You have been
attending our Training sessions for quite some time now; and you should, as of
right, have some means to ascertain for yourselves the extent to which you have
progressed spiritually.
I have told you
before that the very first index of development, which others around you would
notice in you, even before you do, would be the subsidence of mental agitation
and perturbation. Another measure on the scale is that in your interaction with
others, the element of Friction would become less and less, and finally abate
totally. Friction-free
interaction with the environment is a definite stage of advancement for you.
Look at the
number of persons you have to meet and deal with from morning to evening —
vegetable-vendor, bus-conductor, co-passengers or other road-users, colleagues
in the office, and relatives and friends who drop in and drop out without
notice. Not all of them could be expected to be pleasant and congenial in their
behaviour, but they have their place in the sun and
cannot be wished off the face of the Earth just because you do not like their demeanour. The first Prime Minister of India once said in
the Parliament that he did not prefer to visit Calcutta (now Kolkata) because it was “a city of processions.” Stung to
the quick by the gratuitous insult, an irrepressible and scholarly MP from
At the place of
work, there is often much purposeless talk on matters political and social.
Sometimes such a discussion between two persons would turn acrimonious leading
to a hot exchange of words and even fisticuffs. In my Trade Union days I once
had to handle a case of two colleagues who had both been served with
suspension-orders on the ground that one pushed the other to the floor by way
of settling an argument on a political topic. The charge-sheeted were in their
fifties and it was quite a task to draft a reply that would get them off the
hook. At the end of it all, I counselled them,
“Office is the place where you come to earn a living. Why do you indulge there
in extraneous activities?” I am relating this case-study so that when you face
a similar situation, you may correct yourself through introspection. Remember
what Gautama the Buddha advised his disciples, “O monks, when two or more of
you gather, talk about the Dhamma
(Philosophy); or maintain a noble silence.”
According to
Sage Tiruvalluvar the hallmark of learning is only friction-free interaction.
When you visit a factory or a newspaper establishment, have a look at the
rear-side of a giant machine there. You would find innumerable toothed-wheels,
all of them in rotation in clockwise and anti-clockwise directions. Each
toothed-wheel would be fitting into the next, but you would hear no screeching
sound. That is because the wheels are fine-ground and also lubricated. In like
manner should you organise your dealings with the
persons and objects in the phenomenal world. If a screeching sound emanates, it
means that the lubricant has dried up. The lubricant in this case is jnaanam (wisdom). Apply it forthwith or the entire
machinery would come to a stop and call for major overhauling and repairs.
Valluvar says in Verse 140 of Tirukural
: “They who have not learnt (the art of) friction-free interaction are
to be reckoned as ignoramuses only, however learned they may otherwise be (in a
variety of subjects). I am giving below the transliteration of the couplet :
“Ulagathodu otta ozhugal pala katrum
Kallar arivu ilathaar.”
The phrase otta ozhugal in line 1 does not mean “conforming to” as
stated by traditional commentators; it actually connotes “interacting without
friction”. As always, Sage Tiruvalluvar has the last word in any subject under
Management Science.
— Excerpt from a Talk by Sage TGN on
“Way of Life charted by Valluvar”
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