Immortal Until Death

Will I be wrong in saying that I'm an immortal - as long as I am alive, I'll be right and when I'm dead who will you prove wrong?

The Naked Truth

Underneath their clothes, everyone is naked. Makes me wonder what it would take to not be naked. If one is naked while taking a shower then does putting on clothes not mean drawing some walls a lot more closer to one's skin? While in a bathroom nobody can seen one naked, neither can one be seen naked when dressed - clothes merely hide ones nakedness, so do the walls. Nakedness is a property of the skin, covering it with clothes merely hides it from vision, so to think of clothes as an end to nakedness is like expecting to make something disappear from a room by turning off the lights.
The sun never rose or set, it was merely that we were going rounds, sometimes facing the sun and sometimes hiding from it - and called it day & night.

The Price of Majesty

All admire the grandeur of the lion except the deer that  dwell his forest.

The Curse

All my life I have been misunderstood,
forever I wished if others saw what I could,
and as it seemed to get all worse,
I realized that in the land of the blind
vision can often be a curse.

The Roots

None ever got benefited by watering a flower, fruit or a leaf; water the roots if you wish to reap.

Options in Life

When in water you have two choices - to swim or to drown. Always opt for the first because the second is not an option to being with.

Why is the Sky so High?

Because crows don't give milk and cows don't fly :-)

Death - The Begining

To cherish life to the fullest one has to die, at least once. One certainty of life is death, I cannot think of another. With every breath I take I move one step closer to my end. This is no new phenomenon, this movement began with the first gasp of air I took as a newborn. I wonder what will happen of me with death - will that be the end or will it mark another beginning? What I claim to be me was never me, the body is only a transient form of all the food, water & air assimilated through the process of eating, drinking & breathing. In the beginning there was nothing, even the single cell that I took form from was created from the non-living. So am I to believe that I am just a transformed form of the food I have eaten in my life? If my body is the creation of the non-living food then that (the body) cannot be me. What am I - am I just a projection created by some chemical reactions taking place in the brain, so with the cessation of these reactions in the brain with death will I too cease to exist? That leads to another interesting question - when was I born? I do not remember ever being a zygote, I do not remember anything from my period of infancy, was it that the brain chemistry had to attain a certain level of criticality for me (the consciousness) to take form? If death is the non-existence of consciousness then I emerged out of something very dead; out of the non-conscious emerged consciousness.
Why do I fear death if I have never known it? Does this fear not represent a resentment to the ultimate truth to life - or is it the truth, is there more to death than an end or is it the beginning?

Phases of Love

Attraction is felt, affection is missed.

The I Factor

I don't have any ego - I am ego.

The Perfect Flaw

The very idea of a perfect a world seems imperfect - maybe its because we are beings imperfect or that perfection is only a concept that does not exist, perfection is death for there is nothing beyond it, even time should stand still  - or will it move to another state of perfection; then that would mean that there are different levels of perfection but they must all be at equals as there cannot be something more or less perfect than something that is considered to be perfect. And this is where I stop thinking :-)

The Paradox of Happiness

Some questions are very elusive and this is one such – What is Happiness?

The dictionary will tell you that happiness is a state of mind characterized by the presence of several things such as contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy - which I feel are just synonyms for happiness; so that does not define happiness, it just gives us more words to play with. Maybe this situation represents the limitation of human languages since they can only point to ideas. Osho used to say “Words are impotent”; true, they by themselves have no meaning – we give them meaning by understanding what is implied. What I understand from it is that if we try searching for the meaning of things in words, failure is obvious. Maybe we need to look for the meaning elsewhere – somewhere deeper within ourselves. Or, maybe this is one of those fundamental questions – one that has no answer.

My attempt here is to define the concept of happiness and its working in the material world. The approach here is not to define happiness but to try to arrive at the basis of how it gets ‘created’.

The Questions: As ever I will rely on logical analysis to explain how things are. To know happiness let’s begin by asking a series questions –

1. What makes me happy?  - Now with the intention of simplifying the situation I will start with examples. Let’s say, if someone gave me a lot of money then that will make me happy.
2. So what is it in the act of receiving money that has made me happy? – I think it would have been more appropriate had the previous question been rephrased as “what can make me happy?” since it’s not just money that can make me happy - there are lot of other things out there that can, like a big car, a big house, a blond bombshell J make me happy. Ok, I’ll get serious now, so it’s that money cannot necessarily make one happy, the point is that money has the potential to make one happy. Let me explain why, if someone gave me a diamond earring I will not be very happy about it. The only reason for me to be happy about will be that I’ll see a possibility of selling it off and buy something that I desire. Note what I just said “something that I desire”. This point is very important – money can make most of us happy because it is a universal currency – it can be traded for almost anything, the diamond earring became a source of happiness because it too, albeit not so easily as money, can be traded to get something else (most possibly money). Now, if the diamond earring was given to some girl she would have been more than happy (at least happier than I would have been) because it would directly gratify a certain desire that she must have, so what makes us happy is the gratification of desires. If there is no desire for something then that thing cannot make us happy because it means nothing to us. Think about this - how different is a brick of gold from a brick itself to a monkey? The monkey will be happier if it were given a banana instead. So the new question is “what makes us different from the monkey?” -  I think it is the highly developed ability to relate things, ability to foresee the implications of actions that we perform or are considering to perform, that helps us to understand that the brick of gold has the equivalence to a lifetime supply of bananas. Come to think of it, the brink of gold has (by itself) no value to us, rather it will be a pain to carry it around – the damn thing will be almost twice as heavy as lead, imagine the idea of walking around with a car battery tied around your neck, only twice as heavy in this case; I think I’ll go with the monkey J.
3. So what are the things, which by themselves, can make us happy us happy? – The answer to this question lies in the existence of desires that we have at a given point of time (more on this later, this point is critical). If I were hungry then food would make me happy, if I were thirsty then water would make me happy, if I were feeling cold then a blanket would make me happy. Once these needs are gratified, the objects that were a source of happiness may not be that desirable as they once were. Now coming to the point of existence of desires at a given point of time, well we humans are capable of interpreting implications, learning from things how they and how things will be. This ability is the primary driving factor behind our actions and a prime differentiator between things that directly provide gratification and those that indirectly do. If you gave me food when I am hungry I’d be happy, but once I’m done if you tried feed me more I’d be annoyed. Now, if you gave me money to buy food when I’m hungry I’d be happy, if you continued to give me money beyond what is required to buy food, trust me I’ll only love you more for doing it. The reason for this phenomenon lies in the fact that food can only gratify a specific desire at that point of time (let’s not get into the idea of storing it for future use) but money can mean a lot of other things. It (money) fundamentally is tradable (it can do only that) and though I may not be hungry (now that food has taken care of that) but I still have other desires (remember the blonde bombshell) that can be acquired with (or with the help of) money – a diamond necklace for instance J (Oh! those feminists must be fuming now). We always have a desire or two, gratifying one will create a new one, a bigger one. I have been wondering what the root is of any desire and have come to a conclusion, a formula which is based on our perception.

The Formula: I have devised a formula to explain perception.

Δ (Delta) = (Perceived Reality – Current Expectation) / Current Expectation

Question: What on earth is Δ?

è  Δ is the projected perception.

Question: Why is it termed as ‘Projected’ and ‘Perception’?

è  I use the term ‘projected’ because I believe whatever we perceive as reality is only a projection of reality, a version of reality constructed inside our heads. This version of reality is based on the preconceived notions, existing values, beliefs and biases of the perceiver. Say for example an object will be seen in different manner by the same perceiver at different times/situations, now this example is inspired from a joke that I know of, A guy sees a pretty young thing and is filled with a certain emotion but later realizes that the girl so happens to be his own daughter and then his emotions are completely changed. Notice the shift in the perceived reality – one person witnessing the same thing but at some point there is a dramatic shift in perception and that is caused by the thoughts inside his head. Trust me, whatever we see is a projection and never the reality.

Question: All flowery talks aside, what is Δ?

è  Delta is a vector that tells whether the perception is favorable or unfavorable to an expectation and by what degree. Let’s get on with an example. Say my salary is 100 bucks and it has been so for some time and I have desires that cannot be gratified by the amount that I receive, since I yearn to gratify my desire I expect a salary of say 150 bucks. If I were to get a raise 100 bucks then my perceived perception will be

Δ  = (200 – 150) / 150 = 33%

What this means is that the projected perception has exceeded the expectation by 33% so this is perceived as happiness. Now let’s see the reverse, we get hit be recession and due to which my salary gets cut by 50 bucks then Δ will become

Δ = (75 – 150)/150 = -50%

What this would mean is that the projected perception has been unfavorable to the expectation by 50%. You might ask what the perception termed as ‘projected’ when it seems to be so objective, well the answer to that question is that the example has been selected in such as way to convey the idea with least subjectivity, in reality (well, there I contradict myself J) perceptions and expectations are never this simple.

The Rise and fall of Expectations:

Now that we have seen how perception and projected reality work, let’s take a closer look at the formation of expectation and herein lays the paradox. Expectations or desires whatever you want to call it, they are the root to all happiness and sorrows – well that is the Buddhist philosophy for beginners. The Buddha said that happiness and sorrow are the two side of the same coin, it depends which side you are looking at first and it’s only a matter of time when the other side will show up. The Buddha cannot be wrong - this is what I have realized and the formula will show us how. There are some base desires that we are born with, these desire are like the wish (struggle) to survive, aversion to pain, liking for pleasure etc. with the progression of time all those things that we have been experiencing become a part of our memory which essentially is our reference. It’s the very nature of desire or expectation to desire or expect something that we do not have, to expect or desire something that is already available is illogical. Going back to the example, I will desire for a salary of 150 bucks because my current salary cannot buy  me things that the 150 bucks salary can. I desire of those things because I am used to those things that the 100 bucks salary can buy, I need newness. Now the problem lies in the fact that new is transient, it cannot be new forever, new will only be a glimmer, sooner or later it will become the normal then it will become stale. This staleness will cause me to look beyond and search for things new. The paradox is that I want stable supply of new things – now stable and new are contradictory, they cannot coexist. Once I start experiencing the things that the new salary can buy, I will being to get used to them, say I originally used to travel by bus then a small car will seem so enticing but I cannot afford it (rather it seems alluring because I cannot buy it or don’t have it) then comes the raise and I buy the small car and for a brief period of time I’ll be happy, happy I shall be until the newness of the experience wanes away. It’s like you desire to touch and feel a bubble and the very act of touching it will destroy the bubble – if you don ‘t touch them you don’t feel the pleasure and if you do touch then for brief period you can feel it then it’s gone. Pleasures out of material experiences are just like that, the very act of experiencing them take the pleasure out of them. This is the truth to every experience – what we experience eventually becomes our expectation, it however depends on the experience and the perceiver on how long it will take for things to take effect. Imagine that the perceiver’s expectation to be a metal body at a certain temperature say 25⁰C then this expectation will have a certain inertia to it which will depend on the size of the body, if we were to visualize the act experiencing a new experience as subjecting the metal body to water at a different temperature then the time taken for the metal body to acquire the temperature of the water will depend on the degree of difference between the temperature of the metal body and the water. Say for example it will take me (someone who travels by bus) a long time experiencing a sedan before I get hooked to it than someone who is already hooked to driving a small car. This is the fundamental nature of things; any change/transition takes time  and the amount of time depends on the amount and degree of change. Changing the temperature of 1 gm of water by 100⁰Cwill take the same amount of time as changing the temperature of 100 gms of water by 1⁰C assuming the amount/rate of heat applied being same.

Now the paradox:

As you would have noticed the very idea of achieving newness makes things difficult for us. With the example that we had considered earlier, what happens is that as I go on experiencing the 200 bucks salary I being to get used to it, it becomes my reference and gradually my expectation will begin to go beyond what the 200 bucks salary can provide, I will soon realize that the small car is a small car and not a sedan. There will be a ne found desire for a sedan.

Now let us assume that I have the same increment in expectation that I had earlier. At 100 I desired for 150, an expectation of extra 50, so keeping the trend going let’s say now I expect 250 bucks and here comes the problem. The salary that once made me happy will be a reason for sorrow.

 Going back to our formula you can see that

Δ  = (200 – 250) / 250 = -20%

So as to achieve the same level of happiness (Δ = 33%) I will have to get a raise of 132 bucks.

Δ  = (332.5 – 250) / 250 = 33%

Notice how the price of happiness has gone up. This is because more you experience the bigger your expectations will get and since our perception is relative to our expectations we will have to have larger experience to create same level of happiness; and this is the truth – our perception is relative, we do not perceive things on any absolute scale but on a percentile/differential scale and the reference being our own expectations, our own desires.

Imagine the case of a person who is trying to cool himself with a hand fan. Now what he is trying to do is to cool himself, the problem is that he finds pleasure in experiencing a level of coolness that is cooler that what currently is so he tries to wave faster, the faster he waves the cooler he feels and then he will want a level that is not yet achieved. In this frenzy he forgets that it’s the act of waving faster and faster that is causing his body the heat and sweat; and at some point he will reach a point beyond which he cannot wave any faster and this will bring about sorrow – this is the paradox of happiness.

PS: Now I have built this whole argument based on a formula, does that mean that I’m tying our perception around this formula – no, I’m not. We do not have any formula inside our heads/minds. It’s that this formula embodies the nature of our mind (or so I claim). Newton discovered gravity, and maybe wrote formula to describe its nature, that does not mean that gravity depended on the formula he wrote. It’s the other way around. He created a formula that describes the nature of gravity; in the same manner what I have attempted here is to derive a formula that mimics or tries to explain the nature of our mind.