Random
Reflections on a Tragic Week
It has been a deadly week
for humanity. A hat-trick of plane
crashes caused by Nature’s freakish fury and Man’s inhumanity has accounted for
the loss of nearly 500 lives. Israel’s pounding of Palestine has resulted in 823
deaths as of today. ISIS which seeks to establish Islamic caliphate is reported
to have issued a fatwa asking all women between the age of 11 and 46 in Iraq to
undergo genital mutilation in addition to killing five thousand Iraqi Shia Muslims.
Nearer home, the IAF chopper crash has taken way seven lives of our Air force
personnel, the bus –train collision in Telengana has caused the death of 16
young children and 20 more injured with 11 of them in serious condition. Murder,
rape, car accidents, building collapse etc - these make the news headlines on a
daily basis. It is difficult- rather impossible to find any logical or rational
explanation for these tragic happenings. At the same time it is still more difficult to
accept or meekly surrender to them taking refuge in Shakespeare’s philosophic
stoicism: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, / they kill us for their
sport.”
Life with its
irrationality, uncertainty and illogicality can be best described as absurd.
All the aforementioned calamitous happenings that are not man-made constitute
the tragic absurdity of human existence. Even those that are engineered by perverse men have caused irreparable loss to
many thousands of innocent people. The religious minded may scoff at
Shakespeare for his veiled attack on the gods as being whimsical. But their
scoffing at Shakespeare does not provide an answer to the illogical, irrational
and unpredictability of our existence. “Why” and “wherefore” cannot be
explained by “because” and “therefore”… Human
mind bristles with impotent anger at human tragedy which in simple terms is the
colossal waste of the human potential.
The concept of the Absurd emerged in the writings of Nietzsche and Keirkegaard
in the second half of the 19th Century and following them in the philosophical treatises, novels and plays of some of the major writers of the
20th century like Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre,
Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, Harold Pinter etc. The term “absurd” means that which is meaningless,
beyond rationality and understanding. Birth and death, are the two dots on
either side of life. We are as uncertain about the origins of birth as about
the end of life. Things happen arbitrarily beyond human understanding and we
move through life from birth to death without figuring out its meaning or its
purpose. Camus compares the absurdity of man's life with the situation of Sisyphus,
a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat
forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to
see it roll down again. Beckett also wryly mocks at human efforts to wait for a
Godot who they believe will solve all existential problems. Godot never appears
as he is an imaginary figure that each one of us erects in our minds to give us
some form of illusory comfort and waiting for him itself provides an alibi for
being occupied to pass the time between birth and death. Sartre looks at the
existential absurdity as a given fact of life. He defines existentialism as
existence preceding essence, contrary to the traditional belief in essentialism
that held essence preceding existence. The fact that we are born and we exist,
that we have no knowledge prior to our
existence, that we are thrown into the
world, that we have no choice of the world we are thrown into, affirms the
choiceless choice given to us to live in
the world into which we are born.
Absurdity of existence is not only a 20th century phenomenon.
It was there before, and it continues to be present today. The present century
is no less uncertain than the previous century; on the contrary it is a lot
more perplexed and confused. What has added to life’s absurdity is the added
cruelty of man on Nature and his fellow men. If Hitler had brainwashed the
Nazis with hatred for the Jews in the previous century, Osama and the latest
entry to fundamentalism- the ISIS- whip up frenzy against all those who do not
believe in their religious fanaticism. But what is alarming today is the sudden
surge of pent up fury in the man in the street who does not need a Hitler or an
Osama to turn frantic with anger and violence. The tragic shootings of
innocents in US in schools, universities and malls are replicated all over the
world in some form or the other. At the slightest provocation one whips up a
pistol and shoots dead the man in front of him. There is no effort to control
one’s rage or dissatisfaction or frustration and the only possible dialogue
among humans today is with pistols.
Still more frightening is Man’s losing battle with Nature’s fury. For the
last three centuries- starting with the Age of reason in the 18th
century- Man has tried to dominate Nature. Nature had for the last three
hundred years put up with human ingratitude for all the bounty she had bestowed
on Man. Yet like the proverbial killing of the golden goose, Man has systematically
destroyed Nature to satisfy his greed. Nature has now turned her back on Man
causing havoc with sudden deluges, freakish thunderstorms, tsunamis,
earthquakes, wildfires and volcanoes and scorching summers and dreary winters.
The two deadly plane crashes in Algeria and Taiwan and the chopper crash in
India due to bad weather seem to be Nature’s answer to human excesses committed
on her. When, how, where and on whom Nature will register her fury is
unpredictable. Nature’s fury does not discriminate among men and women, among
the good and the bad, between right and wrong. When Nature’s savagery strikes
it sweeps away everyone and therein lies the absurdity – the uncertainty, the
meaninglessness and the irrationality of human existence.
How do we cope with life that hangs by a thread- a thread that can get
snapped at any moment? Living with tension and fear is no living. Living with a
false wait for a Godot to come to our rescue is nothing but imbecilic self
deception. With crumbling religious faith, turning to Gods and invoking their
grace and compassion is sheer hypocrisy. Where can we find wisdom and courage
to face life that withholds even a shred of hope to overcome the indefiniteness
and incertitude that is characteristic of existence?
I am no sage or a saint to offer prescriptive suggestions. But I like to
record my personal efforts that have stood by me whenever I experienced hours
of weariness in which “the burden of the mystery and the heavy and weary weight
of this unintelligible world had hung upon the beatings of my heart”( to quote
Wordsworth).
1. Never keep the mind vacant for unknown worries and tensions to fill
it. Whenever I am doing something- as mundane as dusting the house or cooking
or driving or going on my daily walks-I keep reciting prayers. This helps me to
keep away from unpleasant and disturbing thoughts. Prayers, contrary to what we
generally believe in, are not meant just for seeking God’s grace but they
provide mental discipline and concentration and increase memory power as well
as the basic cognitive process involved
in obtaining and storing knowledge.
2. Cultivate a positive identity both for oneself and for others. Most of
our troubles begin when we develop a negative outlook on people and life in
general. Deepak Chopra says that India is facing a crisis of soul as a majority
of interactions among the people swing too far to the negative. He adds that if
everyday experiences of the majority are negative, they will impact wholesome
human development. This is not India-specific as Deepak Chopra says; it is a
global trend today. To develop a positive outlook, it is essential to think of
oneself as a tiny part of a large system or organization called life. In other
words, one has to accept the truth that one is a cog among many similar cogs in
the wheel of life. If we recognize that each cog is very much like any other
cog, and all cogs have to sail along the same boat, there will be no sense of
superiority or inferiority that is the root of all negativity, of all human
disputes and conflicts.
3. A corollary of the above helps us to give up a sense of doer-ship. We
are specs or sparks from heaven( again heaven is the only available word to
describe our unknown origin) and
therefore we bring with us some essence of that spark. What we do or what we
achieve or what fail to achieve is related to the way we utilize the essence.
We cannot pre-determine the essence that is given to us but we have the
freewill to deploy it for our own good and for the good of other people. But
the unalterable fact remains that we are only the channel for the essence to
flow through. If we understand this, we will not claim the sense of doer ship
but as merely the instrument for action in accordance with the essence that we
carry forth into the world. The no-claim
to ownership of our actions frees us from egotism that fuels rivalry, anger,
frustration and violence. This is Nishkam Karma or selfless or desire less
action or detached involvement that arises out of giving up doer-ship.
4. The best way to meet suffering that is an inevitable part of life is
to accept the principle of ricorsi – the process of a cyclical repetition of
opposite states- happiness and suffering, light and darkness, the sun and the
moon, day and night,s ummer and winter etc. The Bible cites the example of Job who
endures physical pain mental suffering and spiritual anguish for no perceivable
fault or sin that he had committed. When he seeks an answer from the Lord, the
Lord tells him that as long as he enjoyed health, wealth and all the good
things of life such as the beautiful sun and the moon, the stars and the sky,
the birds and the animals, he never asked why all this bounty had been given to
him. But the moment he is denied all the happiness, he seeks an explanation for
his suffering. Job accepts his lack of
knowledge, of ‘things beyond me and which I did not know”. Job is thus the
early recipient of the long tradition of the existence of inexplicable
suffering. Suffering and happiness are two sides of the same coin. Acceptance
of this fact helps us to face suffering with fortitude. We in India despite all
the wisdom of the Bhagavad-Gita mourn death with a lot of rituals that last for
thirteen days. The painful process of these rituals adds to the misery of the
bereaved. I may sound blasphemous when I say that these mindless rituals make
death a painful and tearful event with no thought for the dead or the living.
Death is not an event to be mourned, but has to be observed with gratitude as a
celebration of a life well lived. We should be grateful for the quality time
spent with the departed person and convert mourning to honouring and
remembering the dead. It gives us the psychological strength to accept
suffering with dignity and grace.
5. Last but not the least, I strongly believe in Seneca’s wisdom:
Meanwhile while we live, while we are among human beings,
Let us cultivate humanity.
This is to see oneself as a human being, bound to all human beings by
human ties and to think and imagine what it is to be in the shoes of a person
different from oneself.. While one’s loyalty to one’s own cannot be and should
not be erased, it is essential to recognize the worth of other views of other
nations and cultures and thereby develop an inclusive appreciation of human
values wherever they may occur.
These are my
panch-sheel – my five principles to guide me through life. They are not
demanding and they can easily be adapted by every individual whose personal
interest is intertwined with the interest of fellow humans.
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