A Zen Master, JK and Thyagaraja in an imaginary Conversation

Here is an imaginary conversation between Thyagaraja, JK and a Zen Master in presence of a common man in the aftermath of the gruesome killing of Osama Bin Laden:

The scene starts with the zen master pouring tea into a tea cup. He pours and pours till the cup overflows – in fact he doesn’t stop pouring even after the cup starts overflowing. The common man is not amused. He stops him with a protest. The Zen master stops and simply smiles.
Thyagaraja begins the proceedings with what he passionately believes to be the most appropriate musical composition condemning Osama, namely, “Chakkani Raja margamu lundaga sandula duranela….”. He eloborated saying that when a royal path is well laid out,why should one take the bylanes and crooked paths.

Now it’s JK’s turn. He interjects with his famous line, “Sir,Truth is a pathless land”. The common man looks confused as JK continues, “Each one of us has to explore and find Truth for himself. I am not your guru nor are you my disciple”.
Now the common man wants to know from JK the root cause for human misery. JK says in his inimitable style, “Thought divides. Ideas and ideologies fragment further. When I say I am a Muslim or Hindu or Christian, it divides. So do concepts like democracy, communism, Socialism, Capitalism etc”. He continues, “This leads to violence and crimes against humanity. The story has been the same since times immemorial. The only difference now is that with technological advancements, human beings have invented more efficient ways of killing each other”.
The common man now wants to know how one can end this human misery. JK explains, “Let us explore the problem together. Is it at all possible to empty ourselves of the entire content of our Consciousness which is filled with preconceived notions,anger, jealousy,hatred,envy etc? If one can empty our minds of all that something magical will happen. one will then observe without the prejudiced observer. One will see and hear without the biased seer the hearer.There will indeed be TOTAL ATTENTION and in that attention,an insight emerges resulting in clarity of action. And such an action will be complete and filled with love and compassion”.

The moment JK talked about emptying of the contents of consciousness,the Zen Master smiled again and broke his silence. He said, “That is what I meant by pouring tea till it overflowed. Most of our minds are completely filled and overflowing with garbage – how can such a mind receive anything of value?”

Appreciating JK’S philosophy

The other day my sister called me up from Chennai to share her excitement about a music concert she attended a couple of days back. The conversation went something like this:
She told me excitedly-’You know the concert was excellent’ . I said ‘oh-I see’; she continued, ‘The guy was highly innovative….’ And she went on and on waxing eloquent on the young artist’s creativity. During the next 5 minutes or so, she must have exhausted all the adjectives she knew of describing the joy of her experience. But I was not moved. She talked about the ‘raagaas’ rendered by the musician in exquisite beauty and showered praises on his daring and unpredictable ‘sangatis’,swara kalpana’ etc. She said the young lad is already on par with the best in the field! I kept saying ‘very good-very good’ all the while but failed to experience her enthusiasm or excitement, at least not to the same degree.

The point of narrating this dialogue is to drive home an important message of Jiddu Krishnamurthy who exposes the limitations of language in conveying the depth of one’s experience. Verbalization of beauty and immensity of an experience even by a great poet is bound to fall far short of the real experience itself. The only way to experience a great musical concert, for instance, is to directly experience it. There is no short cut.(It is beside the point that my sister succeeded in motivating me to attend the next music concert by the same young artist).

But one might ask – ‘How can anyone resist the temptation of using exclamatory expressions or better still poetic language (if one is capable)when one sees a beautiful flower like,say, a Rose?’ This is a typical reaction to J Krishnamurthy’s well known remarks on experiencing beauty without languaging the same.
I tell them JK is completely misunderstood. Let us try to understand JK’s thoughts in the right perspective. JK’s oft quoted comment is – ‘The word is not THE THING’. What does he mean by that? Words can never capture the true beauty and experience of , say, a Rose,for instance. Words or poetry or music have limitations, however sublime or profound the medium of an art might be. For, if one is unguarded, it can limit the beauty of a flower to a mere word. JK often stated that the immensity of beauty and Truth can only be experienced but can never be put in words or through poetry or music. The moment one uses a poetic language one can get into a trap in the sense that the poetry becomes more important than the real thing and one is likely to miss the Truth and beauty altogether. JK is not a critic of poetry or music or of any artistic form per se. He is only cautioning us against the pitfalls of such a medium for expression of beauty. He says, ‘The movement of creation does not demand any expression’. On the contrary every expression should come to an end for the mind to find the immensity of creation. JK further puts a rhetorical question – “Is beauty something put together by man Or is beauty something beyond thought….?”.

In fact musical saints like Thyagaraja or Ramadas express the same thoughts through their compositions. For instance in one of Thyagaraja’s kritis – ” Baagaayanayya nI maaya lento; brahmakaina koniyaada taramaa”. Here the saint is saying that His ‘maaya’ is beyond the comprehension of even BRAHMA. Likewise ,another musical saint Ramadas expresses similar ideas in his well known kriti – “Emayya Rama brahmEndraadulaku naina
nI Maaya teliya vashamaa shri Rama ” . He says that even Brahma or Indra are not capable of comprehending the Lord’s beauty and charms.
Even our Upanishads say the same thing in a slightly different manner. Consider the famous lines from Taitriya upanishad- “Yato vaacho nivartante apraapya manasa sah anandam brahmano vidwan….”. The ideas are pretty much similar. It says that when it comes to expressing Truth,words and mind fail. Know that Truth is nothing but Bliss.

Of Thyagaraja, J Krishnamurthy & Neuroscience

The best starting point to learn anything is to say- “I don’t know”. This makes way for tremendous humility, complete openness, a willingness to learn etc. On the other hand if one starts off saying “I know”,then it is a completely opposite mindset – the mind is closed and unwilling to learn.
Thyagaraja says it musically,while J Krishnamurthy talks about it quite eloquently. And neuroscience deals with it scientifically.
For instance in the thyagaraja kriti “teliyaledu Rama bhakti margamu—”,he takes to task those who assume they know in spite of their complete ignorance. He condemns those who indulge in rituals and assume that to be bhakti. If only they admit in the first place they don’t know and then begin to explore,there would be some chance of arriving at an answer.
Likewise,in another kriti “telisi rama chintanato—”,thyagaraja lays emphasis again on awareness and the need to pay attention while doing ‘rama nama japa’. Awareness about the divine qualities of God while doing ‘japa’ is more rewarding than merely repeating His name like a parrot.

Jiddu Krishnamurthy’s philosophy is all about awareness,attention and observation in order to get an insight on any matter. Of course, it is easier said than done because our mind keeps wandering and is invariably misled by our age old conditioning.

This brings us to the question of what is awareness and how is it to be cultivated. Obviously this has to do with the most complex thing called mind. What is mind? One definition,according to neuroscience, is that mind is nothing but a ‘brain in action’.
Therefore a detailed understanding of how the human brain is structured is vital to address some of the basic issues related to the functioning of our mind. Recently I happened to read an interesting book that attempts to come up with possible solutions to transform our minds. The title of the book is “Evolve your Brain”, authored by Joe Dispenza . The book gives a scientific account of how one can get access to one’s subconscious mind. The book also deals with certain interesting techniques to transform our subconscious reactions into free will based positive actions.

In the posts that follow, I will try to highlight some of the problems of dealing with our minds and possible solutions for the benefit of those who may not have the aptitude or time to read a bulky book. The book deals with these issues with facts derived from research in neuroscience.

Being creative – A natural state of our mind

One of the occupational hazards I face in my profession has to do with my role as a scientist and technologist (My role in R&D is essentially to come up with new ideas for new products or projects for implementation from time to time). Very often when a new and simple idea is presented by R&D,one irritating question that pops up is : “If it were so simple and straight forward,why is it that nobody else is doing the same?” or some variation of that. Invariably my honest and stock answer to the question is “I do not know ” .
There are two difficulties in dealing with this question. One is that there is no way to know whether somebody else has also thought of the same idea unless one is totally preoccupied with what others are doing,in which case we can only come up with imitative “me too” products or ideas. Second problem has to do with the mindset of people who can not accept a simple idea. It has to be complex or made to appear complex or at least have a precedence. Yet,in a corporate setting,one can not totally ignore this question because at the end of the day one has to sell one’s ideas to the management.
Generally the rate of success of new ideas(from my personal experience) is one out of ten,which is not bad at all considering the heavy odds against which the new ideas have to be implemented. There are people questioning the practicality virtually at every stage as the idea (or product) travels from the lab to pilot plant to main plant to the market place. If it has to survive and succeed in spite of facing such a rough weather,the R&D man has to pursue the idea with perseverance and serendipity. It is no exaggeration to say that a new concept or idea is like an infant which needs to be encouraged and nurtured by the management at each stage till commercialization. Lack of such an encouragement on our part basically reveals the nature of our mindset – do we have the mindset of a leader or that of a follower. Obviously if it is the latter,we are always troubled by self – doubt at each step and never get out of our comfort zone. Therefore we would constantly look for leaders whom we can conveniently follow all the time. The question that needs to be answered is: what is the root cause of such a mindset? Perhaps,fear of failure (and consequences thereof) is one of the contributing factors for this culture and clearly only fearless minds are capable of being creative. This reminds me of a famous line from the film “Sholay” where the notorious Gabbar Singh says:”Jo dar gaya,samjho,vah mar gaya”.

While reflecting on this problem I recall what J Krishnamurthy ( JK) used to say about developing an unconditioned mind (which is obviously a prerequisite for creativity). When JK was confronted by a listener expressing his difficulty to keep his mind unconditioned, he countered saying – ‘On the contrary, is n’t it very difficult to condition the mind, when it is so simple to keep the mind in its original and natural state which is unconditioned? Don’t we have to take lots of efforts to pile up our mind with prejudices,preconceived notions,likes,dislikes etc?’.
It may sound like an oversimplification of the problem. But then this statement also suggests how we complicate matters unnecessarily. JK’s observation is an eye opener indeed for many of us struggling to get out of our psychological misery due to conditioning.

It may not be unreasonable to conclude from the discussion that innovative thinking and creativity are the natural states of our mind which is poisoned over a period of time by our conditioning.
After all,every idea,every problem or solution is unique and has a context of its own. Therefore,It is best to keep things simple instead of analysing as to why nobody else has done what we intend to do.
A mind with a preconceived notion is the cause of several missed opportunities in life. For instance look at the classic example of conditioning with many of us including myself – to be prejudiced to think that the study of religious scriptures and reflecting on philosophical questions of life are issues exclusively reserved for the old age. This notion has resulted in a tremendous loss of opportunity for self development early in life. One can give several examples -from the most trivial to the most profound – of how biased thinking can harm individuals and positively hamper flowering of one’s personality.