Corporate Punishment

The frog and the scorpion

2010-10-01T09:36:00.000-05:00

It is the strangest thing. Freedom and no choice – sometimes they go hand in hand. My enemy stormed in my cube one day and instead of berating me, asked for my help with something. This was an area where he himself was under siege. I was under absolutely no illusion that if I helped him, he would suddenly become an ally. In fact, I knew that not only would he not acknowledge the help, he would turn it around to possibly hurt me.
But there was no choice. And complete freedom. All my life, I have yearned for big truths. Something that will come and shake the foundations of my life. Something that will lead me to give up my corporate career and join a worthy cause. Or equally, something that will convince me that I need to forget about all this spiritual nonsense and become an unabashed hedonist. Buy that condo on the beach for starters. But there are smaller, simpler truths moment by moment. And the truth of that moment was that I need to help him. And I noticed freedom around that thought. And I noticed that I had no choice but to follow through. It took me a while to reconcile that dichotomy but I think the answer is the question ‘Freedom from what?’
More often than not, freedom is taken as the freedom to do what we want. Like the freedom to pursue your happiness. Freedom and pursuit, in my experience rarely go together. The freedom comes with peace in my experience, is the freedom from the tyranny of the self. I think that is what that moment was about. For a moment, my self opened up for me to recognize the truth of the moment and there was no choice but to honor that recognition. And I also know from my own mistakes that it is an error to always equate that kind of truth with doing goo d or doing the right thing. The truth of that moment could very well have been to politely decline and tell him I was overloaded myself, which I was. The truth of the moment could have been an honest ‘ No. I am not ready for this.’
But in this case, the truth of the moment was to find time to help my enemy, despite being overworked myself.
The second guessing and the internal chatter came later. Voices, that beat me up for being so naïve. Voices, that said ‘See I told you’ when the enemy shamelessly portrayed my help to mean that it was something I should have done in the first place, so it was not help as much as a task overdue.
But still, the glimpse of that moment of truth was enough. I gave my word and followed through. A month later, on his own, he acknowledged that to his team. In truth, I did not even need that acknowledgement. And with that comes freedom. And a little peace.

The Chariot

2010-08-03T07:32:00.004-05:00

I had a glimpse of what small countries go through when they border bigger and more powerful countries.

A few weeks ago, I logged on to my project's collaboration website and found that items which were on my plate had been usurped by my enemy. I sat and reflected on what this would entail. And I saw the strategy clearly. I would still be doing the work on those items but since my enemy had those items on his plate, he would have the right to boss me around on these issues and establish his superiority. And plus he could have assign some of those tasks to someone else and slowly make me redundant on the project.

I reflected on whether I should follow my natural instincts and just do my work and ignore his encroachment and trust that people would notice and acknowledge my work. I abhor territorialism of any sort and if I want my actions to move in the direction of peace and non-violence, how could I fight this? By God, if I wanted a problem in Karma Yoga, I could not conjured up a better one. It was almost eerie. And I had no charioteer to guide me. Plus there was no question of me laying down my arms and refusing to fight – I never had arms to start with.

But staying silent and giving in to this territorial infringement did not feel right. The gnawing voice inside me would not let go and kept saying ‘Cowardice is not non-violence.’ I had come in early to work and there was no one around, so I had the luxury of being able to just sit quietly and contemplate.

My predicament was made worse by the fact that since my enemy is perceived to be much more important to the project than I am, I did not have any expectation of support from my manager. And I would even understand if he did not support me.

At some point, some clarity emerged and I wrote my manager an email, quietly stating my case. Instead of claiming my right to the items that had been usurped, I expressed my interest in owning them and being responsible for them.

To my great surprise, I received a prompt email from my manager saying he agreed and that he would fix the problem.

Later that day, my enemy rushed into my office, demanded I follow him to his and expressed how glad he was that I had taken those items off his plate and he was overburdened as it were and so on and so forth. His body language and tone of voice indicated anything but pleasure at being relieved of his tasks, but I listened and quietly explained to him that I was given to understand all along that I would be accountable for the tasks in questions and so no reason for a change.

Looking back, what might have swayed my manager to rule in my favor was that I focused on my responsibilities and not my rights. By doing so, I made my case without making it into a confrontation. But I am also aware that my manager could have easily just ignored the issue. But I would still have the satisfaction of knowing that I worked hard at ferreting out the truth of the issue and communicated that in a sane and rational manner without throwing a fit about territorial encroachment and sovereignty.

Back to basics

2010-07-05T13:59:00.003-05:00

The other day at a work related party, a colleague came and advised, “Do me a favor. Watch your back.” I had a clue as to what he was talking about. I know one of my colleagues has it in for me and that is putting it rather mildly. I confirmed my suspicion as to who my colleague was referring to but as tempted as I was to inquire more about why he was making that particular statement, I knew it was a slippery slope and could lead to horse-trading and exchanging of favors and other such political complications. And I have no stomach for that.

“Look all I am trying to do is what is good for the project,” I said wearily.
My colleague who until recently was one of those who was gunning me down himself, said “Yeah you just want the job done, right?”
I nodded sadly and added , “Why can’t he just leave me alone?” referring to my antagonistic colleague.
“I got your back buddy,” assured my colleague at the party and I nodded gratefully.

And I thought about this later. Was I wise not to prod my colleague more about what he was talking about or was it just cowardly evasion? I was grateful when he said he would watch my back but I am not willing to do that myself. Am I too attached to being ‘noble’ or acting ‘noble’?

Truth is that confronting this antagonistic colleague does terrify me a little. For this is an adversary unlike any I have faced in the past in terms of unscrupulousness and persistence in back-stabbing. I do not know how to counter him without dragged down to his level of accusation and counter-accusation. I am afraid as to what he will stoop to if I point out his destructive behavior openly. There is a saying in India which goes something like “Never pick a fight with a thug because for a thug, fighting is a full time job.” It is the prospect of being on my guard 24*7 against this guy that terrifies me. I have been in situations like that and I know what it is like, endless worrying about what he may or may not do. Sleepless nights. Higher stress during the day. A feeling I have lost my soul. That is what I am terrified of.

Everything in me, is telling me to just keep playing it straight and trust that my manager and others will know enough to discount the back-biting.
And yet, there is another aspect to this dilemma. “Love thy enemies? How?” Treat obstacles as the dragon guarding the treasure. Nice idea. How the fuck do I translate it into reality here? Can I just be my open and trusting self and let this guy exploit that? Do I turn the other cheek when he twists things that I say, to my disadvantage? Do I ignore all the lies and back-biting he habitually indulges in?
‘.. being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,’ says Kipling in his beautiful poem ‘If’ which I have hanging on my cubicle wall. The first I can do. The second is a bit more difficult because I have such an aversion to this guy and everything he stands for. And there lies my own challenge.

I have to get past my own internal reaction to this guy. As evil as I am making out this guy to be, hating him is not the answer. I am not up to the challenge of loving those who hate me, but I should be able to get past my own hatred and strong aversion. Here is where Buddhism 101 can help. If I don’t have an independently existing self, then neither does he. So what is there for me to hate? Sadness that complex conditions can produce a personality like this, yes. But hatred? No need of that. And it is definitely not satisfying for me to interact with someone – anyone with this shield of opinions around me and having it color all my perceptions. But how do I prevent myself from being an open naïve fool? That is the challenge? Can I be totally present in my interactions with him? Present so that I am aware of my reactions to his aggressive and even offensive body language and tone of voice? Present so that I have equanimity with my reactions to him and so that I don’t project them out. Present so that I allow for him to be something other than what I see him as? Present so that I am aware of his possible hidden agendas at the same time. Present so that I stay focused on the good of the project and keep offering my unconditional co-operation to that goal. Present so that I don’t get ambushed by need for recognition and external validation and keep doing my job to the best of my abilities. Present so that I can counter his falsehoods calmly and assertively.

My enemy is my zen master creeping up behind me with a stick at the slightest sign of drowsiness or muddled thinking. That is going to be my attitude for the next month, so help me God.

A tale of two meetings

2010-06-18T09:13:00.004-05:00

The more I live, the more I am realizing the importance of space. Space between thoughts and actions. Space which has room for possibilities despite being crowded with opinions. Space which makes choice possible. Space that allows me to respond instead of having a knee-jerk reaction. The list goes on and on.

Someone opposes what I am trying to do and I want to brush him aside out of fear that my assignment may not get done otherwise. If I have the internal space in the moment, then I can choose to flow around the obstacle instead of trying to overcome it. Or maybe I realize that flowing around is not working and I need to confront the issue. Space is what allows me to have the confrontation with the right amount of force and without making it into a ‘me against him/her’ issue. Space is what lets me win a point without making the other into a loser. Space is what lets me concede a point and change my stance without feeling like a loser.

And sometimes, holding a free and open internal space, or presence if you will, can result in a transformation of the environment around you. The environment around me, and I suspect for most if not all people, is mind-blowingly complex and full of divisive groups at odds with each other and competing with each other fairly as well as unfairly. And even within a group, often people have their own agendas that run counter to the goals of the group. No surprise here. This is a fractal pattern that repeats almost at every level of society.

But if I hold an internal space that does not project this and allows people to come together towards a common objective, I find that sometimes it results in almost magical co-operation. Where meditation comes into this equation is that it allows you to open up to all your opinions, pre-conceived notions, irritations and reactions on the cushion and have equanimity with this so that when they surface in the middle of a meeting or any work-interaction, they have a lessened chance of making you react blindly. In the words of my primary meditation teacher, Shinzen Young, ‘Equanimity is defined as not interfering with the flow of the senses at any level, including the level of preconscious processing.’

I find that I can let my opinions about people come up and because I have space around it (or equanimity about it), I don’t project it out. That sometime allows the other person to act differently. Or maybe it allows me to notice that the person does not always match my opinion. As an example if I think someone is always focused only on his area and does not understand the collaboration needed to come up with a common solution to a problem and I am comfortable internally with that someone being that way and don’t tense up when that someone is about to speak, I am sometimes surprised to find that person more amenable and co-operative.

But not always. And to my chagrin, I have found time and again that I cannot use this as a formula. And that is the way it should be. If I am interested in holding that space because it will result in a particular outcome, then I am not being open – I am just being manipulative and that attempt itself compromises that free and open space. And sometimes, even if I am in that beautiful space, things can go very wrong. A month ago, I was chairing an important meeting involving my teammates as well as the client and one of my teammates was very antagonistic and disruptive and my attempts to gently direct the meeting were totally ineffective. After the meeting, I was uniformly lambasted for my inability to run the meeting effectively. That caused a crisis of faith.

Not faith in the conventional sense. Faith more in Karma Yoga, for the want of a better word. I was in a very good space during the meeting. I did not react to anything around me. I was allowing and still driving towards consensus. I wasn’t unduly perturbed that the meeting resulted in chaos. Isn’t that what Karma Yoga is about? Do your duty and don’t be attached to the outcome? But in retrospect, in that beautiful space where no one can do anything wrong and everything is alright, I had failed to realize that part of my ‘duty’ is also to present a good image of my company to the client and I failed to realize that the internal disagreements that were being voiced in the meeting were undermining the client’s faith in my company.

Shinzen Young often talks about awareness and equanimity have to go hand in hand and in my experience keeping them balanced is like walking the proverbial razor’s edge. Often I find my awareness exceeds my equanimity and as a result I am more stressed than I need to be. On this occasion however, I was so blissed out by equanimity that I failed to be aware of how the client was reacting to the meeting.

And I learnt from that. In subsequent meetings, despite being in an open and accepting space, I was alert for any disagreements that would cause the client concern about my company’s ability to come up with an uniform solution and learnt to detect and direct those topics to internal meetings instead. On a couple of occasions, when my colleagues were not taking my cue, I had to be firm with them and cut-off further conversation on the topic. And I learnt to take the trouble to build internal consensus before going up in front of the client.

And yesterday, I had one of those internal meetings pulling together three different groups. I was again in a good open and accepting internal space, thanks partly to my meditation the previous evening, and I was also present and focused on the agenda and the goals and I was amazed that the meeting went without a hitch and we were able to reach consensus on a few issues despite prior resistance. It was magical. And I almost fell out of my chair in surprise, when in the management meeting today, one of the managers I had always perceived as self-serving and un-cooperative went out of his way to commend me on the previous day’s meeting. But if I expect that to happen in the next meeting, then I am back to my tendency (and it is a universal tendency) of coming up with lazy formulas and go to sleep at the wheel.

As Dickens would have said, ‘It was the worst of meetings; it was the best of meetings.’
And it is the story of my work life.

Of bricks and walls

2010-05-17T21:24:00.002-05:00

This is an old article that I never posted. Something made me remember it, so here it is:

Of bricks and walls
Last week I had a meeting with my manager. I was dissatisfied with the way my job assignments were turning out. My manager and the Team Lead were promoting a team member at my expense and in the process I was getting marginalized and constantly having to assert myself – something that doesn’t come easily to me. After weeks of stuffing my feelings, I decided to discuss it with him. News of my displeasure had reached my manager and he seemed to know what I was going to talk about.

The moment I opened the topic, my manager launched an attack on me pointing out what I could have done to prevent the situation. I realized he had some misconceptions about what was bothering me and I clarified. He softened somewhat but was still on the defensive. I clarified that I wasn’t blaming him or the team lead and I realized that the situation evolved in the way it did due to a variety of complex reasons but the bottom line was that it wasn’t fair to me. The manager was obviously biased since I was taking on one of his favorites who he had personally brought into the company and refused to see my point of view.

I left the meeting very disappointed and about to start the process of looking for a new job. But after venting my frustration with a sympathetic colleague, some objectivity returned. I remembered all the times my manager had stood by me and gone out of his way to support me and just because he was playing favorites now, I could not dismiss all the good things he had done for me and in all probability would continue to do for me.

As far as leaving the job as concerned, I sat back and realized that there were plenty of plus points still. Despite support from my manager and Team Lead, I had made my presence felt and was confident would be able to get reasonably satisfying assignments if not the best assignments. And given that I did not care to promote myself and suck-up to the bosses, no matter where I went, I would face the same situation where I would find some prima donna throwing his/her weight around. The choice is, and will be, between constantly competing with such people (and it is constant, for each interaction involves some power play) and playing the political game or staying out of such games and maintaining my integrity and peace-of-mind even if it means getting shortchanged.

Last weekend, I was reading a book by Ajahn Brahm intriguingly called 'Who ordered this truckload of dung?' where he talks about how he did not like a wall he built because of two bricks that were misaligned and someone pointed out the ninety-eight other bricks that were just fine. And I was reminded of this incident. So often in our jobs and relationships, we focus on the couple of things that are ‘wrong’ and discount the ninety-eight other things that are just fine. Remembering this hopefully will prevent us from needlessly running from job to job and relationship to relationship.

On assumptions and jerks

2007-04-08T19:04:00.000-05:00

Ahh assumptions! We all have read countless times about it making ‘ass of you and me’. Yes, we know the perils of assuming and reacting prematurely. Yet this is a lesson I have to keep learning again and again. And I suspect I am not alone in this. But why is that? Because, I suspect that nine times out of ten or maybe eight times out of ten, the assumptions are valid and they serve to protect us.
If someone has had a history of being rude and aggressive, does it make sense to go into all interactions with this person with a completely open attitude and leaving myself completely vulnerable? And I have certainly done my share of this in the spirit of being ‘open’ and even ‘spiritual’. I had this fancy ideal that I should leave myself completely open and be able to respond in the moment when confronted with repeated rude behavior. Maybe if I was meditating four hours a day, this would be possible. But in the absence of that luxury and in the middle of having to juggle multiple tasks and demands at work, one is faced with the prospect of either stuffing one’s feelings or reacting more strongly than one would like. And the fact that the person I am talking about is a manager at my client project and has some ‘authority’ over me, does not make it any easier.
At the other end of the spectrum would be the tendency to go into all interactions with this person with an ultra-defensive stance and assuming the worst in that person. This, even if it serves to protect us, is hardly satisfactorily because it involves so much of loss of freedom. To have one’s stance so determined by someone else runs totally contrary to my love of freedom. The Buddha is reported to have said ‘Just like the waters of all the oceans have but one taste, the taste of salt; all true teachings have but one taste, the taste of freedom’. And besides the loss of freedom, it is not satisfactory to pigeonhole people as ‘jerks’ and divide the world into ‘jerks’ and ‘non-jerks’. It is kind of dualistic in an absolute way, no? It causes a severe cognitive dissonance with the idea(and in my case, a hope) that everything and everyone is a manifestation of one reality, Buddha-nature, God or whatever term you prefer.
So, how do I hold all of this? His tendency to be a jerk; my tendency to be hurt and either close up or react to his behavior; my spiritual quest and the bruising of my spiritual ego(what an oxymoron) when I react to him. Yet there is something beautiful trying to muddle through this very ordinary situation. And I don’t even think it is personal. I can’t help but think of this as an impersonal evolutionary impulse that realizes that if ordinary, day-to-day interactions cannot be sorted out at the micro level, there is no chance in hell of peace of earth! And in some moments, compassion emerges; compassion for myself, for having to deal with such people on a day-in and day-out basis; compassion for others(and it is obvious that hardly anyone is exempt from this) in similar situations. And compassion for the ‘jerk’ because it can hardly be pleasant to have to be so aggressive and abrasive and I am sure it involves a lot of suffering on his part. And out of that place of compassion, often the right response emerges. I remember how once after butting heads on an issue, I complimented him on his incisive logic and ability to get to the heart of an issue and he beamed like a four year old. I followed it up by saying that my job responsibilities required me to be creative as well as analytical and misunderstandings could result if he interpreted my floating of an idea, to be recommending an action and held it up to his analytical scrutiny. And he said he was cool with that and I should just let him know.
But it is hard to always preface one’s ideas with so much of preamble. People have advised me that I should be thick-skinned and learn to brush off his behavior. Problem is though, that feels like wearing a clunky armor and I don’t know how much of life I would be shutting off by being thick-skinned.
So, where am I now with this issue? Just being watchful; a little bit on my guard; a little bit open to the moment; open to the possibility of him being co-operative instead of adversarial, this one time; careful to see where he might be coming from and discounting some of his behavior as “that’s just his nature”.
There was a time when I was very careful with every email I wrote to him because of the fear that he would jump on something in my email. Now, even though I try to be a little cautious, I have decided not to be overly cautious and write like I would to any one else in the workplace.
The other challenge is to overcome the tendency to leave him out of certain interactions, correspondence and meetings. But that again is like running away from him and involves a certain loss of freedom on my part. So, the practice is now to treat him just like I would treat another manager and include him wherever I feel he should be included due to his designation.
So, there is no dearth of opportunities to practice and I continue to make feeble attempts at treating my work life and my family life as a monastery – a place to practice and learn.
Finally, on this topic, here is a link to one of my favorite Kabir Dohas(couplets).

The mustard seed

2006-08-13T19:10:00.000-05:00

Not for the first time(and unfortunately not for the last time), I wanted an assignment at work and lost it to a competitive ‘teammate’. The assignment should have been rightfully mine but I wasn’t savvy enough to establish my territory before my ‘teammate’ came on board. As I stayed open to my disappointment and feelings of loss, something amazing happened. Rather than feel desire is something I must transcend, I felt the poignancy of desire and the inevitability of disappointment. I felt connected to everyone. To all those who have wanted something and lost, I know how you feel. It is one thing to read about these things; another to think these thoughts; but entirely different and infinitely richer to feel it. I was sitting at my hairdresser's, after days of inner anguish over this matter, listening to someone talk about how he saw a good deal on a car and sent his wife over to get it and hoped she got it. I hoped too. Another hoped his Dad would give up smoking. I hoped too. Previously, I would have perhaps failed to be empathize with people wanting cars for instance since I did not want ‘material’ things. But having embarked on a journey of self-expression at work where it is OK to go and want something, I am learning and re-learning that the object of the want is immaterial. There is something poignant and universal in the wanting itself. And someday even if by some miracle, the adult in me ends up ‘transcending’ its wants, the child in me will continue wanting and continue getting disappointed, and peace comes from hugging and consoling a crying child and not by preaching sermons to it.
In the meanwhile, I am reminded about something I read about life being an advanced degree in loss. This is not very cheerful. But it is a fact. And a universal fact. And for me alleviation of suffering comes not from transcending it but realizing the universality of hope and disappointment over and over again. And that is where the mustard seed comes in.

Focusing Away from myself

2006-05-22T22:21:00.000-05:00

I am terrified of speaking in public. That includes small groups as well as large groups. That includes speaking in front of strangers as well as speaking in front of people I know. Today, I was at an All Day meeting at work(yuck) and towards the end, I was unexpectedly asked to make a presentation with about ten minutes notice. I am starting a new assignment and everyone who is important to the assignment was in the audience. In the ten minutes I had, my mind was going berserk – oh my god these are all my peers and managers – some of them are actually competent – some of them are very tough and eager to pounce on me - I am starting a new assignment and if I muck up this presentation, I would have started with a very bad impression. I could even be taken off the project if I made an ass of myself. I would be humiliated if that happened. I might even lose my job.

I was in touch with the physical sensations caused by the fear and anxiety and tried my level best to just them let them be and not try to suppress them. It is my experience that suppressing these sensations takes away the energy I need to do a good job as well as cause me to appear tense. There have been occasions though when my attempt to open up to these uncomfortable feelings has caused them to spiral out of control causing me to freeze up and be totally incoherent. Talk about embarrassment! If there is one thing I have learnt over and over while bumbling along this spiritual path, it is that while it is great to learn, the moment I try to make a formula out of that learning, I have set myself up for a fall :)

So coming back to the present, I looked at all the terrifying people in the room. And the thought arose – “I am going to be taking their time. Why don’t I focus on making good use of their time rather than focusing on whether I do a good job of presenting or not”.
And I look again at all the people and especially the tough taskmasters who would tear me apart if I said something indefensible. And the thought arises “All of them are going to die someday. And so am I. Let me make good use of their time and serve their interests”. For some strange reason, that thought seemed to help calm me down and take the focus away from my performance anxiety. I still haven’t understood this completely, but have learnt to instinctively look upon thoughts of worthlessness or severe self-doubt as the workings of the ego.

Anyway, when it was my turn to speak, I forgot about my fears and anxieties and immersed myself completely in the topic I was presenting. I was not invested in being right or having people agree with me, so I welcomed dissenting opinions. At the end, I actually received compliments on a good presentation and the competence I displayed on the subject matter. And now no one is going to believe me if I tell them I am terrified of speaking in public :)

Inshallah

2006-04-29T21:06:00.000-05:00

A month or so ago (and I still haven’t recovered from it), I was given an assignment that was akin to walking through a landmine. Ofcourse, I did not want it but I was the chosen one and I was also not savvy enough to get out of it. I knew it was a no-win situation but I vowed to do my best and call it the way I saw it rather than worry about how to come out with the least amount of damage. I had good intentions, I worked long hours with single minded dedication, sought input from everyone but in the end still managed to get my ass blown up! And what is worse, I was accused of the very thing I was took pains to avoid – compromising my integrity! Yet in retrospect, I did realize I was subtly influenced by someone with a vested interest, which was something else to kick myself about.

A week later I was given another assignment that I did not want but I put no effort into preparing for it, broke every rule in the book and sailed through with honors and won praise from people who are not typically generous with praise.

I have been noticing the all too human tendency to beat up on myself for the first incident and pat myself on the back for the second incident. A friend of mine accuses me of coming up with hallmark card-like phrases, but I think it is more from my love of mathematical equations reinforced by my primary teacher, Shinzen Young. So, here is one derived from something I read somewhere: ‘The extent to which you will kick yourself for failures is proportional to the extent to which you feel proud of your successes’. Wish, like Emerson, I could say ‘One to me are shame and fame’!

The other interesting aspect, that I cannot help but be amused about these two incidents, is that the outcome had no co-relation to the effort. The intention in both cases though was good. So, call it karma or call it ‘let thy will be done’ or Inshallah. (What are all these religions fighting about anyway?). Anyway, here is a poem by Rumi(stolen from Coleman Barks’ Soul of Rumi) on this topic:

Inshallah

Some people work and become wealthy. Others do the same and
remain poor. Marriage
fills one with energy. Another it drains. Don’t trust ways.
They change. A means
flails about like a donkey’s tail. Always, add the gratitude
clause, if God wills. Then
proceed. You may be leading a donkey, no, a goat, no, who can
tell? We sit in a dark pit
and think we are home. We pass around delicacies. Poisoned
bait. You think this
is preachy double-talk? Those who do not breathe the God
willing phrase live in a
collective blindness. Rubbing their eyes in the dark,
they ask, “Who’s there?”

Spiritual Ego and the dhammapada

2006-03-12T13:42:00.000-05:00

When I started writing this blog, I had no idea I would be documenting so many humbling experiences. Even after falling in so many traps, making progress and nullifying it by taking retro-steps, I still naively expect the spiritual journey to be a straight-line progression. My spiritual ego(isn’t that the mother of all oxymorons?) is bruised.

And yet in retrospect it is all so obvious what happened and what the skillful action would have been. On Friday morning, one of my colleagues with whom I am working on an assignment made a hurtful comment and I was too engrossed in the work to be able to respond to her skillfully and I chose to stuff the feelings. In fact I was about to express some anger when miraculously an email flashed on my cell phone with a quotation from the dhammapada and that is exactly what I needed! Here is the quotation:
"Look how he abused me and beat me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
"Look how he abused me and beat me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Abandon such thoughts and live in love.
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
That is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.
You too shall pass away.
Knowing this, how can you quarrel?

And I said “Wow – just in time!”. But I still had to suppress my anger and resentment because I did not have the luxury of going somewhere and meditating and processing the feelings. It was a very busy day with multiple assignments and rushing from one place to another.

Towards the evening, I get an irritating email from a team-leader and that proved to be the last straw. This particular team lead is not technically knowledgeable and still micro-managing me needlessly and this had been going on for a while and there was some build-up over time. The email that I received from her on Friday before she left for her vacation was interpreted by me as an affront to my professional capabilities. Common sense was telling me that I should go home and meditate on it before I did anything rash but I wanted to respond to it before she went away on vacation. What had particularly incensed me was when she replied to my email, she had copied in another team lead. So I shot her an email that I did not need things spelled out and I was interpreting it as a lack of professional respect and I copied in my manager. It was not a rash email although it was strongly worded. She replied apologizing and clarified that she did not intend any disrespect. I replied saying I never felt she intended it, I was just expressing how I was perceiving it and the fact that it was upsetting me.

And then I get a phone call from her. And she wants to know why I hadn’t picked up the phone and called her instead of shooting off emails. Good point. I counter that she could have done the same. She says “Good point – I did not have time – I was just clearing my mailbox before I left on vacation”. And then she wants to know why I escalated the issue by copying in my manager. And I tell her that I did not like her action of including the other team lead in her reply and I wanted my manager to know my displeasure with the whole issue. And she clarifies that when she included the other team lead in her reply it wasn’t so that he could follow up on my tasks as I had assumed(and gotten incensed about) but she was letting him know about the task she was putting on my plate so that he would not overload me with his own tasks!

The reason for recounting this whole story is that I could see how things spiral out of control by a series of misunderstandings. By extrapolating to the macroscopic scale, you can see how conflicts start and escalate into wars. It underscores for me that peace on the macroscopic scale is just not possible without peace at the microscopic level. Reminds me of a Kabir poem that talks about seeing the evil in oneself before seeing it others.

After a few meditation sessions over the weekend, it finally dawns on me that the team-lead was right. I should have picked up the phone and talked with her. That would have been the skillful way. I had tried to hint my displeasure over this issue for a while by withdrawing and being aloof(how often do we do that in relationships!) but she had not linked it to this issue. I had even mentioned that there were some fundamental differences between us on this issue and she had not bothered(in actuality, she probably did not have the time) to talk with me about it. And I was reasonably sure that if I talked with her, I would get some disingenuous management-speak. Still, the skillful way of handling the situation would have been to talk with her and give peaceful resolution a chance. I have a feeling I indulged my righteousness on this issue and there will be karmic consequences of the scars left from this issue. I was also perhaps overcompensating a little to address the perception that Indians are not assertive. This is curious – I don’t go about carrying an Indian identity but still react if people keep pigeon-holing me as an Indian.

Another thing I re-discovered for the umpteenth time is that tolerating boundary violations by conforming to some spiritual ideal of egolessness is not skillful. It was better for me to have been assertive all along instead of suppressing my resentment over a period of weeks and then having it come out with more force than necessary.
And above all, the importance of letting go! If I tried to be assertive over every single perceived infraction by others, I would make life unbearable for myself and others!

Such a small incident and still so many learnings!

Mea Culpa

2006-03-06T22:35:00.000-05:00

When I checked my work email this morning, I saw an email from a colleague who is kind of in a supervisory role asking me for a status on something she thought she had asked me to do. I was on the verge of replying to her email denying any knowledge about what she was asking me about when wiser counsels prevailed and I decided to go thorough all my emails from her for the past week to see if I had missed something. Sure enough there was an email from her on Thursday asking me to do something and to my horror I now remembered reading it then.
Only one workday had passed and I could have easily replied to her email saying I planned to do it today without any explanation. I could have said I was swamped on Friday(which was true) and that I would do it today. But the truth is that I forgot and the truth is that no matter how busy I was on Friday, this was important, and I could have found a way to squeeze it in.
With all the emails flying around and things piling on my plate, it was easy for something to fall through the cracks. Moreover I do not have a relationship of trust with this person and I did not trust her to not make a big deal of this behind my back.
But somehow other than a simple acknowledgement of the fact that I forgot and that I would do it today, nothing else felt right. This is not about one of those eightfold ‘right’ something or the other that almost drove me away from Buddhism. I guess it is a simple question of integrity and the truth that I would not feel good if I covered this up.
The calculating part of me opined that maybe by speaking the truth here, I could build up some credibility, so that when I really needed to fudge the truth, I would be readily believed. I had to smile at this cunning and say to myself, “No. No agendas here. Just one simple action. That’s all”. So, I wrote a simple email saying “I missed this. Will get to it today and let you know”.
I remember going to Ramana Ashram in India and asking one of the caretakers for advice on how best to practice self-enquiry and his advice was “First, simplify your life”. Romantic notions of changing careers and taking up the simple life on a boatman ferrying people across the river floated before my eyes. But the physical work involved there seemed daunting. The idea of being a toll collector in a highway booth also seemed appealing. But, in the absence of any such dramatic changes of vocation, I can try to simplify the way I go about my current job.

Let the games begin

2006-03-04T13:38:00.000-05:00

After more than 20 years in the corporate world, I am still amazed at the amount of territorialism clearly in evidence. A meeting is akin to a bunch of dogs or monkeys grappling for position. With animals it is clear what they are about, but with us ‘evolved’ humans, it is cloaked in all kinds of disguises which makes it all the more pernicious. Most of the time, I am blissfully unaware of this behavior and every now and then a friend will pull me aside and inform me that when so-and-so asked me a question in the meeting, he/she was not asking for information as I had naively assumed, but was subtly asserting their right to ask me questions. ‘Good god – don’t people have anything better to do?’ is my brilliant rejoinder to this. At other times, someone will say something humorous about me in a meeting and later on a friend will ask me why I did not come up with a rebuttal, and enlighten me that what I had taken as standard meeting humor was in fact a put-down and I should not let people take liberties with me like that.

At times, I do see the hidden jockeying for position and dominance clearly and that is even more disturbing because by that I can only infer that these tendencies still exist in me, for I would not be able to spot it in someone else if it was not present in me. When I was younger, I would get dismayed by such behavior and want to distance myself from it. It is romantic to think of oneself as the one sensitive, suffering soul in the midst of all the ugly chaos that passes for modern society. When I was young and disillusioned by the seemingly unredeemable nature of humans and the society we create, I hugged a line from a Hindi Film song close to my heart – ‘Tumhaari hain tum hi sambhalo yeh duniya’ – which can be loosely translated as ‘I relinquish the struggle to conquer this world. You are welcome to it. It is your problem to take care of’.

Once in a while, I even ‘participated’ in these games just to assure myself that my refusal to be involved was a result of choice and not inability to play the game or even worse, cowardice in disguise. At these times however, thanks to the practice of mindfulness which I don’t seem to be able to turn off completely, I notice that I feel pretty nauseated and a strong sense of revulsion. There is a lot of suffering involved and I doubt anyone really feels good playing these games. It can’t be pleasant having to treat all these interactions as a fight for survival. It can’t be pleasant having to expend so much energy in protecting one’s image. I think this is the fundamental evolutionary mistake –humans protecting their image in the manner that they would protect their physical being.

So as I have grown older and hopefully more self aware, what have I learnt? It is to see the motivation behind people’s behavior and then instead of rushing to judgement, seeing the motivation behind the motivation. When I was new to the spiritual path, I did not understand the tremendous depth of the Dalai Lama’s most common utterance – ‘Every being wants to be happy’. It seemed very simplistic and trivial. Now, I am trying to see that even in people who are butting heads with me, putting me down, trying to sideline me or playing any of the common corporate games that is played under the banner of ‘teamwork’, there is an underlying desire for happiness The guy who is trying to make his work seem more important than mine, is he happy when he is trying to do that? I doubt it. Does he want to be happy? I see him(or her) insecure about paying the mortgage on the house if he does not assert his prominence and gets laid-off. I see someone as worrying about how they will send their children to school if they are not doing everything they can to earn the maximum they can by projecting themselves as important enough to earn a bonus. Some others, I see as afraid that they will slacken and lose their motivation to succeed if they are not always climbing and scrapping. And I am acutely aware of the dangers of distancing myself from them and carrying an image of someone who does not play these games and is in a way ‘above’ these games. I have seen the danger of carrying any identity whatsoever – it is nothing but the ego’s attempt at separation and control. Clearly, I don’t need a self-image as a noble person who does not play corporate games of one-upmanship. I can just politely refrain from participating in these mind-games because of the suffering it causes me as well as others. That, I think is the middle-way – to not participate in these games but at the same time, not distance myself from everyone and carry the identity of someone who is above these games.
Let the games end!

credit and discredit

2005-10-04T20:16:00.000-05:00

Been noticing how I feel when someone else takes the credit for work I have done or if this so called credit is wrongly assigned to someone else. So, why this clamouring for credit and recognition? And how much needless suffering have I created(and continue to create) for myself!! Is it some kind of outgrown survival related approval-seeking behavior? Is it addiction to the pleasant feelings of being acknowledged? Is it ambition - wanting to get ahead? Probably all of the above.
Often, when these feelings surface, I try to keep track of all these parts within me, suppressing nothing and staying in touch to the best of my abilities with the physical body sensations associated with these feelings. My primary teacher, Shinzen Young always emphasized full internal expression irrespective of external expression/restraint. It is hard enough to do this on the meditation cushion and so much more difficult to do in the middle of daily life. But, the pay-off is tremendous. I have noticed time and again that if I am in touch with the physical aspect of the emotions, then my mind stays calm enough to be able to respond to the situation appropriately instead of merely reacting. But sometimes though the physical sensations can overwhelm you and make matters much worse and cause you to react inappropriately. At times like these, I feel like Inspector Clouseau saying ‘Not now Cato!!’, if you have seen the Pink Panther movies :)
The other thing that amazes me is that time and again, I have learnt that what is bothering me right now will seem so trivial and insignificant six months from now and I still continue to get bothered! Shinzen again says that these tendencies and habit patterns originate from the primitive levels of the brain that do not respond to logical reasoning and the only way to make them learn is by Skinnerian conditioning where you make the primitive parts aware of the pain that is caused by its habitual tendencies of fear, anxiety and anger by setting up a feedback loop so that it can make a co-relation between its tendencies and the consequences and learn. That is what I have been attempting by staying in touch with the yucky physical sensations caused by my need for acknowledgement or anger at the ‘injustice’ of the ‘credit’ going to someone else. And I keep asking myself, do I want to suffer like this? That question sometimes helps me to let go. But like a hydra, it sprouts up another head and rears up a few minutes later or an hour later!! Gets tiresome!! Seems to me I have a greater capacity for suffering than I would like to believe :)
The Buddha is reported to have said ‘I teach one thing and one thing only – the cause of suffering and the end of suffering’. The comedian in me wants to say ‘Hmmmm Buddha, those are two things. I on the other hand learn one thing and one thing only – oh how I suffer, oh how I suffer’.
In the meanwhile, I practice staying aware of the internal flow of thoughts, feelings and sensations hoping that the primitive parts of ze brain will learn and let go – someday.
In the meanwhile, I keep breathing :)

curbing dogma and driving karma

2005-10-02T15:08:00.000-05:00

Karma Yoga sounds simple - renounce the desire for the fruits of your actions. I have tried this on and off over the years - sometimes it works like a charm bringing about an incredible sense of freedom and power. And sometimes it feels false, untrue - conforming to some ideal I have lost touch of. Every part of me is screaming for reward and recognition and I am trying to control myself. Is this the ego sneaking in through the back door and back to its game of trying to be in charge in the name of spirituality or is this truly an internal war that must be fought? Don't know if I can answer the question, but it seems worth asking.
Another thing I have noticed in my past attempts to apply this is keeping the non-attachment and the passion in balance. Sometimes when I am trying to be mindful of my attachment to rewards, I lose my passion for the work and sometimes slip into apathy. And if I restore the energy I am putting into my work, attachment sneaks in and before I know it, I am anxious and fearful about the outcome. So, the battle lines are clear. Can I put in all my energy and passion into my work(however trivial and inconsequential it may be) and still let go of the need for personal recognition and reward? Can I do this out of a genuine letting go and not some kind of spiritual conformity that camouflages my fear of fighting for my rights? Gandhi is reported to have said that he would prefer violence anyday over cowardice and that non-violence was meant for the brave. Today, on the anniversary of Gandhi's birthday, I dedicate a week(and hopefully more) of renouncing all personal gain from my actions at work and note the process of failing, struggling, learning and letting go. I am writing this to share my journey with my friends and invite their comments and insights to help me in my learning process.
P.S. The title of this piece comes from Swami Beyondananda as far as I know