Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it- says Don Marquis, American novelist and a playwright. We are constantly misled by the gleaming surface, shining exterior of things while essence is left unheeded, unexplored. Often people pursue fortune foregoing meaningful pursuit, observe rigid rituals forgetting yielding prayer. Life drags us away from the center, drives us to the periphery, to non essentials. By middle age most of us arrive at our dreaded nightmare.
Unexamined life is not worth living, said Socrates. After the war with Sparta Socrates dedicated his life to what he called, pursuits of truth. He was known as the greatest philosopher of that time in Athens and beyond. One of the jurors came to him one evening, and said that the oracle at the temple of Delphi had declared Socrates as the wisest man. Socrates laughed and said God was wrong perhaps on this one. But he thought he would test if God wasn't so wrong after all. For several months Socrates went around Athens, asking learned men, ordinary men, statesmen, poets, craftsmen, philosophers - one thing, What was truly worthwhile in life? No one gave a satisfying answer. All were too caught in the urgency of everyday life. Finally the Greek philosopher gave up, and accepted himself to be the wisest, for he learned, he alone was willing to admit his ignorance. People are too busy to rethink what is truly worthwhile in their life.
We have learned how to find the square root and area of a triangle, we know who invented the electric bulb, steam engine and how nuclear fusion works. We can compute standard deviations, draw a bell curve, rattle all historical events by the year. We have spent decades studying them. But about how to lead life, achieve excellence, greatness, how to succeed, earn a purposeful living, about paths to meaningful career, building wealth - we have no clue. Albert Einstein said once, what can be measured in life doesn't matter and what matters can't be measured. For all that matters we are left to seek popular advice, obliged to the chance blessings. We end up following a misleading hearsay or dangerous reasoning that often persuades common sense to our shock later.
It happened long ago. One afternoon I received a call from home amidst a training session. Caller informed me that we had run out of cooking gas. In the next break, I grabbed the first cab and rushed to Sajjan Rao circle. The gas agency argued I could collect the cylinder only three hours late. I didn't have the time. Auto driver offered to collect the cylinder on my behalf. I agreed and handed him the receipt. By late evening we all knew he had disappeared with the cylinder. I was furious. I registered a criminal complaint. In about a week the driver was caught. Police were detaining him overnight, for he had sold off the cylinder.
Midnight knock on the door woke me up. As I peered out through the drowsy gloom, I saw an old woman and a young woman behind her. Old woman in a trembling voice said " Sir, my son is a good man. He did it for his daughter's sake. A year ago his twelve year old daughter, my granddaughter, was diagnosed with bone cancer. Initially people donated. But, it stopped gradually. Few days ago a doctor asked him to buy an injection worth 3000 rupees." Old woman suspected that he stole the cylinder for the injection money. She pulled out a folder and a few papers, a letter from the consulting doctor appealing to the public with the driver's old photo in it, names of donors handwritten in Kannada, and a few bills from the hospital. All along, she was pleading in low tones.
I was not hearing anything anymore. It was as though I was hit by a thunderbolt. It numbed all my senses. A deep piteous tenderness engulfed me. I thought I had killed a soul. It is that which you feel when you know you have wronged a child, refused a penny to the hungry. While I thought the guy a cheat, here was a destitute, desperate father betrayed by his fate, overthrown by his fortune, frantically trying his last luck in total despair. What can be a bigger sorrow for a father than watching his child die, standing helpless before fate? For me, the picture of his dying daughter sanctified all his actions, it altered my every emotion. I didn't feel cheated anymore. Deep compassion, a state of humaneness replaced it. He was not a villain, he was now my hero.
How we experience depends upon what we are centered on. When I was centered on contempt the autorickshaw driver was a cheat, on compassion he became a hero. When wind is anchored to breath it sustains life, and it is death when released. The very medicine that cures in the right portion, kills in the wrong quantity. When emptiness is at the center of the wheel, it supports the movement, it is of no use merely as a miniscule space. In the right center we see the truth of things, says sage Patanjali. If the core of us is rightly centered, our mind can turn even hell into heaven.
What turned my seething anger into moving compassion to charitable sentiment? Even help him with more money? Exteriors of the situation were more or less the same, the rickshaw, taking him to the agency circle, his offer to help me, his disappearance, all were same. But now a little information gets added, and all is changed in an instant. I feel guilty punishing him instead of feeling righteous. In the middle of the night I am willing to go to the police station to bail out a criminal. What caught my wit is the fact that behind seemingly cold cheating that naturally provoked negativity, there was a new possibility of experiencing it. Instead of feeling negative, cheated, bad , I could feel graceful, generous and compassionate. There was a center from which the whole cylinder situation could sooth me than burn me.
We need to anchor our life to the right centers. Centers that help us see more positivity. For instance, we can turn work into indulgence while others are worn down beneath the habit. We can pass through a storm untouched while others may reel under anxieties, feel honest compassion on the misfortune of others instead of envious pleasure. Personal mastery is a set of principles, emotional skills, habits, mental models, creative insights that centers us to passionately pursue excellence, scale new highs of joy, dive into profundity of purpose. Mastery is a mind carved in fine, carefully cultured emotional sensitivities. With these skills instead of feeling anger, jealousy, depression feel more of compassion, a great inner drive to evolve, to grow to commit to excellence. We lose little by little our fears to adventure into a new temple of life whose limitless dome echoes with awe.
Knowing others is intelligence, knowing oneself is wisdom, mastering others is strength, mastering oneself is true power. Lao Tzu.
On the outside, you may appear the same. You walk the same street, sip the same coffee at your regular cafe, work the no frills project. Yet on the inside, nothing could be more stupendous than if mountains changed in their places. As your experiencing changes, little by little everything experienced also changes. Personal mastery is not spiritual training. It doesn't teach such practices. Nor is it a quick something you can learn while you are on the treadmill. Its ways are hard and steep, and is mastered over years of practice. Strictly speaking it is not science either. Personal mastery is a bird of the sky which can stretch its wings in a cage of science but cannot fly. When it comes to life and the inner world of man, science is too constrained a discipline, a very narrow path. Also it isn't some new philosophical fancy which endangers you when put into practice.
We are following an old script for life. While we have questioned literally everything, we have not asked Socratic questions, what truly is worthwhile in life? What should we achieve, what should we master? Religion long satisfied man's quest for meaning. Every aspect of life was creatively woven with mythical, epic imagination or was steeped in ritual that cast mystical hue around it. Now such experiences are difficult as science and technology have torn every strand of religious belief and even threatened the foundations of its faith. The Sun is a star today, not God going round the earth in a chariot pulled by shining white horses. Even those who follow rituals, most do it merely by force of habit. Science has spread too wide and deep to keep up the awe of infinity and mystery of Angels. Man cannot fully lean on the pillars of temples and its script for satisfying life. Devoid of mythical beliefs, of rituals, religion has lost its majesty for meaning.
Various research shows, for many, pursuit of material success, good life as we know it, has not been fulfilling, lasting, experience. Hi tech economy has left enough traces that two flats, two cars, and a high pay job didn't make everyone happy as expected. The deep lasting happiness is beyond sensualities of luxury, private dinners in island resorts, invites to celebrity parties or balconies of castles overlooking the green ocean. Research shows that after a point, more wealth is not the same as more happiness. Therefore ordinary success is at best a short lived fountain at worst, sacrifices most cherished intimacies.
Personal mastery is a new guide to human excellence. Following chapters list a few key skills of gaining personal mastery. Mastering these means personal mastery. You master these skills by understanding it, practicing it and embracing it.
