Rice or noodles?
The most elusive and persistent aspect of our body-mind apparatus is the ego, also referred to as the perception of “I-ness”. Almost everything I do strengthens the illusion of “I-ness.”
In my experience, opinions are a particularly hard problem. Every opinion I have subconsciously asserts that I am significant. I will hold an opinion, “This sambar is very spicy.” Subconsciously, I am also asserting that there is an entity called “I” who is a repository of knowledge about sambar. This strengthens my subconscious belief that I am.
I have realised that each and every opinion plays this game with my consciousness, weakens my awareness of Prakriti, and strengthens my perception that I am a standalone person. Therefore, I have consciously begun dismissing all opinions. If an opinion comes to my mind, I sidestep it by saying “I don’t know enough to form an opinion,” or “There are many facets of everything,” or simply “I could be wrong.” This is a matter of constant vigilance for me; opinions are the backdoor through which a feeling of “I-ness” creeps in when I’m not vigilant.
When we say we are discarding opinions, a question immediately pops up: how does one navigate the vyavahaarik world without making choices constantly? All choosing is based on opinions about one option being preferable, another being unsuitable.
On this matter, I have realised that although choices are a part of our vyavahaarik lives, the assessments and comparisons we need to do to perform actions or make choices seem to be less problematic — they do not seem to strengthen the ego much. Standalone opinions seem to do much more damage.
So, when I am in a restaurant and need to choose between rice and noodles, I see two ways to do it. The first way is that I choose whatever I feel like eating at that point without thinking. The second approach would be to think, “I am an expert on Chinese dishes, and I have seen this restaurant doesn’t do a good job with rice, so I will choose noodles.” If I use the first approach, the ego does not get much grounds to strengthen its foundations. If I choose the second approach, the ego feeds on the opinion, and grows. So I pick rice or noodles, any one, without getting tied down by opinions. My choice does not matter anyway.
This is not very easy to do — just pick one and keep moving. I try to be vigilant. This is not yet instinctive with me, I keep working at it.
To promote or fire?
We are often in a position of having to decide which vendor to give our contract to, or which employee to promote.
You cannot step away from your responsibilities in the vyavahaarik life. You cannot get far in your spiritual journey if you start side-stepping your vyavahaarik role. This side-stepping is a sure way to stoke the ego, because you are then in effect saying that you are too good, too spiritual, to be involved in the difficult choices of vyavahaarik life, let other lesser humans do the choosing.
So, for these situations, I take as objective a decision as I can. I try to weaken my ego (a) by setting up a detailed objective framework, an evaluation matrix, using which I can evaluate competing entities without bias, without saying “I am an expert, I know,” (b) by creating an evaluation group and including others in it, (c) by getting the group members to first evaluate the evaluation matrix itself, so that the yardsticks for evaluation and comparison too are shared, and my ego plays as small a role as possible, and finally, (d) when none of these can be done satisfactorily, I silently remember my master and make the best choice I honestly can, and tell him he’s responsible for ensuring that my ego doesn’t get out of hand.1
- In general, one of the key reasons I need a master is so that I can dump all my shortcomings on him and blithely saunter through life. โฉ๏ธ