En Repos

Lying down after a day's work

Gods at the crossroads
From what I can gather from the actions and conversations of people, God is the Creator of this world and runs this world. We are supposed to be one of his children or are we and have imposed the idea of being his children so that He is forced to treat us as His children and take care of us?

God is all that we aspire of and the highest Aspiration that we can conceive of; or at least so we lead ourselves to believe.

We would rather die hungry but build temples. We would allow ourselves to be impoverished but dress up our God in silk and gold. We shower the best foods on our Gods and hope that He will be pleased and in return offer us goodies four-fold beyond our expectations.

Everyone designs his God in his expectations so a plethora of Them roam this earth. How real are they? Do they have any basis in some real phenomena? Can anyone really prove it? We really do not have answers so the argument is unendable and enclosed within its parameters are all the ills, evils and kindness of the human race.

Humans are an ingenious breed. Once the Gods have been appeased, their importance is immediately placed on the practical balance of everyday affairs and if needed they are sidelined. Often we have no time to give them the obeisance we believe is due to them so we strike a bargain by putting them up at crossroads; this permits us to pay our daily prayer without side-stepping into a temple.
It is another matter that this same God whom we pray to is left to toast under the sun, or be dry-cleaned under the rain and chilled in the winters. He is there finally to serve us and his place is where we need him at our convenience.
If it has to be at the confluence of cross-roads then so be it.

The miniature versions soon become a nuisance and are immediately thrown under a tree or in a stream when they have served us. One does wonder what value we are giving to our Gods. See the number of Greeting card with the Gods adorning them to be crushed underfoot and/or thrown out with the common garbage?

Silence is Golden. Discussing the sayings. 8

Silence is Golden. Discussing the sayings. 8


How often do you go out, sit in your rocking chair and listen to birds and the trees and perhaps the butterflies?

I asked this above question to a group focusing on meditation.

One of the replies is: My inclination lies in Silence -this has been the place in which I have felt at greatest ease. Being an Observer, or Silent witness, conscious of my Real Self, is my way of life, and my Meditation lies on that path.

This is a beautiful reply.

Silence is the best environment to be in. It is the strongest and most creative place. It is only in silence that others can speak to us. The universe is waiting for the din in our heads to quieten down so that it could put in a word or two. But we forget everything and focus on our ability of speech and we never have seemed to learn to stop. A little quietening down is absolutely essential both for growing and for renewal. We need also a little balancing act with ourselves to equate and see ourselves in reflection; ourselves as our own witness comparing and analysing so that we can know where improvement is needed. The flowers and butterflies are silent but in action at the same time.

Yes this is the enigma. Speaking in silence is the trick.
The flowers, the cloud formations, the flowing water and the shimmering reflection of the lights of the cities in water, the he waves crashing on the beach and so many other activities that do their thing, communicate but never say a thing. How entrancing they are. There is something in these forms of happenings that attract our attention and gels with some part of our being. If it were not so, why would we want to collect butterflies and put the flowers in pots? This is speech of a kind. We can speak with the eyes, eyebrows, actions and movement can’t we? The same way Mother Nature speaks to us in various hues and modes. If only we would listen.

I am a practioner of silent action. Once when I was in the neighborhood park with my child who had learnt to walk recently and she was exploring the world of the grass, flowers, swing and other exciting things, an older gentleman sitting and watching us remarked that I rarely said anything to the child but that I simply followed her around.
This is point that could be elaborated a bit. The thing is that I was totally focused on the pleasure of discovery that my child had created. I normally went to the park at a time when it would not be crowded. So we could open ourselves out in comparative aloofness. But although the appreciation of the gentleman came as a pleasant surprise, this is the truth: my child and I were communicating fully although without the medium of speech.
I do not believe in over guiding, teaching or counseling. Better to wait for the right moment and make a remark based on the truth of my own experience, philosophy and experience. This has more impact than continuous lecturing.

Discussing sayings (7)

Dressing by women is a cross between their need to clothe themselves and their instinct to undress. – attributed to Confucius ( although I doubt it).

I am a believer. Look at his picture taken from today’s newspaper:

Does that leave much room for discussion? What I glean into their deeper consciousness, I would say that they have been wired by Mother Nature to mate and populate; thereby fulfilling Mother nature’s need for able bodied humans to keep her Creation going forward.

The converse side is the need to protect oneself from too much attention and of Mother nature herself; she being so unkind as to buffet us with cold winds and blazing heat whenever her whims take her.

To my understanding the question has been stretched rather. The females would have by now realized that with minor changes of lines they are all the same. They are really killing the goose by over exposure. Soon nobody would be attracted by their charms even if they stood on a platform and danced naked. So how does it serve them? Even in the short run, in the jungle of today’s city culture wolves are behind every door-post and corner.

No I think they simply don’t know what they want. They want attention and appreciation but insist on controlling the admirer. Who ever heard of a tiger being controlled when unleashed? I think there is a case here of over valuation and then misery that follows in its wake.

Yesterday I was watching a French movie. A young boy of a single mother had just consumed sleeping pills and his distraught mother was blaming herself; while the boy was explaining to his teacher in the ambulance that he had not wanted to commit suicide but simply wanted to sleep as he had not been able to do so thinking about his girl. In the next shot his mother is shown explaining to him how much she loves him. It seems she had him when she was madly in love with a chef who later moved to New York on a lucrative job offer. She was to join him later as visas are difficult to obtain. But she could simply not put in the effort to pack her suitcase to make the move. The pain and distress she must have caused. She promised him that she would come but never did as she had found her love in her son.

Selfish and stupid wasn’t it? Then I am certain in my heart that she wanted to go but was not going to price herself so low as to go on her own. She was secretly waiting for him to come over and take her along. While the poor man secure in his thoughts that she would come never really understood the situation and never did. Eventually the drift became permanent.

What did she achieve by playing hard to get? Why hook a guy in the first place? I have not acquired enough wisdom yet to answer all these questions but I see for sure that she lost her man, gave him pain and created problems for herself and her son by depriving him of a father’s attention and direction and so much else.

Don’t they see the amount of anguish this business of undressing is causing?

Topping Insults

Discussing the “Sayings” (5)

If you can’t ignore an insult, top it. If you can’t top it, laugh it off; and if you can’t laugh it off, it’s probably deserved. – J.Russel Lyne

I find a great beauty and truth in this saying and in my own life has it has happened more than once. I have never been able to top an insult. The exchange or attack got me seething alright and I would have loved to see the guy’s head blown off. But outside I kept my composure and some remnant of dignity.

Topping an insult is what I would dearly like to do. But I don’t know what happens to me then. I just can’t ever think up one retort at that moment. Later I would not be able to stop myself by coming up with hundreds of brilliant ones but never – never at that particular moment. I suppose it requires a presence of mind I just don’t have. At that moment in time I am so shocked and hurt; my ego and self-regard in shreds that my thinking process freezes over. Then at the back of my mind another background noise is at work. I cannot stop thinking about the brawl I may be getting into. Brawls mean complications, waste of time and even money which I don’t have.

There was no way I could really laugh it away either; that would have been too darned demeaning.
My education has been faulty. I have been taught to be precise, correct and sincere. My spiritual peace is important therefore my mental makeup does not go for exaggeration except when I am obviously aiming for humor. The picture I have obtained from unsavory exchanges is that the art of insulting requires truckloads of a coarse dishonest streak that comes with an ability to lie off like a heartless scoundrel.

There is also attached to this criteria the ability to weave a fact into an insinuation as a foundation and then top it with an accusation; the idea being to attack the person and not the subject. Only an idiot would try to clarify himself in this situation. Some often do get tempted and soon realize that every time they open their mouth they are only giving the opponents some added ammunition.

I am just 5 foot four, 60 kgs(140 lbs) and with age, strength diminishing with joints getting sore and painful. I am terribly scared that a good brawl would develop into a dramatic scene of fist-cuffs flying around and I can’t afford that. No, trying to top insults is not my line and I would not advise it to anybody. What I do is to stare at the guy and maintain an absolute silence both in body and mind. This eventually puts the attacker off and calms him off too. Then I look for an escape route and walk off if I can or if I am on the road get into my vehicle ready to run if the situation permits and while accelerating off, leave a parting shot of words which I have rehearsed often before for these moments. I normally say something negatively nice like; - If you can’t talk like a reasonable man, I am going off. There is no abuse there for my opponent to latch on to for another round and I don’t wait for the prologue anyway.

Then coming back to the element of honesty in my own self, I must admit there is always some basis for the argument to have started in the first place. If I consider myself wise and adept at gauging moods then I should not have allowed myself to enter into a fray of this nature. It can only be stupidity because I let my vanity be pricked or I reacted by anger or something which opened the door for a backlash, fate adding to the occasion by giving me a worthy and most unscrupulous opponent.

Silence and running away are the best solutions. Refuse to engage.

Discussing the “Sayings” (4)



Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Once I was reading about the concept of beauty and the parameters by which one judges something as beautiful. From the entire reading I came to the conclusion that it is all a matter of habit. The conditioning a mind receives from its environment and some instinctive elements finally decide what is beautiful. This I put into practice on myself by dispassionately looking at a woman and try to analyze my mental processes to understand if I found her attractive. And I found this to be true. Only certain skin colors and certain facial & curvatious features were of interest. Which means in every locale and every race, the parameters differ.

Then we have this limitation of thinking that only the female of our own species is beautiful and attractive. The male of the species is considered dumb enough to find anything attractive that comes with her along. You don’t think so! You can laugh at me but then why do these car makers and sports people all have dancing girls with their useless antics around. It really sounds terribly immature as if the entire tribe of organizers have no understanding of human nature and they are not simpletons who are manufacturing paper bags by hand in a back room for the roadside peanut vendor.

The car maker who has put his entire dollar’s worth in designing a luxury car and given it a shape and shine to beat any natural beauty, then goes out to destroy his piece of art by surrounding it by bevies of ladies who I often find downright unattractive. I always wish they would go away so that I could see the car better. Try and imagine being in The Louvre & The Mona Lisa made more attractive to attract viewers by a collection of young ladies around her. Ridiculous is the word that would come to mind.

I watch basketball, cricket or other sports because I find the action interesting but when I open the TV what do I get? First the breaks with commercials and then these skimpily dressed young females of the species trying to make the setting livelier. Somebody has definitely got the equation wrong. Do they really think all their viewers are morons who have only one pleasure in life and that is to gape at the opposite sex? They not only upset our viewing pleasure but insult our intelligence too.


When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. - Franklin D Roosevelt.

I read recently about a young girl of 15 having committed suicide by hanging herself because she was afraid that she would fail in her exams. The results have not even been announced. I wonder what values and demands on their psyche have been imposed by their parents and people around them for certainly they are to blame.
It is horrifying to see semiliterate people wanting their children to excel as if to compensate for their own shortcomings. Can’t they bring up their children with a dose of love, respect and appreciation?
What have these parents done to expect so much of their progeny? Why are egos and stupidity so prominent in their make-up?

One of the biggest problems humans create for them selves is that they live for others. What will they think is more on our minds then living out our own lives?

When people have nursed their egos all their lives, it is difficult to forget something that hurts their self-esteem, their amour-propre. When we have conditioned ourselves to like appreciation even if comes thru the achievements of our children, we are imposing on them a useless burden. We make many objects, actions and various habits a matter of pride that we feel gives us the separate and exclusive identity we crave in this crowded world. But this is restrictive in the sense that it fences us in and we then fight tooth and nail to remain within the fence rather than enjoy life.
Take it easy. Patience. Nothing is ever the end. Do your best. Teach these to the kids first letting them out of your sight.

Start of Civilisation

The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. – Sigmund Freud

I can visualize the day and situation. Here is somebody confronted by a bigger and better armed hunter and the lesser guy who has had to hone-up on his intellectual skills to survive is in a no-win situation. So he gets this brainwave and hurls an insult and most perhaps runs for his life. The first intellectual salvo has been hurled and the next step in the evolution of man taken place.

What a beautiful way to put it. I must grant Freud the accolade of being a seer. But I wish he was here today and he would have seen how his observation has gone a step further.

As civilization kept on maturing and the intellect kept on growing, refinements were added. There were small kingdoms and then bigger kingdoms and then huge unwieldy empires. People had to be educated and pioneers were afoot. The control slowly slipped from the few to the many. But the many, specially the intelligent ones were busy making money or running productive lives so they chose the never-do-well ones to become leaders and called this choosing democracy. These in turn came together and met in a body they called the Parliament or Congress and they in turn chose the most incompetent and most easily influenced type as their President or Prime Minister. Things were going well but then these leaders began to think too much of themselves and their stupid decisions began hurting the very people who had put them there.

Civilization had reached a point of no return and hurling insults was not working. You could see the centuries of refining of social norms spiraling out of control. You can judge this by examining some of the trends. See how music from calm, elevating experience has changed form slowly from polka to symphony to jazz, from quadrille to waltz to rock-n-roll and the wild zanghy music and let-me-be of today’s wild gyrations. You can see it in the transformation of languages. The courtesy and kindness shown in interactions has now been replaced by grunts and heartless SMSs which take much too long to decipher and leaves the recipient confused.

See the art side. The subtlety of Reuben and Renoir went the Picasso way and now even monkeys and elephants are featured as artists.

And lastly to make my point even clearer, we have had to use coarser and louder methods to be seen and heard. Words do not create any effect on the thick skinned leaders who have first created so much displeasure that people have risen in arms and then to protect themselves these leaders have now surrounded themselves with more arms and they keep on developing more sophisticated arms instead of listening.

Is it a wonder then that hurling solid objects is back in vogue and we are seeing this phenomenon catching on?
Civilization is not fully dead; now they are throwing shoes!

Civilization has gone full circle and we are back in the Stone Age although we now do it in T shirts and shoes. Perhaps to differentiate between now and then, we should call it the Shoes Age.

Disscusions

Discussing Sayings. No.1

Doing nothing is better than Being Busy Doing Nothing. – Lao Tzu

This sounds simple. Have you ever tried to do nothing? You will be surprised how difficult it is to do nothing. It requires letting go of the feeling that if you don’t do it things will not get done.
Then who will make my breakfast you would ask and who will broom the place? You are right; these things do need to be done but let us look at the world at large.
This saying is for agitated people who cannot sit still and who have overactive minds. They have to be up and doing even there is nothing to be done. These people are a pain in the neck because in the name of assisting they interfere and upset the equilibrium all over the place. Asking them to sit still tantamount to punishing them and asking to keep out and away, will make them jump to conclusions and even more agitations.
Doing nothing requires to let the world run itself, enjoy the moment, bask in aloneness and savor silence. It is another matter that this repose is also therapeutic both for the body and spirit.


The Most Common Way People give up their Power is by Thinking that They Don’t Have Any. – Alice Walker

We talk and discuss how the world is tearing apart and everything we valued is breaking up. And as a footnote we never forget to add –“but then what can we do?” When we notice a mistake, an injustice happening, something out of place, do we do something or give ourselves the excuse of squarely blaming the authority like the Municipality, Police and the Government?
If there is a stone in the middle of the road, how many of you would stop to remove it? By not acting and using the power of the individual as a person you are simply forgoing it. Then you are also giving the others to as they will and your own right to raise objections.

Believe Nothing, No Matter where you read it or who said it, unless it agrees with your own reason, experience and common sense. – attributed to Buddha.

This definitely the path of right action but if you observe with intent, you will clearly see umpteen examples of it never being practiced. The confidence and panache with which people will talk things they have no idea about is a phenomenon about humans which never ceases to surprise me. If you ask them how and where they learnt about and on what authority they base their claims, the chances are that you will get the reply “They say….” The truth is that we say, think and act in synch to suit our needs of the moment and everything we do is a back-up to justify our desires of the moment. We behave not by reason but by what is convenient and as we shall never admit or agree to it there is not much point in pursuing the subject.

A bucket of ice-cream just for me?

Oh wow

What's this world coming to?