One of my favourite Zen Stories tells the tale of two monks travelling together. As usual, they walked in deep silence. They came across a shallow spring on the way. A lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash was standing there, obviously worried about spoiling her clothes while crossing the stream. One of the monks lifted her in his arms and carried her over the stream.
His companion was shocked with his colleague’s act of sacrilege. Yet, he maintained his silence until the night when they halted to rest. Now he could no longer restrain himself. “We monks have sworn not to touch women,” he burst out, “Yet how could you carry her?” The first monk replied peacefully, “I left that girl on the other side of the stream. It is you who still carries her in your mind!”
So often we hold on to thoughts that are irrelevant in the larger scope of the situation. So often we carry emotions which are nothing but a burden that weighs heavy on us. So often we hold on so tight to past experiences that we fail to understand that those very experiences hold us in a tighter vice that chokes progressive thinking. It seizes our mind and clouds our perspective.
It is said so well by someone, “forget learning… learn forgetting”. We need to let go the unnecessary if we want to move on in life. For every harvested crop of experience, we need to be better at sifting the grain of understanding from the chaff of misapprehension and misinterpretation. Let’s learn to let go of the superfluous and hold on to the more significant aspects of life.
To BE BETTER at moving ahead in life…
let’s let go of irrelevant thought-strife!
- Pravin K. Sabnis
Monday, April 27, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
VIEW WITH A ZOOM
In less than ten minutes, the 1977 short film "Powers of Ten" depicts the relative scale of things in the Universe using factors of ten. The film, made by Ray and Charles Eames, is an adaptation of the 1957 book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke.
It begins with a view from one meter above (100) of a man resting on a blanket. The camera then slowly zooms out to a view ten meters above (101) to show that the man is at a picnic in a park. The camera further pans to a view of 100 meters (102) to show that the picnic is taking place on Chicago's lakefront. Further on we see on the way the views of Lake Michigan, our earth, our solar system, the Milky Way… the zoom continuing to a view of 1024 meters - the size of the observable universe.
The camera then zooms back to the man's hand and moves on to zoom into views of negative powers of ten -10−1 m (10 centimeters), and so forth. The zoom moves the range from the surface of the skin to the inside right up to the proton in a carbon atom at 10−16 meter. The film thus travels two extreme extents of our universe.
However, the lessons from the film go beyond the attempt to understand the universe… they guide us on how to be better at understanding our situation. We need to travel the journey between the larger-picture and the smaller-picture to see ourselves and our situation from a perspective that moves from a wide-angle outlook to a deeper insight. It is only such perspectives that will help us comprehend the larger vision and the minute intricacies of the situation that surrounds us.
To BE BETTER at understanding our situation…
let’s learn to zoom to the powers of ten’s vision!
- Pravin K. Sabnis
It begins with a view from one meter above (100) of a man resting on a blanket. The camera then slowly zooms out to a view ten meters above (101) to show that the man is at a picnic in a park. The camera further pans to a view of 100 meters (102) to show that the picnic is taking place on Chicago's lakefront. Further on we see on the way the views of Lake Michigan, our earth, our solar system, the Milky Way… the zoom continuing to a view of 1024 meters - the size of the observable universe.
The camera then zooms back to the man's hand and moves on to zoom into views of negative powers of ten -10−1 m (10 centimeters), and so forth. The zoom moves the range from the surface of the skin to the inside right up to the proton in a carbon atom at 10−16 meter. The film thus travels two extreme extents of our universe.
However, the lessons from the film go beyond the attempt to understand the universe… they guide us on how to be better at understanding our situation. We need to travel the journey between the larger-picture and the smaller-picture to see ourselves and our situation from a perspective that moves from a wide-angle outlook to a deeper insight. It is only such perspectives that will help us comprehend the larger vision and the minute intricacies of the situation that surrounds us.
To BE BETTER at understanding our situation…
let’s learn to zoom to the powers of ten’s vision!
- Pravin K. Sabnis
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