Eco-heroes

 

A virginal forest is cut on a pristine island in the Andaman. I’m glad that at least we are paying a lip-service to the cause of environment. The government plans to compensate for this loss by planting trees in the Aravalis near Delhi NCR. Well, the world seems to have taken the cause of environment very casually. The expression of loss falls well short of awakening people to the fact of irreversible damage.

It’s befitting the fabric of a humane self to grieve over the ecological loss. As a beacon of hope, there are eco-heroes who are holding processions, dinners, benefit concerts, readings and memorial rituals to mark the dents and bruises suffered by mother nature. They have put red gauze flags signposting dead mangroves in Goa. Artists and environmentalists are setting up monuments to pay homage to the lost species. As mega-floods, super-droughts and super-storms come out shrieking, voicing mother earth’s agony, soft and sensitive souls get under a pal of despair, depression and anxiety. They hold gatherings to commemorate the extinct species. There is a memorial dinner for Dodo in London; there is a candle march and handwritten posts for extinct and imperiled pollinators. Musicians, scientists, filmmakers and academicians express their sense of loss at the death of a glacier. A memorial plaque stands for a huge majestic tree gone extinct. An Australian artist composes songs for dying reefs. In December 2018, Olafur Eliasson fetched thirty blocks of ice from Greenland and put them at public squares in London to melt away, hoping it would melt the ice clods in our hearts also. In Canada the creaking sounds of a dying glacier are broadcast live through speakers so that the office goers know what they are walking upon; so that they realize that a part of earth is groaning with pain and agony. Somewhere a glacier stops moving, groans, cracks, melts and dies. At least some people hold a memorial ceremony to commemorate the dying ice. In Oregon a funeral for Clark glacier is held. A coffin full of meltwater from Clark glacier is ferried to the steps of State Capitol building. And somewhere far away a lone tree holds the last baton for its species. It’s Wood’s Cycad, a native of South Africa, the only tree of the species left in the world.

The essence of being human

 

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 grip 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 like the thief the moment he sees a policeman. Really knowing or becoming aware of a negative emotion or thought as it is and 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 behavior.

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-awakening techniques, bhakti, gyan and the rest of spiritual practices are meant to bring a kind of positive symmetry in body and mind's functioning so that there are more of positive neurochemicals 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 which 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 a cranky state of mind?

So all this is a holistic art involving strict observance, meditation, yoga, bhakti and knowledge; just like different types of nutrients needed for the body to keep the ailments away. Use these various types of spiritual pills to strengthen yourself against the bugs of suspicion, fear, discontentment, anger and jealousy. The bugs 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 the negative bugs of mind. They will be there, whether 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 always stay in one form or the other, just like the harmful virus and bacteria around.

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

On the strip of solace

 

Here I’m on my strip of solace between the two canals going side-by-side. There is water, plenty of it. There are well-watered reeds bordering the streams. Here at least the mankind is not at war to grab more and more land. This has allowed mother nature to bloom a thin ribbon of scrub jungle consisting of some trees, coarse grass and thorn bushes—a scrub and grass ribbon going like a natural lifeline among the pesticide and fertilizer smeared cropped fields on both sides. Walking on the little footpath, and looking at the red disk of the sun slowly melting into the silvery mist of the horizon augments silence and solitude to such proportions as would be sufficient to heal the scars on one’s soul.

The bushes and the reeds have plenty of prinias of various types. The dusky grey, rust brown and rufous earthy brown denizens of the bushy world suspiciously peep at this encroacher from the outside world. They flick their graduated tail up and down and jerkily go hopping across their home bushes to ensure that the enemy has safely crossed over to the other side. Some bushes have conversational, lively twittering that changes to a plaintive, sharp tee-tee-tee, asking me to go away. Little do they realize that I’m also looking for a bush to hide from the bigger, bad world of humans.

One particular prinia, ashy prinia, gives a kit-kit-kit call on being startled by my arrival. Maybe it snaps its bill in irritation to produce the sound. Another type of little prinia gives brr-brr-brr notes with its wings as it angrily hops among the tall grass to make sure the enemy has passed his home bush. They have woven with grass fibers (strengthened with cobwebs) domed or oval pouches in grass tussocks and weed stems. Theirs is a little world centered around a few clumps of grass and bushes. But there are plenty of caterpillars, small beetles, ants, larva to supply calories for their agile flip-flops among the bushes. And when they decide to have a veg supper, there is nectar from tiny wild flowers like Butea, Erythrina and Salamalia. But they have to be very careful till the end of the day when the last streaks of purple light are dying from the clouds in the west after the twilight. Greater coucal, a beautiful dark handsome birdie prince with rust brown wings, loves stalking them across the bushes even till the last rays of the day. He is hunting for their eggs and even the grownups if they get lazy. While most of the birds have started for their host trees and bushes, the coucal still lingers among the bushes. Maybe it stays just nearby to start hunting again with the next dawn.  

The grandeur of getting old

 

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 the 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, ripe and cozy to wear, and easy to carry.

War and peace

 Mankind's basic tendency is war, tension, strife and suffering. Peace is simply imposed against our will.