Equality breeding Equanimity

 The questioner: What do you think are your favourite qualities in a woman?

Me: The same as found in a good man.

The questioner: And your favourite qualities in a man?

Me: The same as in a good woman.

The questioner: Why?

Me: Because both are equal and humans only.

A little brave flower

 

Treat of the day! The tiny sadabahar in the crack of the wall bears a flower. There are hundreds of bigger flowering plants on the ground having dozens of petalous smiles. What makes this little flower exceptional? An entire season’s rains slipped down the wall. It’s not in mother earth’s lap where she stores water for her kids. It just has a hairline crack in the plastered wall to cling to its moisture of survival. Thousands of water drops slip away and then just an ounce of water may be clings to the narrowest root space. Fed like pampered children, the garden has hundreds of flowers. But this solitary flower high on the plastered wall is special. Blossoming is no slave to the conventional parameters of height, weight, the soil around roots, nutrition, the amount of rain or any other circumstantial fact. It’s only about giving the best with what you have. Given its tough conditions, this tiny flower grew in millimeters, while the rest of the more privileged flowers on the ground grew in inches. Their life might be measured in feet and hundreds of flowers. But what is exceptional about the fact of their existence? They are the happy-go-lucky types. Their smiles stand on mother earth’s piety. This but is a brave flower. It clung to survival, just staying a couple of inches of a fragile sapling high in the wall in the hot sweltering summer heat. It waited and waited with patience for more rains and when they came it added a couple of more inches to its height and there comes the flower. It’s basically about reaching home and fulfilling your destiny irrespective of the circumstances. What we get isn’t in our hands, but what we do with what we have is surely our calling. The smile of this flower is worth hundreds of lesser mortals in the garden below. It’s a proud flower, no wonder it’s there high in the air above the rest. 

So dear friends, please avoid the mistake of cribbing about your circumstances of life. A lot many things definitely lie beyond our control. It’s better to accept certain facts. Take it as destiny. But that’s just half of the story. With what has been given to you by the quirks of fate, you are in the driving seat and juggle your pieces to make your own destiny. Like this little plant does. It blossoms a flower in the toughest of a situation and completes its journey, fulfils its meaning of being a flower. You too can blossom your flower with what you have been given. So forget about what you don’t have, just make use of what you have. You too are up for a flowery reward. Best wishes!

What a drama man!

 The tiles are getting so oily and smooth in fashionable houses that I have to walk like a heavily pregnant penguin on the Antarctic ice to avoid slipping. But we are up for leaving a grand impression on the house fashion scene, or for that matter in all types of fashion in all spheres of life. That's being cultured otherwise you are a sentinelese prehistoric tribal in Andamans. The floor tiles have become so slippery these days that I feel like a goat being taken to a slaughter house if some fashionable person invites me at their house. 

But credit goes to we humans. We are a gutsy race. We take risks. We are ready to take the risks of broken bones for being most fashionable in the neighbourhood. And so many slip and break their bones in fact. What floor is any worth if it doesn't carry the slipping potential and break bones and wink a flashy shiny smile as you fall? And we shouldn't forget that breaking bones are a boon for the medical fraternity. 

What car is worth its tyres if it can't go like a rocket and carry the prospect of trampling as many as possible on its glorious journey. But naughty trampling cars are a boon for the insurance industry. Isn’t it?

What music is worth its rhythmic hop if it can't burst a few eardrums? What dress is worth its salt if it doesn't make you look like someone from the farthest galaxy? And the dress that actually covers the body is no dress, it's an old hag. So poor clothing is up for a big challenge. It has to show all and still appear to hide everything. So we are busy fixing it. It's a very serious quesion. How much of cloth goes off from the bumside to cover the soles of feet. Or how much goes from the chest to cover armpits. One half of the mind working overtime to bare all, while the other half trying to devise an airy dress to avoid a complete fall. Imagine how much creativity it requires! What an art man!

And what is this boring, old model plain skin? It's a big canvas for art. Why waste paper for painting when we have our dear skin ready for the sadistic pleasure of the tatooing needle? So human body is the canvas now. Some tatoos go deep in the skin in proportions to the transcient emotions in the heart. But we have shifty hearts. So when the clouds of emotions scatter and take a new shape, the poor tatoo taunts as a sign of infedilty. So it has to be vanquiahed. So tatoo removers have become as important as tatoo makers. The other day when I put out my hand to give some money to a beggar I got a shock. He had a dragon on his hand. He appeared so empowered in comparison to me. My poor non-tatooed hand won't dare to go ahead. So I just walked away. When I see people with their sophisticated tatoos coming on the way, I involuntarily find myself moving away in awe and wonder to give them space to walk. They appear a completely new race to me the old model. Maybe tattooed bums, biceps, breasts and tummies have gone berserk and are now revolting to claim new versions after getting fed up with their boring old self.

And what gun is a gun that can't pierce a hill from a distance? So the human mind is making the best of a gun. But then what bulketproof jacket is that which can't stop a cannon ball on the chest. So one half of our collective brain is making the deadliest gun, while the other half is busy in making the best of bulketproof jacket. 

We are a very busy race. We can't stop. We have to scatter litter in the first place so that we can devise the most efficient ways of waste management. We ought to rechristen ourselves as busysapiens now. We have to first go into war and killings and then make UN and the entire set of peace talks and diplomatic corps for peaceful negotiations. 

I sometimes wonder maybe we are basically looking to create more avenues for problems so that the genius of the human brain can be actualized in managing those problems. I think the autonomous human mind is smartly using the slavish human body for experiments, like we do with toads on dissection tables, putting us in weirdest situations just to find whether there is a solution to this and that. What an experiment going on. It really is a big drama.

Old is gold

 Why be bothered about losing youth. It's just a phase, an unripe one as a character says in Oscar Wilde's novel: "What was youth at best? A green, unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and slickly thoughts." There is no fun in wearing the shiny livery for too long. It then becomes a burden. That's why nature sees it off. But we carry it in mind for a bit longer time. At least I did. But now the wonderful, gray, slow-paced times open their real charms. The aging gray lighter vestments of wisdom and age carry their own charm. They are very light, and ripe, and cosy to wear, and easy to carry.

A slightly better being

 Why be unduly bothered about the typical bugs of the mind like anger, hate, jealousy and others? Follow the trail of any of these, in an effort to track its cause or root, and it will take you to the same primary root. All the negative reactions of our mind, which make us feel guilty after their manifestation in the mind-body combo, originate from the same root. The restlessness at the core, prompting us to seek a higher self. If you have already started looking at your triggers of anger, hate, jealousy, fears etc, it means you already view them as alien entities, strangers to your real self. You want them out. You aren't ready to own them. It means you are already on the path of liberation. Just watch them, watch them, watch them. And they will slowly lose their intensity on your system. They will have a far less force on your system. They won't be impulsive enough to make you react. It's not about their total absence. It's about their being ineffective and not able to dictate our lives. They pop up and are gone. They surface, like a thief comes at a market place, and are gone the moment he sees a policeman. Really knowing a negative emotion or thought as it is, feeling its negative shades itself is the solution. Suppose there is some guy whose reality we don't know. He can easily dupe us. But when we know the truth about him, he won't have a big chance of duping us because we know the nature of reality about him. The same with these typical bugs of mind. The goal isn't about their absence. It's only about being aware of their true nature. Then they become mere bubbles. They pop up and are gone without leaving a big impact on our behaviour. Even saints have these bubbles in their minds. They will arise. It's their nature. But a sage's mind-body system is evolved to a level where these negative shades pass out without much impact. It's not about not having them. It's about making them ineffective. In the beginning with  action and stern look at them. And later, with practice, to ignore them almost on impulse. If we arrive on earth with an impulse to be driven by them, we can certainly develop an impulse to ignore them with practice. Then they may keep popping up. There won't be much turbulence in life.

Yoga, kundalini, Bhakti, gyan, everything is meant to bring a kind of positive symmetry in body and mind's functioning so that there are more of positive neuro chemicals and hormones such as endorphins in the body. That makes us further less prone to infection by the bugs of negative thoughts and emotions. These are spiritual immunity boosters which make us strong against the attack by the things whom we consciously view as against our peace and wellbeing. Haven't you observed that when we are happy and joyful--it means we are overloaded with positive neurochemicals at that time-- we are less prone to irritation by the same stimulants that would leave us blasting in other state? 

So all this is holistic art. This keen observance, yoga, Bhakti, gyan, everything. Just like different types of nutrients for the body to keep ailments away. Use these various types of spiritual pills to strengthen against the bugs of suspicion, fear, discontentment, anger, jealousy. They will always stay in your system and surroundings as long as you are here on earth. Just like human body cannot do away with the harmful bacteria and virus around. They are going to be there. So what do we do? We increase the immunity to leave them ineffective on our system. The same is with negative bugs of mind. They will be there, wether inside you or in the people around you. The task is to strengthen your system to an extent that they don't shake your emotional health too much. Who are the siddhas? They are the robust most energetic systems upon whom the usual bugs that we humans find so troublesome have no effect. But rest assured, they have their own challenges to fight against, the challenges of different categories of which we aren't aware. So the challenge stays. Don't ever dream of reaching a spiritual stage where challenges will vanish. They will aways stay in one form or the other, just like harmful virus and bacteria around. 

Lastly, a smile itself kills a million bugs of the mind. So smile now!