Why are we Here?

Sometimes I think what life is really all about? It is about surviving in the world where the fittest wins? Is it about being in a race to first accumulate money, power and fame? Is it about building mansions, owning luxurious cars and having a life full of royal touch? Or is it about others, not me? Is it about feeding the poor, serving the needy? Is it about giving yourself all away for the sake of others? And in this dilemma for ‘myself’ or ‘others’, where do our relatives fit? Where do our parents, siblings, spouse and children fit in? Are we also supposed to live for them?

 

And what is this world all about? Is it a mere aggregation of professional, personal and social life? Or is there something more to it? Are we here to just conquer it, or is there some other reason for its existence?

I ask these questions to myself in silence. And every time, every time when these questions pop up, one thought that comes from inside is, we have all taken the world for wrong! We have just not understood what we are here for and why this world exists for us!

I don’t know the true answers to these questions, but I would prefer to share what I feel from within.

I feel that our real journey is not outer but inner, within us! I feel that we are not here to conquer the world, accumulate money, power or fame or live for ‘ourselves’ or ‘others’; instead we are here for traveling our inner journey until we become one with the one. I feel that the outer world and all its situations- poverty, money, hunger or power- are mere tools for us to progress within. Actually I feel that the outer world doesn’t really exists! I feel it’s an illusion perceivable only by our own minds. 

Sometimes I go even deeper to think about what happens after death. I am really curious to talk to the soul of someone who has left the world, for I know that soul knows the truth, for I know that soul can see all of us living in this illusory world and fighting the unreal battles, for I know that soul has now become aware of the real world after its death from our world.

A world where only souls dwell, merged with yet separate from the one.

Life Comes a Full Circle!

Human beings are strange. They apply their minds to play with things around them. Most of the time they complicate things, then they think hard to make them simpler and eventually come back to the point they started from! 

Take ‘markets’ for instance. Long back, before ‘human civilization’ started ‘developing’, men used to produce things and gift them to each other as per the requirements. Then the minds started playing their games. Men devised market system, a system that ensures a fair game- you get if you produce; give and take, simple! Now this giving can either be barter system based or gold or currency based. The rules of the game remain same. In ‘modern’ era, this was known as ‘unorganized markets’ wherein people run business in the form of ‘shops’. 

Then came ‘educated’ minds. They ‘organized’ things even further. They formed ‘companies’. Now they could manufacture in ‘masses’ and ‘hire’ more minds to run the show. ‘Profits’ were the rules of the game. ‘Ethics’, forget about them. These minds, in addition to creating apparently magnificent world, undoubtedly created unforeseen social problems around themselves, which were noticed by ‘kind-hearted social-entrepreneurial (KHSE)’ minds. These KHSE minds created a new wave and tried to solve the problems with their ‘social enterprises’ without bothering to know much about the cause of these problems. As a result, most of them built a beautiful garden over a pile of garbage, making the problem disappear when seen from the ‘eyes’. Parallely, other ‘non-governmental’ minds were running a similar show while their ‘cash flows’ were being controlled by ‘organized’ minds. 

Then, interestingly, came a breed of minds who dared to go beyond the ‘monetary system’. They called themselves ‘gift economy’ minds. They said, we will do our work, you contribute according to your ‘heart’. They did good to human civilization to some extent. But even they could not restore the ‘mother nature’. And in the end, came ‘hearts’ who asked their ‘minds’ to stop and just ‘be’. ‘Hearts’ already knew that ‘mother nature’ is capable of restoring itself. All they need is to just ‘live in harmony’ and consider everything a ‘gift’.

Thus life came back from where it started! In between, minds played the game and entertained the human beings!

REALITY CHECK: 

In our present world, there are ‘minds’ at all levels. There are people who believe in running ‘shops’, some believe in starting ‘companies’ or ‘NGOs’ while some has started believing in ‘social enterprises’ or ‘gift economy’. A very small number of people have even started realizing that they cannot do ‘anything’ and thus they have simply started ‘Be-ing’. Interestingly, the game is so complex and yet so simple that most of the people are not able to understand the belief system of others. A father running a ‘shop’ cannot understand his son who wishes to start a ‘social enterprise’. On the other hand, a person running an ‘NGO’ finds the idea of starting a ‘shop’ futile. It looks like we are living in the past, the present and the future all at the same time.

Can Technology Save our Village Economy?

“In those times, secondary production used to happen in the villages itself. People were not dependent on cities or other villages for most of their needs. They used to wear self-made clothes, eat self-processed food and live in houses made up of locally available resources. Travelling to distant places was unusual and migrating for work was simply not a trend,” exclaimed Upamanyu Ji while narrating his village experiences in Chamba three to four decades back. “But now things have changed. The urban-centric industrial revolution has almost completely taken away secondary production from the villages. Now goods manufactured in Mumbai are cheaper here than the ones manufactured locally. Huge machines and skewed government policies have done immense damage to the local village economy.”

“But, isn’t the technology good for us? Does it not save energy and increase output with better quality? What about economies of scale? Don’t we need to produce in large numbers considering our population size in mind? And what about the jobs created by the industry?” I was coming up with plethora of questions. Upamnayu Ji’s words had so challenged my mind that I furiously started thinking of ways to defend modern economic systems. 

“To answer these questions, we must first understand the ways in which we have developed our technologies. In earlier times, there used to be technologies that supported small scale production done my masses. There was very little automization in it. All our kumhars, luhars and badais used to earn their livelihood within the villages only. Today, we have started coming up with more and more automized large scale production based technologies. Such technologies not only require very little human labor but also boast of economy of scale benefits. Modern industries use these technologies to eliminate ‘human factor’ and derive more and more profits by encouraging consumerism through advertisements. In addition, they receive immense support from governments in order to make their product cheap in comparison to local produce. Otherwise, you tell me, how is it possible that biscuits manufactured in Mumbai are cheaper in Chamba than the ones manufactured in Chamba itself?”

“Therefore, we must not blame technology. We should rather blame the direction in which we have developed our technology. Instead of developing technologies for centralized industries, we could have thought about improving the efficiency of our villages’ luhars, kumhars and badais. It is not the technology that causes blunders, but the ways in which we decide to use it. Today, all our R&D units, including the ones owned by our Government, focus on developing large and automized machines.

“In past few years, the need of owning money has increased in the villages. Earlier villagers were outside the money cycle as they used to co-operatively manage their collective produce among themselves without using the currency. Now the use of currency is inevitable as very few people in the villages produce goods for themselves. All of them have now become dependent of markets. It has resulted into a system in which there is ample scope of ‘cash outflow’ but very little scope of ‘cash inflow’.

“Due to this little scope of ‘cash inflow’, you see all these development programs launched by Governments and NGOs. The very first measure taken by our Governments was to provide secure jobs to villagers. Doing this ensured a consistent ‘cash inflow’ into the village economy. Though ‘Government jobs’ as a measure looks very lucrative from outside, it creates huge imbalance within the village eco-system. The most visible imbalance is access to ‘cash’ that makes ‘others’ who don’t have government jobs servants of the ‘ones’ who have. These days, you can easily see huge pakka houses of Government job Holders standing next to kachha houses of others. Other than Government Jobs, ‘Cash Crops’ and ‘Tourism’ are other measures that promise to provide relatively consistent ‘cash inflows’ to the village economy. 

“In a nutshell, times have changed so much that now ‘cash inflows’ to a village have become more important than ‘cash outflows’ as they have already been taken care of by all the psychologists who design advertisements for our industrialists. In absence of ‘Government Jobs’, ‘Cash Crops’ and ‘Tourism’, our villagers are left with very little choices of survival. In such circumstances, they either try to exploit whatever they have in the nature around them or simply migrate from the villages to reside in the urban slums. And then come our NGOs in picture. They try to bring in money into the villages by promoting livelihood programs that sometimes support secondary production. In some cases, this secondary production also utilizes locally available raw material and takes care of the local requirements.” 

I was beginning to understand the logic that Upanmanyu Ji was trying to make. The shift of secondary production was making sense. “But then, don’t you think that the efforts of NGOs are like a drop in the ocean? Can we find our answers through these efforts? ,” I bombarded Upamanyu Ji with another set of questions.

“Yes, you are right. The problem cannot be solved unless we change the direction in which we develop our technologies. We need to focus on intermediate technologies that encourage de-centralized production keeping quality in mind. We need to restore entrepreneurship in villages. But it is not going to be easy. It will require a strong political will and combined efforts of our technologists, educationalists and economists.”

“So, are you talking about bring long-forgotten Atta Chakki, Charkha, Silbatta and Ghada back?”

“Yes, but in a modernized format. We will have to develop technologies to make them effective. In some cases, we will have to come up with better solutions keeping decentralization in mind”, concluded Upamanyu Ji.

A Different Take on ‘Education’- Harmony between Head, Heart and Hand

What 'Education' really means? The question keeps us thinking at times. Does it mean just being able to read, write and express ourselves? Does it only come with a single focus to secure a job? Or is there something more to it? Is the purpose of Education only limited to our ‘Self’? Or is it supposed to take us beyond our own ‘Self’ to ‘Others’, including human beings, animals, plants, trees and material world. And what about going even beyond? Can education have something to do with our spiritual quest? 

Charged with these questions, we began our search last year at Bir, Himachal Pradesh. In the process of working with kids and learning from the experiences of educationalists, we got some answers to our questions. But the answers were never the same. We realized that different people perceived ‘Education’ differently according to the way they perceived the world. For some, Education meant excelling in the worldly world to be a leader in the mainstream. They were striving hard to exploit every means to provide required exposure to their kids. For others, mainstream never made sense. They simply believed in living locally while being in harmony with nature. The focus was to go beyond physical selves to facilitate kids towards inner growth. And then, there were some who were trying to find a balance between both these approaches. 

But, what does actually work? Is there any single definition of Education? The question still left us searching until we came across Gandhiji’s simple yet sensible logic of Harmony between Hand, Head and Heart. According to Gandhiji, happiness is when there is harmony between what a man does, what a man thinks and what his heart says. The quote made a lot of sense to us. 

Driven with the quote, we came up with a simplistic definition of Education as to make one able to ‘Think’ (Head), to ‘Feel’ (Heart) and to ‘Act’ (Hand) in harmony. Digging deeper, we realized that our academics actually serves as a means to ‘Head’, values as a means to ‘heart’ and life skills as a means to ‘Hand’. The definition does not undermine the importance of making a living (Hand) while ensuring spiritual growth (listening to heart) at the same time. All it requires is harmony between what we think, what we do and what our heart says.

Today, the more we think about the beauty of Head-Heart-Hand harmony, the more we learn what ‘Education’ actually means.

Heartless Intellectuals!

Gandhiji once said that the greatest problem of the country after independence is ‘Heartless Intellectuals’. Looks like he was right!

Just look at our cities today. And also look at the people who live in the cities. These are ‘educated’ people. They speak ‘English’. A language that gives them a right to boost their ‘ego’ and treat someone from the countryside with disrespect. They work all day long; they have so many machines around them, yet they do not have any time to talk to their neighbors! Then, what do they do? Do they cook all day long, or they do household chores or agriculture? What do they exactly do?

They make machines and sell machines! Machines that eventually help them to handle their daily lives. Be it travelling, cooking, mopping or talking, they have machines for everything! They have lost their touch with Mother Nature. They hardly touch grass or step on soil anymore. They have become so ‘independent’ that the only thing they are dependent on is a few pieces of paper called ‘money’. In fact, now they have devised ways to not hold even these papers; instead they now use ‘digital currency’. They can now ‘buy’ almost everything. They don’t need people around themselves, at least that is how they feel. 

And what cost have they paid for becoming so much ‘developed’. Well, they have lost their ‘hearts’. They no longer connect with human beings or ‘nature’ around them. They see everything in terms of money. If their security guard needs money for his daughter’s wedding, they lend it for sure, but charge ‘interest’ on the principle. They need someone to boost their ‘ego’ on constant basis, and they also need someone who can be abused to overcome frustration. They believe that littering is their human right and ‘dirty people from countryside’ should be ‘employed’ to handle their ‘garbage’. They do not hesitate to play with the laws of Nature when they pollute the environment, fields, water and soil in the name of ‘entertainment’ and ‘mass production’. 

And they also believe that the villagers need to follow their footsteps. They love to control people. They love to build systems for them. They want them to get educated just the way they did! Looks like, they want them to lose their ‘hearts’ as well.

Reviving Curiosity among Kids

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”  -Albert Einstein

Driven with the understanding that the foremost quality we need to enhance our understanding of the world is curiosity, we at Sahaj Foundation conducted our very first Atmaranjan- An 8 days long Lifeskills Training Program this April, 2014 in Learnwell School of Bir region while keeping the idea of nurturing Curiosity at the center. 

Children possess an innate ability to ask questions, but how does our system respond to it? How do we as parents, friends, siblings or rather teachers respond to this quality? Do we try to nurture it by encouraging more questions or do we try to suppress it by discouraging the child? Or on broader level, do we design our systems that nurture curiosity? Not really, we all understand that.

The Atmaranjan Lifeskills training program followed project based approach to not only nurture curiosity but also apply the same to understand the worldly systems that surround us. A total of 19 kids participated in eight days long program wherein they divided themselves into four groups in order to select and complete their projects.

During the span of these 8 days, all decision making was passed on to the kids. They were free to form their own teams, choose their own team members, choose their own project, think about the questions on their own and plan the execution strategy as per their choice. Through the projects, teams were supposed to understand the working of at least one institution that they come across in their village. After brainstorming different ideas within the 4 groups that were formed with 5 members per group, they finally chose to do their project on Understanding the functioning of 1. A Village Panchayat 2. A Restaurant 3. A Farming activity 4. A Grocery shop.

During the sessions, we facilitated the entire process of team building and project selection. Once the choice was made, we encouraged and guided them to come up with relevant questions related to different segments such as Vision, Team, Operations, Finance etc. Each group thereafter framed their execution strategy as to how they will be approaching their targets, dividing their time and finally coming up with a presentation to showcase their work to the other groups. The kids also learnt nuances of communication skills, team work, time management and presentation skills through participating in different group activities and games before hitting the ground on Sunday to conduct field work and interact with their targeted people.

In the end, each team was given a chance to present their findings and learnings in front of the facilitators and other group members. They all loved it as they found the program quite refreshing with lots of ground work. We also used meditation and prayers to make kids internalize the learnings of each day.

The highlights of the whole program were to understand the importance of asking questions and working harmoniously in a team. In some of our participants words:

“I realized how important it is to ask questions and not take things as they are given.” – Muskaan, Class 7

“I loved going to Panchayat and meeting the Sarpanch to ask a lot of questions on the work they do.” – Rohit, Class 8

“I understood that until I ask questions I cannot understand anything completely, also supporting my team members made me happy.” – Neha, Class 9

There is never nothing going on!

Life has got its miracles, its own plans. Every moment, things which might seem mysterious to us are occurring to support in our adventures. Every moment, people are planning for us, are waiting to know us, are getting ready to support us in our lives’ journey. They will encounter us on the right time. They will just appear, with or without any logic. Things will fall in place at the right time. They have to. Such is the beauty of the nature.

So, what best can we do now to ensure the beauty in our lives? How do we figure out our purpose? How do we know the people we are supposed to know? How do we gain knowledge that we might require in our journey? How do we do all that our mind asks us to do? How do we prepare ourselves at the best?

The answer is simple: Do nothing! Just be in the now! Everything shall be taken care of at the right time. People, knowledge, money, wisdom- all shall come at your disposal at the right time. The best you can do right now is to be in the very moment. Your full attention is required for the present moment to reveal its beauty. Chances are high that you will lose a connection, an opportunity, if you lose track of the present moment!