Foolishness is better than smartness......

The above statement may seem very strange to many. Generally smartness is more sought after quality than foolishness. Let me clarify the statement, before proceeding into the blog. Smartness is referred as an attribute of the mind, while foolishness is referred as attribute of the heart.

There are famous quotes on "foolishness" which we find generally difficult to comprehend.

Steve Jobs's famous quote "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish".
Why he is talking of foolishness? Even though most of us know that he one of the geniuses of present times.

"I learned pretty soon that it was essential to fail and be foolish."
― Daniel Day-Lewis, only three-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor

"Until you're ready to look foolish, you'll never have the possibility of being great."
― Cher

“People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.”
― Alice Walker

Lets begin with a zen story.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.

Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.

Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The story is such that, it takes certain level of foolishness, to get something out of it. Smart people may find it incomplete, and may not get an inch of it.

We often felt that decision that we take from heart (foolishness) are often the best ones. The decision that we take, after lot of deliberations and calculations, are mostly mind based. They may bring material gain, but not peace of mind and bliss in a long run. Why it is so?

Decisions by heart are often not you own decisions. These decisions are taken by you only, when you forget yourself as a person. It seems, these are the decisions of existence, not yours. These decisions are in tune with the existence and that is why, it bring peace and harmony  not only in our lives but for everyone. On the contrary, decisions taken by mind are centered on us as a person. While taking decisions by mind, we do not care for others and existence. The result of all such decisions can only bring stress and disharmony for you and all. People who practice smartness may achieve lot of things, but may miss life. On the other hand, people who can be little fool may be at peace and experience life. Also foolish people are lovable and liked by many, but that is not generally true for smart people. Foolish people have many friends, but smart people generally have opportunistic friends. 

So how to nuture foolishness in our lives. Foolishness is related to the wisdom. And it seems, it is not possible to achieve foolishness by mind. 

"Foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom."
― Witold Gombrowicz, Polish author

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse

We can say that foolishness is the attribute of the wise. It is very similar to the saying that forgiveness is the attribute of the brave.

We can imbibe foolishness by lot of attention. Our attention is generally almost nil. That is why we are not able to concentrate. This is what even Karma Yoga is saying, “Just concentrate on your actions, forget the results”, as results disturbs our attention and concentration.

Everything around us is teaching us foolishness. But it is us who do not want to learn. That is the reason, everyone find peace in the company of serene and calm nature. People who are extremely peaceful, like great masters, are the ones who can help us learn foolishness.

Another easy way of learning foolishness is the company of children. Children are free from ego, past and future, and they are in joy state almost all the time. They can play with anything, it does not matter whether it is broken or inexpensive etc.  May be it is gift of nature that children, irrespective of whether he/she born in poor or rich family, is enjoying this bliss state. But as we grow, we start drawing happiness from material things, and bring endless suffering for us, which is stupidity.  It is even said that, it is better to spend time in the company of children in case you are not able to go to places of worship. There is a famous shayari (couplet) in this regard.

घर से मस्जिद है बहुत दूर चलो, यूँ कर लें

किसी रोते हुए बच्चे को हँसाया जाये

ghar se masjid hai bahut duur chalo, yuuN kar  len

kisii rote hue bachche ko ha.Hsaayaa  jaaye)

This couplet is from a famous poet Nida Fazli. There is an interesting conversation between Nida Fazli and a priest. Priest got angry hearing such a couplet. He asked Nida Ji, “How you can justify that; bringing laugh to a crying child is better than visiting places of worship”. Nida Ji said, “I know just this; it is you who have made places of worship they are artificial, but children are made by god himself/herself ".

There are few words, where their pronunciation in hindi has a close correlation to their meaning in hindi/English. Let us say word, pounced as ‘Buddhu’ in hindi, having a meaning ‘fool’. This word has close correlation with word ‘Buddha’. If you ask a smart person, he will say Gautama (Siddharta) was a fool to have left the kingdom and went to jungle. But a foolish person can only appreciate, the act and know what Buddha has achieved. Similarly, the word फूल pounced as ‘fool’ in hindi, having a meaning ‘flower’. It can be correlated as; someone who is ready to be little foolish, can only blossom and can have the fragrance of a flower.

Ending the blog on a lighter note. From now onward, if someone says to you that 'you are a fool'. There is no reason for you to be angry, you can say thanks to him/her for the compliment, and just laugh....

Your valuable comments are welcome. Learning by sharing.

We are responsible for all our actions and outcomes....

Sigmund Freud once quoted, "Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility." It seems that we are responsible for all our actions and all our results/outcomes. Other way of saying the same thing is: we are responsible for our destiny and freewill.

Most of us will acknowledge that we never accept the above claim totally. We always do it in parts, that too, as per our convenience. Also we always change sides, in such a way, that it suits our ego. For example., When we get rewards/awards, we claim that it was my action and freewill. But when rejection/criticism comes our away, we say that we are not responsible for it, and so and so person, or so and so situation (destiny), is the cause for it. Can you see the game, we are playing with ourselves. We are not even honest with ourselves. Most of the teachers mentioned that ''honesty with one selves is the key to bliss". But who want bliss? (see the Freud statement above).

We agree for a compromised life (slavery) because we do not want to take responsibility. We should either totally believe that everything in our life is due to others or external actions (destiny) or everything is due to our actions (freewill). In choosing the either way, we may reach bliss. But are these two ways of analyzing are different at all or are they same? They seem to be same. This Karma Yoga statement says the same, "Do your actions (freewill) without bothering about the results (destiny)". Destiny will be according to you, if you just concentrate on your freewill. 

It is rather interesting to see that, the attributes of a spiritually inclined person is totally in contrast or opposite to common person (which we discussed above). If someone gives him/her any reward/award, he/she will immediately disown it, mentioning it as effort of others, but if someone criticizes him/her for anything, he/she will immediately accepts and own it. Why this difference in thinking? Essentially, a spiritual person always tries to reduce his/her ego by his/her actions, but a normal person always enhances his/her ego by his/her actions. This observation is a good method that can help distinguish the nature of person, but not foolproof though. It is sometimes misused by few persons to cheat others. Anyway, truth cannot be hidden for long.

A really ideal person will not bother about either freewill or destiny. He/she just lives, without really thinking too much about it. So then how to reach this ideal state, where, both the notions (freewill/destiny) disappears from our mind. The notion can disappear, only when, we can prove that these are same. Destiny is same as freewill and vice versa.

Vivekananda had a deep understanding on this topic. One of my senior colleague today mentioned this to me. Vivekananda considered all past moments as destiny and future events as freewill. Destiny can be defined for events that are already happened, while freewill is futuristic. We will happy to agree with this statement. So if destiny has to merge with freewill, the past has to merge with future. In other way, time should disappear from our understanding, and we can reach timeless state.

Let us use notion of time so solve this mystery. Let us say, we are now at time T = 0. Then, let us imagine that we have freewill over next DeltaT time. After executing our freewill for next DeltaT time, we are in time (T = DeltaT). Now at time  (T = DeltaT) looking backwards, we cannot change anything, then it can be considered in the domain of destiny. Can you notice the difference? At time T = 0, we thought we have freewill for next DeltaT time, but at T = DeltaT, we think that the previous DeltaT is destiny. So it is really freewill time or destiny time? If the time is same, then the destiny and freewill are also same. What we have done here? We have taken assistance from Einstein Theory of Relativity. We have shifted the observer at different instants of time to define our notion of destiny and freewill. Basically, this understanding tells us that, destiny as well as freewill are only time notions and it is only our imagination. Going little deeper on this, if we make DeltaT tending towards zero, i.e. very very small time, we may be able to nearly merge destiny and freewill. 

There can be a another way of looking. We never acknowledge the enabling situations that exists around us which helps us to execute our actions. We take them for granted. Even when we are executing our freewill, there is infinite destiny around us which is present, that enable us in execution. Otherwise how we can do anything. This destiny is sometimes referred as 'grace' by many masters. Freewill can only exist with the help of destiny. Difficult to accept, but true.

Thanks for reading. Your valuable comments are welcome. Learning by sharing