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?

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.

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.

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.

Meditation diaries

I had written a post sometime back, on a particular observation during practise of asanas and meditation. Interestingly I had a comment by a gentleman talking about the a very sweeping description of meditation.

It was a very good description and I would like to agree with him on a lot of aspects. But if I look back and pick up something which had left an impression on me, it was his statement which can be equated with logic.

‘A wise person is intelligent, but an intelligent person is not necessarily wise’

How true?

One thing which I have noticed as a change during the past few years spent in meditation is that there has been a change in my maturity level (a.k.a wisdom). I would strongly attribute this to that fact that I am able to move away from my selfish self. I take myself less seriously and even so others. Can this really be called maturity?

Somebody I know recently said,

‘Let me be myself’.

I asked,

‘What are you, that you want to be yourself? You are but a mixed bag, predominantly composed of your parents and close friends,….and bits and pieces of all the people that you have met since you were born.’

I reflect upon it and isn’t it true that we are all clowns, imitating other in everything starting from the language we speak, body language to everything else. We talk like others, eat like others, think like others. The society seems to be a collective bag of largely identical units walking and talking in a mundane symphony. It as even perfected the art of sustaining itself through generations?

So there is no you as such. So why take yourself so seriously?

My husband, my work, my life……

So much of tension because of these thougths that you are responsible for everything and it is your headache to turn things around.

Is it necessary?

You have no control over why your were born by the collective union of two specific individuals in this wide Cosmos. If you have no control over this fact then you have no control over all the parameters that have influenced you ever since. Everything from your first teacher to the icecream vendor on the street.

A thought like this helps you take yourself less seriously. Can this be called maturity? Can a thought which makes you ligther be called maturity?

Simon say ‘Yes, we can!’

Hah!

@Ashok

I was asked a question on this forum a couple of weeks back and I had always wanted to write about it. This is probably the first time that I have taken notice of him in the time that I have known him. This reflects more on my relationship with him rather than on him in singularity.

His questions goes as thus.

“…..is exercising control over mind and making urself a better person comes only through internal concentration? Or is it internalizing the external world?”

To star with, the question needs a context. The context is that of me telling him once in a while that he might want to spend more time in collecting his thoughts through meditation.

In response he more or less responds that he needs to do it and probably will, but the question is when?

And probably the more important questions is about how much he wants it? And also the kind of questions that he had to internalise, in this process.

On one fine day he popped this question. And I feel there is a nice point to be brought out here.

Let us look at the typical day when I get up. Now let me fast forward to the point when I am about to sleep. Now let me look at the sheer number of people I meet. It goes without saying that I have very little control over the number of people I meet, the kind of circumstances in which I will meet them, the kind of interacions which happen between us and the outcomes.

Let me put it in a simpler fashion. I eat rice on day x. Let us look at the sheer number of people who are involved in getting rice to my table. Farmer, thresher, transporter, wholesaler, retailer and mother to me. This is simplistic, but it brings across the point about the sheer number of people involved. Again very little predictability.

If this is being a bit simplistic, let me try to cpature the point in a differet fashion. If I get up today, I cannot control what my mother will tell me.

I set out to think. I cannot control what others will say/ do in my day to day life. Then I look around and sit down.

What can I do in this world of apparent turbulence and chaos?

What do I do?

Ah! Yes…I can control my mind. I cannot control others actions, but I can control my reaction to it. That is what I can do and it will make a hell lot of difference to me.

Now it is my world.

To get back to the question, I am not answering the question about making oneself through a better person as I am of the opinion that the objective if meditation is not to make oneself a better person. Rather I am quirked by the second portion of the question which talked about internalizing the world.

And I think that collecting one thoughts in trying to handle one’s life involves internalization of the world. It is about taking a global view of the world. It is quite close to the philosophy of trying to find that ‘one’ which explains everything else.

It is about internalizing the world.

Music at my earstep:

I look around me and I dive into my daily routine of work and other chores. Move along in silence with my work surrounding me. The silence of my mind is no different either and I feel pure silence in all it’s melodious self. It has been many a time when this sojourn is interrupted with a brief melody. By melody I am paying more attention to the fact that I am exposed to music rather than the style of music. So the term ‘melody’ is superfluous here.
In these brief instances of exposure to vibrations there have been different kinds of ripples created in the lake of my mind. To start with, there are memories related to music. This is particularly the case when I listen to a piece of music that I have listened to previously. This might be sometime in the near past or probably in the distant past. The more distant they are in my memory, the greater is the magnitude of ripples created in my mind. This is probably because of the greater misfit between my present sate of affairs and the past. This in turn creates a great sense of nostalgia in my mind about the memory raked up by this piece of music. The examples that most commonly create this would be a Tamil song from an old film which I would have listened to maybe 15-20 years back. Add to this the fact that I have been travelling the most part of my life due to the nature of my father’s job and my job prospects. Interestingly one thing leads to another. The song reminds me of those years and those years remind me of a thousand different things. It is something like sitting in the middle of a pile of cinema reels and I randomly pick up a reel and all those reels are interconnected in myriad fashions. In short there is music which is nostalgic.
Then there is music which instigates unique emotions. Just to give an example, there is a very peculiar music which is played during ‘Jallikattu’, the bull-fight festival in the Indian State of Tamilnadu. This music has a very interesting nature of instigation and adds to the overall aggression of the bull which is further accentuated by other actions like spraying of chilli powder/ lemon juice into the animals eyes. Interestingly, the same music is played when people suffer from bouts of hysteria in Tamilnadu. To close your eyes and listen to the music intently will help one appreciate the effect of this piece of music. Emotions-so on and so forth.
If you look at it closely, memories are by themselves cobbled up emotions. Then You would be placing before me a fundamental question, why all this small-talk? I have a question for you my dear reader,…what purpose does this serve? Why do we keep thinking about the past so much and for so long?
I have a few answers, but they do not seem good enough.

Meditation diaries

There have been numerous interpretations for the word meditation. I am sure you would have a fair idea of your own. I have something to say with respect to my understanding of mediation. 

In my opnion, meditation is the ability to catch hold of a concept and delve into great depths to be able to arrive at a fundamental understanding of the subject at hand. Let me take an example.

I have heard of a chant or mantra-‘Neti neti‘

The translation of this goes by either

1. ‘Not this, not this’ or

2. ‘Neither this nor that’

I remember having read this while I was reading up a lot of books on spirituality as part of my preparation for CAT. Now during the past few years of meditation, I have undergone so many different changes in my conceptual understanding of things. To take an example, I was of the opinion that religion had a lot to do with symbolic worship of pictures and objects in various avenues. The worship meant prayer to an external God, represented by pictures, statues and umpteen number of rituals surrounding these pictures/ statues.

I saw these symbols of worship and tried to understand them at a slightly deeper level. I asked myself questions,…

1. What do these statues/ pictures represent?

2. What do the chants and mantras represent/ mean?

I got a few answers like the fact that symbolic worship of statues/ pictures are meant for the average person who might not be accustomed to concentration of mind and hence there needs to be an external object in the form of a picture or a statue onto which they can focus all their attention. I similarly got a few questions for some more questions.

But the critical part of the larning process was in saying ‘Neti neti’

The moot question was if this was the only answer to the qeustion. Another way of looking at it was if this is too simplistic an answer. Are there points that I am missing in trying to arrive at a simplistic answer to my questions.

To look at the question above, I see that the answer is not that simplistic. The fact is that the fundamental diference between humans and animals in the fact that animals meander in their basic urges, which are food and procreation. Whereas, humans are able to move much beyond these basic impulses. This is chiefly because of our ability to postpone gratification. This ability to postpone gratification happens due the ability of humans to concentrate their minds and hence exercise control over the mind when the body craves for basic needs such as food and procreation. To take this forward, the act of prayer is an exercise in concentration of the human mind.

Now all humans are not born with the same ability to concentrate and like there is different grades in school for children of different ages, ages being a surrogate for mental development, similarly religion has different systems to help people in concentration. For most of the average people who cannot focus on an abtract object, religion provided them with images and stories which have temples and edicts as physical manifests of these systems, to help them concentrate.

By saying ‘Neti neti’, I have been able to move from one level of understanding to another. This shift in depth of understanding by holding onto one idea and never stopping with any particualr understanding of a concept is, in my opnion, a very good understanding of this chant.

This ability to be able to catch hold of a simple concept which has barely two words and apply them to gain greater depth in understanding is, in my opinion, a very good explanation for meditation.