The four societal shields

Rajakama, Vedakama, Gurukama, Pavidikama

The things that protect us and make us safe, we value over all else. The people that protect us and make us safe, we revere above all others.  There are four ways in which we are protected and there are four types of people who use them for our protection. 

We are protected by knowledge, we are protected by the truth, we are protected by medicine and we are protected by the material requisites of food, clothing, shelter and security from physical attack. Not too long ago, these factors, also known as the four societal shields against disaster, were deemed so critical that they were provided to all for free. The first was provided by teachers, the second by the renunciates, the third by healers and the fourth by the kings. 

Those who extended that helping hand through one of those four activities did so at great cost to themselves and their wellbeing. They walked, mostly, lonely paths and they did what few people could aspire to do or wanted to do. They did it for gratis and they put themselves on the line at every turn, twist and eventuality that could have the slightest bearing on the wellbeing of the people they watched over. They did it simply because they had unique talents and skills and the emotional strength and fortitude to use them for the good of others. They heeded the calls because they had the ability to respond to them. Granted, such as those were few but merely by dint of superior abilities and commitment to sacrificing themselves for others, those few were quite capable of seeing to the protection of at least very large multitudes if not entire nations.

They could, because of this ability to respond, be rightly called responsible human beings whose footprint reached into each substratum of society, succoring, regenerating, restoring, establishing, consolidating. They moved amongst the multitudes, strengthening the people, their lives, their livelihoods, their belongings, their health, their understanding. They were in turn, given optimal leverage to engage in those activities and they were revered and worshiped by the people for what they did for them. Never claiming their actions as a livelihood, they were simply the custodians of the four shields and were showered with an excess of physical, social, emotional and intellectual requisites as a humble act of recognition of their effort on behalf of the people and not as a reward for what they were doing.  For the people, the very presence of one of two such supremely enabled beings assured their peace of mind and was cause enough for joyful celebration.   

Things are far better these days. Now, we have hundreds of thousands of doctors, teachers, clergymen and leaders and wherever we look we see more and more of them being churned out by their hundreds. We should be swooning in exhilaration. We should be drowning in joy. We should be living so peacefully that even a sneeze should startle us. We should be sleeping so soundly that we should be able give Kumbakarna a run for his money and we should be dreaming so wondrously that we should be rejecting the lotuses of Odysseus’ crew as beggar’s fair. No? Not really? We are not happy? We are not peaceful? We are not secure? Oh, how sad. How very sad. 

The explosion in our times of the practitioners of the big four “callings” has actually had the opposite effect to the one that originally created those callings. There is a simple enough reason for this. The big four are not longer “callings” but rather “livelihoods”. Those who engage in them, do so, not in order to protect others but to protect themselves. Desiring security for themselves, they offer it either conditionally or only as a last resort when all else has failed them.

Kings have been replaced by politicians manipulating the fickleness of human emotion to become, not our protectors but rather, our leaders. Healers have morphed into doctors who, quite apart from being “dosthora” or “dosha-thora” (bereft of ills) are full of “dosha” (illnesses). Teachers have turned into educators who are desperately in need of being taught a few things themselves and the renunciates have transmogrified into the clergy, who, instead of being disciplined and insightful enough to understand the truth are unable to even understand the fallacies under which they live. 

More dangerously though, they are overarched by a business class that promotes politicians for their own advantage, decide who should be teaching what to whom, how many times, where and why, determine what sort of “truths” are sermonized by the clergy and what sort of illnesses get treated to what level. The needs of the people are not even on the radar. Profit is the sole reason for the exercise of these livelihoods. In cahoots with one another, one sees constant exchange (internal migration) of individuals between the business class and the four shield areas.

It is not to be wondered at that these people, collectively, are completely bereft of the “ability to respond” and therefore implicitly irresponsible by default. They would not think twice about throwing the people to the wolves to ensure their own profit, position, pandering, pimping. Unlike in the past, when shield custodians cared not for the type of legacy they created or what they gained from their actions or the type of recognition and respect given to them, the current crop demand, command and threaten people into giving them a respect they do not deserve. 

The people in turn would be entirely justified in protesting the enforced presentation of dubious bouquets and the outright rejection of this band of misfit renegades who now hold monopolies on their peace of mind. But they don’t. They can’t. These manipulative thugs preempted that eventuality through a very simple, clever and diabolical strategy. They institutionalized the four shields and labeled them as “state”, “education”, “religion” and “medicine” and brought them, their instruments, their hierarchies and their rituals into a system bound over with either fear or legislative instruments or both. They made sure that the people had no choice but to engage them, work with them and serve them. In the process, they created for themselves a very advantageous state of affairs where they can enforce recognition of their positions and power and expand the depth of their scope of control and their scope of effect without having to provide the type and quality of services that are deserving of such accolades. 

So, apart from a few exceptions to the current rule, many ordinary citizens recognize the positives of optimizing gain while minimizing effort and, having conveniently converted these callings into careers, they fight each other to the death to come out on top of this dung heap of human non-achievement.  When one of these misbegotten critters takes a hike to hell, a thousand others are ready to step into its shoes and put on its mantle of dishonor.  Our institutions ensure that dishonor is worse compounded. Our practicalities confirm our resultant vulnerabilities. Our realities affirm our certainty of doom. Protection is damned in everyone’s future. We are kaput. 

Teacher's Day -Educating for a lesser idea of knowledge

The greatest knowledge there is, is that there is no greater knowledge than that which enables one to be in harmony and in contentment with one’s self and the externalities that affect one most.

Harmony and contentment are difficult to engineer without much trial and error, without spectral scoping and without many lifetimes because one must be able to absorb and resolve both internal and external negatives and positives with joy, compassion, equanimity, understanding and insight. Tough though this certainly is, some have come very close to achieving precisely that harmony, precisely that contentment. All of them had that rare ability to heal souls and calm troubled waters not because they crusaded for it but simply because they existed. Most of them basked in happiness and signed off on their lives with the slogan “a job well done”. A few, a very few, spent their lives instructing others on how to sample that happiness and achieve it if not to a higher degree than they did themselves, then at least to a level equal to theirs.  

Some of these I have known, some I have heard of, some I have read of or studied and from others I have got to know many things.  They were the accomplished ones. They saw a lot and instructed those that came into their orbit to look both wide and deep. They knew a lot of things about a lot of things and encouraged others to know similarly before they call themselves “knowers”.  They subsumed their egos completely in order to instruct those who were full of it in the skills they required in order to perform.  They never held up a board saying “Come to me, I am a teacher”. Instead, people naturally gravitated to them and were given instruction according to their abilities. None, ever, were sent away empty handed.  They taught the world all that was worth knowing.  

“Disapamok Aduru” is the word used to describe such a one. The word literally means, “A teacher who is foremost in all ten directions” or, one who is universally knowledgeable. From Dronacharya who taught the Kuru princes to Sarvamithra who taught the young Siddhartha through Nagarjuna of Nalanda and Aryadeva of Madhyamaka,  down towards other august individuals of that same ilk, they created the great educational communities of old and edified our world and gave it the sight, direction and stratagems that it required for its continuity.

Unfortunately, by the advent of our age, such people and places of their congregation were few and becoming fewer still. The Thakshilas, Bhathkands and Santhinikethans were rare indeed. Time, that great destroyer of all things brought into being by human endeavor, slowly, surely, brought about the degeneration, sickness, old age and death of these communes.  The heyday of absolution through knowledge was going…going… and is now almost gone. 

The knowledgeable became less so. Instructors became less interested in what they knew and more interested in what they were. Seekers became therefore less well instructed and they in turn instructed yet others not on what needed to be known but on what they themselves knew. Impatience, belligerence, intolerance, extroversion, fighting, continuously assaulted these communes in serial and parallel waves that tugged, twisted and kneaded them into shallower and shallower thinking and lesser and lesser ideals of what constituted quality and what did not.  Communities therefore became less and less able to sustain themselves as the harmony and contentment that built them became slowly but inexorably corrupt, breaking apart at the seams like structures held together with substandard glue.

As the age progressed and self-enhancement became more important than self worth, as getting became more important than giving, as ego became more important than humility, the bloodlines of the greatest instructors became thinned to the point that it was difficult to even determine the original pedigree from which they had sprung. Nothing finally remained of these, other than the throw forward of their efforts, which bore not the slightest resemblance to the original.

Schools we call them. Universities. Teachers. Students. None of which had much to do with knowing, but a lot to do with learning. The ideal from which our social “knowledge gaining facilities” became, were lost in the mists of time, irrelevant, outdated and of no consequence to a world that understands itself primarily by measuring the worth of self.

When “self” walks in through the door, “teaching” jumps out the window.  Selves have this habit of labeling themselves, qualifying themselves, promoting themselves and insisting on themselves. Selves, by definition, love only themselves, their understanding, their voices, their dress, their ornaments, their style. They are possibly good at doing things, but they are disasters at teaching things. Tied inwardly, driving a train of their own make through a very narrow tunnel whose end they know not a lot about and care not much about, they would be lucky not to hit oncoming traffic let alone safely transport a trainload of students into the future.

Where once, the title of “Guru” was vested in a person, these days, selves arm themselves with qualifications, claim that title, and sally forth to desanitize the future of the world by either cauterizing or corrupting minds.

Where once, teachers strove to expand the minds of people, now  they try to contract them into their own mold. Where once the goal of a teacher was to ensure that their protégés became greater than themselves,  now they make sure that they are never even going to be their equal. Where once, teachers who were spectrally knowledgeable recognized and encouraged students to exercise their creative and intellectual faculties to optimal levels, now, they try to manufacture higher averages. Where once difficult students were a thrill and a joy to instruct, now they are labeled as unmitigated nuisances. Where once, a teacher was the first person one would go to when faced with a problem, now, they only go to them if they are forced to do so. Where once, the cane was used to correct a wrong and discipline a young soul, now, the cane is used in anger and hatred because a child has refused to acknowledge the “self” of a teacher.

So, where once, teachers were revered not for what they were but for what they made people see in themselves, now, they are ridiculed and fought by their classrooms. Where once, teachers were worshiped for what they were; now they are shot for what they are. Through successively degenerative cycles, all that we have managed to do is create arenas for these people to joust incessantly with each other  in the name of the weirdest sport ever invented in modern times: education.

Education has done just one thing. It has placed so-called teachers and so-called students in a situation of contention competing with one another for one-upmanship. Nothing more than that.  This is a great sadness and a great tragedy for our world. There is little wonder that we are faced now with impossible situations. Each succeeding generation is given less and less weaponry to battle the ills of the world. Each succeeding generation is less and less impressed by those from the preceding one that claim to be their teachers. 

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Many laud education as a great thing and a fundamental right of people but in its present form, it should be recognized for the evil that it is, where giving an education is practiced by stunted minds and getting an education is practiced by angry minds. I understand that this is not going to happen. Since it has sold itself on this idea of education, it is hard for the world to see it as a corrupter and not an edifier. It is difficult to see it as essentially useless. It is near impossible to see it as a world destroyer.

*shrugs* Let them think as they will. Let them do what they will. I never created this mess nor subscribed to it so I shall not insist. For a world at war, these portals of war may have some relevance. Let them tie their idea of knowing to fencing bouts between teachers, students and parents, imposing buildings, pieces of paper and three letter dirty words.

In the end, most of us will say "we learned" and some of us will say "we taught" and because of this – not despite of it - I fear that a very large percentage of human beings shall go to their deaths in complete ignorance of the fact that they never acquired or imparted anything even remotely close to knowledge. More disconcertingly, most will not know much about how that death came about. 

Nepotism: it's all relative

Photo by Kentoh

The last time I had to visit a police station to sort out a problem with my driving license, I called up my uncle, a retired ASP who phoned up the OIC who talked to the sergeant who frowned at the PC who got off his butt instantly and solved my problem without my having to even go to the cop shed. Recently, when a friend was in the GH-ICU,  my wife got her student’s mother who was a doctor at the place to give us hourly bulletins that were far better than any we would have received if we had sat down to high tea with the attending surgeon. Easy. Simple. And who needs to navigate that little known and less understood monster generally known as “staying in line”? Why, for crying out loud, engage in a fruitless and time consuming activity when we can just jump the queue and have done with it?

Regardless of the type of bureaucratic process involved, Sri Lankans, as a nation, bypass due process as a matter of course. In fact, due process is the last and least preferred modality of engagement when dealing with any kind of societal process that can be even slightly resistive.  Whether it is obtaining a bank loan, getting an approval for our plans for a house, getting out of paying a traffic fine, springing a buddy out of jail, seizing state land for development, getting a contract, choosing a person to manage some area of a business… all of us, without exception, have thought, said or done things similar to the following:

• “Ikram is a high up in that place isn’t he?” 
• “Speak to uncle Para putha, he will get the paperwork sorted out at the ministry for us” 
• “Maybe their technical track record is better than ours but the chairman is married to Avanthi’s sister no? Avanthi men? Sene’s daughter? Remember? I helped her get a good college in America? Contract is ours. Not to worry…just one phone call” 
• “No no, not Senthil. Who is this fellow and whose is he? That’s what I want to know. I don’t trust him. Some bloody outsider. So he is qualified so what? He will sell us out mark my words. Better put our Pali’s brother in that position” 
• “Don’t try to bribe the bugger machan he will kick your proposal into the dustbin but send him four lorry loads of sand, he is building his house and he would like that. Trust me. Done deal.”
• “Damn in! He got the inside track because his buddies were more powerful than our buddies”

Bypassing due-process to unfairly leverage position, networks and physical resources for personal gain is ingrained in the very core of our national psyche and, measured against this broadest possible definition of the word “corruption”, we are, as a collective, as a citizenry, corrupt. Not just one or two, most of us. Some do it out of choice, some do it because they see no other choice, some don’t think twice about it. Regardless of the reason why we do it, none, but none, actually see anything wrong with it. Regardless of the level of empowerment and regardless of our specific social stratums, this is what we do. This is the way we engage society. This is the norm. This? Is Sri Lanka!

So, why are we, in the majority, prancing about like cats on hot coals, lambasting everything from the beautification of Colombo to the new highway to Kandy, pointing fingers at everyone from “the family” to the bureaucracy to the army to the clergy and shrieking “corruption..nn..nnn..nnnnnn….” in a cacophony of noise worse than an entire battalion of screwing felines?  Why do we rattle our teeth loose gnashing them together at the unfairness of it all? Why do we pour vitriol and scorn on every single man jack we perceive to be aligned with systemic corruption? Why do we air our hatred at such things as nepotism or internal circles of trust? Why, in a nutshell, are we pointing an accusing finger at any and all when three fingers are pointing back at us?

Two words. Alignment. Inequity. A lot of us are wrongly aligned and a lot of us are unfairly prevented from unfairly bypassing due process. Basically, we called the wrong people “friends” and we are reaping the non-benefits of that heinous crime. I am amused at the incongruity of it all. When we scream in anger, howl we don’t at corruption per se but yowl we do at the lack of opportunity for our own circles of trust to engage in the same thing. When we claw the walls in frustration, we don’t rake the infrastructure only because of  the thought that the friends and family of the rightly aligned are making a lot of hay, but rather, because we bake in our own misery at the thought that our friends and family are living fringe existences because of our bad choices in alignment.

People look silly when they do such things. Regardless of the millions of “righteous” excuses that people may give themselves and the world. “Righteousness” and “fairness” in our type of society are slogans only for those whose ability to be unrighteous and inequitable has been either curbed or cauterized. Transparency and accountability are useless lenses for us when they are subsumed and micronized by the lens of corruption. If nothing else, then the litany of thirty five years of reneged election promises of successive politicians of every size, shape, color and agenda, the murderous desire of small men to obtain power at all costs and the drooling madness of citizens killing each other over ideologies that trigger emotion over circumspection should prove this.

This is the age of street-smart political agendas where it is not the most law abiding driver but rather the largest bus that gets the right of way. This is the age of humungous busses mostly plying routes to either ethnicville or religiocity. This is the age where circles of trust are only as valid as their goodness-of-fit for a particular self serving purpose and the safest option is to use the most powerful vehicle that can serve that purpose. If one is fair or righteous or both, one doesn’t hop on any of those busses be they big or small, destructive or vulnerable for all of them are moving down the same iffy passage to doom.  

Rather, one gets the heck off of the darned street. 

That way, one is not responsible for the carnage created by a runaway juggernaut.  That way, one would see alignment and inequity against their proper framework of reference and perhaps, even continue to use them as one has always done without attempting to second guess the impact of others using the same process on a bigger stage for a larger audience. That way, one would have made a very right move, that way one would have made a very fair move, that way one would have made a very wise move. However, make no mistake, that way one would not have made a very smart move.

Me? I will wait for ever for a statesman to stand election before I decide to man a lie of voters. Having only seen politicians putting their hands up, I’ve never voted for anyone in my entire life and so, for whatever time I have left on earth, I can duly lay myself down to a relatively calmer sleep, processing out the tiredness that I bring upon myself by pointing my own misbegotten index finger at anyone, at everyone, and cackling insanely at the insanity of the “average Sri Lankan citizen”.