The Secret To Being Still

The unethical have a lot to speak about ethics. This is my learning from a set of recent events.
Maybe they do so to cover-up their own misgivings by pointing their fingers at others, to deflect the audience's attention from them or perhaps this is their defense mechanism of denial that is at play or maybe they should be diagnosed with selective amnesia where they forget their own wrongdoings that they beg to be reminded of.
No one is a saint and everyone has a skeleton or few hidden in their own cupboard; every saint has a past and every sinner a future; yet, we like to point out to the small slips and accidental falls of others trying to wear a halo around our head as we carry our self with a 'holier than thou art' attitude while speaking a hypocritical and sacrosanct language all the while.
Do we ever forget to look at the log in our own eyes (?!) before we try to pull the speck out of other's???
Every fellow manages to somehow reach a point of dissonance to justify their stand while criticizing others - the easiest being, 'I did it for his/her own good' statement that is often made to justify their cruel and rude actions. (Bull crap). However, how good are we in the first place to pick on others and/or criticize? Best left to oneself, the least one can do is remain calm and not condemn. If our concern is to help build and change the other, we better do that with gentleness - this takes time. Fruits don't ripen by force.
Why can't our concerns be real as we deliberate a peaceful way to help people.
Some people take this patience for granted and use their very nature to manipulate and get things work their way or they are too stubborn to change or perhaps filled with a heavy and blinding ego, they refuse to see the consequence of their action. Sometimes I wonder about any other choice we have other than being more patient in situation such as these that tests our patience even more. This situation tests us more than it tests the other I suppose.

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.
And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee." said Fredrick Nietzsche.

The universe that must support our plans must be supported by our plans too. If energies around can have an effect on us, wouldn't it work the other way around too? To bring the mind to rest, thoughtless and to be still, seemed difficult and impossible at first. With a little bit of reflection, the mind does become still and when we pause, the universe does control the rest around us. If goodness is in our heart, peace can be spread even in silence - while riding a bus, while making tea or even while walking away from chaos - without the need to even set apart any time for deliberating it. There is always space and time for goodness and peace. Perhaps this is zen or perhaps why bother to name it at all...

It's So Good To Fail

We are all beings of imitation; we imitate people who we appreciate; everything we do well is how well we have been able to imitate someone who has succeeded doing things we wished we could do too-be it the way we walk, the way we talk or perhaps even the way we think.

Masters of impersonation are we and with our greed to always excel, we would rather imitate someone who has done the same thing before us than try and attempt to do something our own. To do something our own, means, giving ourselves a chance, a chance to perhaps even fail; yet, we hate trying. We would rather 'cut, copy and paste' in our rush to success rather than give ourselves a shot to fail and perhaps to discover who we really are. We are all scared to fail and in that sense, have forgotten to create something new, something true, something real and above all something our very own that defines us. 

Success has always been history and with more and more conditioned, learnt behaviour being taught in schools and colleges, just an imitate-able impersonation... and just a boring repetition of history. At some point of time, rather than succeed in living a life of impersonation and imitation, tired and boring that we should get, why not attempt to do something ourselves even if it meant we would fail and give ourselves a chance to discover who we really are.  Failure teaches us something new, failure teaches us something more sacred than success, failure helps us learn more about who we are rather than what we are expected to be. It is a success to fail :)    

It Is Black

It is black. If one does not draw his identity, he would be forced to move into and take up an identity the world cynically yet cleverly and clearly draws for him. It is great to live in an illusion that we are all equal, created equal, born equal et al; as we endlessly justify its claim and claim for it; yet, the truth is that we are not equal, no one is; we are just similar and that's it. These lines we draw to define ourself appears dark in light. And darkness is real and into darkness we move to know what is true. 

“Light is shallow; darkness is infinitely deep. Light is always bounded, it has boundaries. Darkness has no boundaries, it is unbounded. Light comes and goes; darkness always is. When there is light you cannot see it. When light is not there you can see it. But it is always there; you cannot cause it. Light has a cause. You burn the fire, you put on wood. When the wood is finished the light will be gone. It is caused, hence it is an effect. But darkness is not caused by anything, it is not an effect. It is uncaused eternity.” said Osho.

The closer we get to reality, the darker it gets. In darkness, you are alone, closer to you, closest to you alone. In darkness one loses himself; and lost, finds himself. Darkness brings warmth like the dark looming clouds before a rain. The other mystical element-water, at its depths-the abyss, is just as dark as well. Identifying ones own darkness helps him to move away from the fake light in which he sees himself and others and the spot from which he sees others or allows them to see him. 

Immediate movement into darkness brings forth fear and shudders, the natural. Identity intends to break our comfort zone and that of others that they hold of us. It is in darkness that we usually see beyond the conditioned notions with which the world sees us... those lines of disparity, the points of discrimination and all the unnatural lines drawn to distinguish us and thus differentiate us. It is in darkness that one comes from and into the same one moves' yet, isn't it strange that man fears darkness when in light and alone?! 

In a way, it is in darkness that man is really tested face to face with no restraint-bold, raw, rustic, strong, dark and black-and he begins to see himself clear. Cleared off from all those defining lines the world had drawn for him-to contain him, to manipulate him and to convince him of his limits. In a way, it is in this darkness, the pitch black bottom, that those dark lines separating us to see us apart gets reconnected and we see people beyond differences-that otherwise we have to beg for and plead in light. True knowledge is dark,far away from the comfort of the light we are generally exposed to; that is perhaps why they insist on unlearning as more important than the learning. Light divides, darkness unites. Let the fool and the coward step out and let the others move on; into darkness let us be lost and find ourselves and others ... Let us leap into the boundless comfort of darkness. 

p.c: http://rvspeaks.blogspot.in/2011/08/darkness-important-aspect-of-life.html

Who Said So

Cicero's (106 - 43 BC) philosophy: 

1. The poor: work and work, 

2. The rich:  exploit the poor, 

3. The soldier: protects both, 

4. The taxpayer: pays for all three, 

5. The wanderer: rests for all four, 

6. The drunk: drinks for all five, 

7. The banker: robs all six, 

8. The lawyer: misleads all seven, 

9. The doctor: kills all eight, 

10. The undertaker: buries all nine, 

11. The Politician: lives happily on the account of all ten. 

"Can we quantify 'God'?" seems to be the thought I am troubled with as I wonder deep within... "Should I be quantifying God?" However, everyone wants to build definitions; rigorously working towards containing everything into a small box of their understanding as I stand in vain knowing that the unlimited need not be/cannot be brought into our spectrum of limitations and limited undersatnding... yet the crowd moves. They push and push like a woman in labour and somehow I am pushed too and commit the sin of indulging to do the same as well; knowing well that what I attempt cannot be done having done it more than once in the past too and having the lesson well. Yet, I move along...

I wonder from where comes this desire to try one more time and feel like a fool later on? For uttering words that cannot be taken back; yet I vomit! To regret like a complete idiot for not holding on to silence and bearing with others who are taking the same course that I had taken once. Why does regret come in first and why is patience delayed? 

Someone said that not quantifying God and resting with "Thathuvam' asi" was a sign of laziness. I got irritated. "Why?" I asked myself. If I was at peace then from where arrived this sudden discomfort to rob me of my sanity? I was digging in deeper not wanting to be disturbed one more time, the next time. Complacency disturbed, disrupted, destroyed... I was wondering how well closed I had become in the attempt to open up; jumping from one box right into another. Am I thinking different or is my thinking different? Why are people who think different so alone... (so lonely)?! So am I deliberating mediocre thoughts to belong? Is that where I really want to belong? 

Am I in a place where everything has to be something as I see nothing in it? Are we trying to be smarter or are we trying to show that we are smarter? Why do I talk like a crack pot and realize it too? Having learnt that action speaks louder than words and knowing that silence is golden, why can't I simply shut up and why am I trying to articulate better to survive? So, is the need to survive blocking my vision of existence? 

Does thoughtlessness expose emptiness or does it expose the epitome of nirvana? Why am I disturbed if I knew what peace was once? Why did I slip? Why do I fall? Am I losing myself in the middle of nowhere yet again and searching my soul yet again... knowing well that unless you lose yourself you can't find yourself... Am I lost yet again?! Duh!... As I watch the world pass by from my glass window, I wonder why does it shatter me within (that I try not to let anyone else see) when someone shatters the window pane? Do I fear getting out into the crowd 'I think' I have analysed for long or disturbed that someone shattered the thin line that separated the "me" from "them"? Why am I not me? If I really believed in nothing, then why do I believe in me? Why do I want to be me? Do I really have to be me...? and for that matter anyone I want to be or not to be?

"Lord, thee I dare not contain with my critical thinking-unquantified, unshaped and unconditionally loved thus-in your unlimited vastness I submit me, shape me as you desire (I need not even ask thee)... it is thine I want to be and with faith as blind as can be I move, let each step be a step towards thee."

p.c: http://noorimages.com/feature/the-lost-years/afghanistan-mazar-sharif-women-begging-by-road/

The Poisonous Mushroom

Watching from the shore for long, tides and waves roll with a rhythmic beat all foretold.
New blossoms of temple flowers bloom, as some did fall face first to the ground in sweet surrender.

“Oh dancing leaves on this rainy day!
Dance how you may lest you sway.”

At the sea’s edge, a rush of wind parts memories left far behind...
With remorse stood I conjuring the self-imposed torture; with pain that soared with the cross I bear.

Like the dancing dew drop that rolleth from the blade of the staggering leaf on a withering tree,
like a merry soldier whistling his final tune to the tip of the guillotine,
looking skyward stood I dripping in complete surrender.
The zenith had no bounds and the nadir inched too deep;
wanting to dissolve in the hastened fury, complacency the soul rendered;
knowing for sure that certain dreams are better gone when awake.

The wine rolleth well, piercing those buds screaming for more.
Till the blood-red wine knoweth not if its the blood or the wine that tasteth so well in the mouth it rolls.

"My poisonous mushrooms! Left behind with the serpent's kiss,
knowing too well and none better than he will know what he knows best…
that he desires to be plucked undeserving to be tasted;
unless death beckons the soul from deep for the one who plucketh."

Picture Courtesy (P.C):
http://www.featurepics.com/online/Amanita-Poisonous-Mushroom-1674154.aspx

How Open Is An Open Book?!

"To be an Open Book" as often as someone claims, ask yourself "How open can an open book be? After all, even an open book opens up to only two pages!"

(A thought during a psychoanalytical session)

Picture courtesy:
http://gothicbohemianstock.deviantart.com/art/Stock-Open-Book-85672857

The Short Blog Post

"Any place where Man finds a void, vacant, vacuum, he absolutely must have an erection."

(Staring at skyscrapers filling the urban jungle, a.k.a "cities", I wondered...)

Picture courtesy:
http://usandeep.com/travel/chicago.html

To Pain With Love

Long withstanding and quite understanding;
Remorse replaced with resilience, stood I with someone not too new.

“Pain! What doth thou bring!
Is it in vain that we suffer thee?
Pleasure found none who cast their minds to sway from thee.

Contrary doth my mind think today.
And quite complacent my soul doth feel.
Coming in terms with the sequence of events that offer thee.
The ridiculed mandatory impression of thy vast foray.
That calls for compassion to scrub the scar thy reminiscence leaves behind.

Pain, how art thou?
Miniscule or in magnitude great?!
Prayeth I now, casteth thou not thy shadow on the ones I love.

Pain, thy image might scare the breath out of some.
Having been thy favourite and chosen one oft, I know thee.
Today, I laugh at thee. Sans fear, I mock thee.
If thy mandatory services are to be rendered, shower it on me; set my people free.
Spare them all you kill and give me all if thy will…
On bended knees I ask thee…”

Moi Sleeping Child...

Where on Earth does one find happiness?

A while ago I began asking people I came across, "When was the last time you actually laughed? Laughed just for yourself, laughed not to please anyone and not because it was expected; the last time you actually were happy and laughed like a fool, unbothered..." Everyone brooded for a while and almost everyone had a default reply, "10 years ago." Wow! that was just a number; the actual could be longer.

Troubled with life and the suburban drudgery and chronic dissatisfaction that comes along with it, people have forgotten to be happy. This started my mission to 'Rediscover Happiness'.

Sometimes, I watch my lil' son smiling to himself and making those funny noises, babbling that strange language which must mean a lot to him and he is happy. He feeds, sleeps and sometimes appears to be lost in thought and he transends that feeling of happiness to everyone around him. Everyone, even those serious ones become child like in his precense as they try to mimic his movements and speak his language. He seems to be living Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs upside down. He has all his basic and other elementary needs (those which we, the adults crib for) met/given/provided with happiness. And He, needless to say, is self actualized and transcends the same to everyone around. No wonder people like to be around children.

It hurts me to have to accept the fact that he will slowly be moving downward in that hierarchy of needs, in the course of survival and must climb the hierarchy all over again to reach the point he is already in now as time goes by... as people would expect him to speak their language(s), compartmentalize him into customs, values, mores, traditions, etiquette, culture, religion(s), codes and ethics... someone accepted and admired so much now, will soon be a victim to this compulsory norms and conditions for survival, to gather that acceptance among the people around him who so unconditionally love him now; and I will be watching this transformation (helplessly).

Soon, very soon I shall be asking him "When was the last time you actually laughed? Laughed just for yourself, laughed not to please anyone and not because it was expected; the last time you actually were happy and laughed like a fool, unbothered..." and probably he will help me rediscover happiness as time goes by.

Bottom line: "Man, unlike the animal, has never learned that the sole purpose of life is to enjoy it." Samuel Butler

windows messenger, pandora, limewire

The Strange Case of Binging-in-Butter

Last few days there has been quite a few occassions when the idea of utopia (vs) reality was brought into the perspective for discussion. The truth is never out there; it lies somewhere beneath... sometimes just below your self-constructed, masked, fake image created. In the pursuit of happiness, happiness vanishes once when realized. If one stops to reflect upon happiness, happiness seizes to exist.

So is true satisfaction the actual and happiness just a fantasy we convincingly fool ourselves with a desperate hope to make it seem true? Can everything experienced in life be drawn into charts and figures for others to believe in? Why the effort?!...

Watching the sub-urban drudgery and chronic dissatisfaction of the mortals I am with every single day of my life, sometimes I am forced to wonder if the pit we often find ourselves in devouring us sans giving us a chance to climb. Future is so scary (truthful here) and so I sink into the present to feel complacent and in the attempt to make myself believe so, with that effort, find it meaningless and the pit's devouring capacity further enhanced thus. Can't find refuge in the past as well as the present is just the consequence of the past which I detest. So here I am with the past, present and future staring like a ghost in the dark I can't take my eyes off.

Today I stand not needing anyone to belittle me as I do myself that favour. Horrible it feels yet that is the reality I do not want to run away from. Atleast that bit of residual guts makes me feel good. Feels like nothing and nothing it feels... could this merriment of ridiculing the self to a point of no return with nothingness be what nirvana is all about? If everything means nothing and everything is the same at the end of the day, then why isn't utopia the reality and vice versa?...

By the by, the title means nothing... right? Now thats the point! Why did we want it to mean something and why did we even relate it with anything in the first place? hahaha!... Ces't la vie...

Bottom line: "One creates from nothing. If you try to create from something you're just changing something. So in order to create something you first have to be able to create nothing. " Werner Erhard

Hobsons Choice

Today, the day willing, I decided to write on choices. Right from picking the movie in the mall one decides to spend 2-3hrs of one's daily allowance of time to the decision to be with someone or not to be to the career to take up... every occassion redeems one with choices one has to make... many disagree... the same group who agreed easily that there was a planet called 'Pluto'.

Often one hears someone say, 'I had to do it. I was helpless. I had no choice.' Come on, who are they crapping with?! No choices??? or chose to not make any? a choice again... even if we went with the choice someone else made for us, that was a choice once again... hahaha!

There have been moments when I have been puzzled, almost everytime, I read a story about a girl being raped 'against her will'. Do we still attempt to pseudo-agree that a woMan can be entered without her involvement?! With the oldest (Male) virgins around, I think I will have difficulty explaining this. However, to make it simple, let me put it this way... its not possible. She had a choice and she made it. Rape or technically speaking an aggressive sexual encounter was only incidental. However, personally I feel that child-sexual abuse, where the child is unaware of the pleasure in it, devoid of it, experiences the pain, is offensive.

Anger is a luxury... very few can afford to show it. Passive anger as an option is even deadly making one a brewing pot of neurotoxins. At the end of the day, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. What do we choose? To react or to respond? Emotion or logic?

There are 3 things in life one would live for or die for... simplicity, truth and love... the Trinity I often mention. And the choices one has to make to find it!

No matter how long one takes to make that choice, finally the choice is made at the last second. That split second. Its so simple yet so complex... the drama that goes with it, around it et all that comes with it... that bloody split second. Probably thats why Henry Ford said, "Any colour as long as the colour is black" to make it easier for us to make the decision. Then why so long a time in turmoil in the process?! Its a simple 'yes' or a 'no' or 'Oh! look a third dimension!' the last happens in very few situations though. Again Swami Vivekananda says, "Forces cannot be created, only directed." Everything around us makes it simple for us to make choices and we waste Time, Energy, Emotions and Money (TEEM).

Uncalculated redemption with genuiness is what scriptures in the spiritual world redeems upon us... this genuiness is uncomplicated substituted with the word 'innocence'... Expecting nothing out of our good deeds... even forgetting the incident; for there are more to do... not taking reminders in for feeling good. Moving to the higher road where one simply does good. Thathuvum Asi.

A friend of mine once said that behind everything one does, there is a selfish reason. 'Mother Teresa did all that she did because otherwise, she wouldn't have felt good and so to feel good she did what she did'... thats what he used to say. Point well taken. However, I agreed to disagree and wanted to test that theory. The way out, 'don't feel good.' Feeling thus, one begins not feeling bad as well... thus comes in a guilt-free living. Emotions becoming a straight line... that way sacrificing happiness to not experience sadness.

Bottomline: "Two roads diverged into the woods and I took the one less travelled by; and that has made all the difference." Robert Frost

In Meditation I Write

The voice is cut,
the noises still prevails.
The noises cut,
I listen voices again!

Behind walls of silence,
switching gear to gear,
my journey begins into the wilderness,
across pathless paths I take
as I transcend deeper and deeper into the self...
humbly I surrender to the unseen, the unknown.

No pleasure nor pain,
still in motion, so lies all emotions, thus I stay...
Waiting for the breath to subside.

What am I?
Nothing!
From nothing I came
and to nothing I go
and to realize that nothing I am
feels like there is nothing to worry no more.

'Thathuvumasi'-they say,
To experience a feeling as this.
Hard to explain and hardly explained.

Can't say this is bliss
and can't say that there is anything I missed.
A thought becomes everything
and everything becomes a thought.

Nothing wasted reigns,
nothing wasted remains.

Life is thus and thus remain...
a potpourri of thoughtless thoughts during meditation.

Bottomline: "I think therefore I am"-Rene Descartes