Why one should visit the cemetery often?
Sandeep: “Sir, what are the common characteristics of wealthy people?”
Trainer: “They are successful in life. They have more friends and robust relationships. In general, they are prideful because they wield power, position, name, and fame.”
Malathi: “So, can we conclude that they are happy and have a fulfilling life?”
Anandavardhan: “Far from so. Wealth is not the criterion to measure happiness or fulfillment in life. For that matter, even success is not a yardstick by which you can gauge one’s life. Because triumph is made more visible than failure, people long for it and systematically overestimate their probability to succeeding. They are the staple of self-help books available in the market. Even if your success stems from pure coincidence or sheer luck, you will discover similarities with other successful people and conclude that these are success factors. And what happens to the credulous people who ape these ‘success factors’ to essay their success? As Rolf Dobelli put in ‘The Art of Thinking Clearly’, they end up in the graveyard of failed individuals and doomed companies. If you visit their graveyards, you will realize that the tenants of these burial grounds shared many of the same traits that characterized the successful people. Not only that, most of the so-called successful people also end up in the graveyards of failed people, as time robs them of their riches and wealth.
As Dobelli says, “The burial ground houses 10,000 times more musicians than the stage does, but no journalist is interested in failures –except fallen superstars (read the story of Naresh Goyal, below). It makes the cemetery invisible to the outsiders.” And therein lies the importance of visiting these places often so that you will not be another victim of ‘Survivorship Bias.’’
Lal: “What is ‘Survivorship Bias’?”
Trainer: “The tendency of ambitious people who read the success stories of others to systematically overestimate their chances of success is known as Survivorship Bias. It happens mainly because the media always projects the success stories of triumphant people. They methodically gloss over the stories of failures, which far outnumber the winning tales. It is in the backdrop of this reality that one has to reflect on the 11th verse of Bhaja Govindam, which states:
“Ma kuru dhanajanayauvan garvam
Harati nimeshatkalah sarvam
Mayamayamidhamakhilam hitva
Brahmapaadam tvam pravisha vidhitva.”
“Do not take pride in wealth, friends, and youthfulness. Time snatches away all these in the blink of an eye. Free yourself from the illusion of the world of ‘Maya’, and discerning it, enter into the state of Brahman. So, bhaja Govindam, muda mate.”
Here, the word dhana also encompasses power, position, name, fame, etc. Do not also have pride in that there are people to follow you, to do your bidding, and to take commands from you. All these can disappear within no time. May you realize that all this creation is a product of ‘Maya’ and therefore seek what is unchanging and eternal. For which, sing the glory of ‘Govindam’ always.
Naresh Goyal, the fallen doyen of the Indian aviation sector
Naresh Goyal was the founder and Chairman of the once-famous Jet Airways. He systematically rose in the ladder of growth and bagged 16 prestigious awards from 2003 to 2012. However, the luck was not in his favor for long. In 2019, he and his wife Anita Goyal stepped down from the Board of Jet Airways amid a financial crisis that engulfed the aviation major, and two-thirds of its fleet was grounded. On a complaint from the financier, Canara Bank, Goyal got arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in Sept. 2023. The man looks so broken and helpless in jail; he tells the Court that he lost all his hopes and prefers to die in jail.
The world has seen both his heydays and the subsequent pathetic state now. There’s a big lesson to learn here. Never be proud of your achievements and success in life. Whatever one has accomplished will all get lost one day, for sure. Do not get entangled with the cycle of time.
Success re-defined
While writing this story, this author happened to listen to a monk explaining the terms growth, progress, and success. He said there is a big difference between these three terms. When you increase the turnover of your company from 5000 lakhs to 100,000 lakhs to 500,000 lakhs, it is called growth; it is not a success. Increasing your materialistic possessions in all ways is growth. That growth, if and when supported by ethics, which means discipline, honesty, and norms, is called progress. And that progress plus humanity, morality, and spirituality is what should be called success. Naresh Goyal in the above story had achieved growth, but not progress or success because he lacked discipline, ethics, morality, and spirituality in great measure.
A Chinese story on attaining Enlightenment
One day, a man from a village went to the ashram of a renowned Guru and requested the master to accept him as a disciple. The guru asked him a few questions and decided to take him in. Finding that he had little education, the guru assigned him to the ashram kitchen, where his duty was to clean the rice to be cooked for the 500-strong inmates and the visiting devotees.
The man got up every day early in the morning and started his work; he was totally on the job till late night. He had little time to go to the daily sermons, attend the prayers, read the scriptures, or listen to the talks delivered by the pundits. Likewise, 20 long years passed, and this man was there doing nothing but cleaning rice in the kitchen! He lost track of the days, dates, and everything else. He could seldom recollect his name as nobody used to hail him by the name.
One day the master declared to his disciples that the time had come for him to depart his body. He wanted to choose a successor for him and gave them a test for that purpose. “Anyone who thinks he has succeeded in self-remembering may write on the wall of my hut some insight that shows that he has seen the Truth.”
A senior disciple, considered by all as the greatest scholar in the whole group tried. But he was aware that what he wrote on the wall was not his insight but something from the scriptures. In the morning, the master saw the writing and asked the servant to erase it immediately. He said, “Find out the idiot who spoiled my wall.” The great scholar has not even put his signature below what he wrote for fear of being caught.
Almost a dozen of the scholars tried to give expression to their insight, but none of them dared to sign his name. A visibly annoyed guru said, “None of you has attained the point of self-remembering. You have all been feeding your ego in the name of self. All my preaching so far has come to naught. Now, I will find a deserving successor for me myself.”
At midnight, the guru went to the unlettered villager who joined the ashram kitchen two decades ago. For 20 years, the master had not seen him. He could not remember his face or name either. He went where the man was sleeping and woke him up. The latter asked, “Who are you?” As he had never met the master after his initial contact for a few minutes on the day he joined the ashram long back, the man couldn’t recognize the guru’s voice, and he continued, “What made you disturb my sleep at this odd hour?”
The master replied, “I am your master here. You have forgotten me. Do you remember your name at least?”
The man jumped up, apologized for not recognizing the guru, and said: “No. It’s difficult for me to recollect my name. The karma you have assigned me is such that my name has no relevance in it, nor any fame or scholarship is needed to accomplish it. It is so simple and engaging that I have forgotten everything else, including my name and other details. But I am indeed grateful to you, guruji.”. He touched the feet of the master and said, “Please do not change my job. I have forgotten everything else, but I have also achieved everything.
He continued, “I now know a peace that I have never experienced in the past, a silence that no words can express. I have known such moments of ecstasy that even if I die this moment, I will never feel that this life has not been fair to me. Just do not change my job, I implore. Has anybody complained about my work or behavior, master?”
The master replied, “No. Nobody has complained about you, but your job has to be changed because I am choosing you as my successor.”
The man was startled and said: “But master, you know that I’m only a rice cleaner at this ashram and don’t know anything about being a guru or a disciple. I know nothing but to clean rice. Please forgive me. I don’t want to be your successor because I cannot handle such a big job; I am a small person with little knowledge and experience.”
The master, determined as he was, said, “You have achieved what others have been trying to achieve and failed. You have achieved because you were doing your karma without any desire for its fruits. In simply doing your small work, there was no need for thinking, scope for emotions, need for anger or fighting, comparison, or ambition — your ego died a natural death. And with your ego, died your name. You were not born with a name. The ego is given a name, which is the beginning of the ego. With the death of your ego, you even forgot your own master, because it was your ego that brought you to me. Up to that moment, you were on a spiritually ambitious journey.
You are perfectly the right person to take the mantle of the spiritual head; so take my spiritual attire, which has traditionally been given by the master to the worthy successor. But a word of caution to you: take them and escape from this place as far away as you can, because your life will be in danger. All these 500 egoists will do away with you. You are so simple and innocent that if they ask for this spiritual attire, you will readily part with it.
You just take them and go as far away as you can into the mountains. Soon, people will start coming to you, just as bees start finding their way towards the flowers that bloom. You have blossomed. You need not bother about the disciples; you rest assured silently in a remote place. People will come to you. You can teach them whatever you have been doing.”
“But”, the unconvinced man said, “I have not received any teaching, and I do not know what I can impart to others.”
The master said reassuringly, “Just teach them to do small things unassumingly, without any pride or ego, silently, peacefully, without any ambition, without any motivation to gain something in this world or the other world. Tell them that, by that way, they can become innocent like a child, and that innocence is the real religiousness and the gateway to get enlightenment.”
(Courtesy: Sai Balasanskaar)
Essence:
One must treasure each moment of life and not while it away. Alertness and mindfulness should always be there; it will keep you focused on the ultimate truth. One must not be proud or become deeply engrossed in and attached to material possessions like wealth, relationships, power, or beauty. These are all but transient. The whole world is pervaded by illusion. To entangle oneself with the temporary instead of seeking the permanent is the greatest folly in life. Abasement of the ego is supremely important to attain enlightenment.
Major Takeaways
v All material possessions, including relationships, are transient and could be snatched away by time in the blink of an eye.
v People often mistake growth for progress or success. Growth + ethics = progress. Real and lasting success is progress tempered with humanity, morality, and spirituality.
v Doing one’s karma without any desire for its fruits and with utmost devotion and dedication, in a spirit of surrender, and without ego and pride will help one realize the ultimate Truth.
Dr. K R S Nair
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