Problems are not the problem

There are many events or situations around us that are not favourable to us. Only a few of them we tag as "problems". For example, my pick-up to airport, if late, is a problem. The latest space shuttle, launched a few minutes late, is not a troublesome problem although it probably involves rework or corrections worth a lot more money and effort.

What do we call a problem? Firstly, the event should affect my well-being. And secondly, it should be within my scope of correction. This second point is a very subtle one. If I am told I have incurable cancer with a month to live, after the anguish, it will not be a problem. Problem involves the invoking of a state of doership. I feel I can handle it, or I am expected to handle it, and I am tense about whether I will actually be able to handle it, and to me that issue is then a PROBLEM.

Problems do not come into our lives. Situations come, and a few of them, the handlable ones, we call Problems.

Therefore when we say that every problem has a solution, it is a tautology. Only because it is in our power to resolve, do we decide to call it a problem.

Vision

We learnt in physics and biology that an inverted image of what is in front of us falls on the retina. And the brain, very smartly, turns it upside down and sees it.

Seriously? That retina is the last point where the object exists as a light pattern. The rods and cones in the retina are energised, the photovoltaic pulses travel to the optic nerve and stream to the brain where..... what happens? Well, the optic centre in the brain is receiving only pulses, like dots and dashes of morse, and the mind simply CONSTRUCTS a reality inside the mind itself. In that sense what we "see" is not really what is falling as an inverted image on the retina. Who knows what that shape and form and colour is actually.

No wonder the scriptures call this world mithya. This is one of the reasons or angles through which the world is so called, the perceived being probably quite different from the actual. There are other philosophical reasons for calling it maya as well, but even at this simplistic level, I find the above thought mind-boggling.

What do you think?

Visitors

What do I find interesting in a temple?

Paying respect to the idol is a five-minute occupation. After that I watch the visitors. Sometimes the person is alone, or with family, or with children. Whatever he may be outside the premises, in the temple, he has come to meet his personal god.

No tension in the face, no impatience with a restless child, no lack of courtesy in the queue, no ego in prostration, no shame in prayer,  no greed at the prosaad, no lethargy in walking around the building. All visitors merge into this mass of characteristics, undivided, bhakta. That is where I glimpse the divine.

Gods don't make a place of worship. Devotees do.

Health and happiness

Do we blame other people for our lack of  physical health? Then why do we tend to blame others for our mental illness, which is called misery?

Happiness is our own responsibility, just as health is. There is a difference however. Physical health has built-in corrective systems that bring health back on track. But mental health has an destructive system called the mind on one hand and a corrective system called the intellect on the other. The intellect has to manage the emotional mind and bring it back on even keel quickly, so that happiness is restored. That is why, to continue to be happy, our intellect has to be on guard 24x7.

Even when in the grip of emotions, we have to first listen to our intellect.

Friendship

We see so many posts and nice pithy write ups that encourage us to recognise and appreciate our friends.

The goal of having friends seems to emerge from my need of a support group, people from whom care and pampering can flow to me, who can try to fill some hole, some incompleteness inside me.

If we wish to grow as human beings, and in our role as friends, I feel we should focus more on being a friend than in needing a friend.

So let's see a series starting "You know you have been a good friend when..."

Ehsaan

Kis baat pe zyada roye --
Jab koi na kare ehsaan,
Ya ehsaan na mange koi?

Back to basics

Mankind searches both high and low in the scientific world. On the one hand, he looks for the ultimate unification of energy and matter, so that all laws are covered by a single one. On the other hand, he keeps breaking down matter into smaller units, looking for the single basic building block for all varieties of form.

Mentally, however, it is a one-way street for the human being. Intellectual growth is conversion of physical experiences into concepts, renaming partial information into knowledge, and as a consequence, communicating with each other at verbal levels that mean different things to different people and often mean nothing at all.

There are heavy words like "life" and "relationship", which are supposed to convey something specific but really conveys whatever the hearer wants to hear.  There are lighter words like "justice" and "fairness" which are often generalisations of a specific unpleasant experience. Even a common adjective like "good" or "rich" may be misleading unless the speaker and listener are calibrated similarly.

The victim in all this is Communication. Mature communication is one where we relate a specific experience and describe the relevant mental reaction. If we are generalising, it should be an addendum. Take the following statement.
"Anil is such a crass person. I don't know how I live with him."

What are the questions here? What incident made you think he is crass? Does he behave like this every time in a similar situation? Does he react the same way in other situations? Is this a serious disturbance to you? Is living together full of anxiety because of this? In fact, a psychotherapist or counseller asks these type of questions and tries to lead the person back to basics.

Healthy communication arises out of an initial internal check of basic reactions. Let not the mind jump up to a higher level language. Let us talk basic events and reactions and there will be no dispute. Then let us discuss conclusions and at worst there will only be a debate.

I have sometimes found it useful to speak of or recall an event like I am writing a play. A play has no scope for any commentary. It relates conversations and movements alone, leaving the audience to draw it's own conclusions. A novelist, on the other hand, trends to impose his own conclusions and generalisations on to the reader. A playwrite, as a base level communicator, needs much more control and skill.