Our Mitakes

…make us human; they are great lessons too, says HOMAYUN TABA

They asked Abboud of Omdurman: “Which is better, to be young or to be old?” He answered: “To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse.”

— Idries Shah, in

…make us human; they are great lessons too, says Thinkers of the East

The spectrum of mistakes we make is pretty wide, from simple miscalculations in maths or placing something in the wrong place, to bigger ones like sending a complaint to a wrong department. There are also some costly mistakes like choosing a wrong marriage partner. There are serious mistakes and there are colossal ones. 

Mistakes are not confined to individuals; they can happen with nations — sending soldiers to fight a war based on a wrong premise.

They asked Abboud of Omdurman: “Which is better, to be young or to be old?” He answered: “To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse.”

— Idries Shah, in 

However, mistakes can also be efficient teaching tools.  Michael Jordan said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost more than 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” 

Prajna or wisdom does not only mean the ability to know what to do, but also the sagacity of knowing what not to do. And the latter often comes by learning from one’s own and others’ observations and blunders. 

But we need open-mindedness and sincerity to benefit from our mistakes. One critical factor is ‘owning up’; the common tendency is to blame others or external circumstances for one’s mistakes. 

As humans, we are prone to making mistakes. In mythology, even gods are shown committing them. Therefore, the issue is not about not making mistakes, but about the frequency and type of mistake. Also, some of our mistakes affect others. The awareness of the consequences of our actions is very important. To err is human, but we find that most mistakes are committed by the ignorant, the careless or the uncaring and lazy. The first condition is lamentable, the second correctible, but the third is unforgivable

Some believe that many of our lapses in life arise from feeling when we ought to think and thinking when we ought to feel.

Others feel that if you haven’t ever messed up, it’s because you have played life safe, operating tightly within your comfort zone. The result is less learning and less growth. There is an operation of the yin-yang principle here — in every mistake there is a growth possibility, that is if one observes, reflects and learns. Our maturity and wisdom grow out of our learning from our mistakes.

For this, we need to develop and use the skills of critical thinking, weighing our options, and prioritising. Miscalculations, poor judgement and half-measures are breeding grounds for mistakes. Knowledge, experience and attitude help us in making fewer mistakes. The key really is attitude — the capacity and willingness to acknowledge and to learn from past experiences.

We need to fill in the gaps in knowledge before stepping into anything. Often, the cause of a mistake is overlooking clues and advice, or negligence in considering options and alternatives. Another reason is blind faith or dependence on others, which involves loss of control, and provides fertile ground for errors to happen.

behaviour. This is probably the prime mover in making wrong decisions with a trail of mistakes left behind.

Because of our inadequacies and imperfections, mistake-making makes us human. The idea is not to become perfect — that is an attribute of the Divine, but getting to understand the nature, dynamics and frequency of our mistake and seeking, through mindfulness, a means to wisely negotiate life’s tribulations and challenges. 

Open your Heart and mind

Love and compassion are like the weak spots in the wall of ego, writes Buddhist nun PEMA CHODRON

The Buddhist term bodhicitta means completely awake heart and mind. Citta is translated as heart or mind; bodhi means awake.

The cultivation of the noble heart and mind of bodhicitta is a personal journey. The very life we have is our working basis; the very life we have is our journey to enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something we’re going to achieve after we follow the instructions, and then get it right. In fact,  when it comes to awakening the heart and mind, you can’t ‘get it right’.

On this journey, we’re moving toward that which is not so certain, that which cannot be tied down, that which is not habitual and fixed. We’re moving toward a whole new way of thinking and feeling, a flexible and open way of perceiving reality that is not based on certainty and security. This new way of perceiving is based on connecting with the living energetic quality of ourselves and everything else. Bodhicitta is our means of tapping into this awakened energy and we can start by tapping into our emotions. We can start by connecting very directly with what we already have.

Bodhicitta is particularly available to us when we feel good heart; when we feel gratitude, appreciation or love in any form whatsoever. In any moment of tenderness or happiness, bodhicitta is always here. If we begin to acknowledge these moments and cherish them, if we begin to realise how precious they are, then no matter how fleeting and tiny this good heart may seem, it will gradually, at its own speed, expand. Our capacity to love is an unstoppable essence that when nurtured can expand without limit.

Bodhicitta is also available in other emotions — even the hardest of feelings like rage, jealousy, envy and deep-rooted resentment. In even the most painful and crippling feelings, bodhicitta is available to us when we acknowledge them with an open mind and heart and realise how they are shared by all of us — when we acknowledge that we are all in the same boat feeling the same pain. In the midst of the most profound misery, we can think of others just like ourselves and wish that we could all be free of suffering and the root of suffering. When we tune into any of our feelings, become aware of our feelings, they have the capacity to soften us and to dissolve the barriers we put up between ourselves and others.

On Cape Breton Island, where I live in Nova Scotia, the lakes get so hard in the winter that people can drive trucks and cars on them. Alexander Graham Bell flew one of the early airplanes off that ice. It’s that solid. Our habits and patterns can feel just as frozen as that ice. But when spring comes, the ice melts. The quality of water has never really disappeared, even in the deepest depths of winter. It just changed form. The ice melts, and the essential fluid, living quality of water is there.

The essential good heart and open mind of bodhicitta is like that. It is here even if we’re experiencing it as so solid we could land an airplane on it.

When I’m emotionally in midwinter and nothing I do seems to melt my frozen heart and mind, it helps me to remember that no matter how hard the ice, the water of bodhicitta hasn’t really gone anywhere. It’s always right here. At those moments, I’m just experiencing bodhicitta in its most solid, immovable form.

At that point, I often realise that I prefer the inherent fluidity of situations to the frozenness I habitually impose on them. So I work on melting that hardness by generating more warmth, more open heart. 

A good way for any of us to do this is to think of a person toward whom we feel appreciation or love or gratitude. In other words, we connect with the warmth that we already have. If we can’t think of a person, we can think of a pet, or even a plant. Sometimes, we have to search a bit. But as Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, “Everybody loves something. Even if it’s just tortillas.” The point is to touch in to the good heart that we already have and nurture it.

At other times, we can think of a person or situation that automatically evokes compassion. Compassion is our capacity to care about others and our wish to alleviate their pain. It is based not on pity or professional warmth, but on the acknowledgment that we are all in this together. Compassion is a relationship between equals. So in any moment of hardness, we can connect with the compassion we already have — for laboratory animals, abused children, our friends, our relatives, for anyone, anywhere — and let it open our heart and mind in what otherwise might be a frozen situation.

Love and compassion are like the weak spots in the walls of ego. They are like a naturally occurring opening. And they are the opening we take. If we connect with even one moment of good heart or compassion and cherish it, our ability to open will gradually expand. Beginning to tune into even the minutest feelings of compassion or appreciation or gratitude softens us. It allows us to touch in with the noble heart of bodhicitta on the spot.

When I was a child, there was a comic-strip character named Popeye. At times he was really, really weak and at those vulnerable moments, the big bully Bluto was always standing there ready to reduce poor Popeye to dust. But old Popeye would get out his can of spinach, open it up, and gulp it down. He’d just pour the spinach into his mouth and then — wham! Full of confidence and strength, he could relate with all the demons. That’s what happens when we use our emotions to touch in with our noble heart. Bodhicitta, it’s like spiritual spinach. 

Overwhelmed By Ma Ganga

THE UTTARAKHAND flood tragedy has taken the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people, even as a debate rages on — is Ma Ganga’s ‘fury’ natural or aggravated by human intervention? 

SADHVI BHAGAWATI of Parmarth Niketan, Rishikesh, has been living on the banks of the Ganga for almost two decades now. Here’s what she has to say.

The rains began as we sang our evening aarti; it poured down in sheets as we clapped and chanted euphorically. Mother Ganga flowed below us and next to us, and rained upon us as Akaash Ganga from Heaven. We were soaked from the inside out with gratitude, love and devotion. The monsoons had started, bringing the nectar of rain to the parched soil, to our parched mouths and spirits.  

The next morning, we awoke to the precious, delicious fragrance of hot Himalayan soil saturated by cool Himalayan showers. Yet, upon catching a glimpse of Mother Ganga, I realised this was not just any rainstorm. Within 24 hours, the water level had risen more than 15 feet and had showed no signs of ceasing. Excitement, exuberance and awe filled my heart as I went out to offer my morning prayers to Ganga. 

“Ganga is rising, Ganga is rising,” was the ubiquitous chant all day in the ashram, but it was still filled with joy, reverence and awe. Our hearts pounded with excitement and devotion. Her glories, grandeur, and divinity were filling more and more of the river bed; more of our hearts, our minds, our beings. 

The evening aarti had to take place in the street next to the ghat, as the ghat had flooded. Hands folded in prayer, we performed aarti to Ganga’s now raging glory as she paid no heed to anything that thwarted her flow — the animate and the inanimate, the large and the small. She carried it all in her waters, seizing the aviral flow environmentalists had been demanding. No conference, meeting, agreement, anshan, or contract could now deprive her of her right to flow, and overflow, through her natural river bed, tearing by the root and the foundation of anything that stood in her way. 

All the symbols of our ‘progress’, of man’s triumph over nature — highways, cars, trucks, buildings precariously defiant on mountaintop ledges — with one wave of her hand, the illusion was shattered, and the truth of nature’s power was laid bare, undeniable, non-negotiable, for all to behold and mourn.

As the sun set beyond Mother Ganga’s turbulent waters, her waves crashing now like a storm at sea, a moment arose in which the rising surge of bhaav or devotion reached its peak and was transformed, almost imperceptibly, into a swell of bhaya or fear. 

“Oh Ma Ganga,” hearts now beating rapidly in apprehension rather than awe, voices trembling with more fear than faith, we prayed: “Please calm your tumultuous flow. Permit us please, O Mother Ganga, to hold onto our delusion of invincibility, our illusion of control over nature, our megalomania, our blind race for development. Please Ma Ganga, allow the curtain of illusion to drop back over our eyes so that we may not be forced to see, to realise your true nature as a river with rights, as a goddess who will wrest those rights from the hands of her captors. 

“Ma Ganga, the giver of life, the giver of liberation, whom we have abused, used, disregarded, and turned into a commodity in the name of progress, please have mercy upon us, your children who have promised time and again to preserve you, and yet who time and again, have neglected to do so.”  

But, our chances had been used up. Year after year, Ma  Ganga had tried to warn us — first at Uttarakashi, then at Rudraprayag; year after year breaking bridges, overflowing banks, demolishing buildings, roads and lives. Voiceless, she had used every means in her hands to make us understand. Yet, blinded by our own agenda, foolish in our wisdomless knowledge, reckless and deluded, we ignored her message — again and again. 

We have deforested her hillsides, blasted her fragile, young, soft mountains, encroached further and further upon her banks, dammed and diverted her flow, dragged her helpless tributaries out of their natural beds into steel tunnels, built non-porous structures in the riverbed, impeding the natural flow of water, polluted the air, melting her glaciers. We have pushed her, pulled her, taunted her and tried to tame her. We have used her, abused her and then, as though redemption were so simple, taken our token dubkis, dips, in her waters.

“Jai Gange” we chant as we bob in and out of her waters, feeling redeemed of our sins against she to whom we turn for liberation, redemption, and purity.

Unfortunately the laws of shristi do not bend so easily. Mother Nature provides for us and sustains us as a divine mother, but in accordance with her own laws. If we disobey these laws, we will reap the consequences.

Singing Ganga’s glories or taking dubkis in her waters on auspicious occasions do not render us immune to the laws of Nature. That which we sow, so shall we reap. If we sow unchecked and illegal construction, vision-less development, deceptive politics and pockets lined with commissions — if we sow consumerism as the highest good, we shall reap the fruits of destruction and devastation. 

perished, the soaked soil will dry and some semblance of normalcy will return to the Char Dham valleys. That is our chance. Perhaps, our last chance. When we make plans for the reconstruction, restoration and rehabilitation of the Uttarakahand mountain villages, what vision of development will we use? What seeds for the future will we sow? Today we are eating the bitter fruit of the seeds we’ve planted for the last few decades. What seeds will we plant today for the fruit of tomorrow?