Whom are you gonna eat today?

I saw the butcher reach out
and grab a chicken in its coop
The bird fluttered and croaked
t'was probably its last moment

And I saw goats tied outside
watching the bloodied log
without worries that they could
end up hacked and minced on it

When I saw the eggs
just before I cracked them
I wondered whether they
should've cracked on their own.

Then I saw neatly piled vegetables
Lifeless but still alive with freshness
I thought that these were also
once growing, nourishing parts of a plant.

I realised how futile would it be
to survive without devouring a life
for life can only sustain itself
through another life


End Notes :
The point I was trying to make was, simply..kill only if you are going to eat it..dont kill for fun. When we say we are vegetarians we still kill a plant to nurture ourselves..Be it plant life or animal life all life is LIFE. We label them as veg and non veg based on our notions of what we consider as devour-able life. Human beings turned vegetarians because it was easier to cultivate then to hunt and gather. Also probably because the shrieks of dying animals were much like those of violently killed human beings. What would you do if you could hear the shrieks of dying plants, trees and fruits and flowers??

An Open Mind Surgery

Our minds are not like our brains. They dont need to be closed and confined within the cranium. They dont need to be composed of only grey matter. They can have matters of all colours and sizes. A mind choosing to see only the white or the black or the grey is confined by its ignorance. Such a mind is not liberated and remains a prisoner of its own choices.

A Liberated or an Open mind is receptive to new ideas and argument. This mind is not prejudiced to radically different ideas or people.


Pre...what?

Prejudice simply means pre-judging someone or something. When you tend to judge somebody or something before you understand the relevant facts or even before you give a chance to the other person to justify his actions, you are being prejudical.

Prejudice takes many forms -
1.Discrimination based on Racial, ethnic, caste, sex is a form of prejudice. Racial prejudices have
been displayed during the Jew Holocaust during 2WW and Apartheid regime in S.Africa.

2.Discrimination towards a specific individual based on a persons identity ,thoughts ,actions , lifestyle or ideologies are personal choice prejudice. We see prejudices based on personal choices in daily life - Mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws have multiple prejudices against each other. For instance a mother-in-law may think that her daughter-in-law hates her if she doesn't talk to her and if she frequently visits her home whereas for the daughter it is just the case of being homesick. Similarly a daughter-in-law may construe every advice by her mother-in-law as an attempt to question her ability in managing the house. To top it all mother-in-law's have heard stories of daughter-in-laws who have insulted and thrown her in-laws from her house and all daughter-in-laws have heard stories of mother-in-laws who are cruel and tyrannical. So every interaction between both these entities are rife with misinterpretation (and prejudice)

3.Generalizations - people tend to think in patterns, whatever happens once or twice is considered as generic. Snakes and dangerous insects generally do not bite people if left to themselves but people kill them even if they just happen to see one in its natural habitat.An innocent house servant is the first suspect whenever anything gets lost or missing in the house.

How did we get infected with Prejudice?

Our prejudices are based on our personality, life experiences, upbringing and even genetics. Consider this - If you were born on another place and another religion or race, experienced different lifestyles, your prejudices would have been different! You would have different beliefs and ideals than what you have now.

Prejudices are acquired in the following ways

1. Personality - Development of a persons personality itself is based upon various factors like
hereditary, upbringing, life experinces. Some people develop a closed-minded, authoritarian and
dogmatic personality. Such personality types are more prone to be prejudical.But two people with the similar backgrounds might develop entirely different mindsets since no two person has intrinsically the same experiences and thought patterns at any point in their lives. You would have heard the story of a Thief who had 2 sons. One of them grew up to be a learned man and other one became a famous gangster. Both of them attributed their Dad as the inspiration. The Good guy said “I never wanted to end up like him”. The Bad guy said “What could I do? I learnt everything I saw my Dad do and naturally ended up being like him”. Understand that you and I may actually see the colors, objects, people differently. Our reactions to things happening around us differ based on our upbringing, experiences in life, thought patterns.

2. Groupism - Being attached to a group like religion, language, ethnicity, country has its share of
prejudices. On a group level every group maintains some inherent prejudices against the other group. Some Indians consider westerners as immoral,unfaithful and guilty of not respecting their elders. It was interesting to find that some South Indians have similar opinions about North Indians. Similarly some westerners consider India as a land of Flying fakirs, serpent dancers, Maharajahs and lazy cows on the middle of the road (ahem...which is still true in some places!!).

3. By Imitation - Children learn to prejudice and discriminate by observing elders. Children may discriminate with servants in the house, or ill-treat animals or shun street children based on how their parents behave with them. The Learning never stops when you grow.

How do we liberate the mind?

A) AVOID BEING JUDGEMENTAL

Watch yourself when you are judgmental about anything or anyone. Listen to alternative opinions, verify the facts before you form an opinion . Watch that while you were going through the facts or listening to others opinion, did you already have a opinion formed in your mind? Allow everybody to be like they are because they have the free will to be like they want to be. Restrain the need to see everything as right or wrong. Restrain the need to hate somebody because they have opposite or maybe wrong opinions.

Expect that everybody will Be different, Think different and Act differently for different situations. We cannot expect everybody to think like us and act like us and understand our reasons for doing so. Be prepared to change your opinion about something when you have new and compelling information about it.

Accept new answers as new possibilities if there are no definite answers for your question.Don’t be afraid of admitting that you may be wrong in your beliefs or opinions. This is the First step towards an open mind.

B) DEVELOP EMPATHY

Second step is to understand perspectives that are different from your current one. Develop EMPATHY. Empathy means “Understanding and entering into another’s feelings”. Developing this will enable you to understand why people behave differently. When you empathize with someone you feel like the other person feels, you understand why he behaves like he does and you begin considering the other persons opinion. You also begin to understand why and how he has formed these opinions.

Next time you see a rude person. Try to get inside his body and mind. Put yourself in his place. When did u get rude with someone last time? Why were you rude? Then apply the same answer to this person. When you can allow yourself to get rude for a certain situation, then this person also has the right to get rude for some other reason. Of course you will may never understand the reason but probably there is a reason similar to what you had when you got rude. Give everybody the benefit of doubt.

Learning Human psychology would be helpful in gaining insights to how different people think the way they do and what drives them to do so. This will be helpful in empathizing situations which you may not have experienced personally like meeting someone who brags, working with someone who is overtly stupid or having a friend who is miserly or a relative who is addicted to drinking or gambling.

Reading and Observing people will make you adept in understanding how we think and what drives our thinking. This will go a long way in empathizing with people and not pre-judging or wrongly judging people. Note that bookish knowledge alone cannot be considered as true or absolute, that will amount to prejudice again. Be guarded against generally labeling people based on the patterns which you have read in books.

C) PURSUE KNOWLEDGE PURSUE VARIED EXPERIENCE

An open mind needs exercise to remain open. Knowledge and varied experiences is the key in opening your mind. The World is full of alternate choices in every sphere of life. Some people choose Pepsi over Coke, Some like neither. Some people choose to vote Congress or BJP and again some people do neither. Some people are optimists, some are pessimists. Some are left-handed and some are right. Some are straight, some are gay and some are bisexuals. Exercising your mind with variety of influences, exposes you to alternate choices and views. These are not right or wrong choices, only different ones. Adopting an "To Each his own" attitude will keep you in a good stead while you go about understanding or experiencing ideologies and lifestyles pursued by others.

Wikihow has interesting steps to exercise an open mind here. I highly recommend that you check this link. Its full of sensible and crazy ideas which will make the process challenging and interesting.

The Sour, sweet, spicy, hot, pungent are all different tastes, each worth relishing, worth savouring and digesting. An open minded individual lives many lives and experiences the world in its totality - the world which is like us and the world which we which we cannot understand.

Whoever Brought Me Here

This poem was forwarded by Mr. Sanjib Basu from Kolkata in response to my earlier post "Facts or Fantasies". I have known Rumi as a great Sufi poet. But I have never ventured into reading his works. Thanks for building up my interest on Sufism.

Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207 - 1273)

Whoever Brought Me Here
Rumi


All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Translation by Coleman Barks

Facts or Fantasies

Everything…. we know or claim to know can be categorized into one of these two – FACT or FICTION. There is a thin line between the two. In fact Hindu philosophy considers everything on earth (including Facts) as a Fiction of Imagination or Maya. What we see, hear and feel is an illusion!!

I've had a riot of imagination even before I was exposed to the philosophy of Maya. Some of them I've recollected and presented here.




I used to imagine that probably I'm the only "actual" living being in this world. The rest are just
walking, talking zombies. Programmed for a purpose, programmed to perfection. Everybody I know has been planted here just to interact me. Its like I'm in some big experiment or a test and the characters I interact with (including my family and friends) are actually lifeless and non-existent. I used to think that all my thoughts and actions are forever on the watch. Someone is observing every moment of my life. These thoughts probably in the early eighties when movies like "The Truman show" didn't exist!! Some imagination!.

Other times I used to think that probably I'm seeing, hearing and even understanding things
differently than others. The color green that I see and understand is very different from the actual color green. Maybe other see green something closer to aquamarine or purple (as I know it). The blue of the sky is probably different for others. Similarly the way I understand and intrepret sound, smell, pain may be different of atleast varying in degrees of how others would experience. I attributed this to my lack of understanding Algebra. Some people can get it effortlessly!!

Another favorite matrix-esque imagination was that I'm actually not from this planet and probably don't "actually" look like I do now. The Life experience I've had till now is all a dream that I'm dreaming while I'm sleeping in another realm or dimension. I was wondering whether I would suddenly transform into some other being or travel to a different planet in the natural progression of the dream. What would happen if I get up from that dream? Is it what we call death?

What would happen if I woke up next day and something which has happened yesterday is wiped out from everyone's memory except mine. Similarly some very close person disappears from the world and no one cares since the existence of the person is wiped from everyone's memory. I used to wonder whether this happens more frequently than we know. Anyways, There is no chance of knowing this since the memory is wiped out from every living thing on earth.

I used to think that probably the things that are lost actually disappear or is stolen by ghostly
beings that is why objects suddenly get lost from where they are kept usually and suddenly it
reappears at place which we would have never guessed. Sometimes it reappears at a place where we would have glanced a couple of times earlier without finding it.

Star Trek had a great effect on nourishing my imaginations. I used to ponder about visiting other
planets and other galaxies. Often I have wondered whether the laws of physics like gravity,
centrifugal force, speed of light and sound etc operate differently in different galaxies. People
there can then fly and experience things which we consider as impossible on this planet.

Other dreams and fantasies were very much like a normal kid.

I had prepared my 3 wishes in case I met a fairy or God or some outer worldly being, suddenly.

Typically the first wish was "superpowers" like Superman.

The second wish was to magically create anything out of thin air including money, Food and objects of desires for personal use and for wiping out global poverty and...

The third wish was all encompassing wisdom or knowledge of past, present and future. Alternate third wishes were ability to time travel, be invisible or transform into anyone. Very early on my most favorite last wish was a 100 more wishes (a perennially wish multiplication wish!!). You think anybody would have fallen for this very clever third wish?

Ofcourse a majority of my fantasies will remain in the confines of my mind for they are too diabolical or depraved to be revealed. Probably I might reveal them if someone offered me a million dollars to write about them.

The Devil made me do this

Amongst all the “whys” I have asked myself while I was growing, the why’s related to Spirituality were the most predominant ones.

Q. Why does God have bad and evil things when he can remove it all ?
Q. Everything that is, has a beginning. If God made us then who made God? It has to begin at some point of time even if it is immortal

Q. If Universe was created then what existed before that and where that something did come from? Even the empty space would have a beginning. Where did the empty space come from ? If we go to the end of space can we touch the walls, the boundaries? What would that be? What would be on the other side?
Q. Why do we have pray and praise God to appease him. If he has everything then why are our prayers important to him?
Q. If all religions have different (and sometimes radically opposite) customs and traditions then which one is right? How do we know ours is right?

From then to now my pursuit for answers to these questions have brought me to consider very interesting ideas some proven and some which could not be proved.
These questions do not have definite answers but have multiple possibilities. I have been enriched every time I discovered a new possibility, a new perspective or a new dimension.

Like all inquisitive young minds I’ve pondered on what we call in theosophy as “The Problem of Evil” (POE). Problem of Evil is generally used by Atheist to prove that Gods do not exist. These methods as you will see below do not prove that God does not exist but it does attempt to prove that God is NOT omnipotent and he is NOT entirely Good.

Problem of Evil deals with questions like -
Why does pain and suffering exist on earth? Why do we have Evil when God can easily remove it with his omnipotence? I’m sure many millions of inquisitive children would have brooded on this questions a million times before some of them settled for answers their religion gave them, others became atheists. I have read tomes of theories and thoughts on this question and thought a blog post would be good to document the coherent parts of what I already think I know. Parts of this blog posts have been lifted from a various sources which I shall credit at the end of my post.

I’m neither religious nor atheist Or you can also say I’m religious as well as an atheist. God, for me is the process which manages or un-manages all the animate and inanimate things around us.

Theodicy is branch of theology that defends God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil. A number of theodicies have been proposed and a good search on Google will get you some of the popular theodicy’s floating around. I present some of these theodicy’s, the atheist view and my personal viewpoint which I’ll try to present in a coherent and unambiguous manner but I’m more prone towards not succeeding in that attempt.


#1.Free Will Theodicy:
Suffering exists because of our free will. God created evil so that we could then choose between good and evil, and make moral choices. If all choices result in good, there would be no moral choices. The free will theodicy holds that if love is acceptable, then it must be chosen over hate (or not-love), and therefore evil and suffering result when we make morally poor choices.

Atheist View
Free Will does not require existence of evil or suffering. There is a lot of suffering which is not a result of free will like natural disasters, crime and discrimination. Also free will of one person can cause pain and suffering for another person. God should not allow moral choice of one person affect other beings as this goes against moral accountability. Therefore God is generally not good. He is unable to prevent Evil hence not omnipotent.


My View
I Agree with the Free Will Theodicy.
Free Will means Freedom to exercise your options. Free will cannot exist without the existence of Bad options. That would be akin to censorship or a liquor prohibitory law. It’s necessary that Free Will has elements of both good and evil. A person chooses good or evil based on the moral path he wishes to pursue in this life (and probably an after-life). Having said that - what good is Free will, if someone judges the actions you took while you thought you were Free. It’s like saying you have the Free will to do anything you want but if you take advantage of it, I will punish you. God is then like a child who draws chalk line over an ant’s path and punishes whichever ant that crosses the line. I sincerely hope the God Government functions on more liberty than what we have in our Democratic government. So I set my conclusions on two possibilities –1) Free will with no strings attached and no afterlife to repent/correct Or 2) Free Will with reflection at the end of each life, guidance to understand mistakes, choose next life conditions and attempt to correct and pursue personal goals in the next life. I believe each one has a personal goal which is pursued over a period of countless lives. Why is all this required…something which I haven’t stumbled on yet.


#2. Experience Theodicy:
Suffering exists because we need to experience it or have knowledge of it

This Theodicy tries to explain that suffering makes us stronger. Just like impure gold gets purer by melting it under high temperature. Just like we build stronger muscles by pumping iron, we become stronger by experiencing pain and suffering.

Atheist View
God could simply give us an innate knowledge of what evil is like, without us having to experience it. Don’t birds instinctively learn how to come of their eggs, Don’t fishes learn how to swim and humans babies learn how to open their eyes and cry as soon as they are born. Similarly an understanding of evil and destructive behavior could have been a part of instinctive knowledge. We have a lot of instinctive emotional reactions to pain and suffering. Human beings naturally vacillate towards reactions like vengeance, self-destruction or devastation when encountered by pain and suffering. The lesson intended to be learnt according to this theodicy is not learnt and the reaction causes more pain and suffering for others. Again we cannot even argue that all pain and suffering inflicted on humans or animals ends up in a lesson to be learnt. A fawn which burns to death in a forest fire, dies without any human being knowing about it. What is the lesson for the fawn? If I inflict pain on another human being How is that experience beneficial for that person? A God who lets its followers suffer like this is an Evil God or powerless to control pain and suffering.

My View
Pain and Suffering needs to be experienced so that we do not inflict the same on other fellow beings. Then there are Sadists and Masochists who find pleasure in experiencing and inflicting pain . If we need to get exposed to the entire gamut of sensory experiences then pain and suffering is definitely on the Top Ten. In the higher design of things pain, suffering and evilness are just absolute experiences like pleasure and goodness. Pain and Pleasure, Happiness and Sadness are experiences held at equal importance or equal unimportance. We Feel pain and suffering because we are endowed with the sensory apparatus to feel so. This is evident from the fact that there are some living creatures which do not feel any pain or pleasure atleast not in the way we do. Human emotions like envy, anger, retaliation, lust, pleasure, depravity can be experienced only in Human or closer to Human life forms. They cannot be interpreted outside of it. We need to understand that these are human interpretations and not something absolute. There are definite possibilities that there may be other life forms which have distinctively different life experiences and emotions that we cannot even comprehend.

If God has created the universe then it should have equal love and/or equal un-love (or hate) for all animate and inanimate things. Inanimate things are essential composed of the same structure of atoms as the animate hence their purpose is essentially the same i.e Flow of energy (and possible flowing or evolving into higher beings). We as individuals or as a group are too inconsequential amongst the multitude of beings and non-beings in this universe to be given preferential treatment or preferential attention. How can you justify that?. The cycle of creation and destruction encompasses us as well as all the animate and inanimate beings with equal consideration. If planets and stars can be created or destroyed for no fault of theirs, if trees can be allowed to cut for no fault, if crops, chickens and cattle can be allowed to be consumed for no fault of their then it is but natural that something equivalent is experienced by human beings too. Good creates whereas Evil un-creates, both are necessary for the flow of life and energy. Human beings need to understand this divine design and so choose and play their roles wisely.

#3. Absence Theodicy:
Evil is simply the Absence of God/Good."God" is "goodness", anything not good such as evil and suffering, is the absence of God. Therefore, the absence theodicy claims that God is not responsible for evil, merely for good.

Permit me to copy-paste a popular email forward to explain this further :

"The professor of a university challenged his students with this question. "Did God create everything that exists?" A student answered bravely, "Yes, he did".

The professor then asked, "If God created everything, then he created evil. Since evil exists (as noticed by our own actions), so God is evil. The student couldn't respond to that statement causing the professor to conclude that he had "proved" that "belief in God" was a fairy tale, and therefore worthless.

Another student raised his hand and asked the professor, "May I pose a question? " "Of course" answered the professor. The young student stood up and asked : "Professor does Cold exists?" The professor answered, "What kind of question is that?...Of course the cold exists... haven't you ever been cold?" The young student answered, "In fact sir, Cold does not exist. According to the laws of Physics, what we consider cold, in fact is the absence of heat. Anything is able to be studied as long as it transmits energy (heat). Absolute Zero is the total absence of heat, but cold does not exist. What we have done is create a term to describe how we feel if we don't have body heat or we are not hot." "And, does Dark exist?", he continued. The professor answered "Of course". This time the student responded, "Again you're wrong, Sir. Darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in fact simply the absence of light. Light can be studied, darkness can not. Darkness cannot be broken down. A simple ray of light tears the darkness and illuminates the surface where the light beam finishes. Dark is a term that we humans have created to describe what happens when there's lack of light." Finally, the student asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?" The professor replied, "Of course it exists, as I mentioned at the beginning, we see violations, crimes and violence anywhere in the world, and those things are evil."

The student responded, "Sir, Evil does not exist. Just as in the previous cases, Evil is a term which man has created to describe the result of the absence of God's presence in the hearts of man.

After this, the professor bowed down his head, and didn't answer back.
The young man's name was ALBERT EINSTEIN."

Interesting story that was, but let me tell you that Albert Einstein’s name was added to this story much later after the original version was floating around for quite some time. None of historians have testified that the above quote is to be credited to Mr. Einstein.

Hoaxes apart but that was the explanation which would have hammered the point it ought to make clearly that Evil is Absence of Good (and Satan is absence of God).

Atheist View
But I thought God is everywhere. So how can he be conveniently absent from somewhere? If God is good and he should be everywhere, then why is he absent from hearts of some people, why is he absent in places where we have evil, pain and suffering. This paradox is insurmountable. Secondly, it does not still tell us why God made the scale of Good and Evil. We can experience these varying things because, God created them in the first place. If Good had existed everywhere (like God) then there is no point of having a case of “Absence of Good” in some places. God could have made happiness or goodness an absolute, not part of a scale. But God instead created evil by creating the good/evil dichotomy. So Either God is evil or he does not exist.

My View
I agree that Evil is simply the absence of Good since both are labels based on interpretations. I do not agree that Evil is absence of God. God created evil or you could say that Humans created Evil and God allowed Humans the free will to manufacture Evil and to label it as such. So Evil does not mean absence of God but in fact it proves the presence of Free will allowed to us by God.


#4. The Divine Test Theodicy :
God Tests us to see how we handle pain and suffering. Perhaps, if we pass this test. God will put us in heaven. Otherwise we remain on Earth or go to Hell. Most religions have the same beliefs. Our scriptures have countless stories of people being tested by God. In Buddhism such tests eventually lead us to Nirvana, in Islam the test is one of obedience to God, success takes you to Paradise.

Atheist View
This Theodicy actually admits that God created Evil since it was necessary for a Divine Test. Consider this …. God is all-knowing. It knows everything, future and past. God exists outside of time, and can see all future and past events as if they've all already happened. In fact this chain of events has all been created by God, from beginning to end. God is immovable, immutable, beyond time. As a result of all this, God clearly knows what tests we will pass and fail. God knows if we are largely moral or largely immoral. It knows why we transgress, and it knows in detail every reason and factor that ultimately causes us to go wrong.
God therefore never needs to test anyone. God knows, even without doing a test, what the results of the test will be. Let's say God wants to test someone by allowing them to stumble across a wallet in the street with money in it. Let's assume that God considers it best if the subject hands the wallet in to the police and worse if the subject steals the money and throws away the wallet. God knows if the person will pass such a test. God knows it because it created the person and their personality in the first place, so can work out what they will do. It also knows what the person will do because it is all-knowing, and knows all possible future events. God never needs to actually test the person, God already knows if they'll pass. To say that God needs or wants to "test" us is to say that God is not all-knowing.
The existence of suffering and evil, therefore, is clearly not excused by saying that God wants to test us. God knows, if it creates evil, who will pass its tests and who will fail. God doesn't need to actually create evil, suffering or unhappiness to know who will fail. Likewise, God does not need us to make moral choices in order to know if we're moral or not. God knows what we would choose if moral options are presented to us. The actual testing is not required, God already knows.
God could have created a world with no evil, no suffering, and no moral confusions. That way, everyone would be happy all the time, and we would rightly know that a loving God existed. God would still know, if it allowed transgression and evil, who would succumb to temptation. But the actual creation of potential evil is not necessary

God knows who will enter Heaven - so why does it keep them on Earth?
Given that God knows who will pass and who will fail, and therefore who will get into Heaven, what's the point of Earthly existence at all? God knows who will, in the future, deserve to enter Heaven. So why doesn't God, with its knowledge, simply put those people into Heaven NOW? It could do so, if it wanted. Nothing would be lost. Suffering would be reduced.

God knows who will not enter Heaven
God knows who will fail its tests. God knows, from even before the time when a person is born, whether or not they will pass its tests and enter heaven. Why then does God bother to create people who are to fail these tests? What's the point of the testing when it already knows the answers? Why not simply put those who will fail into hell, those who will pass into heaven, and not have to bother with all the confusion in between? But more importantly, why does God create people who it knows are going to fail tests and suffer torment in Hell?

My View
I must admit that the atheist view was exactly my view when I was growing up.
This refutes the religious teaching which we have been exposed to Or goes on to say that God may not be as omnipotent, omniscient and omni benevolent as we expected him to be Or atleast says that God is playing a funny game with all of us like Age of Empires or Civilization or something. It drills holes in the futility of having concepts like Heaven and Hell.

I consider a possibility that all animate (and probably inanimate) souls are in constant state of evolution. We progress through different levels of consciousness and evolve into beings of higher levels based on our comprehension and ability requisite for our level. Progression probably happens when the being understands his present self and the next one. This is not exactly a test as there are no right answers. But probably there are roles to be played and tasks to be done for each one of us. How? Why? is beyond my comprehension as of yet.

#5. Evil is an Illusion Theodicy
God's divine plan is good. What we see as evil is not really evil; rather, it is part of a divine design that is actually good. Our limitations prevent us from seeing the big picture

My View
I have not read any atheist view on this Theodicy. But this theodicy negates a part of its own definition by saying that existence of evil is an illusion. By that logic we can even consider even good as an illusion. Therefore both are on equal terms.


Conclusion:
Human thinking is abounding with misconceptions. We convince ourselves that what we know is right. Once we convince ourselves we do not subscribe to any other reason. But universe is rife with multitude of possibilities. Lets keep our eyes, ears, nose, minds and options open.




Credits :
Vexen.co.uk's post on Problem of Evil
Wikipedia entry on Theodicy

Change is the Problem and Change is the Solution

Too much change may cause jingles in your pocket - Zen sayings from the Blabbering bard

Suksy’s blog has touched upon challenges in change , my attempt is to scratch a bit deeper.

Changes leave me constipated with worries. Changes in my routine and Changes in job have been my constantipated (constantly constipated) worries. But worries as always grow with anticipation (or constant constipated anticipation), once we fling ourselves onto the imminent juggernaut of change, the nerves are calmed and we again start fortifying in what becomes a part of our new routine. A new and probably changeless routine!!

Changing yourself is easy depending on how adaptable and open you are to change. Yes, change does hassle me, but I don’t crib about it for too long. My principle is Either you go with the flow or you get out of the river.

Standing against the current and flexing your muscles while taunting the mindless river to overwhelm you is not my idea of courage.


Changing others however is a much more difficult task. You can never change anybody without his will. We have all learnt that much long ago in school "You can take a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink it".

Changing someone slowly over a period has been a personal challenge for me and I’ve been attempting this with some dear people. It requires a lot of time and patience. The seeds of change needs to sown in from time to time and then we wait to see if takes root and flourishes.
It is easier when the objective and benefit of change is appreciated by that person. But most of the time people do not require any motivation to turn on a path they already appreciate. It would be like teaching kids the benefits of consuming chocolates!!

So How do you change a person who does not want to change?

I have varied experiences on this. Firstly, I can confidently tell what does not work

Arguments can never change anybody. Arguments can get people on the defensive. Defensive people tend to stand their ground on whimsical notions rather than for a logical reason. Arguments are more or less a win-lose game. They do not convince anybody.

Lectures have an amazing ability of turning out inaudible for your listener. After a couple of minutes the subject can only know that you are talking by observing the movement of your lips.

Criticism never gets the best out anybody. Criticism just creates a chasm of antagonism between you and the subject. Criticism may lead to low self-esteem and suicidal tendencies for some people. Constructive criticism is well accepted by some people, but these are the people who understand criticism as a means to progression.


What works?

Persuasion - Robert Cialdini in his book Influence: Science and Practice has defined six weapons of influence namely :

1.Reciprocation - People tend to reciprocate a good deed ,
2.Commitment and Consistency - you get a person to commit on something verbally or on paper,
3.Social Proof - Peer pressure or people do things which everybody else is doing,
4.Authority - People tend to obey authority figures like Teacher,Guru,Boss,Parent etc
5.Liking - People are easily persuaded by people whom they like,
6.Scarcity - Perceived scarcity will create demand. Thats is why we see advertising saying "Offer open till stocks last".

Other Forms of Persuation -
Seduction or Charm can be considered as a form of persuasion.We all know what a smile and a flutter of eyelids can do? Nagging is my most hated form of persuasion. Husbands know what I'm talking about. But let me reveal you a tiny tidbit - They are more likely to pretend that they have changed and resume their misadventures as soon as the wife is out of sight". So wives beware - Any change that does not come from the heart and mind doesn't stay for long. Corruption as the method of Persuasion is a tactic as old as the hills. In fact this can be extended to offering anything that is of value to the person. i.e Emotional support, Flattery etc.Persuasion should either appeal to the subjects logic (the subjects mind), or appeal to his emotions (his heart). Persuasion may also include extreme measures like torture, hypnosis, mind-control, brainwashing and coercion (the mafia/bhaigiri/rowdy technique). Non-violence or Gandhi-giri has given our world many successful persuasion techniques like Morcha, Dharna, Gherao (called under different names elsewhere) . These are used in political struggles all over the world.

Appreciation is not a persuasive technique but disguise your “change bug” somewhere through appreciation; and chances are that the person will catch the bug. This is how you sow seeds of change. Works well on kids and moderately on elders.

That was my short take on Change..more very soon and sorry Suksy for taking a cue from you..Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

I Walk Away I Walk Away

Thanks to Vivek for Inspiring me....and adding my poem on his picture at flickr.com. hope this is big enough to be read