Yoga of Renunciation of Action

I came across this passage from the Bhagavad Gita.
||Yoga of Renunciation of Action||

Said Arjuna:

"On the one hand you praise renunciation of action and on other you commend the yoga of action. Please tell me clearly which of the two is better."

[Chapter 5 verse 1]
Said the Supreme Lord:

"Both the yoga of action and the renunciation of action are both good for liberation. But of the two, the yoga of action is superior"

[Chapter 5 verse 2]
"The state that can be achieved by following the yoga of knowledge, can also be achieved by following the yoga of action. He who sees both these yogas as one really sees."

[Chapter 5 verse 5]
"But those who destroy their ignorance by means of knowledge, their knowledge illuminates and reveals the Supreme Lord the way Aditya, the sun god illuminates the world."

[Chapter 5 verse 16]

I know what you will do next

Two news items under the technology tag in New York Times led to this short essay. First, the topic of sensor data, or more clearly data on user behavior raises some interesting issues. Two researchers have developed a computer software to sift through a huge collection of user location data (places people have visited collected from taxi cab and other sources) to predict likely places a typical user (a user who fits a certain profile) might go. While Macrosense, the software from Sense Netwroks, uses public data, Albert-László Barabási, a physicist at Northeastern University (of Linked fame), used cell phone data (collected from users from a complying country) to do the same. The interesting part is not the ability to predict user behavior (I think most of us have that ability - we know what our kids, close friends, or spouse might do in certain situations) but the issue of using your behavior data without any direct benefit to you. It is more valuable to somebody who wants to sell me their product or service than it is for me to know what I might do next. How am I to get any direct value? I believe the answer lies in the Trust Bank through which we can trade our digital data.

The ability to predict one's behavior from historical data is dependent on the availability of data, a huge vat of it, and hence the use of aggregate collections. Google is one of the early users of this idea, based on the work of computer scientist who discovered that "data beats algorithms." Perhaps there is also some truth in the metaphysical arguments yogis and counsellors use. They say that if you can visualize your goal you can achieve it. The world (by that resources needed to achieve the goal) will conform to your needs as you move towards the goal - probabilities get larger as you reach the goal. You tend to focus on tasks, events, and resources that help you achieve that goal.

You can really try it and see that it works. Say, next time you are at the airport catching a flight to your destination. You hear an announcement that your flight is delayed due to mechanical problems and a departure time is now unknown. Now visualize yourself at the destination as per schedule and tell yourself that everything will work out as planned. This will give you the courage and ability to try different solutions that work to your benefit. Your actions and thoughts can change the conditions surrounding the problem and make visible solutions. It is a matter of probabilities. You tend to choose the actions that enhance the desired outcome. If on the other hand you become agitated and negative, the probabilities decrease!

Now, the second item in the New York Times - fixing individual notes in a musical compilation. Recently, there has been a significant amount of research that has focused on the issue of separating individual sources of music from a collection. The method is Blind Source Separation. Once the source is separated additional corrections such as pitch correction can be applied. All of these are wonderful set of tools that every budding musician must have. While perfect music all the time may be boring, the ability to have perfect music is a good thing. Perhaps, we should allow the listener the control of much errors they are willing to accept!