The self-emerging pattern of nature through 5 gram superworker

A new home in making, fabulous work of a tiny pair of greenish white-eyed warbler. A perfect mix of natural and human merchandise, thin strands of fibre, cobwebs and threadings. The olive backed sunbirds succeeded in a coup, but not this one. I spotted ha ha. Don't you think there is a supreme consciousness, a cosmic intelligence which pervades across species and phenomena all over the universe, driving all of us knowing unknowing to the actualization of little little milestones in the river that life is?

PS: The owners are unbelievably agile and dart off at bullet speed, cocking snook at my amateur efforts to have them as models for my funny photography. So I gave in. Also their tweets from a neighbouring tree had started to sound abusive. Feeling a Gatecrasher, I just took my nose out of their affair... anyway best of luck you warblers...

PSS: The story ended on a tragic note. Nature has xounter points. Oriental white eye is just 10 cm square tailed greenish bird with a significant white rinf around the eyes. The nest had been firmly glued like a tiny hammock cup, joining three broad leaves, a cosy home of fibres. The lady was seen sitting most of the time. Its white ringed eye visible under the leaf canopy. All seemed well. It appeared too small a world to be noticed by predators. With their slender pointed bills they flitted across the branches to enjoy flower nectar, guavas and tiny ants. They made feeble jingling notes. 

Then arrives the counter point. Greater Coucal, the clumsy, black bird with chestnut wings. I heard its deeply resonant coop coop coop coop in the morning. It was loitering around in the cluster of trees where our Bulbuls have their touny one. I don't think that is catchable anymore. Coucal steals eggs and feeds on lizards and tiny mice .It is very clumailc sticky on the ground. I chased it away. It flew very unqillungly. God knows how did it spot the tiny cup of the white eye. So there it was in the afternoon. I heard the dluffifl of feathers and saw it sneaking out like an expert thief. The tiny warblers just gave very feeble notes which hardly escaped out of the shrub. I checked the tiny cup nest. It was empty. Felt vwrv sad for the tiny creatures. Greed is bad. After a couple of hours I heard the panicked noted of the little birds and went out to see the greedy thief stuck to the leaves poking into the cup for more. It was so engrossed that it siddid mind me approaching at all. Well it's truly lousy. A thief has to be watchful. The heaigh was just at a ateikist range with my raised hand. Well, I had all the chance to kill it in one big swipe. But then you can not engage with a bird at your own human level. That isn't fair, even if it has committed a crime. To mother nature it's no crime. So I used only that much force that would make it really painful for a bird of that size, without permanent disability. So here I went. It fell down, and took to airs with a seriously painful shriek. Well, the only take away of my strike can be that it may not dare to come again to poke into the neat of spotted munia just abobe on the tree. I hope so. I expect him to learn a lesson or two. I know I shouldn't interfere inthe achems of rhinth. But then these birds are my friends, so I use my rights to interfere.

Existential intelligence

At the low tide, I left a trail of footsteps on the soft seaside sand. Then the high tide came and cleaned the slate for somebody's fresh journey. We just write the same lines over and over on the same slate. Life is one. It's not a noun. It is basically living. A throbbing and ever persistent verb. Throbbing in totality, driven by an ever expanding code of cosmic intelligence  which allows a bird weighing 10 grams, and insects weighing in milligrams, to accomplish what we cant do with our two kg brain. And existence lives through different things, phenomena, processes and characters. It's just a quizzical interplay of earth, water, fire, air and ether. 

Girinika: God bless you with the gift of a cow

"...large animals, particularly cows, are aware of their impending slaughter well before it happens. Consequently, they experience high stress levels, which generate a tremendous amount of acidic content in their systems. This, in turn, has its own adverse effects on those who later consume the meat." --Sadhguru in Inner Engineering.

Now I understand why cow-eaters face so many problems... especially the ones who do halal, torture, before slaughter because it is just implanting them with poison. Well, the debate should be kept beyond religion. It's basically what is good for the human system and what is not. The benefits of a live cow, as an integral part of the rural economy, are far more than a slaughtered one. In Rwanda, the gift of a cow, girinika, meaning god bless you with the gift of a cow, is helping in rebuilding a society ravaged by civil, ethnic and tribal wars. The moment two parties at loggerheads gift each other a cow, it is accepted as a truce and confidence building measure. The President there has started a girinika program which has revolutionized the meaning of rural development, using cow as a partner in the rural economy.

In the power game, humanely inferior always defeats humanely superior

"A bigger civilization is always defeated by a lower civilization. India was continuously defeated because of her higher civilization. People were more at ease, not in the mood to fight. They were enjoying life. Those who aren't enjoying life, they are ready to fight. If life is beautiful, you can bless everyone. If your life is in difficulty, in turmoil, you can kill, you can become destructive."

Osho

Why India only, now we understand why Tibet was gobbled up by an ever-hungry China. Now we understand why the people from a particular religion are ever-ready to kill. The only exception to the above seems to be America. But then possibly we shouldn't interpret technological advances as a mark of civilization.

Perils of cooking in aluminium utensils

Cooking in Aluminium utensils is risky for health. In simple words you can say it introduces slow poison in your food. According to researchers, cooking in Aluminium is not advisable. In India we even have a conspiracy theory about it. Most probably just a spin off of anti-colonial talk. They say that cooling in aluminium utensils was first introduced in the infamous cellular jail, Kala Pani jail, in Andamans by the British govt to slowly cripple the prisoners so that they won't be blamed with direct slaughter. And then the trend continued. Most of the modern day diseases have roots in Aluminium cooking, they say. Well, at least research has concluded that aluminium dissolved in the food during cooking gets deposited in brain resulting in Alzheimer disease. Our body basically doesn't require aluminium. So it is advisable to use stainless steel pressure cookers and other kitchen utensils where boiling is involved. 

Be the king in your small world

There are just dozens around us who have achieved more than us at the cost of far less struggle and effort than us. But there are millions who have nothing like us, even though they have struggled thousand times more than us. The numbers involved in this simple maths should make us proud and satisfied with whatever we have achieved and given by life. So smile, feel lucky and look at the small world, your own world, around you. It is bigger and better than you ever thought. Just that you have always been looking sideways to the taller structures. Don't worry the inhabitants over there are even more anxious than you. They have their own still bigger world to ogle at and feel sorry for themselves. You are a 'being', a phenomenon which can exist in the present. So simply be with the moment in your small world. That's what we call by being with your own self.  

Following the codes of existential intelligence

The tireless woman who is camera shy.

This woman-- I mean the one on the wire who is really shy and won't allow me to click her with a close up smile, forcing me to use some sister model of her's from the internet--is busy all day in knitting a little cup of love on the branch of our Parijat (night flowering Jasmine) for the new lives inside her. Well, best of luck soon to be mom, little red vented Bulbul! But then I have to keep a watch on the neighborhood goon also, the big rascally cat, as big as a leopard cat in the wild. I think my stick also needs to be in the scene somewhere...

Some sister of the one in the story, who is a more confident model.

PS: No need to mention that her husband is a loafer and does less work, fools around more. Possibly in the guise of warning tweets it flirts with the lady birds around. Well, not that scandalous because all men are like that. He is just true to his salt. So forgetting about him we can talk a bit about red vented Bulbul in general. They tentative smoke brown birds double the size of common sparrow and have partially crested black head which gives them a semi-hawk stern look. There is a very attractive crimson patch below the root tail. Their white rump is very prominent in flight. They can be very angry for their size. I was wondering about the shape and location of the nest. It doesn't look too safe. But then possibly they are confident of defending the citadel.  

The home...a cup of rootlets...sweet home.. waiting for eggs.

PSS: All well so far with the usual struggle. Chased away a cat many times. It has stopped visiting. Ironically there are always counterpoints in nature. So you have the eggs and you have Shikra, a small hawk bird of the region. At noontime I heard the parent couple's panicked notes and tweets followed by ruffling of wings in the branches. I just ran out exactly at the moment the hungry hawk was trying to perch on the delicate branches for a belated egg breakfast. It flew away and watched from a nearby tree. I loitered around to increase the morale of the defending force. It made attempt again and due to my being still ready for the job it had to fly away. Saw it again the next day and was sure of its success. Then prayed that its hunger be quenched somewhere else, on a dead animal preferably. Thankfully haven't seen it since then. The nest is very small and looks a weak fort--little did I realise the couple's pugnacity in defending even a weak fort--so draped a piece of cloth around, leaving a hole for the birds to sneak in, making it a better home. In any case mother nature can do without our discretion. But then I have to take some credit. The same old human malady. So I presume that possibly the hawk got duped in taking it as some human design to capture it. I have to take my words hitting at the father's laziness. He has earned my respect in many regards. While the mother is in the creative process of managing the nest, the man has been keeping a stern sentry watch from the vantage points in all this heat. I often see him perched on the top end of a rusted out-of-use antenna pole. Even with the hawk, 5-times bigger in size, it gave all that a father can. It fluffed its feathers to look larger and made cantankerous noise to distract the predator. It kept on going very close to the enemy and toe him away with the bait of a larger meal. What won't parents do for their children! He is more free with crows who are also at least five times bigger. He just doesn't allow them to sit anywhere on the surrounding trees, least they spot his family. The more I look at it, the more I am sure of the ingrained divine intelligence each and everywhere. Whenever he is having a row with a crow, tweeting vivacious abuses at a furious pace, the group of house sparrows, warblers and sunbirds add to the chorus, forcing the larger bird to leave the scene in indignation and irritation. Elsewhere, the collared dove looks silently with her mummed up silence and majesty. The cantankerous babblers just babble in a group possibly chasing a cat or even some little snake. Sternly professional mynah go with an air of well meant business. Peacocks, exiled by pesticides in the fields, sing mourning songs in the village. But who cares about the multi-coloured wonder of nature. Monsoon has been normal thus far, so everything is richly green. Butterflies go with business among the bougainvillea flowers who bloom to wildish proportions. And most importantly, I see the parents cargoing insects, grass seeds and worms into the nest. Possibly hatchlings are there, one step further. I can hear very faint chirping. Yea, new life! A new beginning in the stream of existence which links all of us. Life is just one common force driven by cosmic intelligence and it blooms in endless forms and avatars. Another drop of existence manifesting in the sea of existence. Well, best of luck Bulbuls! Let's hope all goes well.

Stay away and respect my privacy. 

PSSS: Life from close quarters, so open, transparent, innocent, vulnerable and optimistic at the same time. Their beaks are always open. The parents are busy throughout the day, still it falls short. The beaks are always open. They have to eat relentlessly, grow as fast as possible and beat the moment that may undo it all. 

Out of the shells and shaped out of the fluid

A squirrel lets loose a chittering chorus. A group of parrots go over with a fruitful shriek. A tatihiri (lapwing) goes on a trumpeting hoot, possibly happy for its correct monsoon forecast. A butterfly darts from bougainvillea to motia to mogra to rajnigandha to sunhair. There are more birds than a decade back and that gives some hope that mother nature isn't totally angry at us.

PSSSS: It has been a roller coaster week. Lots of noise. Well, the hatchlings have jumped out of the nest. All that incessant feeding bears fruits a bit quickly from human standards. There is no pause at this level in nature. One miss, and it's gone. Saw one of them in the shrub below the nest. The parents never fall short of nibbling at crow's feathers whenever they happen to be in the near vicinity. The father especially doesn't allow any bigger bird to perch on any nearby vantage point which may expose the tiny hatchling. They are all day putting out different sounds to communicate in a mysterious way. The language for survival. Presently they object even to me whenever I am nearby. I respect their ownership of the tree. In the scheme of things they own it before me. I don't know about the other hatchling, may be it's there also in the shrubs, may be it hasn't survived. Well, I am not looking for it either, because whenever I do they abuse spiritedly and I feel like an intruder in the scheme of nature. Let's hope this hatchling takes its first flight in the next couple of days. All the best little one/ones!

From a soft tiny ball of meat to a handsome toddler.

PSSSSS: Well, it has been a happy ending. The little one stayed on the tree, after coming out of the nest, for couple of days. Remained completely subdued, glued to a branch for two days while the parents ferried food. On the second day it drizzled almost throughout the day. It stayed like a cute little ball under a cluster of leaves. It even jerked its feathering and coat to shake off water. Well, then possibly it got bored. In the evening it stopped drizzling and away it went on its first sortie under a heavy shadow of clouds. Due to the monsoon everything has a double foliage. It will help him. I can see the parents loitering around on a cluster of keekars nearby. More than the little one, I am sure of the parents' ability to defend it. So I don't see any big hassles. They are no longer bothered about the tree and the nest which they defended so stoutly almost for a month. They possess a thing in totality unlike we humans who do it in fragments. Now they possess that cluster of lush green keekars. I can see the father perched on that dead keekar tree at his sentry point. Well, the world is better with at least one, and hopefully two, Bulbuls. Well done you husband and wife.

PSSSSSS: Even a prickly keekar appears so luxurious in the monsoon season. The little one must have been in the cluster of trees, a larger world, learning the tricks of the trade. I could see the parents loitering around very cautiously for the next two  weeks. They have a stern look and stout defenders of their rights for their size. Just watching them still busy, I can surmise that they still have the little one somewhere in the branches to get them fulfilling the parental duties.But now they look more relaxed, a clear signal that the young bird is growing well. After exactly two weeks of its first flight to a bigger cluster of trees, this breezy morning, I see the fruits of their struggle. It is growing boy or girl. In any case, they don't bother about such issues. Their duty is full not fragmented. It has a slight plumage and a slight crown on its black head. It is sitting on a high branch. And parents tweet from a distance. There it goes with a free swirl followed by the proud ma and pa. They aren't concerned about the nest. They own everything and nothing at the same time. Well the tree has new tenants. A pair of spotted munia. The already existing nest is cosy still but they don't care. They have made a new globular grassy citadel still higher. These are smaller birds and need a better accommodation. A bit below is another world. A tiny hammock cup nest of a white eye. There it sits sternly with its white band around the eyes. The more I see, the more I realise the design of existential intelligence. These birds weigh a few grams and look their feats. The codes of existential intelligence are very smartly written. Salutes to the supreme power!

PSSSSSSS: THERE is no indivisibly aloof life. There is just an ever evolving and transforming process. All apparent forms are just part and parcel of the ever expanding stream of energy. Individuality is just apparent on the surface because of the certain frequencies behind the shapes. But you still you feel elated when you see a milestone reached in the process. Here is the family.

The happy family on a dry crowning branch against skies overlaid with monsoon clouds 

They have build up the bridge to the continuation of "life and living" from their tiny point in the infinite scheme through their selfless work of the last few weeks. The father, as they are, is aloof, to the left. Ever pampering mother, like they are everywhere, is nearby to the right. And in the middle is the prince/princess. The fruitful outcome of nature. The little one is almost the size of its mother. I could recognize it only because it still has the childish manner of opening its beak and shakes its wings expecting to be fed an insect. It is gradually opening to the free flight in an open world. It darts quite sharply, a bit erratically though, and is seen out of the cluster of trees where it has been hiding for the last two weeks. They are still concerned about their little one. And they will continue dutiful to their duties till the day when it will take to the skies of its own.  The father takes liberties to be off the scene. Must be definitely flirting somewhere. The mother, on the other hand, is just busy with single point focus. I cannot see any other priority for her right now. She makes sounds particular to their species and type. The little one is being trained in different tones of sounds, for alerts, socializing and who knows what other coquettes of the birdie world. I even heard it imitating and responding to her. The other day, she nibbled at a guava on the courtyard wall and the young one looked keenly. It also imitated its mother and took beakfuls of guava. Must have really liked it because it continued greedily till a drove of sparrows landed and teased it by pecking at its tail. It then flew away with visible irritation. Now they take even bigger sorties of the open chunk of free skies. But off and on I see the mother and kid, and sometimes the father also, on the dry branches of a dead keekar tree from where the father scouted the skies for predators during the nesting phase. Well, it has been a happy story. Well done Bulbul pair. And best of luck little one!

Dig up your treasure

It’s a beautiful, fresh morning. A fox is on hunt in the forest. The sun is verdantly casting long shadows from the east. The fox gets drunk with ego and pride looking at its long shadow. “I must be really big and powerful to cast such a huge shadow! So little rabbits and tiny rats aren’t worthy of being in my big body! I have to hunt an elephant at least. That will do justice to my true status and standing.” So all through the morning it roams around to get an elephant. Many a small preys cross its path, but swooning with ego and pride it just ignores them. It’s not before the noon time it sees an elephant. The sun is hot and brightly overhead. The fox stands in the elephant’s path. But before it even realizes what is happening, the elephant swipes it away like a dust particle with its trunk. It lands at a distance very painfully. It now runs in panic. While running it looks around its feet and sees the tiny shadow clinging to its scared self. “How come I’ve become so small after the fall?” it wonders.

Holding onto the impermanent elements on the shifting stage of life is the cause of pain and suffering. The externalities are the moving shadows. They give the impression that they define you. But how can such fickle, impermanent, transient, fleeting, temporary things and phenomena be the component of our real self? Peace and happiness lie in connecting with the essentially real self, the substance, the permanent entity. It lies inside all of us. But is of no use unless and until we spot it, observe it, realize and acknowledge it. But if it’s not recognized, it’s almost of no use like the beggar who died wretchedly on a hidden gold treasure.

A beggar died in most wretched poverty in his hut. The place just reeked of misery and suffering. After cremation they just couldn’t bear up with the stench, so decided to dig up the place to remove the signs of misery. To their surprise there was hitherto unfound golden treasure under the hut. There was gold just a few feet under and a man who had met a slow, prolonged, painful death due to poverty on it.

Same is the case with the treasure trove of our real self. Find it, acknowledge it, nourish it to be happy and be at peace, or meet a painful, discontented death. Much as we run after the shadows, the centre, the pivot lies neglected. Shifting shadows never give permanent joy. So go down, unearth and lay bare the treasure you are sitting upon!

The Real Story

Forget about rockets, nukes, missiles, bombastic egos, skyrocketing sensex, high rises, malls, fashion, militaries, cars, bla bla bla. To me the tiniest story of love and compassion is bigger than any other story on earth. The stork with a plastic ring on its beak, an apt testimony to our crimes on Mother Nature.

There are people who aren’t looking too high. They just look around for simple things. But their eyes are special. They have love and kindness. So this good soul clicks a two-and-half year old, male black-necked stork at Basai wasteland, some 34 kms from Delhi. On zooming the picture, the birder found a plastic ring stuck around the bird’s beak.

The Wildlife department set up three teams involving their own officials and people from Bombay Natural History Society. Apart from this, nature and bird lovers from Delhi and Haryana also volunteered. Hundreds of compassionate souls actually roamed around hundreds of kilometers in all this heat to undo a portion of our plasticized sins. It took these soldiers of love 5 days to save the bird. In the last leg of the search, two young boys from Haryana, Rakesh Ahlawat and Sonu Dalal, ran for 4 kms to catch the bird just before the jaws of death waiting nearby in the form of hunger and thirst. Aren’t they and the others involved in the search real heroes? They didn’t do it for a small news item in the newspapers. They did it for love. To them a bird’s life matters. As long as there are such people, hope remains.   

Look at the two pictures. The transition from tragedy to motherly care. This, to me, is the real story. But then somebody is eating iftaar delicacies and mocking the well intentioned fitness video of the PM. World is full of idiosyncrasies. High time we start undoing some of our collective sins. Look at the pictures: the ring of death and the cradle of life. The first, our own doing, the second, some undoing on our part. Which one is preferable?

The twilight: no light, no dark

If you want to swim, accept drowning. If you want to fly, accept falling. To win, accept loss. To fulfillment, accept emptiness. The duality is bound by an unbreakable cord. Pull one, and the other one comes dragging. A win is not a win completely. You are losing something also, in some for or the other. No flight is a flight solely. It involves a fall also in here and there. Swimming isn’t floating only. It involves intervals of drowning also. Accept the so called opposite, antipodal, the perceived enemy and the threat. Don’t run away from it. Success is not the absence of defeat. It’s only accepting defeat, learning further and moving on. Accept death and you live. Surrender and master the ownership of your thoughts, actions and emotions.

The tale of two poor idiots

The urge to dominate, the ambition of power, the desire for prestige, these are all driven not by strength, but by some inherent weakness, fragility, fear and imperfection. There is an inherent imperfection which drives grossly selfish acts. Stalin had very short legs in comparison to his upper body. When he sat on a chair, he looked damn funny as his legs fell short of the ground. We need not insult humanity anymore by even retelling the atrocities he perpetrated on his own people. Changez Khan won half of the world and slaughtered countless innocent human beings. He was so insecure of his death and mortality that he went on rampage to forcibly plant his biological seed across Asia. By an estimate, almost 8% of the Mongoloid people draw their genetic line from him. But even this large scale cropping won’t give him peace and security. He was so scared of his death that fearing some sabotage he never slept at nights. He just went paranoid and one night ran out of his tent, tripped, fell on an iron peg and died like a stray dog dies accidentally.

The mountain and the lake

There is an old ascetic staying very happily under a banyan. No material possessions, almost naked and no desires. The force of his wisdom is spreading far and wide. The King gets so impressed that he touches the saint’s feet and overcome by huge pangs of reverence for the sage asks the old mendicant to come and stay in his palace. He is sure that the ascetic is going to say a loud “no”. But then very surprisingly the old sage says “yes”. So it becomes a big news and the King is even feeling duped. The old friar comes to stay in the palace. In irritation the King is pouring more and more worldly comforts around the mendicant who never shows any unwillingness to roll over more and more in comfort. The sage is accepting all the worldly facilities on offer. The King’s agitation is turning into burning jealousy day by day. He starts condemning the sage as an imposter who has now forgotten all his wisdom after staying in the palace. The King’s anger reaches a breaking point and he condemns him as a disgrace in the name of monkhood and banishes him from the luxurious palace. Nothing changes in the old monk. He smiles and says, “Ok King, as you wish! I was just fulfilling your wish to offer me luxury.” Smilingly the old sage prepares to leave the King with a blessing and a little sermon:

“I stayed in your palace but your palace didn’t stay in me. I am not a lake, I’m a mountain. I enjoy the water falling all over me, cutting my sides, kissing the trees on my slopes. But I am not possessive to hold the waters back. I simply allow it to flow down. I don’t hold. I don’t pull back. I just let it be as it is supposed to be. The lake is hollow. It craves for fullness. It wants more and more water. It has to hold. It has to collect. It is attached to collection. But the water will in any way flow away. So there is pain at the exit. Hence it’s forever looking upland for more and more water. I allow the flow, so enjoy the process, the mix of past, present and future. The lake holds. It suffers. It hardly enjoys its present, its being.”

Elixir of life and curse of death

Creation has just one source, single point of focus. Elixir of life and curse of death spring from the same source. The nectar and the poison originate from the same place. Life’s shadow is death, and death’s shadow is life. The perceived duality is a mental image projected in vacuum as we peer through the lens of “ego”, i.e., helpless bondage to the outermost layer, the grossest level of our material existence. The latter stands as the bridge to the shaky walk this way or the other. Break the bond and these drift away into non-existence. Love is tied to hate. And our “ego” is the rope, the bridge holding the two extremes of duality. Clinging to the two extremities, we have the option of treating one as the substance and the other as the shadow. If your ego allows love to be the substance, then hate turns a shadow. And vice versa. But in treating hate as the substance, we contradict the basic principle of nature. Hate is an exception, love is the rule at the cosmic level. Endless swathes of cosmic tranquility into fathomless depths cannot sustain without inherent love, peace and harmony. By hating we are putting a roadblock, a speed-bump in the path of infinite space-time continuum.  Through love we speed up the cause of evolution. In choosing love and the elixir of life, we add to the inherent cosmic harmony. In hating we add to the cosmic explosions and accidents.

Shadows under the light

There is no perfect darkness,

and hardly complete light,

Not totally good

and perfectly bad either,

Darkness stands because

the light is at some distance,

And light means

the shadows are yet to crawl near,

Here lies the challenge for goodness,

because bad is just a bit away.

The times when almost everything was pardoned

Old times had their own good bad charms. You just can’t afford to be judgmental. In the region where my parent state stands presently, there was this Nawab of Daulta near the present town of Beri. Well, the man was a religious enthusiast. He released even the murderers if they converted to Islam. So what do you say?  

Then there was this communist chap, Prakash Singh Dujana. Even politics was simple during those bucolic days. He won’t think too much before proclaiming at the rally, “I need to convince only the Jat voters. The lower castes will come along by default like a street dogs comes with ticks on its ears.” Someone said, “You don’t have a single vote.” Our politician was one-eyed. Expertly and confidently he pointed out someone in the audience similarly placed on the vision front, “There is my brother in half vision. He at least can’t ignore me through his single eye!” Then he realized another advantage and quipped, “Ten girls from my village have been married here. And they are very social and pleasing personalities. I have faith in them. They must be in a position to influence hundreds of men around!”

There was then this old man. Travelling in his bullock carts at night, he would take long detours away from any type of light visible on the horizon. “This light attracts thugs, robbers and ruffians. This is not light. This is the path of sin,” he used to say. Well, he would have preferred to keep the whole world in darkness at nights.

So those were the days, when the best to the worst was put in the same basket and weighed in the scale and valued at the same price. And nobody got unduly jittery. Those were the times of acceptance I suppose!

Be your own champion

What is there to win for you? If you cannot win a gold medal at the Olympics, who has stopped you from enjoying the game in your local park? Nobody! Only we ourselves deprive us of the moments which could have fetched unqualified happiness to us.

We don’t enjoy because we look at the end, the gold medal, and totally ignore the process--the present--of playing.

So what if you can’t be the handsomest man and the prettiest woman on the earth! But who stops you from getting decked up to be the best for your resources and looks? There is no scale of beauty, we create one on the bases of our complexes. Nature made all of us different in appearance. Nobody holds the copyright on beauty. It’s a freebie lying there dirt cheap to be claimed by one and all.

Accepted that you can’t own a Jaguar. But who stops you from enjoying the pleasant drive in your old car while nature is at its kindest and the weather is applauding at its best?  

Long before destiny, society and governments arrive to rob us of our claims to happiness, it’s we ourselves who shut the door ourselves. We are basically self-fuckers, always pulling down our own pants to shame our own selves.

Expansion and contraction

A raindrop in the ocean,

and a balloon in the air,

One mixing with the whole

to become complete and happily spread out,

The other capturing a part of the hole

to egotistically confine for a specific, limited self.

A simple remedy for thousand ailments

Raise awareness. Work on it diligently. It gives you a nobler heart and more controlled mind. It’s a practice much like you build your physical strength through regular workouts. Natural instinct, almost similar to being inclined to be lazy, is to be caught unaware. It’s nothing short of blindness, just like going into a dark tunnel. Once you cannot see, you are no longer responsible for your actions.

Evil has roots in unawareness. Awareness is a disinfectant. A human being, while being fully aware, can’t kill, rape, rob or fight. It’s simply impossible to be aware and be at your worst at the same time. Goodness flows from awareness. It’s simply being in the warm light where you feel better and see everything crystal clear.

There is a fountain of happiness inside. It lies dormant under the crust of fears, lies, illusions and ignorance. All these are bred by unawareness. To sharpen your awareness you need to do the spadework. A lot of unearthing required. You need to dig. Stop, take a pause and dig again. It needs a long look within.

With just knowledge you can walk on the crust. It makes you simply competitive, wherein you want to win at any cost. It pushes you into a zone of being terribly self-centered. No wonder you become less humane.

Awareness breeds wisdom. You reach the source of happiness. Therein you just don’t run to your destination stampeding over the lesser things along the path. You have empathy and you care for the consequences of your actions.  

Unawareness is the root cause of pseudo-illnesses of the mind. In the long term these even turn into real physical ailments.

The soldier of peace

If avoidance of fight and quarrel is cowardice and escapism, then biting back a dog that has bitten you is bravery. If running away from fire is defeat, then standing in front of a speeding car is bravery.

Acceptance doesn’t mean defeat. It means taking control of yourself, sympathize with the self, giving yourself an understanding pat on the back, pause, sit down, rest and allow the storm to pass over. And then you see the light. Believe me, storms burn out too fast. And peace drags moments to eternity.  

When you get caught in the whirlpool of adverse situations, the more you struggle, the more are the chances of drowning. The perilous eddies are most dangerous on the surface. But sometimes allowing yourself effortlessly to be sucked in gives you a chance to slip out of the vortex, because the base is very narrow. Similarly, problems have an apparent broad surface, but in reality have a very tiny base below the surface. So don’t choose to waste yourself on the surface of issues and routine headaches. Just dive down. There you see the reality. Most of the seemingly mammoth problems eddy out of a very small, funny base.

So the cool soldier, be on your guard, lower your head and dive to survive and see your glorious sun some other day at some other point.

Repose, rest and creative imagination

Don’t be in haste, don’t run too fast, for in running too fast, always looking at your destination, you lose the real charm of your journey. You miss the real fruits that were placed along your path. You hardly realize the real boons coming across your path. Is it, in any way, better than a blind run? And mind you, no destination is defined just in itself, something lying at a distance in abstract. Every destination is the sum total of the experiences coming across the way.

So cool down, take a pause, and move restfully with respectful awareness. The things that light up your awareness at each step are as important as the final destination to which you mean to reach. The trees, birds, floating clouds, gentle breeze, sunshine, ponds, rivers, nice people, charming conversations, and what not. Your each step carries the prospects of the pearls of happiness provided you slow down your time. The time which is yours, defined by you, not by the clicking hands of the clock. Your time obeys you, not the vice versa. You can slow it down with your increased awareness. Stretch each second on the enlightened curve of awareness. Time then obeys you, giving you more in seconds than you ever watched and experienced in whole days.

Do you think a journey is accomplished by the running force you propel into? Think again if you say yes. It’s not possible to run forever. A run has to depend on rest to sustain itself. Do you think the accelerator paddle in your car takes you to the destination? No! It’s the brakes intervening to give restful pauses for safety to give meaning to your speed, to make it an organized run instead of a mad rush ever accelerating and crashing into some fatality.

The break, the pause, the rest, these are the basic ingredients to turn any random movement into a meaningful, assured, safe journey taking us to some destination. Miles and miles of mindless dash without breaking, restful pauses are meaningless crazy jump into the desert ending in painful mirages.

As you run without pause, rest and awareness, and with heedless hurry, you stress yourself out. This stress and tension kills the imagery. All tensed up and stressed, looking anxiously at the destination far-far away, you lose that dreamy imagery which makes each step a victory in itself. Do you think life is meaningful without restful reflections and creative imagination? It simply isn’t. If not now, you realize it later when unfortunately it is too late.

So guys watch your step. And look around you. Countless things and phenomena await to enrich you. These are the things which make your journey fruitful and meaningful in the true sense. The destination stands defined only in terms of the process of journeying and the experiences gained alongside. And when you reach your destination as someone different, almost a victorious king, from the one who began the journey, it’s only the experiences before the final goalpost which have turned the scale in your favour.

The nutshell is: Enjoy the journey fella. Don’t just close your eyes to the surroundings thinking about the destination where you presume to become happy some day in future. Forget it. No destination can give you happiness if you haven’t been happier while journeying.

Happy journey!