What you own, owns you

This is the 75th blog. And this one is special because it has been written by my friend Anshul Khare.

Anshul has worn many hats in the past. And one of the hats he wore was of a key contributor at SafalNiveshak.com. where he wrote over 200 blogs and a book. They say: somebody who has read just one book talks a lot whereas somebody who has read an entire library remains quiet. Anshul has probably read a few libraries worth of books and yet is one of the humblest and gentlest persons I have met. I have known Anshul for over 6 years now and every time I meet him I learn something new.

Thank you Anshul for this wonderful blog.

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I was reflecting on this couplet from Saint Kabir Das.

माटी कहे कुम्हार से, तु क्या रौंदे मोय ।

एक दिन ऐसा आएगा, मैं रौंदूंगी तोय ।।

Translation: Clay warns the potter, “today you are crushing me under your feet but a day will come when I’ll trample on you.”

The widely accepted interpretation of this couplet says that the soil is reminding the man that he will also eventually turn to ashes after death. 

The beauty of Kabir Das’ couplet is that the more you meditate over them the bigger the gems of wisdom you uncover. Same is with this couplet, the more you peel, deeper the message becomes.

A potter doesn’t trample on the clay for nothing. The trampling on the clay is a prerequisite for molding the clay into a pot which can then be sold for a profit or into a beautiful vase that becomes a potter’s prized possession. 

In a capitalist’s words, the potter is extracting value out of the soil for his personal benefit. Sometimes, capitalism uses ‘extracting value’ to hide its real intention i.e. exploitation. The word रौंदे in hindi sometimes connotes ruthless exploitation.

So as the potter is exploiting the clay, the clay warns him of an impending exploitation of the potter himself. How? 

For that let me take you to 10,000 years back in human history — The Agricultural Revolution. Until then, for 2.5 million years, humans fed themselves by gathering plants, plucking roots and hunting animals. Scholars have argued for ages that the agricultural revolution was a turning point in bringing comfort, convenience, security and progress to the human race. However, one intelligent historian begs to differ. Yuval Noah Harari calls the agricultural revolution the biggest fraud in human history where the man was defrauded of his freedom.

A hunter gatherer’s diet was varied. But after the advent of farming, ninety percent of the human diet consisted of wheat, rice, corn and potatoes. Before its domestication wheat was just a wild grass, one of many. And within a short few thousand years, it’s growing all over the world today. 

Wheat required humans to spend whole days tending for their crops, doing back breaking repetitive labor. This was in stark contrast to a playful and agile life a hunter gatherer lived. The body of Home sapiens had not evolved for the kind of tasks farming required. 

Harari writes – 

It [wheat] did not offer a better diet. Remember, humans are omnivorous apes who thrive on a wide variety of foods. Grains made up only a small fraction of the human diet before the Agricultural Revolution. A diet based on cereals is poor in minerals and vitamins, hard to digest, and really bad for your teeth and gums. 

Wheat did not give people economic security. The life of a peasant is less secure than that of a hunter-gatherer. Foragers relied on dozens of species to survive, and could therefore weather difficult years even without stocks of preserved food. If the availability of one species was reduced, they could gather and hunt more of other species. Farming societies have, until very recently, relied for the great bulk of their calorie intake on a small variety of domesticated plants. In many areas, they relied on just a single staple, such as wheat, potatoes or rice. If the rains failed or clouds of locusts arrived or if a fungus infected that staple species, peasants died by the thousands and millions.

We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. 

Take a moment’s pause and allow that to sink in.

Let’s come back to our unsuspecting potter. As he merrily molds a pot, he forgets that the clay (in form of pot) becomes his mental burden. He has to ensure that the pot doesn’t break until it’s sold. He makes arrangements to store his stock of pots safely and securely. He now worries that each of his pots is sold for a profit. He spends sleepless nights wondering about YOY growth in his pottery business. 

He is not the carefree man anymore who used to play in the mud. The mud has taken over his life and his mental peace.

एक दिन ऐसा आएगा, मैं रौंदूंगी तोय ।।

The exploiter has become the exploited. But he doesn’t realize it. And when it’s pointed out to him, he simply refuses to accept it. Just like the most successful species on planet earth, Homo Sapiens, lives in a denial that an obscure wild grass from Africa has been manipulating him for thousands of years.

This is not just the story of a potter or the biggest fraud. This is the story of slavery of “the owner”

It’s an important truth that most people would disagree with — most of our possessions are not possessions, they’re a burden. And when I am talking about possession it includes everything — property, ideas, beliefs, habits, people.  

J. Krishnamurti, regarded as one of the wisest people of our times, observes – 

“What makes us want to possess, not only people, but things and ideas? Why this urge to own, with all its struggle and pain? And when once we do possess, it doesn’t put an end to the problem, but only awakens other issues. If one may ask, do you know why you want to possess, and what possession means?”

Let these words make you think hard about your own life — what are the things that you’ve been giving value to in your life? Do all those things really deserve all that importance? Maybe some of them do. Many of them don’t.

by Anshul Khare