Zen master in Communicating through hollywood

I once incidentally saw a movie on HBO. (ohhh.... I love watching movies)-Charlie Wilson's war. Following is a dialogue in the last scene  of the movie


Gust Avrakotos: There's a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse... and everybody in the village says, "how wonderful. The boy got a horse" And the Zen master says, "we'll see." Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, "How terrible." And the Zen master says, "We'll see." Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight... except the boy can't cause his legs all messed up. and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful." 
Charlie Wilson: Now the Zen master says, "We'll see." 


Reference: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472062/quotes?qt0436729

Probably it may not sound so powerful while just reading it, however in the movie (based on US' covert support for Afghan rebels during Russian occupation) it is masterfully placed and conveys a very serious and thought provoking message.

Summary of the message was thus : You may think yourself to be doing good while in the end the result is f**ked up beyond recognition. Similarly you may be messing up and suddenly there is a heap of rewards in front of you.

I wouldn't go too much further in this post because probably zen master explains it the best.
Just  simple questions for you whenever something positive happens to you: What just happened was good? really? should i rejoice? or maybe should i not?

Probably this positive may lead to something not really positive or something real bad.

Similarly for every negative outcome: Is it bad? really? Should i be sad? or maybe not. This negative may lead to something positive which you might have not thought of before or considered possible.

In short be a little skeptic when good happens and little content when something bad happens. It is a natural course of life and what happens is how it is meant to be.

How Past affects the Future

This is a little bit in continuation with my previous post. I have my oddities and you have your oddities. We are all different characters. If in an experiment we were put inside and exactly similar situation we will definitely react differently. Why is that so? Why are you and why am I different?

Now i remember a movie dialog from some obscure movie I saw in the good old days of Doordarshan: "मैं पेट से चोर पैदा नहीं हुआ था. "(I was not born a thief). The thief tells us what I want to reiterate today-' Its our past which frames our present, our future is shaped by our past and the present'. This may not look like a huge conclusion to you, but think about it in little detail as follows. Look at your present- Why are u sitting/lying at the location you are, why are you in front of this particular computer reading at this particular blog. For example if you are in Mumbai (what were the events that led you to Mumbai? What were the events that lead you to those events?), Why are you in front of computer? Why do you have a computer? Why did you search for this blog? Why did you end up on this one?

If we create a backwards issue tree in detail we will reach to one particular conclusion all of us: " This moment is the sum total of results of all (Yes ALL) events of the past". This implies that your present circumstance is nothing but a consequence of our actions in the past.

What about the future? The future as a corollary will be a sum of all events in the past and all events from present to the future. We can react positively, negatively or lethargically to the present circumstance. The circumstance arising from past events in our life.

(How does an event result: You have a circumstance, you react to it and the result is an event. For example I had free time, I wrote and I have this blog- an event. An event may just not be a circumstance * reaction- The event may also be affected by external events- other people's actions or climate etc.)

Even though the circumstance is not in our control anymore we have the option of reacting to it in a way we like (I have a theory on why we react the way we react) and trying to come up with an event which will better our future.

We are like people and our destiny is a ship. The direction the ship takes is based on our reactions to present circumstance. We can only try to control the direction though the direction may depend on host of factors. The whole thought is as shown in the diagram below:

The figure below shows how we navigate our lives:

So the conclusion is that the time of action is NOW and NOW only. There is no other time. Being Inactive now affects your future. 

The above is my line of thought. I would like to know what you would think of it? Please comment.

My next blog will be on why we react in a certain way to any circumstance. 

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