FAQs on Everything

A COMPILATION OF ANSWERS TO FAQs ON EVERYTHING

(Note: This aims not be some kind of a Wiki but parallels the effort to craft a Theory of Everything for which many supposedly extremely brilliant minds are exercised upon.)

FAQs on everything

Just as scientists are trying to get a Theory of Everything there should a compilation of FAQs on Everything.

A sample:

Q. Who am I ?
A. One of zillions of many

Q. How will I know which one am I
A. Depends. You can look at yourself. When, for instance you look at your self physically, you get one answer; another one if your focus is social, a third one if its is religious a fourth one if you go global, a fifth one if you can't get the patriotism/matriotism out of you. Thinking about yourself professionally, financially, entertainingly will gt you different answers, too.

It could be helpful to remember that the psychologists who selected the astronauts for the Mon mission, needed at least 14 answers to this question. Check if they can "space" you out, or, for the Trekkies, "beam" you up.

Q. How should I know which way shoul I look at myself?
A. You should look at yourself so that you are at the greatest advantage; at any given time you can look at yourself multi-perspectively, too

Q. What does that mean?
A. You can have many points of view at approximately the same time.

Q. What is advantage?

A. Again, it depends. If you think (the portion after this needs work) it'd be to your advantage to follow a 'leader' you can formid your mind to ask any questions and do your leader's bidding. If you want to have proxy life you can followthe celebrity circuit, If you... then you, if you..then your advantage may be in...

The above from an email sent by Vyom Akhil June 21 2007; color-coding by Vyom.

On the abbreviation "DAD" (dollar-a-day)

When I was growing up, a phrase I often heard - mostly from the mouths of working people - would translate thus: "What is money? After all, its dirt off your hands." Then, there is this memory of my grandfather; as soon as he sat up after a night's sleep - it was usually in the open, under the stars - no mosquitos then as now - he would bring his hands up palm towards him and mutter something in Sanskrit. Later, I learnt that this was a fairly wide practice.

One day, years later, I figured out what that short Sanskrit was about. In translation, it will go "On the front of the hand is Lakshmi, Mother of prosperity, In the root of hand is Saraswati, Mother of learning. In the middle is Govinda, (Krishna).Thus we respectfully see our hands in the Morning"... The Sanskrit word for hand is 'Kara' (from this you get Kartaa - kartaar - Creator) which is also the root word for Karma.... That prayer is now contracted into temple ritual and in some homes as routine. Not much feeling or undertanding go in it.

I have always maintained that the two hands and the head form the Triangle of Cognition.

All of the above bubbled up when I received a banner from a friend that I ended up using for this blog. As I did this I wondered how many would understand that I am using D. A. D. as a figure of speech. I do not 'make' a dollar a day. In fact, any money I 'make' is little and far in between. Its a situation that can be best summed up as "Total Employment at Zero income"

So, How do I make ends meet? how do I get 'food' on the table?

My answer: I am supported by the awesome philanthropy of people who do make about a dollar a day. They work with their hands. They are not greedily attached to money. Although they are not heard saying those old things I mentioned in the beginning, their actions indicate that they know their validity in their bones. In comparison the class of people above them is shameful in its stingy, calculating, hoarding attitude.

I find the philanthropy of dollar-a-day people just awesome. It is possible that the human race has a giving instinct, some kind of a gene. When people have nothing to give, they give themselves, and that is what is enoblingly awesome. They have little material wealth. Hardly any education. They are too busy to read newspapers or watch TV. And yet, in their working and in their amazing capacity to give themselves they sustain more than the people meeting at any G-8 conference.

- Vyom Akhil, an email dated 06/02/2007 9:06 PM

Throw your life away

Throw your life away

You'll lose it anyway

So find something -

a cause, a person, a group, a hope -

And give your life away.

It wasn't yours to begin with.

-- By Vyom, Recasted 7:20 AM 9/25/2006 after the Original 3:08 PM 8/31/2006

Reflecting on Muda (Japanese for waste, futility, purposelessness)

I was reading "Natural Capitalism, and I stopped on the word, "Muda", part of the title of Natural Capitalism, Chapter 7 ("Muda, Service and Flow") which also connects its meaning with the content of Chapter 3 ("Waste Not").

"Muda" was not the first word I pondered and mused. This book "Natural Capitalism" is so engagingly well-written that, paradoxically, I have difficulty through-putting it through my mind. There's hardly a sentence which doesn't ring bells of associatve resonances and I am diverted into listening and savoring those sounds. That is how successful the authors have been in writing this book.

So as I pondered and mused over the word , I wondered if it had been accurately rendered in the Roman script. Do the Japanese really pronounce it to rhyme with "coulda" as in the colloquial "I coulda dunnit"? Then it came to me--an "echo":

There's a word in Sanskrit (and several Indian languages) "Moodha." It connotes stupid, uninformed, irresponsible, slow, unintelligent, wilful, proud, deaf, lacking consciousness / conscience / sympathy, being unresponsive or insensitive etc. etc.

Ghamachchhanna drishti ghamachchhannamarkam,
yathaa nishprabham chaati moodha

For an Indian like me, every time I come across something said with considerable brilliance and apparent originality, my unfortunate focus is to first make a connection with something said in the past--to cock my ear up for a time-skip echo--and then to communicate it in a manner which, at best, is only tangentially relevant and at worst, is tiresome even to me. Still the addiction is so hardwired, few can kick the habit. I only hope some catalyzing good can come out of these imposition.

For instance, a shloka-shubhaashitam in Sanskrit could be of interest to the advocates of resource-productivity and the opponents of Muda / moodha-behaviour, or biomimicry. It goes :

Amantram aksharonaasti, naastimoolam anaushadham
Ayogyah purushonaasti, yojakastatra durlabha

"There's no sound / alphabetical letter which can't become a mantra,
there is no rooted plant which can't become a medicine
and there is no human who is incompetent.
All one needs is appropriate design and organization"

In my frequent moments of quiet frustration with the current situation here (which, in Bucky Fuller's words, "Teach us to assume, as closely as possible, the view point, the patience and competence of God"} I have commented elsewhere,

"Instead of inventing and producing what we need, we get into the habit of inventorying and debating what our ancients left behind them. Since our culture prides itself in being hoary, the inventorying never gets done. Someone, somewhere, appears to always leave something out and count goes back again and always to the Vedas."


-- From a letter Vyom Akhil sent to the authors of Natural Capitalism, Sunday April 9, 2000