Lost art of mindfulness

"Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat"- Lao Tzu
"We see things not as they are, but as we are"- H.M Tomlinson

I think Chaos theory is great. It is one field which haven't left us completely rejoiced by the act of submission from mother nature. It is one of the unconquered regime in her battalion of universal physics as we know it. Its nature's manifestation of the uncontrollable and undecipherable encoding of life. Rudolf Clausius a German physicist associated this chaotic nature of universe with entropy. A quantity signifying the increasing chaos of natural systems. It is now valid through second law of thermodynamics that "For irreversible processes to occur, the entropy of the system has to decrease", which simply means that a broken egg can never form together by natural will. 

2500 years ago, when scientific developments were insightful rather than experimental as in today, a man who called himself Buddha, sat under a Bodhi tree with a vow that he wouldn't budge until he found out the real secret of relieving mankind from eternal suffering. His volition gave birth to a meditation technique called Vipassana, which most stunningly is still practiced by people around the world. Vipassana revolves around a simple concept: To see things as they are, without judging them. The product of the practice is that you get to see the world with complete awareness. Without chaos. With pristine continuity and innate rationalism. You get to see the world as it is, without addition or subtraction of yourself to it.

The two concepts are head -on each other. Both share existential truth that manifests through appropriate reasoning. On one hand, Nature perplex us with her chaotic manifestation of events in real time, which leave us enervated thinking that the quality of certitude just won't work all the time. On the other hand, Buddha taught us to avoid chaos to be able to see things in the right perspective. What is the real truth?

In fluid dynamics, there exist a simple principle that processes can be conceived as "reversible" or "irreversible". The meanings are just literary. The beautiful part is that you can make a process reversible only by avoiding disturbances and by doing it slowly, step by step. If a process is reversible, then, it doesn’t loose much energy from itself. It conserves. With little effort, it becomes clear that, Buddha was convincing that to survive and evolve as a species, that can think and reason, we must fight the chaos in our minds and make it more simple and slower, so that our energies are not lost but remain conserved for howsoever we wish to spent them. Simply put, make your processes more reversible.

It was great the first time I was introduced to this technique. It was through a bestseller that tipped on conversational skills with people. It quoted that to keep someone active in a conversation, you need to pay attention to them. By attention, it is not meant that you'd have to notice the words that come out of their mouth, but the meaning in them. A brain mapping research has brought to the fore the astonishing fact that most of the time, while in a conversation, we think simultaneously while listening, as an congruent effort to reshuffle our ego to match the other person. We think " Okay, so what should I reply to this? What will I tell him if he asks me this?" etc. This simple example defines what mindlessness is.

Zen enthusiasts practice the art of mindful eating. From the act of preparing your dinner, to holding your fork, to chewing your food, they stay alert and non judgemental. Such an act makes having a meal a relaxing experience. Mindfulness has almost objective connectedness to learning abilities. Our minds tend to graduate a piece of information from short term to long term memories if the information was absorbed with untainted alertness. Mindfulness relates directly to calmness, sense of confidence and self control. Creativity is, but another important outcome of this stupendous lifestyle.

The first time I tried it, I was rewarded graciously with a glimpse of my own psychic abilities. I started of small, by simply paying attention to brushing my teeth every day. 51000 times, we do this simple act, ( I presume you brush twice!) almost unconsciously in our lifetime,. By paying attention, neither will you finish brushing early nor will your teeth's replace your 100 watt bathroom bulb but, may improve your experience of the act of doing it. I moved on to mindful eating and then to mindful working. To emphasise, if efficiency is to be defined as how much productive output for the given amount of time, I would announce that I am challenging Sadi Carnot for his idealistic view of efficiency always being lesser than 1! I no longer work long hours, no longer feel frustrated being unable to complete "to-do “lists and find enough time for a balanced lifestyle. Not only has it helped me find success in my professional domain, but has reaped benefits in my personal interactions with people. This is one strong habit, that I still continually work on improving, has taken my life on a upward trajectory.

Maybe it’s the realization or outcome of logical reasoning that I lighted up my notion on the point that our generation has almost lost this precious art. We have been preached the art of multitasking. The "Book in the hand, song on the stereo" lifestyles have drained our attention spans to almost countable restless minutes. Patience seems to be a word from Shakespearean literature. Fast foods to multiplexes, we need things fast, full and frantic. We order the most expensive chocolate only to gulp it down the throat. We work uncounted hours without logic and reasoning and proclaim hardwork is a virtue. We eat while on phone, read while on music, act while on thoughts. Multitasking occurs to me as putting up resistances in parallel in an electrical circuit: Simply splits your current. Go the series way. Go one at a time, no haste. Be relaxed. There is a word called "composure" whose opposite is the exact requirement for being a politician in India. If you’re living, then enjoy it. If you have spent money on a shoe, admire how it feels on you. If you are drinking a 60's classic Italian wine, then pay attention to your senses because the moment it trickles downs your throat, there is no difference between it and the pee you'd go later.

So, how do you start to go about this? Well as I pointed out, start small. Consider working on your brushing. Notice and pay attention to every action and every sense you experience in that act. Try mindfully eating. Be completely congruent with every sensory response from the act of having food. When working, work for small short bursts of say 15-20 min each with complete attention. Take a break and think wild, and then repeat the same. You'd be amazed how much you will be able to complete in a given time. With practice you might consider writing a "to-do book" instead of to-do lists". When talking to people, listen and observe. Be patient with your thoughts, and speak only when its completely necessary rather than being a unconscious frantic conversationalist. Meditation is a taboo in our accelerated westernization fanaticism. But I'd say, meditating for at least 20 min a day is only going to take you leaps forward to art of mindfulness. Finally, as I see it, its all about control. Control over life, over experiences, over decisions, over everything we can possibly think of! Every man wants it. The wise wants it within; the fools want it outside. The choice is ours.