The seat of ego

 The huge sense of self-righteousness has its origins in a very little dark space in our egoistic chamber where mammoth ghosts of judgement and opinions burst to their seams. They have been suffocating in a little dark space and that's why they run wild to assert and claim more territory in other's mind once the door gets unlocked.

On a secret mission

 

We have seen many cows peacefully chewing the cud right in the middle of roads. They serve a good purpose. The rampaging motorists have to turn careful and slow down, for their own safety at least. We think twice before hurting a cow even involuntarily. So cows on the road is a usual thing. But what about a dog sitting right in the middle of a highway? Well, it looks a clear attempt at suicide since stray dogs hardly carry any faith-born protection like the cows. The red brown dog seems relaxed in the face of death hurtling past at so close quarters.

I also rattle past the stoic dog in my battered, old little car. I’m on a mission, a secretive mission. The winter is quite harsh for my middle-aged bones now. With each passing season, the winters pose a bit bigger threat to my ageing bones. I deliberate over the issue and decide to buy some brandy to take little teaspoons in warm water at the end of the day. People have a particularly clean view of my persona, so even brandy, intended to serve against cold as medicine, is as good as buying a contraband item.

The main problem is that brandy is available at liquor shops. You stand out as a hardcore drinker if you find yourself standing in front of a liquor outlet in broad daylight. I’m at a town near the village but I imagine the peeping eyes of many fellow villagers even on strange faces. I have to be quick and hide the secret item quickly in a bag I’m carrying for the purpose. Nobody would accept that you are buying just brandy from a liquor shop. Even the shop assistant gave a disappointed look when I asked for a mere ‘brandy’. As if I had demanded a kitchen knife from a cannon factory!

I go for a half bottle. He demands 500 rupees for it. I’m ecstatic as the little squat bottle is safely hidden in the bag. For another half bottle I decide to visit some other outlet to get some other brand of the product. But only one brand is available at the town and finally I buy the same one. Surprisingly it comes at 400 rupees. So the other guy duped me for 100 rupees. Then I reflect, ‘Maybe I saved 100 rupees instead of losing. Because had I purchased both bottles from the same outlet that would have meant giving 100 rupees extra.’ 

The lone ranger

 

On December 18, 2022, a Sunday, almost the entire world prayed for Messi to win the world cup. The prayer was heeded and Argentina won the world cup after 36 years. Huge celebration comes at the cost of pain in some corner. So sadly France has to sulk. One man stood between Argentina, or say the entire world, and the coveted trophy—Kylian Mbappe. He is just twenty three and has shown enough artistry to be the next soccer superstar.

Argentina had lost their opening match to Saudi Arabia but finished as the champions in the tournament’s final game. So a botched up opening doesn’t always mean a painful end. You just have to stay focused and give as much, in fact even more, as you would have given in enthusiastic spirits after a good beginning. Sometimes you end up with tears of joy after starting with tears of agony. These are irresolvable mysteries. And victory chooses you rather than you grabbing her by the wrist because there are so many chance factors—the ball hitting the bar, the ball getting deflected off the mark, the ball suddenly dipping, the ball going straight, somehow. All this happens mysteriously among a melee of chances. But one has to be there right in the middle of it to allow some chance fruit to fall in one’s lap.  

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!