I have read a little bit of philosophy. It is helpful. It offers useful ways of looking at life and our place in it. Buddha is supposed to have been quiet on the matter of God. He neither affirmed the idea nor debated it. He seems to have side-stepped many such questions and gone straight to the issue: Dukkha and its solution. And by Dukkha- he did not just mean pain, sadness, misery – he included the basic un-satis-factori-ness of the world. If you no more in your teens, you must have noticed, whatever you pick up or do- very soon turns into a kind of dissatisfaction. It seems whatever we touch turns into ashes- as if we were some kind of tragic character in some Greek play.
When someone asked him philosophical question (valid but no relevance to task at the hand), he gave the story of the poisoned arrow. If someone has shot you with a poisoned arrow and you are taken to a surgeon, will you get the arrow removed promptly OR will you insist on finding out first who shot the arrow and why? (Read this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Poisoned_Arrow ).
Something similar has happened with us. We have often thought that if I could find the reason, the real original reason behind my stammering, I will be able to find a way out. Medical scientists also have devoted themselves to it. A stuttering association in the west, I believe has ear-marked lot of funds for such a research – to find a drug for stammering.
But if Buddha stammered, I am sure, he would have opted for a simple and straightforward approach: If I am afraid of the world’s judgment on my speech, then, let me tell them at the first opportunity that I stammer – so that they are at peace with me, I am at peace with myself – and both of us are free to attend to the practical task at hand- which is, conveying some meaning, some ideas, some information. That is all.
Can we, as modern inheritors of such a philosophy, live it out in our day to day life? This is what TISA encourages you to think and play with. Feel free to write to us.
