a country boy was growing up on the fringes of poverty in an area dotted with the relics of the ideological, codified mental state of equanimity promoted by the buddhist and jain competing with the hindu shaivite and vaishnavite ways of life. and there were but a few english people who were having hard times being unable to subdue the elements of nature while sweating in the suit as required by their sense of superiority primarily expressed in the three piece suite.
while wandering in the foothills of the gir forest he chanced observe other creatures -- lions, leopards and deer, several species of birds, butterflies and snakes, all of whom living differently from the humans whose main preoccupation seemed to him to be showing to others of their own kind (clan) how better off they were in their ideological existence than that of the other human and non human creatures. it made him wonder why nature created this ever magnifying conflict of interests among the different species, and even within subspecies of humans.
unbeknown to him, an unintended step landed him from the study of the buddhist art into a buddhist country enabling him to experience the self imposed poverty that was different from his childhood experience of it; and the low was uplifting the high. using the buddha’s own suggestion not to believe because he said so, but to see it by and for oneself, he was ordained as a non believer novice in the siamese buddhist order. the interactions in that capacity among the believing lay and ordained people made him feel to be an actor among pretenders. monks lived better than many of their devotees who fed them and clothed them. it was an acting poor since he had never emotionally felt poor even when experientially physically lacking in needed things, like warm clothing and place or footwear. he had seen some injured animals still going about with their respective motions of life as well as possible without dwelling on the mishap beyond its occurrence. his experience of the disconnect between the physical pain from its mental perception was like that of other creatures, as he, too, did not have distractions like the arts and music. in this instance, he was no different from other life forms.
(from ‘sleepwalker’)
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except for the comparative identity the rich are more poor than the dirt poor, for the poor the experience is not the description of the thing, but the effect of the lack of the thing. poverty for the poor is a state of being, and not a description of things -- the tattered clothes that reveal an emaciated body with the dried up skin stuck to the thin bones -- that the well to do actors put on while acting poor, including the facial makeup for the wretched, the hunchback of notre dame looks.
poverty being a factual state of being does not need the rich to be seen as the poor by comparison. a comparative existence is a state of mind, the mental existence made up of verbal description. the thought out things that having no biological need for the human person do not generate a sense of satisfaction. its opposite, the sense of dissatisfaction generated by the lack of biological needs for those thought out things that the actors are enwrapped with.
the richness not being a biological necessity of the personhood of the person, the only way a person can be rich is in appearance. as it is essentially a mental state of being, which is a thought out existence requires the make up, have those thought out needs that enhance description. the richness of the rich is an acted out state of being. its not bring a biological state of being the actor is unable to experience the role one plays. since the actor does not biologically need the role one plays, the actor needs the onlooker, the audience on whose opinion depends the success of the performance of the role the actor plays. and it generates mental satisfaction without any biological relevance.
owning a stretch of thousands of acres of land or living in a multi-roomed place still physically enables a rich person to physically occupy the same 2x 2 ½ meters of space to sleep in, and a poop hole identically similar diameter of the poop hole of the poor.
comparison breeds competition. the competition is among peers. though the richness is measured with comparison with poverty, the poor are not the willing competitors. rather, poverty is imposed upon the poor by keeping them poor in order for the rich to appear rich. it requires the force to do that. force takes many forms, the physical force of bullying, army, monetary restrictions an unequal exchange of interactions, such as remuneration, and legal practices such as governance, and the law, all these are created to maintain the status quo of the rich.
this mental state of poverty is that which is the driving force that pushes the person to acquire more and more. but since the acquisitions are material things they cannot satisfy the mental hunger. hence the insatiable desire for more. then there is another problem: the physical body is made of natural elements that flow with the laws of nature. it can assimilate only things that are of similar nature, and are life supporting when allowing the physical body to absorb in the needed proportion in proper time. it is so that even the organically grown nutritious food eaten in proportion beyond the biological need produces disturbance in the natural rhythm of the limbs and organs in the body. the most of the modern ailments thrive in lifestyles in materially well off societies.
being rich is a comparative state only existing as thought, and since thoughts are not made of elements, they are not visible. hence the rich person needs to create visible forms based upon thought. in order to interact with the thus produced things and beings the rich have to have a description of the form of the function that uses these material things. it requires learning how to interact with these things, including the other persons, rich and the poor. this makes the rich person an actor, who cannot be acting rich without being seen by others, and without their applauding. this act of rich living is called the protocol. an actor becomes an actor only because of and when acting before the cheering audience. when not on stage, the actor has the hard time to experience being alive as an actor. having spent so much time following the protocol, the how to act out the description, actors’ biological senses are dulled. having worn the required costumes and the set stage, their limbs and organs are denied to express the feelings that are not called for by the protocol.
the poor person’s biological existence is all feelings, occasionally pleasant, and mostly painful. such experientially existing state of being follows no protocol. the poverty not existing in thought exists outside of the approving or disapproving thoughts of others. it is not produced to please the onlooker.
krishna’s address to arjuna, in the epic mahabharata, that he was incarnated to prevent dharma from being harmed, and re-establish dharma. that is to say, that, the dharma that krishna was protecting with the battle of mahabharata was not only a product of thought of the man of power, but it was different from, and even opposite of nature’s law. for, nature is the nature of things, even in the chain of events in the misdeeds. krishna was a king. so were both the warring parties kings, fighting to acquire dominance, with the help of more powerful king krishna. this competing duets of mahabharata is no different from, say, what is happening in the feuds between iraq and iran, where the u.s. plays krishna siding with iraq. and india and other minor countries playing the populace watching from the safe sidelines, awaiting the expected outcome. indians of narendra modi’s devotees of rama, gandhi’s god incarnate hero cannot discard the dharma as dictated by the contemporary krishna played by the u.s.a.
the colonial indian mindset was cast in macaulay’s minutes. 1935:
a class of persons, indian in blood and colour, but english in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. to that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass.
the effects of the british parliamentarian macaulay has indeed created such a mindset, that sees everything british is better than indian. so even a totally illiterate man operating a ramshackle eatery has to have shingle written in english, that neither he nor his customers can read. that may as well be so, for, the three piece suit was not worn by the english and the englisized indian/ asians for the protection of the physical body. it was solely for the appearance. that being the fact, the indian prime minister can feel comfortable promoting the hindutva despite having a mindset of the english. besides, neither the english way of life, nor indian prime minister’s hindutva is anything but a show of wealth, regardless of how it is accumulated.
before the europeans there were other people lured by the fabled indian riches.
they came, looted and went away. then others who came and found it pleasurable to stay, and made it a home, renaming it as hindustan. but let the populace retain its own way of life. the word: rich stems from rex(regal, king) > reich > rich. the battles of mahabharata are still fought for the same reason as before, namely to be acknowledged as the supreme rich. what has changed is the weaponry, from the stick and spear to the drones and nuclear weapons, in this instance, the devotees of krishna could not have refrained from acquiring the nuclear weapons. thus, as in the past, so, too, in the modern indian mind, the buddhist and jain ideals of nonviolence has remained only verbal, and the hindutva is promulgated as the state religion in modi’s india.
an india, whose fabulous riches that attracted the hordes of looters was not created by the rich, much the same as the riches of the likes of bill gates, bezos, ambanis and the likes are created by the sweat and blood of the poor, who unwittingly suffer in order make the rich richer.
