Thursday, July 16, 2009
IF GOD WAS A BANKER
Read this book 'If God was a banker' by Ravi Subramanium, think it is a must read by all the people in the corporate world and the ones who aspire to be there. The story follows 2 boys who join a bank together and then delineates there lives comparing the two. Given the same set of conditions how the 2 boys react in different ways is what gives the book a wholesome feeling. I don't agree that the book is hundred percent correct and think it is quite exaggerated, but it is a very quick read because all throughout you want to know what will happen next. It also lays emphasis on the fact that in life, you should learn to say NO for better results may be not immediately but in long term. Written in very simple language, overall its a good read.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance-excerpts 3
Page 198
Any effort that has self glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. Now we are paying the price. When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are , you almost never make it. And even if you do it’s a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory, you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true an someone will find out. That’s never the way.
To the untrained eye, ego climbing and self less climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference ! The ego climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step show he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be ‘here’. What he’s looking for what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that becaue it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goals to be external and distant.
Page 293
Of the value traps, the most widespread an pernicious is value rigidity. This is an ability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values. In motorcycle maintenance, you must rediscover what you do as you go. Right values makes that impossible. If your values are rigid, you cant really learn new facts.
What you have to do, if you get caught in this gumption trap of value rigidity, is slow down – you’re going to have to slow down anyway whether you want to or not – but slow down deliberately and go over ground that you have been over before to see if the things you thought were important were really important and to..well..just stare at the machine. There’s nothing wrong with that. Just live with it for a while. Watch it the way you watch a line when fishing an before long, as sure as you live, you’ll get a little nibble, a little fact asking in a timid, humble way if you’re interested in it. That’s the way the world keeps on happening. Be interested in it.
South Indian Monkey trap, an example of value rigidity
The trap consists of a hollowed out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through a small hole. The hole is big enough so that the monkey’s hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice in it to come out. The monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped – by nothing more than his own value rigidity. He can’t revalue the rice. He cannot see the freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it.
There is a fact that this monkey should know: if he opens his hand he’s free. But how is he going to discover this fact ? By removing the value rigidity that rates rice above freedom. How is he going to do that ? Well, he should somehow try to slow down deliberately and go over ground that he has been over before and see if things he thought were important really were important, an, well stop yanking and just stare at the coconut for a while. Before long he should get a nibble from a little fact wondering if he is interested in it. He should try to understand this fact not so much in terms of his big problem as for its own sake. That problem may not be as big as he thinks it is. That fact may not be as small as he thinks it is either. That’s about all the general information you can give him.
Ego Trap: if you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened. Your ego isolates you from the quality reality. When the facts show that you’ve just goofed, you’re not as likely to admit it. When false information makes you look good, you’re likely to believe it. Mechanics tend to be modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they’re not quiet and modest at first, the work seems to make them that way. And skeptical, Attentive, but skeptical. But not egoistic.
Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of opposite of ego. You’re so sure you’ll do everything wrong you’re afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than ‘laziness’, is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety which results from over motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness.
The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down. You should remember that its peace of mind you’re after and not just a fixed machine.
Boredom, is the next gumption trap that comes to mind. This is the opposite of anxiety and commonly goes with ego problems. Boredom means you’re off the quality track, you’re not seeing things freshly, you’ve lost your “beginner’s mind” and your motorcycle is in great danger. Boredom means your gumption supply is low and must be replenished before anything else is done.
When you’re bored, stop! Go to a show. Turn on the TV. Call it a day. Do anything but work on the machine. If you don’t stop, the next thing that happens is the Big Mistake, and then all the boredom plus the Big Mistake combine together in one Sunday punch to knock all the gumption out of you and you are really stopped.
Impatience is close to boredom but always results from one cause: an underestimation of the amount of time the job will take. You will never really know what will come up an very few jobs get done as quickly as planned. Impatience is the first reaction against a setback and can soon turn to anger if you’re not careful.
Impatience is best handled by allowing an indefinite time for the job, particularly new jobs that require unfamiliar techniques, by doubling the allotted time when circumstances force time planning, and by scaling down the scope of what you want to do.
Overall goals must be scaled down in importance and immediate goals, must be scaled up. This requires value flexibility , and the value shift is usually accompanied by some loss of gumption, but it’s a sacrifice that must be made.
Apart from bad tools, bad surroundings are a major gumption trap.
Page 340
Or if he takes whatever dull job he’s stuck with – and they are all, sooner or later, dull – and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he’s likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others too because the quality tends to fan out like waves. The quality job he didn’t think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, an in that way the quality tends to keep on going.
Page 357
The Illiad is the story of the siege of Troy, which will fall in the dust, an of its defenders who will all be killed in battle. The wife of Hector, the leader, says to him: ‘Your strength will be your destruction, and you have no pity either for your infant son or for your unhappy wife who will soon be your widow. For soon the Acheans will set upon you and kill you; and if I lose you it would be better for me to die.’
Her husband replies:
‘Well do I know this, and I am sure of it: that day is coming when the holy city of Troy will perish, and Priam and the people of wealthy Prima. But my grief is not so much for the Trojans, nor for Hecuba herself, nor for Priam the King, nor for my many noble brothers, who will be slain by the foe, and will lie in the dust, as for you, when one of the bronze-clad Acheans will carry you away in tears an end your days of freedom. Then you may live in Argos, and work at the loom in another woman’s house, or perhaps carry water for a woman of Messene or Hyperia, sore against your will: but hard compulsion will lie upon you. And then a man willsay as he sees you weeping, “ This was the wife of Hector, who was the noblest in battle of the horse taming Trojans, when they were fighting around Illion” This is what they will say: and it will be fresh grief for you, to fight against slavery bereft of a husband like that. But may I be dead, may the earth be heaped over my grave before I hear your cries, and of the violence done to you’.
What moves the Greek warrior to deeds of heroism is not a sense of duty as we understand it- duty towards others, it is rather duty towards himself. He strives after that which we translate “virtue” but in Greek arête, “excellence” – this is the definition of quality.
Any effort that has self glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. Now we are paying the price. When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are , you almost never make it. And even if you do it’s a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory, you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true an someone will find out. That’s never the way.
To the untrained eye, ego climbing and self less climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference ! The ego climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step show he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be ‘here’. What he’s looking for what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that becaue it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goals to be external and distant.
Page 293
Of the value traps, the most widespread an pernicious is value rigidity. This is an ability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values. In motorcycle maintenance, you must rediscover what you do as you go. Right values makes that impossible. If your values are rigid, you cant really learn new facts.
What you have to do, if you get caught in this gumption trap of value rigidity, is slow down – you’re going to have to slow down anyway whether you want to or not – but slow down deliberately and go over ground that you have been over before to see if the things you thought were important were really important and to..well..just stare at the machine. There’s nothing wrong with that. Just live with it for a while. Watch it the way you watch a line when fishing an before long, as sure as you live, you’ll get a little nibble, a little fact asking in a timid, humble way if you’re interested in it. That’s the way the world keeps on happening. Be interested in it.
South Indian Monkey trap, an example of value rigidity
The trap consists of a hollowed out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through a small hole. The hole is big enough so that the monkey’s hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice in it to come out. The monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped – by nothing more than his own value rigidity. He can’t revalue the rice. He cannot see the freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it.
There is a fact that this monkey should know: if he opens his hand he’s free. But how is he going to discover this fact ? By removing the value rigidity that rates rice above freedom. How is he going to do that ? Well, he should somehow try to slow down deliberately and go over ground that he has been over before and see if things he thought were important really were important, an, well stop yanking and just stare at the coconut for a while. Before long he should get a nibble from a little fact wondering if he is interested in it. He should try to understand this fact not so much in terms of his big problem as for its own sake. That problem may not be as big as he thinks it is. That fact may not be as small as he thinks it is either. That’s about all the general information you can give him.
Ego Trap: if you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened. Your ego isolates you from the quality reality. When the facts show that you’ve just goofed, you’re not as likely to admit it. When false information makes you look good, you’re likely to believe it. Mechanics tend to be modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they’re not quiet and modest at first, the work seems to make them that way. And skeptical, Attentive, but skeptical. But not egoistic.
Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of opposite of ego. You’re so sure you’ll do everything wrong you’re afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than ‘laziness’, is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety which results from over motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness.
The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down. You should remember that its peace of mind you’re after and not just a fixed machine.
Boredom, is the next gumption trap that comes to mind. This is the opposite of anxiety and commonly goes with ego problems. Boredom means you’re off the quality track, you’re not seeing things freshly, you’ve lost your “beginner’s mind” and your motorcycle is in great danger. Boredom means your gumption supply is low and must be replenished before anything else is done.
When you’re bored, stop! Go to a show. Turn on the TV. Call it a day. Do anything but work on the machine. If you don’t stop, the next thing that happens is the Big Mistake, and then all the boredom plus the Big Mistake combine together in one Sunday punch to knock all the gumption out of you and you are really stopped.
Impatience is close to boredom but always results from one cause: an underestimation of the amount of time the job will take. You will never really know what will come up an very few jobs get done as quickly as planned. Impatience is the first reaction against a setback and can soon turn to anger if you’re not careful.
Impatience is best handled by allowing an indefinite time for the job, particularly new jobs that require unfamiliar techniques, by doubling the allotted time when circumstances force time planning, and by scaling down the scope of what you want to do.
Overall goals must be scaled down in importance and immediate goals, must be scaled up. This requires value flexibility , and the value shift is usually accompanied by some loss of gumption, but it’s a sacrifice that must be made.
Apart from bad tools, bad surroundings are a major gumption trap.
Page 340
Or if he takes whatever dull job he’s stuck with – and they are all, sooner or later, dull – and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he’s likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others too because the quality tends to fan out like waves. The quality job he didn’t think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, an in that way the quality tends to keep on going.
Page 357
The Illiad is the story of the siege of Troy, which will fall in the dust, an of its defenders who will all be killed in battle. The wife of Hector, the leader, says to him: ‘Your strength will be your destruction, and you have no pity either for your infant son or for your unhappy wife who will soon be your widow. For soon the Acheans will set upon you and kill you; and if I lose you it would be better for me to die.’
Her husband replies:
‘Well do I know this, and I am sure of it: that day is coming when the holy city of Troy will perish, and Priam and the people of wealthy Prima. But my grief is not so much for the Trojans, nor for Hecuba herself, nor for Priam the King, nor for my many noble brothers, who will be slain by the foe, and will lie in the dust, as for you, when one of the bronze-clad Acheans will carry you away in tears an end your days of freedom. Then you may live in Argos, and work at the loom in another woman’s house, or perhaps carry water for a woman of Messene or Hyperia, sore against your will: but hard compulsion will lie upon you. And then a man willsay as he sees you weeping, “ This was the wife of Hector, who was the noblest in battle of the horse taming Trojans, when they were fighting around Illion” This is what they will say: and it will be fresh grief for you, to fight against slavery bereft of a husband like that. But may I be dead, may the earth be heaped over my grave before I hear your cries, and of the violence done to you’.
What moves the Greek warrior to deeds of heroism is not a sense of duty as we understand it- duty towards others, it is rather duty towards himself. He strives after that which we translate “virtue” but in Greek arête, “excellence” – this is the definition of quality.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance-excerpts
Page 72
We just take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us, and call that handful of sand the world
Page 114
Its so hard when contemplated from advance, and so easy when you do it
Page 137
It began with a news article about a country church building with an electric beer sign hanging right over the front entrance. The building had been sold an was being used as a bar. The article said that a number of people had complained to the church officials about it. It ha been a Catholic church, and the priest who had been delegated to respond to the criticism ha sounded quite irritated about the whole thing. To him it had revealed an incredible ignorance of what a church really was. Did they think that bricks and boards an glass constituted a church ? or the shape of the roof ? Here, posing as piety was an example of the very materialism the church opposed. The building in question was not holy ground. It had been desanctified. That was the end of it. The beer sign resided over a bar, not a church, and those who couldn’t tell the difference were simply revealing something about themselves.
Page 140
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
The militancy of Jesuits somewhat resembled a case in point. Historically, their zeal stems not from the strength of the Catholic church, but from its weakness in the face of the Reformation.
Page 191
Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible, and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the side of the mountain which sustains life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.
But of course without the top, you cannot have the sides. It’s the top that defines the sides. So on we go,we have a long way, no hurry, just one step after the next.
We just take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us, and call that handful of sand the world
Page 114
Its so hard when contemplated from advance, and so easy when you do it
Page 137
It began with a news article about a country church building with an electric beer sign hanging right over the front entrance. The building had been sold an was being used as a bar. The article said that a number of people had complained to the church officials about it. It ha been a Catholic church, and the priest who had been delegated to respond to the criticism ha sounded quite irritated about the whole thing. To him it had revealed an incredible ignorance of what a church really was. Did they think that bricks and boards an glass constituted a church ? or the shape of the roof ? Here, posing as piety was an example of the very materialism the church opposed. The building in question was not holy ground. It had been desanctified. That was the end of it. The beer sign resided over a bar, not a church, and those who couldn’t tell the difference were simply revealing something about themselves.
Page 140
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
The militancy of Jesuits somewhat resembled a case in point. Historically, their zeal stems not from the strength of the Catholic church, but from its weakness in the face of the Reformation.
Page 191
Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible, and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the side of the mountain which sustains life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.
But of course without the top, you cannot have the sides. It’s the top that defines the sides. So on we go,we have a long way, no hurry, just one step after the next.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance- excerpts
Page 17
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha – which is to demean oneself
Page 24
The radio was a clue. You cant really think hard about what you’re doing and listen to the radio at the same time. Maybe they didn’t see their job as having anything to do with hard thought, just wrench twiddling. If you can twiddle wrenches while listening to the radio that’s more enjoyable.
Their speed was another clue. They were really slopping things around in a hurry and not looking where they slopped them. More money that way – if you don’t stop to think that it usually takes longer or comes out worse
But the biggest clue seemed to be their expression. They were hard to explain. Good- natured, friendly, easy going – and uninvolved. They were spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, ‘I’m a mechanic.’
At 5 pm or whenever their eight hours were in, you knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job. In their own way they were achieving the same things John and Sylvia were, living with technology, without really having anything to do with it. Or rather, they had something to do with it, but their own selves were outside of it, detached, removed. They were involved in it, but not in such a way as to care.
When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it, and want to get on to other things.
Page 63
The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. “Art” when it is opposed to “Science” is often romantic. It does not proceed with reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience. In the northern European cultures the romantic mode is usually associated with feminity, but this is certainly not a necessary association.
The classic mode, by contract, proceeds by reason and by laws – which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior. In the European cultures it is primarily a masculine mode and the fields of science, law and medicine are unattractive to women largely for this reason. Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic. The dirt, the grease, the mastery of underlying form required all give it such a negative romantic appeal that women never go near it.
Although surface ugliness is often found in the classic mode of understanding it is not inherent in it. There is a classic esthetic which romantics often miss because of its subtlety. The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos, and make the unknown known.
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha – which is to demean oneself
Page 24
The radio was a clue. You cant really think hard about what you’re doing and listen to the radio at the same time. Maybe they didn’t see their job as having anything to do with hard thought, just wrench twiddling. If you can twiddle wrenches while listening to the radio that’s more enjoyable.
Their speed was another clue. They were really slopping things around in a hurry and not looking where they slopped them. More money that way – if you don’t stop to think that it usually takes longer or comes out worse
But the biggest clue seemed to be their expression. They were hard to explain. Good- natured, friendly, easy going – and uninvolved. They were spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, ‘I’m a mechanic.’
At 5 pm or whenever their eight hours were in, you knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job. In their own way they were achieving the same things John and Sylvia were, living with technology, without really having anything to do with it. Or rather, they had something to do with it, but their own selves were outside of it, detached, removed. They were involved in it, but not in such a way as to care.
When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it, and want to get on to other things.
Page 63
The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. “Art” when it is opposed to “Science” is often romantic. It does not proceed with reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience. In the northern European cultures the romantic mode is usually associated with feminity, but this is certainly not a necessary association.
The classic mode, by contract, proceeds by reason and by laws – which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior. In the European cultures it is primarily a masculine mode and the fields of science, law and medicine are unattractive to women largely for this reason. Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic. The dirt, the grease, the mastery of underlying form required all give it such a negative romantic appeal that women never go near it.
Although surface ugliness is often found in the classic mode of understanding it is not inherent in it. There is a classic esthetic which romantics often miss because of its subtlety. The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos, and make the unknown known.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance- Excerpts
Page 4
“ In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realise that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer an it is all moving by you boringly in a frame”.
Page 5
“The hereness and nowness of things”
“Truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth’”
Page 7
Unless you’re fond of hollering you don’t make great conversations on a running cycle. Instead you spend your time being aware of things and meditating on them
We re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day to day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that its all gone.
The stream of consciousness runs broader now, but runs less deep
“ In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realise that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer an it is all moving by you boringly in a frame”.
Page 5
“The hereness and nowness of things”
“Truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth’”
Page 7
Unless you’re fond of hollering you don’t make great conversations on a running cycle. Instead you spend your time being aware of things and meditating on them
We re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day to day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that its all gone.
The stream of consciousness runs broader now, but runs less deep
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