Counting Breaths

The central message of the ‘Bhagavadgita’ (1) according to Mahatma Gandhi, is “to do one’s duty without focusing on the result”. One day, this topic came up for discussion between me and one of the younger colleagues in my department, in India. He challenged the concept by saying “How can one achieve the result without focusing on it? This goes against common sense”. I tried to convey the truth behind this message by this explanation.

“You believe one should never lose focus on the result or the goal to be achieved. Otherwise you will not achieve your goal. Let us apply this principle to one of your routine daily activities – you reaching this office building, every morning.

In the morning, you sit on the motor cycle, in the parking lot of your apartment. You start the engine. Your goal now is to reach the office building. According to your formula for success, you should continuously focus on the office building from this point. But wait. Can you see your office building from this place? No. It means you failed to focus on your goal, even before you started your journey. What did you do then?

You knew the route to be followed, to reach your office. Following your previous experience, you drove out of the apartment complex, turned right and were driving towards the office building, on the first leg of your journey. Are you NOW focusing on the office building? No, you can’t see it even now. You are not thinking or worried about not seeing that goal. But you are happily driving ahead on that road. What are you doing, while busily driving?

You drive safely, watching the vehicles on both your sides and ahead of you. You take care not to hit any other vehicle or get hit by any other. Are you aware that when driving, your office building is not on your mind, even for a moment, let alone focusing on it. Did you forget your goal of reaching your office building? What is happening next on your journey?

You come to a red light and stop. Your journey comes to a halt. You are now watching the red light, instead of focusing on the office building. Your goal is again out of focus. What next?

You have a three choices when the light turns green, turn right or turn left or go straight. You know you have to turn right at this intersection. The light turned green and you turned right. Again you are focusing on safe driving, not on your office building.

What if there is a detour due to road work on a road? You follow the unknown and unfamiliar route, guided by the signs for the detour. You ignore the proven route to your office and drive on the fly.

You have now seen that focusing on the goal is not what you do to reach your goal. You actually follow this strategy:

• You know the sequence of steps to be followed on your journey to the goal.
• While executing each step of the journey,  you carefully monitor the environment around you, avoiding any adversity that may distract you from your journey and delay reaching the goal. You are always focusing on the present moment.
• At every decision point, you take the right decision and action, based on all the information you have till that point.
• You are open to unforeseen events and take the best decisions to manage them and still reach your goal.

You reach your goal finally! But not by focusing on it all the time!”

My young colleague was silent, apparently thinking about this interpretation of the scripture.

(1) It is a Hindu Vedic scripture well known for its spiritual message to scholars in many countries.

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I go to the nearby Walmart store often for fresh milk and vegetables. As soon as I enter, I pull out a cart from the train of stacked carts and go into the aisles, to pick up the stuff. Occasionally, after pushing the cart for a few feet, I realize that wheels are not in alignment, pulling it slightly to left or right. I am not happy with its condition. But having walked a few feet ahead, I am reluctant to walk back to the entrance to replace the defective cart by a good one. So I go ahead and continue the shopping.

If I remain passive and allow the cart to move as it tends to, my cart will soon hit another shopper or the shelving. I silently curse the defective cart and the people who should have have taken such carts out of circulation. To prevent any mishap, I periodically adjust it to go straight ahead. With a number of grumbling adjustments, I complete my shopping and walk out of the store, without any mishap.

One day it occurred to me that my mind sometimes behaves like that defective cart. I am aware of my mental bias pushing me to obviously unwarranted judgments of people. If I go by its dictates, I will definitely regret my judgments and consequent actions. Taking a clue from my experience with the defective carts, whenever I am aware, I ignore the wrong tendency of my mind and make a deliberate effort to judge and act correctly. Due to such repeated efforts, self correction of my mind has become natural and spontaneous, with less regrets.

We see this situation often. Consider these scenarios.

• A sufi teacher (1)  was pointing his crooked index finger, bent due to arthritis, at the moon. He was asking his student to look at the beautiful full moon. The student was focusing on the crooked index finger. He could not divert his attention away from the finger. The communication between them was a total failure. Who is responsible? Who is the loser?
• I receive a partially damaged and dirty envelope from the tax department. I feel like throwing it in the trash bin. But then….What if it is a notice of an audit of my tax return? Or it has a check for the tax refund? Should I ignore the dirty condition of the envelope and open it, pull out the letter and then toss the envelope in the trash bin?
• I parked my car crossing the dividing line between the two parking spots, close to the entrance of a famous temple and went inside with my family. The adjacent parking space was wasted, as it was risky for any one to park in that narrow space. That being a week end, there were many visitors and the parking was very tight.  When I returned after the worship, I found a paper under the wiper of the wind shield with the pungent message “Stupid! Don’t you know how to park?” I felt very bad. Should I curse the hot blooded person, may be a youngster, for his crude message? Should I regret my negligent parking, depriving another devotee of a convenient parking space? Should I etch this incident in my mind and not repeat the parking negligence any time in future? Should I thank the youngster for teaching me an important lesson that I definitely needed?

There are choices in each of the above situations. What are the smart choices?

(1) Sufism is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam.A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a Sufī.

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We constantly get thoughts in the mind – mostly negative ones and rarely positive ones. Most of them are random thoughts and vastly vary in content and rarely relevant to the task on hand. Often we get carried away by the content and message of such a thought, without questioning its validity. We do not raise the question “Is there any truth in this thought? Do I believe it?”

A thought has no impact on our mind or behavior unless we believe it.

We can visualize a thought entering the mind as a balloon without air. We don’t have to blow air into every balloon we get. We can decide which balloon we need now and only blow air in those balloons we want to use.

Similarly we can decide which thought being delivered int our mind has any relevance or significance to us at this moment, examine its validity and decide whether to believe it and act on it. Believing in a thought is like blowing air into it, giving it an attractive look and utility. Not believing in a thought is like leaving it lifeless and insignificant, as good as discarding it at this moment.

Related article: Is it a snake or rope? on importance of correct perception in saving one’s life or in not missing a potential opportunity.

There were a row of  plants by the side of the road leading to my office.  The purpose of these plants was to show off their green leaves and colorful flowers, giving relief to the eyes from the drab concrete buildings and roads.

As a maintenance engineer in a continuous running plant, I had to face sudden stoppages of continuous running machines due to mechanical defects. I had to answer the management for the consequent losses to the company. The persons responsible for avoiding the unplanned stoppages of the machines would tell me that the machine was running fine yesterday and even a little while back and it failed suddenly. They claimed they could not have detected and prevented the failure. Of course this is not true for mechanical parts. But how to drive this point home without arguments? I used to practically demonstrate what might have been happening this way.