Death, as a punctuation mark.

Death is very likely the single best invention of life - Steve Jobs. 

Jobs is not alone in portraying death as an unmistakeable source of clairvoyance. Phil Koeghan's (long-standing host of The Amazing Race) fantastic podcast episode on the Tim Ferriss Show got me thinking on these lines, where he describes how an incident as a 19 year old, where he nearly drowned, changed his perspective on life for the better. Josh Waitzkin, the chess prodigy and master of learning, describes a similar incident, where he almost drowns. The same can be said about Randy Pausch, whose battle with cancer in his last few days led to his illustrious life's seminal work - The Last Lecture. 

The common thread that runs through this perspective on death is that it is steeped in western philosophy. This is not a new thought. Seneca, the Greek stoic, has expounded at length on the Shortness of Life and the need to live as though every unfolding moment is one's very last.

"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing" - Seneca on the Shortness of Life

Along similar lines on a theme covered in another post, I was mulling the idea of visualizing death as a practice, in order to connect with a compass deep within. Morbid as this sounds, there can be few ways of making the most of life without acknowledging its fleeting shortness. But just as I pen down these lines, an argument wells up within.

A diametrically opposite, albeit older philosophy exists that deals very differently with death - vedic philosophy. Death is not seen to be an end, but rather, a checkpoint before the beginning of another journey. It is attachment to the mind and the body, temporary vessels that hold thoughts, memories and a conscious identity of one lifetime, that causes a rift in a continuum spanning several lifetimes. With the same conviction that western philosophy eulogizes death as a clairvoyant that emphasizes the urgency of the present moment, vedic philosophy dismisses it as a frivolous illusion that distorts reality.

"Arjuna, the wise know that you and I and the rest existed before this event, and will continue to exist after this event. The resident of this body experiences its childhood, youth and old age before moving on to the next. This body gets attached to the world around it, and so fears death...."  - Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, verse 12 to 16 (paraphrased), Quoted from Devdutt Pattanaik's My Gita 

Interestingly, these two poles - oriental and occidental, do converge upon a common ground. As disparate as they are in describing what death is, they seem to agree upon how fear must not be the dominant response. Both schools emphasize on understanding life and death for what they are, and living in the present moment with this understanding. Fear is seen as an inherent tendency that seeks to always distort this understanding, and must be overcome. The same quote above from the Gita continues

"... But the wise, aware of the inner resident's immortality, aware that the flesh goes through cycles of birth and death, do not fear change, or death. They know that what matters is the immortal, not the mortal. - Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, verse 12 to 16 (paraphrased)

And Seneca says -

"And so, however small the amount of it [life], it is abundantly sufficient, and therefore, whenever his last day shall come, the wise man will not hesitate to go to meet death with steady step." - Seneca on the Shortness of Life

I am often confused as to which idea of death I subscribe to, as I feel my own self caught in the swirls where these worlds intersect. As a child, the essence of Hindu philosophy has left an indelible impression on me - one that I continue to respect even if I do not understand it wholly. My education and world-view for the most part is now Western, which makes occidental concepts easier to understand and grasp. While I grapple with this dilemma, there is always solace in knowing that there is convergence somewhere in a middle-ground, which appeals to my sensibilities.  

Teaching empathy

A saying that can be traced back to the Cherokee Indian tribe is something that sounds quite familiar - Never judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins. Lessons and sermons in empathy abound us to the extent that these are dubbed cliches. Ironically, it is because empathy could so easily be taken for granted that the understanding of its full import is prevented. On the day following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Jane Elliot, a third grade teacher in a small town in Iowa, decided to change that with her class. She did so with a powerful and bold social experiment that changed their lives. 

Elliot had her class of all-white third graders identified as blue-eyed people and brown-eyed people. On the first day, she proclaimed that the blue-eyed children were superior to their brown-eyed peers and offered them special privileges - a few extra minutes at recess, exclusive access to the playground equipment etc. She had the brown-eyed children wear collars and praised their blue-eyed classmates at every opportunity, while often taking a dig at their expense. This treatment went on for a whole day, and was reversed the next day to ensure that the shoe was on the other foot. These children in Elliot's class in Iowa, felt for a day, what marginalized groups of people - Native Americans and Blacks in the context of their country, felt the whole of their lives. During the course of the experiment, Elliot describes how she saw sweet little third-graders who were the best of friends turn against each other in a mere span of 15 minutes.  Elliot's experiment is plausibly the only way these children would have learnt true empathy for these cultures, with even an iota of authenticity. 2 decades after this experience, the children of that classroom met for a reunion, where they attested to this fact in unequivocal terms. All of this is beautifully captured in a mind-expanding Frontline documentary, which I simply cannot recommend enough (hat-tip to David McCrany's excellent podcast for guiding me to this).

The relevance of this study bears true to this day, and will continue to do so as long as I feel, sadly as it may seem, innate human mind tendency to discriminate against the other. I often wonder (and I am almost sure of undocumented cases) where an Indian teacher may have replicated this experience in our society, where barriers of caste, creed and religion have always been simmering under the surface. My own experience in our educational institutions has been one where peers who are a little differently wired are socially marginalized by their adolescent classmates - an age where friendships can be the only solace. While this quality is common among teenagers in almost every culture, I have observed sadly, that this is as applicable for a class of "mature" Indian 25-year-olds - a rot that festers deep in the roots of our society. As I recollect these rather unfortunate experiences in my own life with a twinge of guilt, I find myself awestruck by the impact that Elliot's lesson had on the impressionable minds in an Iowa classroom.