A little prayer

 Lord let me be joyful to see my own death. Let my old self take a peaceful death right here in front of me. Let a new me take birth before I shed this body. Dying of the old self and the birth of the new!

Let the hand that would have hit on impulse die and take birth to go up for a blessing on the same provocation. Let the tongue that would have spewed out poisoned words die and take birth as the one that gently rolls out delicate words of kindness, sympathy and solace in the same situation. Let the face that would have snorted with anger and hate die and take birth as a smiling face of empathy under similar circumstances. Let the eyes that saw fault in others die and get reborn as the one which see the inherent beauty in the same people. Let the heart that carries anger, hate, jealousy take its last breath and rise as a kind and compassionate chamber of my soul in its new birth.

This is a beautiful dying that all of us have to welcome in our lives. The old self dies slowly, gently over a period of time and by the time we reach a stage of physical death we are already reborn as a new person. In that case the physical death loses its meaning. We already know that we have been reborn and there is more that awaits blissfully in changed dimensions and reshaped consciousness. Maybe then there is no fear of the physical death of this body. Maybe this is what they mean by getting liberated.

Wish you all a very happy Gurupurab. Let Baba Nanak’s blessings be showered upon you on this holy kartik purnima!     

The bliss of being 'common'

 I don’t want to be too good or too great to be finally get burdened under the weight of my own goodness. Conceptual sense of goodness and purity turns an obligation in the long run and one has to put up masks to keep it. I don’t want that divinity that would uproot me from the pains and pleasures of earthly humanity. I don’t aspire to attain too lofty a character to finally become someone who has to take up falsehoods as customs and rituals to maintain my persona. I don’t want to be completely detached, perfectly moral, neutral and aloof so as not to even hear the panicked notes of a little bird being pursued by a hunting bird and watch the game of ‘the stronger eating the weaker’ unfold with a saintly muse. I want to retain enough humanity to allow my kindness on impulse and throw a clod at the hunting bird. Even if it hits the bird of prey I would take the chance. I don’t want enlightenment or liberation that takes me away from the sweet, common scent of humanity with its mundane pains and pleasures.

Even Buddha kept quiet when his wife questioned him about the necessity of renouncing everything to get supreme joy for himself. He had abandoned a wife and a little son; severed his ties right in the middle of the night. That to me is causing pain to others for individual salvation. When he returned as a revered spiritual king, his wife requested to be granted a meeting with the great teacher. ‘It’s my right to be allowed a meeting with him in privacy as his wife,’ she said. And the great master agreed. ‘O great spiritual master and dear husband, you abandoned me and your child and the entire family for individual salvation. Tell me whether what you have attained could not have been attained without abandoning us?’ she asked. She spoke as an aggrieved wife with feminine authority and worldly conviction. The great master kept quiet. For the first time he had no answer to this. He knew all this could have been attained even without causing pain to his family. But it would have been a bigger challenge to attain all this, which he had availed as a sanyasi, while staying in worldliness.

So isn’t renunciation the easier way? Isn’t running away—even if it means to attain the salvation of humanity later—an easier path? It’s very easy to shut out disturbing mental situations from going rampant while sitting in a cave. The real challenge is to be a yogi within while moving on the worldly stage with all the earthly bearings of duties, roles, relationships, karma, dharma, everything. Like Krishna did. Like Rama did. They forged their saintliness ‘within’ right there on the stage of this drama.

I would prefer to run into situations instead of running away. To try to be stable on a shaking platform is the real challenge. It’s so easy to get poise and balance on a stable platform. The entire essence of being a spiritual person to me is just to remind myself of my core truths even while I’m walking across the illustrious, blinding bazaars of fakery and falsehood surrounding me; to be stable within even while walking in a noisy bazaar; to do my duties on the worldly stage with a perfect detachment and understanding that I’m playing this role in this drama and I have to perform it really well.

The saints are as much part of this existence as the common people like you and me are. If the God had been too partial towards the saints, they would have outnumbered the commoners by now. The real saints are joyful with the minimum that supports their life. The common people suppose that the drama on the stage will get them happiness. Not much difference, I think. To some super-galactic consciousness, taking itself to be a separate super-entity, all this would be just the same—the saints and the commoners. So don’t harbor vanity for being a saint; and don’t feel the guilt of being common. Mother existence stands equally distant or close to both the categories. Further, God certainly must be in love with his common children because He has so many of them.

If my sympathetic tears alleviate the pain of a fellow human being, I’m ready to cry. If my smile lights up someone’s life, I’m there to offer it. I don’t want to be an idol that turns liberated, impassive, heavenly and mute to all the fluctuations of fate and fortunes around me. I love being just like anyone around. 

And if you ever get judgemental over normal worldliness, either about your own self or others, always remember this: It's lonely enough in an increasingly difficult world. Pardon people for willing to find comfort by indulging in illusionary sweeties of life. Because all this is part of life; all this is meant to help us grow, evolve and continue with our journey. 

The little world of honeybees

 It needs a lot of effort by the honeybees to hold onto the edges of water bucket and take sips of water to save their larvae in the comb. It’s a risky gambit, many tumble down and swim very hard to get back to safety. Many drown in the process. But they don’t mind it. They exist as a species, not as Mr Honey x or Miss Honey y. It’s a humongous survival game on the tiny stage portraying extraordinary interludes of life and hope among the assault by brutal bayonets of annihilation. They are just near the bigger bank of survival, the monsoons; just three or four more weeks of ferrying water in this killing heat. Then the monsoons would be roaring. A few stinging yellow wasps also visit the bucket. They carry an advantage as far as drawing water from the bucket is concerned. They are bigger in body and have larger legs, which allow them to land straightaway on the water surface like a seaplane.

The tree above the bucket is a place of active engagement these days. A babbler and tailorbird nests cause this shrieking squalor. Both of them are very proactive verbal fighters. A tailorbird is far smaller in size but punching far above their weight the little couple even outshouts the babbler pair. The little guys are staunchly stubborn. I have seen even the bullying babblers turn hesitant and patchy in their beaky bombardment, calling for a ceasefire which is very surprising. And when both these noisy nest-makers are silent for some strange reason, it looks as if pure and primitive strains of silence have dawned upon the little garden.

A little journey

 On our relentless march on the path of progress, we have turned ‘time’ more and more scarce. We are running against time, or maybe away from it. We have speedier vehicles, better roads, iron-hard will to arrive ‘within time’ but still we are losing the grip and time is always speeding away, forcing us to continue increasing our quest for more speed. Everything is in a whirlwind, spinning like a mad top, cosmic top with whirring galaxies, sucking black holes, exploding stars. Things have changed so much as to reverse the reality: waterwork’s vestiges on the Himalayan peaks and sandiest deserts where once there were luscious most forests. And we with our social prominence and feigned calm trying to outfox time that has outfoxed everything to the stretches of infinity.

As I go slowly clinging to the edge of the road on my scooter, the bigger vehicles go making war-like din and angry clamor. Some even shriek with a hungry terrier’s vengeance. People seem to be running almost madly. Sadly very few have the real clue as to why and where they are running to. It’s more of a habit to run, I suppose. There is not much to look around the road, at least in this part of India. There are sinews of self-destruction scattered around in the intensive lop-sided cropping pattern in the fields with wagon-loads of poison in the form of chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and weedicides. The vestiges of the erratic interlocutors hell bent upon writing a one-dimensional, human-centric legacy.

In any case, you hardly have the time to look at something that may assure you that not all is lost. You have to be spot-on in staring at the road to survive and not get squashed like we squash worms and ants as we hurriedly walk. Your chances of reaching the destination and a centipede crossing the road are almost same. But then there are brief moments that steal in because they fall within the range of your concentration. The gypsy caravan is an exotic chaos by the side of the road. A young gypsy woman untangles the little front leg of a baby goat from the tethering rope and puts some chopped fodder in the small metal basin in front of the tiny guy. A truck carries a pile of junk and sitting on the junk heap are junked humans, the laborers. Faces and clothes smeared with dirt and grease. Destiny-hounded men carrying just trifle measure of flesh around their ribs, while the capaciously potbellied behemoths of luck and prosperity go almost squashing them underfoot. You feel so lucky even on your little scooter amidst car-swarms of latest models competing to get bigger and costlier. Many a shoeless foot bleeding on the stony path, while at least you have your slippers and common ground to walk upon. If you ever feel like a victim and think that the hostile searchlight of fate always picks you out to test you, please remember that there are people who are in the burning kiln right from beginning to end without any respite. 

True knowledge

 True knowledge is just coming home with the realisation that all the information fed in our neural network is only a means for survival, a mere tool like a chair to sit upon. It also sets up the course for unknowing and unlearning, and the consequent swiping the screen clean, to be in sync with the intangible, but ever manifesting, intelligence in its undivided form. Logic, words, knowledge and information are mere chisels and hammers to chip away the mind-created stone from the huge rock of our assumed self, ego, and carve out a dimenaionless entity. So one's logic though can't take you to the Truth, but it can at least help you in avoiding the tricks of the false. So guys pic up your tools, but remember they are nothing more than a stonemason's instruments in his rucksack as he movers to his stoneyard.