Climbing Trees with Guru-ji

A couple of months ago I was told by a wise woman that I ought to be weary of guru's and that I may find relationships with them difficult because of 'my nature'. I wasn't entirely sure what she meant by the delicate phrasing - 'my nature' - but when she offered me her words it certainly struck a chord....

I have tended to adopt a quite a sceptical attitude towards people who act and are treated as if they are gurus. I'm aware that gurus are jointly and dynamically 'created' through and in relationship (in the same way that someone or thing on taking a parent-type role in a relationship requires the other to be take on a child-type role). And yet, still I've found myself surprised, intrigued and sometimes even upset by the faith that some people seem to have for their guru. I've sometimes felt disturbed by the relative difficulty I have in associating with such figures compared with others; am I lacking in sufficient humility or respect? This tension has increased a little recently, as I've discovered that in some traditions, the role of the guru is regarded as quite important in the context of an individual's own spiritual or developmental journey.

The other day I had a image come to me that has helped me understand the tension I encounter a little bit better. I rolled the internal picture forward a few frames and here's the movie that played:

A man - thin, wiry, dark - is climbing a tree (its not a broad and sturdy English oak or a sparkling spruce; maybe its more like a coconut tree. Yes, that's it – a coconut or palm tree of some sort, swaying in a warm ocean breeze). The chap is climbing the tree, steadily and surely.

Now, the image splits into two separate films.

In one film, as our hero works his way up the tree and we see another fellow above him, climbing this same tree. As he clambers ever higher, debris falls down. Our wiry man barely notices the leaves and twigs falling down. But the leading climber eventually knocks a big fat, green coconut off. Down it tumbles. It hits a branch just above Wireman and whistles past his face. Huh. The grip is less certain now. It looks a long way down and it suddenly seems as if the momentum has changed direction – what goes up....

His guru calls down and Wireman dares to look up. Its easy, he calls. You just need to keep going. Motivational stuff from up there. Listen, bhaiya, positive mental attitude is needed to reach such altitude. Beneficient smile, sweetness and might. You can't be thinking negative thoughts now. Believe me, I did it. Come, yar. Come.

Wireman looks up and then pushes off with his right foot. He misses his footing and for a moment, he's a-gone-a....

Cut to...

Wireman 2.

Its not a sequel or prequel. More like a para-quel. Another story, another vision. Same lighting. Wireman is climbing the tree. Steadily and surely. And the guru is also climbing, sending down his debris. But what's this? The shot pans out....Its not the same tree at all. They're on different trees. And our wiry fellow is making his way up, without those kind gifts from guru-ji's showering down upon him. He looks over to his friend, who seems to be climbing high, and then looks up to the top of his tree. Oh, that's far. How on earth...He notices a sturdy looking branch, sticking out to the side and its within reach. Perhaps, I'll just aim for that one and then have a little rest.

As I said above, I have had a tense relationship with guru-type figures in the past. It not that I've had any conflicts with them; its all internal, as I struggle to know how to engage with their experience, intelligence, insights and so on.

I've wondered whether the source of the tension is my education. Damn, education. Somewhere along the line, I learnt something that is often known as 'critical thinking'. Doubt, doubt, question, doubt, doubt. Its lovely two-step dance. Try it some time. Doubt, doubt, question, doubt, doubt. I'm sure many of you already have. Doubt, doubt, question, doubt, doubt.

The screening of these two films in my head have given me a new angle on the difficulties I have relating to guru-type figures. I've realised that its not that I'm not willing to be inspired or that I lack humility. Its not that at all.

The second film works shows me a healthier way of relating to people who have worked hard and seem to have have gone further.

Its like this. Instead of following someone else up The Tree, its more helpful for me to see that we're each of us on different trees. We're both still connected, through the shared act of our climbing and there's a lot for me to learn from looking over. The challenges we encounter are somewhat similar but altogether different as well. Its my tree, adapted for (and, perhaps even, adapting to) me and my particular clumsiness.

And the guru, we'll he or she is a different kind of person altogether; she's no longer inadvertently sending down her own debris for me to deal with. In fact, she's mainly busy getting on with her own tree and debris.

Does this make sense or have I got the wrong end of the stick? Are there any wise women, sages or guru's out there who can let me know how wrong I've got this all?

work...its a laugh

It’s funny. I walked in to work this morning having had a delightful start to the day and I’m writing this because I’m sad that the delight has gone so easily.

I woke up naturally and early. I knew that I would wake in the morning with a newly discovered shadow of my body after the yoga class last night, where we stretched and breathed our way into new forms. It was a pleasant aching that I felt. The radio happened to be tuned to Radio 3 –and the easy tension of classical music sat well with the feeling in my body. I had a leisurely breakfast - alone for a while and then joined by my brother, sister-in-law and nephew. I walked outside and tended to a few of the vegetable plants – nothing heavy, just a little bit of TLC. I walked down to the train station with plenty of time and found myself on the platform with a few moments of silence to stop and stare. I stared. On the train I sat for a while and I then pulled out my current read – a rather large book about the history of work that has just started engaging my attention. Toward the end of the journey I leafed through some notes and had a moment of inspiration about some pending task at work. I noted down my thoughts and sat back satisfied. I took the early stop on the train so I would have the slightly longer walk into the office along some quiet side streets.

I walked the half mile at a pace but steadily and consciously. Opposing fore-finger and thumb.
And then onto the main street behind the office.
Round the corner.

I’m getting my key fob out and waving it in front of the security sensor. And now I’m in the office. I walk up the stairs. And then suddenly I am here. In a now increasingly familiar place that feels…..

A couple of colleagues are already at their desks, typing away and looking industrious. I say hello and hear a hello back. But there is more than hello that I hear. I hear something like ‘we’re busy working’. I stop myself from saying anything further. I don’t share my calm. I don’t feel they want my energy. It would get in the way of the productivity. Efficiency and accountability has cold voice.

I walk away quietly, quickly to the toilet to wash my possibly H1N1 infected hands. Time to get on. It’s not so funny now.

a bedtime story

I'm feeling bruised by an encounter today. So bruised that I've been awake since 3am. My mind has been whirring away trying to apply some tlc to the black and blue inside. And this post is the noise being emitted from that dodgy computer fan as it has been trying to cool my head down in these early hours.

Okay, Rupesh. So what happened?

Wellll...

I had been preparing some work for a few days. In my head it was a reasonable important thing. Anyway, I was supposed to get some feedback on it today. I certainly got the feedback and it felt the ususal sliced white sandwich feedback.....you know a meaty bit of bad surrounded two slices of white which just seemed to be there to highlight the importance of the stuff in the middle.

After hearing these thoughts about my work, I left feeling hurt and bruised. I felt like a victim of someone else's dealings. I started wondering why that person didn't seem to care, didn't even seem to recognise that I might be not feeling that great.

On the one hand I could not quite imagine this person really being this great ogre that I was picturing her as. And yet, on the other hand, my experience of being affected by this, of being hurt and injured was pretty real. The whole afternoon, I had been walking around a bit like a teary child who was ready to fall into a boxing rage having been sent to the naughty corner.

Early this morning I woke up with a few aches and started wondering about this. How was it that this person had not seen the hurt that I was going through? And how is it that people in power always seem to be oblivious to the hurt they cause other people? Surely there was a time when they didn't have power and got hurt. How can people forget this?

I got to thinking about some stuff that I had been reading about language and communication recently (in fact the same stuff I had been reading in preparation for the work).

One of the writers I had been reading is a guy called Lakoff. He talks about the powerful role of metaphor in our language and how our lives can end up being influenced by them. For example, if we talk about sending a message to hit a target, then we're setting up our communcation to be defined by this underlying image of some kind of battle between opposing forces. He suggests that this is not just a nice parallel, but that the metaphors we use end up actually organising us, our families, organisations, schools etc. They influence what we think is good, and right and correct. In a booklet (written in XXX) addressed to American progressives, he suggests that the conservatives have successfully used some ways of talking to inspire people to believe in their values. He goes on to talk about the power of certain types of story, which seem to exist in the American culture. Most of these stories, he suggests, are defined by the having three important elements - a victim, an aggressor and a hero.

(I think this is a line of thinking that can be linked to the work of the cultural anthropologist, Joseph Campbell, who proposed that there were some seven major types of stories that can be seen human cultures traced across both time and geography.)

Back to my experiences today. There I was merely trying to do my best for the organisation, indeed thinking that I had something substantial to offer, when along came someone who just put out the flame, and then shot me down for good measure. After all of this had happened, I had come home on the train thinking simply how nice it would have been to have someone to hug.

So, there we have it - the myth in real time, right. Me the victim of someone else's nasty oppression, with the dream of a loved one to be my hero.

But as I was going over this in my head this morning, I started wondering whether perhaps the aggressor in my story was simply that or whether something more complex was going on. I mean was it possible that she was as uncaring as this role required her to be.

The story about her and I...aggressor and victim is quite helpful in one way. That way I get to be right, loving and complex and she gets to be...well, it doesn't matter that much - aggressor. End of.

But is it not possible that she was perhaps also a victim - perhaps not in that situation but sometime somewhere else. I argued with myself for a while on this one...she's got more power, so she should be more conscious. I would have been much more caring towards the other person if I had been in her position. I thought to myself that I would remember this lesson and when I was in a similar situation I would make sure that the other person didn't feel that way.

But wait on there just one second partner. Is it really possible that she's there to hurt me. That all the times I get hurt, someone on the other side is a bit of an aggressor who's fighting me. The numbers just don't seem to add up. If half of us get hurt once, then that makes the other half aggressors right. But everyone seems to have been the victim of someone else at some point. So where are these pure evil doers who never get hurt by some else?

Suddenly, I realised that I'm trapped by the story. That the only way I was looking at the situation was through this set of characters. Quickly, I started going through other possible stories. But it was hard. They all seemed to require this victim, hero and aggressor story.

What other stories are there?

Well, to me there seem to be a couple of potential other ones out there. In my head these sound a bit balmy, so I'm not sure what's going to happen when I put them down on paper...but lets see what happens.

One of the oldest stories is that we're just all going somewhere. I mean, its the journey of the traveller. It implies that we're not static, that we're not just sitting here as fully formed statues but that we that we are work in progress all the time going somewhere a bit unknown, but going somewhere. Some would say that we are more verbs than nouns...less human beings and more "human becomings". You might also think about that in wider circles - families, cultures and societies, ecosystems and universes. They are just all becomings.

I'm quite attracted to this idea at 4.30 in the morning. It means that I'm giving some sense of possibility back to the nasty ogre...and also freeing myself up from having to always be in the fight or flight mode. I think this is the reason why sometimes people talk about such and such being a teaching. My aggressor today was not so much an aggressor, but she was instead a teaching. And perhaps for her I was also a teaching.

Another one works with the image of a poet or dancer. Its quite similar to the becoming story - about composing something, perhaps improvising with what you have and what is around you, drawing inspiration from this and then expressing with creativity and not knowing. An extension to this story is a group of dancers, collectively improvising something out together.

And perhaps bringing these together - the becoming, the poet and the group...perhaps another story is about a circus of travelling bards.

Right, I think I'm getting a little sleepy now. I guess my last thought on this right now is how pervasive and easy that fight story is - the one with the victim, hero and all. I'm not sure that sometimes its not actually quite helpful. But, it also seems to me to have to much of a grip on my imagination sometimes. I think for now, I'm just going to try and notice where it crops up in my head or in my language...and perhaps occasionally, I'll tell myself another story to drift off to sleep. Night night.

Shawls from Ranikhet

Here is a little video about showing how shawls are made in a small workshop in Ranikhet.

Uttrayan...flying kites in Ahmedabad

This is a little video that I made a month or so back. A sequence of computing problems have prevented me from posting this. I'm hoping now that this will work.

The video was shot in Ahmedabad on 14th January by my flat mate Aaron and I...

And here are some links on how to make your own kites:

http://www.skratch-pad.com/kites/make.html

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Kite-Out-of-a-Plastic-Bag

http://www.making-and-flying-kites.com/

monsters

Hey....I've got a special treat for some of you. I'm thinking especially about Rohan and Dhruv, but I reckon someone in Bristol might enjoy this as well:




This line of lorries is regularly parked up on this one roadside in Ahmedabad...they come from all over the state and country, dropping, picking up, shifting and loading. I only captured about a half of the line of lorries in the clip...

I've hitched a couple lifts going from place to place for work...here's a picture from the inside of one of these beasts:




Rupesh

ps I wrote this blog about two months ago and have just figured out a way to post it...So fingers crossed that you can see it! If you get the video and it works well for you, let me know and I can do more....

A Stony Elegance

Sorry for the silence guys, I don’t know where the last few weeks have gone (and I've had some trouble uploading a posting with a video - that's on hold for now). Let me just jump feet first into something that I’ve been wondering these last few weeks. I’ve been thinking about elegance. These thoughts were actually inspired by the state of my feet, so not exactly the most elegant starting point but if you bear with me, there is some elegance in the end.

A few weeks back I bought thee very lovely Kolaphuri sandals. They’re lovely to wear but Ahmedabad is one dusty place and after a day walking around my feet have been getting quite dusty and dirty. I’ve been coming back to our flat (yes, I’ve moved out of my bosses’ lovely Jupiter pad and into a 10th floor room with a view – more about the view another time) and spending a good 5 or 10 minutes trying to get my feet clean. But really it has felt like I was fighting a losing battle – no matter how much I would soap and rub, and rub and soap they would still look a little off colour.

Then one day a couple of weeks ago Avni suggested a pumice stone (you know the type? A stone with bubbles inside…think funny shaped, sand-coloured Wispa bar if you are in the UK). She said it would be really handy in bringing back the sparkle to my feet again.

Since then I’ve been popping into all kinds of little stores and huts and shacks , but I have not found anything that resembles this simple piece of stone. I couldn’t understand why it would be so difficult to find a stone until the other day when I was enlightened by a store owner just near our apartment.

I had gone into to the little store which sells beauty products and underwear, as I’d been told that this would be the best kind of store to look in and I asked if they sold pumice stone. The owner looked pleased in the way that only shop owners can when they know that they’ve got exactly what you’re looking for. I beamed him a smile in return and my feet breathed a sigh of relief! He finished up with his other customer and then pulled out a tray of items for me.

Actually, what he pulled out was a tray of bars of blocks of something that looked hard that were in a variety of colours from a bright orange to a deeply intense blue. I took a look at one of the bars and it seemed reasonably interesting. There was even a little rope attached which I guess you could use to hang it up from or twirl it around your finger as you while away your hours in the bathroom. I asked if I could take one of the bars out if it’s plastic wrapping and have a closer look. The shop keeper looked a little surprised but said fine.

Opening it up I saw that one side was flat and on the other, little grooves had been etched into the surface. As I turned the bar over in my hands and I realised that it was made of up of tiny bits of stone that had the look coloured crystals. I rubbed the bar against my palm and as I did so a few crumbs of the compacted, crystallised stone came off. I rubbed a little harder and some more came off.

My face fell as I realised that these bits of crystaline stone were being held together by some kind of glue.

I asked the owner if he just had the simple puthro. You know, the kind that you use for scrubbing feet.

He said no.

I umm’ed. I ah’ed. ‘Kya thi marse?’

Oh, no you won’t find those stones anywhere. Buy one of these. They’re very attractive, no?

Well, yes the colours are interesting but I don’t think they are going to work very well. Do you ever get just the stones?

No, no, not really. Those stones are old. People always want something new. Try this, it’s the latest and will look very nice in your bathroom....

So, I left and went for a walk with feet that were still in need of a good hard scrub. As I walked around and forgot about my feet, I began thinking about how wonderful it is that somehow some stones are formed, which seem to fit rather neatly into the palms of human hands, can actually happen to do a pretty good job of helping you scrub the Ahmedabadi grime from your feet.

The very fact that these bubbly stones (which, I have since discovered, are formed after volcanic eruptions) come into existence at all seemed to be an amazing demonstration of elegance compared to the clumsy attempt of some manufacturer to….

‘Ah, just walk back to your cave, you dirty footed Luddite. Those old bits of crusty volcano don’t come in the perfect colour to match the awesome design that we made up for our bathroom, do they?’