What donkey are you ???

My good friend in her feedback on my last blog mentioned on the importance of trying out one’s luck again and again when things are not necessarily going your way instead of merely letting go…..she felt that letting go was too theoretical to be practiced

I agree partially with the argument but do not wish to contest at this point of time as its one's own perspective of looking at things. But this argument reminds me of a Buddhist parable which was narrated by a famous monk over the satellite radio some months ago. Although i don't remember the complete parable but for its fantastic learning's which it conveys I'm gonna risk risk narrating it in my own words .... i feel there is a lot to learn from the short and beautiful parable and should answer my friends dilemma

This is a parable about two donkeys. An ordinary and a Buddhist donkey!

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The new owner of these two donkeys considered himself very smart. His earlier herd of donkeys were now of no use to him. He made life miserable for them. Too much work and strain took their toll. He always used to devise ways to ensure that his donkeys reach the marketplace in the quickest possible time to deliver the goods. He considered his donkeys to be the dumbest around. He was sure that they would fall to his tactics.

But little did he realize this time around among the two new donkeys, he was dealing with one Buddhist donkey!

The first day he put the one of the donkey's to work. This time around he had devised a new method to extract more work from them. The so-called smart owner had hung a carrot at exactly one feet's distance from the donkey's mouth as a inducement for the donkey to run faster. However the arrangement of the carrot was such that despite his best efforts the donkey could never manage to touch the carrot.

The donkey though had other plans on his mind. He felt that if he ran fast enough he would be able to catch hold of the much desired carrot .

And so as soon as the owner sitting on the back of the donkey with the goods, ordered the donkey to move ahead ...the donkey was on the job. With all eyes on the carrot he moved faster.He ran faster than he ever could. He felt it was just a matter of time before he could catch hold of the carrot. Unfortunately he realised that the faster he was running the further was the carrot moving away. He tried harder, ran faster; thought this time he would be able to catch up. However the carrot was always ahead of him.

The donkey however did not give up, he tried his luck more and more he thought he would be able to get it with a little bit more effort . Unfortunately little did he realize that he was fighting for a lost cause. The speed which the donkey managed to achieve, the owner reached the marketplace in a record time. However the carrot was still beyond the donkeys reach. he could never enjoy the carrot. The donkey was obviously frustrated blamed destiny. For the owner it was a job well done.

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The next day the owner fresh from his previous days success tried the same technique with the other donkey. He expected similar results. However things don’t always go as planned. For our second donkey was different. This was a Buddhist donkey!

Same carrot for inducement. Same one feet distance. Beyond the reach of the Buddhist donkeys mouth. The Buddhist donkey fixes his eye on the carrot. He knows he desires it a lot and wants to get it as much as the donkey on the previous day desired. However something in him made him more convincing in his approach. Only time would tell.

As soon the owners ordered the donkey to start moving, the Buddhist donkey began his journey. He started building pace. Initially at a slow speed and then faster and faster. The owner in the mean time was visibly happy.He felt he's got hold of the magic formula to get work done faster and effectively. He also felt sorry for the Buddhist donkey who looked as if he was running for his life. He was running faster than any other donkey he’s ever seen. However with the increasing speed the carrot like the previous day was going further aways from him. But he never gave up . He ran faster and faster

But was he running to a plan? After all he’s a Buddhist donkey na;)

The Buddhist donkey's speed now reached a critical phase. It was the fastest he could ever run. The carrot too reached the furthest point away. He ran still faster. He broke his own speed record. As he reached his new fastest speed he executed his master plan . At his fastest speed when the carrot was furthest away from him ..........the Buddhist donkey ..........suddenly .......halts

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And all witness the most beautiful thing. The carrot till now which was at the furthest point from the donkey's mouth due to the sudden halt slowly begins to move back towards the Buddhist donkeys in such a way that he can now catch hold of his most prized possession. The owners looks stunned. The donkey gives a pleasant smile. A job well done

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If you happen to read my earlier blogs each one always ends with my point of view on the topic mentioned. However this time around I choose keep it open. I leave it for all to interpret this beautiful parable in your own way

Just some thoughts to ponder on....

We're all donkeys (Is there any doubt!)
Carrots are what we desire in life.
The owner is destiny (ok this is my addition can be argued)

So are you just a donkey or a Buddhist donkey?

Perspectives......

(All Content including Pictures are Copyrighted 2006- 2008 © Stevan Noronha. Copying or Using the content without permission is punishable and offenders will be liable for prosecution.)

My experience with letting go....

I may not be most comfortable sharing the fact that I am a very possessive personality by nature. And its certainly one of those aspects which have bought me lot of pain in my life. What is most irritating is the fact that I know the cause but still can’t find a way out! At that particular moment of truth (when your possessive instinct emerges) I falter. I let my possessiveness rule my conscience and commit a blunder which I repent later...

But as stubborn as I am, have taken this as a challenge, to get over my possessiveness and learn to let go. Buddhism inspired me a lot, I started doing meditation, reading motivational books etc. Lots of efforts, however just when u feel you have kinda conquered your enemy, it remerges...even more powerful.

This power of letting go is one of the most difficult qualities I have found to imbibe within me

However life which has its own way of teaching you the most difficult of tasks. Was generous on this one too. One incident which I was a part of inspired me a lot on this subject. I guess it’s the only incident where I actually could manage to let go!

What is interesting is this fine example of letting go was not initiated by me…in the sense I cannot take the credit of actually being able to let go (oh how I wish I could!) but it was actually circumstances which led to this scenario.

But it taught me one of life’s greatest lessons ......on how to let go. I now try to incorporate its learning’s in my daily routine and have been successful within my own limits. Letting go is a topic which every one can identify with. All have faced problems of letting go, whether its of the past , of relationships, etc. And hence I decided to write a blog on it so that this sharing of experience may open up new thought on this fascinating subject...

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I have been a computer freak right since childhood. As years passed by my relation with computers and more so the internet became more passionate. Today I spend at least 2 hours daily on the net, for surfing information on stocks, catching up on news, studying new business model, reading some good marketing articles etc.

There were two specific sites which were my most favorites. Google's web mail service called gmail - which had my personal id through which I was in touch all friends and business collegues. And second was a recent but powerful addition, a social networking site called orkut.

Infact orkut came at a very crucial point of time. At a time when all was not well with me....It helped me in its own way to get over things. I made a lot of really good friends on this site, also used to participate in a lot of discussion forums. It kinda helped me channelise my energies in a more useful way than i was going about during that time.

I would not be wrong to say i was kinda emotionally attached to these two sites. In the sense I had to check my orkut/gmail every time i was on the internet. They had become part of my daily routine.

Then one day something really wrong happened

Sometimes two months ago one Sunday, i was all screwed up. That day I fought with a good friend, I had lots of work… nothing seems to be moving... i decided to chuck all my work and surf a little bit ...thought it would get me out of my bad mood.....I went on the internet

….And as a matter of habit I tried to access gmail first. After keying in the password I realized I was unable to login due to some password error. It was strange as my passwords are always common and I never forgot them. I tried again . But it was showing the same error

However repeated tries were in vain as it continued to give me the same error. I thought it must be some technical glitch and moved out of gmail and logged in to orkut. But even here it was not accepting my password. Both gmail and orkut have the same user name and password combination. I feared something had gone wrong

I feared that my password and my account were probably hacked! I tried and tried to access my accounts with all the passwords i ever could possibly have used ..........but to no avail. I was getting tense. Hoping it could be a machine error, I called up my friend just to check if she could access it from her laptop. However it gave the same error. Now i was really worried.

I thought that i have lost all my mails and more importantly I was worried about losing my orkut account. I was just thinking of all the friends i had made on orkut, i did not have their contact details to connect with them again......all the scraps I had received, the testimonials......... I feared that I had lost all.

I just could not get over the fact that I would not be able to retain those friends list, scraps, and testimonials anymore. I was not able to let go!! I tried frantically to get back my password. Tried to check up the forgot password button but it did not give back any reply. After trying for nearly 90 mins, my hopes of getting back my password were diminishing. There was no way I could retrieve the password. Howeve there was one ray of hope.

On the website it mentioned that if you have forgotten your password you can regain in by answering the security question you had answered during the time of registering. Wow!All was not lost. I was pretty sure I knew the right answer to the security question. However there was a catch!!

It mentioned that to be able to answer the security question one should not logon to the website for 5 consecutive days. On the sixth day when you try to logging in you would be prompted with the security question.

I asked myself "5 Days!!!!”? What if I could not answer it even then? I was getting impatient.... I could not wait for 5 days . It was too long a wait for me to get back my accounts. I convinced myself that i knew the password. So the next day I ignored the 5 day constraint and tried logging...again with a hope! .... It still did not work.

So then finally I decided that I would control myself and not log in for 5 consecutive days as I had simply no other option!!

Now here was the difficult part. 5 days of not accessing orkut & gmail, I felt a little uncomfortable as I felt I would receive imp. messages on my email ids and recieve some imp. scraps etc. i thought i would miss something important and would feel incomplete.

The first day was tough. True to my regular habit i almost logged on the gmail website. I surfed the net but still because i did not visit my two regular sites i felt something missing. I was actually counting number of days left before i could manage to answer the security question! My internet routine was changed and i was not comfortable. Gmail was no more the first site which I accessed. It was difficult to change! First two days I felt strange. It was not terrible but still….i thought it would be difficult not to access it for 3 more days

However after 3 days things began to change..... As I went through the fourth and fifth day, my eagerness to access these two sites diminished.

I mean like earlier I was not looking forward to it. I felt ok surfing the net without accessing these two websites which earlier formed a very important part of my daily routine. In fact by the fifth day I was completely fine with the concept of not having orkut or gmail..

And therefore I actually did not even try accessing the security question on the sixth day when I could to do so.!!! I was actually able to let go of the attachment of these two sites! And it was only on the eighth day did i finally decide to try out the security question.

I was fully aware that if I missed this one I would never be able to access my gmail and orkut but I was not too worried…i was OK. When the security question came I answered to the best of my abilities....And you know what happened. Yahoo! It accepted my request and generated a new password.

And I could now access all my accounts! I felt so happy and relieved. But at the same time I realized something very important which this incident had taught me. The magic mantra of letting go.


I learnt that in our lives there are many entities ( gmail/orkut in this case) which we are so possessive about, which we try to own. We feel that we are incomplete in their absence. To a point we feel that if they are not around life would be different. (Remember the time we constantly ask ourself that life would be so much different/would be better if such entites would have still been around)

The first learning which i experienced was that we require no one to make us feel complete. This also means that no entity in this world has the power to create vacuum in our life. It’s only our own perception. Getting ourselves attached with that entity has habituated us in various ways. Such entities become so much a part of our daily routine that we tend to feel that we cannot exist or feel incomplete without its presence.

I do not intent to say therefore that one should not be attached to such entities. No. Thats not the point but only trying to say is that even if such entities go away from our life we wont be left incomplete; our life has the power to put us back on track.

What i experienced through this event is that life can adjust to circumstances beautifully but only if it were given a chance. Absence of such attached entities may create certain discomfort but only for a matter of time as is true with any change one brings into his/her life. It’s a transitionary period, but then it returns back on track.

So in life we should not be too worried if we end up losing such entities because the wisdom is that they can’t overpower your life ...unless you allow them to.

I did not have such wisdom then. When i lost my passwords it was difficult to let go of these two websites. Till that point of time i felt that these two webistes were a very important part of me. I would be unhappy without them. Because of the fear that the absence of these two sites would make me incomplete, i surely would have been desperately trying to access the sites everyday only to have been disappointed and then would have cribbed about what all i have lost and how things are no more the same without them ...i knew i would have regretted this ....i would have thought how would have life been if these websites would have been operational for me!!!

Had it not been for what had happened to me. I would have never have realised that the absence of these two websites would never really have made much of difference after all. I would have alywals felt something incomplete!

But life it seems wanted me to teach this lesson. I had to necessarily not access these two websites for few days. i had no choice but to carry on with life for few days.

And once i just carried on normally as if nothing had happened and did not waste my time ruining over what had happened.... it took me exactly 5 days to get over this attachment with orkut and gmail. Something which i could never imagine the first day.

So the question remains is if one undertsands that just by keeping check on the emoitional feelings when you lose an entity can put one back on track in some duration. Then isnt it a very simple solution.

Not really , in theory it seems simple but to sucessfully let go of any entity ON OUR OWN we need tremedous will power. The will power to continue life in the absence of such entiies. Till a point when life returns back to normalcy....

I agree orkut and gmail would be peripheral compared to the subject of letting go of relationships are concerned ...but what i surely feel is that this process holds true even then. Only difference in the duration one takes to complete this process....

In this case 5 days of willpower to not access the websites made me let go and i realized that it was not that bad after all. Things were as normal as before. i could live normally without them....

So my dear friends what i truly learnt is that .....Attachment is not a sin. I mean we are all humans. I have heard of lot of these so called guru's saying don’t be attached and all such things. I feel it’s all superficial and nonessential.

It’s hard to not get attached as attachment comes from inside on which you have no control. However i feel one must remember that it is always possible to release himself /herself from every possible attachment in this life.

As the feeling of completeness is not dependent on attachments but from your soul within. Incompleteness/ Pain as result of detattachement are only temporary and happen due to the changes being made in your body system. But the system never depends on them to run itself. And therefore once this realization dawn i believe we become much more patient in our behavior

As one of the famous Buddhist monks in his regular disclosures on letting go mentioned "Your attitude in life should be such...If you happen to get something you desire you should say " Its wonderful" On the other hand if you do not get what you desired you response should be ..... "Its Wonderful!" These desires, attachments are all temporary, one must remember they are just visitors in your journey of life ...some visitors may give you a great time some not so great but no way they can effect your journey to reach the destination......

Perspectives.....

(All Content including Pictures are Copyrighted 2006- 2008 © Stevan Noronha. Copying or Using the content without permission is punishable and offenders will be liable for prosecution.)