Skip to main content

The loin cloth philosophy

Once, a wealthy and a powerful family man decided to embrace the Zen way of life. So he renounced everything – except for his loin cloth. But the rats in his hut were prying on the loin cloth (good that those were not squirrels) and hence he brought a cat to take care of the rats. Now, the cat needed milk, so he had to bring a cow. The cow needed to be attended, so he brought in a maiden. Shortly, he fell in love with the maiden and went back to square one.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I remembered the ‘simple life’ days when we used to hop rental homes. All that mattered would be 2 sky bags and a taxi. This time home moving was a few bruises, a sore back and shoulders, a loss of 2 kgs of body weight and a week’s time off from work. Mentally, it was like moving Mount Kinabalu. All the time, I had been wondering about how junk got accumulated. And that’s when the story above came to mind.

I consulted Sujatha’s thick yellow book – The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. For the uninitiated, Patanjali was the sage who documented the ‘open source’ version of the Yoga 2500 years ago. To him, it is not just the stretches you do once a week ogling at babes in True Yoga, still cursing your boss, complaining about your bonus and scheming how to cheat income tax in your mind. It is a holistic life style with codes of conduct (called the 8 limbs of yoga). Under the topic ‘Non-Possession' (aparigraha), Patanjali talks about the 4 folds of misery of accumulating objects

Misery 1 : The effort and time spent in researching for, running around, paying and buying objects and the buyer’s remorse that follows. Darn not simple if your spouse is involved in it too.

Misery 2 : The effort and time spent in maintaining things. Typical scene in my home involves us yelling at each other every few hours on unclosed wardrobes, wet towels on the bed, strewn staplers on the floor, un-repaired equipments, unpaid bills…

Misery 3 : Things do wither and expire. The pain of loss and withdrawal syndrome due to that.

Misery 4 : It is getting caught up in the continuous cycle of buying and replacing things. Called ‘upgrading’ in the consumer lingo.

Hmm…. even the possession of just a loin cloth is powerful enough to drag one down. Is there a way out?
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 7, 2009 at 1:59 PM

    Learn to catch rats with your bare hands.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJuly 8, 2009 at 12:33 AM

    Why do you need a way out? I am not sure either that the other way will "pull you up".. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Raja SPJuly 10, 2009 at 10:04 AM

    Anonymous, yes, that probably is the approach to the solution. I guess, its about drawing a line on the wants and needs and trying not to get sucked into the 'rat' race. People who lived that way had a fulfilling life and stand a great example ever (Gandhi, Teresa...).

    Cheenu, dont you want your name in that list?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Date - Part 1

“Good Morning. How is everything? Did you manage to have an early breakfast date with yourself?” I was on the bed in a hotel room in Jakarta when that SMS woke me up. I only managed to get a very few hours of sleep that night. Even in that, my mind went churning non-stop on some meaningless, unconnected things. I was literally aware of all that turmoil in the half sleep, twisting and tossing through it. Back to the SMS. All the SMS I get usually are with a single consistent purpose - my colleagues trying to find my whereabouts. Note - none of them is a hot babe. (This is altogether a different topic - how come no hot chick in this whole damn world manages to become an IT architect!!) Oh, for a change, I do occasionally get some irritating marketing campaigns. So, it is not a wonder that this message sprang me awake like a Maasai Warrior. (Maasai are an African tribe famous for their ability to rise from the deepest sleep to a state of total combat readiness in a matter of seconds)...
2 comments
Read more

Birthdays and Facebook

I read about a guy who had 400+ friends in Facebook. One day he woke up as a curious little wanker and wondered if he is really that sociable. So he organized a party and sent invitations to all his contacts over Facebook. 50% confirmed and another 20% were tentative. He was delighted - that’s one hell of a response, actually. The real day came. Our man waited at the venue, which happened to be a popular joint, but no single soul turned up. An hour later, one woman came but she also left in the next 30 minutes. He had 400 friends and yet he ended up drinking alone that night. So the question to ponder is how close are our virtual worlds to the reality? . But my case was quite not as somber. Yesterday was my birthday. Facebook reminded of it to a whole lot of my gang. Some of them have never wished me in decades and some are new. How exciting! So here is my big thanks to all my dear friends for the wishes over calls, sms and facebook. You made me feel special. Special thanks to cutie p...
9 comments
Read more

Sift Audience Data Query Language (DQL) – 1

I had been thinking long and hard on enhancing the Audience Management capability in Sift. Everybody seems to have it - from the mighty big players to the obscure ones. In such a crowded space, it is of prime importance to have a very clear and a striking "unique selling proposition" before you boast that you have this capability too. Basically, the tool shall solve a problem that was very challenging previously, in a cost effective way that was not thought of commonly. Now, Sift is a real time analytics engine. So obviously, the profiles it builds about individual entities are accurate - up to the second. That gets a lot of brownies to start with. And as Sift would limitlessly process data, the data points it can compute for a single entity would also be much wider in range. This is great too. But, 1. What if I add "relationships between the entities" into this mix? For example, retrieving " all customers who just visited a particular online storefront...
7 comments
Read more