The seven spiritual laws of success by Deepak Chopra

One seed contains the potential of a whole forest. These 9000 words in this small pocketbook comprise a glimpse of the infinite and its day to day reflection in our lives. Explore your own space and nature within the infinitely dynamic exchange of matter in the singular stream of primordial energy shooting off in countless directions, carrying fixed laws and supported by infallible universal intelligence.

Love notes of a lonely bird

Oriental magpie robin's monsoonal love notes. The long drawn love notes are flying in air to catch the attention of an interested female. The guy is so absorbed in his love search that I reached just 3 feet from it. Only then it realised that there are more important things than love and irritatingly flew away to continue its mate searching song from a nearby tree.

The fort-maker on a rainy day

It's hot and humid, the sun sweltering over rain-lashed earth. There is a well-digger in my yard. Sweating it out since early morning. The sand wasp works more efficiently than a human earth mover. No noise, no pollution. Simply going in and coming in reverse with a sand ball tucked between its snout and the foreleg pair which it uses with the efficiency of hands. Freshly hued damp yellow sand growing up like a tiny mound. 

It's unmindful of me taking a picture from a close quarter. Given its single-minded focus, I wonder I may have a tiny hill and a spring--because water table is very high in rainy season--in my yard. Best of luck well digger. But please don't dig too deep to make a hole for a small snake to fit in.

PS: on further enquiries I find it's a friendly insect... doesn't aggressively bite like bees. Now I see why it's unmindful of my presence so near its sandy altar. It also preys upon mosquitoes and houseflies. So continue bro, lay down a long tunnel for your larvae and then prey upon our common enemies. In full support with you. Cheers!

PSS: in the video it's closing the gates of its fort, for new life, new cycle. While closing the gates, it even took a few breakfasty bites at a couple of ants also. Possibly it had missed breakfast today. After closing the gates it hovered over the mound with the elated buzz of a triumphant US military hawk helicopter. It has left a little depression around the gate and gone for the time. Not to loiter around I m sure. There is something in store in its scheme, which I cannot understand at the time. And I am proven right. It's never chalta hai attitude in nature unlike humans who take shortcuts and apartments and bridges collapse. The sand wasp had gone out to get some preys which it collects nearby under leaves. To keep its hole safe and guarded in its absence, it had put up a temporary earthwork by its opening. Coming back it removes the part time gate and gets into business again. It will lay eggs and leave food there. The larvae will eat, grow big and pop out into the world.

The fort-maker scraping a depression around the freshly dug cave-mouth to close it temporarily during its absence

PSSS: So that turned out to be its modus operandi: closing the fortress and temporarily, leaving an oblong depression around the opening, leaving the scene, and come back again after a couple of hours to start the task again. In the afternoon it rained cats and dogs, a furious rain storm which jolted even the farmers and big trees. After the storm I saw the  site lashed by the rains, the small depression around the opening filled with sand and the sand mound washed away. I thought it was over. In such a stormy blizzard the little insect must have been blown away to a far place, I thought. Or most probably it was even dead. But then the tough taskmaster showed that it was still around despite the storm. The next day I see again the trademark little depression around the hole mouth and gates temporarily shut. Well done!

Back to business after the floods.

Closing the gates of its fort again.

Some sweetly humid moments on a rainy day in the countryside

Life was never greener and more colourful in my small yard. Luxurious green of Harsingar, motia, jasmine, duranta, guava, Kari patta, Tulsi, murva and the ubiquitous sadabahar blooming out of proportion. Well, the rains have been good. Butterflies dart around, flirting with flowers and their mates amid airy swirls. Even the irritatingly prickly and boring keekars are luxurious green like a new bride. There are more birds. Breeding in the safe and overgrown greenery. I could see even a kite hovering in silent, serene majesty, its wings spread out in embracing comfort of the mother nature. Even in the countryside the sight has become a rarity and I cannot remember many during the past decade. So it's a positive sign for the birdie world. There are two couples of Oriental magpie Robins chhrrring around. The bulbul family is still around, improvising new and new calls. The mother bulbul is very possessive of its offspring and entails it all the time. Bee eaters sit silently and swoop suddenly to catch flying insects. One overzealous bee-eater swooped down on a dragonfly and sat on a dry mulberry branch, the prey bigger for its beat, thinking over what to do now. It then started beating the struggling bray on the branch, striking its on both sides by rhythmically moving its neck sideways. It appeared more like bird yoga. The wire-tailed swallow family is often seen with their swift dives and faint chips. There are lots of flying insects. So the young fellows are being fed well. Tiny tailor-bird tweets with best effect among all. A lovelorn male Indian Robin is persistently sending love notes to attract a mate. The other day it was drizzling and the lonely bird kept sitting on a high dry branch in the rain and continued with its pining notes. Well, let's hope lady luck smiles on it soon. The unperturbed stoicism of the dove pair is inspiring to a meditator like me. The babblers and crows are noisy though. The stern looking mynah always appears with an air of aloof, single point focus on her own affairs. Another pair of spotted munias has erected a new nest in Parijat tree's high branches. And the slow pace of life unfolds in its rustic majesty in the countryside.

If the tree is cut, you too will suffer in your science-derived cocoon

There is a system of goodness. The simplest code nature shows is of unified and interdependent co-existence. All things, phenomena, life processes and transformations give and take from the larger system. In simple terms, nothing can exist in isolation in this universe. Our little environment is supported by the earth, the earth is supported by the sun, the sun by larger suns, they in turn by galaxies, and the latter by super-galaxies, and so on and so forth. There is absolutely no such thing as individualism in nature. It’s all a collective behemoth, ever expanding in more and more transformative ways. So how can our very own happiness come from our own limited self, concerning and defined by just our little fights and brawls in the arena of life? We just take fractions of happiness from the bigger pool. Happiness is never complete, or you can say just cannot happen, if it is confined to the limits of the individual self. There are happy families in happy societies and happy individuals in happy families. You simply cannot have happy individuals in an ant-swarm of unhappy society comprising unhappy families. And you cannot have a happy society surrounded by an unhappy ecosystem. You simply cannot. And if you think that the conveniences created science are the modes of happiness, then you are mistaken. These are mere utilities. Utilities are just contributors to happiness like countless other things. You have cars, then you have pollution, and your lungs suffer, simply because trees are suffering. It’s just like everything and everybody is unhappy and suffering in a forest fire. In a flowery luxurious garden, on the other hand, everybody and everything is happy and peaceful. We are happy or unhappy as a collective unit, not individually. Well, this is how it is, if you consider the real substantial meanings of peace and happiness. The rest are simply temporary delusions, nurtured under the mistake of taking some scientific conveniences as the destinations of happiness, which they are not, they are simply some of the means of convenience. So nurture this habit of connecting to the environment around you. The natural environment is the base of our struggle and sustenance. So see the processes of life and learn the art of miraculous interdependence. And come out of this delusion that we humans can be happy and unhappy in isolation in our modern-day scientific cocoons.

Fears are directly proportional to the doubts we have

A sword fighter has a beautiful wife. She is in awe of his reputation and is almost daunted by the force of his persona. She respects him, but love is missing in the secret chamber of her heart. As it happens, she falls in love with somebody outside her marriage. As if that is a small problem, to make it still worse the lover happens to be their servant. Lies and deceit can be hidden, but love has the natural propensity to shine like sun from behind the clouds. It comes to the light. That is its nature. As per social norms, love usually stands out scandalous. The offended husband challenges the servant for a duel, taking it for granted that he will surely kill the illicit lover, thus giving him death and earning more laurels for his swordsmanship as bonus. The deed will not reek of cold-blooded revenge and his motive to kill the servant will lie buried under the fair game of duel. So it is supposed to be a sure death for the poor servant. The sword fighter hides his revenge and anger under the art and craft of his swordsmanship. Most importantly, he is sure of victory, because by the logic of it, how can it be otherwise, pitted as he is against a man who has just picked up the scabbard from his famed walls to clean it. And he being a master swordsman whose reputation chimes across the four corners of the state. The servant is thus sure of his death. He has accepted his fate, death. When you are eying victory, you are also eying safety to yourself from the corner of your eyes. And you have fear also, because without that the sense of victory cannot sustain. With a sense of victory you just cannot be fearless. There is something to fight for and achieve and for that you have to remain alive. This breeds fear. But the servant has accepted death and failure. His acceptance is hundred percent. He has no doubt about it. And when there is no doubt, you become fearless. The swordsman isn’t totally free from fear because his certainty about his victory falls short of the servant’s certainty of his defeat and death. He isn’t as sure of his victory as the servant is of his defeat. So, irrespective of the fighting caliber, the servant is more fearless of the two, simply because he is under less doubt. In his fearlessness he decides to let loose all madness in him before his death. He doesn’t hate the opponent. He isn’t angry. His acceptance of death enables him to give all to life before death. The sword-fighter on the other hand cannot give all in the fight, because he is fighting to save respect, prolong life, take revenge, and all these with further expectations from life. Life itself means fear. The offended husband takes maneuvers as per the art of sword-fighting. In pre-death fearless madness, the lover strikes with sword like he is striking with a stick. To all the conventional strokes of the sword-fighter, he hits back with the most awkward and unorthodox ones. Fearlessness in his eyes creates fear in the opponent’s eyes. The servant kills the master! Why? Because he is sure of his death, and because the master isn’t that sure of his victory! How can he be? He simply cannot. He is fighting to save a lot of things and fighting to save things cannot allow you to be cent-percent fearless.

When ideology turns into a raised slipper, all dialogues are closed

Well, sometimes even saffron robe isn't sufficient to save you from the neo-nationalists...Neo-naionalism is very safe and convenient. Most of the times, the web-patriots are into virtual, bloodless wars--but highly gratifying for ego--on the social media. Sometimes it shows its patriotic face through a mob lynching, which is as safe as a web war. But then you should at least spare an 80-year-old man. Not that I agree with this man's ideology, just like I don't agree to the ideological fervour of those running behind him. Just like parroting patriotic songs on social media doesn't turn a lampoon into a real nationalist, similarly wearing saffron is no guarantee of one's holiness. The man definitely isn't a saint. But then it throws poor light on the BJP supporters to run with slippers after someone who had come to pay homage to the former PM Atal Bihari Bajpayi's mortal remains. To a departed soul, and more importantly to the mortal remains, all that is left behind is just the same. 

The sun shining for mother Spotted Munia

The evening is laden with drizzling moments. After the day-long watery bonanza, the sun casts a momentary glance to find out how much more water may be needed. A pale yellow streak spreads under the black curtain of clouds. The spotted munia comes out and sits pensively by her hut. Chocolate brown and white and black speckled underparts. She utters feeble chirrups. The nest is a disorderly globular structure, possibly to confuse predators, with a semi-closed entrance hole. There are eggs under incubation. Probably she has come out to enjoy the rain-soaked evening with a silver lining.

The lady takes a break from incubating warmth to give shape to the formless liquid in her eggs

PS: There are three hatchlings. I can recognise them by their distinctive frail notes. The nest is a masterwork in deception. The outer rag tag globular structure having the main entry hole gives the look of an abandoned nest. The real seat of residence lies in a safer cocoon inside. I saw a curious squirrel enquiringly snoozing by the hole. It sneaked in and came out on the other side of the loose top ends. The little ones didn't so much as even came out of their sleep. Or they prefer to remain mum in Mom's absence. Hail cosmic intelligence. The flawless fabric.

A bit of sun at the day's end, splashing the horizon with pale yellow shine 

Grey dark skies and the new journey of tiny wire tailed swallows.

Perfect outing on a rain-lashed day. With excess of rains the day appeared even gloomy dark. But then the skies relented for some time in early afternoon. And a wire-tailed swallow couple arrives with their little ones. They fly swiftly but are yet to get the wires in their tales like their parents. Ma and Pa are swiftly darting in the overcast skies to catch midges and flies to feed the little ones. Parental duties going on swiftly. The birds are so colourful: glossy steel blue above, chestnut patch on head and glistening white underparts. Well, it's always a better world with more and more birds around. A shikra, crow-sized hawk, was seen around. The parents darted around and send warning whistles. Within a minute dozens of swallows arrived on the scene and darted in their majestically free ways to confuse the transgressor. They are always there for each other, without fail, despite fight, quarrels and brawls for midges. They never betray their instincts of love and care for each other.   

Wire-tailed swallow nestlings...out in the world

The stately Papa (lite typical males he is braggish with longer wire tail) giving a picture of poise and confidence

The happy family. Mother (as they are always, busy) hovering above.

Eying the same midget

Wire-tailed swallow... courtesy @ Salim Ali's book The Book of Indian Birds

Well, Modi Sahab will make it again simply because there isn't any alternative

I'm not much of a political person. Nor have I any tangible stakes in politics, like majority of Indians don't have any. So putting myself somewhere at the centre of the political arena, and looking around for relatively better leadership--mind you it can only be relative, because governance simply cannot be perfect on the scale of our expectations--I can very easily surmise, without any iota of doubt, that we need Modi Sahab as the PM, not just for the next 5 years but at least a decade. Strictly for the better of the nation. For the simple reason that he definitely is the best chief administrator of the nation as of now. Not the I absolve BJP and its RSS affiliates of the tactics of polarization on religious grounds which divides society and even results in violence now and then. It's the collective bane of Indian democracy. All political parties have their divisive and polarizing tactics in one form or the other. Issue based politics has never been the trend in a country where masses have struggled for the seven decades after independence. These are generational changes and with economic prosperity and better literacy we can only hope that things will change in future and real issues will take centre-stage, pushing the divisive tactics to the periphery. 

However, the state BJP government in Haryana has been a really poor show. In every sense of the term. We have not felt the warmth of effective governance so far. Khattar sahab is too honest, straightforward and simple to be a political head. I respect the honourable PM's decision to install a colleague from RSS days as the state CM. But then real governance is far above shiny nationalistic ideologies. You need a crooked, wily full time politician to run the show. And in the Haryana assembly we have a big bunch of such BJP politicians who have the calibre to outshine any other politician in being crooked and wily fox. I won't be surprised if they face some chin music in the next assembly elections. The only chance is Modi Sahab's charisma which may save the boat from sinking in the state.

The funny game of breaking the walls which don't even exist

It’s not a wall, this body, separating the world outside that our illusionary ego, the sense of “I” makes us believe, exclusively separating the self from the other. There are no separating walls. They appear so on account of the conditioned mind and the limited perceptions thanks to our sense organs which interpret the fragmented parts perceivable to them in the forms of feelings, appearances and shapes at certain frequencies. The latter are nothing but concentrations of energies at particular frequencies. Otherwise, it is the same cosmic energy, vibrating, evolving, transforming in endless chains. It’s nothing but an ever existing evolution, with balancing counterpoints all along the way. The apparent creation and destruction, the dualities, are nothing but the balancing acts as cosmic design unfolds. You can compare it to a pole-wielding rope-walker. The movement is onwards, but at each step the pole sways between the dualities to manage the balance and movement ahead.

So let’s start with the cemented identities of the separation of the self from the big scheme out there. At least accept that there are windows in the wall. Accept that it’s not an unbreakable stone wall around your flesh and bones. Open the windows and let the light flood in. By taking windows as walls, we just keep on piling a crust of illusions around our apparently exclusive self. Then it becomes a fortress, created solidly by the mind. A dark, sooty psychological crust around the self. It’s a narrow, confined world of insecurities, jealousy, self-centeredness, hate and complexes. The things which should hardly matter become life-defining parameters. Under the tar of illusions, our real self, our real potential, our gateway to success, plus peace, lies dormant in the dark.

The crust becomes too hard. But its brittleness increases with its thickness with the passage of time, as our age and experience tell us later. It is bound to crack. And when it does, we feel the pain. Our assumptions of happiness and success turn out to be flimsy and childish. It seems we just ran after a mirage. No wonder we die in pain and agony.

So guys start hammering down the crust. Practice opening the windows in the illusionary wall. Let the let pour in. It’s there, everywhere, the real you, with your potential of greatness and peace. As much as you pursue dreams in a competing world, return home to your real self in the evening for rest and repose. That is your root, the real origin. Nourish it. Leaves, branches and trunk are important. But these are the manifestations of the potential of your roots which lie there in the soil of unity and totality of one universal energy going on and on in countless transformations, following the same laws, diferent transformations at each stage. So nourish your roots to the real self. The branches will be sturdy, the leaves healthy and shiny.

Go and embrace the tree near you. It is the same energy, utilizing the five primal matters like yours, manifesting its tree form at a slightly different frequency that yours.

A sad pink-bum

I politely refused him guava from my small tree because last time he nearly dislodged it. This chap is too hefty, as broad-backed as a man. So he smirks from the neem tree and doesn't give a good pause to click him. Sadly looking at the raw guavas. Last time he just picked them raw and then threw these like grenades. The way he is looking at them, I'm sure he will return. By the way his bum is soooooo sooooo pink! This colour is the pick of the day.

Peace: The redundant wish

Worldwide peace and harmony doesn't need authority, power centers and hegemony to sustain. But the latter--authority, power centers and hegemony--surely need strife, wars, violence and bloodbath to sustain it. Peace has never been the focal point of geo-strategists. It it were, most of the issues we are fighting about become redundant by default.

Don't write with hate in your heart

If good writers write with a bit more sense of equanimity, they do more justice to the art. Falling off the fine line of balance turns them cynical, and it affects their art.

The only problem with "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" is that it's written with too much "hate" for the "religious hatred". It somehow taints the soul of the artist. Hate, even for a good cause, easily creeps up to turn to cynicism. The latter sours the spirit, which in turn smiles a degree lesser than in its unadulterated version. But it's human to have our prejudices, even if they come at the cost of losing our balance a bit. Otherwise it's poignant and moving beyond words.

Learn to smile big from your small corner

It's the smallest plant in my garden. But it beats most of others in bigness of flowers. In numbers and beauty also. It appears so happy to be just itself. No wonder, in a world obsessed with larger and bigger things, it attracts you from its little corner with big bouquet of beauty. It's so tiny and fragile. But has a huge blooming spirit. No matter where you are, in whatever circumstances, at whatever ladder in the scheme of things, you can bloom at your own level to the fullest. And when you are true to your own being, your own self, you attract bigger eyes by default.

Shut your mind's eyes and hypothetical projections cease to be

Well, nothing exists as long as I choose to ignore it. And who are you? My colors are my own unlike yours. 

A moment drops from the endless sea of existence

Childish bud, youth in full bloom and dead decaying petals of an old flower. Nature accepts the fluidity, the transition. Spot the impermanence. And grab your moment now, this very moment. Mystical handover of the baton: little bud to full bloom to crumpled petals. Accept the change because that's what keeps the nature alive.

My water

There may be seven seas around abounding with endless waters. 

But I reserve my right to hold the raindrops because those clouds rained for me only.

A birdie coup in the shrub

Olive backed sunbird hatchling. Well these tiny flirtatious birds have done a coup in the jasmine cluster right under my nose. Right under my gatecrashing presence. And I hadn't the littlest clue. I was just watching the progress on the Bulbul front in the slightly bigger world on the Harsingar tree above. Lo! Here is the swift hatchling! Straight from its tiniest of grassy hideout among the jasmine shrub. Not only it escaped my eyes, it also beat the cat in master camouflage. The way this one in the pic, and its brother or sister, already dash among the branches, I am fully sure of their survival and taking the world on their own! Best of luck sons or daughters! Fly safe for the next week and always obey your parents. Then you guys can scale the world on your own..

Brain-brewed whiskey: Anandamide

The world is full of those who need narcotics, drugs and alcohol to get a pleasant, forgetting, easy going state. These definitely give you some temporary solace but come with huge physical and social side affects.

Count upon your own self made, brain-brewed chemical of bliss and happiness, anandamide. It's available inside all of us. Just that we need to look within for the joys that we seek outside. So seekers, happy days and nights. Brew your own anandamide and stay blessed permanently. Happy spiritual boozing! Booze makers, beware!

I have started brewing mine quite copiously...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anandamide