In celebration of life and living

 

Why would there be sense pleasure in nature? Can you imagine any type of life possible without it on the planet? Is manifestation possible at all without sense-driven gratification? Isn’t sensual pacification the gateway from the unmanifest to the manifest? When a flower blooms isn’t it a result of the black-bee’s sense gratification? When a rishi goes into the caves to launch his war against the senses, isn’t he himself a result of the sense gratification of his parents? When I aim for the ultimate gratification, the much cherished perpetual bliss, isn’t that a super gratification?

Poor sense pacifications, they are such a maligned entity. Their theoretical negation forms the base all the endless stream of words in holy books and scriptures. While the reality is that at the level of life’s manifestation, as it’s on earth, how will you even survive without this faculty? These are merely the faculties that have evolved with us in the game of survival. The key lies in their balanced usage for a wholesome life.

Those on the path of so-called spirituality start with an acute sense of some imbalance, some pain, loss, bitterness. The latter are just results of mismanaged, skewed usage of our natural faculties. I have seen very well-poised and balanced people serving as hawkers and rickshaw pullers in crowded bazaars; almost saintly in demeanor; at so much ease with whatever nature has given them at the level of senses and their use. And I have seen high priests, the careerist spiritualists, unfortunately most of them in fact, who are well decked up in the armor of dharma and holy look, but peace is farthest from their eyes. Many of them take a cute tumble with their lady followers.

It’s only about being at ease with yourself; nothing less, nothing more. One can use any kind of words to describe it. There is no end to words. They are the products of the faculty of our mind only. Sometimes back an old sadhu was ruminating that he got a nightfall which he considered a sin. Well, had you been healthy in your ideas about sex and women, had been balanced in your ideas and usage of this natural sense-born faculty, you won’t have been crying over night falls in old age, I thought. It’s not about negating sense-born desires. It’s not even about getting saturated with them. It’s all about balance. Like when you eat. Not much to give you ache, not too less to starve you. Like Buddha realized when he almost died after starving himself for months.

Learn to be at ease dear brothers and sisters. If you are sitting in a brothel and are at ease with yourself, you are your own saint. If you are occupying the highest seat of a pontiff and itching with restlessness then you are a novice still. So learn the art of being at ease with yourself wherever you are situated. Balance. Balance. Balance. In everything that life offers. Accept. Accept the windfalls of the pleasure of flesh with humility and gratitude and pay back with sincere hard work. It’s a beautiful world because of the teasing interplay of sensory desire seeking, not because of those who preach against it and keep smoldering with desire within.

You dear seeker, you ought to feel obliged to the teasing ways of desires. You have been given this beautiful life by an exciting play of desires between your parents. I am sure they were not meditating while you got launched into the womb. Desire is the force that’s catapulting the forces of creation and generation: at the level of species in mating urge, and huge galaxies expanding at the cosmic level. That’s the force that pulls this cosmos. Those who are running away from life, relationships, needful responsibilities, mundane pleasures need to remember that most of our gods, rishis and munis had beautiful partners, families and children. They are called bhagwan because they used their energies in an optimum way and managed their sensual faculties in the way they wanted. They used them in a balanced way instead of falling imbalanced to one particular impulse.

In balanced amount even poison serves like amrit. In imbalanced amount even amrit turns poison. A judicious mix of what nature has given is nothing short of enlightenment. Why put your fate solely in the pages of holy books? They are mere indicators, just creation of the minds who could write better than you and me. So ease up. Just be. Accept what you are. Why negate? As the component of being at ease builds up, the tendency to go into impulsive, imbalanced use of sense pleasure faculties will get transformed itself. New neurological circuits develop that drive more hormones of wellness through our system. It’s a very simple physiological fact. Why interpret it to mythological proportions?

The ultimate untroubled playfulness is a result of carefully nurtured well-balanced use of our energies and sensorial faculties. We come to a ripening. The impulses lose their meaning and desires drop off without pain like a ripe fruit drops by itself. The senses and their potential for pleasure still remain in the body but their use or no use means the same. They no longer drive our thoughts, actions and emotions. You get a choice and use doesn’t drive you crazy and no-use doesn’t make you suffer. In a way one rises above that dimension. Call it realization or enlightenment. It’s but merely more conscious, aware form of living; just transformation of energies for a bit more refined thoughts and emotions; a shift in perspective.

It doesn’t mean I find people in the so-called worldly dimension as lowly placed. Everything is just same in mother existence. It’s only about a choice to be something extra if our present sense of existence makes us restless and we feel something missing. It’s merely a choice to be at more ease with the self.

Just learn to stay in the present. This is the ultimate meditation. No need to roam in the Himalayas. Do it among the sweet-sour scent of humanity around you. It’s almost always about what we had been or what we would be. Very rarely we are what we are now. And thus dear brothers and sisters, we exit from the portals of life as ignorant of its meaning as when we entered it.

The flower bud opens with a pining majesty. Infantile petals ready to be born for one more fragrant, juicy season. The goddess of beauty opens another eye to see this world with more colors. But the de-juicing black-bee is also around! Things of beauty and joy are almost always accompanied by the greedy swirls of utilitarian air—two aspects of duality. But that doesn’t mean the things of beauty and joy shouldn’t smile and bloom.

I know it disturbs many minds who have accepted the superiority of particular paths in taking them to the exclusive class of refined and holy beings on earth. That also is another form of ego: the desire to be in a state from where the rest of humanity seems a group of meek ignorants who need reformation and enlightenment. So take this slightly bitter pill of information with a glass of water and be at ease. If your mind still feels disturbed then rethink about the utility of gurus and scriptures who haven’t given you equanimity of mind to even digest this. Then reboot. And smile. Then laugh. At yourself. It helps.

A skirmish in the village temple

 

The village temple seemed a sad affair. You cannot expect too much from a temple patronized by farmers. From the same equation, you cannot afford to have an ambitious priest in such a temple because the boons of rituals are meager. Some years back an ageing priest arrived with his wife. Two of his elder children, a boy and a girl, were already married and ran their separate houses. The returns from the village temple were meager but the services were in the same league. Pandit ji fumbled over mantras and coughed terribly during havan ceremonies because he was asthmatic. Since most of the farmers around the temple loved liquor, so he went along the popular culture and started drinking as well.

I remember the havan he performed on my mother’s death anniversary. The havan smoke triggered his asthma and as a result it was a rumbustious chanting of coughs. Hardly any mantra was audible. In any case he knew a little set of mantras which he repeated to good effect on all ceremonies ranging across birth, death, marriage, engagements and house inaugurations.

Staying among the farmers toughened his attitude by several notches. Earlier he would have verbal potshots at his wife but now he would even launch a physical assault sometimes. Then he fell ill and died leaving the panditayan in charge of the temple. She did not know anything about puja and rituals. The already neglected idols further slumped in neglect. Their dresses developed a thick coating of dust. There were cobwebs around. Shiva’s idol had a hole in thigh because someone left a lamp burning on it. Hanuman being viewed as a wrestler and fond of food would be forced to eat. The muscular idol’s mouth had eatables smitten on it and bees and wasps ate for his sake.

There were voices of dissent against her conduct. The people had to bring a pundit from outside the village for a havan ceremony. The majority of the villagers wanted her to leave the temple but four or five families wanted her to stay. The offerings to the neglected gods were sufficient to allow her a nice life of retirement. It became an issue and the two groups would engage in brawls. Finally, the majority prevailed and she had to go. During the conclusive brawl her supporter group of ladies advised her, ‘Before you go, leave the village under your curse.’ So on the day of departure, when her supportive group came to receive her farewell blessings, she showered her beneficence over them. ‘All of you become like me,’ she said. It meant all of you bear the same fate as me, roughly interpreted as being a widow and turning homeless. Some women from the opposing group laughed, ‘You asked a curse for the village. Since you are also part of the village, you too get your prashad as well. A curse through a blessing on your head!’

The story of an old man

 

Tau Bhoopan has finished his innings here on earth but the anecdotes he sired still fetch little nuggets of memories from the deep abyss of the past. He had a penchant and flare for flirting with norms. He was a certified flirtatious character; always water-mouthed for the opposite gender till late in his old age. So most of his stories deal with his disconcerting overtures to pacify and gratify the undying worms of desire in him. The people seem forgiving and laugh about it.

He indeed was a character. He once came across an English sahib in the privacy of acacia forest and finding him alone pounced upon him like a local panther trying to redeem the native pride. Both of them were strong for each other and huffing and puffing, unable to outdo the other, fell into a well. After a few minutes of water slinging they realized the importance of truce to save their lives. Then both of them yelled, joined the forces of vocal cords to draw someone’s attention. The help won’t arrive for a few hours and meantime they copiously consumed their quota of swearing, oath taking and cuss words in their respective languages. Once they were fished out, they had antipodal reception. Bhoopan was jailed for a few months and the Englishman was treated like a brave prince.

India then became independent and Bhoopan would always claim that he had fought for the country’s liberation from the foreign rule. In a free India, once Bhoopan had opened a tea stall by the road outside the village. He would get up at four in the morning, start fire in the hearth, set the kettle sizzling as a welcome sign for his customers. But he always felt that the number of customers never did justice to his seriousness about the job. He got itchy over the months and when a military convoy passed the road his check dam broke. He fell in front of the officer’s jeep and started crying profusely. The officer thought he was the most wronged person in the area. He asked him about his grievance. A profusely weeping Bhoopan told him about his plight, how the villagers were deliberately ignoring him, as he thought, to make him go penniless. ‘Please point this cannon towards the village once, please, you don’t have to fire, just the cannon mouth towards them will teach them a lesson. They are cowards, they will pee in their pants,’ he pleaded.

In his sixties he was struggling as a sugarcane juice maker. A woman ordered a glass of juice. He made it and while he was gloating over her figure a fly fell into the glass. ‘See, you have put a fly in the glass,’ she angrily complained. ‘Of course, I cannot put an elephant in the glass,’ he countered from his side. She threw away the glass which broke and paid him for the juice. ‘But what about the fly and the broken grass?  Pay for them also. Those were costly items,’ he hollered.

His mischief got hugely manifested in mind, as his body grew old and the basic instinct seeped into his old neurons from the body tissues. A young peasant woman was showing her buffalo, which had been giving mating calls at night, to a bull for calving and fresh milk in the family. It was a tiny grove of trees. Her farmer husband was not at home and fearing a missed chance at getting the buffalo seeded, she herself took charge of the situation. It would have been embarrassing in the presence of someone but since there wasn’t anyone around she tried her best to get the mating done. She pacified the buffalo into a position and whistled to inspire the bull. She had after all seen the process with stealthy eyes as the menfolk managed it. This bull was not that experienced in the art. It was willing, was in the mood and repeatedly getting on but missed the mark. She had seen how nonchalantly the menfolk would help the faltering bull by holding the pizzle and putting it into the slot. But it was a big block in her female mind, conditioned in the chains of patriarchy, to get this particular thing done. She seemed in two minds. She blushed even though there was nobody around. She moved her hand with determination but seemed lacking the courage to do it as if she was scared of it. ‘Daughter, why worry? It looks red and hot but it isn’t so. It won’t burn your hands,’ Bhoopan the expert spoke from behind a tree trunk. He was considerably old by this time and had expertly followed the trio, anticipating some fun that would tickle his lusty bone.

Once, this time older than before, he was urinating by a path. At a distance some peasant women stopped waiting for him to get done. ‘Daughters, don’t worry. You can safely pass. That which you are afraid of is firmly held by its neck,’  he assured them.

As he grew still older he would have lots of fights with his daughters-in-law, sons and grandsons. And people would try to remind him that an old man shouldn’t quarrel and fight with his family members. ‘If not the family, with whom should I fight then? Russia and America? Sorry I’m not capable of that anymore,’ he would say.

Fresh milk in a farmer's house

 

A buffalo’s mating call is melodious to a farmer’s ears. It brings the prospects of fresh milk to the family. At the slightest hint, the family patriarch runs to hire the mating services of a mater (either a public bull like earlier or a farmer’s domesticated bull presently). The males, as usual, are ready yearlong with their ever-active passion.

It’s the females who decide when the male luck will strike gold. Then sometimes there are false alarms. Maybe the farmer misread the female cattle’s braying, grunts and moans. Maybe it doesn’t like the husband presented to her to be the father of her calf. The situation turns tricky when she kicks and gallops to deny the water-mouthed bull any chance. The farmer gets irritated. They whistle. They try to get them into proper mood. The buffalo is tamed into immobility by tying her with ropes. I have seen farmers holding the bull’s pizzle to facilitate a forced entry. And many such forced adventures turn out to be fruitless. And then the bull gets a bad name. The aggrieved farmer, having paid for the seedless adventure, casts aspersion on the mater buffalo. ‘The bull is worthless, not fit for siring calves anymore,’ he taunts. To this the owner of the bull cringes with such pain as if he himself has been called impotent and sterile.

Beauty and truth

 

Truth is the mind and beauty is the heart of the ultimate reality, if at all we can have some terminology to comprehend it with our limited senses. And art straddles the tenuous bridge holding truth and beauty together, binding each to the other with almost a synonymous bond. Economics will hardly have any valuation for truth, beauty and art. The beholders of truth, lovers of beauty and practitioners of art may try to monetize their domains, but they mostly fail. Truth, beauty and art stand, somewhere, in the bylanes, in almost secluded corners, away from the mainstream commerce and monetization.