Cuppa' Joe

Anger, apathy, the fire burns so cold. The flat grey sky above, the cold morning light, the world seems so indifferent. The sun is lost in clouds, having perhaps tired of the routine. It’s freezing out – at least there’s something to feel. Children walk to school rushing headlong towards a future of certain bleakness. The world, it would seem, has fallen off its axis. The morning’s news only makes it worse – greed, apathy and worst of all, naïve optimism. The fire burns brighter but it doesn’t warm – instead its harsh light makes the dullness even more impossible to ignore. The once comforting ritual of coffee brewing seems now oppressive and forced – enjoy this coffee before it turns to ashes in your mouth. And then, the coffee pot burbles plaintively and an aroma tickles the senses – the smell of what a morning ought to be, reminding of the faint ember of life that still glows in the corner, weak yet defiant. The first sip is a tidal wave of sensation and thought, the ground shifts underfoot, the world rights itself with a certain pure violence. Vast as the blackness is, it is nonetheless powerless to resist the flashlight beam cutting a swathe through it… context! In one glorious swoop, context redefines reality… I exist, I live, I thrive. And, people ask me why I don’t get my coffee at Starbucks…

Shifting sands

Have you ever returned home from a trip to find it intangibly different from the way you left it? It’s happened to me lots of times. But always, the feeling has been transient. Except in the most recent case; and, this time, it wasn’t my apartment that felt vaguely alien. This summer, I traveled to Chennai (the city formerly known as Madras), India – the place I’ve thought of as home for some years now. However, when I finally landed there, after some drama with an overbooked connecting flight, there was a nagging emptiness, a lack of emotion that just wouldn’t go away.

[Cue a segue out of left field.] The feeling reminded me of a rather peculiar neurological disorder – it results from damage to the brain, specifically to the connections between the fusiform gyrus (the face-recognition area of the brain) and the amygdala (the emotional center of the brain). People with such damage suffer from a curious form of face blindness, where they recognize the faces of people they know but think the person to be an impostor. The rationale behind this pathology is rather simple: from memory, they recognize the pattern of the face but the recognition is not accompanied by an emotional response from the amygdala, as happens in healthy individuals. As a result, the brain concludes that the person, who looks familiar, must be an impostor.

Now that I’ve wandered hopelessly far from whence I started, let’s return rather abruptly to the main plot. The problem wasn’t that I was bothered by Madras having changed in my absence… I had noticed changes during every visit too. But it had always retained an ineffable quality that made it unmistakably Madras, unmistakably home. However, this time was different… it had changed in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on… I felt like I’d walked into someone else’s home, nonetheless at the location where mine had been. And what bothered me most was how indifferent I felt about this. What had changed?

Like a child relentlessly picking at a scab, I kept digging into my thoughts until the little voice in the back of my brain was suddenly a deafening scream: “Fuck it! Nothing is yours! Nothing remains!” Ah, at last, a clue! Despite the oppressive summer heat, the city felt cold, aloof, uncaring, even unfamiliar, it’s rhythm suddenly different from the one that had so mesmerized me years ago. I realized that the city once again felt every bit as unfamiliar as it did when I moved there in 1997. But what had changed about ‘my city’ that should bother me so? Or was it really I who had changed? Before I even began to find an answer, I knew it would have to involve both… I had certainly changed but the city had likely changed too.

The answer came to me in a stunning moment of clarity as I sat in a restaurant eating an excellently cooked dosa. The food was excellent, I was in the company of family… but something irked me still. And then I put my finger on it… it was the rest of the restaurant… the activity, the buzz, the palpable impatience – people wanted me out of there – the harried waiters who could no longer even feign politeness, the hungry customers with pocketfuls of cash waiting for a table…they all wanted me out of there. And that was it… there was simply no room to relax any more, the city was too busy being a rat race to be fun.

The why was easy enough to figure out – all I had to do was drink a few glasses of tea (yes, glasses, not cups) and keep my ears open. Road-side tea shops are the real nerve centers of Madras, where one feels the pulse of the city at its strongest. (And, I am mixing up my metaphors, I know.) So, there I was, sitting on a wooden bench drinking strong, sweet, creamy tea and listening. With each conversation, I felt my perspective widen, my understanding grow clearer.

As it often does, it all boils down to time and economics. The 21^st century has witnessed economic progress hit India and hit it has, with all the subtlety of a tropical cyclone and as much balance and planning as a riot. Not that it could have been much different – this is India after all, and we Indians jus do not do simple. And Madras has definitely kept pace with the rest of the country, if not led the charge. It’s visible – lots of shiny new Audis and BMWs on the roads, stores peddling every luxury brand under the sun. But not all is well – the nouveau riche must still drive their sports cars past the same old slums and at every stop light, they must still ignore the destitute beggars. In a city trying unabashedly to gentrify itself, land is at an all time premium and as the rent rises inexorably skyward, all but the very well heeled feel the ground eroding away from under their feet. All this has turned Madras into a city full of people hanging on with grim determination and desperate people do not have the time to be nice. And, so it is that the place I once called home has turned too cold and unfamiliar to give me the time of day now. Suddenly the saying that “home is where the heart is” seems like rather cold comfort indeed.

A Momentary Lapse to the Dark Side

I was watching a documentary about the legendary Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon and something that Roger Waters said triggered off an avalanche of thoughts and memories. He talked about how “everything up to [a certain] point was preparation for life that would start later and [he] realized suddenly that life was already happening. [He] realized that life began at dot and at any time one could take control of it…” When he said that it made me think of my own life and the influence upon it of the Indian social context in which I grew up. The notion of education and ‘growing up’ being preparation for life that would start later is very much the way of thinking in Indian society. Even as I grew up being a good little hamster, keeping his wheel turning as fast as was demanded and then some, I began to question the fundamental principles that the worldview I’d been taught was predicated upon. By the time I was out of high school, I realized that the massive edifice of a life’s plan I’d constructed was built on a foundation of well, nothing. I also realized that the loneliest place an individual could find himself in the midst of a collectivistic society.
"And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon."
Lyrics like this suddenly felt a great deal more personal.

Thereupon followed the existential crisis and period of darkness that I imagine everyone goes through in some form and to some degree. Thinking back to those times brought to mind yet another bit of Pink Floyd brilliance, this time from the song Time…
"Hanging on in quiet desperation
Is the English way."

Whether it was the way life had always been in the subcontinent or a dark remnant on the Indian psyche of the colonial past, it is certainly how I looked upon the Indian experience of life in those days. At that thought surfaced memories, all to vivid, of fears past… fears best summarized by more Pink Floyd lyrics,
"And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun."
And out of all this angst came the person I am today… someone consciously trying not to lose the here and the now in the formless mists of possible futures. Thinking back on all this I realize it’s no mystery why music and prog rock/metal resonates with me so strongly… it’s been, and continues to be, the soundtrack to my life. And every night, when I sleep, my fears come out to play in the dark garden of my dreams:
"The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say."

A couple of first paragraphs

Arguing with BULLSHIT

How could one, knowing fact from conjecture, knowing inference from observation, ever be totally certain? And without selling the truth short to put on a mask of certainty, how does one then debate the illogically obstinate? Employing logic against blind, stupid lunacy leaves one in much the same position as a wave crashing against a rock. How then does one deal with such a situation? How does one argue with BULLSHIT? More importantly, how does one keep at bay, cynicism and apathy? Perhaps, Max Planck was right when he said, “A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Cold Days

At times I wake up knowing that the day will be passed in quiet desperation. Some time during the night, my mind must have wandered somewhere dark and the old, familiar monkey is back upon my shoulder. First glimpse of daylight and I already feel tired… life, it seems, is an oppressive, utterly pointless tedium. I look out the window and the sky is an impenetrable mass of gray, which seems rather appropriate. I got through my morning routine – calisthenics, shower, coffee – even though every thing seems harder than usual. I step outside and there’s a cold wind blowing rain drops into my face like little, icy needles. Pile on the misery! But through all this, there’s a glimmer of something somewhere in a corner of my mind that tells me “This too shall pass.” So, I can’t stop, I can't even really slow down… I must just keep on keepin’ on.

The Linearity Trap

I have not written for some time now – over a year – in part because I’ve not felt the need to put down any of my thoughts but also in part because I’ve been struggling to find the words to express myself with. There have been many, many first paragraphs, even a few second. But nothing seems to translate, to flow. My conscious mind tells me I should be very troubled by all this, but curiously, I’m not. Realizing that brought a fresh question to my mind – do I need turmoil to fuel my writing? I’m certainly cognizant of how much I’ve depended on writing as a means to find clarity in times of confusion. Indeed, most of my writing was fueled by mental flux. Emerson was right on the money when he said “Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.” But oddly, in learning to live through difficult times, I seem to have forgotten how to deal with placidity.

And perhaps, along the way, my writing has become dependent on mental flux as a source of inspiration – all indications certainly point to this being the case. The past six months or so have been a period of relative calm (I think) and I have had the hardest time writing anything at all – and this has bothered me immensely. The resultant unease drove me to reexamine myself and my recent past. Careful recollection tells me that these months have not really been entirely calm – no more so than substantial chunks of my past, anyway. So, what’s different now? The answer, it would seem, is me… more precisely where I stand with respect to the events that make up my life. It appears I have moved with respect to these events, suddenly finding myself closer to the eye of the storm… that little island of calm from whence I can observe the gusting winds. More importantly, with respect to my current predicament it would appear it is the perception of flux, rather than flux itself, that I’ve come to depend upon as writing fuel.

But why would any of this unnerve me so? The reason lies what I see as the value of writing: it has helped me to learn and to grow. And, without growth, there is only stagnation – the thing I fear most – for stagnation is decay and decay, death. So, it is that writer’s block felt every bit like an existential crisis – oddly, a quiet but persistent one – and therefore, I persisted in my efforts to write. As with every task, I set myself a seemingly easy goal: to write a page of something, anything at all. Weeks turned into months and the accursed page just wouldn’t fill up.

Jump across space and time to at cinema hall at a multiplex, the evening of last Wednesday. I’m watching, in 3D no less, Werner Herzog’s new documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, about the Chauvet cave in France. The cave, apart from being a place of breathtaking natural splendor, is home to the oldest known cave paintings. And they were far indeed from simplistic stick figures that I expected. Even as I marveled at the beauty of the lions and horses painted on the walls, the thought crossed my mind that they had spent thousands of years hidden within the cave while history happened outside: the dark ages, the renaissance, two world wars… a whole lot of history.

And then, I got to thinking about that notion itself. It was a fairly interesting thought but it wasn’t much more than that. It was not the start of a chain of logic that led me somewhere more interesting. It wasn’t the only such thought I had during that movie either… there were several such isolated, amorphous thoughts. Each one interesting in its own right, within its specific context, interrelated even but not in any linear fashion. That’s when it hit me: I’ve had a lot of these amorphous thoughts over the last several months. But I don’t know what to do with them. Even the descriptors I can muster for these thoughts – amorphous, non-linear – only tell me what they are not. Therein lies the fundamental problem: I am limited by the linearity of my thought. In identifying this limitation, I have discovered my next challenge – to move beyond linearity. Perhaps, in time, I will make some headway in that direction and write about it on this blog. For now, I can only wonder how such a post would be structured.

Half a world away, I journey inward

The need for such an approach arises from the subjective experience of objective reality that we know as the human condition. I began by granting the fact of my own existence. This allows me to work under the assumption that my identity, which I seek, exists, in some form and thereby, simplifies the problem manifold. In so doing, I have established the ‘fact’ of my existence as the frame of reference, the foundation upon which all other knowledge I possess is predicated.

The next step was to define that which I sought. Upon some consideration, I redefined my question as “Do I have an identity that extends beyond context, i.e. my past and present experiences and actions?” The simplest experiment I could think of was to try and observe myself in a radically different context. From a reductionist standpoint, there are two significant weaknesses in the experiment’s design: a) as both observer and subject, I’d be prone to bias and, b) being privy to my observations, I’d invariably be affected by them, i.e. the act of observation would alter the subject of study. However, these could be offset to a degree by recognizing and accounting for them, as far as possible.

Moving halfway across the globe to begin by graduate studies gave me the perfect opportunity to conduct such an experiment. It is important to acknowledge that the need for the physical separation from my past stemmed from my lack of mental discipline at the time. Over the last five years, I’ve been engaged in a continuous, iterative process of introspection and self-assessment. At each step, I became aware of the impact that the knowledge, thus gained, was having upon me. Observing my own evolution, I came to the realization that it should be possible for me to consciously guide the process, at least to a degree.

Over time, as I changed and grew more and more comfortable in my own skin, I noticed improving clarity in my self-observation. The act of observation was changing that which was being observed as well as the observer – after all, compartmentation of thought notwithstanding; they are both the same entity. Along the way, I’ve come to realize also that the process of seeking is continually revising my definition of that which I seek. Indeed, I’ve come to look upon ‘my identity’ very differently now.

For the longest time, I was troubled by the immense influence of my circumstances upon my identity. I desperately sought to discover for myself a context-independent identity; so that I could see myself more than the sum of my past experiences and actions. This is no longer a concern for me. I see now the flaw in my linear, reductionist approach to the problem. I find it more apt to describe myself as a complex adaptive system and my identity is an emergent behavior/property of the system (i.e., me). Therefore, while my identity is informed by my past, it is different from the sum of my past. The question of whether one is more or less does not arise, because the process of my evolution is non-linear, far from monotonic and not commutative.

My response to new experience is heavily influenced by my history and the different parts of my history do not always exert the same level of influence. Therefore, I no longer consider my identity in linear terms or even as a function of time even thought it is constantly evolving in time. While I recognize the infinite nature of one’s search for one’s identity, I no longer consider it a journey in simple space-time. Rather it is more akin to an evolutionary optimization problem, where one is constantly redefining the optimum criteria based on new input even as one tries to more towards it. This idea in turn leads me back to the concept of ‘wu wei’ – I mustn’t stagnate nor must I hurry. The key is to be conscious of all my experiences and actions which in and of itself is an ideal to strive for. And, to me this provides a rather satisfactory answer to what I’m doing with my existence – I’m learning – about myself and about the universe (well, the infinitesimal fragment of it that I interact with). It is both the means and the end, at least to me.

Wei Wu Wei - Action without action

‘Wu wei’, which roughly translates to ‘spontaneous/natural action’, is a Taoist concept applicable to the martial arts. The idea is for the martial artist to neither act nor remain passive, for these are both unilateral; both are states of inertia. He remains free from inertia in his interaction with the universe – which is represented by the opponent – and restores balance with minimal expenditure of energy. He forces neither action nor inaction, he neither attacks nor defends, he is neither protagonist nor antagonist. He rises above and beyond being a party to any conflict, and simply prevails through them. The opponent’s force which disturbs balance/oneness is countered with a smaller force that complements, rather than opposes it.

To achieve ‘wu wei’, the martial artist must first look inward and quell the fluctuations within. He must achieve a state of calm hyper-awareness where he is keenly attuned to all his senses. In this state of mind, he is also able to rapidly process sensory information and make decisions. The key to speeding up the thought process is to adopt a non-linear approach that utilizes the pattern recognition and predictive functions of the neocortex. The subjective experience of such a mental state may be perceived as a slowing down of time and it is absolutely vital to ‘wu wei’. In short, he must be like still water, reflecting his opponent’s weaknesses and letting him defeat himself.

His attacks find his opponent’s vulnerabilities because they are simply a response to the existence of an opening. This is what Bruce Lee referred to when he talked about his ‘fist striking on its own’ and what Miyamoto Musashi called the ‘strike of non-thought’. Likewise, wu wei allows the martial artist to avoid and deflect his opponent’s attacks and frustrate him at every turn. Thereby, he is able to turn his opponent against himself in both mind and body and ultimately dissipate his very will to fight. At this level, the martial arts become, to use Bruce Lee’s words, a means of ‘honest self-expression’ and transcend from a fighting art to a path to self-realization.

However, honestly expression requires intense introspection and deep knowledge of the self. He must shed all that is unnecessary – reducing himself, body and mind, in the crucible of training to the solid core of his being. While he must constantly strive for improvement, he must do so without being at conflict with himself – in short, he must accept his nature and his humanity. He must be comfortable in the knowledge that the ideal will always remain beyond his grasp. Such realization will bring lasting peace. And, it is this inner calm, rather than aggression, that brings clarity of expression and the ability to prevail.

In achieving such growth, the martial artist surpasses action and reaction, attack and defense, indeed, all limitations. And he no longer limits himself to a style or even to action that is only physical. He applies himself as necessary to the situation at hand, be it through thought, word or deed. His goal is beyond even victory. In a way, he becomes the eternal, the intangible, his ‘self’ no longer a party to any conflict. The opponent is then reduced to a helpless hand swatting at thin air. Such is the method of ‘wei wu wei’.

A Question of Balance

What follows is an attempt to crystallize some thoughts I’ve had with regard to my pursuit of gung fu. The words gung fu translate to ‘time and hard work’ and it is my understanding that the development of martial skill happens as much in the mind as in the body, if not more so. Developing skill demands not just constant training but constantly evolving training.

In martial arts, as in all things, one must strive constantly for balance. The first step in seeking balance is identifying the antagonistic elements that compose the equation. In doing this one is forced to examine oneself in the blinding light of honest introspection.

In order to be effective, training must hone one’s body and mind into an effective tool. One must train the body to maximize agility, speed, balance and efficiency of motion and the mind to develop sharper perception, thorough situational awareness and stillness of thought. The key is to balance the hard elements within gung fu forms with the soft, the external with the internal.

In a sense, one could think of the body as a tool to develop and transmit force, into the earth for movement or into the opponent. Hence, training must be balanced between developing form and fitness. In fitness training one must balance strength and power with speed and flexibility. While working on form one must balance the various elements: stability, balance, breathing, power, speed, fluidity. Even within the context of a single move, one must balance tension and relaxation just as one must balance following the traditional form with improvisation.

The true martial artist does not start fights but finishes them. While he must avoid being the instigator/aggressor, he must possess the fortitude to prevail should conflict be forced upon him. Even so, the martial artist must measure his response, balancing concern for his own well being with concern for his opponent’s well being. Where he must be gentle in dealing with an errant act of rowdiness, he must be able to act with unbridled violence when such action is called for.

Although the martial artist must possess the capacity for violence, it is vital that he use the right motivations to propel him in a conflict. Aggression, while untamed, must be free of anger and malice and should be expressed through one’s instincts and reasoning skills rather than as an emotional outburst. In this way, one remains in control of oneself and is best able to avoid unintended damage to all parties involved in the conflict as well as to bystanders.