Mix
the contradictions. Make a paste. Mix the duality. Grind it well. And you get
nothing in the so called ‘everything’. Is there any hard and fast line between
the so called two ends of our perception? Is ‘black’ only ‘black’? Is ‘white’
only ‘white’? No. They seep into each other and define each other, apparently,
relatively. Dark is not just ‘dark’. And light is not just ‘light’. Dark is
only ‘less light’. And light is just ‘less dark’. Duality sustains on our sense
of ‘ego’. It turns our consciousness into self-consciousness. Is there any
pure, unadulterated ‘pleasure’? No. Pleasure is a state of having lesser pain.
Pleasure has a mild dose of pain in it. Always. Find out a person who has no
trace of pain in him. Is there any condition of just having ‘pain’? No. Pain is
just having lesser degree of ‘pleasure’. Pleasure carries pain in it, and pain
carries pleasure in it. Our ego stretches the point of reality in two
directions for suitable duality, of contradictions. Imagine ‘twilight’ when day’s
rising light mixes with the night’s vanishing darkness. The balance. The
melting of duality. Is there any state of something being perfectly ‘cold’ or
perfectly ‘hot’? No. Cold is just lesser hot. And hot is just lesser cold. The reality
just gives the illusion of apparently getting stretched in opposite directions.
It’s the see-saw battle. We look this way, then we turn to the other side. By
subduing the element of ‘self’ from ‘consciousness’ one can get a balanced
vision. Then the funny mirage of seeing two avatars of the same thing becomes
visible. The two things are inseparable, and are just our conveniently defined
two points on the plain of reality. Death is not just death in itself. It is
the beginning of life, of birth. Birth is not just birth. It is the beginning
of death. Same is the apparent duality of creation and destruction. They don’t
exist separately. For an event and happening to occur, there has to be a
balance between the two. Like human body survives on the principle of the
balance between creation and destruction. New cells are continuously being
created and old ones are dying. The circle. It holds the key to the mystery.
The reality has loops of the so called dualities going side by side, at all
points, at all points. The counterweights. The balance. Going on and on in
loops. The ever-expanding universe and the ever-dying universe. In loops. In
circles. At countless points. Forever. Explosions and implosions. Blasts and
suction. Circular loops. Creation and destruction. Creation and destruction. On
and on. In circles. Expansion and suction. Going from nowhere to nowhere. And passing
through the point where you happen to read it presently.
The posts on this blog deal with common people who try to stand proud in front of their own conscience. The rest of the life's tale naturally follows from this point. It's intended to be a joy-maker, helping the reader to see the beauty underlying everyone and everything. Copyright © Sandeep Dahiya. All Rights Reserved for all posts on this blog. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author of this blog.
About Me
- Sufi
- Hi, this is somebody who has taken the quieter by-lane to be happy. The hustle and bustle of the big, booming main street was too intimidating. Passing through the quieter by-lane I intend to reach a solitary path, laid out just for me, to reach my destiny, to be happy primarily, and enjoy the fruits of being happy. (www.sandeepdahiya.com)
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Use the leftover spirits from Valentine Day and use it to cerebrate Earth Day
It’s
Earth day today, passing off like any other inconsequential day. Valentine day
makes a far bigger noise and catches attention. Media is full of it. People
themselves are so eager to celebrate it. Nothing wrong with that. Symbolism of
love and affection in relationships has its utility and importance. But it also
shows how confined and limited, almost self-seeking, is our interpretation of
love and care. Mind you it might even be merely skin deep, shallow and funny.
The
best part of being human--our beautiful emotions and awareness of good and bad--has
been imprisoned so tightly that we just trample ahead with our tiny boxed up,
suffocating emotions, totally unconcerned about what is getting squeezed under
our feet. We carry tremendous insecurity. Every fellow human is a competitor
and rival to beat. No wonder the things that really matter, the matters that
are make or break for all of us, the great common ground, hardly get attention.
So the plight of mother earth is not that big an issue. It’s the nightmare that
we simply delegate to the future generations to face and suffer about. If as
parents we sacrifice our present to make our children’s future, cannot we just
take a few more steps to be bothered about the future a few generations down
the line?
There
is a rat race of domination among all the countries. There are elaborate geo-strategic
plans to capture the future for themselves. Plunder of natural resources and
development of weapons of mass destruction, genocides, communal killings, where
does it take us all. Mankind is certainly the most aware species on earth, but
the most foolish as well. Of course foolish because what else it is to keep
moving in a direction where, in complete knowledge of it happening, there will
be fire and destruction. It’s as foolish as setting the house on fire, and
getting full throttle creative about setting a luxurious bed for a night-long
rest.
So
the biggest stage—mother earth—is shaking and creaking under the hooves of prudent-most
animal on earth. What value the victory carries if the place you have fought
over is bound to be crumbled to pieces in future? What does a luxurious bed
stand for if the house itself will burn? Hope the earthlings realize that the
biggest reason for them to feel insecure is for mother earth itself. Other
levels of insecurities, and the consequent strife, confrontations and wars,
come later. Even the fights of ego need a solid stage. What does victory mean
on a crumbling planet?
Suppose
the aliens approach us. And they will definitely. It’s just a matter of time.
Won’t we be simply earthlings in the face of a common threat? Then these caste,
class, communal and national divides will melt. It’s high time that we realize that
the great commonality which supports and sustains us, mother nature, is under
threat.
There
is a common enemy, environmental degradation, the result of our rampant plunder
and greed. Let it be recognized as such and a fight launched against it. Let it
be done before it is too late. Because the cycle of destruction, once it
crosses the critical limit, becomes irreversible.
Save
earth! Celebrate Earth Day with as much fervor as you celebrate Valentine day!
Friday, April 21, 2017
Highway Murder
Do you think only you have the right
to tell you story? No man, no! Even we trees have the right to tell the tale of
our life, especially when the main protagonist is man, the master of nature
presently. So listen you all, humans as well as nature. The two are different
now by the way. Listen!
Well, I am a great eucalypts tree
standing by a road. They are killing me. The iron is hissing and kissing the
rings of age in my stout trunk. I stand benumbed and in daze. But I have to
speak out before I fall. Possibly you listeners will spot the crime and just—at
least—have some of the pain I feel while I am being slaughtered.
Well, I feel really bad about it. I
never thought the end will arrive so soon, without any notice. There is no
storm threatening to uproot me. It’s a very fine day, and all the more suitable
to the humans to carry out their act of greed. My killing but is unjustified
because I have been fulfilling all my duties assigned by mother nature to me.
The way I have gone overboard in
carrying out my task, I think I should have been lucky enough to see the
majesty of upcoming wintery full moon. The moon-rays are very naughty I tell
you. You may be lost in brighter self-created neon lights, but nothing can beat
the beauty of full moon rays on a winter night. I pine for one more such night!
Alas it seems impossible! I have to take solace by remembering the past
only.
See, you may not realise it but your
tools of cutting, your axes, saws, scythes and blades are very painful. I have
to impose anaesthesia on myself for I cannot even cry like you guys. Still I
can feel the saw’s butchering the bloodless flesh in my guts. But poor me, I
don’t even have the blood to put forth the evidence of a murder. Even though my
flesh is as good as yours, but mine doesn’t bleed so even the sanguine interior
as they saw through it, appears simple painless stone to them. But I feel the
pain, I swear. Just want to tell. Please don’t take my cutting as simple as
breaking a stone.
It’s a hazily sun-lit winter noon.
It appeared such a balmy day. Looking at the people moving onto their
destination. But then they suddenly arrived like hounds. I was even surprised
why so many of them arrived and started prodding me, slapping me out of my
languorous spell. I don’t even know whether to throw my almost harmless,
inaudible curse at these fellows or the state itself that has authorised my
murder to broaden this already fat road.
Let me be clear on this. It’s a
murder. You may prefer to call it just cutting wood. But there is a life
inside. Never forget this. Don’t I grow like you guys do? Don’t I do my duty of
purifying air and providing shade and provide dead and even live wood, like you
people claim your utility?
For many decades I have been
standing as a serving helper to both man and nature. During older times, this
metalled road, this carrier of huge traffic and so called your ‘progress’, was
simply a dirt road. It was my friend taking your forefathers to their common
destinations. Nobody was in damn hurry like you people these days. I stood here
as a milestone reached by a tired pair of legs, by a rickety bull-cart, who
halted under me, savouring the shade I provided. I felt so proud of myself.
This very path has turned a foe now.
It’s a highway after all. The merciless, fast-paced carrier of growth. It has
turned a parasite now. It needs more space. Damn it, they don’t need shade and
pure air now. These can be easily managed in the metal boxes that hurtle day
and night on it. So I’m redundant and old. I have turned a blocker of progress
with my few square-feet of foot-hold.
Man, again I try to shout and remind
you that if a healthy mass like me is no life, then yours is also not so
important. By cutting us you are cutting yourselves, for you are nothing but
merely an extension of our world. A mere reflection of the nature around you. We
gone, even you will be gone. Haa fools, now I can afford to call you as such
during these final moments, for you cannot even see the precipice you are
heading into.
Man, now it is hurting quite a lot.
But I have resolved to keep telling my murder story till the axes, scythes and
saws send my tiniest of branches to be turned to ashes in some poor household’s
fire-place.
We trees never wince with pain as
your axes spray chips of our flesh. Just because our flesh is different
coloured doesn’t mean we don’t feel the pain. We do, man!
We had equal rights till mankind was
just a part of nature, not the master of it. Now this saw going deeper and
deeper into my bloodless guts reminds me of our inevitable fate. Every tree on
earth now has a deadly date with the greedy most, treacherous and unforgiving
mate.
Haa the cowards! Forever playing so
safe! They know that I’m huge. Poor things are afraid of my fall. Little do
they realise that a tree’s pride is in standing tall and upright. And we do it till
the last ounce of our strength. I am not going to give in that easily. They
have to earn my dead body. It cannot be a cakewalk. Let them have blisters on
their hands. It will serve as a proof to my murder.
Little do they realise my commitment
to my duty, my oath to mother nature. Even in the face of death, I cannot stop
playing my part in nature. As they are robbing me of my few square feet of
space on earth, my saplings are still giving them life, still doling out oxygen
under this winter sun. I am helpless and bound to my sworn duty. I cannot be
vindictive and stop fuelling life into the lungs even if they happen to be my
murderers. Even my murder cannot change me, helpless as I am due to my nature.
Now the saw has gone pretty deep. I
am getting the signs of that eternal sleep. There is also an unbearable pain in
the so called painless mass. Death is death after all. Hope you understand.
Like hangman’s noose, thick hemp
ropes are tied to direct my fall. From a safe distance tractors are pulling to
bring down this wooden bull. They are worried, but are assured of victory.
There are too many of them, with steely human determination to win, to stifle
any chance of failure. No, I don’t see any chance of a miracle. It’s as
hopeless as it can be.
Now I feel it. The death blow. The
pinnacle of their jeering selves. A
cleavage breaks through the portion still holding me to my mother earth.
From softest saplings to rock hard tissues my whole self is panicked. But still
I have to tell the tale of my murder before I finally fall. My saplings are
crying like innocent children. The hardest of trunk tissues are shamelessly
crying like the battle hard, handsome soldiers on their knees after losing the
war. Death is after all death. Who wants to cease to exist?
Who
cares? Nobody. This big snapping sound is my death cry. And here I fall with a
thud. Yes man, you win. I am dead before I thought I will.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
The murderer and the robber are just an arm-length away
Feeling
lucky not to have come across a real-life murderer with blood-ridden hands and a
dagger in hand? Feeling at ease not to have faced a robber, with muscular
barrel chest, eye-patch and devilish beard running away with yours and others’
money? Well think again for you might be grossly mistaken. There are murderers
and robbers on the prowl around. And in far more numbers than you can ever think
even in your wildest of horrifying imagination.
It
can be your sheepish looking, harmless milkman, holding the potent weapon of
slow death over the years. Yes the milkman with his passable crime, with little
doses over months and years. In India the fight for self-survival is so rampant
that poor milkman won’t flinch an eye before mixing urea and adhesives like
Fevicol to make adulterated milk. It breeds death, slowly over months and
years, with no sign of a murder committed. For the milkman all that matters is
a successful day with all the pots empty sold out. What happens later is none
of his concerns.
It
can be the sweet-tongued sweet-maker pampering your sweet-tooth with an affable
smile and still honeyed words. Yes the sweet-maker with his shortcuts to
profits with fake milk derivatives and cancerous chemicals and colors. And
there are many, as many as you count the sweet shops, except for the few
moralistic ones. India is crammed to the guts, and the mere struggle to
survive, at any cost and through whatever means, justifies the end and more
bucks in the wallet.
It
can be the poor-looking harmless fruit vendor. You even end up having sympathy
for him. Little do you realize that the fruits you presume to add to your life
are in fact cutting into your days. Artificial, cancerous-chemical-catalyzed ripening,
waxing on the surface to make stale fruits look fresh and scores of other
devil-devised machinations to get some more bucks at the cost of disease and
destruction in others’ livers.
These
are the murders on the safer side of law. Nobody dies instantly. Death comes
slowly. It’s a causeless disease. Nobody can be blamed. They vend out poison
slowly, in mild doses. They add a day to their survival at the cost of minutes
from the lives of those whom they serve.
There
are robbers around as well, in clean shirts and socially respected avatars. Law
cannot touch them because they don’t rob out rightly like the condemnable
criminals barging into a bank and running away with the whole vault of money
and gold. They do it in slow sips over years, as invisible cogs in the corrupt
machinery. In both governmental and private institutions and departments these legalized
robbers sit on their desks with an affable smile and clean slate. It’s
facilitation money. The extra money has to land invisibly into their pockets to
move the process stuck at their check-post.
Then
there are countless petty criminals and transgressors, stomping their way to
their destination at any cost. It’s an ant-swarm. Law never looks more impotent
than in the face of such brazen frequency, everywhere, every moment. Spitting,
urinating, defecating, shouting, molesting, eve-teasing, raping and countless
other forms of violence from the mildest to the heinous most. It makes it seem
as if the rulebook is just a draw of lots for all the criminals around. Only a
few are unlucky to get their name taken out as legal offenders. The rest clap
for their luck for being left out.
So
there are mass murderers and robbers all around. And law cannot sneak into each
and every soul to arise either fear or conscience to think of injustice done to
others’ in the struggle to survive. Poverty and greed make a person too
thick-skinned to be sensitive to the world beyond the self. The only option is
to hope for a generational shift when more people will be aware of the issues
beyond the limited self.
Unfortunately
with the Indian population ever-exploding, and more people fighting for
diminishing resources, it seems a dream to visualize a society where the
milkman, the fruit-vendor, the sweet-maker, the government officials will
become humane enough to be self-responsible and follow the laws even if there
is no apparent risk of getting caught.
Law-abiding
instincts get honed over a period of time. It’s like stopping at a red light on a totally
empty road, in the depths of night, with absolutely nobody around, and no fear
of punishment, but you still put up breaks, and smile. It gives a strange peace
to be self-responsible for such tiny transgressions. Just looking forward to a
day when majority of the Indians will come out of the pit of self-obsessed
survival and be self-responsible not just for their own survival but for others’
convenience as well.
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
No flesh, blood and bones after 200 years
Nature is not with
anybody. Neither is it against anyone. It is for us to decide whether we are
with it or against it. The onus is on us! Since we are a part of it, it suits
our purpose if we go with it. Going against nature means going against
ourselves. But that is what we are doing presently.
With its impartiality,
nature ensured a competition among species for survival. Look at the fantastic
evolution of organism and species. But then with the food-chains reaching a
dead end with mankind being the master, the nature itself—the cause—will become
the casualty.
Humans evolved as inseparable
part of nature, just like any other animal species, using their best skills to
survive. Humans used brain to master nature. Still mankind (biologically) and
its institutions stand on nature’s back. Now we are crossing all limits. Possibly
the inevitable juggernaut of progresss. The more forests we cut, the more
species we force into extinction, the more pollutants we release into the air
and the seas, the more we are eating into nature’s guts. It’s like killing the
hen that lays golden eggs.
Our present biological standing
is a sum total of the nature around us. We are a reflection and sum total of
the state of the overall natural health. With more natural ecosystems being
decimated to get into a more mechanized world, it will be a folly to think that
we will be able to survive at the present biological level of human physiology.
In a world with ghastly
depleting natural resources, and cement, steel and machines ruling the roost,
how will the present human biology—the outcome of the natural phenomena and
food-chains—survive? It just will not. So the cut into nature’s guts will
require adaptations in human biology and physiology as well. Simple fact is,
the present human physiology will be totally redundant in a world where there
will be hardly any forests, most of the species extinct, air polluted and
weather totally changed. To survive under the new challenge, the mankind will
bring out mechanization in the physiology itself. Genetic engineering,
artificial intelligence, artificial organs will see a world in which mankind
will be a semi-machine managing full machines.
And with the final traces
of nature gone, with the environment modified mechanically to survive, mankind
will finally become a full machine. It might be just 200 years away when the
last sinews of human blood, ligaments, flesh and skin will be replaced by
artificial devices. The cycle of evolution! The super species! The machines all
around. And then the inevitable destruction.
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