Divine Dichotomy : Whose Karma ?!

Continuing where I left in my last post, and just a few minutes later (!), there is one more age old and obvious question which has been doing the rounds in my head.

I read somewhere that control can either be absolute or not at all. And this is in context of the universe and how our tiny-miny life plays out in the vast cosmos which has existed since eternity. The number of variables which go into our just BEING at any given moment is so vast and hugely out of our either understanding or control that mere idea that we have any say about any thing in our lives or the world seems laughable. Even our inception (soul or body) was not something we controlled or perhaps willed, or even if we did, then we have no memory of it.

Then how can helpless puppets like us create Karma and be made answerable to it through circumstances which are not pleasant by any stretch of imagination?

And yet we believe in Karma theory and talk about paying for our past deeds and not creating any Karma for the  future etc. Something which suggests control.

Going back to my initial precept about having either FULL or NO control, the latter suggests full control and in that I wonder why I created such a world around me ? Why would I.....you know what....

Beats me. And only when we get beyond can we begin to enjoy.....

Ahh..the Divine Dichotomy ?!

Which ME ?

At the risk of stating something obvious once again, this time I intend to talk about the two MEs. No it's not the Gemini Twin theory (Gemini, that I am) but one which perhaps plays in every individual who has ever walked upon earth and ever will.

It's the material me and the spiritual me. Ok, accepted..no SURPRISE. But within this age old fact is an endless amount of drama which unfolds in our life. Taking my life, I see the material ME interested in all things which normal people do..you know, the usual fame, money, woman ..continuum. And then there is the spiritual me which is appalled at how ORDINARY I am. And no matter what I know (or rather, have read), what I live is far inferior and baser, compared to those puritan ideals.

Once in a while, while I do climb a spiritual peak and look at 'ordinary, mundane' things at a distance with distaste and dispassion and enjoy the atmosphere rarefied of material thoughts, I do find reality, but it's like a HIGH, a dose of a drug whose effect wanes down as I slowly and inescapably climb down to my other self, which takes up most of my time and attention.

Until I am again bruised and bleeding and run to the spiritual peak for solace. Perhaps, death of the material self only will permanently secure a memorial on the peak. They do say that being a sadhu is equivalent of dying. You give up your material possessions, relations...even your name and identity wearing the colour of fire to signify the temporary nature of the show around.

And yet for now, I can only see the material desires burning me slowly. Slowly...painfully. Perhaps to etch the memory in my conscience for all births to come. And I really prey that the memory of all the pain remains, how can I let go of this treasure? Karma?!

 

Fashion & Passion

Just came back after watching 'Fashion', a movie by Madhur Bhandarkar. I think, of all his movies, this I like the most. More than that, the perspective in which I interpreted it made its impact all the more stronger for I could relate to it personally.

To put the story in short, in this movie a Chandigarh girl wins some beauty contest there and becomes a 'wanna be' model. She goes to Mumbai, struggles, and finally makes it big because a big time 'fashion GOD' falls for her (although he is married) and uses her as a mistress. Our lady, in the meantime moves from being an honest seedhi-saadi girl to an arrogant %&*(# who ruins all her relationships and when the 'fashion GOD' also dumps her after she becomes pregnant, life goes topsy-turvy and she ends up with booze and joints of all kinds. She eventually also loses her career.

She goes back to her angry dad's home (who had always been against modelling). After an year of therapy, her dad realises that she needs to win back her confidence and for that she needs to be a model again..and so he sends her back. After another struggle, she again makes it to the top, albeit at the cost of a lot of personal loss.

Well, I kind of dumped the fashion theme altogether, for its pretty complicated and my views are pretty orthodox and prejudiced. What mattered to me was the 'struggle for a dream' and 'it's cost'.

Now, fashion or no fashion, most of us, or at least many of us have a passion and achieving it requires a cost. It could be any dream...

And most of us fail to achieve it fully, and if one believes in rebirths, we take god knows how many births and keep running after one dream or another in every life.

Point is.....it all appears pointless! Giving your life for a dream..losing it at death and then starting all over again. Life after life after life......ad infinitum.

Why not find what's permanent and be done for eternity?

Now I know that the thought is neither novel nor profound but after watching the movie it hit me pretty hard. Especially because I find myself at the crossroads to various destinations and since I seem to be just stuck here without being able to move anywhere, quite like Priyanka Chopra in Fashion (when she's lost) I feel at times I am just running away from the crossroads since I do not have the answer. OK, I dun do joints or booze etc., but running away can be done in various ways...

And the only way is to go back to the SELF, which too seems very difficult right now and I am thinking of ways in order to facilitate that. Perhaps we all are.

But not all of us are ready to pay the price. We'd much rather run life after life rather than go through just one 'Passion of Christ'! 

Statutory Warning : Wishes May Come True !

My mind is like a football field right now.  And there are like 5 footballs and 10 Navendus playing for an equal number of goal posts. 

Its like even while I write this blog, I can think of at least 2-3 more titles depending on which goal it talks about.

Now, in order to bring some order to chaos, lets begin with (in advertising lingo.) Top-Of-Mind recall :)

Umm...some desires, which just refuse to die down, and as soon as I come from a 'teerth', they manifest in some form, subtle or gross...almost immediately...POP..like that !

On the one hand, its an instant gratification, on other is fear and guilt of satiating something which ULTIMATELY I am not or do not want but have to go through in order to get over it.

Now inherently there is nothing wrong in it but it is the scum attached..kam, krodh, lobh, moh...ahankaar which makes everything wortless and then the perennial feeling which emerges on certain occasions, and of late has been very pronounced...bole to...

kitne janam

kitne relations

kitne problems

kitne solutions

kitne ram

kitne ravana

par sab wahin ka wahin

How many more before we move on ?

And in that mindset, it's like you are lost in your own dhun, and whatever happens around seems immaterial and inconsequential, you are detached, and THAT IS WHY you can enjoy it fully for you come without expectations or burdens to that moment/situation and enjoy for whatever it is and give your all too, for you hold on to nothing...there is nothing to hold on to! Neither you nor that is around... drops evaporating on a hot metal plate..

And in that mindset, you wonder whether to focus on personal/professional aspirations which seem so ephemeral or live dreamlike and lost in a reality which is normally accepted  ....

And then personal goals...again a many pronged question which can lead you to X no. of directions, but in my current state, I think only about enjoying NOW and that will dominate, I am not interested in changing anything or anyone...

But even talking about enjoying now can mean creative/intellectual kick or something more geared towards self-actualization...

For when I see presentations like a senior was giving on Branding..I know what we will gimme a kick! Now I dun wanna CHANGE anything or anyone but I know what I can do well and in the long term that's all that I want to do.

Or, do I ?

So where were we ? Which ball...which field..which goal? Whose playing?

Disclaimer: The title of this blog has got nothing to do with the content or it's direction or flow...like many Hindi movies :)

 

Camouflage and the Joint of Silence

The last weekend, or rather the last few weekends have been about camouflaging my true self with a veneer of materialism to ensure that I don't stand as an odd one out in the 'normal' world. But some of the veneer also boils down to some essential needs and that's where it gets complicated.

If you look a little deeper into the veneer you find that some of  the camoflague is born of my own desires rather than any externally imposed compulsion. Although, in the absolute analysis, everything in our external world, right from the close locus of our body to the unfathomable distances in space which our perception can envision, are given birth by our own desires, it's the canvas we have painted through our sanskars..our latent desires.

So, in that sense I painted Mumbai...the land of Bollywood and struggle and next was Gurgaon, India's very own US...and I must own it as a product of my SELF's creativity/rajas.

Yes, I am happy in Gurgaon...with all its external superficialities...and until that remains ...I remain here..

But on days, rather every day, there are moments when the shallowness hits and hits hard enough to numb out the brain and only a few minutes of silence can make it come back to 'normal' consciousness. And thus I take this joint of silence and carry on...escaping every weekened from the madness of my desires which bind me to the world.

Creativity...money..peace..research...the nodes on which professional satisfaction jumps for me and then stops to think whether I am the DOer in this drama or just a passive observer...

Because, the other way is to disown everything as HIS, and negate everything as being nothing but HIM, and surrendering completely to HIS fullness and just watching the show by HIS side.

So what is right? Which is the way?

The joint of silence...

:) 

Wall-E(d) ?!

Just saw the movie Wall-E by Pixar. And since it has led to unexpected waves in the creative cesspool resulting from long durations of monotonous and non-creative routines, the result is: THIS BLOGPOST.

Having clarified the circumstances leading to this now increasingly recurrent phenomena, I must give vent to the thoughts surging inside, lest I suffer from 'internal hemorrhage'  due to the incapacity of the brain to 'hold it' anymore!

Hmm...so where were we ?

Wall-E

The movie touches upon many issues - commercialization, increasing dependence on automated amenities and machines, homogenization by brands which are coming up in an increasingly consolidated industrial world, no opportunity for individual expression/ choice/ creativity/ entrepreneurship, pollution, insensitivity of the capitalistic system, Lōve :-) ..etc etc.....

However the thing which touched me a lot, and I believe it's an interpretation which perhaps wasn't even intended as a metaphor but is only a result of having nothing exciting to do in the past few days. And that is the buildings of waste which Wall-E walls on the now-defunct earth.

It's like, in our professional lives, most of us, sift through loads of dirt, and then like machines (like Wall-E), diligently make blocks of those (dirt). And then religiously, arduously we make buildings (of dirt) of those blocks.

Of the dirt. By the dirt. For the dirt.

:)

Work. Jobs. 

And in that, like Wall-E, our remaining sentience finds some intriguing tit-bits here and there to value. Those small tit-bits give us minute doses of excitement and exhilaration to drudge on with the otherwise mundane crap producing/assorting process. Often we also force us into enjoying some irrelevant processes/tasks in order to keep our selves high enough...hour after hour...day after day..month after month..year after year..

.... Wall-E(d) in ?! 

At a distance

Life happens to us in all it's alarmingly dramatic and sudden shifts occuring anywhere and anywhere, especially when you expect them the least or may be expect quite the opposite. However,after having been THROUGH a situation or having REACTED to one in a way you never wanted to, all you are left with is a philosphical afterthought that it is better to just see what's happening and keep your responses away in some quiet hidden corner from where you can dispassionatelyand wisely  extricate them at your convenience and as you choose.

Unleashing your sword in the heat of the battle (images which we grow up with ..thanks Hollywood and Bollywood :), in real life is perhaps one of the most foolish things to do. Kiddish people like me often realize that after being badly bruised in a duel.

What' s even worse is that when the opponents are not really enemies but friends or even worse your own kith and kin, your own blood, it mirrors back 5000 years with Arjun standing perplexed in the battle field. Where both, those who are with and against him are his own relatives. Where the blood to be shed, the losses and victories are all the same for whoever we hurt will ultimately hurt us.

Where you can see Bhisma pitamah pitted against you. The Pitamah on whose shoulders you have ridden your childhood. You can see Dronacharya ready to kill or be killed. The Guru who taught you to wield the bow and arrow you currently hold in your hands. And these are the people you have to defeat/to kill.

With me it's even worse for I find my rath in the middle of two armies, and I don't even know which army am I fighting for and why?

All I can think of in such a situation is to run from the battlefield to a quiet corner with Krishna and beg him to show me the way. For it seems much worthier to surrender to him than to slay those whom I love. To hurt them and thus get hurt myself.

Dispassion. Detachment. Perhaps those are the pre-requisites for any Mahabharata. Physical, mental or spiritual. I guess it always is inside out.

So perhaps this is Lesson 101. Watch the show. Do what you want to do (by letting the intellect ride over emotions). Trust him. And not ever speak your mind out.

I for one have opened my trap much more than is required in my life. And perhaps it is time to shut up and grow..

To look at life at a distance. And quietly dig the hole where the founadtion for the future is to be laid. One thing which I  have discovered of late is that more than where you dig, and who helps you dig, what is more imp. is that YOU DIG and long enough that a structure which shall be erected would last long enough and be able to withstand earthquakes, storms...and other unexpected calamities. And be a launching pad for operations in all directions...and of all kinds.

How and where life will lead you to discover your dreams is something which life chooses to keep a secret (perhaps thats what makes it worth living), all the while looking at how sincerely you are digging the well to your heart..your soul.

So....sshhh...dig...dig...dig

And keep watching life and its characters (even yourself) at a distance.

Rock On....Gain with Pain

Had an exhilarating weekend with Rock On, a long lost batchmate, Mumbai Meri Jan and the vibrations which follow a 20 something...!

In the end, what stuck on was ROCK ON !!

What a movie! So moving, so real.

Now what I do know though is that even though I was impressed in equal measure by the characters of Farhan Akhtar and the guy who goes on to head Channel 'V', I would vouch for the latter, for with lesser pain he get's a life and not to forget, a decent wife!

But what rubs in, after you settle back in office and back to a Farhan Akhtar like routine (well not as bad!!...just one screen..and in my case..I avoid numbers) is that to be either of the two, it takes a lot of pain and patience.

The movie doesn't show how the Channel 'V' head, aformer 'rocker' himself, and a competitor who lost out to Farhan's band with bad blood, went to head V. But one thing which I can say is that he managed to not let go his passion for music completely (V), avoided risk with an executive's life, probably the passion for music (not to mention a new found GF..Farhan's ex) drove him. The lady does have a few good words about him by the
end of the movie.

Farhan too eliminates risk, but takes on a bitterness which elevates him to a solid financial situation but his personal life sucks...and that's what the movie was about.

As for the music industry strugglers, like the film industry, they are a different breed, I have mt them and realized that I didn't have it in me. If you seek security, want a life (especially family life)..that's not the path. So my mind kind of switched off after I saw Arjun Rampal's wife selling fish and Rob having to wag his tail in front of Anu Malik.

Not that you do not wag your tail in the corporate world, but perhaps it's a little more elegant with a little more ROI (Investment = hard work+ass work+emotional).

And as a lady friend pointed out, Farhan's wife is anoyone's dream and hard to find in the real world but my belief is that it depends on where and who is searching. This gal seems an arranged marriage kind (by parents) as Farhan had kind of switched off his personal life after going to Delhi.

Now, in the educated, elite, professional, career-oriented lot we move around in, such gals are not to be found. I know a few but they are pretty desi, homely with different priorities in life.

Now what would such a girl do whole day when her better half is in office?

Well...the only solution which comes to me is a joint family where family and eventually kids give the lady a life outside of his husband. As for satisfying the urge to creativity..is

that she can be indulged in creating and shaping a new life (which is also creativity)

only thing the creativityis a biological and social one. But is that enough?

Perhaps that question can be answered by only someone who has been a mother. So I choose to stay shut on that point.

But somehow I just cant look at the person who brought me up and my brothers and say that she wasted her time or did nothing. To this day, in the worst hour of crisis, we look up to her and we can see the satisfaction of being there for her loved ones.

Now that's a lot of emotion but once again, that's my take on it.

Again..like men..there's gain with pain. Be it professional or personal..men or women.

How satisfied are professional women? I don't know. My stay in US for 2 years couldn't change my views about my mother and what gives her (or her family) happiness.

Now..that's a lot for one blog. So bye for now. Do watch ROCK ON !!

Let Life Lead

Sometimes, when we just let ourselves take some time off for ourselves, life overtakes us. And sometimes, that happens at such a breath-taking pace that we have no time left to think but just react or respond.

And that can be both good or bad. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have seen both sides of the coin in the last one year. The bad phase was slow and painful with each day taking the vitality out of me slowly but surely.

However, the "good" phase, so to speak (such adjectives being pretty relative in philosophical debates, though of late am very happy being on the terra firma, acknowleging my flesh and blood incarnation without denying it with some theory of 'maya' or Einstein's fundas), came in (and continues to !...and I thankfully and humbly pray that that the trend goes on...for the bad phase was looong..very..very...) in sudden jolts of lightning where there was just the light and sound, no choice or doubt, but a path so well lit that it left no ambiguity whatsoever in making the decision.

Of course, I read in one of Paulo Coelho's books that the devil lies in details, and me being a little nervous kind about such matters, often spoil the party by worrying about nitty-gritties, but still, the kick refuses to let the high go dry!

Perhaps, all the above passages could be summarized in one line. Am letting life lead as it throws in immense opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment as my grand illusions about the world and well-being become focused inside out. Bole to...the sick can't cure the diseased!

I guess, I'll call it a day here as I have this irritating habit of dragging on blogs forever and ever..

Adios !

Sojourn : Part 4

Life expands. Life contracts. Like the pulsating rhythm of the heart beat or the waves of the ocean, out of the singular consciousness, varied forms emerge in the dualistic existence and then in the same flow they disappear.

And all this happens, on it's own. As if wound by the clock maker of yore, who has set the rhythm of our lives and the rhythm of tyhe universe, long ago.

But in life, we assume control. We assume duality. We assign names, definitions and various other mental constructs for things which appear and disappear in the consciousness.

It's only in moments of thoughtlessness, of nothingness, of complete relaxation, that we see the way it IS and realize that in this play of God, we are mere observers, of the various shows which are simultaneously on, all around, interacting/crossing/transferring/destroying/creating/sustaining...each other, yet beyond their own volition or plans. On their own, as a result of the momentum which has set all things in motion...long ago. By the prime mover whom we give various names.

Yet, this realization dawns only in moments of rest and peacefulness, where we accept rather than try to control or judge all that comes across in our consciousness.

In this vast continuum of our consciousness, how it matters whether this or that happens around our bodies, especiall when the duration of our life spans or those events around us is infinitisimally small.

And yet I know that this same mind will turn around and revolt, and push and pull and forget all this 'gyan' by getting lost in activity and duality, assuming control and responsibility for illusions and irrelevant phenomena.

As if, within a life there are various bursts of duality and non-duality, like the millions of strands of DNA in our genes. May be that is all that there is to it, and yet for fun, the show must go on.

Gods, palying fools. :)

So be it.

And enjoying this current state of clarity and forces of truth and reality, forces of beauty and a spontaneous flow with ryhthm rather than stress, control and confusion.

Maya has consented to release it's grip for sometime..perhaps it's Shiv's blessings !

(Just returned from trips to two Jyotirlings - Bhimashankar and Tryambakeshwar, and other sites in Nasik ..)

Part 3

Read about half of a collection of stories by Premchand. It is always a good idea to look at the life and works of giants. It helps you relate with the size and enormity of world/life and promptly cuts you to size, puts you where you belong.

Such giants have walked the earth, yet so little has changed by their efforts alone. Premchand’s stories are like looking at life with a magnifying glass. Ordinary events, ordinary people, as real as they get, nothing supernatural or miraculous, no fundas, no gyan, just facts which say so much about life and people. You can see a lot and feel kinship and at times with your own insignificance/ ordinariness in the larger scheme of things.

This is the first time in my life that I am taking a serious look at Hindi literature of my own accord. And already I can feel so much closer to life and human emotions. DD used to have serials on stories like this. Mitti ke rang etc. Perhaps more stories can be based on them but I fear people will not be able to relate with them until and unless they are packaged rightly for the contemporary milieu.

It is funny how I want to share everything good that I come across with everyone. May be it is a Gemini trait and was the primary reason of getting into media. But I can see that it is a desire and makes no difference to the world what so ever. I might even end up harming the world. Now, I can seriously see how BEING there is more important that showing the way to get there. The latter means nothing without BEING there, and once you are THERE, nothing matters, things happen as they have to. For all you know, perhaps they always do!

It is only our illusion of control and choice which keeps us forever perplexed and worried about ways to be happy. Life IS. BE happy or not. That might be our only choice about it. Acceptance. Surrender. Blah..blah…

The other day a friend, promptly summarized my entire blog in one word. SURRENDER. So true! That guy is on a highway to… :-)

Coming back to Premchand, I have been thinking how his kind of writing can come only from observing life and people from a very close quarter and being pretty social in general. Now, in the current day and age, in buildings, individualized societies where you do not even know your neighbour’s name or recognize his face, can we look at life of others like Premcand did? May be if we limit our world to our colleagues in office for life today is just life in OFFICE and the corporation is your life.

Coming back to me..

I seem to have finally struck a rhythm with life and found a way to talk without anyone’s company! I am reading a novel, and as it spurs my own thoughts, I write (have written some 7 pages since morning!). Now I might even post this on a blog and there by interact with some friends whom I will threaten with dire consequences if they do not read the blog, or may be just keep it as a diary entry, talking to myself. And I listen to all these writers, Paulo Coelho, Prem Chand…for self-obsessed people like me, the only way to make us listen is to give us books. We often hear/listen to others very less.

Talking about others, I cannot forget an observation from someone that the purpose of life is INTERACTION (the whole theory about reason of creation by splitting the one consciouness-adavita to many-dvaita), and that everything else, all the work and all of life’s events are just to facilitate that. Now that often puts people like me in a dilemma for indiscriminate interaction is often harmful, to at least one party in question even if not both. Whom to interact with, how much, where and how? Just forget why and about what in order to keep things less complicated. The reason I raise the vast complex array of questions about something so seemingly innocuous as interacting (plain simple talking man!), is that interactions are the building blocks of relationships, and relationships are often the most essential building block of lives with all the emotions, attachments, expectation etc. (and all other psychological jargon you can recall) thrown in.

Very often, a wrong choice in any of these questions lands you in trouble for varying periods of time. Now one might suggest being spontaneous and just letting it BE, not thinking so much and all, and that would often make the interaction/relationship one of LOVE and a very true friendship, but very often even in these a little discrimination becomes necessary. If two people could truly interact/talk mindlessly, they would be closer to each other than anybody else in their lives, and they could be lovers or in some other relationship which comes quite close in intensity.

For now, I am happy looking at my interactions from a distance, trying my best to calculate and regulate them to the best of my ability. I have messed up far too often in them! :-)

Part 2

I have been struggling for a very long time to accept the saying, "At some time you have to stop dreaming what you want and start doing what you were born for." I think I heard that in a Hollywood movie.

Now, at the outset, this quote sounds, to say the least, disappointing. But anyone who has been under the sun for a few years on his own would realize that there is a lot that we want/desire/wish in life. Some of those things are downright fantasies with reality being as far away as is Kingdom Come in life. I mean, practically speaking, there is a lot that depends on things which are simply not in our control or if they are, we have to make superhuman efforts to ensure that ordinary frailties don't do us in.

For example, every kid on the block might dream of becoming a 'Fighter Pilot!' But with time, other truths dawn upon him and thankfully the Air Force does not even need so many pilots. Similarly, I once met a creative in an ad-agency who told me that he meets at least one person every day who wants to make a film!

That brings me to the second clause in the 'what to do' question. And that is WHY?

A lot of reasons can be attributed for this 'WHY' question. I happened to be watching 'Rang De Basanti' again yesterday and came across at least two major reasons in the film for driving us. Patriotism and love.

To make things more generalized, let us call these (truth/moral/principles/ethics), on the one hand and love, on the other. Now these are terms which are only fancied by glassy eyed kids according to practical people so other factors like MONEY (which is a BBIIGG one), professional satisfaction (intellectual/creative kicks we get out of using our grey matter) are other reasons which come readily to mind.

There are still others who are driven by the sole desire to serve others. Now that's a an infinitesimally small number of saints, for most of such people whom we know of only "ASSUME" that they are doing good, more often than not, knowingly or unknowingly they are just satiating some other inner desire/need.

Not digressing any further, we come back to the main question of 'WHY' in choosing what we do. For a lot of impractical fools like me, to live and die for just money, perks or the happiness of a select few (read family and friends) who claim to love us and whom be feel obliged to reciprocate or actually profess to love. Now lets look into this. As the Beatles said, 'Money Can't Buy Me Love' (and I would like to extend that to happiness), and very often when the money begins to drain out you truly understand the meaning of love and the the strength of relationships. Often, those relationships which last the strain of monetary struggle are those which would stay with you, at least for the lifetime, no matter WHAT YOU DO or HOW MUCH YOU EARN. They form those select coterie of people who are doomed to love you no matter what happens. God Bless Them and help them recover from their insanity.

But even these people, whom will be with us for at best a lifetime cannot be the reason for what you do because when you spend 10 hours a day working far from these loved ones, what matters is the 'WORK IN THOSE 10 HOURS' rather than anything else.

Other than dreams and fantasies (for which we might or might not possess the requisite skills or resources, or may be just the grit!), we do have some gifts, analytical or creative which help us have a living where after a certain number of compromises we can manage to create an environment to survive.

Coming to the most important part. What about happiness ? Remember, PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS !!

So is happiness a function of what we DO or who are/who we BE?

I apologize for throwing the readers from a so-far fairly practical line of thought into what is widely accepted as spiritual quandary.

From whatever little I have read or heard from people who manage to stay happy NO MATTER WHAT (and where, and when), happiness ain't a function of what you do, where you are, whom you are with (or not with), but just a state of mind, the length and intensity of which are directly proportional to your consonance with an element (which is very difficult to describe, and something over which I have been pondered over the last five minutes as I struggle to make it effable) which is at best described by an abstraction which the human mind chooses to call God/the Self or whatever you call that concept which beyond the intellect.

Having established, the most important human need in terms of something which almost sounds unattainable and even futile to think about at times, the fact is that all of us, irrespective of our religion (or even the fact whether we are agnostics or not) do strive in millions of ways for that state of mind which can be called best attuned to that Divine force.

Luckily for us, from whatever little I have read or observed, it is the intensity and sincerity and not the methodology which matters in this pursuit...of happiness. Meditation, zen, tao, sketching, painting, music, day-to-day work (!!...by the way that MORE THAN ANYTHING else), relationships and anything and everything which can be said to compose the fabric of life contributes in this pursuit and leads to paths (perceptibly and imperceptibly) which we walk consciously or in sleep walking state what the Indian scriptures call Maya and which we call reality (everyday life) and which Einstein described with these attributes, "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one."

What's more, for those of us who desire from the core of our hearts to live for something higher than which is offered by the monotonous daily humdrum of daily life, walking this path often makes us an instrument, often unknowingly, in the service of mankind. And someday, just by our presence we are able to bring smiles to the faces of our fellow beings, and I mean genuine heart-felt long lasting smiles of satisfaction and contentment rather than those which Close-Up commercials promise by pasting them on faces of beautiful (well paid) damsels.

So coming back to square-one, what to do?

Well, I guess, anything as long as your antennas are focused to THAT right frequency for the periods and durations of time where one can soak in enough of that 'Happy' element in order to last the rest of the day.

Other than what you do, how you do it, is widely believed to be inconsequential. I guess someone said that the 'Devil lies in the details.'

There's one more point I would like to touch upon before I terminate this rather LOOONG blog post. And that is, right and wrong.

I mean, there are some things which appear downright wrong while doing. For example, umm..let us say..killing beings etc. Now although that appears an extreme and a long continuum of such things could be listed which various people might find reprehensible to various degrees, the low down on this aspect appears to be that apparently even a butcher selling meat can be realize if he just focuses sincerely on his responsibility towards his family and the society, just as a butcher, as a son, as a brother, as a husband, as a father and all that which life makes us during the course of our lives.


And this, my dear friends comes right from Vedanta, the holy scriptures of Hindus which strictly talks against 'killing' and eating 'non-veg' and all other sins which a lot of people readily acknowledge. But apparently, even the Rishis of ancient times seemed to acknowledge what I read in one of Paulo Coelho's books, "It is not what goes inside men's mouths that is sinful but what comes out of it."

At this, I would like to stay full stop for this post.

:-)

Part 1

There are times in life when you can feel strongly and with evidence that things are not in our hands, that instead we choosing things in life, life chooses them for us. Such moments are both scary and relieving at the same time. While on the one hand, the presence of something HIGHER, a divinity greater than ourselves assures us that we can sit back and relax, on the other the uncertainty and our inability to understand the way life turns out leaves us perplexed. It in fact also makes us doubt ourselves, and the intentions of the divinity in question. Our faith and patience are put to the ultimate tests and every moment seems to squeeze an iota of life from you.

However surprisingly the void remaining after that at times might feel more alive than before if things appear to start making sense or appear favourable. Hope after all, as someone said, is the quintessential human illusion.

You never give upon possibilities and desires of the world until and unless you have burnt your mouth with everything which you thought of as a delicacy. This could be in professional or in personal life.

The sanskaras drive you on until by rubbing against every hardened corner of the material world they remain no more. And that is the void we all seek, consciously or not.

Meanwhile life goes on with the illusion of control in our hands, until some days when everything seems topsy-turvy and you do not even know whether to look up or look down at God. Whether to call him God or Satan. Now many religions would consider this statement blasphemous, Hinduism does not even have the concept of Satan, only demons. No ultimate negative black hole per se.

Whatever it may be, after a good night’s sleep (in my case even a not so good night’ sleep at times, this is being written at 4 am!), or soothing your nerves through some addiction, according to one’s liking or mood at the moment, (booze, sex, emotional attachments and support or Bhakti), you find yourself possessed of again some age old experience and you learn, or have to learn, to let it be. May be that was the reason in the first place.

And that brings me to the end of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ series of this blog – Part-I.

:-)