Think like a dog, roar like a lion

Let me start this write up by narrating a little incident that happened sometime in my past. I had attended a three day conference of accountants once and daily before the start of the technical sessions, we had a lifestyle improvement coach or a spiritual guru give us a talk for an hour. In one such session, the question that was put forth to the audience was a very simple one. The speaker asked a random selection of people from the audience to describe themselves. Looking in hindsight, the result was appalling, to say the least, because all of those people talked for a straight ten minutes each but none of them described anything about themselves. All they described was where they were from, in which locality they lived, their occupations, vocations, designations at the work place etcetera. I am in no way blaming those guys because if I was in their place that day, I would have done the same.

That little exercise by the guru opened my eyes to the fact that we as a people sometimes mistake the means to the end in life as the end itself. Let us start by asking our self why we do anything in life. What is the purpose of earning all that money? What is the purpose of all that fame and popularity? What is the purpose of all that success? Or is the money, success and fame the end in itself? Most of us think they are and some die believing so. It is only a handful of us who have the privilege of coming across an enlightened soul like that old man at the conference, who give us a knock on the head and make us see sense. The sense that all those achievements we keep talking about are nothing if we are not happy at the end of the day and sleep peacefully at night. Once we realize that, we slowly start rephrasing the questions above – What is the purpose of earning all that money if I am not able to spend some quality time with my family and friends? What is the purpose of all that fame and popularity if I can’t use it to positively influence the lives of the younger generation? What is the purpose of all that success if I am not able to give back to the less privileged in the society?

I see two basic reasons why we fail to make this realization. Firstly, we don’t meet a good master who will show us the right path. Secondly, we are all a bunch of egotistic idiots who refuse to see beyond the mirage that we have defined as our purpose in life.

Finding a good master or a coach to learn something technical is very easy. We just need to Google up our requirement and we will have a load of references available, but a master or counsel who teaches you the truth of life is not someone we can look up on Just dial. We need to be lucky to be at the right place at the right time. We also need to be humble enough to realize the importance of that counsel. Life coaches need not always be in person form. They can be animals, places or incidents too. Life takes us through umpteen instances which break our ego, and make us realize that we are not always the invincible beings that we assume our self to be. But most of the time we refuse to accept the same; rather our ego refuses to accept the same. This results in us believing in the mirage that we define as the purpose in our life.

A wise man once narrated a comic snippet to me to stress upon this point. The story goes thus – ‘Lord Vishnu, the preserver of this world as per Hindu mythology was so distraught on seeing the state of affairs of humankind that he decided to interfere and pay the humans a visit. However, the sage Narada advised him against it telling him that he will fail because humans have gone beyond repair. But the Lord was not discouraged so fast. He coaxed Narada to join him in this venture and decided to present himself to a whole congregation of people who had gathered in a hall to perform a ritual sacrifice in honour of the Lord himself. So both Vishnu and Narada appeared before the crowd dressed as commoners as soon as the ritual got over and declared that they were Vishnu and Narada from heaven. Though the crowd was perplexed at the sudden appearance of these two gentlemen, they were not convinced as to their identities. With the advances in virtual reality and theatrical special effects, one can never be too sure. Narada immediately told Vishnu – “See my Lord, I told you this was not a good idea. These guys have too much technology in hand that nothing can perplex them. They do not believe who we are.”

Vishnu replied – “It is okay Narada. We can’t expect them to believe that we are who we say we are. Let us reveal our true form to them. Then probably they will believe us. They are very well holding this ritual in my honour, so they must be believers.”

Having said that, Vishnu lifts the veil and presents themselves in their full divine glory to the congregation. The people are in awe at the spectacle, but just for a few minutes. Then one of them exclaims, “This is all fine gentlemen. I like your dress, the conch, the chakra and the mace. But all these are available in the corner shop down the road from here too. So how can we believe that you are the Lord himself?”

Narada pulls Vishnu aside and says – “I told you they were idiots my Lord and I don’t really trust them. So let us leave in dignity before one of them gets the idea to burgle your Sudharshan chakra or mace.”

Vishnu replies – “No Narada! I don’t have the heart to give up on these people. They may have corrupted over the ages but they are still my people. Let me handle this.” Thus explaining, Vishnu picks up a pebble that was lying on the floor of the congregation hall and turns it into pure gold. That did the trick. The whole congregation ran out of the hall.

Vishnu triumphantly tells Narada – “See Narada? They are finally convinced, though I didn’t mean to startle them. All of them ran away in awe.” Narada heads to the entry doors of the hall to check on the crowd and to ask them not to run away. He however rushes back and exclaims – “My Lord, they didn’t run away in awe of you! Those imbeciles are collecting rocks from the garden outside to convert them to gold!” That my friend was the last time the Great Lord Vishnu ever made contact with us humans’.

Though this story was in good humour, it highlights how we as a people have gone beyond redemption in our greed for wealth and glory. This attitude will also deprive us of the ability to recognize a life master when he is right under our noses. Once the ego is broken, we will be able to see clear even in the pitch dark. This mad rush to accomplish the inane will subside and we will look for a higher goal in life, to realize pure unadulterated happiness; happiness which is already within you. We are not mature enough to realize that on our own and that is why we need the help of a teacher or coach who can guide us onto the path of self-realization.

Taking advice or counsel does not make us lesser human beings, to the contrary it means we are humble enough to realize that we have much to learn and understand. That reminds me of a phrase from a book of proverbs – ‘Where no counsel is, people fall, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.’ This is the official motto of the Institute of Intelligence and Special Operations which is no department in a high school university. This in fact happens to be one of the most dreaded and efficient intelligence services in the world, commonly known as the Mossad. So if the spooks can understand that then we commoners should definitely too.

Now let us move to the second reason. The predominant description of a person is two-fold, the external appearance and internal disposition or behaviour. There is also a third layer which hovers over the external appearance as an invisible aura; the ego. Unfortunately for us the third layer rules us for most part of our lives, at least until life decides to break it and break us along with it. It is because of this ego that we look outward trying to project our physical and mental qualities to others about how beautiful we look or how smart we are. We have even coined phrases like outer beauty and inner beauty, which is one of the biggest farces of its kind. As somebody rightly said, “You are either beautiful or ugly, accept that. There is nothing called inner beauty. It is just an excuse you make to console your ego because you are feeling insecure. Have you ever heard a short person saying they have inner height?”

When we stop looking outside and start looking inside our self, deeper than our physical appearance, body and mind, we will see that ultimate, unchanging reality called the soul. That reality is what is referred to in Indian mythology as the Brahman. Interestingly, this word has been convoluted so much that people today think Brahman means that bald headed Hindu priest who wears a thread across his chest like a cross-belt and performs religious rituals at a temple.

So what do we do to lose this blanket of an ego and become better living beings and a reflection of our unblemished souls? We start to think like a dog. People who have pets at home will have experienced that seamless, bottomless love their pets give them without questions or reservations. Let me stick to one category of pets for the purpose of this write-up – dogs. Have you ever wondered how dogs get all their needs met by us without uttering a single word while we rack our heads on explaining things to other people? Does that mean that the boon of speech and language that we are so proud of is actually not one?

In truth, it has got a lot more to do than the ability to speak. Because dogs give us such unadulterated love we reciprocate the same. We make that extra effort to understand their requirements, read their mannerisms and make sure they are met without any fault. We would never think of making such an effort with people. Also, dogs never judge you. If you disappear for a month and meet them after, they are so happy to see you again. They simply enjoy the moment and your company without asking questions. This is because dogs don’t view us as man or woman, tall or short, handsome or ugly, rich or destitute. Just as their eye sight is dichromatic, meaning they can see only in two colours, their behaviour is pretty monochrome. They only know how to love.

Hence, the moment we start thinking like a dog and see the truth that all of us are a part of that ultimate, unchanging reality, we will start being better human beings. We will stop weighing our self in gold, success or beauty and start realizing that we are made out of something far more valuable, a happy soul. A happy person is a confident person and a confident person is a content person. There is a popular name in India which signifies this – Satchitananda. Sat means truth or existence, Chit means consciousness and Ananda means bliss.  

Let me conclude with the clichéd story of the lion cub which was brought up among sheep. An orphaned lion cub was raised by sheep and he learnt the ways of the sheep, how to graze on grass, how to bleat, yada yada…you know the story; until the leader of a pride of lions spots him grazing and bleating like sheep. How much ever the leader tried convincing the cub, he refused to accept that he was a muscular, meat eating cat christened as the king of the jungle. The leader had lost hope until he dragged the cub to a stream and showed him his reflection in the water and the cub reluctantly realized that he looked less like his sheep brethren and more like the lion leader. As soon as the acceptance crept in, the lion in the cub woke up and when he cried at his own reflection in the water, the cry was not the bleat of a sheep. It was the roar of a lion.

What does this nursery story have to do with anything that we discussed earlier? Well the lion cub is us, the sheep all the other ignorant idiots just like us and the leader of the pack is the teacher/coach/counsel who finds us.

Just like the cub, unless we let our guard down and accept who we truly are, we are never going to listen to the teacher. We will also not be able to think like a dog and roar like a lion.

We are a special kind of stupid

The primary necessities of humankind are food, water, clothes and shelter or so we thought, until we accessed the digital ether. Now food and water can take a back seat, but our smart-phones can’t. I will not be entirely wrong if I say that we cannot survive ten minutes without checking for notifications on our phone these days. If you can, then you are either my dad’s age or have reached a higher spiritual plane.

It is true that digitization has taken the world to a different pedestal, simplifying how we approach our daily tasks in a far more efficient and time effective manner and improved the quality of life in general. With the miniaturization of digital platforms and applications, everything that we need is available on our fingertips, in other words the smartphone. Our phones can do much more than make or receive calls these days. In fact now-a-days they are used for everything other than making calls.

I still remember the first time Whatsapp was launched. Everybody was intrigued with the emoticons or emojis as you may call them. They were so exhaustive that all emotions humanly possible were covered therein. After a week of using Whatsapp I happened to realise with quite a bit of alarm that I had not spoken to my family, who stay in another city for almost a week. It was only a matter of time before greetings were sent by Whatsapp, school homework was submitted by google apps and party invites were posted on Google maps.

Then there was the dawn of the “all knowledgeable multi-faceted personality”. An engineer gives lectures on the country’s monetary policy and the nuances of capital market dealings. An accountant becomes an expert in rocket trajectories and gravity-turns as does an athlete on political strategy and foreign policies. It is good if everyone has an opinion on some things, but not so much when everyone has an opinion on everything. If someone doesn’t post their opinion on their Facebook page or Twitter handle on any event of the day, they are considered uninformed and lagging behind. It has become a slugfest to display one’s expertise about events on social media, how much ever trivial they are and thus resulting in a satiation of egos as opposed to any fruitful accomplishment.

This feat would have been next to impossible or highly utopian until 04^th of September 1998, on which day two gentlemen in Menlo Park, California founded Google. It is the ultimate go to tool for any kind of information so much so that the in India they are referring to Google as Google Matha (read: mother) and sister of Goddess Saraswati, the Goddess of knowledge.

The topic of satiation of egos brings me to the umpteen social media apps which we all access on a daily basis. All fantastic apps, I must say, which help us keep in touch with friends even way back from school, to portray achievements, share ideas, art and culture, to promote businesses etc. However, it also develops a kind of “have to post” mania. We can’t seem to travel anywhere these days or have a good meal without posting the fact on social media. We always argue that this is just for the benefit of those people who couldn’t join in but would secretly admit that these posts also give us a weird sense of accomplishment and an ego boost. The irony though is the fact that whenever we join any of these social media apps, the first thing we do is to go to the security settings and up the security on all parameters.

In short, we are eternally addicted to social media applications which were invented by their respective founders so that people who don’t know each other can come into contact with each other; but however complain and express surprise when a stranger does exactly that and approaches us on said ‘social’ media. We post everything about our lives on social media including what we had for breakfast  and how hard our stool was that morning, but make sure that these posts are seen only by close family or a list of selected friends. We wish the family a good morning on Whatsapp rather than walk up to the living room where we can do that in person.

Therefore, in summation we are a generation of the un-social social! We are also a generation of a special kind of stupid!