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Saturday, October 1, 2016

Perspectives, Impacts, Choices and Decisions


Perspectives, Impacts, Choices and Decisions play a very important role in all spheres of life whether we are aware of it or consciously willing to accept it.

Impacts may influence our perspectives, choices and decisions and similarly our choices, decisions and perspective do impact and influence many things starting from our perception to performance.  It is a sort of inevitable logical obverse.

In every field the story of human evolution is nothing but the history of impacts either positive or negative made by people who refused to take the beaten track and no wonder that George Bernard Shaw is reported to have said

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. All progress depends upon the unreasonable man”.

That is one of the reasons why more people prefer reading literature because of its impact than books on grammar or dictionaries.


Literature is a natural creative splendor which evolves according to its own dynamics unfettered by limitations of lexicon. Words, expressions, usage all play their part in that romance.  


Each life i.e. my life, your life and the lives of all great saints are really speaking very insignificant transient events of a few years-mostly less than 100 in flesh and blood with conscious awareness- compared to LIFE as a whole which has happened some four million years before and may continue for another few millions years hence in various forms, shapes in multiple species expressing its own attributes some of which we have understood, some we are not even aware of.
In fact the whole of Bhagawad Gita, one of the reasons why it became more popular among the 28 Gitas, is that all its 700 stanzas are sand- witched between two words the starting word 'Dharma' and the last word ‘Mama’.

It must be actually read as ‘Mama Dharma’= my dharma- does not mean either Krishna’s or Arjuna’s Dharma, rather  when everyone reads it becomes ‘his Dhrama’ and all these 700 verses [ subjected to all sorts of excellent, enlightening as well as, often used as tool to justifying traditional practices, explanations by many] primarily are about attitudes to be adopted, actions to be executed and reactions to show at different situations taking into consideration the overall welfare of all [humanism].


This manual is more about balancing the intellect and emotions and most importantly through both emotions and intellect, or to be precise in short it talks about the dynamics of synthesis of human nature and nature of Truth [ define as you may- it is the inevitable and intellectual perception and sometimes all logic eluding factor].


Life is all about movements, actions and reactions which broadly could be defined as i.e. Karma but then the Laws [Dharma ] of motions [Karma] of life are very important and therefore prioritized.


Personal grief, sorrows and miseries are difficult to handle even for some of the most advanced intellectual giants or highly sane and even balanced souls.
It is easier to sit and sermonize or pontificate dispassionately as an outsider.

It is difficult to prescribe rules for any type of crisis in any aspect of life.

However, if the mind, especially, that of a grown up individual, is equipped with certain qualities; then encountering the crisis becomes a shade more simple and sane.

However, the balanced mind, calm soul, caring heart, clever mind will wait and work on multiple options before resorting to impulsive actions which may more often result in regret.

Life is the sum total of many choices and decisions we make/take at every moment and the concomitant actions and reactions based on them.

But, does life or our cultures or social systems or religions or education systems offer us readymade templates to make/to take relevant or correct choices and decisions with multiple options at every moment?


Or   even if they offer and are ready, are we willing or capable of understanding and making use of those templates?








Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road –taken from a book- some observations and all you may add your own personalities and unleash your imagination and write

Plato: For the greater good.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Machiavellia: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of black bile and a deficiency of choleric humor.


Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.


Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.


Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken- nature.

 David Hume: Out of custom and habit.


Salvador Dali: The Fish. Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.


Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

 Epicurus: For fun.


Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.


Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.


Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?


The Sphinx: You tell me.

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.


Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such a herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.



Ronald Reagan: I forget.


Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated. Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.



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