Sagara sangamam

My hearts echo to the unheard music
the pain of seperation gives rise to my creativity...
I can't take the pain of living through each day as a miracle
The drop of my consciousness which i have held within me
seeks for a escape from this cruel world
I travel great lengths to find the ocean of peace
I break all the limitations which are kept in front of me
The betrayal of faith and trust cracks my soul
I starve myself through the years
I keep away from the pleasures
I become friends with darkness and solitude
I wait in vain to find the way to liberation
My past chains my legs
My future creates mirages..
The present stuck in the lonely drop
Then one day as I walk through the lonely road
A whisper flows into my ears
It sounds that the day has arrived
I write a letter to my soulmate
I leave possesion less and follow the trail
As my breath slows down
My legs begin to shake
the lonely drop begins to escape
I sit down motionless and watch the waves
My drop drips away into the ocean
My mind dives deep to seacrh for the lost drop
But how do I bring back the lost drop from an ocean
How do I stop time which is ticking away
the drop which is the death of me was held in my hand
WHy did life allow me to throw it away!!!!

Broken Glass

If you find Buddha then shoot him...

This philosophy may be a contradiction to the philosophy of non violence. But what it express is to kill the idea of finding someone/something who can give you all the answers.

We all are mirrors to each other. Every emotion which springs at you is because you have it in yourself. If you did not know jealously or selfishness/or any other complex emotion yourself then how can you judge others, that they have it. May be this theory is not very sophisticated to give us insight into our twisted mindset. But I believe there is one thing which comes forward, that we as humans are imperfect.

There is a masochistic self which beats us around and expects us to become perfect.
The inner critic tells us that we are worthless. The voice gets louder and makes us follow paths that contradict who we are. We do things which hurt us deeply. We achieve greater goals in life but never wonder why we are still unhappy. We keep running on a
Path where each day the goal changes.

As I pour water into the glass..it slips on the ground..It shatters..the pieces,
hundreds of them on the floor. They reflect who I am. The tears from my eyes join with the water free from the glass prison. The pursuit of greatness, fame and wealth have cracked my inner self.

With what do I join these broken parts
With what do I fill the emptiness which is deep inside me...
The road to perfection, always is illusionary
the standards of achievement faulty
It makes me feel mentally deformed
when I know the extent of possibilities which can be calcualted by my profession
I am human,I win,I lose,I cry,I express joy..
I may be the last one to get to the top
I may be the only one bankrupt
I may be the only traveller in this confusion
I am human,I win,I lose,I cry,I express joy..
I am human and above all I am imperfect..

Degrees Of Freedom

courtesy of preethi krishnan

Yesterday in my apartment there was power shut down for around 4 hours. These four hours made me realize how vulnerable we all are. That every minute we depend and take for granted all the things which are present. As there was no power..no hot food as the electric stove does no work, no hot water as the geyser does not work, no internet as the wirless does not work and to top it all of there was this unending darkness as the apartment was not well ventilated. I felt isolated.

Whereas on one side we have nations building weapons to give their citizens security ,there is the other side where these small things just stop our lives all together and make us weak and dependent..
We are the prisoners of own empires. We build it with bricks of discrimination. The divide we form among ourselves on the basis of religion, money and other status symbols. Brick by brick we make a wall which no one can enter...

I don't know

I feel these are the three most powerful words which every individual should carve it into their memory.These words gives us a chance to experiment,study,analyze,come up with new solutions to old problems,fail miserably,make a mess and finally make us human.
One of the stories which help us understand this perspective is..

A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

The above story is taken from the site www.101zenstories.com

The story explains how the world fills us with so much of stuff that everything which we want to do is always conditioned by our responses which are taught by the society.What ever we want to know about the world is present within each of us.We should just find creative ways to pull it out.We are just a medium of the higher consciousness which is present in the world.We take what is there in the world and give it back to the world.Our evolution finds beauty in the everyday world.To be a true student of nature we all have to shed our pre conceived notions of how things work and let our own inner instincts guide our way...

Paradox Of Religion -part 1

Caution:This post has been solely written to analyze religion in a scientific/analytic way. Here a religion is considered as an idea. Religious fanatics PLEASE stay away.

It is very important for any person in search of the truth to eradicate all the myths which surround the ever accepting mind. If doubt shatters ur belief..Do not read further.

History is always written by the winners. What I feel is really true every time..Is religion is also written by the victorious kings.

I was watching the other day, one of the good movies which our Hindi industry has managed to produce. The movie was Guide. There was this particular dialogue..Which is a conversation between the saint and the interviewer..

Q:Does the religion stand any chance in the ever so technological world??
A:All sciences end in religion.
(Paraphrased from the movie)

It made wonder how philosophy,story,rituals,wisdom,poetry,art ,medicine,dance ...have all been amalgamated to a huge mass called religion. As a constant critic of the so called sureties of religion, I decided to read all religious books not with devotion but with the eye of analysis and scientific logic.
But few things do not make sense ..If people just pay a little attention to minor details, you understand that most of the major religions have the same theme.

Hinduism was introduced basically by the Aryans who themselves were not from India .The exact location is not known. But they were from the Mediterranean side.Thats one of the reasons why Hitler put a Swastika symbol as one of his official trademarks. They consider themselves superior to other races. One of the primary reasons why fair and lovely people earn so much money is because of this one conquest.
Aryans were the fair kind. If you read the Vedas. And mostly all of them address the priests or the learned "Brahman" as the "fair one”. The natives of India, who were the darker race, were treated as the lowest caste. A good slang in ancient India would be to address any one as dark. The funniest thing is it still works today.
The natives also have left their mark on India. The bindi is a product of the tribal cultures of the ancient north India.
Religion in the olden days was like how politics is in these days. Corrupted..YES!!!
India has been a cradle for Native religions(which have been successfully crushed by Hinduism),Hinduism,Jainism,Buddhism and Sikh religion. All religions promote the idea of peace and the idea of enlightment.The trouble comes when instead of these goals, the easier path of ritual is followed. The under lying philosophy is ignored.
Most of us consider that religion is perfect and we all know that any work of human is full of imperfections .Why the so called higher ideal from an idea??LAziness,no wrong answer..Comfort.We dont want to shake the stagnation in our mind.

How come in most of the major religions a woman is considered as an inferior being who has no position of respect??
Hinduism has lot of goddesses but in reality we do not have a female preist.When the goddesses herself is pure how come the female form of her creation be impure.
Male chauvinistic propaganda. It exists ..even in ancient times.
The philosophy of union i.e of Shiva and Parvati..the symbol of creation and destruction is never been told by any of the priests. The symbolism is never revealed to young minds.
Matter can be created nor destroyed..everything is a dance.. a leela..

Does GOD play DICE

The famous Stephen Hawking speech was an inspiration to this post.

Basically I used to get excited to know about all the new research going on in astrophysics. Quantum physics trying to find or search for GOD was one of the topics which I used to extensively read about. But yesterday I had a strange thought. Instead of thinking about M-theory or strings, I started to think about randomness in our lives. Is everything happening according to some order? Right above the ozone layer... Is there a bearded guy/wise lady who is having the latest supercomputer trying to jot down what every good /bad thing each living being on earth does. Her / His assistants the other glowing enlightened ones also helping her/him judge whether in the next life{if reincarnation exists}where, when ,how and what conditions they should be born. The fact that I am born in a place which does not have wars, hunger, poverty and slavery is decided by these numbers which flash on the screen of the god head.

second scenario
Is there a set of dice which decides where I should be. You can have a counter argument that even people under slavery, the poorest of the poor may be happy inside but we may think otherwise. But at least in my view -Existence for many in the developing world is a crime. Poverty is a curse. Living is just waiting for death.
So I wonder aloud whether the only reason that I have food to eat, clean drinking water and most other comforts which billions can only dream about is because of a roll of dice...

The fact that the ozone layer is burning would have naturally spoilt the god-head's supercomputer. So we have to depend upon the dice...

Hidden scars

There are countless cracks on the doors. It seems the whole world has taken a stance against me. The ideals which I have followed crashes as it dissolves in the aimless fights with my parents. Not that I was a difficult child ..but frankly accepting the un-wholeness of my being ..I agree I was short tempered. Now I don’t scream ..it gets lost in the multitude of echoes of the past. The anger still resides but now the target has changed. There are so many instances which come up every now and then...At least the spark which turns into fire crop up because of some lowly evolved people .The behavior [mis] of (men/boys) towards girls/women folk (with me and other women/friends included) creates such a raging fury in me. As a master’s student I find most of the Indian boys attitude towards girls is as cheap as it was in India .Not that I hoped that they would undergo a mutation in the flight when they were coming to “U.S.A”.

As a "Indian" girl I have experienced the usual stares/glances/words from all those who violated my private space by making me feel powerless …Is there a way to fight back??[following the principle of "pen is mightier than the sword"]
YES!!!
Because I feel there is a voice which is gaining momentum…which is sweeping like a wave which is giving a voice to all those countless women who suffer on every street on every developed/undeveloped piece of land on earth.

1.Blank noise project is one of them …
http://www.blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com/

2.RAHI foundation
http://www.rahifoundation.org/

3.TULIR
http://www.tulircphcsa.org/

You don’t have to be a feminist to fight against crime ...
A sensitive ..kind heart would do ...

Does this article make a difference ??Will this tiny spark survive the unending hurricane of darkness...???
I HOPE it does!!!!

Silence

I am not talking about the calmness or stillness of a moment.I am talking about the chaos,confusion ,hopelessness and despair when everything is beyond your control.There seems no way that the world understand what you are going through.

When you have a small argument with your best friend and you know you have rocked the relationship...
When someone passes an unneceesary comment about how you look in front of everyone...
When you made a mess but have no way to hide the damage done...
When the person who has wronged stands in front of you ,but you cant do anything...
Whne you give up everything for the person you love and they leave you ...
When you work very hard and everyone except you gets the prize...
When you have a path to the ultimate experience in life but you are stuck in your dead end job...
When god laughs at your every plan...
When you have a voice to shatter the injustice,a will to change your destiny and still there is something which has chained your soul...

Is silence the best option???

At death's Door

The "D"(death)has always influenced me .It has creeped into my contended life and created havoc.I encountered its horrific nature when I was 13 years old..NO..I did not have a near death experience.It was much more worse ..I had a feel of death's claw because I thought it would grab away my most precious thing..NO ..not life ,my mother..It happened like this..

It was a lazy afternoon and a perfect time for a poem in my view.As the teacher read through the lines I was lost in the beauty of the words.Then came the knowledge that every poem is a purposeful attempt to get the listener/reader to experience themselves in the poet's shoes..The truth is ,it works like a charm..The poem changed the way I looked at my life for ever.The poem was an attempt to contact his dead mother.The verses were drenched in sorrow.I could hear his cries in every word.I went back home and told my mother that I never wanted her to ever leave me.I was scared if she returned late from work,that may be something would have happened to her.I tormented and tortured myself with the cruelity that life offered.
It took me 6 months to get out of the trance of misery and one gaint promise from my mother that she would never leave me. But it took me another 9 years when life bought me again at the same situation- back to square one.I did the only thing I used to do when faced with tough situations in life .. worry and run away as fast as possible.

The fear of death is the most natural fear in all of us.It is basically used to make our lives better.If you think that you have less time you would never postpone.
Coming back to the story -

When I was 14 years old my aunt died of a heart attack .What did I do ???
Run away ..ya never saw her again..thought death was a disease..may be I can inherit..told my mom to stay away too..(not that I was that dumb..but D can kill intelligence).One of my relatives who was staying with us and was 92 passed away..was close to him.What did I do???locked myself in a room and never came out for a day..Then last year when my grand mother ..who I have been closet of all too passed to another world..What did I do??locked myself, but wanted to see her for the last time.I reasoned with my mind... that I would have nightmares,will faint and go through shock because of the fear of D..but the heart won hands down.I saw her.A strange thing happened that day death changed from D to P(peace).
Sometimes when we dont learn our lessons from difficult situations they keep arising in one form or the other .Life is beautiful..it wants us to learn ..pain/fear and failures are the biggest teachers that anyone can have.

Bhool Jaa

There is so much emphasis on learning.But how come no one teaches us how to unlearn.There are so many advantages to unlearning our thought process.Sometimes when the past memories which as psychic images effect and torture us ..How do we forget these scarry stuff?I sometimes wonder..[I dont have a degree in neuro sciences but using my logic] whether everything which we store in our mind is rewritten by fresh memories or is it that in our mind we have infinite place to store all kinds of things.I also read somewhere that may be our consciousness may lie outside..its some kind of vibration and frequency theory.This theory is still in infant state .Thoughts which really sit inside our subconscious minds are may be instances of praise,love,hate,...and the list goes on.But what I have observed from self examination is that we make a constant approach to holding on to emotions which give us joy/pain.We dont let go of the past.If we never let go then there is a obstacle to your present i.e you colour everything according to your experiences in the past.Its like wearing tinted glasses(lets say red colur tinted glasses)Imagine the whole world in red..Scary ..Thats how most thought processes gets coloured.Our past failures with relationships,our joys from our success in life are just small bits of our life.They are many mundane things which also take great importance .They are always taken for granted until the day we lose it and repent .

For me letting go of the anger and forgiving people have freed up most of my emotional burden.In career not worrying about the monetary aspect and to work because I love to ..has given me freedom from my over ambitious/egoistic nature. It is said easier than done .But when it comes to people who have hurt you the most the only way I have found some solace in easing the pain ..a two word formula
bhool jaa...(shaan's song ..my fav)

My words on love

I have always wondered does love last forever??There are many scientists trying to find out whether there is a parallel universe..How come many dont proceed in this direction too??With all my little experience in love I had ..these are my little insights:
CAUTION:I dont claim this to be the truth in relationships..this is just a advisory.If you are going to consider any advice the rule is :::use a bag of salt..
But if that caution did not scare you away ..please continue...
1.dont be too dependent.
2.When someone says you they are going to leave you because they have some other problems or some other issues , but if it did not exist they would'nt leave you for the world..
My golden words ITS ALL CRAP..
90% of the time it means that there is no serious commitment to love/relationship.
3.If some issues or a particular lifestyle is important like oxygen dont go fall for the person who is just the opposite.
OPPOSITES attract only in magnets ..not in humans.. or else we will never have had wars ...
4.When a relationship turns sour(someone ditches u)..Do not run back of the person.Earn some self respect and leave it as fast as possible.Forgiveness is not a joke .Anger is always destructive .
Be very angry first with the person and then forgive yourself a decade later.
5.Manipulations in a relationship makes the relationship more complicated .If you are wearing some other mask and not showing your true self to the person u love then - u dont have a good reationship.The world is a stage and we are all actors -you dont get paid for this work and acting is good only if you are working in a t.v series or a movie or else it is called you mental delusion.
6.Sometimes when a person fits a particular image and we think they are perfect ..they are ur other half and complete you..run as fast as possible.You are whole you dont need someone to complete you.Thats why we are born alone or else we would be born with our umblical cords connected to another individual.We die alone too..How can you think that god was stupid!!!!
7.If you are not ready for a relationship ..then believe it ..go dig out the old hammer and chisel on the nearby rock ..A doubt in a relationship is cancer ..there is no cure ....mostly...
8.Independence...freedom ,honesty,trust ...find out which words give meaning to your life..search these qualities for the person you want to be with..I always believe love should let you grow as a person .If your love is inhibiting your true self and lettting you die as each day passes,find someone else.
9.Be very straight forward and discuss all the terms of the relationship.Mostly when it comes to Indians
find out the traditional/mordernity level..
how the family behaves..because most of the Indain men are carbon copy of their family traits..If you are a girl try to be away from people who search to find their mother in you.You are a individual and the uniqueness should be accepted.
10.If you are going to dive into the M world(marriage)..discuss issues about finance and career at the beginning itself.These destroy lot of relationships.Dont have a marriage based on contract or on a idea.A relationship if it has to last for ever is not a joke it needs some solid ground work.If you have castles in the air ,go to the next step put some strong foundation.
11.If everthing looks like a dream pinch yourself hard..If you are flying high in the air ..remember there is gravity it will pull you down to earth immedaitely.Take time off from the relationship to overcome the infactuation effect.The fog will disappear and the true self will show itself.
12.Anyways expecting anything in return is wrong ..when you are in love.If life throws you lot of bricks when it comes to your love life ..keep first aid ready and start by building a wall.If you are tough hearted prick (I have come across them in my life)start by taking care of a plant..If the plant survives ,then adopt a dog or a cat..then progress to humans.We humans have mouths we scream in agony.
13.Educational qualifications dont show the inner character of a person.Knowledge,enlightment and education are three different words.A highly qualified person can be sometimes the worst choice of your life.
14.Dont go around searching for love.Let it come and find you.We all can be happy alone.But when we share our lives with someone else it makes us more happier.That does not mean you dont share your love for life with others.Give your love away by volunteering in your free time,making time for your freinds and family.

I will add few other insights as I go along and meet other screwed up people.
this is one of the quotes which I like about love

There are two great tragedies in life
falling in love and failing in love.....

Marriage is always good..look at me
if the marriage fails ..you can always become a philosopher :)
- socrates

Inner voice...

PEN AND PAPER trail
The paper is usually made from the normal destruction of trees which caused lot of soil erosion and led to extinction of many villages in the rural areas.Past few years there were these enviornmentally friendly books made available.They were only available in the globalised book stores and are compartively expensive.The lay man would never pay such a high price for saving trees.

The television advertisements in India mostly show the latest technology they have used to produce to make the nib which would give smooth writing.Its a whole new world when you see the Indian (pen)ADS..May be if the scientists who are trying to make this space age pens take a break and the funds are given to AIDS scientists ...
We may have a cure...Does the plastic which is used in the pens, harm the soil??WIll the future generations have to breathe toxins instead of oxygen!!!
The chain of identical stores [which have sprung up in the past few years which sell the space age pens and paper(env/non env)(books)] have made the smaller warm unique shops extinct ..This cancer has made so many jobless,families hungry and overall we have suceeded to increase the gap between rich and poor.

This is a story of the paper and pen ..
countless lives are changed,made better,made worse..when we make the decision of buying the ordinary pen and paper.These ramblings are common to many of us .We all sometime or the other go through these voices which tell us how we effect the world in general.The main question here is do we let the voice pass as a whisper and disappear or let it echo in our lives and amplify it so that its explodes ...

Write your own story...

few years back...I was reading this self help book which told how to handle terrible situations gracefully .There was this story about a shop keeper .I paraphrased it and have added details from my memory.I hope I have done enough justice.The story:::

As I enter the store I see there are various quotations which fill your mind with ever flowing enthusiasm.Its like a shrine of positive statements.My mind gets filled with pictures of his childhood ..his perfect parents,superb teachers,and all good stuff which at the end made him create so much goodness in his life.He was married with two kids"..the AMerican DReam.."".I told him how lucky he was that life has treated him well.He told me that his father was a alocohlic,mother a drug addict and had lived his entire childhood and teenage life in foster homes and orphanages.He joined the military and served there for many years .At the end ,there was too much suffering so he had come back to his hometown and wanted a fresh start and opened the store and got married.This is what he says::
" Its very easy to blame the past and accumlate hurt ..sometimes we have to write our very own story,change the ending however bad the beginning is..."