Employment Opportunities for the Music Learners

1 Introduction:


With the institutionalization of the learning of music, many students in the field of music pass out every year from different Universities and other equivalent institutes. Like everybody else, learners of music also need jobs. In fact, music is emerging as a very good career option presently. New horizons are appearing and newer employment opportunities are being created in the field of music. Besides the traditional jobs for the music learners, various kinds of new alternatives are being offered these days in the light of the changing living conditions and technological development. Previously, students of music had to be content with just two or three kinds of jobs. Either they would become the teachers of music or as performers. Not enough opportunities were available to them. But with the development of new cultural and educational circumstances, new areas have been opened for the students of music in the field of employment. This article deals with new and emerging career options for the music students.



2 Traditional career options in the field of music:

First let us see the traditional career options.

2.1 Career options during the ancient period:

If we go through the history of our music, [our music here refers to the music of the subcontinent], we will see that in the very beginning of the Vedic civilization, music had attained a very high place in our cultural aspirations. Music was considered a religious act. All social and religious happenings as well as the rituals had not been considered complete without the accompaniment of music. All the three components of music – vocal music, instrumental music and the dance – were common in our cultural ethos.

In Saam Veda, there are references of different kinds of specialists with regard to the Saamgaan, a particular singing tradition of Saam. Those musicians, who used to perform the saamgaana, had been divided in three different categories: the Udgata, the Prastota and the Pratiharta. In the singing of “Panchvidh Saam” and “Saptvidh Saam” these three categories of singing maestros would sing there specified portions.

This shows that these categories of musicians were required in various rituals and on social gatherings. These Samgatas were called as “Rikdwijas”. They had a very respectable place in the social strata. In the Gurukul, which were the schools for the learners and can be compared to the present schools, the students were taught the musical skills with special attention to the saamgaan. Though the present schools are very different from that of the ancient gurukul, but still they were the substitute to the present schools. In these gurukuls, musicians were taught the music of that period. During the period of Ramayana and Mahabharata, more career-options came into existence. To categories of Veena-maestros are mentioned in this era. These categories were Veena-Gathin and Veena-Vadin. In the same period, a special class of professional musicians called Gandharwas came into existence. Many gandharwas are mentioned in the great epics. Haha, Huhu, Narad etc can be mentioned as some of them. Kings and emperors had also been fascinated towards the learning of music. Emperors like Samudragupta, Harshvardhana, were skilled Veena-players. Playing on Veena was considered a very sacred act. Ravana knew the art of Veena-playing. When Hanuman secretly visited the palace of Ravana while he was in search of goddess Sita, he saw many musical instruments in his palace.

In this period, we find that a special category of professional musicians came into being. This category was called the Kushilavas. These musicians were not only the skilled musicians, but they were great warriors too. They were trained in many skills. They could dance, play on musical instruments and they could use many weapons too as and when required. They were a kind of a psychologist and could read the face expressions. They could easily win the hearts of all sorts of people and could collect the required information’s. These people were used as the detectives by the kings and the emperors. In Arthashastra of Kautilya, these people have been named as the Goodh Purushas.

In the era of the epics, many classes of professional musicians have been referred to. In Ramayana as well as Mahabharata, we find such classes like Kushilavas, Kinnaras, Gandharwas, Talapcharas or Talapanis etc. Here mention of Talapacharas or Talapanis would be very relevant. In fact, there was a class of musicians who assisted Tala accompanists by displaying Tala Kriyas through their hands. In Sangeet Ratnakar, with reference to 10 tala pranas, four Sashabda Kriyas as well as four Nishabda Kriyas have been mentioned which were displayed by different hand movements by the Talapcharas or the Talapanis.

In Manusmriti, professional musicians like the Kushilavas have been heavily criticized. Manu has clearly stated that the musicians can be categorized in two classes: the professional musicians and the musicians in the service of the Almighty. He has condemned the former and praised the latter.

From Natyashastra onwards, professional musicians got prominence. In the Natya, several musicians were required in order to provide the background music as well as to fulfill the musical requirements on the stage too. Bharata has clearly stated that for the background music, there would be a well-furnished orchestra, which he named as the Kutup Vinyasa. Orchestral music in the subcontinent began from hereafter.

A special professional group was also flourishing side by side with the development in music. This group was of the makers of the musical instruments. With the invention of numerous musical instruments, now it was not easy to make or repair musical instruments without the help of the skilled workers. Therefore, this group served as the workshop for the artists of music. They provided the music-lovers with the suitable musical instruments so that they could give all their attention to the upliftment of the musical skills.

From Arthashastra of Kautilya, we can find several clues about the professional status of the musicians of that time. We find the references of Ganikas, charming women who were supposed to be skilled singers and dancers and who would earn their living by publicly exhibiting their charms as well as their skills. These Ganikas had specified places to live and run their business. They used to employ professional accompanying musicians like the Veena players, the Mridangam players etc.

After Natyashastra, Vrihaddeshi of Matanga also tells us a lot about the professional status of musicians. Matanga has described two kinds of Sangeet, namely, margi sangeet and Desi Sangeet. Margi was bound by a well-devised set of rules and was performed by the Gandharvas whereas Desi was like the folk music of that period.

Music was an integral part of our folk tradition. Our traditional theatre as well as the folk theatre was full of music. During the period of Sangeet Ratnakar too, music and musicians held great importance. From this work, it looks that the profession of making and repairing musical instruments was increasing manifolds.



2.2 Medieval Period:

Although, music evolved as a career option during the ancient Vedic age, (and professional musicians like Veena Vadins and Veena Gathins were present in the society), there is no clear reference as to how they were paid or what the method of appointment was. Therefore, it is very difficult to ascertain such positions in the present circumstances. However, we are certain enough that great emperors of that age employed musicians in their courts in order to teach as well as perform.

In the story of “Nal Damayanti”, king Nal was employed as a teacher of Veena. In Mahabharata also, during “Agyaatvas”, Arjuna was appointed as the dance teacher for princess Uttara.

Samudragupta of Gupta dynasty was himself a great player of Veena. He had employed various artists in his court.

During the medieval period of history, we hear of different court musicians like Amir Khusro, Baiju Baavra, Bakshu, Gopal Nayak etc. Mughal emperor Akbar, (1556-1605), was also a great patron of music and arts. He employed many musicians and other artists in his Durbar. Tansen, the great musicians, was one of them. It is also likely that there might have been some accompanying artists. Although there is no specific reference to the accompanying artists, but it can easily be inferred that during the vocal/instrumental performances, the rhythmic accompaniment must have been there. Thus accompanying artists were required in order to provide the rhythmic accompaniment. During the dance, other melodic and vocal accompaniment was required besides the rhythmic accompaniment.

This shows that traditionally, musicians had four broad categories of jobs during the ancient as well as the medieval periods of history. These categories are:

A. Performing artists,

B. Gurus (teachers) of music.

C. Accompanying artists.

D. Makers and menders of musical instruments.



Besides these four kinds of employment opportunities, we do not find any other options for the musicians of that period. Musicians earned the livelihood just by these four options. This cannot be said a very happy situation for the musicians. That perhaps was one of the many reasons as to why general public did not show any interest in learning music during that period of history.



2.3 Modern Period:

As the Europeans, (especially the British and Germans), came to India during the modern period of history, they were fascinated by the delicacies of Indian music. They initiated research in the field of music. In the meanwhile, modern system of institutional education came into being. As this system of modern education was introduced and implemented by the British, they tried to introduce a little bit of music with the new system. School prayers, with other cultural functions became the part of institutional curriculum. Moreover, in the newly organized British army, Band masters were required. Thus, new class of musicians began to emerge. Many of our musicians took to music Bands. Many music Bands were formed in different kingly states in order to please the British rulers. Great Ustad Allauddin Khan was the in charge of one of such Bands for some time. Ustad Allauddin Khan (also known as Baba Allauddin Khan) (1862-1972) was an Indian Sarod player and multi-instrumentalist and one of the greatest music teachers of the 20th Century.

Thus, music bands became popular in India during the British Raj.

There were several changes which reformed the system of music teaching. These changes had some negative connotations, no doubt. Gurukul tradition of teaching of music collapses on account the patronage of music through Durbar of the medieval rulers. Gharana system was the first victim. Artists of different Gharanas had to look for other options as the Sultanate was taken over the British Regime. British rule never directly patronized Indian artists. However, many musicians came forward to encounter the new challenges.

Great artists like Kumar Gandharva and Pt. Bhimsen Joshi had to run away from their homes in order to continue learning music. This shows that during the period of the British, the state of music was not very good. Music was considered a profession of the lower strata of the society. It was not thought to be the profession of noble men and women. Because of all this, the masses began ignoring music.

The reason of such pathetic condition of the profession of music was that during the period of Durbars, musical compositions were filled with romanticism. The flattery of the king and romance became the subjects of musical songs. The devotional music which was going on alongside with the Durbari music, kept intact in South India and in some corners in the other regions too. However, the main stream of music, which was later called as the classical music, was full of romantic depictions. This was one of the reasons that people parted themselves from this great art.

In this era when music was losing its shine, and the followers and the appreciators of music were getting lesser in numbers, two great musicians changed the scenario. These were Pt. Vishnu Digamber Paluskar and Pt. Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande. Both of them tried very hard to take music out of the pathetic situation. They created a chain of music-learning schools. Some of these music-learning centres are still running. Both of them devised a notation-system so that musical compositions might be written and preserved in the printed format. They trained the teachers for the proper teaching of music. But for their efforts, music would not have regained its lost ground. We cannot forget the contributions made by these eminent personalities.



3 New career options:

After Independence in 1947, Indian Government made music an integral part of education system. Government provided the necessary infrastructure that was required for the development of music and musicians. Thus, many new career opportunities emerged which can be classified as under:

During the ancient and the medieval periods, we have already mentioned four categories of jobs for musicians:

A. Performing artists,

B. Gurus (teachers) of music.

C. Accompanying artists.

D. Makers and menders of musical instruments.



Modern period of the history of music of the Subcontinent saw phenomenal changes in all the dimensions. In this period, notation systems were designed to write musical compositions in the print media. Audio/video recording facilities were invented, which had a great impact on our music. The invention of radio marked an era of broadcasting and the television further increased its capacity. The arrival of movies with speech output, paved the way for movie melodies and later on, it opened the field of popular music. Presently, we call it Indi-pop. We have seen the impact of computer on our music. All these happenings opened new career options for the learners of music.

Previously mentioned four categories of employment have evolved to an extent that more and more jobs are being offered to the learners of music through them. We have integrated music in our school as well as college system. Post-doctorate fellowships are being offered in the field of music research. Moreover, more and more music institutes are coming into being providing more opportunities for teaching of music. Branches of Gandharwa mahavidyalaya and Prayag Sangeet Samiti are all over India. Indira Kala Vishva Vidyalaya (Khairagarh) has been dedicated especially for music studies. Other private institutes include various music academies. One of such music academy is run by ITC (Indian Tobacco Company) in Kolkata, West Bengal. Sangeet Natak Akademy, run by the government of India, encourages various projects and fellowships in the field of music.

Besides this, some of the new career options are:

A. As an artist in TV and Radio:

Presently, Aakashvani and Doordarshan provide good job opportunity for the artists of music. We can choose to be the programme executive or staff artist in different centers of Aakashvani.



B. Orchestral groups:

One can form an orchestral group or music band and can perform independently for private programmes.



C. Job prospects in the Bollywood world:

We can refer to some big names like Pt. Ravishankar, Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pt. Shivkumar Sharma; Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan etc. these personalities did not have to search for employment in the film industry because they were already established performing artists. They were distinguished celebrities in their respective fields. Therefore, it will not be proper to say that they came to the film industry in search of career options. In fact, most of the times, these personalities were contacted by people in the film industry in order to give a new dimension to their films. Sometimes, these people came to films in order to make new experiments in the field of musical compositions. On the other hand, many ordinary musicians have been and are coming to the Bollywood in order to earn a living. This great entertainment industry offers a great opportunity to the artists of music – vocal or instrumental music alike.

Musical instruments like flute, guitar, santoor, different kinds of drums, different categories of violins, sitar, sarangi etc. are in demand constantly. Proficient of these musical instruments have ample opportunity of jobs here. Moreover, music composers are also required to compose music for different feature films as well as the documentary films.



D. Advertising industry:

Although the film industry or the Indian cinema is the biggest institution with regard to the world of entertainment, but other agencies like the advertisement agencies, the cable TV networks, National Films Division, various production companies engaged in preparation of TV features for different TV channels etc. also play a great role in providing employment to musicians of different backgrounds.

Jingles for numerous advertisement agencies provide the alternative opportunities of employment. Those who somehow, do not get opportunity in the world of cinema directly try their luck in the advertising industry and get some space to survive and struggle for their success in cinema. Advertising industry is very much related to the world of cinema. These two industries apparently, complement each other. Many actors and actresses, who generally work for the films, can also be seen in different advertisements on TV and other forms of the media. Likewise, many singers give their voice to the jingles recorded for different advertisement agencies. Famous playback singers like Kailash Kher, Alka Yagnik etc. have fluently given their voices in many such ads. In the ever-increasing consumerism, the advertising industry is growing at a great pace. Numerous big as well as small advertisement agencies have mushroomed in different cities of the subcontinent. These agencies employ many musicians in order to compose and playback music. These prove to be multipurpose artists.



E. Music journalism:

There are many newspapers and magazines who employ cultural correspondents. We can opt for such employment opportunities. Music students, who have also a degree in journalism, are preferred for such posts.



F. Music Therapy:

Music can be used as a tool for a happy and a healthy life. Presently, dance and music have been used as alternative medical therapies in order to have a good health without using harmful drugs. We are aware of the fact that music can affect the growth of plants in a positive manner. We are also in knowledge of the fact that more and more doctors are advising their patients to include music-listening in their lifestyles. Nada Center of T. Sairam is running many courses on music therapy.







G. Dance therapy:

Likewise, dance therapy is also getting popular these days. Dance is the most fundamental of the arts, involving direct expression through the body. Thus, it is an intimate and powerful medium for therapy. Dance therapy (also called dance/movement therapy) is the use of choreographed or improvised movement as a way of treating social, emotional, cognitive, and physical problems. Throughout the ages, people of many cultures have used dance to express powerful emotions, tell stories, treat illness, celebrate important events, and maintain communal bonds. Dance therapy harnesses this power of movement in a therapeutic setting and uses it to promote personal growth, health, and well-being.

Dance as therapy came into existence as a marriage of sorts between modern dance and psychiatry. It was pioneered by Marian Chace (1896-1970), who studied dance in New York City before establishing her own studio in Washington, DC, in the 1930s. Because Chase's dance classes provided unique opportunities for self-expression, communication, and group interaction, psychiatrists in Washington began sending patients to her.

By the mid-1940s Chase was giving lectures and demonstrations, and other professional dancers soon followed her lead, using dance to help people with an array of emotional, mental, and physical problems. It was not until 1966, when the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA) was founded, that dance therapy gained professional recognition. Today the ADTA has nearly 1,200 members in 46 states and 20 countries around the world.

Music: The Invisible Effect

Welcome address to freshman at Boston Conservatory


Delivered By

Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division

at Boston Conservatory.



"One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school she said, "you're WASTING your SAT scores." On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment.

Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us.

Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp.

Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."

On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost. And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again.

And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble.

We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome".

Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic.

The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival.

Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music?

What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way.

The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St.

Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?"

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: "If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies.

I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

Chicago Address 3: Swami Vivekananda

Chicago Addresses -3


PAPER ON HINDUISM

Read at the Parliament on 19th September 1893



Three religions now stand in the world which has come down to us from time prehistoric - Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism.

They have all received tremendous shocks, and all of them prove by their survival their internal strength. But while Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place of birth by its all-conquering daughter, and a handful of Parsees is all that remains to tell the tale of their grand religion, sect after sect arose in India and seemed to shake the religion of the Vedas to its very foundations, but like the waters of the sea-shore in a tremendous earthquake it receded only for a while, only to return in an all-absorbing Hood, a thousand times more vigorous, and when the tumult of the rush was over, these sects were all sucked in, absorbed and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith.

From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu's religion.

Where then, the question arises, where is the common centre to which all these widely diverging radii converge? Where is the common basis upon which all these seemingly hopeless contradictions rest? And this is the question I shall attempt to answer.

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant.

They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.

The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honour them as perfected beings. I am glad to tell this audience that some of the very greatest of them were women.

Here it may be said that these laws as laws may be without end, but they must have had a beginning. The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science is said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy?

Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make Him mutable. Everything mutable is a compound and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd-Therefore, there never was a time when there was no creation.

If I may be allowed to use a simile, creation and creator are two lines, without beginning and without end, zoning parallel to each other. God is the ever-active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time, and again destroyed. This is what the Brahmin boy repeats every day:

'The sun and the moon, the Lord created like the suns and the moons of previous cycles.'

And this agrees with modern science. Here I Stand and if I shut my eyes, and try to conceive my existence, 'I,' 'I,' 'I', what is the idea before me? The idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing but a combination of material substances? The Vedas declare, 'No' I am a spirit living in a body: I am not the body. The body will die, but I shall not die. Here I am in this body; it will fall, soul shall go on living. I had also a past. The soul was not created, for creation means a combination, which means a certain future dissolution. If then the soul was created, it must die. Some are born happy, enjoy perfect health with beautiful body, mental vigour, and all wants supplied. Others are born miserable; some are without hands or feet; others again are idiots, and only drag on a wretched existence. Why, if they are all created, why does a just and merciful God create one happy and another unhappy, why is He so partial? Nor would it mend matters in the least to hold that those who are miserable in this life will be happy in an other one. Why should a man be miserable even here in the reign of a just and merciful God?

In the second place, the idea of a creator God does not explain the anomaly, but simply expresses the cruel Rat of an all-powerful being. There must have been causes, then, before his birth, to make a man miserable or happy and those were his past actions.

Are not all the tendencies of the mind and the body accounted for by inherited aptitude? Here are two parallel lines of existence -

One of the mind, the other of matter. If matter and its transformations answer for all that we have, there is no necessity for supposing the existence of a soul. But it cannot be proved that thought has been evolved out of matter; and if a philosophical monism is inevitable, spiritual monism is certainly logical and no less desirable than a materialistic monism; but neither of these is necessary here.

We cannot deny that bodies acquire certain tendencies from heredity, but those tendencies only mean the physical configuration through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way.

There are other tendencies peculiar to a soul caused by his past actions. And a soul with a certain tendency would, by the laws of affinity, take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency. This is in accord with science, for science wants to explain everything by habit, and habit is got through repetitions. So repetitions are necessary to explain the natural habits of a new born soul. And since they were not obtained in this present life, they must have come down from past lives.

There is another suggestion. Taking all these for granted, how is it that I do not remember anything of my past life? This can be easily explained. I am now speaking English. It is not my mother tongue; in fact, no words of my mother tongue are now present in my consciousness; but let me try to bring them up, and they rush in.

That shows that consciousness is only the surface of mental ocean, and within its depths are stored up all our experiences. Try and struggle, they would come up. And you would be conscious even of your past life.

This is direct and demonstrative evidence. Verification is the perfect proof of a theory, and here is the challenge thrown to the world by the Rishis. We have discovered the secret by which the very depths of the ocean of memory can be stirred up - try it and you would get a complete reminiscence of your past life.

So then the Hindu believes that he is a spirit. Him the sword cannot pierce - him the fire cannot burn - him the water cannot melt - him the air cannot dry. The Hindu believes that every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere but whose centre is located in the body, and that death means the change of the centre from holy to body. Nor is the soul bound by the conditions of matter.

In its very essence, it is flee, unbounded, holy, pure, and perfect. But somehow or other it finds itself tied down to matter and thinks of itself as matter. Why should the free, perfect, and pure be thus under the thraldom of matter, is the next question.

How can the perfect soul be deluded into the belief that it is imperfect? We have been told that the Hindus shirk the question and say that no such question can be there- Some thinkers want to answer it by positing one or more quasi-perfect beings, and use big scientific names to fill up the gap. But naming is not explaining.

The question remains the same. How can the perfect become the quasi-perfect; how can the pure, the absolute change even a microscopic particle of its nature? But the Hindu is sincere. He does not want to take shelter under sophistry. He is brave enough to face the question in a manly fashion; and his answer is: 'I do not know.' I do not know how the perfect being, the soul, came to think of itself as imperfect, as Joined to and conditioned by matter.' But the fact is a fact for all that. It is a fact in everybody's consciousness that one thinks of oneself as the body.

The Hindu does not attempt to explain why one thinks one is the body. The answer that it is the will of God is no explanation. This is nothing more than what the Hindu says, 'I do not know.'

Well, then, the human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change of centre from one body to another. The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present. The soul will go on evolving up or reverting back from birth to birth and death to death. But here is another question: Is man a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on the foamy crest of a billow and dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and from at the mercy of good and bad actions - a powerless, helpless wreck in an ever-raging, ever-rushing, uncompromising current of cause and effect - a little moth placed under the wheel of causation, which rolls on crushing everything in its way and waits not for the widow's tears or the orphan's cry?

The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape? That was the cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of despair. It reached the throne of mercy, and words of hope and consolation came down and inspired a Vedic sage, and he stood up before the world and in trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tidings: 'Hear, ye children of immortal bliss!

Even ye that reside in higher spheres! I have found the Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusion: knowing Him alone you shall be saved from death over again. 'Children of immortal bliss'

-what a sweet, what a hopeful name! Allow me to call you, brethren, by that sweet name -heirs of immortal bliss - yea, the Hindu refuses to call you sinners. We are the Children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. E divinities on earth - sinners! It is a sin to call a ma. So; it is standing libel on human nature. Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.

Thus it is that the Vedas proclaim not a dreadful combination of unforgiving laws, not an endless prison of cause and effect, but that at the head of all these laws, in and through every particle of matter and force, stands One, 'by whose command the wind blows, the fire burns, the clouds rain and death stalks upon the earth.'

And what is His nature?

He is everywhere, the pure and formless One, the Almighty and the All-merciful. 'Thou art our father, Thou art our mother, Thou art our beloved friend, Thou art the source of all strength; give us strength. Thou art He that beareth the burdens of the universe; help me bear the little burden of this life.'

Thus sang the Rishis of the Veda. And how to worship Him? Through love. 'He is to be worshiped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and the next life.'

This is the doctrine of love declared in the Vedas, and let us see how it is fully developed and taught by Krishna whom the Hindus believe to have been God incarnate on earth.

He taught that a man ought to live in this world like a lotus leaf, which grows in water but is never moistened by water; so a man ought to live in the world - his heart to God and his hands to work.

It is good to love God for hope of reward in this or the next world, but it is better to love God for love's sake; and the prayer goes: 'Lord, I do not want wealth nor children nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth; but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward - love unselfishly for love's sake.'

One of the disciples of Krishna, the then Emperor of India, was driven from his kingdom by his enemies and had to take shelter with his queen, in a forest in the Himalayas and there one day the queen asked how it was that he, the most virtuous of men, should suffer so much misery. Udhishthira answered, 'Be hold, my queen, the Himalayas, how grand and beautiful they are; I love them. They do not give me any- thing but my nature is to love the grand, the beautiful, therefore I love them. Similarly, I love the Lord. He is the source of all beauty, of all sublimity. He is the only object to beloved; my nature is to love Him, and therefore I love.

I do not pray for anything; I do not ask for anything. Let Him place me wherever He likes. I must love Him for love's sake. I cannot trade in love.'

The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is, therefore, Mukti - freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery- And this bondage can only fall off through the mercy of God, and this mercy comes on the pure. So purity is the condition of His mercy. How does that mercy act? He reveals Himself to the pure heart; the pure and the stainless see God, yea, even in this life; then and then only all the crookedness of the heart is made straight. Then all doubt ceases. He is no more the freak of a terrible law of causation. This is the very centre, the very vital conception of Hinduism. The Hindu does not want to live upon words and theories, if there are existences beyond the ordinary sensuous existence, he wants to come face to face with them. If there is a soul in him which is not matter, if there is an all-merciful universal Soul, he will Rota Him direct. He must see Him, and that alone can destroy all doubts. So the best proof a Hindu sage gives about the soul, about God, is: 'I have seen the soul; I have seen God.' And that is the only condition of perfection. The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing - not in believing, but in being and becoming.

Thus the whole object of their system is by constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God, and see God; and this reaching God, seeing God, becoming perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect, constitutes the religion of the Hindus.

And what becomes of a man when he attains perfection? He lives a life of bliss infinite. He enjoys infinite and perfect bliss, having obtained the only thing in which man ought to have pleasure, namely God, and enjoys the bliss with God.

So far all the Hindus are agreed. This is the common religion of all the sects of India; but then perfection is absolute, and the absolute cannot be two or three. It cannot have any qualities. It cannot be an individual. And so when a soul becomes perfect and absolute, it must become one with Brahman, and it would only realize the Lord as the perfection, the reality, of its own nature and existence, the existence absolute, knowledge absolute, an bliss absolute. We have often and often read this called the losing of individuality and becoming a stock or a stone.

'He jests at scars that never felt a wound.'

I tell you it is nothing of the kind. If it is happiness to enjoy the consciousness of this small body, it must be greater happiness to enjoy the consciousness of two bodies, the measure of happiness increasing with the consciousness of an increasing number of bodies, the Rim, the ultimate of happiness, being reached when it would become a universal consciousness.

Therefore, to gain this infinite universal individuality, this miserable little prison - individuality must go. Then alone can death cease when I am one with life, then alone can misery cease when I am one with happiness itself, then alone can all errors cease when I am one with knowledge itself; and this is the necessary scientific conclusion- Science has proved to me that physical individuality is a delusion, that really my body is one little continuously changing body in an unbroken ocean of matter, and Advaita (unity) is the necessary conclusion with my other counterpart, Soul.

Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus chemistry could not progress farther when it would discover one element out of which all others could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfil its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are hut manifestations, and the science of religion become perfect when it would discover Him who is the one life in a universe of death, Him who is the constant basis of an ever-changing world, One who is the only Soul of which all souls are but delusive manifestations.

Thus is it, through multiplicity and duality, that the ultimate unity is reached. Religion can go no farther. This is the goal of all science.

All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run.

Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of science today; and the Hindu is only glad that what he has been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in more forcible language and with further light from the latest conclusions of science.

Descend we now from the aspirations of philosophy to the religion of the ignorant. At the very outset, I may tell you that there is no polytheism in India. In every temple, if one stands by and listens, one will find the worshipers applying all the attributes of God, including omnipresence. To the images. It is not polytheism, nor would the name henotheism explain the situation.

'The rose, called by any other name, would smell as sweet.' Names are not explanations.

I remember, as a boy, hearing a Christian missionary preach to crowd in India. Among other sweet things he was telling them was, that if he gave a blow to their idol with his stick. What could it do? One of his hearers sharply answered, 'If I abuse your God, what can He do?' ' you would be punished,' said the preacher, 'when you die.' 'So my idol will punish you when you die,' retorted the Hindu.

The tree is known by its fruits. When I have seen amongst them that are called idolaters, men, the like of whom, in morality and spirituality and love, I have never seen anywhere, I stop and ask myself, 'Can sin beget holiness?'

Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is worse. Why does a Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the Catholic Church? Why are there so many images in the minds of Protestants when they pray? My brethren, we can Do more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing- By the law of association the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you. It helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent. finer all, how much does omnipresence mean to almost the whole world? It stands merely as a word, a symbol. Has God superficial area? If not, when we repeat that word 'omnipresent', we think of the extended sky or of space - that is all.

As we find that somehow or other, by the laws of our mental constitution, we have to associate our ideas of infinity with the image of the blue sky, or of the sea, so we naturally connect our idea of holiness with the image of a church, a mosque, or a cross.

The Hindus have associated the ideas of holiness, purity, truth, omnipresence, and such other ideas with different images and forms.

But with this difference that while some people devote their whole lives to their idol of a church and never rise higher, because with them religion means an intellectual assent to certain doctrines and doing good to their fellows, the whole religion of the Hindu is centered in realization. Man is to become divine by realizing the divine. Idols or temples or churches or books are only the supports, the helps, of his spiritual childhood; but on and on he must progress.

He must not stop anywhere. 'External worship, material worship' ?,' say the scriptures, 'is the lowest stage,' struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage, but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realized., Mark, the same earnest man who is kneeling before the idol tells you, 'Him the sun cannot express, nor the moon, nor the stars, the lightning cannot express Him, nor what we speak of as fire; through Him they shine.' But he does not abuse anyone's idol or call its worship sin. He recognizes in it a necessary stage of life. 'The child is father of the man.' Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin?

If a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor, even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error. To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. To him all the religions from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength till it reaches the Glorious Sun.

Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognized it. Every other religion lays down certain fixed dogmas and tries to force society to adopt them. It places before society only one coat which must fit Jack and John and Henry, all alike. If it does not fit John or Henry he must go without a coat to cover his body. The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realized, or thought of, or stated through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols - so many pegs to hang spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for everyone, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. Nor is it compulsory in Hinduism.

One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots. On the other hand, it is the attempt of undeveloped minds to grasp high spiritual truths.

The Hindus have their faults, they sometimes have their exceptions; but mark this, they are always for punishing their own bodies, an do never for cutting the throats of their neighbors. If the Hindu fanatic burns himself on the pyre, he never lights the fire of Inquisition. And even this cannot be laid at the door of his religion any more than the burning of witches can be laid at the door of Christianity.

To the Hindu, then, the whole world of religions is only a travelling, a coming up, of different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every religion is only evolving a God out of the material man, and the same God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The contradictions come from the same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances of different natures.

It is the same light coming through glasses of different colors-

And these little variations are necessary for purposes of adaptation. But in the heart of everything the same truth reigns.

The Lord has declared to the Hindu in His incarnation as Krishna:

'I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls.

Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there. ' And what has been the result? I challenge the world to find, throughout the whole system of Sanskrit philosophy, any such expression as that the Hindu alone will be saved and not others. Says Vyasa, 'we find perfect men even beyond the pale of our caste and creed.' One thing more. How, then, can the Hindu, whose whole fabric of thought centers in God, believe in Buddhism which is agnostic, or in Jainism which is atheistic?

The Buddhists or the Jains do not depend upon God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion, to evolve a God out of man. They have not seen the Father, but they have seen the Son. And he that hath seen the Son bath seen the Father also.

This, brethren, is a short sketch of the religious ideas of the Hindus. The Hindu may have failed to carry out all his plans, but if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these. And still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity will embrace in infinite arms, and find a place for, every human being from the lowest grovelling savage, not far removed from the brute, to the highest man towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centered in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature. Offer such a religion and all the nations will follow you. Asoka's council was a council of the Buddhist faith. Akbar's, though more to the purpose, was only a parlor meeting. It was reserved for America to proclaim to all quarters of the globe that the Lord is in every religion.



May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to carry out your noble idea! The star arose in the East; it travelled steadily towards the West, sometimes dimmed and sometimes effulgent, till it made a circuit of the world, and now it is again rising on the very horizon of the East, the borders of the

Sanpo(1), a thousand fold more effulgent than it ever was before.

Hail Columbia, motherland of liberty! It has been given to thee, who never dipped her hand in her neighbor's blood, who never found out that the shortest way of becoming rich was by robbing one's neighbors, it has been given to thee to march at the vanguard of civilization with the flag of harmony.

(1) A Tibetan name for the Bramaputra River

Chicago Address-1: Swami Vivekanand

Today, as I was surfing the net, I got some marvellous words from the great sage, Swami Vivekananda’s speeches delivered at World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago.


I wondered, why not to share it with all other like-minded persons!

I am presenting the first episode in this edition. Here it goes:

Chicago Address - 1



Response to Welcome at the World's Parliament of Religions,

Chicago, 11th September 1893



Sisters and Brothers of America, It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. Thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of the millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects. My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honour of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.

We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to the southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings:

"As the different streams having there sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world, of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita:

"Whosoever comes to me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me."

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-kneell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.



Chicago Addresses -2

Why We Disagree

15th September 1893



I will tell you a little story. You have heard the eloquent speaker who has just finished say, "Let us cease from abusing each other," and he was very sorry that there should be always so much variance.

But I think I should tell you a story which would illustrate the cause of this variance.

A frog lived in a well. It had lived therefore a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog. Of course, the evolutionists were not there then to tell us whether the frog lost its eyes or not, but, for our story's sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it every day cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern bacteriologists. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat.

Well, one day another flog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.

'Where are you from?'

'I am from the sea.'

'The sea! How big is that?

Is it as big as my well?' and he took a leap to one side of the well to the other.

'My friend,' said the frog of the sea, 'how do you compare the sea with your little well?'

Then the frog took another leap and asked, 'Is your sea so big?'

'What nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well!'

'Well, then,' said the frog of the well, 'nothing can be bigger than my well; there can be nothing bigger than this; this fellow is a liar, so turn him out.'

That has been the difficulty all the while.

I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christian sits in his little well and thinks the whole world is his well. The Mohammedan sits in his little well and thinks that is the whole world. I have to thank you of America for the great attempt you are making to break down the barriers of this little world of ours, and hope that, in the future, the Lord will help you to accomplish your purpose.

Emotional Intelligence

1                     Introduction:

The emotions make human beings different from other animals; it is this trait of man which makes him a ‘social animal’. Machines can work faster and with much more accuracy than the humans, but humans are emotional and machines are not. A man without emotions is heartless. Without emotions there’d be neither joys nor sorrows and life would be boring and without any motivations. Many HR analysts have looked into the emotional aspects of human beings and found that our mind all the times behaves in two distinct manners: A. logically, and B. emotionally.

Many analysts propose that IQ contributes only 20% to life success – the rest of your achievements come from “emotional intelligence” (Emotional Intelligence Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, Daniel Goleman).

 That is the reason that even the strongest chess software could not defeat the great Grand Masters of chess till date. Emotional intelligence plays a great role in our career development. Ideas without emotions are nothing. Emotions make them functional and through the intelligence we use them to our benefit. It is on this pretext that the modern human resource development managers are looking into emotional intelligence with a view to utilizing HR more skillfully and productively.

Emotional Intelligence and CA Technologies:

Broadly, there are five basic extents whereby we can classify the scope of emotional intelligence. They are:

A.      self-awareness,

B.      Managing emotions,

C.      Self-motivation,

D.      Empathy

E.       Handling relationships.

Self-awareness is very important for all of us. One should be aware of his/her strengths as well as weaknesses. This is a trait of one’s personality. When one is aware of one’s limitations, he/she can manage assignments/tasks more efficiently allotted to him/her. Secondly, managing emotional stresses is vital to our responsibilities. For instance, we cannot cope with tensions and obstacles unless we have control over our emotions. Emotions like sadness, stressfulness, etc., may lead to depression. Thus, the person shall not be able to perform up to the level. Thirdly, Self-motivation plays a great role in one’s success. When we face failure and are not able to accept it, we invite stress. Success as well as the failure is the parts of our lives. At times, we have to encounter failures and fatigue. There are some of us who are not able to cope with failures and hence create problems for themselves. These problems dampen their potentials and they do not perform well. Fourthly, we should be able to spread happiness around us. Keep smiling. Encourage others when they are down, help your colleagues when in need; take every comment thrown at you, positively. These traits of your personality evolve empathy towards others. It is the human tendency that you shall get whatever you give to others; hence, the saying, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Therefore, let your emotions not hurt others. Lastly, as we are social animals, we have created a web of relations called society. We are individual units of this society. Individuals form family, families form communities and finally the society comes into being. In this society, we have many roles to play. At home, in the office, on Public places etc., everywhere we have a specified role to play. Perhaps, that is why, Shakespeare said, “The whole world is the theatre, and we all are actors.”

Relations influence our behavior very promptly and swiftly. Therefore, we should handle our relations very artfully. We should respect other’s feelings if we wish others to respect ours. If the relations are not very well-managed, the problems may arise that would hamper your responsibilities towards your Company. That is why, management of personal relations is very important.

3                     Emotional intelligence and performance:

Through the appropriate management of our emotions, we can achieve growth in our performance. Firstly, enjoy whatever you are assigned to do. When we are engaged in the tasks that we like, we are never mentally tired. Mental freshness makes us more efficient. Therefore, enjoy your assignments and you’d never feel fatigue. Secondly, concentrate upon what you are doing. While at work, do it like a painter works skillfully to decorate his piece of art, or a musician performs with a charming expression. Forget everything else. Feel the pleasure of creating something which you are assigned to and which shall make the life of many, more comfortable. Computer applications are like literary works. Literary works give us pleasure through the beauty of words; whereas, computer applications give us pleasure by making our tasks more automotive and efficient. Everything that is done with a sense of beauty is art. When you write a program, you create a kind of new innovation which in itself is a piece of art.

4                     My own experiences:

I can say it with my own experiences that emotional intelligence is a tool that can enhance our capabilities and performance. That is why, these days, people are joining more and more laughing clubs. Through my own experiences, I can state that in our mind, there are numerous emotions – good as well as bad ones. We should try to suppress bad ones and inculcate the good ones. But sometimes, suppression may lead to depression. Therefore it is a tactful exercise. To control your anger, you may attract your attention to something else or leave the work for a while and relax. If you hear some harsh words from some of your colleagues or Managers, you can express your anger by writing your feelings on a paper and tear the same afterwards. There are many things in the world that we may not like. But we have to encounter them. Be sure that you cannot change the world; you can change yourself. Those who adapt themselves survive and all others are flown away in the strong storm of circumstances. Therefore, adapt yourself to the circumstances and you’d survive. Do not worry if the targets are not achieved; think of the reasons and remove them. Do not get disturbed if someone in the team is not performing up to the mark. Divide his incomplete work in other members. Do not get frustrated if the project is not complete and the date is fast approaching. Increase working hours, enhance performance and share the burden jointly. Smile whenever you see a sad face. Smile whenever someone behaves improperly, smile as this would motivate others in your team, smile because it costs nothing and gives enough support to your team. Finally, remember these strong words of Swami Vivekananda:

If you say, “I am, I am,” so shall you be. And if you say, I am not, think that you are not and day and night meditate upon the fact that you are nothing, miserable and low, nothing shall you be.

Losing faith in oneself is losing faith in God. Always remember. We are everything, ready to do everything, we can do everything and man must do everything.

Ustad Sarvar Sabri: Extending the Boundaries of Fixity

Ustad Sarvar Sabri:
Extending the Boundaries of Fixity
Shezad Khalil

It is good to swim in the
waters of tradition, but to sink in them is suicide.
—Mahatma Gandhi (p. 308)

In an era in which postmodernist and postcolonial thought and its relationship with the arts, and in particular in music, is defined in accordance with the construction of the ‘new’, the names of prominent musicians as Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawhney appear to be constantly experiencing and experimenting with transforming the musical traditions of the past. This is to say that that which was acceptable and practiced throughout the narratives of antiquity has now evolved into novel and innovative procedures of the present, that is, change has occurred and continues to transpire.
Alongside the compositions of the twenty-first century South Asian and British South Asian musician sits the theoretical underpinnings of cultural thinkers as Homi Bhabha and Paul Gilroy. It is the speculations of these postmodernist and postcolonial theorists that provide the analytical framework and foray of contemporary artists as Singh and Sawhney illustrating as Bhabha observes that ‘newness’ occurs within the space of the British metropolis. This is then the
domain in which numerous South Asian and British South Asian artists take the ‘roots’ of their homelands and their classical training into the depths of the ‘unknown’. And, this is also the vicinity in which many South Asian migrants leave behind the artistic conventions of the ‘past’ to journey forward into the realm of the ‘new’. The intention of this is to redefine and reconstruct those identity politics that identify who they are as twenty-first century artists and how their artistic modes sit within the space of contemporary Britain. In turn, the result often leads to the formation of compositions that are hybrid in nature, but through the fusion of varying styles of artistic expression.
Stemming from a rich South Asian historical tradition of music that dates back to the court of the Mughul Emperor Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar, also known as Akbar the Great, (1542-1605), he contemporary composer and musician Ustad Sarvar Sabri welcomes and embraces the roots of
classical training with the intention of extending and experimenting with the conventions of adition. This is an argument that will be explored shortly, but first the contextual scaffold of Sabri’s history must be examined in brief.
It was during the era of Mughal rule that Akbar the Great, even though illiterate, displayed a great admiration for the performing and fine arts of the Indian subcontinent. As an aficionado of the ich diversity of the arts, Akbar attracted the greatest thinkers and artists in his court. These were known as the navaratna; the Sanskrit word for the nine jewels. One of these gems was Mian Tansen (1520-1590) who was a classical vocalist in the court of Akbar and also trained people in the art of South Asian classical music. And so, Sarvar Sabri’s lineage of musical learning belongs to and can be dated back to Akbar’s chief musician.
Sabri’s early teaching that he received from his gurus was not only affiliated with the past, but was also associated with some degree of fixity. Hall’s theorisations would describe this instance of Sabri’s musical training as situated in and influenced by ‘the idea of a pure, original people’ and culture [italics in the original] (p. 275). Further, the choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh would observe this type of ‘traditional’ guidance as an example of keeping alive the ‘acknowledgment of a common consensus’ of those ‘groups of people [that have and continue to] agree on certain things’, that is in connection with those systems of the past (p. 6). And therefore, for Sabri, his early training in the tabla would also be viewed as an instance of transmitting a consensus of the past into the domain of the present. But on close inspection, is this really so?
In fact, even though Sabri’s learning of the tabla was situated in the customs of history and stemmed back to the influence of Tansen and his musical systems, his work imitates Hall’s conception of ‘translation’. According to this cultural theorist then, some postmodern subjects, including Sabri and his musical manifestations, undergo a form of renovation; an excursion of progress and alteration. Although the artist’s training may have been positioned within the classical vocabularies of the past, it is as a result of these systems that direct several people to make changes to that which already exists. Hall observes that such people [as musicians and their
art] retain strong links with their places of origin and their traditions, but they are without the illusion of a return to the past. They are obliged to come to terms with the new [artistic] cultures they inhabit, without simply assimilating to them….They bear upon them the traces of particular cultures, traditions, languages [, artistic systems] and histories by which they were shaped. The difference is that they are not and will never be unified in the old sense, because they are irrevocably the product of several interlocking histories and cultures’ [italics in the original] (p. 310).
For Sabri then, his contemporary arrangements and art form are created from a combination of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’. What this means is that the ‘past’ (‘sameness’) is positioned within the ‘present’ (‘difference’), but the ‘present’ (‘difference’) is dissimilar to and/or an extension of the ‘past’ (‘sameness’). For example, in creations as Master Drummer of India, 2002, a CD album influenced by three of Sabri’s gurus:
Ustad Bundu Khan (1880-1955), Ustad Latif Ahmed Khan (1942-89) and Karaat Ullah Khan (1918-80), the listener witnesses how this musical genius in tracks as ‘Taal Bundu Khan’ not only executes his classical training but also presents a modern twist to the composition by playing it in
an unusual eight and a half beat cycle.
In this brief example of this tabla master’s work, we observe how Sabri unfolds the ethics of his musical philosophy. This is positioned within the realms of hybridity that is as inspired by the notion and elements of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’. In discussion with Sabri, 2012, he justifies his thinking: ‘I never lose track of or contact with my roots … It is the concept of a musical idea and process that is more exciting as well as the ability to find different ways’ of communicating thoughts. For Sabri then, the notion of broadening boundaries is situated within the belief that one can create ‘newness’ without having to challenge tradition and/or the past. ‘History’ in itself can then open doors for the construction of something quite novel and unique, and yet similar and distinct from the past. It is this philosophy that sets Sabri apart from many twenty-first century composers and musicians as many of these artists appear to break away from the musical systems of the past and infuse their contemporary work with minute elements of their classical training.
Sabri’s constructions then take the notion of ‘sameness’ on a different voyage of discovery. Even though he begins each musical journey from the starting-point of the past that is as positioned
within his classical training, from here his roots develop into something both ‘fresh’ and ‘new’. ‘Sameness’ then expands itself and travels along a route that is concerned in conveying difference’. It is this conception of disparity, diversity and variation that distinguishes the work of this master from other South Asian and British South Asian musicians of the contemporary domain.
Sabri’s musical compositions also imitate Jeyasingh’s thoughts, especially in relation to tradition. If, as Jeyasingh asserts that convention is something that has been ‘tried and tested’, suggesting that the practices of the past do not remain stationary, then for Sabri the same thought and philosophy are applicable to his own creations. This is because as Jeyasingh states, the terms ‘tried and tested’ propose the importance of alteration. This is not to say that one’s musical
roots have to remain static. Not at all! In fact, for Sabri, Jeyasingh’s vocalisations advocate that his own work celebrates the musical systems of convention and yet at the same time he enhances
these by employing his own ideas in order to experiment with and deliver the past into the present. Further, Sabri’s postmodern arrangements continue to convey signs of particular musical traditions so that the listener understands that the systems of the past are still appropriate and relevant for the contemporary world that we live in. Further, even though his work bears a strong influence of the past, it is through Sabri’s aptitude as a maestro of the tabla that he is able to modernise these constructions through his own musical and hybrid vocabulary.
The route(s) and destination are one, that is, the past can be represented in the present.

For further information on Sarvar Sabri, see his website: http://www.sarvarsabri.com/
and his company Sabri Ensemble: http://www.sabri.org.uk/
Please visit Sarvar Sabri and the Sabri Ensemble on Facebook. For further reading of Sarvar
Sabri, see Arc Music, ‘News’: http://www.arcmusic.co.uk/index.php?page=news
Selected Bibliography
Homi Bhabha. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Mahatma Gandhi. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. May-July 1925. Vol. 27. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust, 1968.
Paul Gilroy. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double
Consciousness, 1993. Reprint, London:
Verso, 2002.
Stuart Hall. “The Question of
Cultural Identity”. In Modernity and its
Futures, edited by Stuart
Hall, David Held and Tony McGrew, 273-325. Oxford: Open University Press, 1992.
Shobana Jeyasingh. Appendix i – Transcripts
of Presentations: Shobana Jeyasingh”. Compiled
and produced by Tina Cockett. In Traditions on the Move, Open Forum Report, edited by Academy of Indian Dance,
6-9. London: Academy of Indian Dance, June
9, 1993.
Shezad Khalil is studying for a PhD at the University of Loughborough

Sexy vs Beautiful

The word ‘Sexy’ has been in the public discourse recently as
a Chair Person of some women’s Organization used it to express beauty/preventability
of the women. In her views, addressing a woman as ‘sexy’ is a compliment and
not an offense as it shows a basic trait of the womanhood. Being ‘sexy’ in a manner
is a quality and not a disqualification for the women.
But what about the men. Should not it be a quality for them
either? If sexier young ladies are better than those who are not, the same
logic should apply to their male counterparts too. To extend the logic, if ‘sexy’
is a compliment for the women, the same applies for the men. Therefore, the
word should not and would not be referred especially to the womanhood.
Now, the question arises as to how the word should be used
and in what circumstances it may or may not violate the basic norms of civility.
It is the usage of the word and not the word itself that counts. If a friend
uses the word and addresses the woman as ‘sexy’, there is no harm. On the other
hand, if some unknown youngster uses the same to tease her and to provoke her,
it is an infringement upon the behavior of the user of the term.
There are specific topics which look good on the specified
lines drawn by the social customs and traditions. Those who give the society
more importance than individuality would agree that we should follow the social
practices and should not discuss matters like ‘sex’ openly. Only the authorized
persons should participate in such discourse. Suppose, a five-year-old praises
his/her mom by saying, “Mom, how sexy have you been these days!”
Or the granny in her eighty’s looks at her grandson of
around 14 and comments, “Hi handsome, what a sexy physique you have!”
In the both cases, the persons who are being complimented
would feel themselves in awkward situation and it would be difficult for them
to react. Therefore, my supposition is that the usage of the word and not the
word itself should be considered when one decides upon the correctness of the
word. In the present context, the word ‘sexy’ is harmless. It is just a word
like other countless words. It has been created to be used. Therefore, neither
its meaning nor its usage is at fault. The word becomes objectionable only when
it is used for the wrong reasons. Many of our friends use abusive language; it
is in their habit; they cannot help it. Therefore, we have become used to their
slangs and do not mind the same. On the contrary, if some unknown person uses
the same language against us, we get highly charged and more often than not
begin to respond in the same abusive tongue which we think highly uncivilized.
The word ‘sexy’, therefore, should not be used during a
formal session. Neither can it be accepted as a compliment to a woman if
someone wishes to take liberty with her basic dignity. In the friendly environment
the word may be used. Nobody is going to object to it. In their heart, the women
would love to listen to the word if the speaker is the person whom they like to
the least possible quantity.

Music and stress-management

Introduction:

In this era of rapid growth and nail-biting competition, life is getting full of tension. This tension leads to different diseases like the hypertension, heart problems, and insomnia and so on. In psychological terms this tension is called ‘stress’. Many ailments occur due to the lack of physical exercises. Our life-styles have become so comfortable and relaxing, thanks to the science and technology, that most of our day-to-day activities are performed automatically by different machines. For example, we have remote control devices for TV, air conditioners, fans etc and therefore need not trouble our legs in order to use them. Outdoor games have been replaced by very meticulously designed video games. Hence, most of us need not go out and play. Mobile phones have made it possible to sit at home and replace important meetings with the video conferencing. There is just no scope for physical activities. This physical inaction leads to hypertention, and other psychological disorders which generate stress. In this article, we’d see as to how we can manage stress through the use of music.

What is stress?

There are many definitions given to the mental stress. Some are as under:
1 Stress is the body's reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental or emotional adjustment or response. It can come from any situation or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, nervous, or anxious.
2 Stress is caused by an existing stress-causing factor or "stressor."
3 Stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.
Considering these definitions, we can conclude that the stress is the result of our mental fatigue which may occur due to a variety of reasons. Your co-workers do not behave your way and you get tensed; you are waiting for someone but he/she gets late and you get frustrated; you do not succeed in the mission undertaken by you and your blood pressure shoots. There are numerous excuses for stress but in fact it is in your mind. In the same unfavourable situation, some get stress and some other do not. This shows that stress is not something that comes from outside; it is within our own mind.
The stress begins with frustration. We do not like someone’s actions or something and we get frustrated. This frustration, if suppressed, generates anxiety which, in turn, gets transformed in anger. We try to suppress this anger as most of the time we cannot express it. That leads to more mental imbalances and finally we fall prey to the stress. If the situation prevails for a long time, this state of mind can lead to mental depression which can cause more psychological problems.

The solution:

There are many simple actions which can curtail our stress and we can get rid of it. Psychologists have devised means and methods whereby one can cope up with these kinds of situations. However, fine arts in general and music specifically can be of great help in controlling the mental stress.

Stress-management through music:

The basic cause of the mental stress is that our mind sometimes does not accept, or does not wish to accept the reality of circumstances. For example, you are watching your favourite show on TV and suddenly the the electric supply is off. If you accept the situation and keep cool, it is well. However, many of us take it very sentimentally and think that the power fails only when they are watching TV and they are not very lucky and so on. These types of feelings generate stress. If our attitude towards life is negative, we are stressed. If the attitude is positive, the situation changes rapidly to our favour.
Music makes positive. We feel relaxed and comfortable. As we listen soothing and sweet music, all our frustrations, tentions and other mental imbalances keep on evaporating and we feel very light and free of all stress. If one happens to be a musician, he/she can cure the ailment of mental stress very easily. The Swara Sadhana, which is essential to Indian music, is very helpful in controlling the stress. As we listen to the rich drone sound of Tanpura, we feel a kind of peace in our mind. When we mingle our voice in tune with Tanpura, our mind gets concentrated on Shadja, the key note of Indian music. As we tune the instrument, we need too much of concentration of mind towards the basic note. All these activities lead us to the state of meditation. In terms of Yoga, this meditation is the basic prerequisite for attaining the state of Samadhi. But the musicians have the privilege to get this state of mind without Yogic practices. Music in itself is a kind of Yoga. It can cure many mental illnesses including the mental stress.
In the fourth Chapter of Sangeet Ratnakar, the author has elaborated upon the characteristics of a good Vaggeyakara, i.e. the good musical composer. One of the characteristics mentioned herein is ‘Avadhana’ which means the concentration of mind. Thus, we see that the composers of Indian music need the concentration of mind in order to create music. It applies to any kind of music. If we can practice to concentration of mind, we can strengthen our will power. If our will power is strong, we can easily can overpower the mental stress.
Not only musicians, but the listeners of music can also benefit from the positive qualities of Indian music. Here, let us make a distinction between the quality music and the popular music. It is not that the popular or the mainstream music cannot fall in the category of the quality music. But more often than not, the popular music is different from the quality music. Music which is meant for generating excitement and action, fails to give relaxation. Those who wish to use music to suppress the original mental feelings, have to face the consequences. This is the reason, that disco jockeys are able to make us dance but their kind of music is far from the peace of mind. It can generate excitement but cannot create pleasing effects. Therefore, one should choose soothing and relaxing music if he/she wants to get rid of the mental stress.
Indian classical music has the capacity to shun the negative feelings and create the positive attitude. Therefore, it is recommended that one should develop the habit of listening to the Indian classical music if the mental stress is to be curtailed.

Conclusion:

There is a very famous saying: “caution is always better than cure.” Therefore, it is advisable that before it is too late, before we fall prey to the mental stress, let us develop the liking towards the Indian classical music. All of us try to learn a bit of Indian music. If it is not possible, at least we can listen to the good music. We should try to keep away from the loud amplified kind of music which is amply available on the electronic media. We should rather be inclined to the real classical music. This will surely make our lives more fruitful and productive in all respects.