Lao Tzu And The west-Delhi Punjaabi

Lao Tzu walked with his long-time friend each morning. He spoke sparingly, close to nothing. The friend follows suit.

One day the friend has a visitor. He brings him along for the stroll. Lao welcomes him and they set-off. As always, neither Lao nor the friend utter a word. The silence is unsettling.

The visitor, a west-Delhi Punjaabi, had only ever combined his morning yap-yap with a ghost of a walk. Nothing more, his triglyceride-laden heart would permit. This, to the tune of loud methane-emissions, embarrassing Pammi auntie.

Twenty minutes in, he’s ready to blow his lid off.

‘What a peaceful, sublime morning’. He looks at Lao. He looks at his host. The host looks at Lao. Not a word is spoken, not a step missed; as if nothing happened.

Fighting feelings of being snubbed, he resorts to mentally planning his day, rehearsing his negotiation strategy, his arguments and retorts. He’s due to meet local manufacturers of cheap electronics later.

The walk consummated, Lao quietly whispers into his friend’s ear. ‘Avoid him tomorrow. He’s but a gossip-monger.’ They bid good-byes.

*

That evening, the friend pays Lao Tzu an unscheduled visit.

Friend: I was quite troubled by your manner this morning. He only once complimented nature’s beauty. It hardly fits your description of him.

LT (after a pregnant pause): My dear Sir, I must talk about beauty. What is beauty?

Is it out there in what you see? In the mountains, the sunrise, the pines, the birds, in the grandeur of the Gompa?

Or is it in the eye of the beholder as they say? In the eye that is trained to appreciate proportion, depth, shadows. And dismiss that which has not all of the above.

Or is it in neither? What is beauty?

*

Beauty Sir, I submit to you, is when 'you' are not. Beauty is when the mind, which is thought, is knocked-out and hence time, being a creation of the mind, ceases to be. It may never be expressed but that’s an entirely trivial matter.

*

It is only when the mind snaps back, comparative studies are made, commentaries written and universities teach art-appreciation.

These are ancillary matters; matters of a restless mind seeking titillation, increasingly matters of commerce too; art consultants advise investment in high-art. But beauty is long gone by then.

Your guest’s words only revealed that he was untouched by the spirit of the morning, for the faintest glimpse of it nudges even a chattering mind into the timeless.

Deeply pensive, the friend walked back.

**

Pragnya, You Beauty!!

The Vedic rishis called it Pragnya, the Sloan Management Review calls it a ‘Systems-thinking’ approach. Buzz-fucking-words till we distill their essence and live each moment with an extraordinary awareness.

Trust a Zen parable to facilitate a deeper inquiry.

A Master swordsman had grown old. He decided it was time to pass his legacy to the most able of his three sons. He sent out a word that he wanted to see them.

The youngest one was called in first. As he entered through the door, an apple that had been precariously placed atop, fell. In one swift motion he pulled out his sword and slashed the falling fruit in two precise halves. He was asked to wait.

The second son was called. The apple fell as he entered through the door and he conveniently caught it by his side.

It was now the eldest son’s turn. As he entered, he reached for the top of the door, picked the apple and offered it to his father.

The swordsman called all three sons. To the youngest son he said, ‘You move like a butterfly and sting like a bee.  Your technique is flawless. Keep up the good work.’

To his second son he said, ‘You’re almost there. I hope you will continue in the same spirit.’

And to the eldest son, he said, ‘You are now ready to begin’.

**

The Orientals and the Occidentals alike have pondered what it means to be wise. To understand our world in a sense that’s more evolved than raw numbers and analytics that turn its wheels. Also, what are the limits of epistemic access? What can be known? Is wisdom actually capable of prescience as suggested in this story?

Some would pursue this inquiry along the line of statistics, research, projections, boggling computers and haloed experts. I am not convinced. All the above have been marshaled to manufacture the greatest crisis of our times and to support the loudest louts. The problem is much more human; I want to go deep.

A wise man was challenged by a yuppy to tell whether the dove he was hiding in his coat was dead or alive. ‘If he says it’s dead I’ll present the bird as it is. Otherwise, I’ll break its neck and show it dead’, thought the yuppy.

And the wise man said, ‘The dove is dead. Now, please set it free.’

How does one unpack that?

**

Information hierarchy,

Signal -> Data -> Information -> Knowledge -> Wisdom

Knowledge is more sophisticated than information. It's processed, value-added information. Wisdom is even more special. To be wise is to have an intimate access to knowledge from across arenas of time and space. By intimate I mean actionable. Knowledge that has been customized and integrated so there’s no execution-lag.

Wisdom neatly stitches together relevant knowledge, culled from across time and space into a coherent reality. In total attention, the mind begins to uncover wisdom.

**

Through this rickety lens, I peered at the Madoff scam and the Shakespearean tragedy that ensued.

Bernie Madoff ran the biggest Ponzy scheme in history, swindling investors off $65 billion before his arrest in Dec ’08. He was a Wall Street legend and a pioneer, a one-time non-executive chairman of NASDAQ managing his own hedge-fund.

It was reported that he never lost money when in fact, Bernie had not bought or sold a single dollars' worth of stock with investor’s money. Not one trade had been placed in years. He just used the sum as his personal piggy-bank. Earlier investors were paid-off with new inflows, the classic Ponzi.

**

When it all came down, Bernie was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Counseled by lawyers, his sons severed all connection with him and their mother, refusing to provide a bail-bond for him at one point. The older son, Marc 42, couldn’t bear the accusations of complicity and committed suicide following which Bernie’s devoted wife of almost 5 decades, divorced him. The daughter-in-law squarely blamed him and came out with the dirty linen on national TV. Some part of their wealth was seized.

One of his partners, Jeffery Picower, the largest feeder of money and the biggest beneficiary from the fund was found dead in the pool of his ocean-front mansion.

**

From the prison Bernie said, ‘I feel happier than I have been in years. I lived the last 20 years of my life in fear. Now I am no longer in control of my life, I have no decisions to make and that is a great relief.’

He acknowledges that he should be punished, that he destroyed his family and feels terrible remorse. He’s depressed and has horrible nightmares. He says he contemplated suicide earlier but did not have the courage.

**

Bernie’s daughter-in-law recollects how once in a very fancy store, he matter-of-factly bragged about ‘whatever his wife touches is dutifully delivered to her’.

A wiser Bernie would,

..see that the ‘anything she touches, she gets’ life is being paid for by the Pensioner’s fund. The $700 spent on the useless trinket, set some kid in Texas back on his college tuition by a couple of months.

..see his young son lying in a coffin as he peered into his collection of Rolex watches or Belgian loafers.

..experience jail-time, horrible nightmares and feel the agony of contemplating suicide while partying on the Bull, his luxurious 55-foot vintage yacht.

Wall Street smarts know this better than most but how deep is this knowing? To intimately know so it informs and directs action is pickled in quiet attention. That’s Pragnya!

**

What is time? Is it so far-fetched to see into the future?
A case for prescience.

Let’s throw it wide open. Let’s be brave. Let’s for once walk our talk about stepping out of our comfort zone. Let’s have our imagination grapple with a novel concept. Let’s surf the wave of space-time.

Theoretical physicists acknowledge a great mystery called the ‘mystery of the direction of time’. The idea that, ‘there is a fundamental sense in which the laws of physics don’t make any interesting distinction between past and future’.

It is a puzzle from the standpoint of these laws that we should be able to remember the past and not know the future. It is a puzzle why we should think that by acting now we can affect the future and not the past.

It is so fundamental to the way we experience the world that to not be curious about it is to be three-quarters of the way to being dead.

- David Albert, theoretical physicist on the ‘mystery of the direction of time’

What a gun of an attitude!

**