Will you resign, or will you be dismissed?

I recently finished Suketu Mehta’s amazing “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found”, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist book about the city’s underground lives, such as gangs, police-gang warfare, prostitutes, and transvestites.  One of the most striking stories concerns a family of Jains who, having accumulated incredible wealth in the jewelry business, now decide to give up the world to become Jain monks and nuns.  The family of five give up all of their wealth, shave their heads and go forth into the world in winter, barefoot and with only two sets of clothes.  The men separate from the women, each parent now regarding the accompanying children as disciples only.  The father recalls reading a Jainist book with a sentence that electrified him and ultimately led him to this renunciation: “Are you going to be dismissed or will you resign?”

Mehta writes, “For a long time afterward, in my life in the cities, I think of Sevantibhai, of the utter final simplicity of his life. In New York I am beset with financial worry. How will I educate my children? Will I be able to buy a home? Approaching the middle of my life, I feel poorer every day compared to my friends who went to school with me, who are making money in technology and on the stock market, and who are buying up apartments and cars and raising their prices beyond my reach. I am earning more than I ever have before, and I am also feeling poorer than ever before. Each time it feels like I almost have it within reach at last – financial security (if not wealth), a working family, a career – it slips out of my grasp… “Sevantibhai has just bypassed all this. He has taken a leap over his worries, outdistancing them, outfoxing them. In response to the possibility of a loss in his business, his answer is: I have nothing, so I can lose nothing. When faced with losing his loved ones through death or illness, his attitude is: They mean nothing to me, so their illness or death doesn’t affect me. Before anything can be taken from him, he has given it away himself. And I continue on my way, always accumulating the things I will eventually lose and always anxious either about not having enough of them or, when I have them, about losing them… All that remains is his body, to which he has renounced title in advance and treats as a borrowed, soiled shirt. He can’t wait to take it off. Sevantibhai has beat death to the end. He has resigned before he could be dismissed.”

On the one hand, I think, these Jains are taking the easy way out. They are so afraid of pain and loss that they give it up beforehand, and there’s no guarantee that this renunciation will lead to enlightenment and release from the cycle of rebirth.  On the other hand, this counter-argument’s position is also a lie. Living a full life deeply embedded in modern society is a delicate balance between getting what you want, and being satisfied with what you have.  I find that almost all my unhappiness derives from the gap between what I have and what I expect or want.  Sure, I’m smart but I want to be brilliant. What if, as Joy and I have both fearfully wondered, we become merely “mediocre”? That may sound ridiculous because we’re so well-degreed and intelligent, capable people, but clearly there’s a difference between that and leaving a legacy, of becoming “somebody.”  I’m wealthy in comparison to most Bangkokians, but does what I earn reflect my personal value? And will what I earn really be enough to support my parents, my family, me? It isn’t that what I have isn’t enough or isn’t great. It’s that I, society, and what I think society thinks all want and expect more more more and all of it now.  It seems so hard to strive for things I value – such as meaningful, contributing career, a wonderful, strong family, a legacy – without tipping into avarice (not only of money, but all things).  The very act of striving suggests an admittance that the status quo is inadequate.

When I was in Snowmass, CO, people worked 9-5 and that was that. Then they went fishing and hiking and skiing. It wasn’t stressful, it wasn’t a race and, by being in nature’s living room all the time, I had a sense that the world – nature, Earth – is larger, more infinite than the imagination of humans can comprehend. So what is this chase all about? Is it worth it? And is it a cop-out to give up your place in line to the top of the food chain?

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