The twilight: no light, no dark

If you want to swim, accept drowning. If you want to fly, accept falling. To win, accept loss. To fulfillment, accept emptiness. The duality is bound by an unbreakable cord. Pull one, and the other one comes dragging. A win is not a win completely. You are losing something also, in some for or the other. No flight is a flight solely. It involves a fall also in here and there. Swimming isn’t floating only. It involves intervals of drowning also. Accept the so called opposite, antipodal, the perceived enemy and the threat. Don’t run away from it. Success is not the absence of defeat. It’s only accepting defeat, learning further and moving on. Accept death and you live. Surrender and master the ownership of your thoughts, actions and emotions.

The tale of two poor idiots

The urge to dominate, the ambition of power, the desire for prestige, these are all driven not by strength, but by some inherent weakness, fragility, fear and imperfection. There is an inherent imperfection which drives grossly selfish acts. Stalin had very short legs in comparison to his upper body. When he sat on a chair, he looked damn funny as his legs fell short of the ground. We need not insult humanity anymore by even retelling the atrocities he perpetrated on his own people. Changez Khan won half of the world and slaughtered countless innocent human beings. He was so insecure of his death and mortality that he went on rampage to forcibly plant his biological seed across Asia. By an estimate, almost 8% of the Mongoloid people draw their genetic line from him. But even this large scale cropping won’t give him peace and security. He was so scared of his death that fearing some sabotage he never slept at nights. He just went paranoid and one night ran out of his tent, tripped, fell on an iron peg and died like a stray dog dies accidentally.

The mountain and the lake

There is an old ascetic staying very happily under a banyan. No material possessions, almost naked and no desires. The force of his wisdom is spreading far and wide. The King gets so impressed that he touches the saint’s feet and overcome by huge pangs of reverence for the sage asks the old mendicant to come and stay in his palace. He is sure that the ascetic is going to say a loud “no”. But then very surprisingly the old sage says “yes”. So it becomes a big news and the King is even feeling duped. The old friar comes to stay in the palace. In irritation the King is pouring more and more worldly comforts around the mendicant who never shows any unwillingness to roll over more and more in comfort. The sage is accepting all the worldly facilities on offer. The King’s agitation is turning into burning jealousy day by day. He starts condemning the sage as an imposter who has now forgotten all his wisdom after staying in the palace. The King’s anger reaches a breaking point and he condemns him as a disgrace in the name of monkhood and banishes him from the luxurious palace. Nothing changes in the old monk. He smiles and says, “Ok King, as you wish! I was just fulfilling your wish to offer me luxury.” Smilingly the old sage prepares to leave the King with a blessing and a little sermon:

“I stayed in your palace but your palace didn’t stay in me. I am not a lake, I’m a mountain. I enjoy the water falling all over me, cutting my sides, kissing the trees on my slopes. But I am not possessive to hold the waters back. I simply allow it to flow down. I don’t hold. I don’t pull back. I just let it be as it is supposed to be. The lake is hollow. It craves for fullness. It wants more and more water. It has to hold. It has to collect. It is attached to collection. But the water will in any way flow away. So there is pain at the exit. Hence it’s forever looking upland for more and more water. I allow the flow, so enjoy the process, the mix of past, present and future. The lake holds. It suffers. It hardly enjoys its present, its being.”

Elixir of life and curse of death

Creation has just one source, single point of focus. Elixir of life and curse of death spring from the same source. The nectar and the poison originate from the same place. Life’s shadow is death, and death’s shadow is life. The perceived duality is a mental image projected in vacuum as we peer through the lens of “ego”, i.e., helpless bondage to the outermost layer, the grossest level of our material existence. The latter stands as the bridge to the shaky walk this way or the other. Break the bond and these drift away into non-existence. Love is tied to hate. And our “ego” is the rope, the bridge holding the two extremes of duality. Clinging to the two extremities, we have the option of treating one as the substance and the other as the shadow. If your ego allows love to be the substance, then hate turns a shadow. And vice versa. But in treating hate as the substance, we contradict the basic principle of nature. Hate is an exception, love is the rule at the cosmic level. Endless swathes of cosmic tranquility into fathomless depths cannot sustain without inherent love, peace and harmony. By hating we are putting a roadblock, a speed-bump in the path of infinite space-time continuum.  Through love we speed up the cause of evolution. In choosing love and the elixir of life, we add to the inherent cosmic harmony. In hating we add to the cosmic explosions and accidents.

Shadows under the light

There is no perfect darkness,

and hardly complete light,

Not totally good

and perfectly bad either,

Darkness stands because

the light is at some distance,

And light means

the shadows are yet to crawl near,

Here lies the challenge for goodness,

because bad is just a bit away.