouring down, he ordered Ahimsaka to leave the house. Ahimsaka went to his mother and asked her advice, but she could not go against the will of her husband. Next
Ahimsaka went to the house of his betrothed (in accord with the ancient custom in India calling for betrothal of children long before their actual marriage), but
when the family learned why Ahimsaka had been turned out of school, they drove him off. The shame, anger, fear, and despair of Ahimsaka drove him out of his
mind. His suffering mind could only recollect the teachers order: to collect 1,000 human thumbs. And so he started killing, and as he killed, the thumbs he
collected were hung on a tree, but as they were destroyed by crows and vultures, he later wore a garland of the fingers to keep track of the number.

Because of this he came to be known as Angulimala (finger garland) and became the terror of the countryside. The king himself heard about the exploits
of Angulimala, and he decided to capture him. When Mantani, Ahimsakas mother, heard about the kings intention, she went to the forest in a desperate bid
to save her son. By this time, the chain around the neck of Angulimala had 999 fingers in it, just one finger short of 1,000.

The Buddha; learned of the mothers attempt to dissuade her son from, and reflected that if he did not intervene, Angulimala, who was on the lookout for the
last person to make up the 1,000, would see his mother and might kill her. In that case, he would have to suffer an even longer period for his evil kamma. Out
of compassion, the Buddha left for the forest.

Angulimala, after many sleepless days and nights, was very tired and near exhaustion. At the same time, he was very anxious to kill the last person to make up
his full quota of 1,000 and so complete his task. He made up his mind to kill the first person he met. As he looked down from his mountain perch, he saw a woman
on the road below. He wanted to fulfil his vow to complete the 1,000 thumbs, but as he approached, he saw it was his mother. At the same time, the Buddha
was approaching, and Angulimala had just enough presence of mind to decide to kill the wandering monk instead of his mother. He set out after the Blessed
One with his knife raised. But the Buddha kept moving ahead of him. Angulimala just could not catch up with him. Then it occurred to the robber Angulimala: It is
indeed wonderful, earlier, I could overtake a running elephant, a running horse, a moving chariot, here running with all my strength, I cannot reach up to
this recluse. Finally, he stopped and cried out,

“O Bhikkhu, stop, stop!”

And the Enlightened One replied,

“I have stopped. It is you who have not stopped.”

Then it occurred to the robber Angulimala: These recluses talk the truth and are established in the truth: Yet while walking why did he say, I have
stopped and it is you who have not stopped!

And asked…

“O bhikkhu! Why do you say that you have stopped while I have not?”

The Buddha replied, “I say that I have stopped because I have given up killing all beings. I have given up ill-treating all beings, and have established myself
in universal love, patience, and knowledge through reflection. But you have not given up killing or ill treating others and you are not yet established in
universal love and patience. Hence, you are the one who has not stopped.”

On hearing these words Angulimala was recalled to reality, and thought, these are the words of a wise man. This monk is so very wise
and so very brave that he must be the leader of the monks. Indeed, he must be the Enlightened One himself! He must have come here specially to make me see the
light. So thinking, he threw away his weapons and asked the Blessed One to admit to the Order of the bhikkhus, which the Buddha did.

When the king and his men came to capture Angulimala, they found him at the monastery of the Buddha. Finding that Angulimala had given up his evil ways and become
a bhikkhu, the king and his men agreed to leave him alone. During his stay at the monastery, Angulimala ardently practiced meditation.

Angulimala had no peace of mind because even in his solitary meditation he used to recall memories of his past and the pathetic cries of his unfortunate
victims. As a result of his evil kamma, while seeking alms in the streets he would become a target of stray stones and sticks and he would return to the Jetavana
monastery with broken head and blood flowing, cut and bruised, to be reminded by the Buddha: “My son Angulimala. You have done away with evil. Have
patience. This is the effect of the evil deeds you have committed in the existence. Your evil kamma would have made you suffer through innumerable existences had I not met you.”

One morning while going on an almsround in Savatthi, Angulimala heard someone crying out in pain. When he came to know that a pregnant lady was having labor
pains and facing difficulty to deliver the child, he reflected, all worldly beings are subject to suffering. Moved by compassion, he reported the
suffering of this poor woman to the Buddha who advised him to recite the following words of truth, which
later came to be known as Angulimala Paritta. Going to the presence of the suffering woman, he sat on a seat
separated from her by a screen, and uttered these words:

Sister, since the day I became an arahat I have not consciously destroyed The life of any living beings. By this truth, may you be well And may your unborn child be well.

Instantly the woman delivered her child with ease. Both the mother and chid were well and healthy. Even today many resort to this paritta.
Angulimala liked living in solitude and in seclusion. Later he passed away peacefully. As an arahant, he attained parinibbana.

Other bhikkhus asked the Buddha where Angulimala was reborn, and when the Blessed One replied, my son Angulimala has attained parinibbana, they could hardly believe it. So they asked whether it was possible that such a man who had in fact killed so many people could have attained parinibbana. To this question, the Buddha replied, “Bhikkhus, Angulimala had done much evil because he did not have good friends. But later, he hound good friends and with their help and good advice he became steadfast and mindful in practicing the dhamma and meditation. Thus, his evil deeds have been overwhelmed by good kamma and his mind has been completely rid of all defilements.”

The Buddha said of Angulimala

“Whose evil deed is obscured by good,
he illumines this world like the
moon freed from a cloud.”

The power of love and compassion are stronger than any evil, and are absolute conditions for awakening.

——————————–

Original source:

Angulimala: A Story of the Power of Compassion (As told by Ven. Walpola Piyananda Thera)

The above version was more readable, but found that a little detail from here was worth adding.

———————————