More Osho :)

"Certainly, to be full of spring yourself is far more beautiful than the autumn dew falling on the lotus leaves. That is one of the most beautiful things to watch: when autumn dew falls on the lotus leaves and shines in the morning sun like real pearls. But of course it is a momentary experience. As the sun rises, the autumn dew starts evaporating... This temporary beauty cannot be compared, certainly, with an eternal spring in your being. You look back as far as you can and it has always been there. You look forward as much as you can, and you will be surprised: it is your very being. Wherever you are it will be there, and the flowers will continue to shower on you."

http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/Osho.html#anchor_15879

Communication Kills!

Here are some pearls I found buried deep in the despair of answer papers:

1) Scientist giving a talk about recent developments in astronomy:
    "Do you know what our solar system is called? It is called the Milky Way Galaxy."
   [A second year science student wrote this.]

2) How to write a letter of application for a job, along with a resume:
   I feel like an imposter teaching these wise souls.

   * I give you permission to call me for an interview.
   * Give me the job. (This person surely believes in simplicity.)
   * Name: Balack Obama
   * Martial status/ Material status: Single

Simplicity

"Listen to your heart, move according to your heart, whatsoever the stake: A condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything.... To be simple is arduous, because to be simple costs everything that you have. You have to lose all to be simple. That's why people have chosen to be complex and they have forgotten how to be simple."

-- Osho!

Walking through twilight

Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow...

Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.
 
-- Lord Alfred Tennyson


Handball I am,
my own deepest feelings
are a mirage.
And after twilight, I know
I must meet the darker night.

I can't walk, I can't see.
You that brought along the night
for me to see
must see me through the blinding dark,
be the ground and the feet for me.

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Humpty Dumpty got up again,
Humpty Dumpty hobbled in pain.

Humpty Dumpty climbed back on the wall,
Humpty Dumpty had another fall.

Humpty Dumpty has no king's men,
Nor any to wish his wishes amen.

Humpty Dumpty is a you and a me,
We fall, we rise, till we break a knee.

Some break it soon, some hold on for a time,
And some who fall down never climb.

The Script

My short story appeared in Soundzine this month. (Click on the title of this post for page link.)

Play

Am I a handball
being tossed about?
Tossing about thus
in waves,
afraid of encountering
walls of mirage?

Am I the reckless
hand tossing
itself into the waves
hitting walls
of mirage
to shatter?

Am I your game
of tossing balls
and of waves and walls?
Whatever I am,
gather me safe at last
into your hands.

Fury's prisoner

"I am Wrath. I had neither father nor mother: I leapt out of a lion`s mouth when I was scarce half an hour old; and ever since I have run up and down the world with this case of rapiers, wounding myself when I had nobody to fight withal. I was born in hell; and look to it, for some of you shall be my father."

(Wrath, the third deadly sin, in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus)

Crossroads

I searched for a ray of warmth,
I found glitter.
What does it conceal?

I am afraid of the glitter,
but will I ever find the ray I sought?
Out of this dark,
show me light. I have none else to ask.

The Blunt Edge

Does the conscience regulate our actions or do actions silence or awaken the conscience?
It seems to work both ways. Take dietary habits, for example:

In his essay, "Why do Men Stupefy Themselves?", Leo Tolstoy examines the habit of consuming intoxicants, referring back to his own past experiences. It is easy enough to notice the ill-effects of the excessive use of intoxicants -- how narcotics or drink seem to give strength and courage to any act that requires the blunting of the conscience. But what about consumption of these in moderation?

Tolstoy appeals to our sense of self-honesty, our ability to get over the impulse to darken the conscience:

One is not living as conscience demands, yet lacks the strength to reshape one's life in accord with its demands. The diversions which might distract attention from the consciousness of this discord are insufficient, or have become stale, and so—in order to be able to live on, disregarding the indications conscience gives of the wrongness of their life—people (by poisoning it temporarily) stop the activity of the organ [the brain] through which conscience manifests itself, as a man by covering his eyes hides from himself what he does not wish to see.

We live with glaring contradictions within our personalities, choosing to supress the voice of the conscience by means of rationality, because the desire for comfort is overwhelming.

Tolstoy's conclusion is unambiguous:

[I]if the use of stupefiers in large occasional doses stifles man's conscience, their regular use must have a like effect (always first intensifying and then dulling the activity of the brain) whether they are taken in large or small doses.

This stance can obviously provoke many counter-arguments. Is the author's claim about small doses of intoxicants proved in fact? Tolstoy points out that to be honest to oneself, one has to observe the changes in one's life and one's choices at different points in time objectively, without zealously protecting one's insecure inner self that clings to the all-important 'freedom of identity'. Only then can true reason emerge:

Life does not accord with conscience, so conscience is made to bend to life.


This is done in the life of individuals, and it is done in the life of humanity as a whole, which consists of the lives of individuals.

To grasp the full significance of such stupefying of one's consciousness, let each one carefully recall the spiritual conditions he has passed through at each period of his life. Everyone will find that at each period of his life certain moral questions confronted him which he ought to solve, and on the solution of which the whole welfare of his life depended. For the solution of these questions great concentration of attention was needful. Such concentration of attention is a labor. In every labor, especially at the beginning, there is a time when the work seems difficult and painful, and when human weakness prompts a desire to abandon it.

Physical work seems painful at first; mental work still more so. As Lessing says: people are inclined to cease to think at the point at which thought begins to be difficult; but it is just there, I would add, that thinking begins to be fruitful.

A man feels that to decide the questions confronting him needs labor—often painful labor—and he wishes to evade this. If he had no means of stupefying his faculties he could not expel from his consciousness the questions that confront him, and the necessity of solving them would be forced upon him.

But man finds that there exists a means to drive off these questions whenever they present themselves—and he uses it.

As soon as the questions awaiting solution begin to torment him, he has recourse to these means, and avoids the disquietude evoked by the troublesome questions. Consciousness ceases to demand their solution, and the unsolved questions remain unsolved till his next period of enlightenment.

But when that period comes, the same thing is repeated, and the man goes on for months, years, or even for his whole life, standing before those same moral questions and not moving a step towards their solution. Yet it is in the solution of moral questions that life's whole movement consists.

What occurs is as if a man who needs to see to the bottom of some muddy water to obtain a precious pearl, but who dislikes entering the water, should stir it up each time it begins to settle and become clear. Many a man continues to stupefy himself all his life long, and remains immovable at the same once-accepted, obscure, self-contradictory view of life—pressing, as each period of enlightenment approaches, ever at one and the same wall against which he pressed ten or twenty years ago, and which he cannot break through because he intentionally blunts that sharp point of thought which alone could pierce it.

"It rides time like riding a river"

The Silence of Suffering

Elie Wiesel's Night came back to me today, with its pictures of a terrible suffering that challenges every human hope for meaning through all history, and even the remote possibility of  lasting peace. It reminded me that the suffering I know directly will always be lengths shorter than this triumph of brutality. It also suggested that the worst might always be yet to come, and I cannot ask why or how.

A discussion of Gerard Manley Hopkins' The Wreck of the Deutschland with references to the Holocaust, here.

Not out of His Bliss
     Springs the stress felt
Nor first from heaven (and few know this)
     Swings the stroke dealt—
Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt—
     But it rides time like riding a river
(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss).

[Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland]

The ride through time is real enough, but are there any that can escape the "fable and miss"?

The need to trust

What is seen is not the Truth
What is cannot be said
Trust comes not without seeing
Nor understanding without words

-- Kabir

Caution, warns the wary instinct,
trust, says a need, deep as water.
Trust what, asks the desolate child --
trust comes with knowing,
how can I trust what I do not know?

But can I know if I do not trust?

"That music cannot be written",
says Kabir. I only want
to feel it in my veins.

Dharnas, Documents and the Decline of Higher Education

The private musings of a troubled teacher

Activism has always been a niggling issue for me. ‘To be or not to be’ an aggressive, uncompromising activist is a question I have had to contend with many a time while faced with matters that call for radical change, much to the unease of my conscience. Of course, I know that activism is inevitable to some extent. In spite of the natural kinship of boiling blood, all this slogan-shouting solidarity, demonstrations and deliberate violation of the law during the teachers’ strike was for me a new learning experience. Nonetheless, even within the limited extent of my participation, I could sense some of the contagious exhilaration that accompanies any mass movement driven by a sense of justice.

For a few hours, outside the confines of our classrooms, we teachers seemed to have lost our self-conscious need for sobriety and decorum. That it was not easy to be uninhibited sloganeers in public places was evident at last week’s meeting and even today’s gathering at the university campus. Initially, voices responded rather feebly in answer to the lead of those in charge of the meeting. Occasionally, some of us stole glances at each other and exchanged embarrassed smiles. But in the police van, we were in the full gust and flow of our teacherly voices. People on the streets looked at us with curiosity. There certainly was no surprise on those faces, and if we think we awoke a few pedestrians to the gravity of the issue we are fighting for, we must be simpletons indeed.

Morchas have their unique brand of humour too. I cannot but admire the union leaders’ ability to speak at length to large gatherings (with or without a microphone), keeping both interest and morale high all along. “The police have requested that only 15 of us court arrest or they will run out of vans and diesel” or “The Maharashtra government has failed to give us anything at all in writing. As teachers, we know that sometimes it is necessary to take down notes…” The imprint of changed times and attitudes is evident among the teachers, but these veteran idealists are unfazed.

It is relatively easy to be part of a mass protest and let someone else take the important decisions. There was after all a feeling of security in being amidst a unanimous crowd this afternoon. But what if I am called upon to take risks and assume complete responsibility for my actions in the public sphere? My field of work – education – itself presents before me numerous challenges. Changes are rapid in higher education and the debates of today will prove crucial in deciding what shape and direction this sector will take in the near future. The measures adopted now will have lasting consequences on the quality of education, educational values, practices that prevail in the academia and service conditions for teachers, as well as teacher-student relationships and the goals of education in society.

There is an increasing demand for privatisation of higher education in India. Arguments in favour are many and certainly have much merit. Privatisation is seen as a means to ensure quality and bring about accountability. It is also viewed as an efficacious means of strengthening the links between education and the industry. Moreover, it is hoped that the freedom to make autonomous decisions in academic matters at the ‘grassroot’ level – i.e., by institutions rather than universities, boards or other governing bodies – will considerably reduce the constraints of umbrella policies that do not meet specific needs, and introduce flexibility and context-sensitivity in the system.

Rahul Bajaj puts forth his views in favour of a more liberalised educational sector here.

I commend the author for stating clearly that what is called for at the moment is a ‘third way’ – neither low-quality subsidised education, nor high-quality, but expensive, private education. However, my fear is that much (and many) might be irredeemably sacrificed by the time we reach the long-term goal of having institutions that function on the strength of endowments. Industry, says Bajaj, has to step forward and create a market for the vocationally trained. I do not want to sound unduly sceptical, but the call for greater involvement (read 'interference') of corporates does indicate a strong possibility of an education-industry nexus wherein the educational sector will be increasingly manipulated to suit the needs of industries (thereby becoming merely a supply line that feeds custom-made candidates to industries) and might lose its independence in deciding what constitutes wholesome education for a student. No course that does not cultivate critical thinking, deep insight, sensitivity and responsibility to society and life values can be termed as education in its true sense as described by visionary educationists like Tagore, whom Bajaj refers to in his article.

That there is real cause for alarm at the way unaided courses are being taught is evident from our experience to date. To take a single example, there has recently been a ruckus over one of the papers prescribed for the Bachelor of Mass Media (BMM) course, where the teacher is expected to teach Communication Skills in Hindi, Marathi and English (and perhaps any number of other Indian languages) in a single paper. Besides the challenge of finding a teacher competent enough to teach all these languages or running the risk of fragmenting it among many, there is also the question of what constitutes ‘communication skills’ going by the rather nebulous aims of this paper. Even as students are to be taught grammar and pronunciation, they are only expected to be able to communicate (i.e. ‘get by’) in the languages included. Effectively, the students’ level of competence remains unchanged at the end of the semester.

Replacing the control of the government over education with control of the industry is no pathway to reform. Where time is money, as in the competitive market, it is feared that there may simply be no place for values or critical skills in education. These ‘ideals’ (itself a somewhat-derogatory term in common parlance nowadays) will become irrelevant because they don’t make pockets jingle. I know this point will draw much criticism -- after all, are we implying that there is respect for these ideals in the present system? However, I do feel we are headed in the direction of a more and more market-driven world where people are seen as customers or service providers alone and education as a mere commodity or at best, an assortment of skills, without the accompaniment of moral debate and intelligent appraisal.

The rapidity with which concepts from management studies are taking over every sector of human activity is alarming to me. These ideas seem to be created solely for the purpose of increasing competency and are tellingly devoid of anything humane or emotional. Not only that, even as they emphasise difference and innovation as crucial to 'value addition', the results inevitably show a kind of innovation that occurs in a programmed, patterned way, much in the manner of packaged commodities that are found in different colourful wrappers but are nevertheless the same. To replace even the hodge-podge mixture of aims that exists in the current educational scenario with such a new culture is, for me, to seal permanently the doors to discovery and creativity.

Let me try to imagine in concrete terms a future in which these fears of mine have materialised. Would people want to study Shakespeare, for instance? Perhaps, for survival's sake, we might re-package the Shakespeare course as 'A study of personalities through Shakespeare's plays'. During the course, we classify some characters from Shakespeare into 'types' and try to identify these with the kind of people we find in everyday life. Or perhaps we include Mark Antony's speech in a study of leadership and oratory. So much cleverness put to mercenary ends. The layered, multi-dimensional world of Shakespeare would be lost in such classes. Philosophy, to survive, might become nothing but 'yoga at the workplace', intended to 'manage' other individuals and periodically release stress gathered at all other times of the day. Perhaps research will flourish for its own sake, with more and more books being published with fancy terminology and endless theorising.

All in all, education in this scenario I dread might lose its marvellous ability to open one's eyes in all-encompassing and empathetic observation of the world -- an ability cherished and lauded by scientists and philosophers alike as a path to a humble and ever-growing understanding of ourselves and the universe. Higher education, if it merely cultivates certain skills that are in demand and makes adaptable finished products of our personalities, is reduced to a light bulb that illumines only a narrow path in our treasure hunts. Is that learning? To learn is to let sunlight flood all about us and to gratefully absorb this light all life -- a light that reveals new shapes and colours each day, and leaves nothing shrouded in the dark.

(to be continued...)

On Exquisiteness in Poetry: Louis MacNeice's 'Snow'

There are poems only a dollop of prolonged inspiration can produce. The idea unfurls by itself, already made, already complete, layer by neatly laid layer. Images follow one another, each one finer than the earlier, enhancing the development of the poem and mining from the germ a self-nourishing process of growth like leaf sprouting on leaf to make a perfectly formed plant.

Take Louis MacNeice’s 'Snow', for instance...

(The entire post is here.)

Breaking News

Been thinking for a while of going public with the madwoman's ravings. Well, here we are. Heaven save my readers!