About Giving, Taking and Transactions

For about a year and half since we moved to Tiruvannamalai, I experimented with offering my service (yoga therapy sessions primarily) on a gift economy model, wherein what we offer and receive are gifts and hence without any sort of a predetermination or limitation of how much is offered and received.  This experiment had been a revelation for me in terms of my relationship with money / earning, and my expectations from whom I seek to serve.  I had also felt that this model hinges on a relationship of trust.

I came to a conclusion that every engagement in the world is a transaction, and I don’t mean that in a cynical or negative way. I believed that even a mother wants something from her child; it may not necessarily be in a cut-and-dried way of “I give you this, in return you give me that” however there is an expectation of something.  I may have glimpses of unconditional giving in myself and others now and then, but I question that it is an uninterrupted flow. The ‘I’ does interrupt.  I felt that I could keep this (unconditional giving) as a signpost of growth, act such that at the very least my transactions are not exploitative, practice in this direction.           

   

A recent conversation with a friend lighted up and brought in deeper meaning into this matter of transaction for me.  She was speaking about how difficult it is for her to ‘take’ from others, and some of the ways in which this plays out in her life. I realised that I was looking into a mirror!  While it has manifested differently in my life, I could have said those very same words and it would have been true for me.  As I listened to her and said some things in response to her questions, I felt I was saying those things to myself as well. 

Swami Vivekananda is a personal Hero, and I have known the following aspect of his personality and what he has said about this, for quite long.  However it took this conversation with my friend to truly personalise what he had said. Paraphrasing what he had said in different contexts to different people: that he doesn’t see himself as a ‘giver’, there is a problem in seeing oneself as a giver or receiver. I have no problems receiving gifts from all you people who come to me. In giving, I may receive and in taking, I may give.”  

As I said to her that somehow this is what I am reminded of, it occurred to me that I have always identified myself with ‘giver’ and ‘giving’, with the primary cultural conditioning and assumption being, ‘giving is good’ and a consequent injunction, ‘I should give’ and somehow the automatic negation of ‘taking’.  All that I have perceived as ‘taking’ from others, I have been carrying on me a like a heavy sack of rocks. And every time I ‘take’ without ‘giving’ something, I have put a stamp of ‘exploiter’ on myself.  And if I ‘give’ without taking anything, then I am some great saint or some such!! What a drama.

As I continued walking around the mountain with her and left my drama behind, I remembered the often-discussed idea that every engagement is an exchange of prAna, and in that current exchange of prAna that was happening between my friend and me (as much in silence as during the conversations), I did not (and I feel neither did she) perceive either of us as giver or taker. We were with each other for that period of time for a purpose, which held our complete attention, as much as each other, and the path and what it brought to us. From a point of examination, it could be said that in a gross way, we gave each other many things, and even looking at it more subtly we each took from the other a whole lot. And yet there were no expectations and agendas. There was no give and take.  There actually was no transaction. There are I believe, no residues. Perhaps.  It was a spontaneous, innocent connection / exchange. 

While returning, a few non-transactional processes and exchanges that I have experienced came to mind.  Examining them I find that a non-transactional exchange takes place as a consequence of some spontaneous, empathetic connection. I want to call it love. A deeper sense of losing / reaching across one’s usual boundaries of ‘I’? Maybe.  A space where and when, notions of giver and receiver lose their meaning?  

Yet, one category of people I see who are involved in this kind of a prAna exchange have their role boundaries very clear – my elders. And it struck me that this is something special about how some of my elders love, and seek to serve the people they love.  They are able to hold the transactional and non-transactional together seamlessly without any apparent conflict between the two.  This is what gives me the sense of wonder and joy when I watch them doing what they do. 

My domestic helper transacts with me every day and yet there is an underlying sense of non-transaction about it all.  She and I are much more than each of those transactions that we engage in, and yet it is not just this. There is something else, something more, that is feeding the human process here?  

My great grandfather at 104 does not expect much from the world around him except the vadas that he relishes, to watch his beloved tennis, and someone to bless with a good and prosperous life through a 10 or 50 rupee note, each day. He gives and takes with childlike abandon and yet there is nothing transactional about it. Oh, he was a banker.  

My mother-in-law’s purpose of living seems to be to support everyone in her immediate and extended family.  She also gently and consistently demands role appropriate values and behaviours from her family.  Her every exchange seems to be a transaction and yet absolutely non-transactional at the same time.  Just how is this happening?

I now feel that it is a secondary matter whether I am working with a gift economy model or not.  This would depend on the context and what is necessary.  I stay with my questions, what makes me (us) give and what makes me (us) take, when do I (we) not feel any difference between the two, and so, to look at those times when transactions are taking place and yet the meta process is non-transactional. 

  

x

A walk in the clouds

A walk in the clouds. I re-discovered the heartwarming and eye- and mind- opening experience that this can be.  As I wrote in my journal, two kinds of people who would totally and especially get much from such an experience, came to mind. (Obviously, anyone would find a walk in the clouds joyful) Read on to find out more.  

Are you one of those people who can’t seem to discover an iota of interest in getting your limbs to move?  Would you rather grow roots under your couch and have the world delivered there?  Pilates: "What’s that?" Yoga: "Those convoluted positions? No thank you, I’m already happy!" Ok, the gym: (whispering) "Do you know they sweat in those room? What if I get dehydrated?" Would you say, "Look, I am not obese; I love all of me including my body and don't want to change it just because people who love me are telling me to hit the gym. I dont want to do anything just because others are telling me to."  

Alright, what if your body is telling you to? Have you listened to your body lately? Do you feel breathless and weak if you walk up the stairs? Or fatigued if you walk at all? Or does your heart start racing? You heart is also a muscle which needs exercise and so it has to do double work even for a little bit of movement if you have not given it enough (exercise). In a series of studies published in a medical journal a few years back, it said that there are as many deaths in the world because of not exercising as smoking! One of the other important signs is the "heavy cloud inside your head". Do you feel listless and disinclined? Do you feel like a dark cloud has taken residence in your head and heart? There are many ways in which your body talks to you, warns you, coaxes you and even shocks you to get you to truly notice it, but we don't want to wait until the shock, do we? 

Or, are you one of those driven people, who have an ultra-disciplined and regimented day, and you drive yourself at work and at play? You want to give better than your best on the shop floor, at the gym and at home with your family.  You sweat it out with your cardios, push yourself with the weight-training and gorge on salads and low-carb, protein-rich diets. Would you say that you are a go-getter, success is your mantra and one of your non-negotiable goals is to keep yourself healthy and fit? And others call you superwoman or superman? 

It sounds just the thing. However the question here as well is: have you listened to your body lately? What is it trying to tell you? Do you return from the gym sore and weak, and then return the next day for more strength training? Have you been dropping the stretches from your routines to make more time for the cardios and resistance training?  Are you fresh and flexible when you get up in the morning, or stiff and unyieldy? Do you rarely feel that you have accomplished anything, or have had time to spend hanging out with friends?  Do the people closest to you find you hasty and / or irritable? 

For both these types of people on extreme ends, the pendulum needs to swing back to a dynamic balance.  The body and mind cannot hold extreme positions against natural rhythm and gravity for long without showing the wear and tear and ultimately giving up. What you are doing is forcefully holding the pendulum up at its farthest ends, not allowing for its native movement.  

What I recommend to you is a walk in the clouds. By which, I mean a simple, no-strings attached walk. One that doesn't have to go anywhere and do anything. One that doesn't have any goals.  One that is not measured by any parameters. The only thing that could give it a boundary (if you choose) is time.  You simply walk. You see the sky above, a mountain and hills, the crows perched on a window sill, trees and shrubs looking clean, the heavy and hanging clothesline, a line of scurrying ants on the ground that you carefully avoid, puddles, a couple of cycles and motorbikes, a car, and an autorickshaw, school kids returning home and an assortment of adults including vendors.  You smell mud after the rains, dampness, smoke and grease, flowers, urine, and some others that you can't identify. You hear bird calls and particularly crows cawing, children's giggles and chatter, vehicles honking, one of them braking, vendors' shouts, dogs barking somewhere, water splashing in a puddle, the slapping of your slippers once you reach the road. You taste your saliva along with faint coffee just as you swallow.  You feel your slippers very differently on squishy ground, the slippery edges of puddles, on grass and on the road; you feel the wind raising the fine hairs on your arms and touching the skin in-between, the insides of your loose pants when it billows out this way and that from the wind, and a welcome chill after all the heat.  And you feel free. 

With your senses alive and awakened to what you are experiencing, you will find yourself returned to the here and now. Your mind opens up to new possibilities; you may find puzzling situations falling into place, the cloud in your head lifting, gifts worth celebrating, and meaning to life.  You see a whole new canvas, or a different canvas, or your old one from a different angle at the very least.  Your heart may expand with love*.  You wouldn't need further recommendations.  You would find them all within.  At least for now! ;)  Which means that this is also a muscle to be exercised, it would be good for me and the world, to do this now and then. 

Go on, get up and take that walk.  Just concentrate on putting this one leg in front of the other.  I dare you to.  
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* My post is not based on the movie, A Walk in the Clouds.  It is coincidental that I titled this post by the same name. Or perhaps, "There are no accidents"  (Will have to watch the movie again to find out, I dont remember much except that it is a love story)