A story:
Once there was an Ashram near Varanasi, where a guru lived with his disciples. Also living in this ashram was a cat. The cat was well fed and well loved by everyone in the Ashram.
Once there was an Ashram near Varanasi, where a guru lived with his disciples. Also living in this ashram was a cat. The cat was well fed and well loved by everyone in the Ashram.
Each time the guru sat for chanting and worship with his disciples, the ashram cat would nuzzle and mew, and this distracted the disciples. So the guru said that during chanting and meditation time the cat should be tied to a post in another room.
That done, daily order was restored.
After a few years......the guru died, the disciples continues the ritual of tying the cat during meditation time.
A couple years later, the sweet cat also died. The disciples after serious deliberation went and bought another cat and tied it to the same post in the ashram to make sure the guru's orders were observed faithfully.
Centuries passed and learned treatises were written by the guru's scholarly disciples on the ritualistic significance of tying up a cat while meditating.
'What holds you from seeking to know why you do what you do....to understand the purpose of the many things you do in life'
So true. Blind following of practices without questioning and validating for "dated processes" is a bane in society and organisations! There is a real expirement conducted on a dozen monkeys in a well with bananas tied at the middle of the ladder. Each time a monkey would try to climb the ladder, all the monkeys were doused with ice cold water. So, every time a monkey tried to climb, all other monkeys would pull it down. Gradually, all monkeys were replaced one after the other till there were 12 monkeys in the well none of whom had been douched with water but nobody would climb the ladder!conditioning? Processes following? What do you call it?
ReplyDeleteThe term for it is just that...'Classical Conditioning', made famous by the Pavlov experiment with a dog. And sadly true that a lot of human behavior comes from conditioning too.
ReplyDeleteIn this context, I love the Somerset Maugham quote 'If 50 million people say something foolish, it is still foolish'.
This is why 'Self Awareness' is key