December 09, 2009

In defence of laziness

Hello brothers,

Exactly what is laziness? Why do people call us good-for-nothing? Let us clear the air.

Laziness is a state of mind, which is precariously hanging between the plasma state and enlightenment. It is that fine difference between my art teacher and Picasso, between my physical trainer in school and Hitler, this is that fine difference between this blog and others in the blogger world. This difference is what brings character, this difference is what makes people or object stands out. Laziness is precisely that difference between ‘close to enlightenment’ and enlightened.

Hence, all seekers, as a pre-condition, must be lazy.

Laziness is also multi-dimensional. It is like Shri Krishna. Laziness shows itself in different form to different people.

For seekers, it is a way to enlightenment. For enlightened people, laziness is a genre of postures. It is that same ladder through which you go up and come down. Once removed, you hang in the air like Lara Croft in the not-so-recent Tomb Raider game, Anniversary (thanks to the technical glitch).

If you are lazily active enough, you can go to the terrace and stare at the stars without even having the need to blink. When your eye muscles get tired, it blinks automatically. You can continue staring at those sparkles till the sun comes up and the resultant heat forces you to find a shelter and practice the same yoga, this time staring at the fast moving blades of the ceiling fan. The art is to watch and not to think. For thinking is activity and enlightened people know the futility of activity.

Of course we are not enlightened, otherwise this blog would not have existed, for we are enduring this pain to write and you as a reader is far from getting enlightenment in this birth, for you are reading it. Bon courage.

But enlightened people, like the other non-active members of this blog, are rumored to have received invitation from our team-leader 20 Box. And despite our cheerleader Anando’s scantily clad dances (which is often followed by 18 hours of blissful snoring), they are still staring at their inboxes and wondering whether to hold the mouse and execute the pain of ‘click’ to accept the invitation. Of course, everybody knows how many muscles are involved in this west-invented clicking exercise (if you still don’t know why don’t you do some google?)

That is too much of a task for sure and our enlightened friends know the futility of it. They are like wise Indians. When a churan-wallah enters the train compartment and offers sample of his latest product for the commuters to test, everybody spread their palms. The small spoonful churan enters their stomach, if not heart, promptly. Even if they don’t like the test, they will spread their palms again for free sample. But they will never buy any packet.

Our enlightened members too watched our cheerleader Anando’s topless chaddhi-flaunting dances and went home … to stare at the invitation link but not to click it, even by accident.

‘Laziness,’ mitron, is a very recent coinage in our country. It could be ancient in the western world. Funny enough, the West has two concepts where everybody should fit in --‘winner’ or ‘looser.’ All the seekers are ‘loosers’ cause they don’t have a car to drive down to the nearest coffee shop. Let’s ignore those nincompoops. All the seekers in our country, as we know already, fall in ‘lazy’ category. Hail laziness. 

In our divine country, laziness was always associated with enlightenment. We used to call it ‘dhyana.’ We have excellent words to describe the sub-sets of this dhyana. Take for example the concept called ‘samadhi’, which, if you translate in English is ‘burial,’ how insensitive.

But our foolish Indian brothers, under the influence of their MNC masters, are increasingly becoming active. This particular development is bothersome. Shall we conclude that there is no scope for introspecting one’s inner self? Shall we conclude that what we see through our already established ‘one of the weakest eyes in animal kingdom’ is only worth investigating and celebrating? Are we not dragging the human civilization down the forgettable path by closing down the R&D of our inner self? How can you develop your inner self if you are not lazy?

How can you have dialogues with your inner self if you are not wrapped up in a shawl turning your back to the sun, warming up in a December winter, sipping a cup of tea, atom by atom, for hours? Those wise active people mean to say that they know more about atoms than us? The atom concept is ours, so is the zero. It should be our conscious endeavor to come close to that zero. It’s a daunting task.

Zero is such a mighty state that only a handful in the entire human race has achieved that. Those who managed to touch that magic number became Buddha. Was that possible if Buddha didn’t sit under that famed banyan tree in modern day Bihar for months? You call it laziness? We call it the mother of all achievement.

Next time when somebody calls you lazy, brother, just smile at him. For hitting him you have to raise your hand, that’s too much of a task.

Remember, non-activity is the ultimate activity, the way to Moksha, the Maha-parinirvaan. Anand, Anand.

11 comments:

  1. "Laziness is also multi-dimensional. It is like Shri Krishna. Laziness shows itself in different form to different people."

    It came to us in the most different and difficult form. It came to us in the form of cheap aristocracy. Still the legacy of it is in the air of Phursatgunj.

    Wanted to write about cheap-Aristocrats of Phursatgunj but lazyness prevented it for years. Hope someday I can manage it, and if I can't it is even better. Though it is one of the rarest state a human can ever be we were lucky that we went through it together and came out even more cheaper, aristocratic and lazyer.

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  2. How can laziness be the difference between two things? This is a very lazy metaphor, which I am too lazy to understand; or perhaps not lazy enough.

    Now I get it: laziness is the difference between too lazy and not lazy enough. "Not to think" is the key. I surely need to be in India to be truly lazy (no racist slur intended) because here in the cursed west I cannot see the stars from the terrace (even if I had a terrace) - too many bright street lights.

    Ah, the west-invented clicking exercise - it has been frustrating me lately so I have just returned from the purchase of a Microsoft Basic Mouse. My grandmother told me the proverb "The bad workman blames his tools" so I will not blame my old mouse. I shall simply throw it away without comment.

    Ah, these indian-invented technical terms! Dhyana and samadhi! We have no need in west of them, not if we are enlightened. There is a saying, attributed to some elderly uneducated agricultural peasant - I won't interrupt my flow by googling it for the origin - "Sometimes I sits and thinks. Sometimes I just sits." So there. We have no need of the Upanishads, no need even for laziness. The least of us knows the truth - I mean The Truth. You don't conquer India & establish Queen-Empress Victoria as the pin-up girl of all the nineteenth-century maharajahs by being lazy.

    I am not denigrating the wisdom of your utterance, O moksha, O sannyasin and future bather in the holy Ganges at Benares! Indeed there is desperate danger of "dragging the human civilization down the forgettable path by closing down the R&D of our inner self"

    But don't forget that Buddha could not sit for months under the bodhi tree, or the banyan tree or even the banana tree, unless the milkmaid Nandabala came along at just the right time and offered him some strengthening rice pudding. Without her he would have died and rotted there, and the Four Noble Truths would have remained unknown.

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  3. wah! you are close to enlightenment Vincent! whether you like it or not. Congratulations dear! you have to streatch till next birth, maximum, hang on there.

    (i know you don't believe in any of the things mentioned above, neither do i. but this blog is the celebration of nonsense and it is encouraged that you don't use bombastic concepts here. the moderator is pretty pissed off at me coming close to seriousness here. let's be lazy enough not to apply brain here. we need something like this to escape the madrush)

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  4. Dear Ghetu,

    Welcome to 20Box. You have many things to learn. Rather I should say unlearn. You have just joined and already posted a blog. Many of the lazy masters have not written even a single world in the last 4 years despite many requests.

    Also, You have exposed your childishness by writing on laziness. The members of this blog are masters of this subject. They will not comment on what you have written because they are masters and know the futility. But, as I have lost some of my laziness after coming to Mumbai, I am taking the pain to write this. Hope from next time you will explore something hilarious and spare us from this childish blabber.

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  5. Ghetu, you were right to be in fear of your new landlord. Will it all swing on the behaviour of your invited guests (me for example)? Let me warn you, Anando Rocks and all, that I shall be as serious, bombastic childish, blabbering and generally defiant as I know how. If they don't like it, and you get thrown out of your new lodgings, I shall be sorry, and will feel a little guilty, I am sure. But don't let them silence you, is all I say. There are other places to go.

    PS. Anando, lazyguru etc. Please be kind to Ghetu. Let him speak. He has been silent too long. He will learn more quickly by speaking. As for me, I enjoy being a nuisance and I don't expect to learn anything. Ban me if you dare.

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  6. ha ha Vincent, they are all my dear friends. these are all part of pulling each others' leg. don't worry. be comfortable. nobody is going to dare you. that would mean giving too much importance to anybody. that's not the path of seekers.

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  7. Dear Vincent,

    I am not asking your friend Ghetu to stop writing. He can write whatever he wants to write. It was just an advise to write on something else. This lazy master is too lazy to protest further.

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  8. Thanks Anando. I know this is a kind and tolerant place. This is why I have come here tonight, conscious that I have not posted a written article for two weeks in my own blog (just a gallery of photos a week ago). I like to drive myself hard, then fall into a deep sleep. But I fail to sleep.

    Just to be controversial - for disputing is my way of learning from others - I shall put forward a challenge.

    I claim that trying hard, and failing every time, is superior as a path to enlightenment compared with laziness. Certainly being overtired can be a good way to stop thinking and take the easiest way out.

    If I were invited to write a guest post, I would write "in defence of failure". On second thoughts, I would waste much time on thinking and trying to write such an article; then fail to deliver. Which might be good for the soul, but there are deadlines to meet on my work.

    Goodnight inhabitants of Phursatgunj, that real or imaginary place where I hear the murmurings of your voices, the futility of your evenings, the lateness of your risings in the mornings of work, the ...

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