The Guest House

A beautiful Rumi poem I received from my mother-in-law today.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks

Is this the end?

Seeing all the upheaval in the stock markets, combined with meaningless rioting in London (I call them meaningless because to the best of my knowledge, no official cause was ever started), the fight against torturous regimes elsewhere – Libya, Syria, Egypt – a thought occurred to me. What if all this is somehow connected to Dec 21, 2012 the day touted to be as the end of humanity?

As the day draws nearer, people out of curiosity or fear or both will start reading more about it but over the years this is what I’ve gathered about the ultimate doomsday.

The Mayans were one the first to declare Dec 21, 2012 as the end of the world. Using their advanced knowledge of astronomy they constructed a highly evolved calendar that ends on 12/21/2012.  The Hopis and the Indians have similar calendars that show the world ends on the exact same date. They have predicted massive natural calamities and great upheaval to precede the end of the world.

There, however, is other literature too that claims the end of the world is not literal but an end in terms of the ideas, beliefs and attitudes that bind us. In short, Dec 21, 2012 is touted as also being end of business as usual and a rise in consciousness, a positive force that will take over the Earth and destroy these cataclysmic man-made scenarios. So that got me thinking, what if this is the beginning of the end? The end of the world as we know it, the end of politics, greed, hunger and power as we know it? What if the Earth rejuvenates itself and with it brings a fresh wave of life? Think of those next generation babies who will never know life as knew it, who will experience pure and unadulterated consciousness.

Really, like heaven on Earth!

P.S.: I dedicate this entry to India who today celebrates her 65^th Independence Day! My homeland, from where today I’ve been away for 9 years has influenced me in more ways than I know. Jai Hind!

The Man in the Arena

During some sparce moments of clarity in an otherwise chaotic few years, Jamie Dimon (CEO of JP Morgan), sent Paulson a note quoting an excerpt of a very famous speech 'Citizen in  a Republic' by President Roosevelt.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

What is interesting is there is no mention of whether the hero succeded or failed. Its almost as if President Roosevelt didn't consider that to be the central notion of his argument. What mattered is the one who tries, no matter how many times he falls he gets up and tries again. That man who struggles, fearless of consequences, is ultimately better off than those thousands of men who never bothered to take a chance.

This brought to mind a passage from the Gita, where Krishna tells Arjun - do your duty and do it to the best of your ability. The consequence doesn't matter, what matters is the here and now. That's the way to salvation.

Too Big to Fail

On the recommendation of a friend, I watched the HBO movie “Too Big to Fail”. All of us know something went down during the financial crisis (we were all affected in some way) but very few know what exactly occurred. The complexity of the financial system baffles even those who work in that sector, so what game are you and I?

To say that the movie is good is an understatement. It’s a revelation of how the economy works the effect of the falling dominoes, how the people we only hear of in papers and sometimes see on TV affect the very system that we are an integral part of. It not only explains succinctly what occurred but also the why. The gross mismanagement of companies, their endless tendencies towards risk and investing in securities and commodities they themselves knew very little about lends belief to the faith that they deserved what happened to them. But the movie also makes very clear why the government had to intervene – there was simply no other choice.  We have seen the scale of devastation that is taking place despite massive and timely government intervention. All of us know someone who lost their job and perhaps is still unemployed even though officially the recession ended in 2009. I shudder to imagine what would have happened had there been no help from the authorities. Timely injection of money into the system helped, as much as we don’t like to see tax payer money go down the tubes, I must say it helped.

However, at the offset, during the final stages of the Bush administration, the bank bailout of $125 billion was simply transferred to the executives. Despite a teetering economy, golden parachutes weren’t cut for senior executives on Wall Street, they still made massive amounts of money and the year of the bail out alone, executives made a whopping $135 billion in bonuses. So much for the stimulus!

I recommend everyone watch this movie, to better understand the intricacies of the financial system and of the nation’s politics. It’s a clear picture of how bad things can get if business as usual is allowed to continue and no one cares to even learn what they are investing in.

So all this talk about the movie got me so intrigued I started reading the book the movie is based on. The book, same name, Too Big to Fail, is written by Andrew Ross Sorkin, a reporter for the NY Times. It’s a Bible, a mammoth reading that lures you into its human style of characters. These executives, we only know their names, but Sorkin brings them to life. He describes their background and how they rose to their current positions. Then he starts to talk about the downfall. So far, I’ve read about Bernanke, Paulson, Dimon (Chase), Fuld (Lehman) Geithner and realized that the one thing common to all of them is ambition and the desire to succeed. They set off to change the world without even knowing they were doing so, simply following their instinct to achieve. Some, as history now shows us, were more successful than others but most rose from humble beginnings.

The story has renewed motivation in me. It’s reminding me that regardless of where you come from, if you want to leave your mark on this world, you can! You simply need the desire. Anyone can be successful, if you dare to.

Tale of a genuis

Last week I was disdained by the amount of words and needless descriptions the author used in the tale. This week, the story remarkably picked up and became a non-stop read. The descriptions and the lucidty of the story, along with the seemingly endless sentences in typical British style were endearing.

What was also interesting was the story; which does not differ much from the real version of events. So Ramanujan was a poor man living in South India with an uncanny penchant for mathematics. He was awarded numerous scholarships but they were usually taken away because he couldn't be bothered with any other subject. While in India, he wrote countless theorems, without any formal training in the subject, an achievement he attributed to a local Goddess.

He then decides to write to 3 Professors in Britain (this was during pre-independence), one of whom identifies his sheer talent and brings Ramanujan to the UK. This Professor is Hardy, one of the greatest mathematicians of that era, perhaps in the same league as Isaac Newton.

Ramanujan comes to England, makes many more break throughs, as a result of which countless awards are bestowed on him. He becomes the youngest fellow of the FRS (at 29), a feat that no one until today has topped. FRS is Fellow of the Royal Society.

This mathematician however is extremely religious and from the sounds of it a picky eater. With time he is severally malnutritioned and as a result of World War I cannot gain access to the vegetables, etc. he needs to sustain himself. So he becomes ill, very ill and is constantly in and out of hospitals. Finally he decides, after the war, to return to India where at the age of 32 he passes away. This is what the book tells us.

I wiki Ramanujan and find the exact same version, but my guess is the author chose to call it fiction because he inserts certain dialogues and instances that cannot be independently verified.

Here comes the mind boggling part -- this harmless young man with absolutely no formal training in mathematics growing up, conjured the greatest discoveries in the field. People who are not trained in mathematics may not understand the importance of these feats but consider this -- mathematicians themselves are only just beginning to fathom the breadth of his work! A man way ahead of his times, it is said his formulae might explain String theory; considered to be the unified theory of everything, as well as multiple dimensions, wormholes, levitation and so much more!

Indeed a sad end to great talent!

Dreams

What are they? Are they as some people say a manifestation of the sub conscious or are they messages from a space we haven’t yet deciphered? Last week I mentioned I’ve been having some crazy dreams. I mentioned this to a friend who said she was happy for me because they constituted some sort of a release. Are they a release? Or are they giving me an opportunity to view something that I wouldn’t experience otherwise? It’s hard to tell and that primarily stems from our very limited knowledge of our brain. We could call dreams whatever and define them to mean an assortment of things but the truth is we really don’t know.

The same friend I was talking to about dream as a release jokingly told me she has lost her creativity in her dreams, i.e. she isn’t dreaming. No sooner did she say that she was blown away this past weekend when she and her mother had the same dream. How does something like that happen? Two people having the same dream? Those of us who have read The Stand might say it’s a precursor of things to come. Or skeptics might call it a coincidence. Believe it or not, I don’t think there are coincidences in this world. Everything we see, experience and derive meaning from was meant to be.

Are dreams traveling from a plane we don’t yet understand? Are they a sign of our evolvement or how much more we have to go? And what about those dreams that come true? No I don’t mean I dreamt of being a senior executive at a big company and with hard work I got there. No, not that. I mean a real dream that few days later was confirmed as real. How does that happen?

For the past few weeks I am trying to understand what power, if any, is giving us charge to manifest our fears in our dreams. Or perhaps the power that is giving us little control over what is going to happen by letting us view in our dreams the reality about to unfold. Are becoming psychic? Perhaps in this world where all is going to hell, the higher power is giving us control to awaken our consciousness by giving us glimpses of things to come.

I am not questioning that which is and I know sometimes there is no need to even understand it. It is enough knowledge that something is occurring and as always exists to solve a higher, deeper purpose. My dreams are showing me the world in a way that I didn’t know I could see. They are opening my eyes to realms that exist deep within me, albeit quiet all along. Something inside has tuned in with the universe, how much ever it astonishes me, I am humming along.

Disdain

Why do English writers go on & on & on & on? I get that its their language and their general comfort level with the script and its usage is high than the rest of us; to whom they introduced their beloved tongue, but does that mean they should get lost in their own words? I often come across this, where I believe, usually an English writer gives out waaaaay too many details about things that do not matter. There are exceptions, of course but a lot of them talk about trivialties in such a way; you forget the point they were really making and the story you are actually reading.

This trend was alright back in the day when writers like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky rambled on for centuries because they were being paid per word. Now-a-days, its archaic. Get to the point! And get to it fast. Resorting to such feeble attempts to fill in pages isn't lending credibility to your writing skills. Crisp writing is.