Why do we act the way we do?

 It is said that any action we take in life has only one of four reasons, at least a major one. 

The action may be taken for enhancing a feeling of security - be it monetary, power of even emotional security. In scriptures, this is called artha.

Or the action may be driven by a need for entertainment - sensual or intellectual. This is also called kama.

Or the action may come from a space of willingness to do the right thing, which we believe is benevolent. The path followed is then one of dharma.

Or it may be an action that arises out of a need not to be bound down, to be free - from tension, from anxiety, or from a general sense of incompleteness. This is a need for moksha. 

The actions we take can be at a physical level, an emotional level or at an intellectual level.

Let us take a look at some examples.

Case study: Future Body Inc - the dismembering plant

Imagine a world where mining is over. All metals are available only as scrap. New cars are assembled (even rockets are assembled) obtaining components from, say, rejected cars. Like assembly plants, there are now numerous dismembering plants. I, William Livergall, am a Factory Manager in charge of one of them, an employee of Future Body Inc.

Like in an assembly plant, here the rejected products - cars, machineries, metal utility items - move steadily along rails at a predetermined speed. Workers in their stations take apart designated components. These components are shipped to other assembly plants. In our case it is to another Hightech vehicle assembly plant of ours, to which we are the feeder plant.

As a manager, my goals are to ensure steady procurement, smooth movement, adequate dismembering teams (some of whom cut/unscrew, some lubricate and some clean before despatch) and maximum conversion. Items remaining on the rails at the end should ideally be totally useless. Components shipped to the Hightech facility should be ready to use.

The biggest challenge that compromises process quality, is the Procurement Manager, John Sugarspice. His procurement goals seem to be based on colour of item, sound of metal, something novel, something bought in mammoth quantities because it is available cheap - in short quite at variance from my line goals. Consequently, there are a lot of unusable/unused components that are scrapped again in the end. Or the item has many rusty parts that make them difficult to dismember and clean. Or the line becomes overloaded - I sometimes have to load two cars in the slot meant for one - much to the disgust of my crew members, who either have to leave much of it untouched, or they have to dismember bigger chunks rather than individual components. These chunks, when shipped to the Hightech facility, lies there unused, straining their storage facility, to be broken down and utilised only if they run out of components. 

Personally, I prefer loading simpler assemblies because they can be dismembered faster. But John prefers complex assemblies like small cars,  enamored by their earlier road performance and looks.

My line needs maintenance downtime. Online maintenance has its limits and I prefer to hold back loading fresh items in order to repair the rails and give the teams some breathing space. But our great Mr Sugarspice still quietly loads the line and there we go again, limping along.

Overall, line health suffers because of the stupid Procurement Manager.

I have taken up the matter with our CEO, David Frontlobe, again and again and although he agrees in principle, somehow he turns out helpless in front of the procurement zeal of our dear John. However, I noticed that once our CEO turned 60, he started paying more attention to me rather than to John. Hope he had done it earlier.

My friends, our digestive system is a complex piece of work. It knows what needs to go in to convert to a healthy body. So please do not let the tongue rule your brain. Healthy food habits need to start young.

Meditation muscles

A person went to the gym for body building. The instructor asked him whether he had any physical problems. He said, not much, just some arthritis, a bit of asthma, ulcers and spondilosis. But he wanted to do weight training. The instructor told him, first cure your ills, make your body suitable for weight training and then come back. 

Meditation is body building for the mind. We suffer from rigid attitudes, we start wheezing with anger at any provocation, our mind is full of bleeding ulcers from prejudices, and we are pains in the neck personified. Yet we think we can just plop down onto the ground, sit cross legged and experience a serene mind? 

Read up Patanjali's Yogasutra, O aspirers to meditation, and first makes your mind fit to sit. Yama and Niyama are perhaps the toughest stages to cross.

Master dialogues

Satyajit Ray was once asked : "Why do your films have less dialogue than most other film makers?"

He answered : "Every time I have to use words to explain a scene, a situation or an emotion, I feel I have failed as a director."

So is it in life. 

How many times have we used words and wished later that we had not? If we have to use words to explain our emotion, then our love has not spoken till now. If we have to use words to convey our happiness, then our smile has not spoken till now. If we have to use words to give an instruction every time, then our living philosophy has not spoken till now. 

Let us use words - only if it is better than silence.

The two purposes of action

We act throughout our lives. If we are the selfish type, we act for ourselves. If we are the generous type, we act for the upliftment others. In either case, we believe that the purpose of action is for benefitting somebody or the other.

I have a slightly different take on this. It does not really matter what we do to the world. Action actually has two other purposes, which sometimes we miss altogether.

The first purpose is to hold up in front of our faces what is the mechanism of our mind, our decision points, our value systems. Since most of our actions are reactions, they reflect quite accurately our inner workings, provided we are humble enough to look inside and see them without defensiveness. This needs awareness of course. We should be able to look at our action and ask: Now what made me act like that?

Having done this, we need to recognise the second purpose of action, that is to modify or improve our inner working to make it more refined, benevolent, driven by good values and less compulsive. We do this through the deliberate actions of introspection, meditation, selfless charity and worship.

These two are the main purposes of action. What we really do to the world outside is relatively unimportant. As our mind becomes more evolved, our need for action itself reduces. Sages who do "nothing" have probably crossed the need for action. On the other hand, an unrefined mind cannot afford to be sitting without action, because then it would have stopped looking at the mirror and halted its own evolution.

We all need to be in action, for our own sake. What benefit we do to the world is incidental.

In pursuit of happiness

Can we ever reach good health? No we cannot, because health is our natural state. To be healthy, all we need to do is to keep away disease from happening and cure ir if it ever happens. Disease is a distortion of health.

Can we achieve happiness? Again we cannot, because happines is absence of unhappiness. Instead of trying to learn how to be happy, we need to learn how to avoid unhappiness from enveloping us and how to get out of its shadows if it does.

Gold Rush

Suppose I was on a riverbed in California in the 19th century, walking amongst the pebbles looking for gold nuggets. It's evening and the light is failing, but I have to carry on and maximise my riches. What would I do? Pick up pebble by pebble and examine them before throwing them back again, right?

Life is like that riverbed. Opportunities will seem to come up all the time, inviting our action or involvement, but we ignore most of them, especially if we are the low-energy type, saying "Oh, I will wait till I can see the glittery one, the gold nugget. That will be the right one for me. "But, really, how do we know it is not a gold nugget without picking it up, without addressing the opportunity to some extent before rejecting it?

It seems we choose our life path when we are born, having set out to experience some particular events for sure during this lifetime, mostly for self-growth (Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield talks about this with a fair bit of passion). Opportunities for the same, the gold nuggets, keep popping up, but are overwhelmed by the pebbles of ordinary living. That is why it is important that we taste as many opportunities as possible, whether they seem relevent or not, so that the gold nugget does not escape our scrutiny.

We need to get rich quick, right?