It's interesting how with a little attention to our breath and a smile on our faces, we are more calm and present. I recently came across a TED Talk which describes that fundamentally every one of us lives only in two states.
No-Stress or Beautiful State
Stressful State
.
Behind every choice and every action is the driving force of only these two states. Sadly, our education, the entire system of our society, our parents, and our religion do not bring sufficient attention to our inner state.
The very structure of education at school makes us
compete
feel jealous of another's progress
feel ashamed of being less
A total compromise on the essence of being human.
We need a greater inner power to get us to a beautiful state. And that is the way of inner truth.
This truth can be inconvenient for us. All emotional suffering arises from obsessive self-centric thinking. We are pre-occupied with
injustice done to us
pleasure that was denied to us
opportunities that did not come our way
love that was withheld from us
In this state, we are not concerned with solutions to the problem at hand.
When we see this truth (that all lingering and suffering is a total preoccupation with oneself): Not only do we walk out of stressful states, but there is a great release of energy and you awaken to a sense of power, connection, freedom and purpose.
The questions to ask ourselves time and again is Are You
engaged with your past?
engaged with your future?
in the present?
preoccupied with yourself?
(OR)
Are You in a state of connection?
How to end stress, unhappiness and anxiety to live in a beautiful state!!
Enrolling in the following course from my alma mater remotely via EdX(utAustinx) prompted me to inscribe this digital post, with the sole hope of leaving behind a digital footprint, that is hopefully useful to chance blog readers.
Effective Thinking Through Mathematics Understand Deeply Don't face complex issues head-on; first, understand simple ideas deeply. Clear the clutter and expose what is really important. Be brutally honest about what you know and don't know. Then see what's missing, identify the gaps, and fill them in. Let go of bias, prejudice, and preconceived notion. There are degrees to understanding (it's not just a yes-or-no proposition) and you can always heighten yours. Rock-solid understanding is the foundation for success.
Make Mistakes
Fail to succeed. Intentionally get it wrong to inevitably get it even more right. Mistakes are great teachers - they highlight unforeseen opportunities and holes in your understanding. They also show you which way to turn next, and they ignite your imagination.
Raise Questions
Constantly create questions to clarify and extend your understanding. What's the real question? Working on the wrong questions can waste a lifetime. Ideas are in the air - the right questions will bring them out and help you see connections that otherwise would have been invisible.
Follow the Flow of Ideas
Look back to see where ideas came from and then look ahead to discover where those ideas may lead. A new idea is a beginning, not an end. Ideas are rare - milk them. Following the consequences of small ideas can result in big payoffs.
The Quintessential Element
The unchanging element is change - by mastering the first four elements, you can change the way you think and learn. You can always improve, grow, and extract more out of your education, yourself, and the way you live your life. Change is the universal constant that allows you to get the most out of living and learning.
As always, the sweetest reward of practicing such effective mathematical thinking is to discover your ability to create and nurture a beautiful mind
Csikszentmihalyiin his book on Flow observes the lives and psyche of creative people. Below is a brief summary of the same.
The Myth
That there isone "creative personality". Something all creative people seem to share iscomplexity-they "tend to bring the entire range of human possibilities within themselves".
The lesson
The author says that it would be too easy to see creative people as a privileged elite. However, their lives are a message that we should all be able to find work that is fulfilling and that we love. In fact, the greatest achievement for them was having created their own lives or careers without recourse to social expectation.
The Intrinsic Reward
We are happiest when we are being creative because we lose our sense of self and get the feeling that we are part of something greater. We are actually programmed to get satisfaction and pleasure from discovery and creativity because its results lead to our survival as a species. New ideas are needed more than ever if the planet is going to survive, and the best ones are likely to come from genuinely creative people.
As a poet writes poems to pay ode to people they admire, artists pay their homage/tribute by painting. The celebrated Malayali artist Raja Ravi Verma discovered this form of paying tributes and I am grateful for Ganesh's informative talk at NGMA which helped me realize this.
Attending his well-researched informative presentation today got me curious to learn a bit more about India's great artist Raja Ravi Varma.
Hence, I turned to the growing omniscient knowledge source of our era, that I am aware of which is accessible a mouse clicks away ~ Google Arts and Culture and these following lines caught my attention.
Raja Ravi Varma was a celebrated Malayali Indian painter and artist. He is considered among the greatest painters in the history of Indian art for a number of aesthetic and broader social reasons. Firstly, his works are held to be among the best examples of the fusion of European techniques with a purely Indian sensibility.
Attending this lecture made me realize that I needed to read more about the great people of India. As opposed to limiting myself to Europian intellectuals like Leonardo da Vinci whose autobiography I have been reading.
Birth of Shakuntala - Vishvamitra rejects the child and mother because they represented to him a lapse in spiritual pursuits and his earlier renunciation of domestic/king's life.[8] Painting by Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906)
Ganesh (in today's talk) points us to observe the positions of both the characters in this composition by the great artist Raja Ravi Varma. He explained the concept of Hierarchy of spaces used in our Indian dance form Kathakali, and how Raja Ravi Varma employs it in all his compositions. As per this hierarchy, the person playing the dominant role appears on the left side of the stage, and the one playing the submissive role on the right side. He further explained how Raja Ravi Varma uses this hierarchy of space concept in all his compositions.
As per folklore (Click here for more), the beautiful apsara Menaka (the mother in the painting) leaves the innocent new-born infant on the bank of river Malini and goes away. Rishi Kanva happens to find this infant and below are some references from Wikipedia.
Rishi Kanva says:
And beholding the new-born infant lying in that forest destitute of human beings but abounding with lions and tigers, a number of vultures sat around to protect it from harm. I went there to perform my ablution and beheld the infant lying in the solitude of the wilderness surrounded by vultures. Bringing her hither I have made her my daughter. And because she was surrounded in the solitude of the wilderness, by Sakuntas (birds), therefore, hath she been named by me Shakuntala (bird-protected).
The great poet Kalidasa portrays the infant's character and life in the sacred text:
Kalidasa's Shakuntala is crafted as an epitome of virtue, modesty, subservience, and sacrifice. These characteristics are meant to conform to the perception of "the feminine ideal of Indian women: in a patriarchal culture. The Shakuntala of Mahabharata is a remarkable woman who does not conform to the dictate of a patriarchal society. She belongs to the fifth century, and yet she represents the contemporary "feminine ideal of Indian women." Perhaps she is timeless. Click here for source
Shakuntala looking back to glimpse Dushyanta by Raja Ravi Varma (1898)
Coincidentally, Shakuntala is the mother of Emperor Bharatha, after whom our country is named :).
Ending the post with these closing thoughts ...
As a poet writes poems to pay ode to people they admire, I feel artists pay their homage/tribute via paintings. I am unsure if there is a word in the English language for this form of expressing tribute to someone. If so, I would be grateful to you for enlightening me.
Ambition is just an exaggeration of the existing. Vision as the word suggests is about a new possibility, something which is not yet. Ambition is about wanting to take as much as we can take, vision is about making everything yours. One is an aggressive way of taking it, another is an embrace. There is a world of difference. Making the world yield to you willingly and trying to take a piece of world are two different dimensions.
Business is about expansion. If we forcefully take something you will never be expand to the full capacity. Only if you learn to make the world yield to what you want it to be only then you can take it all. Ambition is about more, vision is about all.
A leader is somebody who is trying to create a situation and people are looking up to him believing that he is going to make it happen. He must be in some position within himself that he is able to see things better than the people around him. If you are not even able to manage your own mind, it will be accidental management. Managers of the world are the most tense human beings. If you succeed you will suffer is the message that is going in the world. Success is becoming a suffering simply because we are managing to do outside things without doing anything about ourselves. If the work that you are doing is important, the first thing that you need to do is to work upon yourself.
Each human being is his own, everybody is unique. Our idea of success has become like this right now.If we fail we will be depressed, if we succeed we will be damned. At present, our ideas of success and well being are not consciously worked at. Today leadership means that we are able to re-engineer the very ideas of success and well being in this world.
If we bring about the necessary shift from economic leaders operating out of narrow personal ambitions to a larger vision that will be the greatest things for the future generations. This message that success is the sweetest thing in your life, success is not a miserable thing has to go for which economic leaders need to do something about themselves.
This is important because everything that we ever know and experience
is within you. Working about the inward nature of who you are is
extremely important.
We have mistaken that intelligence means thought. The intelligence which is the very source, that which makes the body happen is so phenomenal. The way to find access to this intelligence is Inner Engineering. This inner dimension is needed the moment we are taking a position of leadership. Once you are a leader every thought, emotion and action you perform is going to impact million people. We are going with ambition right now.If we journey from more to all, we have traveled from ambition to vision
To transform a society, we need to transform individuals. If we cannot do what we can do then it is a disaster. All the technology and resource is present except the person who can use it effectively. There is an intelligence that gathers the body and mind. We need to access it. A range of human experiences are different chemical basis within you.
We are talking about a
technology of creating the right kind of chemistry. You are at a
chemistry of blissfulness, does not matter what the situations are, you
are at your best!!
Especially if situations are going wrong, its all the more important that you are on the track. Once you establish your way of being and it cannot be disturbed by what is around you, one thing that is happened to you is you are free of suffering. Once the fear of suffering is gone in your life, only then you will walk full stride in your life. Otherwise every step you take is half a stride worrying what will happen to me, if this doesn’t work what will happen to me.
Action has to be focused, a multitude of actions will lead us no where.We have to learn to do everything the way it works. We just have to learn to do it the way of the world/planet. Only then we will be a sustained success. Otherwise my way or your way, is ambition. Vision means we do it the way it works. If we do it the way it works we all do it the same way. Organizations will become monstrous if we function out of individual ambition rather than a larger vision. Somehow get there is the nature of ambition.
Human consciousness should shape our business environment. Essence of being human is we can create our situations. Leadership means we have a vision to craft the situations where everybody can fit in and everybody can prosper.
Working with people is not management, it is a big love affair. People are in love with you, they will do it. They will not fall in
love with you unless you fall in love with them, that is the secret. You
have to do it first :).
