Monday morning

The strangest Monday morning. Tapping away on my phone amidst a deluge of impending tasks. Am definitely in a talkative mood. But I am not able to figure out the topic. Not about work or family or anything to do with my friends.

Yes, I can talk about Yoga. 9 years since I started and have come a long way. It has ceased to be an item in my daily routine. It is now a part of me. I am shedding my coloured glasses one by one. I can see more clearly now. I can understand better. All the lines that are said and those unsaid, in seriousness and otherwise. Intentionally & otherwise. Directly & otherwise. The next knot was being judgemental & opinionated. Am working on it.

Where is my paper?

Meditation diaries

As days have moved past me, I am spending increasingly more time understanding the nuances of Kundalini Gnanam. I have broken away from addressing my practises as mere Yoga or Kundalini Yoga. It is definitely because it is not so. While Yoga lends itself to a lot of interpretations, Kundalini lends it a lot of character and the word Gnanam is in a similar vein.

The difference lies in Kundalini being a more particular description of the science and the word Gnanam being even more descriptive. Let me first start off with the word Kundalini. While Yoga is considered to be strongly related to ‘Asanas’, the word Kundalini gives it a more subtle sense. Kundalini talks about the subtle energy which keeps the whole world, me inclusive, going. The word Gnanam is descriptive of the highest sense of understanding, the pinnacle of Yogic achievement, as explained by my Guru.

Have started exploring various books in English and Tamil to collect my thoughts, experiment and understand the science. More to relate to what has been already been written. The fact that I have studied anatomy during my graduation has helped to a great degree. What is challenging in this initiative is the fact that so much has been written on this subject by so many Masters. All I can do is add my 2 pence to it.

Let me see.

Meditation diaries – Guru Bhakthi

I have been practicing a science called ‘Kundalini Gnanam’ for the past 8 years and it never ceases to amaze. What is thought as relevant yesterday lies in tatters today. What I thought was right is no longer right. Right is not relevant anymore.

Recently I had the chance to visit my Guru for 3 uninterrupted days and that helped me clear a lot of air. First and foremost I was increasingly losing my sense of direction in the last couple of months. My sense of discipline and my understanding of what I should do were both suffering. Days in and days out, I was increasingly getting frustrated that I was not doing what I wanted to do and I was getting further perturbed by the course of events. It was a negative loop and I suffered further due to my habit of not speaking to my Guru in such phases. Then it happened.

Arun, one of my buddies, called me out of the blue and told me that he was done with it (metaphorically and meaning of ‘it’ does not matter) and he had made up his mind to visit our Guru for a whole week. He wanted to meet and asked me to plan. Cutting a long story short, I was there for 3 days with my Guru. All kinds of things happened in those 3 days.

First and foremost, I understood the importance of Guru – Bhakthi. While in popular parlance, it would mean thinking about the Guru and worshiping him, for me it took on a deeper dimension. For me it meant understanding what he wants his students and disciples to do. A Guru wants nothing less than all of his students becoming a Guru themselves. This is a unique aspect of ‘knowledge’. It is one of the few assets, which makes the one who possesses it, want to share with as many people as possible. If one has to become a Guru then one must want to teach. For one who wants to teach, one must possess knowledge. To possess knowledge, one must research. The word research is beautiful isn’t it?

You have to re – search. The way I understand it is that you must probably abandon all that you hold true today and start from the beginning. The way I see it, religious people are not truly spiritual. Particularly the ones deeply embroiled in symbolic rituals and everyday ablutions. This has nothing to do with what they do and more to do with their outlook. They have accepted that this is it and have left it at that. The spiritual aspirant’s foremost quality would be to accept nothing as it is and question everything. Because they day one says this is it, he or she stops learning and is for all practical purposes, non-existent. Life is energy and energy that stagnates is more or less dead. As Vivekananda once said, the atheist is more religious than the Brahmin who unerringly performs pujas everyday.

So to me Guru – Bhakthi would also mean to tirelessly pursue the knowledge which will help me understand things better. The Spiritual Masters say that there is a knowledge which will be sweeter than forest honey. There is a knowledge which is ageless and timeless. There is a knowledge which will change the whole plane of existence. To me Guru – Bhakthi would mean to seek it with the same sense of urgency as a deer which just escaped from the hunter’s nest. It would mean to search it with the same emotions as the desert nomad who is thirsty and sees a mirage for the nth time.

This would take time and ceaseless effort. But like Lao Tse said – ‘The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step’. Please start, my friend. Start today. Start now.

Nice week…

Lot of things happened in the week past. They have been really interesting from the perspective of priorities.

The first one was my visit to a premium motorcycle showroom and involved being turned out, metaphorically, by the guys there. I had a word with a good friend of mine and the conversation centred around me having a big head. So big that I could not put up with a little frustration. Whatever it was, I felt closer to my bullet. More importantly, I felt like a kid who was refused his lollipop. I now don’t care about that lollipop. I on the other hand felt closer to my friend.

The second one was a conversation with another friend of mine when we had met after a long time. I was having chicken after close to 2 months. This friend was going through an important stage in his life and that kind of is an introspective phase for him. So we were having food and we were discussing a lot of friends and stuff. I abruptly told him that most of these things are immaterial and we should rather enjoy th food. I did just that. While on the way back, I looked at my day to day routine and found out that we, or atleast I am losing track of time in my everyday routine. I feel that I am  not enjoying the moment as much as I would want to. We all say that time flies, but what we actually mean is that we are wasting our time. We do not value time and the most important reason is because we are so packed in analyzing and dissecting things with our narrow minded priorities and petty politics that we let moments slip by us. We waste ourselves.

What priorities do I have today? To enjoy time. I don’t think there is any bigger priority for myself. Thanks to all my friends who taught me this.

Where is my paper?

Long time later…

Been sometime. I have been taken up by work and family for about two odd years now. But I always of the opinion that there is always time. Here I am, online through my phone. I am looking forward to putting in more updates as and when…

Very funny though as I am not a big fan of gadgets. Anyways….am cool as long as things work.

Soft and mellow

It is interesting that I had made a draft a long while ago with just the name – ‘Soft and mellow’.

Now I login ages later to be able to relate to it like air. What else do I say when I talk about my moments these days. The swirl of incense in the mornings,..when I sit down to meditate is just like that. The waft of the morning mist and the wetness of dew is just like that. The words of my wife when she has just woken up,..is just like that. The sight of the morning bloom of roses in my balcony,..is just like that. The subtle taste of green tea, at any time of the day,..is just like that.

And yes, the sheer sight of my infant son,…at any time of the day,…any moment,..be it when he is sleeping or awake or when he is playing,….is bang on target – Soft and mellow.

I guess this feeling has less to do with the sights and sounds. It has more to do the inner draft. The incessant flow which sustains me. It is soft and mellow to start with. Everything else follows.

Days slide by me

It has been ages since I had a chance to write.

Not written because of many reasons, some obvious and some not. Some just and some not. But I am not here because of any other reason other than my desire to share.

And I have so much to share with so little time to do with.

A start is nevertheless good enough. A few quick things would be that I have a son, Bharan. I have never spent too much time thinking about it, but I am liking the whole experience a lot.

Will keep adding in a trickle.

Thanks for dropping by Prashant, I and writing because of you.

Cheers!

Feel like a ride

It was a fine evening. Just like any other.

Was at office contemplating the next few hours and I was reminded of the road. It has always been a nice thought to munch on. The wide road and the unending miles. Traffic far and between with sparsely interspersed shops and small eats.

I felt like a ride that moment. Light as  the air on my face. Ticklish as the light drizzle on my visor. Wet as the slush on my tyre tread. Steady as the beat on my thumper. I felt like I was ready to drift.

I picked up my keys and was off.

Monday morning

A good weekend that was past.

Good time with wife and family. Meeting up with friends and of course I had time to get back to my plants.

All in all a good weekend. I now look forward to this week whcih might become the most important week for my career and for my company.

Let me see.

Good times and the bad times

It has beena kind of rough week for me. Half of my relatives are down with some illness or the other. The saving grace has been that each household has only a maximum of one person out of action. But it has been stressful enough with work to add.

But then there is a kind of silver lining everywhere. We just have to search enough for it. It has got be there somewhere. And I got mine in a whole lotta ways.

I got to sit down and chat with ‘Amma’ for a whole day. I can’t remember last having spent a whole day with amma in the recent past. I do not remember at all. We chatted about a lot of stuff. It was good. I made all kinds of things for her. They were simple, but satisfying. 

Spoke with my wife couple of times in the day and was happy to hear that her mother was doing fine. Sometimes a voice is all that is enough to make my day.

Then the evening came and I went off on a long ride with Ashok. It was drizzling and that made kind of a perfect setting for a drive. Lovely ride. Spent the later part of the night listening to old songs which used to make up ‘insti-party’ lore.

There is a silver lining everywhere.