Baba-Dada and Politics of Self Promotion!

The basest of emotions can get better of sanity.

It is silly and tragic how the story of Ramdev's Fast has evolved. A self-anointed yoga guru with ambitions to become a sage becomes a shoddy caricature of his own media image.

I don't care for government's reactions because our politics has ceased to be a purveyor of social order. But Baba's antics have really come as a rude shock. A man who proposes Satyagrah and then uses the first opportunity thrown at him to become a naive, conniving, snivelling, arrogant, saint can't be trusted with a goat let alone a nation!

One question that the turn of event throws up again is Who cares for eradication of corruption?


Politicians ... nah?


Baba Ramdev ... most emphatically no?


Public at large ... be damned if one claims innocence!


Who then ... Anna Hazare ... yes ... may be ... a few more ... too weak and ignorant to muster courage to look into themselves ...

The wait must come to an end ...

Words ... words ... my head is a radio ... where millions of stations are being broadcast on the same frequency ... static .... while driving between cities with radio set to one channel ... landscape changes ... and time comes when the radio plays two channels at the same time ... a mash-up of voices and sounds ... cacophony that my little-big universe is ... galaxies receding farther ... oscillating and vibrating as they drift away into nothingness ... the noise drowns out everything ....

I may wish for a miracle ... mind focused ...
designed like a descrambler ... instant segregation of data into easily digestible bits and bytes ....

The junk yard must be cleaned ... bowels must  throw-up and not regurgitate ...

medicine is not hope ... cure must be found ... wait must come to an end, vigil begin! 

What if there are no answers ...

What if the mystery remains unresolved and there is no ending ...?
Would it matter if one were to raise a hand, and the respondent moves on to another question?
What if there is no death?
In this lonesome universe, how would you spend seconds as the last man standing?
What if one disappears?
What would it mean to vanish while the the next ride on the ferris wheel is about to begin?
What if ...

Fear of Retribution!

http://en.articlesgratuits.com/fear-facts-and-factors-psychology-of-fear-id390.php

Fear is so pervasive that one need not indulge in customary argument and counter-argument to establish the veracity of this fact. Fear does not need substantiation!

The effects of actions impinged upon by fear are quiet dramatic, import of which one does not realise unless an inner turmoil escapes the subconscious and becomes ominously threatening to the very existence of the self. The crippling self-evaluation in the aftermath of some minor tragedy or an impending personal disaster that one conducts with increasing frequency shows up in minor events and catclysmic catastrophes.

Our history is riddled with countless examples where individual fear and collective paranoia have wreaked havoc upon nature and mankind. Still, we do not comprehend the extent of damage and decay that fear causes.

What causes fear? I can hardly begin to come to terms with my own. 

That is the challenege and the travesty. 

Even before we are brought face-to-face with our demeaning fears, we begin to propound theories and espouse cures for ills of the universe!

       Less of a sin, more of a twist 

       I am not ill, let alone be slain

       The willing victim of fate

       Walks on, with a blind eye

       The vast stretch of time, fertile

       The shallow soul grasps, futile

       For fear is my ruling star

       Some times I feel, happy

       When greed knocks, lays

       Eggs of hopes, bears fruits

       Gripes and turns sour

       The very bowels of heart ... 

  

Salvation of the non-believer

{Source: http://www.christian-wallpaper.com/backgrounds/conceptual-picture-about-salvation.jpg - Is that a hairy hand tugging at another hairy hand? Damn, you hairless Bas***d, no one's coming for you!!}

1. http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/beliefs/salvation.htm
2. http://www.religionfacts.com/islam/beliefs/salvation.htm
3. http://www.godrealized.com/glossary/Moksha-Hinduism.html

If you are religious minded and believe that the angels lay in wait for you to stride into the gilded portals of heaven, then check out the above links.

If you are an ignorant oaf like me then you are doomed to evaporate and spook and haunt gentlemen playing games on their X-Box and startle pretty ladies in the kitchen knitting a dress out of ham and sausages!

Surrender ...

I have a sad sinking feeling that It would best to surrender, absolutely and completely; whatever it may mean. The difficulty is that I don't know what ritual, ceremony or habit would make for SURRENDER.

Does it mean I cease to exist ...
Or, escape ceaselessy into diversions ...
Be a zombie ...
Keep rattling off synonyms of the word ...
Find a Guru and badger him to bugger me into salvation ...

(Not pretty thoughts)

May be I should switch off my brain!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xztzg_sarah-mclachlan-sweet-surrender_music

Is it possible to be compassionate?

When the clouds burst open

And the tears of heavens escape

Is it exhilaration, or worse fear

That make the moisture dissipate and disappear 

com·pas·sion

   [kuhm-pash-uhn]  Show IPA

–noun

1.

a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire toalleviate the suffering.

Is it possible for me to be compassionate--to know when a fellow being suffers and needs to see a sign of hope. I don't know. I don't even remember when I last felt a quiver of emotion because someone else was sad or plain unlucky.

I always thought that I can be any thing but compassionate, love is a far cry. Of course, I do put on an ambivalent look on face, from time to time. But, folks do see through me. The snicker is hard to hide. I always knew that compassion is some thing that other people needed. I stopped seeking the dregs when I grew up.

Now, when I reflect on all things myself, I do need to find an answer--why do we need not be compassionate and why I am loathe even to pretend that I may  empathise or show remorse when others feel sad.

Songs of Innocence and Experience: Introduction

Innocence: Introduction

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
``Pipe a song about a Lamb!''
So I piped with a merry chear.
``Piper, pipe that song again;''
So I piped: he wept to hear.
``Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy chear:''
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
``Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.''
So he vanish'd from my sight,
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear.





Experience: Introduction


Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walk'd among the ancient trees,
Calling the lapsed Soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might controll
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen light renew!
``O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass.
``Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The wat'ry shore,
Is giv'n thee till the break of day.''

What is meditation?

med·i·tate

   

[med-i-teyt] Show IPAverb, -tat·ed, -tat·ing.
–verb (used without object)
1. to engage in thought or contemplation; reflect.
2. to engage in transcendental meditation, devout religious contemplation, or quiescent spiritual introspection.

From Wikipedia

Meditation refers to any of a family of practices in which the practitioner trains his or her mind or self-induces a mode of consciousness in order to realize some benefit.^[1][2][3]

Meditation is generally an internal, personal practice and done without any external involvement, except perhaps prayer beads to count prayers, though many practitioners of meditation may rely on external objects such as candle flames as points on which to focus their attention as an aid to the process. Meditation often involves invoking or cultivating a feeling or internal state, such as compassion, or attending to a specific focal point. The term can refer to the state itself, as well as to practices or techniques employed to cultivate the state.

There is a possibility that meditation as explained above may help in precipitating the chaos that keeps getting murkier by the day. A process of cleansing whereby one may dust off the cobwebs in the mind. A mind that is unsure, uncertain, and unreliable. When I close my eyes and focus on breathing the cycle of objective observation, followed by dissipation/exhileration is self-defeating.

Probably, I will persist with it and see how it goes ...

Control versus Freedom

How is one one to experience pure and inhibitionless freedom?

      Oh Freedom, how I long and fret

     Every minute for you to embrace

     My burdened soul ...

     Oh fickle folly of the hair-brained

     Do you really live beyond some lofty portals

     Or, are you just a crazy dream

     

      Wrought upon by cursed smoke and narcotics,

      You have befooled many, 

      Who never shall cease 

      To lay themselves upon you feet

      Do you not have a heart

      To have pity on damned souls

      Of those who long till eternity

      When their lives are nothing but brief ... 

It seems to me that fear and greed are constantly preying on my ability to exist freely and independently -- ability to see clearly and thus experience reality as it is. And, mind it, I am not talking about experience in terms of moments isolated from their moorings in chronological time and sociological context. It is easy to look at oneself by dividing an experience and time into their various facets--emotional propensity, visual details, psychological dependencies, and subjective outcome of the experience measured from a selected point of reference.

*** Pardon the convulted prose. I am still working on keeping it simple.     

    

Absolute Simple and Beautiful Surrender

Now, we all rely on the wisdom of others to find hope, meaning, and salvation. However, it is a difficult, almost impossible for the egoistic mind to accept a channel for its deliverance. Then, how am I to find the door that leads me unto myself.

And, what is the guarantee that the door won't open into another prison of lies and self-deceit!

Observer is the observed!

The observer is the observed

"One image, as the observer, observes dozens of other images around himself and inside himself, and he says, `I like this image, I'm going to keep it' or 'I don't like that image so I'll get rid of it', but the observer himself has been put together by the various images which have come into being through reaction to various other images. So we come to a point where we can say, `The observer is also the image, only he has separated himself and observes. This observer who has come into being through various other images thinks himself permanent and between himself and the images he has created there is a division, a time interval. This creates conflict between himself and the images he believes to be the cause of his troubles. So then he says, "I must get rid of this conflict", but the very desire to get rid of the conflict creates another image. Awareness of all this, which is real meditation, has revealed that there is a central image put together by all the other images, and the central image, the observer, is the censor, the experiencer, the evaluator, the judge who wants to conquer or subjugate the other images or destroy them altogether. The other images are the result of judgements, opinions and conclusions by the observer, and the observer is the result of all the other images - therefore the observer is the observed."

Commentaries On Living Series II Chapter 50 Convictions--Dreams

Mind

mind

   [mahynd]  Show IPA

–noun

1.

(in a human or other conscious being) the element, part,substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills,perceives, judges, etc.: the processes of the human mind.

2.

Psychology . the totality of conscious and unconsciousmental processes and activities.

3.

intellect or understanding, as distinguished from the facultiesof feeling and willing; intelligence.

Mind is definitely not an organ part of human physionlogy. The definition in terms of psychology is more apt.

In terms of understanding what brings about a chane in the quality of a mind, an analysis of all aspects of human thought and the physiological changes associated with the working of the "mind" is of utmost significance.