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Whatever may be said, who ever may say it - to
determine the truth of it, is wisdom - Thirukural

Reflections 2004 : Chinthanaigal

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Reflection by Jayalakshmi Satyendra

Saturday 25 December 2004 Christmas Day

அன்பும் சிவமும் இரண்டென்பர் அறிவிலார்
அன்பேசிவமாவது யாரும் அறிகிலார்
அன்பே சிவமாவது யாரும் அறிந்தபின்
அன்பேசிவமாய் அமர்ந்திருந்தாரே -  Thirumular

Saturday 18 December 2004

"From Nostradamus to Alvin Toffler, individuals and organisations have long been obsessed with trying to see the future. The goal is to somehow get advance warning of "what will be".... (However) the goal is not to speculate on what might happen but to imagine what you can actually make happen... You can't be a revolutionary without a revolutionary point of view... You have to become your own seer, your own guru, and your own futurist.. A fresh way of seeing is often more valuable than sheer brainpower..." Gary Hamel in  Leading the Revolution, 2000

Wednesday 1 December 2004

"To know and not to do, is really not to know. To learn and not to do is not to learn. In other words, to understand something but not apply it is really not to understand it. It is only by the doing, the applying, that knowledge and understanding are internalised. For instance, you could study tennis as a sport by reading books, and hearing lectures, but until you've actually played it, you wouldn't know the sport. To know and not to do is not to know." Stephen R.Covey in the 8th Habit : From Effectiveness to Greatness

Sunday 21 November 2004

"Yasser Arafat: master tactician, failed strategist...Nations are born of battle, and the battles that began in 1970 and raged until the mid-1990s established a principle - there is now, if there was not before, a nation called Palestine...Mr Arafat.. had established the principle of Palestine, but he had failed to define what that Palestinian nation meant and what it wanted... Mr Arafat's tactic was to appear the statesman restraining uncontrollable radicals. He understood that he needed Western support to get a state, and he used this role superbly. He appeared moderate and malleable in English, radical and intractable in Arabic. This was his dilemma. Mr Arafat led a nation that had no common understanding of their goal. There were those who wanted to recover a part of Palestine and be content. There were those who wanted to recover part of Palestine and use it as a base of operations to retake the rest. There were those who would accept no intermediate deal but wanted to destroy Israel. Mr Arafat's fatal problem was that in the course of creating the Palestinian nation, he had convinced all three factions that he stood with them. Like many politicians, Mr Arafat had made too many deals. He successfully persuaded the West that he genuinely wanted a compromise and that he could restrain terrorism. But he also persuaded Palestinians that any deal was temporary, and others that he wouldn't accept any deal. By the time of the Oslo accords, he was so tied up in knots that he could no longer speak for the nation he created...The Palestinians are left now without strategy, only tactics..." George Friedman in the Straits Times, 21 November 2004

Sunday 7 November 2004

" We love the British Empire,
We love it very much,
It gives us peace and happiness,
It gives us clothes and such..." 
Manipuri Dancing Girls in India once sang this ditty as they entertained officers of the British Indian Army. (quoted by Asad Latif in review of  Forgotten Armies: The Fall Of British Asia, 1941-1945 by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper )

Saturday 6 November 2004

“To step aside from aggressive responses to problem-solving requires using some little-used skills: humility, curiosity, and a willingness to listen. Humility is a brave act–we have to admit that we don’t know enough to solve the problem, that our approaches aren’t working and never will. Even our own treasured answers are insufficient–if everyone bowed to our demands and did what we asked, the problem still would not be solved... " We need more information, more insight. This kind of humility is rare in competitive, embattled organizations and communities, but it is the door we must walk through to find the place of true solutions. One wise educator put it this way: ‘Humility is admitting that I don’t know the whole story. Compassion is recognizing that you don’t know it either.’ "  - Margaret Wheatley, Author of *Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future  (contributed by Satyendra Chelvendra)

"...Trust grows when people see leaders translate their personal integrity into organisational fidelity. At the heart of fidelity lies truth telling and promise keeping. In organisations truth is not, as some like to think, power. Truth sets us free....Without truth, trust becomes overshadowed and stunted by the undergrowth of partial lies and outright falsehoods..." *Max De Pree - Leading Without Power : Finding Hope in Serving Community

Thursday 28 October 2004

New Internationalist November 2004

Thursday 21 October 2004

"It has been repeatedly asked, 'Of what possible use can the republication, translation and editing of books like Thiruvasagam be?' - and 'Who can be expected to desire to make themselves acquainted with such works?' ... If the Tamil people and the English are ever in a degree to understand one another, and to appreciate each other's thoughts and feelings regarding the highest matters... our English people must have the means of obtaining some insight into the living system which exercises at the present day such a marvellous power over the minds of the great majority of the Tamil people... The sacred mystic poetry of a people reveals their character and aspirations more truly than even their secular legends and ballads... The attentive consideration of the system here developed must lead to a sympathetic appreciation of what the hopes, fears, aspirations of the devoutest Hindu minds in the South are, and have been from time immemorial..." Reverend G.U.Pope  in the preface to his English translation of Thiruvasagam  in 1900

Monday 11 October 2004

“As our studies have suggested, the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it. - Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?"  - Satchell Paige

(contributed by Satyendra Chelvendra)
 

Thursday 7 October 2004

"...சமாதானத்தை நான் ஆத்மபூர்வமாக விரும்புகின்றேன். எனது மக்கள் நிம்மதியாக, சமாதானமாக, கௌரவமாக வாழ வேண்டும் என்பதே எனது ஆன்மீக இலட்சியம். ..விடுதலைப் புலிகள் மக்களிலிருந்து வேறுபட்டவர்கள் அல்ல. விடுதலைப் புலிகள் ஒரு மக்கள் இயக்கம். மக்கள் தான் புலிகள்.

எமது மக்கள் போற்றப்பட வேண்டியவர்கள். கௌரவிக்கப்பட வேண்டியவர்கள். தேசியப் போராட்டத்தில் எமது மக்களின் பங்களிப்பு சாதாரணமானதல்ல. அவர்களது பங்களிப்பு அளப்பரியது என்றுதான் சொல்வேன். இலைமறை காய்யாக இருந்து விடுதலைப் போராட்டத்திற்குத் தோள் கொடுத்துவரும் எமது எண்ணற்ற ஆதரவாளர்களையும் அனுதாபிகளையும் மன உறுதி படைத்த மாமனிதர்கள் என்றுதான் அழைக்கவேண்டும்.

அரசியல் என்பது மக்கள் மீது ஆட்சியை நடாத்தும் அல்லது அதிகாரம் செலுத்தும் விவகாரம் அல்ல. அரசியல் என்பது மக்களுக்குச் சேவை புரியும் பணி. மக்களின் நல்வாழ்வுக்கு ஆற்றுப்படும் தொண்டு. .." Velupillai Pirabakaran on Peace, People & Governance

Wednesday 29 September 2004

"Some quarrellers do not realise that in this world
We must all at some time cease to live
But there are others who do realise,
And they will settle their quarrels."

From the Dhammapada quoted by a Sinhala teacher from Balapitiya, Sri Lanka  in a tribute to the memory of S.Nadesan Q.C. on his 10th Death Anniversary

Saturday 11 September 2004

"There are things that we know. And then there are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know that we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know....that is, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence....simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist..."  US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld quoted by Howard Zinn in 'Iraq is not a Liberated Country but An Occupied Country'

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Thursday 9 September 2004

Terrorism 59 years before Chechenya - Toge Sankichi: Hibakusha (A-bomb survivor) - Toge Sankichi was born in Japan in 1921. He started writing poems at the age of eighteen. He was twenty-four when the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. He died at age thirty-six, a victim of leukemia resulting from the A-bomb. His first hand experience of the bomb, his passion for peace and his realistic insight into the event made him the leading Hiroshima poet in Japan. [ see also Hiroshima & Nagasaki - The Atomic Bombings of Japan: A 50-Year Retrospective]

Thursday 26 August 2004

"...I don't know what I may seem to the world, but as for myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me..."  Isaac Newton, cited in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (Oxford University Press).

"...The most beautiful and profound emotion emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the source of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms --- this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religion..." Albert Einstein,  in The Enlightened Mind, ed. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Harper Collins)

Thursday 19 August 2004

"...One of the greatest lessons I've learned in life is that success is neither the destination nor the journey, but a way of travelling. Destinations and journeys inevitably involve arrivals and endings. I have always felt the word retired, for example was misspelled. The word should be retried or maybe, reinspired. Retired implies tired again or perhaps tired for the final time... Life is not something to step back from and admire when completed. It is an ongoing process of design, laying the foundations, forming, erecting, bonding, changing, detailing, refining and renovating... It is always under construction.. It calls for us to gain hindsight from all that went before... It calls for us to gain foresight by imagining a better world ahead for all by passing on our trials, errors, and achievements as lessons in leadership. It calls for us to live in the present, longing for neither yesterday nor tomorrow, but rather facing what today offers, boldly, optimistically and flexibly..." *Denis Waitley - Empires of the Mind : Lessons to Lead and Succeed in a Knowledge-Based World  Paperback (August 1996)

Friday 6 August 2004

 "Like all people, they (the blacks) have differing personalities, diverse financial interests, and varied aspirations. There are Negroes who will never fight for freedom. There are Negroes who will seek profit for themselves alone from the struggle. There even are some Negroes who will co-operate with the oppressors. These facts should distress no one. Every minority, and every people has its share of opportunists, profiteers, freeloaders and escapists .... No one can pretend that because a people may be oppressed, every individual member is virtuous and worthy. The real issue is whether in the great mass the dominant characteristics are decency, honour and courage" - Martin Luther King quoted by S.Sivanayagam on The Role of Tamil Expatriates: "Grandpa, where were you when the Tamil people were fighting for freedom in Sri Lanka?"

Monday 26 July 2004

“One of the greatest dangers of success is the tendency to ignore or discount negative information about ourselves or our business. Real friendship – sharing the self that lies below the pleasant surface and trusting someone with sensitive information – becomes impossible. It’s a too common scenario that, as the achiever rises, old friends are gradually dropped and only sycophants and bringers of good news are allowed in. As honest information needed to sustain success becomes scarce, the leader, who now gets only carefully filtered feedback, is operating in partial darkness, missing important signals that should be heeded” - John R. O'Neil  - *The Paradox of Success: When Winning at Work Means Losing at Life : A Book of Renewal for Leaders

Monday 19 July 2004

" Where does the noble concept of self-determination stop? In expedience. Purists may yearn for a single principle to apply across the board. But, says Brent Scowcroft, George Bush's National Security Adviser, "consistency here doesn't work." Pragmatism is what rules the world of power politics, in which a range of less high-minded considerations determines who wins and who loses in the statehood lottery. The bad luck of historical accident is what has left most current claimants out in the cold. To change that, you need to be in the right movement at the right time in the right place. The Kurds in northern Iraq were just another bunch of bickering agitators until the U.S. needed them to challenge Saddam Hussein. No one cared a whit for the Kosovars until Slobodan Milosevic ground them into the dirt. It obviously helps to be the victim of a reviled dictator. But Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka: Your moment has yet to arrive." Johanna McGeary, Time Magazine, 8 March 1999 (see also National Lottery? by Nadesan Satyendra, 12 March 1999 - "It is true that the historical situation in which a people find themselves will impact on their struggle for freedom.  But, states do not come into being by 'luck'. Often, that which passes off as  'luck' is the meeting of opportunity with preparation - and 'bad luck' may be simply a reflection of a failure to prepare adequately and lead effectively...." )

Friday 9 July 2004

 "...If a man asks himself how he ever became interested in those fields of thought which were destined to occupy the most important place throughout his life, he will not find it easy to give a simple answer. Perhaps he was born with an inclination for certain questions, or perhaps it was the influence of certain teachers, or of current ideas, or of personal experiences which led him along the path of his later interests - who knows which of these factors have determined the course of his life? Indeed, if one wanted to know precisely the relative weight of all these factors, nothing short of a detailed historical autobiography could even attempt to give the answers... Our main task is to give birth to ourselves." - Eric Fromm in Beyond the Chain of Illusion

Sunday 4 July 2004

"...The basic questions we encounter when we look deeply into the shadow are spiritual questions. They concern our place and purpose in the world, the significance of our lives, and our personal connection to whatever force keeps the world humming along. Most of us today have moved away from the religious structures that once supplied answers to these questions, but the questions have not gone away. Our compulsive busyness, our dread of unstructured time, and our reluctance to be alone with ourselves are rooted in the uncomfortable sense that our lives lack meaning, that we are disconnected and alone. But the paradox of spiritual life, as seekers have learned for centuries, is that by looking deeply inside ourselves we discover our strong connections with other people, the physical world, and the spirit that moves it.... 'One is always alone with or among things and others.' Conversely... the experience of being alone is one of discovery - of ourselves and the world we inhabit: . . . the self is always capable of experience and action - that is to say, is never isolated. Loneliness and solitude, therefore, discover rather than conceal the world, self, others, and things.'  Living a spiritual life could be defined as living so that our most deeply held values and convictions are congruent with our actions...." John R. O'Neil  - *The Paradox of Success: When Winning at Work Means Losing at Life : A Book of Renewal for Leaders

Saturday 19 June 2004

"....Shortly before he retired as CEO of Shell Oil, Phil Carroll reflected on his personal journey as CEO by saying, “Every process of transformation begins with your self. It has to start with personal change. The abstraction of corporate transformation – that’s a result, that’s not a method.” He then talked about how difficult the journey had been. “I had to do a lot of soul searching about how I behaved, what I thought was important. Were my personal objectives and aspirations consistent with what I would try to hope for in the company?” One of his great discoveries was that “vulnerability is a very important element in leadership. If you are not willing to make yourself vulnerable, then you can’t provide good leadership”. Vulnerability can actually increase your effective power."   Peter Senge - Author of  The Fifth Discipline : The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization  (contributed by Satyendra Chelvendra)

Friday 11 June 2004

“What is real life ?”A little boy has asked this question. Playing games, eating good food, running, jumping, pushing – that is real life for him. You see we divide life into the real and the false. Real life is doing something that you love to do with your whole being so that there is no inner contradiction, no war between what you are doing and what you think you should do. Life is then a completely integrated process in which there is tremendous joy. But that can happen only when you are not psychologically depending on anybody, or any society when there is complete detachment inwardly, for only then is there a possibility of really loving what you do. If you are in a state of total revolution, it does not matter whether you garden, or become a prime minister, or do something else; you will love what you do, and out of that love there comes an extraordinary feeling of creativeness." - Jiddu Krishnamurthi (contributed by Satyendra Chelvendra)

Saturday 5 June 2004

Moments in Life - Contributed by a Friend from Washington There are moments in life when you miss someone so much that you just want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real! When the door of happiness closes, another opens; but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one, which has been opened for us. Don't go for looks; they can deceive. Don’t go for wealth; even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile, because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright. Find the one that makes your heart smile. Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do. May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human and enough hope to make you happy. Always put yourself in others’ shoes. If you feel it hurts you, it probably hurts the other person too. The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. Happiness lies for those who cry, those who are hurt, those who have searched, and those who tried, for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched our lives. Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss And ends with a tear The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past; you can't go forward in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches. When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so at the end, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying. Don't count the years - count the memories…. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take; but by the moments that take our breath away!

Monday 10 May 2004

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being a live.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear and further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or you own, without moving to hide it or fade or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see the beauty, even when it's not pretty, every day and you can source your own life form its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what need to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you cam to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in empty moments." -  I Want to Know You - Oriah Mountain Dreamer in the Invitation

Saturday 21 February 2004

" Make four resolutions about your life. 

Purity : Desist from wicked thoughts, bad habits, low activities, that weaken your self respect. 

Service : Serve others, for they are the reflections of the same entity of which you are yourself a reflection. No one of you has any authenticity, except with reference to the one original. 

Mutuality : Feel always kinship with all creation. See the same current flowing through all the objects in the universe. 

Truth : Do not deceive yourself or others by distorting Your experience..."  Sri Sathya Sai Baba

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Saturday, 7 February 2004

The power of the mind -  Mahatma Gandhi stressed one of the most important aspects of the mind when he stated : “If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, I acquire the ability to do it, even if I did not have the ability in the beginning” Think about it. You have within you the resources to accomplish even those goals which may have been dismissed as unobtainable. Research conducted on the power of the subconscious indicates that physical changes do occur when the body is influenced by the brain. There is no doubt the mind and the body are interrelated, that an individual's state of mind determines physical abilities. This remarkable combination can be released through a positive attitude which leads to success in sports, in business, and in all  areas of life. Henry Ford put it another way when he  said: “If you decide you can or can’t do something  you are right” - Carl Mays  in a Strategy for Winning

Continued - Reflections 2001.........