On Failure

1. The sheet that covers her face, clenched tightly between her teeth, growing moist around her mouth, is insufficient defence. She twists on the hard mattress, conscious of another morning that attacks her through the gap in the curtain. Another bloody day. Determined to return to sleep, she perceives her own condition from the bedroom door - such drama, such comedy, it is almost unreal. There is nothing left to live for. What's the point anyway?

2. He goes back to the cigarette every time the task is too big. He has been falling off the pace for a few months now. It is incredible how a few bad months can completely derail your life. Money, love and ambition have all dried up; as he stubs the flaming stub under his dusty chappal, he realizes health will soon follow suit. What's the point anyway?

3. You got fired. So what? She left you for another man. So what? Your dreams are crashing and burning in a blinding flame that lights up your wonderful past. So what? You deserted your parents, and now they're dead. How did it all come to this? There is either pain, or nothing. You want neither. Is happiness so difficult to find? Okay, cut that crap about not having to seek happiness. Of course you must seek happiness. Or perish in the attempt. What's the point of life anyway?

4. You cannot lose everything that matters unless you let something matter. You look at your friends, leading their sedentary lives, "hedging risks", existing but never living. Nothing matters. They eat, they breathe, they sleep, they find someone who will share their bed for sixty years, they get themselves a career, they eat, they breathe, they sleep, they defecate... They'll probably never feel like killing themselves. But they'll never feel like Alexander. Go big or go home. Only, "go home" is a lie. You don't go home. You nearly die.

5. You know those flirts? Who don't truly follow their hearts. Because they're cowards. And dabble with millions of ideas, people and events. They'll never make up their minds. Making up their minds would kill them. You know why? Because they'd be All In. Most humans cannot go All In. They're scared. They'd much rather live their lukewarm romances.

6. When you invest blood, sweat and tears in a person, in a book, in a company, in an idea... you do it with expectations. Sri Krishna talks about outcome-independence. Don't bother about the fruits of your actions; your actions are both the means and the end. But who is so great that he/she truly believes this? And if someone truly believes in outcome-independence, doesn't that spell the end of passion? There is no way to reconcile passion and wisdom. No, you cannot have the whole fucking lot.

7. You know it is reasonable to settle into a rhythm, right? Why work outside your comfort-zone? What's that again - "Life starts outside the comfort zone"? Yeah, no it doesn't. Life starts when you emerge from the womb, covered in a film of sticky fluid and wail into the world. Life ends when you can wail no more. Everything in between is life. So you lost. Everybody loses. There is no point analysing this.

8. Where do we go now? Where do we go? Isn't it too late to salvage something? It probably is. Then again, life is weird. There are no beginnings, no middles, no ends. It's just a mess. A hopeless tangle of events, thoughts, emotions, places, people... None of it is supposed to make sense. Not from up close, anyway. Maybe from a distance. From far, far away, everything makes sense. You're living a goddamned epic!

9. And she does it over and over again. She calls me to tell me how she suffers only because of her goodness. Yes doll, you suffer only because of you're good. And successful people are successful only because they have rotten hearts. Get over yourself. If you're good, you wouldn't use it as defence! Goodness needs no incentive. Be good because you want to be good; nobody is asking you to be anything. People are shit? Well, of course they are! If everybody was good, we wouldn't give a damn about you. You angel.

10. "God is a dick!" Well, you believe in God; you haven't been broken enough. Be thankful. And shut up. You know the sequence: believer becomes agnostic, agnostic turns atheist, atheist converts into a bitter cynic, and the bitter cynic suffers real physical pain. Then everybody dies, of course. You know what? You are so conscious about your failure only because you think you can experience the state of not-failing. That's called hope. And hope is a good thing.

Three Levels of Perception: How to become a Zen-master?

Do you remember how we first read books? Those hard-bound things of wonder, with fair, blonde princesses and square-chested knights who would slay dragons and breathe life into the damsel with a kiss… Do you remember Amar Chitra Katha, and the legends of kings and demigods? And then Enid Blyton and her Pixie folks, and later still, Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins, Hercule Poirot…

LEVEL ONE

I don’t know about you, but I read them the same way a devout would read the Bible or the Quran: as gospel. It was written; therefore, it had to be true. This is the first level of perception. When confronted with an experience, we begin by reacting to it, with the body, mind or some combination of the two.

In the first level, the experience itself is flawless. The book is comprehensive, the movie is complete, and the person you talk to is perfect. At this level, we are easily influenced by the permanence and immutability of the stimulus. When our parents said something to us, it had to be correct; it had to be good advice. When a history textbook said that Shivaji was good and Aurangzeb was bad, that had to be correct as well.

LEVEL TWO

Beyond this basic understanding of the world, we begin to question the experience itself. Maybe the book was flawed, or the movie had terrible plot-holes… Perhaps, the person giving us advice is as confused as us.

At this level of understanding, we begin punching holes into theories, books, people and everything that isn’t the Self. We realize that textbooks are flawed because of their own skewed viewpoints, we understand that people have their own vested interests, and that movie-scripts are often written by idiots. At this level, we begin trusting our own previous experiences and the cumulative derived wisdom from those.

We pitch our opinions against those of another. “I think that the eagle could have flown to Mordor and dropped the ring into the fires of Mount Doom”. “I think that Genesis is a bad idea, because I believe in the Big Bang, in evolution, and in scientifically proven concepts”. “I think what you did was really shitty”. Our teenage and early twenties are often about this level of understanding.

LEVEL THREE

After we have spent enough energy fighting with the world, we wonder why we perceive the world in a particular way. What are these lenses through which we observe the world? How do we build our own personal rules?

With a third-person-insight into the prevailing conditions of the mind, we dissect not only why we act the way we act, but also why others act the way they do. In books, movies and works of art, we understand why we perceive a plot-hole where others (including the writer) possibly do not.

It is at this level that I think we are truly incapable of intense hatred or passion. If it can be explained, one can do away with a primal emotional reaction. We begin to see the code that governs this dysfunctional world, and keeps it stuck together in this precarious way.

At this stage, we are far less susceptible to intense life-changing moments. But we become Zen-masters, who can control the flow of water and the motion of the Moon. At this point of balance and peace, the will has a real shot at controlling our own actions.

Note: These levels of understanding are infinite: each subsequent level offers a unique, defining insight into the machinations of the world.