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.