Sunday, February 11, 2001		Article

CHILDREN are born pure and with all the capacity to love but the forces of society start acting on their innocence. Sometimes, parents have expectation; they want children to become somebody. Sometimes they dream for their future. Often they want children to behave in a way which enhances their social value.

The acceptance of a child thus becomes conditional. It becomes contingent on conformance to some standards. Added to this age of quality time, people just do not have time for their children, they are busy in some more "important" tasks.

When a child does a wrong, however small it may be, these very people take out time from their important tasks to abhor, to condemn and to reprimand. They do not realise that a child is innocent, that he is asking for nothing but love, that he is exhausted in the ways he can get it. Blaming is the easiest thing to do.

So one neglected child acts out of desperation to seek attention by getting into mischief. All he wants is acceptance. But all he gets is attention; the acceptance is seldom given. So the habit of attention seeking through mischief is reinforced and it becomes a consistent pattern. He becomes the aberrant.

The other neglected child is perhaps a bit more intelligent and modifies his behavior to conform to the expectations of his parents. This modification is not because he really believes in it but because he wants acceptance. Secretly he also realises that this acceptance is conditional. That the moment he becomes his true self he will no longer be accepted. So he decides to become the moralist, forever chained in borrowed rules.

Both the children have been given a self-definition, one becomes the criminal and the other the moralist. One seeks power and attention and the other seeks power and respect. Both do not respect each other. Though victims of the same system, both see each other as opposites.

The rise of excessive and dogmatic virtue as well as of apathy and crime are both a result of rigid definition of the right way. Hatred is not a solution for hatred. A victory of force is often a shallow win. Palestine and Kashmir are burning examples.

A sage seeks to undo the effects of all this. He seeks to repair the mistakes of hundreds of others by accepting unconditionally. He knows that every heart, whether it is of a sinner or of a moralist yearns for acceptances of a moralist. Every Buddha has a place for an Angulimaal in his heart. Only with his compassionate heart, he has the huge capacity to love unconditionally, to accept others as they are, without any precondition. Thus he achieves miracles, thus he transforms. Just because he refuses to categorize, to pass judgments on what others are, he creates the infinity that he sees in others. For when the ego has no boundary, it has the permission to become anything.

These sages are not the designated heads of religion. They are seemingly ordinary people. They do not indulge in propaganda. There are thousands of them and the media knows nothing of them. They are there, perceptible only when we look beyond the veneer of everyday sociality. Someone is a doctor who refuses to charge more in order to cut down the rush and make more money in less time. Someone is an editor who fearlessly exposes the evil political designs. Someone is a lawyer, fighting battles with giants for a worthy cause. Someone is a soldier who fight to defend than to conquer. Someone is a teacher, who believe in transformation through education. Someone is a filmmaker, making movies because he is moved by something. Someone is a businessman, for whom work is a service to employees and customers. Someone is a police officer, who can bring even the hardened criminals to meditation. Someone is a poet like Paash, who chooses to die rather ignore injustice. Someone is a economist who challenges the classical economic theories and tries to show the futility of blindly adulating the concept of free markets.

In media 90 per cent of the publicity goes to 10 per cent of the bad news. However, in spite of the everyday bombarding with news of human atrocities, there is a hope. There is a hope because the society goes on. People still make friends. People still fall in love and suffer hard ships for it. For those who come to understand love, cannot act otherwise. They can only love, irrespective of the conditions. Sartre said that there is no inherent meaning in life.Scientifically speaking we are just a group of atoms wandering in infinite space. Only having faith in ideas of love, friendship and compassion makes us human. Without faith these are mere ideas, it is faith that makes them real and gives meaning to life.

Limiting are the way of world, which classify people as Indians-Pakistanis, Hindus-Muslims, rich-poor, haves-have-nots, superior-inferior, upper caste-lower caste, same-insane, extroverts-introverts, topper-average, small-great and what not. We the children of the same infinity walk alienated. With self-created labels, we divide the singularity and then we seek to understand each other through analysis. Constantly living in these boundaries we come to believe that these boundaries are real and anyone who challenges them crazy. We study each other as biologists study a specimen to determine its characteristics; ignorant branches of a banyan tree.

But what is the use of such a study; if there is no realisation that in studying others we study ourselves. That to know one self is to know others. We do not realise that whatever happens in the world, we are responsible for it, at least to a degree. We do not see that the only true service that we can do, is to rectify the mistakes of our fellow beings, by giving acceptance where they have denied. Aa society is not a distant abstract but is determined by individual actions.

A Krishna is born, when the polarisation between what is seen as virtuous and what as evil is large; he comes to restore the balance. And because he is neither on the side of the dogmatic virtue and nor on the side of the sinner, for these are just constructs of ordinary minds, he does not see the enemy as innately evil. He has no hatred. He is neutral. He sees the same humanity in all.

Both Shri Krishna and Guru Nanak come for the same task. One acts by destroying the negative polarity and the other by discrediting the dogmatic virtue. Whenever there is dogmatism and rigidity, a Guru Nanak is born to remind the world that we are essentially human.

We all do not need to be Guru Nanak, neither can we all bed. We just need to start from the nearest, from self, parents, spouses, colleagues and acquaintances. There is no need to give acceptance if it is beyond our capacity. First the realisation and capacity must increase, then the conduct. For when we feign our capacity for acceptance, it again becomes an overture, a technique of gaining respect. It leads to people becoming religion heads and then poisoning their children because they dare to love. Oblivious that love is nothing but a way to God:

Rigid judgement is not strength; it is an affliction, because it sees a seed as a seed, small and unimpressive. It cannot see the tree, large and majestic. Judgment is about what appears to be, acceptance is about what is inside. What we expect others to be becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have a choice to either limit this expectation by passing a judgment that never changes or we can give each other the permission to become a true expression of human potential. Its time we take a step towards acceptance.