The homework book

Everytime my daughter brings her homework book for signature,  I find something amusing in there. It is the case with every child; there is a mix of innocence, wonder and creativity in the way they see the world (and probably try to understand it..). Here are some examples on visualisation of words:

There has to be something to look at, right?

Late to school are her frinds and her (different color bags…)

Live is actually an aquarium (life has to be moving..)

We say NO with hands..

“Do and Did ‘ is the same activity separated by time

Time

My 6 year old daughter was in the living room watching television. I was reading something in my room; when I heard my wife asking her what the time was. My wife was in the kitchen and the clock was on the living room wall.

 I could not resist paying attention to, because my daughter had not yet learnt how to find out the time. Few moments pass by, me waiting.

“9.45” shouts my daughter

 “9.45?…where is the small needle?” asks my wife from the kitchen

“it is pointing to 9” replies my kid

“is it above or below 9?”

 “below”

“so, what time is it?”

 “…8.45?…”

 “very good”

Looks like my wife has been training her to figure the time out looking at a clock. But I was overcome by a strange guilty feeling. I was witnessing one of the biggest crimes that every parent does to their children – to teach them what time means. Till about the age of 5 or so, children don’t much understand what time is. They can’t figure out what it means “to be getting late”, because they are there where they are. That’s the reason why children are happy, energetic and creative.

 And we teach them what time is and this is something that takes away pretty much all the joy in their lives.

It took me so many years to find out that one of the biggest problems in my life was that I was always separated from ‘my self’ by what is called time.

I don’t know if the kids can escape from this bondage. May be not. That’s needed for surviving in this world.

But hopefully, one day they will also learn to step out of it….

May be “time” needs to be there to glorify that moment…

How much of what we see, we ’see’?

Yesterday,  I watched a video on a medical condition known as ’Neglect’(also known as Hemispatial neglect) which is exhibited by people with the right hemisphere of the brain injured (the left hemispherical injury could also result in this situation, but that is not bad as this, because of the built in redundancy in with the right hemisphere for the visual processing). These people lose their sense of space on one side (usually the left) and don’t much realize it.

This video showed a patient copying a picture of a cat and when she reproduced it, it just had only one half ! What was also interesting is that she did not realize that it was incomplete; she could actually see the whole picture.

This points to a very interesting aspect about the way we see. In fact, we ‘register’ only a small percentage of what we see around us, the rest of the details are filled in by the brain based on past experiences (retrieved from memory). Which is to say when you look at some object, you only notice some key features and the image in your mind is formed by combining what you see and what is already stored in your memory about the same object. Optical illusions and magic exploit this behavior of the brain. So the mind sort of takes a “Oh! I know this stuff already” approach.

This leads to problems like not paying attention to details, pre conceptions about things/events and also restricts your creative thinking.

 Now assume what happens if we don’t access the memory when we see things around us. You just watch. You perceive things as they are without judging, labeling, categorizing, connecting to yourself, attaching an attribute etc. We are in a way not letting the left brain come in the way. This can be a great experience and you will see the entire world around in a new perspective.

This is the essence of mindful watching…

Or will we just end up seeing the outline of everything around, like in cartoons?

Attitude

I was reading about some thing called ‘Lojong’ in Tibetan Buddhism (which involves refining and purifying one’s intent and way of thinking through a set of proverbs) when I came across this short story about a teacher called Atisha, the originator of this concept. This happened when Atisha was planning to move to Tibet to teach there; the story is reproduced below from Wikipedia:

 A story is told of Atisha that when he heard that the inhabitants of Tibet were very pleasant and easy to get along with, instead of being delighted, he was concerned that he would not have enough negative emotion to work with in his Lojong practice. So he brought along his ill-tempered Bengali servant-boy, who would criticize him incessantly and was awful to spend time with. Tibetan teachers then like to joke that when Atisha arrived in Tibet, he realized that there was no need after all.

 Though the story brought out an instant smile, the depth was touching. How many people really think of the possibility of negativity around for his/own self development?

 This reminded me of an article I read long ago. This was written by a person called Siddique (a film director from our state) about a person called Father Abel, the founder of an institution called Cochin Kalabhavan  (this is group of performing artists with lots of emphasis on humor). Siddique recalled this incident about Father Abel, when the latter passed away .

 When Siddique was a small boy, he along with his friends used to play football in a ground adjacent to the church. Father Abel used to walk  to the church from his residence and back, along the road next to the ground. The children used to make fun of him, call him names and tease him, whenever he walked past. But he would never respond and would walk away walk away calmly as if nothing happened. Many years later, Siddique joined Cochin  Kalabhavan as  an artist and during a conversation asked Father Abel why he refused to react when the children made fun of him. Father replied with a smile: “ When we were in Rome for the priesthood training, people are employed to stand on roadside to insult us. This was done to increase patience and tolerance. When you boys were giving me that training free of cost, why should I get angry at all?”

In the corporate world, I have heard the ‘whether the glass is half empty or  half full’ stuff more than a dozen times, and whenever people use that to talk of attitude, you could tell how empty the statements were. But to practice it to the  extend where everything is simply a means to help you on the path, needs something more profound.

May be that’s why god need to exist…

Which brain listens? Right or left?

Some of the literature on right and left brain suggest that while the left brain processes things serially, the right processes things as a whole.

Looked interesting and also convincing, but for quiet sometime I could not really figure out what it really meant.

But then I had this interesting experience that simply but in a profound way showed me this. As is my usual practice, I was listening to a talk as I was driving home yesterday. Though it was the second time I was listening to it, I was listening intendly. Suddenly there came a moment of laughter, where the speaker explained a point with a joke. As I burst out laughing, suddenly I became aware of the surroundings; and where I was at that point. But what was also interesting was that I remembered exactly the location where I listened to the same joke earlier. I rather remembered it like a picture.

I was amused and when I shared this incident with a friend, he too agreed to have had similar experiences. I think this is what happened: When I was listening to the talk, it was my left brain who was ‘listening’ (predominantly) making sense of what is heard in an incremental way. But when the moment the joke came, suddenly the right brain kicked in and the whole thing including the surroundings is perceived as one shot.

I think the reason why the shift to right brain was so visible, is that a joke is not serially processed, mostly you laugh at a whole joke. So you wait till a joke is complete without logically processing it and when it is done, the whole thing is just processed in one shot as a whole.

And I think this is the essence of mindfulness…

Collective wish

I was in a meeting when someone brought up this topic. Why many projects fail? The organization has created a strong supporting infrastructure for the project to execute: there are good enabling functions,(such as Training Division, Quality, KM, HR, Networking)a host of tools (for project management, tracking etc) and proven practices and proceses. In spite of all these, many of the projects are in trouble or are sure to fail. Why?

No one had the answer (it is not expected too…)

Sitting there, something strange came to my mind. I remembered someone telling me a potential reason behind increasing number of sick people around; he said it was because of what is called a ‘collective wish’ by the doctors. Though not consciously, a doctor, deep in side is actually wishing that there are more and more sick people around, so that he can make a living. And such strong wish by many doctors together actually becomes true. That’s the power of the wish. The same holds good for many other professions. Lawyers are wishing for more crime and trouble in the society, army is wishing for more wars…etc

It is not that they make this explicit wish, but deep inside, their existence depends on this. If everyone is healthy, what will a doctor do? In a way this is also a contradiction in the mind. At two levels, one wishes for two opposite things to happen.

I think the same thing happens at work too. Most of the people or groups who are supposed to help projects execute better, deep inside also wish that the projects get in to trouble or even fail. Because they are constantly required to prove their value-addition or difference they bring on to table, and for them to do this projects need to be in trouble. Only then they can ‘turn them around’ and prove their worth. If everyone in the company follows the process perfectly, what is the need for a ‘quality team to exist’ at all?

The same can be extended to ‘why companies fail’ also? Many of the CEO’s (and the aspirants) are in fact wishing that the companies perform badly (or go bankrupt or the existence threatened); so that they can ‘turn them around’.

The converse might also be true. Probably one reason for the high rate of crime could be that there is no ‘collective wish’ for peace….

The country that gods rule…

Gods rule this country. Any problem that the government, judiciary, police, technology or medicine cannot resolve, people simply go to gods and…..the problems is solved, no matter how hard or bad it is.

See below how innovative this can get…

If you didn’t get it…here goes the thinking. In India, people like building walls for their property, and when the “Indian men” encounter a such a wall, there is an irresistable urge to pee there. And there has been no way to stop this age old habit…law would be useless as this is almost a comulsive reaction.

So..comes gods.  Some one started to make tiles  with gods pics which you can put on the walls. God fearing people don’t pee on gods.

This led to another problem. Some people found it more satisfying to pee on other’s gods.

Comes the workaround: tiles with pics of gods representing all the religions in the area..(the one you see above is such a one)…

Sigh!

The muted TV

Over the last weekend, I was watching a film on the TV, when the phone rang. I muted the TV and picked up the phone; and it was a call for my wife. As she came walked in to the living room to attend the call, I returned to the sofa to resume watching of the film.

Not to disturb her, I didn’t turn the volume ON, but continued watching the picture.

This was interesting. I was trying to make sense of what’s going on without the audio part. I had to concentrate hard. It occurred to me that I haven’t watched something so attentively for a long time. And it was not easy.

The telephone interruption ended, but I continued to watch the film without the audio. I looked at people more closely (in to their eyes, lips..) and I could understand most of what is going on clearly. When there was audio, it was taking most of the attention and I paid little attention to really the whole experience (I think I paid real attention to the visual part only when there was no background clutter..)

I am all the more convinced now that language (or speech) disrupts our perception process by drawing our attention to it. Or may be there is an unnecessary urgency in us to ‘understand’ things..

When I look back at this, I also get a feeling that most of our primary needs and emotions can be expressed easily without any language. Then what we need the language for? – for all that mess that we have been building around us which is creating a false identity for us

Try listening to someone intently without processing what they say or without trying to interpret or even respond. You are in for a great revelation….

Past and the future…

Sometime back I wrote about our anticipated future being actually our negated past. Here is something interesting that I came across which in a way supports this point.

I was watching a UKtv video series on brain and mind. One of them had this interesting experiment. There was gymnast attempting to perform what is called Gienger saltos; which involves leaving the high bar, performing a back summersault and a half twist before re-caching the bar again.

It begins by the coach slowly taking her through the steps to get her mind accumsted to the sequence of movements. Then she goes on to attempt it. But she fails repeatedly. She couldn’t re-catch the bar at the end of the sequence.

She had to take a different approach now and she does something interesting. She sits down with eyes closed and visualises the the whole saltos in her mind (that she is performing it successfully), slowly, as detailed as possible. She does it over and over again. After this she goes on to perform the saltos and gets it right in the very first attempt.

What happened here? As she was visualizing the whole sequence in her mind, she was creating a pattern in the brain as if the event had already happened. So when she did this at last, she actually was doing something that she was already accustomed to –at least that’s what her brain thought.

I think this is the crux behind visioning, where in you convert a future event to a past event in the mind, so that brain can perform it automatically.

I came across another very interesting study that clinically proves that it is the same part of your brain that is activated both while you remember something from the past and while thinking about the future. (See this blog)

So I guess the future does not really exist, except in the mind; that too as past. But if we can master the art of converting the future to the ‘past’ (before it happens in reality) may be it is a great tool for changing our lives.

Of course the next question will be: does past exist except in the mind?

Two worst things that can happen to a joke…

There are two worst things that can happen to a joke (and to the one who says it, of course).

First is that you are forced to explain your joke, because the other guy doesn’t get it. Don’t even think of doing it, the ‘goddess of jokes’ will never forgive this…

Second is that the other guy gets it wrong. Worse than the first one, but the same action holds good.

If your judging capabilities improve with such incidents, that’s some consolation….

The beauty of contradictions

Last week, I was in a session discussing about TRIZ (For those who do not know, TRIZ is an inventiveproblem solving methodology which has 40 principles. This is an easy way to solve a problem using these principles : phrase your problem in to a contradiction (there is a parameter that’s improving and there is another one that is suffering) and then using a matrix, you can identify the correct principles to be applied)

That left me thinking a bit about contradictions. Have you wondered what happens in the mind when there is a contradiction? Why is contradiction an important aspect in problem solving?

I think this is because holding two contradictory thoughts in the mind simultaneously, makes the mind bit confused, and there is a moment of uncertainly and stillness. This stillness is where mind is receptive to new ideas, looking beyond the patterns.

Now when I think of it, all the religions used this brilliantly to convey their teachings. The “Bhagawat Geetha“, one of the most popular books in Hinduism begins with illustrating a contradiction. It starts with Krishna telling Arjuna : You are mourning for those not worthy of sorrow; yet speaking like one knowledgeable. The learnt neither laments for the dead or the living. (Chapter 2, verse 11 – This is where the great Shankara starts his interpretation of Geetha). Geetha is conveyed in to the stillness created by this contradiction.

Incidentally Geetha also ends with a contradiction. Towards the end, after the message is conveyed, Krishna contradicts whatever he said in the verse : Relinquishing all the ideas of righteousness, surrender un to Me exclusively, I will deliver you from all sinful reactions, do not despair.(Chapter 18, Verse 66)

Many sayings of Jesus has this contradiction in them. This is a good example: “Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”

This is what happens here: there is an immediate compulsive tendency for the mind to respond and this is based on patterns or conditioning. But when there is a contradiction, mind waits for a moment, not sure which pattern to execute. And this is a moment of awareness where you are open to newer possibilities.

I think for the contradictions to really become effective and bring about a new dimension to problems, it needs to be felt by the heart and not the head.

The problem of ‘interpretation’

Continuing the thoughts from the previous posts: A thought formed…. ,How the mind associates thoughts….

After a few more experiments with how the mind associates/connects different thoughts, I think I was not completely right in saying that our past experiences are interpreted and stored in the memory in ‘text like form’. I think it is slightly different. It is rather like the “interpretation” coming between you and the experience. These interpretations could be emotions (I like him, this is bad, horrible, I can’t take this pain…) or some priorities that we assign (I need to pay attention to this, there is an opportunity in here, this is what will make me successful…). During our thinking process, connections between thoughts are formed based on these ‘interpretations’

I tried to visually represent a thought train that I had. See below. This was a thought (thought train) that passed in my mind and I caught it after a while.

 

This is what happens. Because we have become dominantly logical people, the logical mind comes between us and the experience- judging, categorizing, analyzing. It is rather like trying to understand the ‘meaning’ of an experience, rather than the experience itself. Perhaps both the interpretation and the experience get to the memory, but our mind is more concerned about the ‘interpretation’. So, many a times, the experience fades away in memory and what remains is the ‘interpretation’.

But when it comes to the events that have not really happened (they exist only in the mind), the interpretation might have not yet happened. That’s why day dreaming still is an enjoyable thing to do..

But, why do we have to interpret things in an almost compulsive manner. This is because it is this interpretation that connects you to the world to create your sense of identity (of course a false one). We believe that our existence / identity depend on the world and what world thinks of us and there is a constant attempt to ‘prove’ to the world around who we are.

Most of the ancient religious traditions lay a great emphasis on ‘silence’. This is the key. Stop talking, and then the compulsion to express your feelings / experience as words will come down. And so the compulsion to interpret.

Another brilliant way to stop interpreting is to be with nature. As you might have observed, our need to interpret is much lesser when we are with nature, than with other human beings. Though there might still be some attempts like: what a lovely voice that bird has. But it is still infinitely better if you think of the complex process of interpretation that you need to undergo on meeting another human being…

When you were a child and probably you looked at a tree with wonder, not knowing what it is, your father told you – this is just a tree. And soon you learnt the trick. When you see a tree now, there is an immediate compulsive thought that comes up in the mind ‘that is just a tree’…

The Zen master, in the morning describes a dream that he had to his disciples.

The first disciple says ‘Master, hot water is ready; you can have your bath’.

The second says “Master, The meditation room is ready’.

 And the third asks “Master, What would you like for breakfast today?”

No one seems to pay any attention to the dream that the master described.

The master smiles: ‘If any of you had attempted to interpret my dream, I would have thrown you out of here’

How the mind associates thoughts….

Post my experience described in the previous post (A thought formed..), I successfully did ‘catch’ some of my thought trains and traced them back to the origin. I was basically curious to find out how a thought originates and  forms the first association (or connection) with the next one; which is the beginning of the thought train.

This wasn’t easy. I could do this only on handful of occasions. I wasn’t aware most of the other time and even when I was, it was not possible to trace the thought back to the origin.

But I found something interesting from the experience, on analyzing the first association. When an association is made between a new thought with one already in the memory (a past incident), the comparison is done rather ‘textually’ (like a string matching, sentence matching etc..) and not “visually”. But when the connection is done with something in the future (an imagination that is stored in the memory) it is ‘visual’.

                Another way to state this is to say that most of our past experiences are stored in the memory in ‘text’ form (when I say, text, don’t get carried away by text as we use in day to day world. I couldn’t find another appropriate word for it) and our imagination (anything that has not yet happened) is stored ‘visually’ (pictures static or moving).

                 You must have seen people who can associate two or more seemingly non-related things. (Btw, you must have also have done this yourself some times). Typically people who are found of story telling, have this ability. Given any incident, they will tell you a story, that is connected to the incident in a strange but uniquely strong way. I have been trying to find out how some people are able to do this, while others not. I think the answer lies here in what I described above. These are the people who can do a ‘visual’ association.               

                I think this is what is happening. When you have an experience (visual, auditory, emotion, conversation ….), the mind (the logical mind) has a compulsive need to interpret it and store in the form of language. This actually connects the ‘experience’ with you (the self or the ego or the identity whatever you call it). As you go along, you forget (or lose) the real experience and retain just the ‘interpretation’. Next time a similar experience occurs, it is first ‘interpreted’ and the interpretation is then compared with already stored interpretations in the memory to form the connection.

                Here is an example to understand this: You see a beautiful flower. The experience is “the beauty”, but say the interpretation is “Oh! I don’t have this in my garden”. Some days later, you see a good painting. The experience actually is the same: “the beauty”, but you are probably not able to relate this experience to seeing the flower because the connection is not happening at the level of experience. Now assume you see another beautiful flower, and the interpretation immediately is “Another one I want to have in my garden” and may be you connect the experience to the previous one.

                Since most of the events in life (perhaps with the exception of the time we were children) are interpreted and stored in the memory and this makes the associations to the past events slow and memory dependent. On the other hand, the future events (our imagination) has not yet been interpreted and they are stored in visual form.

                So if we need to form the right associations (with the past events of our life, what we have seen, heard, read, did…) we need to rather store the experience and not the interpretation. Then I think we will be able to do visual associations.When a new experience comes, immediately the association is made and this is effortless and fast.

                 This I believe is the crux of Mindfulness or awareness. When we are aware , what gets stored to memory first is the experience; then the mind kicks in, to do the interpretating job and also stores the interpretation to the memory. When a new experience comes and you are aware, the experience is compared to prior experiences first and only if there is no association found, the interpretations are compared.

                You can experience this yourself, when you are intensely aware in a situation, you form many associations to your child hood events (probably the only time, we didn’t much interpret things, but rather experienced them).

                The two problems that cause this are the ‘language’ and ‘thinking’. We have a compulsive need to interpret, analyze, judge, categorize and label everything around us and connect them to ‘us’ to form our sense of identity.

A thought formed….

Of late, I have become curious about mind and the brain and have been reading about it and also trying to reflect on the working of my own mind. And every time it’s amusing how the mind works.

One thing I have been attempting of late is to ‘catch’ some my thoughts (the compulsive ones). I become aware and observe any thought that’s going on in the mind and then try to trace that thought back to its origin. I failed mostly except on very rare occasions, one of which I am about to describe here. This gives a glimpse of how mind uses associations / connections to form thought trains.

Saturday evening, I was sitting for a meditation session. I was sitting quiet, relaxed and aware, when this sequence of thoughts flashed in my mind. It began when I realized that my spine was not erect and I had to adjust my posture.

This reminded me of one of primary school teachers who used to say “those who sit with bent backs are idiots”

….Next I am driving to my hometown where I meet this teacher on the roadside and I get down to greet him…

….My car is a skoda..

.. white skoda..

….No. It’s a red Sx4

(*Skoda and Sx4 are two car models..)

At this moment I caught this thought train (observed it) and it stopped. All this happened perhaps in a fraction of a second or so (or may be much less than that…). Since I was very aware (I assume), I could trace back to its origin and see how the thought train formed. As I retraced it back, the complexity was really amusing.

 Here is a brief description of how it happened.

To begin with, the whole thought train began with a bodily sensation (feeling my back). As I translated that in to a sentence in my head, it connected it with another related thought that ‘a bent back is not good’. This thought immediately formed a match with a sentence in my memory which in turn took me to the teacher who used to say it.

Till this point, it was all textual. Now comes the visual. I roughly knew the place where the teacher used to live. The next thing in the mind was me getting down from the car, to greet my teacher as I passed him.

Now here is a twist. Naturally the thoughts should have gone with me meeting the teacher. But the above visual was bit complex as it also had a car (a white skoda, not the one I drive currently). A few weeks back, I was talking to my wife about buying a bigger car and I told her that may be a skoda is a good option. I didn’t mention white to her, but that was my preference.

 So the thought now moved to the car- a white skoda. Immediately there was a new visual – a red Sx4.Recently, as I was driving I happened to follow a red Sx4 and I had a feeling that this was a better car and should perhaps consider this.

Here I caught the thought train and it stopped…

It is amazing how complex such a seemingly simple thought train can be. Mind connects memories, facts, emotions, text and visuals so effortlessly and spontaneously to form one of the millions of thought trains that pass through the brain.

No wonder we believe in God.

What makes children creative?

See the picture below; drawn by a 51/2 yr old child. (This is a scene from the Indian mythology of Little Krishna stealing butter from the women folk)

She drew this based on the stories she heard and not imitating a picture. What I found very interesting here is the entire sequence of the events depicted here.  As you can see, there are three ‘Krishna’s” in the picture (see the circles in the below picture)

 

This is how the imagination goes. To begin with, Krishna is sitting on a tree top and see the two women coming with butter-filled pots on their heads (the top most circle). Krishna now silently gets down from the tree (the middle circle) and then is right behind the women about to steal the butter (the bottom circle)

Look at the concept of space and time depicted in such a simple way. As adults we have developed very strong sense of both space and time, which limits our imaginaion and ceativity.