| GOALS .~AN EYE OPENER A young man went to Gautama Buddha and sought the Master's guidance to achieve Enlightenment, The conversation—that in my opinion must be required reading for anyone-- went roughly as follows: YOUNG MAN [YM] Master how long will it take for me to achieve enlightenment? GAUTAMA BUDDHA[GB] It all depends on you… YM: If I put in ten hours of meditation every day how long will it take ? GB: Maybe ten years YM: What if I put in fifteen hours meditation? GB: Maybe fifteen years YM;[getting irritated] What if I meditate for twenty hours? GB: Maybe twenty five years The young man was almost infuriated. YM; I cannot understand your logic—the more effort I put in the more time it will take—this is ridiculous, Please explain. GB: As long as you are fixated and obsessed about your goal you will not achieve it. Just do spiritual practice without one eye on the goal. Let events take their shape. I was reminded of this story when I saw on TV an interview of Nobel Laureate V .Ramakrishnan an Indian American. The new laureate was the very epitome of humility and one of his statements was eye opening. He said that he embarked on his research not out of a desire to win laurels but out of curiosity to solve a scientific problem. He was not working with one eye on the Nobel Prize. My understanding of life is that the things we desire most—money, power, status etc are best left to shape themselves .What we must keep as our main goal, is best exemplified by what a friend of mine ,an Indian —now a top executive in Egypt---told his young sons. He told them ''It does not matter what you do in life. I request you to aspire to be the very best in terms of excellence in whatever you do. If you choose to be a janitor try and become the best janitor in town' In other words EXCELLENCE ought to be our ideal and everything else ought to be a side effect. Now that we are talking about Nobel prizes and outstanding Indians readers might like to read about another illustrious Indian American who figures among the people of excellence in his chosen field .He is Dr.V Ramachandran, neuroscientist . He is respected all over the world on account of his pioneering work in understanding the human mind. What is striking about him—apart from his commitment to excellence—is his humility. He travels frequently to India to meet his aged parents at his humble home in Chennai. My friends tell me that he can be spotted sitting at his verandah sporting a lungi and banian, sipping kaapi [ coffee,] reading THE HINDU paper and is known to be accessible to anyone who chooses to meet him and serves kaapi himself with no airs whatsoever. That raises another point. It is time that our media gives extensive coverage to those among us who have excelled –not necessarily in financial terms-- so that they might inspire youngsters to not only aspire for world class efforts but to imbibe the qualities that go into the making a Nobel Laureate—humility, curiosity, sustained endeavour, without an eye on the main chance. A few years ago a niece of mine almost scored the world number one rank in the GMAT exam. I requested the media to interview her so that others may be inspired to rise above their limitations—she is from an ordinary middle class family who excelled by sheer dint of hard work and dedication to excellence. The media ignored her and she went on to excel at Harvard Business School and is now at one of the world's most respected consultancy organization at Wall Street. Her most observable quality—humility.[She will kill me if she read this eulogy ]. Recently I spoke to the Principal at the college in Chennai where she did her graduation, You can guess the response—silence .Contrast this with the response I get when I tell students that a nephew of mine is a top film star[I do to wish to name him] The immediate question is—when will you get him to our college ? K..R.RAVI P.S. The cryptic advice IN A RAT RACE EVEN IF YOU COME FIRST YOU ARE STILL A RAT !!!
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