SPARE A THOUGHT.....

At the end of winning a rat race, we are still a rat.

June 16, 2008

bulla ki jaana main kaun....luv it...

the mystical bauls....

I know of the Bauls through Osho....He writes of them as the "sahaja purushas" - natural beings.
Some of their songs are so mystical(like in sufi tradition) and thanks to Osho's translations, we get to know them...
a sample:
Only a connoisseur of the flavours of love
can comprehend the flavours of a lover's heart;
others have no clue.
The taste of lime rests in the core of the fruit
and even experts know of no easy way to reach it.
Honey is hidden within the lotus bloom
but the bee knows it.
Dung beetles nestle in dung, discounting honey.
Submission is the secret of knowledge.......

inter-galactic travel...

My cousin gifted me a fish tank with 6 fish yesterday. They travelled by his car in their glass house to their new abode.
i was wondering at their experience. How would it feel to be transported alongwith our house as we are inside, to a distant planet. the uncertainty, the anxiety, the fear and so on....a kind of weird and spooky feeling..
Or , is it that the fish only experience the water around them?
They were restless a while.....now they seem ok....must have been akin to an earth shattering experience!!!!!!!!!!!

June 15, 2008

Dear Dad,

Dear Appa,
We did not have Father's day during the time we spent together.It seems so long since you are gone.Remember, I was 14, you were 47 , mom was 37. I cannot forget that Saturday. I had just entered college after having topped my school division. You had hosted a party for all my friends.
And then your sudden exit from our lives. We were left shocked and gaping for surviving our next day.
Dad, we were so caught up in our struggle, that we never ever expressed our gratitude for all that you did for us. Thank You seems such a small word.
I am releasing this gratitude in the collective consciousness in the hope that I reach out to you.
I need your blessings and guidance every second of my life....and a capacity to get mom out of impacts of a series of shattering episodes in her life.
Pada Pranams to you...I hope you are happy with the way I have shaped up....

die to live...

The man did not like the movie he was watching. He decided to change the television.However, after a few changes , the movie continued.He was desperate.

It never occurred to him that the dvd required changing, not the television.....

Sounds stupid?

How sane it is then to keep seeking changes on the outside when our inner hard disks are playing the same movie? We then wonder why the same underlying patterns are getting repeated across seemingly different events?

The outer worlds are mere reflections of our inner worlds..changing events in the outer worlds can really lead us nowhere..in a while, we are back to the fundamental theme of our lives; repetitive and monotonous.

A hunter went to the forest and hunted down a baby bird while the mom managed to escape.He caged the kid in his house, she appeared forlorn and sad. One day , he returned to the forest where he came across the mom. She enquired of her child. The hunter mentioned that she was very sad. Hearing this, the mom fell down, apparently dead.

The hunter returned home and conveyed the same to the kid. Hearing this, the kid fell down, apparently dead. The hunter slowly opened the cage. Seizing the opportunity, the kid flew off.While going, it told the hunter, "To attain freedom in the world , one has to die as one is. This was my mom's teaching for me."

So it is with us....freedom has no halfway measures. Pain never decreases or increases in our lives. It is a constant - physical + psychological + spiritual. When we say we have solved something, we have merely changed it's apparent cause. The pain remains intact.Notice, how after deep psychological suffering, we end with a headache. The psychological pain transmutes to physical which is more manageable.We can pop a pill.

As we rise in consciousness, we get de-clutched from the fundamental pain, not it's apparent causes. This process is liberating, not managing. It is not a moving across concepts; it is moving beyond concepts and watching everything as a concept and dissolving our acquired positionalities vis-a-vis the same.It is not a transformation within the mind, it is a moving away from the mind, a reformation - creation emerging in emptiness....the mind stops using us, we could use the mind where required.

Awareness is freedom, liberating, a death of the old....It is radical...

An old zen story says that a man was going to the market and on the way became liberated.He went to the market and finished his shopping. Everything is seemingly the same, but the vision is different. Before enlightenment, the trees are the trees and the rivers are teh rivers. During enlightenment , nothing seems real. After enlightenment, again the trees are the trees and the rivers are the rivers.But everything has changed in the way we see them and feel connected....

osho humour - the world changeth....

perspectives change with time....once upon a time people used to hide their playboy magazines within annual reports or the bible...today it is the other way round..people hide their bibles inside their playboys!!!!!!!!!
-inspirations from Osho

June 14, 2008

Sri Bhagavan has said "Don't try to change another.It is not possible". This can be misinterpreted by some. Suppose your 10 year old child has recently exposed himself to the habit of smoking. As a parent , it is important for you to try and stop him. On the other hand, if your mother has a habit of being constantly critical of another or judging another, do not try to change it through advice; for it can backfire.She will get angry or may try to control her behaviour.After a while , it is back to square one. It is here that Bhagavan's statement comes into play. It is futile to try and changing another. It is prudent if we can accept them.

Also , on the aspect of accepting oneself; it does not apply to events in the outside world. if one has committed fraudulent behaviour anywhere, we will have to pay for it, today or tomorrow.On teh other hand, if one experiences a sense of lust, one should not deny it. One should accept it.The seeds of change lie in it's acceptance , not in resistance.We have to accept our inner world situation as it is.There is no point in trying to change it. It is an impossibility. Watching in awareness and accepting it, enables us to respond, not react. It is the same with anger. Reacting in anger is very destructive; however, one can respond discretionally in anger.

- from talks of Sri Sammadarshini.

Carry Over....the root of suffering...

A Sadhak once asked his teacher, "Master, Why can't I remain peaceful, in spite of doing so many spiritual sadhanas. Why can't I be devoid of suffering in spite of reading so many spiritual books and listening to religious discourses? Is enlightenment possible for such as I?"'To be liberated from suffering you must first understand what suffering is'. Sri Bhagavan says, "Suffering is nothing but the continuous thought processing that happens in the mind over an event or incident of the past. Suffering is nothing but the 'carry over' of the past events of our life.There are two kinds of people who have walked on these sands, enlightened and unenlightened. Enlightened ones are those who are 'ordinary' and unenlightened are those who are 'extraordinary' (extra suffering). An enlightened one, does not suffer because he is constantly living in the present, experiencing every bit of what life is offering him. But for those who are unenlightened, life itself is reduced to nothing but suffering.To be aware is to be enlightened. The whole purpose of life itself is to live life moment to moment. If one observes the thought process in oneself, then it can easily be discovered that the 'CARRY OVER' is the suffering. For instance, there were two friends who were very close right from their childhood. Out of sheer misunderstanding, they landed in a bitter quarrel and they broke up. The fight by itself is nothing but mere 'calling names'. But it doesn't end there, the event continues to plague the mind, be it at kitchen, office, watching TV or even at a party! It follows… It continues. The suffering springs only when our mind indulges in unnecessary thoughts about living in past or future, without living in the present. This constant commentary or dialogue in the mind is the cause for all suffering, where even after an event has ended, it is continued within where we still talk to the other person, who has hurt us.An enlightened person experiences everything, which makes his life rich, eternal and ever fresh, but for an unenlightened, life is mechanical and repetitive, hence boring. One who is enlightened enjoys the ice cream whereas one who is unenlightened does not enjoy the ice cream because he would be busy with the question – who made the ice cream? Which factory? Which cow's milk? Which grass did the cow ate? One who is living will never question the purpose of life. Why would he! He is only experiencing.Now the question is how to end this unnecessary thought process. Any effort in this direction is a futile endeavour, because any effort to silence the mind would only create more noise - "THOUGHT CANNOT END THOUGHT".Buddha was Buddha not because he read books. Venkataramana didn't become Ramana Maharishi because he attended religious discourses. Enlightenment is something that is beyond the purview of the mind. It is not transformation within the mind; Enlightenment is a state where you transcend the mind and its limitations. Such a happening is a benediction."To experience is to believe.' Enlightenment is a benediction bestowed today upon thousands by Sri Bhagavan and Sri Amma . Come ! Alive into the waters of immense grace and experience, because….."Man cannot make it on His own … It has to be given to Him."
- inspirations from Sri Bhagavan

June 13, 2008

feeling the presence....

Life seems to flow more harmoniously when we are in touch with our source, deep within.
Tuning in to the higher consciousness is the key to enable this.When lower consciousness aspects stifle us, we have to just watch, be aware.When we watch, first the judgements come in, comparisons against our accumulated concepts of right and wrong.This also has to be watched.it is a happening, a recording emerging out of our conditioned inner hard disk.It is on auto play and we cannot control it or stop it. As mentioned in an earlier posting, this outflow from our unconscious is 2 million times more powerful than our conscious mind.
The ONLY way to get de-clutched is to watch it helplessly. As we watch, its hold on us is released.It could be like watching a cyclone..as the flood from the unconscious envelopes us.We have to complete the cycle of the experience.The nature of experience by itself is bliss; it is independent of the content of experience.
And as the cycle is completed, what remains is joy and bliss....our intrinsic nature....beyond realms and layers of conditioning which prevent experiencing...
As we are watching, we are filled with the WITNESS, the presence or call it what you may...
Lot of people say we are guided by our higher consciousness, but we have to be cautious that we are not mistaking a play of the mind for the same.When we are guided by the higher consciousness, we always experience bliss and joy....There is no residual misery or doubt. There is a sense of completeness, a fullness which translates as oneness.....

June 12, 2008

patterns...

If we closely observe, the same kind of patterns keep repeating subtly or loudly in our lives.A certain kind of event, a certain kind of person or an event-person combo etc.
Such underlying patterns control the drift of our lives and we are more often than not unconscious of it.
Closely observing and becoming aware is the key to de-clutching ourselves from this control.
We cannot de-clutch ourselves through conscious intent as the unconscious is 2 million times more powerful than the conscious.We may decide to act or behave in a certain fashion when an event occurs, but we find ourselves drawn into the whirlpool of the pattern.
Awareness is freedom..just watching can de-clutch us...