Random Walk

Keep on Rockin in the free world

2006-11-04T17:45:00.000-08:00

Its amazing the amount of hope, the sheer amount of energy, the naivette, youth and being young should embody. And its hard to preserve and let that which makes us beautiful, hopeful and positive live and thrive inside of us, particularly when all we see outside of us is so sapping in every way. Its hard to be positive, to learn from your mistakes, to try to be honest to yourself, to be naive in some ways yet wiser in other ways. And it just comes to you at some point, the sheer challenge in balancing many seemingly difficult contradictions inside of you. I guess when we tranform ourselves, we'll transform what we see outside of us.
I guess that naivette about being young is so beautiful, its such a gift, it needs to be preserved and unfortunately many young people don't realize, that part of the beauty of being young is not knowing it all, not 'having it all figured, and its just so amazing. You don't have to know everything in life, the first day you are born, I know people expect that of us, but its nice to let loose and give ourselves space to grow and thrive in our own way. And its an amazing realization to come to, that your growth doesn't have to keep pace with anybody elses around you, its just you and the race is with you. When you know that, you tend to make a deeper connection with yourself.

How I felt when I was 21 and mindless ramblings about life after

2006-10-07T07:53:00.000-07:00

Some days ago my mind harkened back to what it was like for me when I was 21. How did I feel? How did I view the world? Why am I reflecting about how I felt when I was 21. Honestly, our past must cause us to pause and reflect. Most of that reflection is internal, some of it needn't be, which is why I am writing this blog. When I was 21, I was like anybody else of my age, a little ambitious and looking towards the future. The life I had lived before I was 21 had'nt been short of events, I had already learnt a fair bit of hard lessons by then, but my mind hadn't fully cranked up to the experiences I would have in the years since. My 21st year changed it all, nothing happened in that year and yet everything happened, a weird contradiction. Nothing happened to fundamentally alter the direction of where I was and have been headed and yet something happened that caused a paradign shift in my life. A curious contradiction. Many things happen in our life, some of those things have a humanly comprehensible cause and effect relationship with us, but there are others that happen to us seemingly bereft of causality. Sometimes we don't grasp the magnitude of the event that happened and continue living our lives deeply numbed by the our own experience, living our life like aimless zombies. Sometimes we do, and when we do, we start looking for answers. Answers to questions that were in some obscure corner of our mind, questions which we told ourselves, we'd ruminate on, hoping that we wouldn't ever need to answer them. How we deal with ourselves, our own experiences and the things that happened to us, including the things we caused and those we seemingly didn't, fundamentally define our life, they define the decisions we'd take and those we wouldn't. I began serious questioning of the premise of my life at a time when I felt particularly vulnerable, challenged by own reality. Such a situation can manifest itself in one of two ways. Fortunately as I see it, I felt I couldn't stay content any longer without pursing those answers, I considered crucial to my understanding of myself. I had done some of this thinking before, but the way I viewed these questions and how I pursued their answers changed quite radically. Hence the paradigm shift. I learnt the value of human experience. Its funny how the greatest personal troughs often provide the greatest amount of inner inspiration. I was disillusioned before, trying to find my moorings, unsure of my steps, but nevertheless walking slowly and suddenly some of it started making sense and the steps became more sure. Life isn't about getting to the final destination somehow anyhow, its not about winning at any or all costs, its about playing the game on the rules of personal conviction. And it is a deeply personal game with some universal realities. We all came alone and we will all walk away alone and even the most lucky amongst us will find most of the road desolate. We all have to find our own rules, our own games, our own ways of getting good at the game , of accepting victory, digesting defeat all with humility, and foremost of the reality that someday the game will be over and we will be judged for our performance in the game. There is the possibility of earning both a promotion and a demotion. And the people that I have met since the time when I started looking at my own little personal game, have helped me refine my rule book, its also helped me understand that the understanding of our own internal inabilities is crucial in our own inability to master the game. Our own ego manifesting itself in the desire to control those around us, is our greatest inability. It impairs us from making deeper communications with ourselves. At a certain time in my life, after commiting a grave error of judgement which had direct ramifications for some others, I in my mind was blaming others for my follies. On careful reflection I realized that I bore the responsibility for what I thought, said and did, and blaming anybody else but myself for what happened to me, was not appropriate. I also realized that those people around us who choose to interact with us at a deeper than superficial level, give us a deeper insight into who we are. And if we are mindful, we can learn from every experience we have.

The ability to introspect, look within for our own answers, our own rationale for life and while doing so, not judge the world for not sharing our views, adds value to our own experience. Thats not always how I felt, but thats how I started thinking and my experiences and my ability to be alive to that has helped me a lot. My life or mind did not change course overnight, it had been slowly heading in a certain direction, certain experiences accelerated the process.

The process of learning is truly a process, its life-long, its based on what is esentially deep introspection. It is based on internalizing external experiences, on living lfe without the desire to control other's reality, it is the ability to strive, passionately towards something and yet let go. This is a weird paradox. There are things in life, which we can legitimately impact, among those are our thoughts, our speech and our actions, what we can't impact is, how it gets received by somebody else and how they choose to understand it.

Our realization of our own limitations can bring a sense of modesty and a sense of perspective of who or what we are and what we can do to improve ourselves and our world. We cannot hope to stand forever on others shoulders, at some point we have to find our own individuality, our own small, but unique place in the grand scheme of things. An honest assesment of ourselves can only help in that endeavor.
The Human ego like anything else has an inherent duality to it. On the one-hand it brings meaning to our life, it can make us strive towards the most perfect individuals we can be. It can also be a very bad thing, when we do not understand ourselves and the world around us properly. It can sometimes without our own knowledge bring a sense of self-righteousness, a sense of self-persecution and a sense of self-centeredness and self-absorption. When we think that others around us are wrong and we are right in all cases, we have decided to walk through life with blinders on. Its basically a decision to not correct or learn from our past mistakes and to not listen to anybody who may have our best interests at heart, as we have made the decision to view everybody who disagrees with us as our enemies. Its a profoundly disempowering experience when we have decided to not learn from the past, as effectively we have consigned our own past to the waste-paper basket. I wasn't always open myself to this idea, I made mistakes, hurt myself a lot and many others in the bargain and gradually learnt from it. Even as I write this today, there are occassions when I observe myself slipping into the mode of self-righteousness. The only good thing is that when one is aware of one's own mind and behavior, one has better chances of faster and less-destructive self-correction.

When we know that we can be wrong, that its alright to be wrong, as long as we learn from the experience, we are not afraid to err. The funny aspect is that most people err, don't learn and keep falling into the same traps again and again. Its a sad truth but there are certain very negative and personally harmful stereotypes which are enforced by our societies of today. Its conventionally thought that if we show our weakness too much, it will be exploited, that while for the most part true, doesn't as an argument hold good for looking at oneself, it also doesn't take into account those around us who aren't out to get us, or to put it differently who are out to help us grow, improve and understand ourselves better. One of the sad aspects of human society is that people are taught to follow conventions (we are not taught to think or spot exceptions), and in attempting to follow conventions which one often doesn't completely understand, we are not able to or taught to think for ourselves, we are not taught to question, we are not taught to be skeptical of what we see around us and what we see in ourselves. When we are in a position to think, we reach a stage where we can discriminate between our various experiences and at that point we can understand that every person around us isn't out to exploit us, we reach a stage of higher self-awareness, we reach a stage where we can accept love and compassion, be aware of what we are accepting, what we are learning, understanding, absorbing and disseminating. A thinking man, fights against blind faith, he fights against the irrational dogmas, essentially a truly thinking man is an individualist. I don't know why it is hard for many to accept that its alright to feel weak sometimes, to feel vulnerable, to feel sad, to wander the depths of one's own pschyche in search for answers, one doesn't need to feel sad, sorry or make excuses for one's own thoughts, and above all, its alright to be confused, to find one's own mind oscillate between different thoughts, different points of view, after all no man, not even the greatest of us, had it all figured out the day he was born. Only the self-delusional can make any claim of knowing it all, knowledge unravels itself to the discerning mind. The aim of life ought to be , to be that discerning mind, to fight for and seek truth, within and by obvious extension outside. Sometimes societal stereotypes are emphasized and enforced in odd ways, like such catchy punch lines as "We are Born winners"(If you are a born winner, please reveal your DNA configuration, it must be something super-human), "Win at all costs"(how about do the right thing, pursue your passion, don't just look for instant gratification, quick money, quick fame at any cost, oh ofcourse I forget, that was the ethos of a by-gone generation wasn't it. I forget, thats what may be right may not be the most easy thing to do or the most expedient thing), etc etc...People get wired with these societal stereotypes rather quickly, of whats cool and whats not in somebody elses view and then it becomes very difficult to fight such views.

I do not claim, I know it all, what I do claim is that knowledge is no one's person's property, its everybody's to find out, understand, personalize, preserve, enlarge and disseminate. Forgive me, I didn't always sound so old and grumpy, I got there, I just hope I got a bit wiser in the bargain. I guess only time will tell.

The Invincibles

2006-10-06T21:11:00.000-07:00

I have often thought of what binds all human-beings who walk this planet. There are many ways of looking at it, but the one aspect that I have seen with the greatest prevalence is the almost universal vanity in the human species. The belief that I am right, I am always right, I know everything, that I am better than the rest. There is not a human-being I have met, not one, foremost among them myself, who has not or at some level does not still have such a view of oneself. It is amazing the kind of vain and make-believe worlds we create for ourselves. And all we do is delude and fool ourselves. To what end? What do we achieve? Well, I think we achieve a lot, we achieve a sense of security, we insulate our lives from who we really are, and thats very important for many. If we have succeded in deluding ourselves, its fairly easy to delude anybody else. Now I shall digress for a bit.

I have heard some of the myths of super-humans even gods walking this planet, but at some level fantastic as the stories sound, could it be true that they did. Why is it, that god has to be brought into the mix, everytime man-kind can't manage its own house. And why can't we manage our own house. I am not disputing the story that gods walked this planet, frankly it sounds quite fantastic, one would always want to believe fantastic stories, they give a larger than life perspective on reality. Anything else, would seem dour and boring. At some level, that might be because of the inherent escapism in humans. People would much rather cull an elaborate story about what they wished or fantasized had happened as opposed to deal with what really did. But in doing so, I fear that man-kind in general has veered off the path of, action and consequence. When we are the ones, cutting trees and pillaging the planet, and when we face greater droughts, floods and natural catastrophies as a result of disturbing the delicate ecological balance, why blame it on the wrath of gods, why not blame it on the stupidity of humans. Could it be because we all walk with such bloated egos, that we'd be willing to blame everything and everybody on this planet for what happens to us (as a result of our own actions By the way), besides ourselves. I have a feeling that the history of human-species on this planet has been one of 'lost oppurtunity'. We have had numerous oppurtunities to redeem ourselves, but every single time one gets the feeling we have looked to extend our domination over other objects outside of us, we have looked to dominate nature, by incessantly destroying it, we have looked to dominate other human-beings through less subtle techniques like slavery, colonization, conquest, racism etc.. or more subtle techniques like mind control etc... At some level, our history, sadly most of it lost, in all but myth and legend, in my opinion, is a depressing chronicle of an agressive, war-mongering species who want to subjugate each other's will powers and pillage the planet. And though its depressing, its never been more important for that history to be uncovered. Just because its depressing doesn't mean, we shouldn't know it, we are on a collision course with our own nature and with mother earth. And it would seem an appropriate moment to uncover the "great" civilizations of the past, many of whom (the 'escapist' in me wouldn't like to think all), may have met a fate which they embarked on in ignorance and a false belief of 'invincibility' just like we have. It may be essential for us to know all this, so that maybe just maybe makind as a whole can undergo a paradigm shift in terms of our view of each other and most profoundly of ourselves. That ofcourse, predicates itself on a rather flimsy assumption, that we will learn from our own mistakes of the past and those mistakes will translate into a collecting wisdom, resulting in a huge course correction. Probably Only time will tell.

Past Regrets

2006-09-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

"i've used hammers made out of wood
i have played games with pieces and rules
i undeciphered tricks at the bar
but now you're gone, i haven't figured out why
i've come up with riddles and jokes about war
i've figured out numbers and what they're for
i've understood feelings and i've understood words
but how could you be taken away?
and wherever you've gone
and wherever we might go
it don't seem fair...today just disappeared
your light's reflected now, reflected from afar
we were but stones, your light made us stars
with heavy breath, awakened regrets
back pages and days alone that could have been spent, together..
but we were miles apart
every inch between us becomes light years now
no time to be void or save up on life
you got to spend it all..
and wherever you've gone
and wherever we might go
it don't seem fair...you seemed to like it here
your light's reflected now, reflected from afar
we were but stones, your light made us stars
and wherever you've gone
and wherever we might go
it don't seem fair...today just disappeared
your light's reflected now, reflected from afar
we were but stones, your light made us stars"

These are lyrics from a pearljam song called "Light years" and the amazing part is how pertinent it is to human beings and the way we live our lives. We often deal with people who we think are precious to us in an almost cavalier fashion, freely assuming that there will be a tomorrow. Sometimes there is no tomorrow, all that there is, is today, to explain how sorry you were for what you did, how much somebody means to you, etc...I have known through personal experience of some instances which drove that point home to me early on. Sometimes we may meet a person, a close friend perhaps, for the last time, we may be alive, but may never meet again, but the precious few minutes we may spend together isn't spent in understanding the great friendship we share, it
is spent in other sad and wasteful ways. If there is one universal truth about human nature, it is probably that we are profoundly ignorant and that more than anything else brings our own downfall.

"and i wished for so long, cannot stay
all the precious moments, cannot stay
it's not like wings have fallen, cannot stay
but still something's missing, i cannot say yeah
holding hands are daughters and sons
and their faiths are falling down down down down
i have wished for so long
how i wish for you today
will i walk the long road the long road
cannot stay the long road
there's no need to say goodbye say goodbye
all the friends and family
all the memories going round round round
i have wished for so long
how i wish for you today
and the wind keeps roarin'
and the sky keeps turning grey
and the sun is setting
the sun will rise another day
i have wished for so long
how i wish for you today
i have wished for so long
how i wish for you today
will i walk the long road
we all walk the long road
will i walk the long road
we all walk the long road"

Another pearljam song "Lomg Road", seemed pertinent.

Peace

2006-09-22T20:39:00.000-07:00

"Peace starts from within. Peace is quiet.

Peace is listening when others speak – even if they are speaking in a language we must learn to understand.

Peace is recognizing that we are all different – even as we are all human. Peace is acceptance that we do not understand others unless we take the time to allow them to tell us who they are.

Peace is humble – it is realizing that we do not know, we are not experts, we need help more than we need to give help.

Peace is not global. Peace is Individual.

Peace is knowing that life matters enough to change our actions so that our personal commitment becomes one that honors the life each of us has been given, and allows others the right to decide for themselves what their personal commitment must be.

Peace is helping when asked – it is not assuming help is needed.

Peace is freely making the choice to live the life that is right for us – to take care of what is ours, and to leave others free to do the same.

Someone once asked, “Why does God allow us all to suffer?”

God seemed to answer – “I allow you to suffer because I have given you the freedom to choose. When you choose to follow the simple laws I have given to you, you will no longer suffer. You have not chosen well.”

Peace is knowing that we have chosen well. "

This is something interesting I found on a webiste I found interesting. What I would only wish to add is, peace is the ability to be dispassionate, to look at oneself for who we are, peace is the ability to look at oneself in the mirror everyday and re-affirm the commitment to better oneself, to always learn, to forgive and make peace with others. Peace is the belief in taking responsibility for our thoughts, our speech, our actions, of being honest,mindful, considerate. When we have seen the amount of suffering we have caused to ourselves and others as a result of our own thoughtlesness, we may realize that the means and the end lies inside us.

Marriages are made in heaven

2006-09-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

My knowledge of marriages are purely through observations, not through any practical experience thus far thankfully. But its just funny how people say marriages are made in heaven, well if marriages are made in heaven, so are most other things. Whether people believe in the concept of heaven or hell or not, I certainly do think there are many things in life which are a consequence of actions indulged in by a soul not just in this life-time, but in other life-times. For a moment I might digress into the whole concept of 'karma' which as I see it, is basically the encapsulation of all experiences thus far in the journey of a soul. It doesn't matter which life or what physical vehicle (Human or some other living form) a soul resided in, the experiences of a soul continue. During this journey of a soul towards its eventual rightful place, of higher consciousness, experiences are annihilated, while new ones are created. I am convinced that marriages, just like one's family, close friends are experiences one carries over from a different time and place. One may also ask the question, is it not possible that these may be new experiences, and not carry overs from previous experiences? Though it may be possible, I have my doubts about that. At any instant, on this planet, millions if not billions of souls occupy a physical vehicle for this small part of their journey, called this life. Why did I bring this up? Well did you know in which household you would be born before hand? Did you have control over that? Why is it, that among so many people born at any given momet, some are born in rich families, some are born in poverty. Some are born in households of a certain kind, some in households of a different kind. There is no doubt that our parentage, our family background, has a big part to play in who we are, and who we will become. Our family is our greatest pillar of strength, in some sense our parents define the values we have, and the values we don't. Then there are other experiences we have in life, which shape our mind, certain life-altering experiences, certain mind-bending experiences which forever change the way one looks at life, the true meaning of life, why we are here and what we are about. It takes a great deal of courage to look within. I have known no better or more meaningful way of looking at life. Returning to the subject of marriage, marriage like most other experiences is a 'karmic' experience, one gets who and what one deserves, no better and no worse. There are people who spend their young lives dreaming and fantasizing about their 'dream girl' or 'dream guy' or whatever, such thoughts are often shaped by societal stereotypes of who or what is beautiful or handsome as the case may be, and knowingly or unknowingly people serve to merely enforce that stereotype. Nobody seeks an ugly looking person as one's life partner, no matter how one may look, from the physical stand-point. But inspite of all I have heard from people about being friends before being life-partners, I have often thought of this as a highly suspicious statement. Who is a friend? A person who for better or worse, always stands by us, fights for us, sometimes even fights against us, to protect us from even the remotest of difficulty, who laughs with us, who weeps with us, who is always there with us, mentally even if not physically, and who will make any sacrifice humanly possible to see us happy. Different people define friendships differently, this is my definition. Even the most fortunate amongst us, find very very few true friends, most are friends more out of situation and convenience, than philosophy, and most of us find no true friends and walk life alone. Mental affinity, is about understanding a person's thinking, what they stand for, their vulnerabilities, the kind of thoughts one keeps tucked away somewhere in the deepest corners of human thought, and at that point of profound and deep understanding of oneself and hence another person, one finds love and the true meaning of life. To some this may sound like an ideal, impossible to achieve. To me, what I have seen of marriage, has made me believe in this ideal even more. There is no point garnishing a relationship based on 'physical attraction' alone, with such words as 'love' and 'friendship', sadly to many these are nothing but words and are often used inter-changeably. Its sad to see how such inexplicable vulgarity is so commonplace. How somehow, emotions which are so beautiful, so private are talked about in public, how people express their love for one-another in front of so many others, is that really love, or is it really trying to find validation for one's love, relationship, from others. But people do that, and thats a sacrilege, that isn't love, its something else, but thats what most people do in parties, other social events, thats what marriage becomes. So like everything else contemporary, marriage becomes a compromise. A compromise for the sake of others and because in our quest to please others, we never gave ourselves the chance to explore ourselves and what we seek from life.

But in spite of all this 'marriages are made in heaven', even though those whom we may get married to, may not most often be the person who makes us happy or even a better human-being or makes our life more meaningful. For good or for bad, we get to experience the fruits of our own strong likes and dislikes, and marriage and who we are married to, is but one of many consequences of that.

Howard Roark

2006-09-12T21:45:00.000-07:00

Howard Roark was the famous hero of the ayn rand masterpiece, "The Fountainhead". Howard Roark was a man who believed in himself, his vision of himself, his vision of life and of the one thing that was his life and more, his work (The buildings he envisioned, but could not build and the buildings he envisioned and built). The answer to what is howard roark is a rather complex one. Howard Roark is the deep, undying self-belief in a man who believed in his own self, his own vision, his own dream so deeply, that even the deepest abyss of failure could not bring despair to him, a man so deeply honest to his own principle, that nothing or nobody could shake or change that belief. In a world where people want to live in the eyes of others, we need people who live for themselves. In a world where people want to act out their dreams for others, we need people who want to make their dreams reality for themselves. In a world where people want to make statements about themselves to prove something to others, we need men with the integrity and courage to make their life a statement, to make their life an embodiment of all that is pure, beautiful and worth striving for in mankind. Seen too much make-believe around, We need honest men , we need men of truth, of dignity, of true class, who truly value themselves, their thoughts, their life and what they can give back to life. "Howard Roark" is a pillar which can't be destroyed, Howard Roark is a flame that can't be extinguished, Howard Roark is the belief in everything that is pure, beautiful, serene, honest, natural and unembellished.

We need such men, now more than ever. We have too many around us who believe in what other people want them to believe. We have relinquished so much of our personal lives to others, there's no space remaining for the real 'me'. Other people's judgements have come to decide, most every aspect of our life, others are our standard-bearers, if this isn't living life second-handed, what is. Something I have had the privilege of observing, experiencing and learning from close quarters about people, is that the true spirit of men doesn't need statement, it is itself a statement. Those who understand this, don't need to state themselves, their life makes the most eloquent statement.

Contemprary concept of god

2006-09-03T21:58:00.000-07:00

God is an energy, power who will come in a human incarnation, wash away all our bad deeds, show us intelligent humans the way, and we human-beings will learn from such a lesson or from our own past mistakes and improve, and then everything will be beautiful and everybody will be happy ever after. That story does give you a warm and fuzzy feeling doesn't it or is it self-delusional? I will stay away from saying more.

Blogs

2006-09-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

Nowadays everybody has a blog, including yours truly. Thats at some level one of the greatest boons of the internet revolution. However it is often very difficult to sift through purely crappy blogs like this one, which is nothing but my own mindless rants and musings, and anybody who reads this and actually follows my points of view does it at the expense of his own sanity. Now that, that little disclaimer is out of the way, I'd just like to continue on the point I was making, which is that is the huge plethora of blogs a good thing? The answer, my opinion, strictly is 'yes', simply because a blog gives one the oppurtunity to air one's thoughts on anything. There are people who are afraid of expressing themselves honestly, I do not think blogs are meant for them, if one lacks the will to express oneself, whether for fear that there are total strangers out there who will be able to read what you write or for some other insecurity, blogs aren't meant for you.

A man's individuality

2006-08-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

When one looks at the true quest of life, as I understand it, it is essentially perhaps the pursuit of one's own individuality. It is the desire to find answers to questions such as who am I, what am I and why am I. Every man has a unique identity and he tries to find it. Some men think that what differentiates them from others is far more than what they share. I think the only thing that differentiates a man from another man is our own individual abilities to grow from our own experiences, our own individual abilities to transcend desire, anger and the sometimes hidden (other times fairly overt) desire to prove ourselves in whatever way, shape or form to others. There are people who question why we should deal with other human-beings, why we should trust others? To them my simple answer is, that every single, meaningful human experience we have with some one else is a way of annihilating ones own karma(good and bad) of the past and preparing oneself for the future. Why must every meaningful experience happen with some other human-being as the other party, how about between me and nature, or me and myself? There are a large number of realizations one comes to through critical thought and through self-analysis, but there are also other realizations one comes to through observations of one's interactions with people around. It is my belief, a belief I have derived from some level of observation of my own experiences over the years, that, we meet people who in some way shape or form, offer us present, past or future images of ourselves. And when we dislike or mistrust those around us, we dislike or mistrust who we were, who we are or who we'll be. When our experiences from the past, make us cynical, they don't make us better human-beings, they make us worse. Any man who seeks to find his own individuality, cannot deride or disrespect his own past or future or for that matter, that of another man. I have always believed that our lives offer us infinite chances for redemption, for making good with ourselves, with god and with every form of god's creation around us. You can't love god, without loving yourself, you can't love yourself without loving another human-being. Sounds like I lifted a phrase from a do-gooder's book doesn't it? Well to be honest I have read a few people who write along the above written lines, but these are certain thoughts I have had, based on my own observations of myself in the past, what I've done wrong, what I could learn and even what I've done right. I don't preach socialism, some people might misunderstand, quite the contrary, all I say is that the pursuit of man's individuality invariably leeds him to another man(his own time-variant image). So when you have an experience, good or bad, learn from it and you will see yourself understand yourself that much more than before. So don't loathe another man, learn from him and you will grow. People so often talk about realization as if its a concept only in the abstract, I don't claim to be realized, but do understand that one starts realizing when one stops talking and starts listening to one's own inner voices.

Human evolution

2006-08-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

Its been a long long time since I last updated the blog. Been quite lazy to be honest.

A self-righteous man: a man who believes he is the sole torch-bearer of all knowledge, who doesn't care for any other man's point of view other than his. Men who have a robust value system, but yet re-invent their thoughts and beliefs as they learn more, are men who are truly open-minded and in who I believe, the bright future of mankind rests. One would imagine that these are two seperate categories of men: self-righteous and open-minded. But it seems to me that there is an ego-maniacal, self-righteous side in all of us and also a side that wishes to learn from every human-being, from every experience, and as human-beings we tend to find the balance between the animal and divine instincts in all of us. The animal instinct is a fight for self-sustenance, where there are perceived threats, where its a 'survival of the fittest', where one feels one must fight vehemently against change, against anybody or anything that questions us, against perceived enemies (no matter how flawed such a perception may be) and the divine instinct is to realize the truth within, realize the similarity and yet the dissimilarity between all living things and cherish both, to understand and harness the boundless positive energies inside. I may not be a qualified person to comment, but yet I find that whether one agrees or disagrees with darwin theory of human evolution, he was undoubtedly a genius, he observed and captured the animal instinct in the homo-sapien, the only trouble is he forgot to capture the divine instinct in men as well. All the science textbooks in the world have taught us the darwin's theory of evolution, they have done a great job at some level in describing the human-being as nothing but chemicals, and the human emotions as reactions to chemicals, I wonder if they forgot to ask the question what if anything other than chemicals is a human-being. Why are human-beings born in different physical surroundings and states, does a human-being take one or several lives? Why are we here?

Interesting story

2006-06-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

I was watching a story the other day of a police officer who met with a dreadful accident in the line of duty, an accident which completely ruined his face, hands and severely bruised his body, to the point that his face needed complete plastic surgery. After going through such great trauma, the first thing this guy did was return to the line of duty again. Inspite of the irrepairable damage to his body, and knowing that he would never be able to serve in the same capacity as he had been accustomed to before or would have liked to, he returned to the police force to do what little he could for law enforcement. There are people who would have sat home and/or brooded about what life took away from them, felt self-pity, blamed others for their problems.

But not this man. He was pro-active enough to take all the suffering he had to go through and turn it into something positive not just for himself, but for the larger society. Such people and their lives prove that heroes exist not just in stories but in real life too. The only common bond between heroes in all walks of life is probably that they don't aim to be heroes, they just do their work, as best and as sincerely as they can.

Many people need to learn that its easy to make statements about morals, rights and wrongs, about other people and its just very difficult to be honest to what one says and preaches to others in ones own life, those that suceed, serve as examples to others, those that fail, have the oppurtunity to try and learn from their failure or they have the oppurtunity to give up and blame others for their failures. Like many other things in life, its a personal choice. Our personal choices in life, define who we are. We may like to not take responsibility for our choices, but finally the buck stops with us and the internal knowledge of that can often be helpful to get rid of unnecessary negative stereotypes of those around us. Its also always amazing how the greatest amount of self-pity comes from men who have not or do not wish to try to do anything honest with themselves. This is not a judgement or an indictment of people I have seen or known, who am I to do that? But its just an odd observation, that the process of trying to be honest and sincere to yourself, is such a battle with the external world many a time, but brings a man so much 'clarity' and serenity inside, that all the difficulties seem worth it.

Conversely, a man who feels sorry for himself, tends to blame others for his problems and is more interested in making 'announcements' or 'pronouncements' to the outside world, is a broken man inside. The desire to grow internally and the desire to prove something to somebody else always tend to go in opposite directions.

The point is there are people who are honest and compassionate, in spite of many problems they confront, u've just got to learn from your mistakes, past and present, give yourself and others the leeway to make mistakes and learn from them. Those who learn, keep moving, those who don't, stay ignorant.

Maya

2006-06-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

"our real nature is divine: pure, perfect, eternally free. But if our real nature is divine, why then are we so appallingly unaware of it?

The answer to this question lies in the concept of maya, or ignorance. Maya is the veil that covers our real nature and the real nature of the world around us. Maya is fundamentally inscrutable: we don't know why it exists and we don't know when it began. What we do know is that, like any form of ignorance, maya ceases to exist at the dawn of knowledge, the knowledge of our own divine nature. The changing world that we see around us can be compared to the moving images on a movie screen: without the unchanging screen in the background, there can be no movie. for us this reality is conditioned, like a warped mirror, by time, space, and causality—the law of cause and effect. Our vision of reality is further obscured by wrong identification: we identify ourselves with the body, mind, and ego rather than the Atman, the divine Self.

This original misperception creates more ignorance and pain in a domino effect: identifying ourselves with the body and mind, we fear disease, old age and death; identifying ourselves with the ego, we suffer from anger, hatred, and a hundred other miseries. Yet none of this affects our real nature, the Atman.

Maya can be compared to clouds which cover the sun: the sun remains in the sky but a dense cloud cover prevents us from seeing it. When the clouds disperse, we become aware that the sun has been there all the time. Our clouds—maya appearing as egotism, selfishness, hatred, greed, lust, anger, ambition—are pushed away when we meditate upon our real nature, when we engage in unselfish action, and when we consistently act and think in ways that manifest our true nature: that is, through truthfulness, purity, contentment, self-restraint, and forbearance. This mental purification drives away the clouds of maya and allows our divine nature to shine forth.

Shankara, the great philosopher-sage of seventh-century India, used the example of the rope and the snake to illustrate the concept of maya. Walking down a darkened road, a man sees a snake; his heart pounds, his pulse quickens. On closer inspection the "snake" turns out to be a piece of coiled rope. Once the delusion breaks, the snake vanishes forever.

Similarly, walking down the darkened road of ignorance, we see ourselves as mortal creatures, and around us, the universe of name and form, the universe conditioned by time, space, and causation. We become aware of our limitations, bondage, and suffering. On "closer inspection" both the mortal creature as well as the universe turn out to be Brahman. Once the delusion breaks, our mortality as well as the universe disappear forever. We see Brahman existing everywhere and in everything."

I found this passage on a website I find very good and useful. I was once trying to explain an experience I perceived as being spiritual to another person. I soon realized that by doing so, all I was doing was devaluing the experience. I say this not out of a false sense of ego or mispalced arrogance. I say this because spiritual experiences are meta-physical experiences, experiences which the physical realm do not always account for. I think certain experiences can't be shared, they can only be experienced and understood. There are people we meet who feel threatened by people around them, their own family and friends, they see other people as being different from them and hence think nobody can understand them, I used to think that way, I later realized that it revealed my own ignorance.

"All fear and all misery arise from our sense of separation from the great cosmic unity, the web of being that enfolds us.There is fear from the second,our sense of separation from the rest of creation, is always a misperception since it implies that something exists other than God. There can be no other. "This grand preaching, the oneness of things, making us one with everything that exists, is the great lesson to learn," said Swami Vivekananda a century ago."

I have always felt that when we seek our own identity in others we become dependent on others, when other people give us a favorable picture of ourselves, we like them and when they don't we hate them. What we love/hate are people, thats the way of living our life second-hand, where our deep love/hate for another man's opinions of us and therefore the man himself governs our life. Where there is deep love, there is bound to be hate, in all this what is lost is the truth. The buddhist thinking and something I have seen to be true with more experience, has been one of knowledge and forgiveness.
Why do we go through the experiences we go through in life? Why do we meet certain people through whom we experience certain emotions? I have thought about it and I have felt that it has a lot to do with what we make ourselves deserving for not just in this physical form and plane, but in all previous forms and planes of existence. I think that self-awareness and the ability to understand ourselves helps us understand the reason/root for suffering and also therefore gives us insight into how we can alleviate our own suffering and that of others. Contrary to what many like to think, the root of all suffering is the same, the other surrounding situations may be different.
The people we meet in life are teachers who teach us certain realities of life. Most experiences in life are not hollywood movies with a happy ending, where the hero rescues the whole of humanity from the jaws of extinction, the human life experience fortunately is a little deeper and more meaningful than most hollywood movies. We can learn from all experiences, those who are truly open learn from all experiences good and bad, if we learn from the lessons our teachers teach us, we loose a little bit more of our false ego (our unwillingness to learn), and grow a little more within. A little more of the chaos, confusion we see outside of us gets resolved, we look past the illusion a little more. And I feel depending upon our own actions and our own thoughts, we meet suitable kinds of people in the world around us who assist us in our endeavors to learn and grow, the world we see around us is just a reflection of who we really are.

2006-06-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

I do not know what to name this post. Whats common between clothes and perfumes on the one hand and words, a cynic would say they both can embellish the truth, and that would be partially true. A high flying optimist would say that both clothes/perfumes and words can add a sense of sophistication/class to a person. Maybe true, maybe not, its all a little dependent on personal taste I guess. The reason I say this is that, you observe people all around you who enjoy using words with abandon, they may have read a word or sentence somewhere and they will use it everywhere, irrespective of whether it belongs there or not. I have always felt clothes and perfumes don't make a person look sophisticated or classy, quite the contrary, its the person (and who/she is and how they feel about themselves) which make every other thing they do look good. I think our opinions of ourself are reflected in everything we do, most notably in our speech. There are people who like to make disparaging remarks about other people at the drop of a hat.

(I think at some level, all people have this disease, for every man, he is the only man on this planet who is succesful albeit against terrific odds, he is the only man to be thinking what he is thinking, he is the only man to have done or experienced a million things...., Its a nice feeling to think you are 'exclusive', 'the chosen one', gives you a false sense of security, makes you feel less mediocre, less 'ordinary' than you really are, but maybe all it does is makes you more self-centered and delusional, and probably nothing else, but who cares, well frankly nobody does, including the people who make such statements, which is the pity of it all. If I loath myself so much, even the best-intentioned people out there, can't help me. But being self-loathing and self-delusional is a terrific combination) There are also people who talk one way and behave another way, thus reflecting internal contradictions. If we don't take what we say seriously, nobody will. And that doesn't mean that we cannot have a change of heart about certain issues, as we think about things in greater detail, we see facets to an issue which we weren't able to see, in our urge to quickly over-simplify something. Its just the way words are abused often that amazes me. To give an example, the way the word 'cynic' is used everywhere is quite interesting, who is a cynic? Is it specific individuals we refer to or is it a pattern of behavior to refer to somebody whose demeanor reflects hate/anger/depression etc.. (and who doesn't have all these elements to varying degrees inside them, to my mind every human-being does, what identifies a cynic), basically somebody who finds difficulties everywhere maybe reasonable to define a cynic perhaps. There are people who say, cynics are people who are negative towards everything, true at a level probably, but thats over-simplification, a cynic as I can see it, is somebody who finds negativity in every experience and hence becomes a negative person. There is a strange irony which I will mention later. A similarly abused word 'optimist'. Who is an optimist, somebody who only sees positive or somebody who to the extent humanly possible finds oppurtunities in every difficulty and uses them as stepping stones for growth. And these two versions of being optimistic are very different, the second kind of optimist is the more meaningful kind of optimist, and such people are very rare.
Its funny how people who have lived in slums, under terrible, sub-human circumstances, are always smiling, they are always positive, they seem to be really positive, upbeat, as if they had something besides grinding poverty to look forward to, and in their minds they do which is all that matters to them, they dream of a way out of that hell, which has been their life, that dream no matter how irrational to many is what sustains them, or they could have as well gone insane or died. These are not people who have read books about poverty and imagine things, but people who have experienced what nobody would ever want even for their worst enemies and they would like to progress out of their hell. And on the other side, there are people whose lives have been much easier, much less hassled and difficult, who are always unhappy, always complaining about others (some people don't even know that they are negative and have no reason to be that way.). Understanding the value of what you have, helps you value what/who you are, who you've got in your life (friends and family), how blessed you are, and makes you feel more humble and thankful to god. It transforms you, your thinking, your view of life, I say this having seen that to an extent in myself. I am not completely transformed, but finding something awaken in yourself always helps make that leap.

We all have great potential to grow and a great resistance to grow (and be stuck somewhere), all at the same time. When I was a kid, when people (particularly those who cared for and knew me) criticized me, I used to get very angry and react in a way that reflected my maturity at the time. Even after so many years, criticism still hurts, as it should, but I try to learn from it. Not everybody's critique is one we need to take seriously, but we know who is well-meaning and who is not, thats not too hard to figure out. Divinity manifests itself in all of us, and I feel that there are 6 billion gods walking the planet, its a pity most of us don't know where to look for it and how much good we are capable of.

Change-II

2006-05-30T21:37:00.000-07:00

I used to think we all make conscious choices, choices of how we'd like to see ourselves, how we'd like to view life. Well, probably many a time we don't (maybe better put, would be that only the very lucky few amongst make those choices), many a time others who think they know whats best for us, make those choices for us. And we spend most of our lives under those shadows, either fighting openly against it or reacting to everything we see around us, often with irrational fears (complexes of whatever kind) and scars of the past, running from our own shadows. I think we are all scarred by our past, at some level desperate to seek hope anywhere, desperate to hold onto even a straw of hope, when we see so much horror, so much turmoil, so much negativity around us. I think no matter what past we had, what distinguishes us is how we deal with our experiences. There are no gospel truths. Everybody has to find their own truth. Just a few observations though.

There are many things about our lives we can't change, namely those things which have happened in our past. There are two permanent aspects of life, the begining of life and the end of life, when one has seen both these things up close early on, one respects most aspects of life in their entirety much more than one would otherwise. One also looks to assume as little as one can about one's life and of life in general. One realizes that many of our assumptions, which lead to our own false senses of security are what prevent us from growth. In my observation, the knowledge of struggle, of both the meaninglesness and meaningfulness of life, all at once,makes one humble, less reactive, less likely to want to judge others, more receptive to an alternate point of view. I am convinced that we create our own realities, not by being biased and seeing the world through those eyes, but by being honest (to ourselves first, and to others where possible), by being kind, compassionate and understanding to others, their points of view. Those who have humility in their hearts, are more open to accepting their own fallibility and by extension are more open to learning and growth. People grow when they learn from their own experiences and those of others. We learn from others by approaching them with an open heart and mind and a stead-fast desire to learn. Anger, biases towards others, makes us blind and we hurt only ourselves. I have observed people including myself making complete fools of themselves, through false ego and having a desire to prove a point to others. Such vanity and self-delusions exist in all of us. When we are able to dust ourselves up and learn from our mistakes, we come out stronger and more mature from an experience. This however predicates itself on the assumption that we wish to learn, that is something that is strictly a personal choice. Only we can determine when and how we wish to learn, other people around us no matter how well-meaning cannot make us see what we are determined not to see, they can only help, if we are humble enough to recognize that it is human to err, human to learn and human to grow. Part of the human experience is to make our own mistakes, but it is also part of the human experience to learn from those mistakes and make an effort to grow from it. We all have the freedom and should have the freedom to learn our own way, without interference. Our friends and family can at best only help us in this endeavor provided we are kind, humble to learn with and from them and value and respect their presence and experience enough. We live in a world where no man has time for another's problems or points of view. By dismissing another man's viewpoint without careful thought, we only serve to devalue ourselves.

Irrespective of anything real change comes from inside.
I have no right to pass judgement on others, merely to hope that we make the best of what life gives us.

Winds of change

2006-05-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

"Change does not come by loud protests, by abusing public property and by daring law officers to arrest us to make a statement against the establishment.

Change comes with patience, understanding and education. Change comes by example – by using wisdom to lead others to realize the best choice for them. Change comes by allowing others to live through the experiences they must, as difficult as it is to watch, so that they can come to their choices from within themselves. This is the only way they will truly believe.

To bring about the change we all are seeking, we must realize that the change must be a choice we all are allowed to make, as individuals and in our own time. We must learn to live our own lives, not to presume to know what is best for others. We must educate ourselves, and we must love others enough to give them the same opportunity for themselves."

These are statements made by somebody I have followed a great deal over the last year
or so, somebody whose struggle I have come to admire.

And then somebody who I didn't know much about till yesterday, but somebody whose voice betrayed and experience (real credentials) showed a very nuanced, deep and wise understanding of the world said this and I quote. " In life, we find lots of comrades, but no friends, the very lucky amongst us maybe find very very few friends, because the feeling of comradeship is based on the emotions of a moment whereas friendship is something more permanent we hope, something based on true mental intimacy". How do the two things I quote associate with one another? My experience is that even amongst the people who know you, very few, maybe hardly anybody understands you for who and what you are, hardly anybody cares to know what you stand for, hardly anybody asks the tough questions of you and is willing to listen to the answers, the answers that half-make sense, half don't, the answers that show your mental confusion, hardly anybody cares to listen and make sense. What I heard from a man I knew nothing about till yesterday seemed to make a lot of sense, it touched a chord. I have found myself alone practically everywhere in life, more so in the last many years, and its not physical loneliness, its something more, much more, I won't get into that here, the greater point was that it was quite easy for me to understand his point. Comradeship has some emotional appeal, its about finding emotional oneness with somebody you may not know and may not share much in common with, its about walking in step with somebody, but unfortunately comrades last only so long as the struggle lasts, sometimes not even that long (you ofcourse understand that much later). Friendship is about sharing core values and finding a deep level of connection. It is very rare, I have personally known it to be even more rare.

As regards to the excerpt on change. Through my own limited experiences there are times when I have made constructive suggestions to people who I care about. I did not and do not expect them to incorporate those suggestions in their life or thinking without doing their own thinking, but what I do like to see is people who take what I say not as some sort of a scathing attack on them, but who try to be more receptive. I say this, because when we sense people attacking us, as human-beings our first instinct is to defend ourselves, we often either dismiss what is being said or try to fight back in other ways, and these instincts kick in without our conscious knowledge, probably because of the deep-seated instinct to defend ourselves. And sometimes we are wrong in thinking that every bit of critcism we get is malicious, thats because all people around us are not malicious, and we owe it to ourselves to know who we are listening to and based on that, to make our own judgement on what/whose advise we listen to. Change can't be forced on anybody, everybody has to come to their own realizations through their own experiences. The idea in making suggestions to people is not to take away their right to make their own independent judgements on things, its more to make them cognizant of certain things they may not be aware of through knowledge/wisdom gained through our personal experience. I think you can sense the change in somebody, if you know them very well, there are very subtle ways of seeing/sensing that change. It maybe a suggestion you may have made, and its not to claim credit for it, its more the sense of satisfaction that you could serve as a trigger for an internal conversation, which could help the person. On the other hand, I have also known people who say they are transforming themselves, but somehow you don't sense/feel that transformation when you hear them or talk to them, and you really hope that they know, that they would be better served being more honest to themselves and secondly that you would know if and when you saw that change in them (and you clearly aren't seeing any transformation in them that they claim), that they wouldn't need to make any statements if that transformation occured. When you truly know somebody, you back your instincts and subtle observations about them, more than the statements they make. I know I do and when I see a contradiction between what I hear and what I see, I question to clarify, if whoever it is matters.
You know you are dealing with somebody who is a friend and who cares deeply, if they see subtle things others can't. Finally change is internal, but people who care can however serve as vital catalysts.

A view of the system

2006-05-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

I am not a big fan of political blogs, but the huge uproar about the whole quota system back home sort of moved me to write about this a little bit. There are some ways of looking at this whole issue.

One perspective is of those students who fall under no quota, and are struggling to get an education in the institutions for higher learning in India. I among many others have come from that system and know that since the first mandal commission report's findings were implemented, its only been that much harder for students who don't fall under any quota to get admission into educational institutions. I can therefore understand the anger students and others are expressing about this new quota system for OBC's and others. There are doctors who are on strike to protest this and there are students who committed 'self-imolation' to protest this, I am not sure if this kind of reactionary behavior either addresses the issue or helps redress anybody's grievances.
There are many people who feel aggrieved by the system in its present form. There are many who say system should be replaced. With what?
There are people who can rail and rant about the system, day and night. That proves that they don't like this system, but what do they want it to be replaced with. You ask that question and chances are you will not get any answer, partly because its much easier to blame everybody else, the system, your parents, your friends, your neighbor's dog etc etc.. for all your woes.

I think some good things can come about by this whole debate about quotas. I think more people, including the ones who are apathetic to whats happening in the country and those who sympathize with that point of view, have an oppurtunity to wake up and get to know whats happening, and initiate and participate in a constructive, meaningful public dialogue. Well, what does this last sentence mean? Aren't the doctors who are taking part in strikes and students who are not attending classes doing that? Well, I don't think so, what I mean by a public dialogue is a comprehensive national one, where the people who are against this quota system being implemented, go and spread their message to every part of the country.

You so often get to hear people talking about 'India shining' and that India is doing very well economically etc... What people don't address is the fact that, india's so called propserity has been largely confined to the big and small cities, maybe even towns, but some how hasn't found its way to the smaller villages, the rural parts of india, and so far in any public debate their voices have never been heard. With practically 80% of the country living in the countryside, what sense does it make not to involve them in this process of national debate. Here's my problem with people who are participating in strikes, they paralyze the cities (which maybe is their objective), but secondly and more importantly the people who participate in these strikes are preaching to the quoire. How so? Well the people who are watching this debate, raging about it, hotly debating these issues in blogs are people from cities, who probably have lapped up every detail they read in some newspaper and are debating the finer points of the quota system, and above all, all of these people participating in these discussions are against this system. But what of those people who have not been part of the economic boom in cities, what of those people who are not educated and do not have TV sets at home, let alone computers, who do not have a constant supply of electricity and water. They are not part of this national debate, in fact they have not been part of any debate. Its hard to explain this to people from cities, because they see it only from their perspective. In this issue, it may be important to spread the message to those in small villages and initiate a national ballot measure to see who stands where.

This would also be important from a more longer term perspective, because this debate (can be the begining of more to come in the months and years) acts as a clear glass for the rural electorate, it helps them see who their elected representatives really are, what they are doing in their names. It makes the politicians aware that what they do is being watched, for a change not just by the urbane and the so-called sophisticated, but by their own electorates. There are those who will say this will not work (and its fine as long as you have something else constructive to suggest, that is the whole objective of public discourse. ) it is precisely these people who are the first ones to read the riot act and say what won't work and the last ones to do anything meaningful. For a change I am hoping, people will talk about what they can do, and not what they can't.

The real people of India are not the rich people, moving in their swanky cars, or the ones talking on cell phones, or the ones writing in blogs such as this one. They are the ones who are living in abject poverty, in complete hopelesness, who are moved to such desperation to commit suicide. Every summer we hear about some farmer somewhere commiting suicide, I think it has all become so common place that people are not affected by it any longer. Is india shining for these people? The answer would be not really, they are only becoming poorer, more desperate. I heard a farmer yesterday from Gujarat whose ancestors have been farmers, who works very hard, but no matter how much he tries, he only makes losses on his produce, often undercut by cheaper rice from outside. He doesn't know what to do. He is not educated and feels desperate to go to the city, where he doesn't know what he will do. I wouldn't be surprised to find him begging in some remote part of some city. How many such desperate farmers, who could not fathom suicide, are begging in some city. Is that what they deserve. They are feeding all of us, they work much harder than anybody in any city, against odds (partiuclarly more so in India). Are we creating a permanent underclass? People who don't have the tools to rise, people who are hapless and helpless. Maybe these economically disempowered, need a quota. I am afraid no politician would be for it, because he doesn't get to divide the country (and because for once he gets to do something truly meaningful), they would instead like to divide the country along caste lines, create divisions in a very delicately balanced country, thereby ensuring their own survival.

At the same time in educational institutions everywhere in India, we need to improve the quality of education, there are some ways of doing so. Maybe those who are educated and those who are frustrated with the system, have their oppurtunity to do something meaningful for a change, instead of constantly complaining about what isn't working in the system and paying lip service to the country. But to do that we have to get rid of aggrandized illusions of ourselves, and find a sense of humility, which doesn't come from anywhere but looking within. Who wants to do that?

Growth

2006-05-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

Its funny, a few days ago, I had mentioned about my blog to one of my good friends, over the past few years. We were then at some point talking about our own thoughts about life, about things in general. He said that sometimes when he reflected about his own thoughts in the times gone by, he felt that some of his own thoughts which he previously held sacrosanct, seemed silly now, in hindsight. And frankly I have found that to be so true. There are people (and at some point I was one of them, maybe sometimes I go back there again) who get so passionate,(there's nothing wrong with that) and so opinionated about things, that they don't realize when they loose mental clarity. There's nothing wrong with having an opinion, but there is something to be said about holding onto an opinion with dear life. I think that with experiences (good and bad), and careful reflection about those experiences, we have the oppurtunity to transcend our own opinions, our own biases, and grow beyond our years. Getting opinionated I have felt, is due to the domination of the ego on our thinking. The color of the world around us depends on which colored glasses we wear. I find that positivity, just like cynicism is an inherent bias, it can skew our view of the world. Having said that however, we all need to model the world in a way in which we feel we can survive and thrive, for some it is creating an illusion of joy, for others it is an illusion of sorrow.

Some people have talked to me and thought that either I didn't make any sense to them or that I was in perenial sorrow, I have disputed neither observations, because view points of people about others, tend to be relative to their view of the world. Since there are no absolute/known references to compare against, they are view points which you respect, but might not necessarily agree with.

Obcession

2006-05-17T18:18:00.000-07:00

We all live in a result oriented world. A world where it doesn't matter how you make your money as long as you make the money. It doesn't matter how you do something as long as the job is done. I find this rather strange, I have often wondered, if it was just me or if somebody else saw it similarly or not. Yes it does matter, how you do something, how you make your money, how you work, how you live, sometimes its not just the end results which matter, but the ways and means we use to get there. I have heard people say in sport that they will do anything to win. But does doing anything to win mean that you will transgress rules, freely doing anything to get what you want. Doesn't that make an otherwise important achievement, something which one could be proud of, quite hollow. What is a 'winning mentality'? In my opinion, its the ability to persevere, in the face of odds, not to escape odds, not to somehow always choose easy ways, but to face upto a tough situation and get tougher when in the face of an adversity. Its also to accept that occassionally things will not work the way you expect them to, but if it matters, you just got to keep trying. My experience has always been that you get learn by trying and by falling and picking yourself up. Those who are afraid of falling are invariably afraid of trying and they conjure up weird, irrational reasons for it. A great winner in life in my opinion is a person who can be graceful and philosophical even when he/she looses (it doesn't mean you enjoy loosing, it just means you don't necessarily show your worst behavior, the moment things don't work out your way) even when things don't work out and who has a strong mind and strong work ethic. Sometimes, you learn something more profound, in the process of doing something, than in achieving an end result.

Strange

2006-05-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

My experience when it comes to people has been rather bizarre, put quite mildly. You find good, helpful and positive people in the strangest of places. I say 'strange' because sometimes people from nowhere, help you out when in a difficult situation and almost sort of instantly disappear. And after that, even if you tried to find them, you wouldn't be able to do it, its almost as if they are messengers from god. I always found that really strange.

The other strange aspect about dealing with people is the way we use our speech. There are people who live their lives completely unmindful of another human-being. By unmindful, I do not mean that every decision we make in life has to be one based on inputs from others or based on some form of consensus. What I do however mean is that when we talk to people, when we interact with even our closest friends or family, we can't be unmindful of their point of view. There are many people who are easily provoked into fits of rage or anger. Such fits of rage are probably very counter-productive. The people who are enraged expect that after they have finished their tirade against somebody, everything will be forgiven and forgotten, but the problem is that neither they nor the other person learnt anything at all from the experience, and that such unpleasant events are likely to happen again and again. I have experienced a few fits of anger myself over the years, a long time ago I used to vent it out, but then I am learning to live with it, to understand it, the irrationality behind it. Equally I have also been on the receiving end of a few mad-tempered verbal tirades from people. I have also been on the receiving end of what I can only best characterize as less than intelligent or rational behavior by some individuals. I do not blame them for it, but it would be an unmistakable lie to say that I am less than sensitive or easily forget such behavior, from either myself or somebody else.

I think a lot of people condone their own inappropriate behavior. We all assume a lot in life. We assume that we will have an oppurtunity tomorrow to appologize to people we knowingly or unknowingly hurt. I have known that to be a completely fallacious and flawed assumption. It serves only to delude us. Finally the buck stops wih us, we are and should be responsible for our own behavior, and that includes being mindful towards other human-beings, and not to simply abuse and walk-over people who care for us and try to help us. We can make ourselves deserving for better or worse in life, based on our thoughts, speech and more importantly actions. I say all this because I have realized through my own life and my own thinking. I always felt that the people in our lives serve as agents for growth. And we get people around us, no better than the kind we deserve. So if you want to change the world around you, change yousrelf first.

General stuff

2006-05-13T08:54:00.000-07:00

I have often heard people debate about the presence of extra-terrestrial intelligence and whether they try to make contact with us. Some people passionately believe that this is indeed the case, others argue passionately against it. Then there is the debate about whose views about culture, society, religion, morals etc.. are better. There are always 2 sides to each of those issues. All probably equally valid, but none probably more true or less true than any other opinion. Finally truth just like beauty depends on who is perceiving it. And above all this, is something much more beautiful, much more spiritual, it is the pursuit of god. Its the deepest and the most meaningful journey, a journey inward. At some point we all come to the realization that there is something more to life than we've ever seen or known, something much more.... Its not about we, our new cars, our big homes, the money we make (whether rightful or wrongful), our physical beauty or lack there of, or anything about ourselves. Its perhaps about the knowledge that there was life before me and there will be life after me, that what I am experiencing today has been experienced by many before me and will most probably be experienced by many after me. That in its true and complete sense is the one of the most profound and humbling experiences. As you delve deeper, you realize that the things we held against people for things they did or didn't do for us was due to our own stupidity, our own vanity, that by forgiving people, no matter how hard it may seem at the time, we get rid of heavy emotional and 'karmic' burden. Often we feel sorry for bad that happens to us, we indulge in self-pity, not knowing that what we experience today is our own past actions, that while we can't control what has happened in our past, we can control our actions in the present and the future, those who realize that, understand that through kindness and love, we can transform suffering into joy. I never completely understood that until the last few years. In the last few years, I have had some of the most interesting experiences in my life, which have enriched my thinking, they have opened new doors where previously I knew of none that existed.

Anger is one of the most profoundly disempowering experiences, where instead of harnessing all that is good and beautiful in us, we give birth to paranoia and irrationality, and we imagine beasts when none exist. By imagining such beasts around us, we become the beast. Fear is another irrational emotion among others, these are emotions which put veils on our eyes and create darkness and ignorance, instead of light and beauty.

There are people who think that one can't get spiritual until one is old. That thought predicates itself on the assumption that a person ages as slowly mentally as one does physically. That maybe true in certain cases, but fortunately or unfortunately hasn't held true in all cases. There are also cultural dogmas about being spiritual. I do not believe in any of these thoughts because my experiences have taught me otherwise. I believe physical aging is out of our hands and mental aging depends on who we are, what kind of choices we make in life and because of that is to a large extent in our control, I do not say completely, because of other reasons.

Our choices about the human-beings we are, define who we are, not the clothes we wear, the cars we drive or other physical factors.

Corduroy

2006-05-12T10:22:00.000-07:00

"The waiting drove me mad...you're finally here and I'm a mess
I take your entrance back...can't let you roam inside my head
I don't want to take what you can give...
I would rather starve than eat your bread...
I would rather run but I can't walk...
Guess I'll lie alone just like before...

I'll take the varmint's path...oh, and I must refuse your test
Push me and I will resist...this behavior's not unique
I don't want to hear from those who know...
They can buy, but can't put on my clothes...
I don't want to limp for them to walk...
Never would have known of me before...
I don't want to be held in your debt...
I'll pay it off in blood, let I be wed...
I'm already cut up and half dead...
I'll end up alone like I began...

Everything has chains...absolutely nothing's changed"

This song is absolutely beautiful. Its about how sick you feel down in your stomach, when you have people talk about you as if they know what you are and how you feel.But more pertinently, I will add some more lyrics of an even better song (AN Even more meaningful, deeper song). A state of mind of complete "indifference", so total that you don't even have to say anything, its all apparent.

" I will light the match this morning, so I won't be alone
Watch as she lies silent, for soon light will be gone
Oh I will stand arms outstretched, pretend I'm free to roam
Oh I will make my way, through, one more day in...hell

How much difference does it make
How much difference does it make...

I will hold the candle, till it burns up my arm
I'll keep takin' punches, until their will grows tired
Oh I will stare the sun down, until my eyes go blind
Hey I won't change direction, and I won't change my mind

how much difference does it make
how much difference does it make..
how much difference...

I'll swallow poison, until I grow immune
I will scream my lungs out till it fills this room

How much difference
How much difference
How much difference does it make
How much difference does it make..."

Truth

2006-05-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

One of a few movies I really like is a movie called "Dead Poet's society". Its a story that revolves around Robin Williams, a teacher who teaches english in a boarding school somewhere in the new england states (I think). The school is meant for kids from really rich families, families where parents have big ambitions for their kids. The movie revolves around the rigors of life for these adolescent kids. As you would imagine, for somebody of that age, they are trying to explore their mind, explore themselves, but the expectations of their parents is a stifling reality for many of them. This is chiefly because of the fact, that the careers some of these kids wish to pursue are at odds with the ones chosen by their parents. Robin williams is this teacher who wants to explain english grammar and the english language in a very innovative way, by encouraging the kids to explore themselves, he wants them to not just understand and appreciate the english language, but also help them to understand who/what they are and what their calling is in life. He tries to awaken a poet in each one of them, he tries to teach them english in a way that's more fun and less of a drudgery. One of my favorite dialogues by him in the movie is "Carpe diem" implying sieze the day, where he tells his young students that today is the day to start self-exploration, to begin the process of finding the real "you". His novel way of teaching is not liked by the school principal, but he doesn't have grounds to fire him yet. And then an incident happens, that gives him the excuse to fire him. A young and promising kid, whose father wanted him to be a doctor, but who himself wants to be a stage actor, performs in a play in school, earns a lot of plaudits for his work, much against his father's better judgement. The kid unable to deal with his father's overbearing presence in his life, yet unable to kill his own desire to be a stage actor, finally commits suicide unable to deal with things as they stood. The grief-stricken parents blame robin williams for subverting their son's mind, and the principal fires robin williams after he coerces some more kids (who love and admire robin williams) through mental and physical abuse to make false confessions that robin williams was a bad teacher.

Though the specifics maybe different, that seems like a very real scenario. Not just a work of fiction. I say this because you meet so many people in life, who claim to know you, to know who you are, what you are like and what you feel. Based on their ideas of who you are, they try to tell you what's good for you.That in itself is a very good thing if they are ready to accept that you may need to do your own thinking to accept what they say or that may have to be more compassionate, persusassive and persistent in putting their point to you if they truly believe that what they are saying is actually good for you. They may also have to accept that after doing your own thinking, you may come to a different conclusion from them. Would your family, your friends still support you? I think most people wouldn't, some people would, we in life try to seek out those few. They are the few who would truly support us, they are the few who really care for us, for who we are and what we think and we know we can be confident that they will be there, even if we disagree with them. They are the few who know us and not know of us.

There are many people who befriend us when we can be of use to them or when we tell them 'they look great, they are great etc etc..., they have a great mind etc..' (none of which are actually true). Most people at some level probably love to be complimented, even if the compliments are false, they hence are given to doing the same to others. Such people have pre-conceived notions about themselves due to their own insecurities and also similar notions of the world, because they are afraid they may actually be much more 'ordinary' than they ever thought. So they surround themselves with people who shower them with fake compliments, instead of the truth. I have seen and known people in all walks of life who do that all the time. Initially it used to make me angry, now I observe it and am cognizant of it, but don't get as angry, I have developed a sense of humor about it (though it may not be readily apparent). I have met a few such people who like to propagate their delusions of themselves and the world through others thereby extending their own ego.

Such people are neither truth-seekers nor can they be truth-finders. They are simply opinionated people. When I have looked inside, I have found too many flaws to pick flaws in others, but I am neither blind nor do I wish to be ignorant of the things I have seen in the world outside of me or the experiences I have had. They have enriched my mind beyond my own comprehension. This has helped broaden the internal conversation, made it more interesting. When somebody has sought my honest opinion, I have given it, as truthfully as I could, but to be honest very few have, most seek validations of pre-conceived notions. Its hard to have conversations with such people, because they are already closed.

I have found the pursuit of truth to be an internal quest, one where you try to find yourself, for who you are, with all your flaws. Its about loosing the will to be self-righteous and trying to be honest and dispassionate. Trying to be self-critical, trying to be clear glass, to see things for what they are, not for what we fancy they'd be.

My take

2006-05-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

The last post is the lyrics of a song called 'present tense' by pearljam. Its a truly beatiful song. And a very pertinent one at that. Amongst human-beings there seems a large section of people who are always ruminating about their past, living in it, wishing they could change this or that, wondering if something else done differently from the way they did it, would alter what happened. Basically a lot of regrets and a lot of baggage. Then there are many people who cull dreams about the future, and they live so much in those dreams, that those dreams start seeming real to them. Between the ones who live in regrets and ones who live in dreams, there are very few who are awake. In my limited interactions with and observations of people, I have found very few who try to live and make a difference in the present.We all can do something to help ourselves and our fellow human-beings be the best that they can be. And by looking within for inspiration, maybe we can all find a more honorable, truthful and graceful way of living life.

Present Tense

2006-05-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

Do you see the way that tree bends?
Does it inspire?
Leaning out to catch the sun's rays
A lesson to be applied
Are you getting something out of this all-encompassing trip?

You can spend your time alone, re-digesting past regrets, oh
Or you can come to terms and realize
You're the only one who can't forgive yourself, oh
Makes much more sense, to live in the present tense

Have you ideas on how this life ends?
Checked your hands and studied the lines
Have you the belief that the road ahead, ascends off into the light?
Seems that needlessly it's getting harder
To find an approach and a way to live
Are we getting something out of this all-encompassing trip?

You can spend your time alone re-digesting past regrets, oh
Or you can come to terms and realize
You're the only one who cannot forgive yourself, oh
Makes much more sense, to live in the present tense

Adi's rant

2006-05-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

Adi's rant

First Post

2006-05-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

It's about 11:52am on thursday. I was reading my friend's blog and sort of felt this was a really powerful tool and maybe that I should have my own little space as well. Anyways I will try to update this space with stuff I feel like writing, as often as possible.