Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 24

 

Most of the time, we are self-charged on the grand mission of aggravating our own miseries. We are suitably helped all along by our ability to hold onto the master illusion that others are responsible for all the shit flying around in our lives.

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Thus spoke a little flake of cloud over a cosy valley in small hills:

A dole out from the infinite unmanifest to the finite manifest, I am just a tiny speck of cloudy phenomenon casting its shadow in a little valley. From the unbound infinity to cosmos to solar system to Earth atmosphere to this little fleeting shadow, I am simply a ripple, a pulsating, throbbing little presence through which the whole feels its own being!

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Democracy needs champions, says President Biden. And who is a champion? It's the one who fights for a cause without much calculations about the possible fallouts. Unfortunately, neither the world’s largest nor the world’s most powerful democracy fit the tag of being a champion for democracy. The biggest threat to democracy right now is the CCP (Communist Party of China) authoritarianism. Little Lithuania is indeed a champion of democracy. It’s the only country that has officially recognised Taiwan at the cost of being cornered by the fuming dragon. My conviction has never wavered that democracy is the best among the worst forms of governance. It has its limitations but still has enough space to allow an individual to nurture decent amount of dignity and independence of spirit. I also believe in one China. But I view mainland China as part of Taiwan, not vice versa. Authoritarianism has to fall inevitably. It’s almost a natural law. It comes with its own undoing. So there will be a day when there will be a unified democratic republic of China. And no wonder, it will then be among the best nations on earth in the real sense of it. Don't feel sceptical about it. This probability is surer than any other reality. It's only about time. Till than we can take inspiration from the little champion of democracy, Lithuania.

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Maybe I was feeling a bit bigger than my skin, the very same human tendency to be proud and vain. And instantly mother existence makes me realise my real status. Standing near a clump of ferns, a few mosquitoes hovered around me and one of them nicely settled for a little feast. I am also a food for some other constituent of existence, I realise. Nearby, a rockchat snaps up a carpenter ant from the ground. Well, it's nice to be reminded that apart from whatever notions I have about my being and significance, I am also a mosquito feed.

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Don't be too serious about anything, as Charles Dickens says, ‘The trifles make the sum of life.’

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The marigold leaves are a bit dull among the bright blossoms. They look dusty and need bathing, I realise. I sprinkle some water over them and they immediately say thanks through a soft, gentle fragrance wafting around me, embracing me, strengthening my solitude, adding to the smiles in my life, further calming down my nerves and say, ‘All is well because we are nothing but your very own smile!’

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 23

 

The beautiful bunch of roses showers its petals on the ground after the heartiest of blooming. Joyful dissolution of the self! A flower blooms up fully. Opens its heart to the elements around. Draws every ounce from its potential to smiles and fragrance. Opens up completely. And then painless dissolve! This dissolution is further expansion only. Now the petals fly around in a broader dimension. Beautiful, self-surrendered parts of its previous existence now lie scattered as pious homage to mother earth. That is the purpose of life. We have to give back something better than what we took. That is evolution, expansion. Like this flower offers fragrance and smiles to mother earth in return for the sunshine, soil and moisture. The sole purpose of our existence is to be a better version of ourselves.

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A hybrid rose can have nice colour and exquisite design but it lacks the basic essence of a flower, which is ‘fragrance’. The beauty is skin deep, a mere cosmetic effort at the surface. It's haughty and arrogant, a kind of constriction within itself, an insecurity, a fear, an aloofness, a separation. The soul is missing. They seem too self-absorbed. Like the apparently classy, well polished gentry. They stand with touch-me-not attitude. And the bees and butterflies stay away. They find it totally unapproachable.

The marigolds, on the other hand, are little humble, down to earth flowers. They aren't showy. They are common looking. But they have a soul, a depth, a delicate fragrance. Most importantly, they have nectar to offer to the butterflies and bees. With their openness and genteel receptivity, they are buzzing with little winged insects. They have broader connection to life and living. I can feel their soul through their soft fragrance as I sit by them. They exist in a dimension where they touch many chords in my heart.

Sadly, the smell-less hybrid roses are as distant and soulless as a mere picture, beautiful without the splendour of life in it, or a well designed set of plastic flowers.

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It happened 12 years back in Delhi. The moment still stands out somehow. Some brief moments carry far more significance than months and sometimes even years. Hazy darkness outside the railway station. A friar approached me with mystical pride and spiritual pomp. He asked for alms (which can be money only, given the times we are living in). I found myself offering him 10 rupees. A Gentleman verbally poked me for my meekness and abetment of begging. The friar shot back, ‘Do you think it's only about money. If you think so, take this!’ He proffered a 100 rupees note. The gentleman had to beat a retreat. The friar smiled at me and melted into the crowd after blessing me.

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If you have time and softness to plant flowers, take some moments to appreciate their beauty once they blossom up. Needless to say, always spare time for your children once you have taken time to produce them.

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If you are hurrying and a tree's branch braces against your head or face, don't get irritated. It's merely a soft greeting asking you to be restful. Accept it. You can run fast and still be at rest within. What else is meditation? It's the ability to be still within even while you are walking or dispensing what life needs you to do in order to survive.

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 22

 

Dear friends, if life isn't making much of a sense then give an ear to the Voice Inside. Forget about the hoot and holler emanating from the world outside. It simply adds to the confusion. Give an ear to the soft and murmurous cooings emanating from the soul. It has a soft and sympathetic message for you only, your most personal message, meant only for you. Listen to these delicate chimes. It’ll help you in finding peace in chaos. In getting a foothold in the stampede. In feeling rest, repose and respite in the face of constant buffeting by the world around. It’ll help you in breaking the hardest of superficial layers, which suffocate and limit your identity. And put you face to face with your true self, your real worth.

Listen to it, close your eyes and pay attention with all your heart. Just for a change, don’t look far, look closest at yourself. It’ll be as uneventful as looking at a dust particle around your feet. But it changes the universe for you. You will have the biggest message in the softest of whispering phrases! It’ll help you in finding yourself. Happy self-seeking! God bless us all!

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Why does truth pinch most of the time? Simple! Because it is no chocolate, sugar candy or mellowable sweetie-pie lump of ice cream. It is a hard, sour, iron ball guys. It has pinching rough stony edges to its surface. Come into contact with them and they will take a few flakes from your skin, leaving a red or purple bruise depending on the intensity of truth contained in it. Now the question arises, 'Why does it almost always leave a grimace on our face instead of a smile?' The simple fact that all of us almost always rub cold shoulders against this ironed ball having thorns for our soft skin, proves one fact: We are not subjectively inclined to accept the objective reality as it stands in abstract. But does not that mean that we have moved poles apart from truth and its manifestations, while going on the path of individual and collective improvisations at the subjective level. May be the reason for our success in emerging at the top of the food chain in the game of 'survival of the fittest' is that we have institutionalized ourselves to negate and defy, and do without, certain basic truths that form the core of creation and nature. Nothing wrong with that. It, however, is paradoxical that most of these scions of truth—against which we have always been taking cudgels—form the core of our moral, humanistic, religious, spiritual and aesthetic vision enshrined in preach books. Strange!

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Look far away into the mists but always watch your next step also. Take a step, take a pause then and look into the distances before the next step. And never forget to go slow. It allows a healthy balance of sight, observation, dreams and imagination. You enjoy the journey and don't bother about destination. Most importantly, moving on from the past is usually a far better journey than you ever imagined!

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 21

 

Guys, individual freedom has always remained a fundamental ideal since the historical times. However, it is not to be achieved by casting off all society and civilization or by going back to a so-called 'natural state'. The perfection of man, his freedom, his liberty, his happiness, and the growing mastery of his own destiny, all are dependent upon a clear understanding of certain laws of nature and society. We have to accept that both nature and society have worked according to these laws to enable us to get the idea of this so called 'freedom'. So the pursuit of the interest of the baby should not turn us blind to the interests of the mother.

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Many a thing changed over the centuries. In fact, almost everything changed to take a completely different shape and connotation. But the religious differences are the same. They seem beyond the pale of time. Blood-shedding and hate in the name of religion is the same. Isn’t it high time that the world community starts dismantling the hold of exclusivist religious principles on people and states?

It is the time for an all-inclusive world religion, the religion of all humanity, humanism. It can have Allah, Jesus, Buddha, Hindu and other major Gods and deities of other sects in its fold. The main issue is how do we convince the beholders of Puritanism in various religions, particularly the fundamentalist Islamists, to see beyond the rigid confines of their unchanging tradition.

Most of the religions are melting under the warm sun of internationalism. But the medieval icy blocks in the stream of fundamentalist Islam are holding their archaic laws and principles solidly crystallized like the polar snows. The question is, will Islam ever be lenient to the non-Muslims? Modern Islamists will have to dismantle the institutionalized psyche among the Muslim masses against the kafirs and welcome non-discriminatory universal brotherhood as His Holiness Prophet Mohammad envisioned.

World peace and harmony depends on this question. If internationalism succeeds to liberate humanism buried under religious fanaticism, we can expect to have a peaceful world following the religion of humanism. In any case, religion has to be systematically dismantled to lay the foundation of a common world. China will attempt to do it with its atheist state policy. But that will turn this world a big jail. Better that it’s done under democratic principles.

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Most of the time, our hate for someone is merely an instrument to undo and hide our own guilt about the incidents and happenings, which took us to a point of unbridgeable differences with that person. Hate is a very convenient tool. It’s fuelled by anger. With the tools of hate and anger, it’s very easy to put all the blame on someone else for the fallouts. In our own court, the hammer of hate and anger sets our conscience free, while holding the other party culpable for all the wrongs that have befallen.

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All of us want to leave a mark on the running water and blowing air. And all of us fail. Only this unquenchable urge wins. But then maybe a bit of laziness is what we need after all this burnout. Slowing down helps in avoiding the explosion, both individual and collective. We have run too blindly and now stare at the edge of a blind drop. Treading carefully will save us. Walk slow and with poise.

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 20

 

Usually weaknesses and inhibitions end up being taken as goodness. Most of the people never had the opportunity to misuse their endowments and power—which makes us qualify people as mean or bad—thus ending up as nice fellows. Empower the people economically, or through any other means qualifying as empowerment, and then wait and watch. I think, most of the people whom we count as good fellows are simply helpless. I have seen a few really good fellows who are empowered at many levels and still count a human as a human irrespective of caste, class or creed. This is what I call as goodness.

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Taiwan of course will be part of China one day in future. But it will be the mainland going with the island, not vice-versa. The model of monopoly and autocracy is inherently weak. It is bound to collapse. The only matter is about time. Of course we will have a democratic, unified China one day. But a sinking ship sucks in a lot of water. The communists will, no doubt, breed a lot of mischief before that. Its repercussions will reach the far ends of mother earth.

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Hinduism is the primal faith on mother earth. It has the deepest roots as far as faith is concerned. Brahmanism is far smaller as a philosophy. It’s merely a particular approach to the socio-political and economic domain of our society followed by a group of Hindus. Brahmanism, I would say, doesn’t constitute even 10% of Hinduism. It’s a very small cult to assert socio-political and economic hegemony of a small section of Hindus.

No problem with that. It’s always about dominance by one group or the other. The problem arises when these adherents of only 10% of Hinduism hold the rest by neck and try to portray Brahmanism as the entire Sanatan Dharma. Brahmanism is lucrative and swashbuckling to influence shallow minds to gain parochial advantage. I don’t have any problem even with it. The only issue is, please don’t tell me that Brahmanism is Hinduism. It’s attractive, I know, because there is a great show and turbulence on the surface. But Brahmanism is merely little pieces of foam among the waves in the universal sea of Hinduism.

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Feeling the heat? Don't worry, cool winds will pick up soon. Feeling cold? Worry not, the sun is just about to shine from the cloud's corner. Getting hunted? Don't worry, there never is a prey who isn't a hunter itself. As the proverb goes, when it floods, the fish eat the ants. And as the waters recede and leave the ground dry, the ants eat the fish. The circumstantial winds are equally for and against all of us. So just dance to the tunes of life. Like grass does. Like flexible plants do. They dance and enjoy the most, open to the winds from all directions. No point in having a tiff with life. We may not have too much control over the music of life that beats around us. But we can surely take a jig and go for dancing the steps of our choice. Or even hop like a frog if you are dance-challenged like me. Hopping around is no less fun. Telling from my personal experience.