Rituals are integral part of any culture; for that, culture is a result of human tendency to evolve. Rituals may still existing in their original form since their inception or transformed into a new form as the culture moves on or the essence of the ritual might have washed away by the flow of culture and just a representation is left behind. What is ritual? What could be the expected outcome of rituals? If we are performing any rituals, we should be asking these questions – if at all we claim ourselves as educated or knowledgeable! Unfortunately, seldom we enquire about such abstract and subtle things. Even if enquired, we create our own answers based on what we think and heard from others, and then start believing that answer; any belief is a blind belief.
The below description could be a description of rituals and its intention. Like the out come of any other enquiry, it is a deduction. It may or may not be having any relevance to truth. As long as we are clear about this, the trueness or falseness of this deduction does not matter, we will reach the real intention of rituals. But if we just believe or reject this deduction or any other description we are also rejecting the truth. This could be a complex statement!
For human being, the mind is a gift (also a curse!). Any one person, any where in the world, belongs to any culture and try to understand oneself, mind is the only vehicle available for such investigation and mind is the only additional instrument than other animals in this earth. Hence if one intend to reach or learn the extreme possibility of evolution it should be through the vehicle of mind only. This investigation has created so many religions in this world. All the religions in this world must have started from at least one such investigating mind. In other words mind must be the happening point of every thing for human being and mind is the space where all our living takes place and this living is expressed thru’ our actions.
Once we understand a little bit of our mind and it’s functioning with respect to living, looks like, the mind is capable of digging towards the ultimate knowledge, may be inch by inch or atom by atom. Hence invoking the mind towards this knowledge must be the first step towards understanding life and living. How to invoke the mind towards this understanding, which has evolved slowly to this state since the creation of world (if there was a creation) and have unlimited blocks with in it during this evolutionary journey? Rituals may be a mechanism of invoking our mind for higher knowledge. Mind can get in to higher knowledge only when meditation happens upon it. In other words rituals must be for invoking meditation.
Our mind is made up of symbols and images. These symbols and images together constitute our language and communication. For example, when we see a tree the mind records that information as an image based on the qualities the mind perceives about the tree and a word or symbol to represent that tree - the qualities perceived by the mind cannot be the complete qualities of a tree, but a few outer and perceivable qualities. Now, if we see a tree the mind associates it with the word and if we hear or see the word “tree” the mind associate it with the image we have about the tree. In other words, the symbols always invoke the image with in mind. Symbols can associate only with the images not the real – this is one of a subtle philosophical concept at higher plane.
Our sense organs are the instruments to get these images and symbols into mind. But the capabilities of our senses are very limited. We are also limiting ourselves within the reach of these sense organs in our way of living even though we have another instrument called mind. Of course, we are using our mind for entangling with these symbols and images, not for gain freedom from these symbols and images in our way of living. We know how we are joyful when we get freedom from being a salve with in social set up. If we can properly associate the word freedom to the image of freedom, we can understand the limitless joy one can have when we gain freedom from symbols and images also.
When meditation happens, the mind will be capable of perceiving nothingness which is beyond the capability of sense organs. Perceiving nothingness may be some thing like the state of perception where neither the symbols nor the images are involved. Probably one may not be able to explain such a perception directly as it does not contained within any symbols or images. Yet, there is a need to communicate it to others so that the mind of others also can be invoked for such a capability. When the perception excludes the images which are always far away from real and the symbols representing the images, such a perception must be a pure perception – the perception of nothingness.
Rituals must be devised for stimulating the mind to have such a perception. Rituals may be the external symbols which represent more subtle things happen within our life or within existence. By perceiving the symbol in action by the senses, the mind must be stimulated to perceive the unperceivable by sense organs. Unless one gets such a mental stimulation by performing a ritual, the ritual does not have any meaning. One must perform the ritual only with the understanding that the rituals are to be transcended. Once capable of reaching meditativeness, the rituals must be abandoned. If not it becomes a trap. Being in this trap neither we get the mental stimulation expected out of performing rituals.
Every mind cannot be stimulated by rituals. The minds with certain composition can only be stimulated by rituals. For such minds which cannot be stimulated by rituals, there is no meaning for rituals. Such minds must avoid performing any rituals if have the desire to perceive nothingness or meditation to happen within that mind.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Meditation & Body
Meditation is a process. Possibly, it may be a process of rearranging the content of our own brain so that the brain functions altogether in a different manner and the new way of functioning of brain itself may be meditation.
Due to the factors like fear, anger, stress, etc our body has lost its natural way of being, as we grow from child to adult. The body lose its flexibility and become stiff. Depend on the environment we live, we reach the peak of body stiffness some where between teen age and middle age. The worst part is that we also lost our sensitivity to feel this stiffness. Hence it appears that the way we are now is the natural way of being. Those who are practicing some relaxation techniques may be able to understand this fact. If we can observe any part of our body, we can feel that part of body is getting relaxed and along with that relaxation, the mind is also relaxing. But if we are not used to such observations, the mind may drag away from such observation as the mind may not be capable of withstanding such sensitivity due to prolonged ignorance of our own body and mind by us.
Any activity of mind is a material process within our body - meaning the activity of brain, a matter, is expressed as mind. On the other hand mind is an integral part of our body. When the mind relaxes the body also get relaxed. Similarly, if the body is relaxed we can very well feel the relaxation of mind also. Probably the ‘Kriya Yogis’ uses this relation to prepare the mind by means of preparing body through ‘Kriyas’ or breathing techniques/Aasanas so that the right condition for meditation to happen is set with in the ‘Kriya Yogi’.
When meditation happens, the body also adapts its natural state as the mind frees itself from fear, anger, stress, belief etc and hence the stiffness of body due to these factors are also freed up. That is the body may gains freedom from the unnecessary burden of brain. In other words, when meditation happens, the mind may be approaching its highest capability and so is the body. Any ailment of body due to the unnatural stiffness of body also may be cured and hence a healthy body is also an effect of meditation.
If the body is not in right condition, again the possibility of meditation to happen may be very remote. In such cases, any attempt to get into meditative state by mental stimulation may spoil the healthiness of mind and in turn impact the body also. This could be the reason for many of the spiritual techniques at higher level are closely guarded secrets – To avoid damaging mind and body of the unprepared. But if one avoids such violent stimulation of mind with awareness, as one progress in reaching meditativeness, the body also prepares itself to complement the process of meditation.
When the body is not in peace, mind cannot be in peace and hence meditation cannot happen. The reverse must also be true – When the mind is not in peace, body cannot be in peace and hence meditation cannot happen. This implies that any method which tortures the mind and body may drag us away from meditation and illusion may be dominant in such cases. But we must note that certain method may be bliss to one person, but can be a torture to another person. Hence no method is a generic method for inviting meditation. It entirely depends on the composition of individual who is waiting for meditation to happen.
For meditation to happen, the body and mind may have to move towards meditation with synch. A mind moving faster than body may create mental imbalance or get into some illusion to escape from this mental imbalance. Similarly the body moving faster than mind may lead to physical disorders. Here is the actual purpose of a spiritual guru, if at all we seek one. The Spiritual guru is to see that our mind and body moves with synch towards meditation and correct the imbalance if occurs.
With all this dangers why should we seek meditation? The answer depends on how we like to live our life. For worldly life, we have to walk on the streets many times a day where unlimited dangers are possible. But to live a worldly life we have to face all these dangers as and when occur. Same is the case for inner journey! There are enough dangers in the inner path. Our alertness can guard against all these dangers and can lead us to the destination. But, we have to be alert to take such journey.
Let us leave alone the freedom of body required for meditation to happen. But we are spoiling our body and mind by the name of lifestyle. It does not mean simply ignore all worldly changes and live the life inside a cave or hut. But understand our need and adapt a lifestyle suited for the need. If we can live such a life, no other effort may be required for meditation to happen. In such cases, the mind and body may be ready for welcoming meditation. But the trouble is that we are not prepared for a real necessity based life. Our necessities are driven by our ego!
Due to the factors like fear, anger, stress, etc our body has lost its natural way of being, as we grow from child to adult. The body lose its flexibility and become stiff. Depend on the environment we live, we reach the peak of body stiffness some where between teen age and middle age. The worst part is that we also lost our sensitivity to feel this stiffness. Hence it appears that the way we are now is the natural way of being. Those who are practicing some relaxation techniques may be able to understand this fact. If we can observe any part of our body, we can feel that part of body is getting relaxed and along with that relaxation, the mind is also relaxing. But if we are not used to such observations, the mind may drag away from such observation as the mind may not be capable of withstanding such sensitivity due to prolonged ignorance of our own body and mind by us.
Any activity of mind is a material process within our body - meaning the activity of brain, a matter, is expressed as mind. On the other hand mind is an integral part of our body. When the mind relaxes the body also get relaxed. Similarly, if the body is relaxed we can very well feel the relaxation of mind also. Probably the ‘Kriya Yogis’ uses this relation to prepare the mind by means of preparing body through ‘Kriyas’ or breathing techniques/Aasanas so that the right condition for meditation to happen is set with in the ‘Kriya Yogi’.
When meditation happens, the body also adapts its natural state as the mind frees itself from fear, anger, stress, belief etc and hence the stiffness of body due to these factors are also freed up. That is the body may gains freedom from the unnecessary burden of brain. In other words, when meditation happens, the mind may be approaching its highest capability and so is the body. Any ailment of body due to the unnatural stiffness of body also may be cured and hence a healthy body is also an effect of meditation.
If the body is not in right condition, again the possibility of meditation to happen may be very remote. In such cases, any attempt to get into meditative state by mental stimulation may spoil the healthiness of mind and in turn impact the body also. This could be the reason for many of the spiritual techniques at higher level are closely guarded secrets – To avoid damaging mind and body of the unprepared. But if one avoids such violent stimulation of mind with awareness, as one progress in reaching meditativeness, the body also prepares itself to complement the process of meditation.
When the body is not in peace, mind cannot be in peace and hence meditation cannot happen. The reverse must also be true – When the mind is not in peace, body cannot be in peace and hence meditation cannot happen. This implies that any method which tortures the mind and body may drag us away from meditation and illusion may be dominant in such cases. But we must note that certain method may be bliss to one person, but can be a torture to another person. Hence no method is a generic method for inviting meditation. It entirely depends on the composition of individual who is waiting for meditation to happen.
For meditation to happen, the body and mind may have to move towards meditation with synch. A mind moving faster than body may create mental imbalance or get into some illusion to escape from this mental imbalance. Similarly the body moving faster than mind may lead to physical disorders. Here is the actual purpose of a spiritual guru, if at all we seek one. The Spiritual guru is to see that our mind and body moves with synch towards meditation and correct the imbalance if occurs.
With all this dangers why should we seek meditation? The answer depends on how we like to live our life. For worldly life, we have to walk on the streets many times a day where unlimited dangers are possible. But to live a worldly life we have to face all these dangers as and when occur. Same is the case for inner journey! There are enough dangers in the inner path. Our alertness can guard against all these dangers and can lead us to the destination. But, we have to be alert to take such journey.
Let us leave alone the freedom of body required for meditation to happen. But we are spoiling our body and mind by the name of lifestyle. It does not mean simply ignore all worldly changes and live the life inside a cave or hut. But understand our need and adapt a lifestyle suited for the need. If we can live such a life, no other effort may be required for meditation to happen. In such cases, the mind and body may be ready for welcoming meditation. But the trouble is that we are not prepared for a real necessity based life. Our necessities are driven by our ego!
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Meditation & Mind
Meditation can happen 24 x 7. But our mind is the barrier for happening this. Meditation is a state of mind. The barrier is due to the way our brain is programmed; may be an equal programming by our past generations since the beginning of creation and by us from our birth to until now. Unless one crosses this barrier, meditation cannot happen within mind. The whole content of this blog is about understanding this barrier.
Unless we know, how it looks like or feel like, we may not intend to aspire for meditation. But it may not be possible to express meditation as it is. That could be the reason that any expression about meditation or God is poetic in nature. Most of us are not capable of understanding poems, except mere words. Hence we depend heavily on the interpretations by those who never allowed meditation to happen within them. Due to this fact, in most of the cases, what we hear about meditation is not actually about meditation- they are just the mental images of those who interpreted those poetic languages – with out any understanding of what is meditation.
Then, what could be the way out? One possibility may be by understanding it by ourselves- Allowing our mind to question. The question itself create the necessary understanding, unless we fall into some easy traps like belief etc. In our current life style, unless we face some real problem, we never question. Questioning is never encouraged in our education/Social system. Our social system just fix a target of self development and encourage to achieve it in any way. As long as the social system stops teaching and enforcing belief systems or teaching the limitations of belief systems along with the belief systems or encouraging the questioning of belief systems itself, society as a whole cannot question the content of its own mind.
For a logical mind, meditation can happen only after the avalanche of questioning is transcended or, may be partially transcended. For a devotional mind, there may be alternatives. Unfortunately, seldom there is any devotional mind in society due to the very fact of completely materialistic lifestyle for more than few generations. Those who call themselves as devotee, the possibility is that they are caught with in the trap of their own mind. Of course, there are exceptional devotees still available in the society. But with in the general social structure, they are very, very few and hence ignorable count, compared to the logical minds with in the society. Even one to touch the devotional part of one’s one mind, the logical layer of the mind must be transcended. If not, the logical part of mind cannot allow functioning its own devotional part, due to the very nature of this logical structure within mind. Once the logical layer of mind is transcended, depend on the composition of individual’s brain, devotion or rituals or kiryas or any other means, which can stimulate the mind positively, can prepare the mind for meditation to happen. Unless the logical layer of mind is not transcended (It is about transcending logical layer – not escaping or killing the logics of mind), any Kiryas, or rituals or devotion or any other type of physical brain stimulation may take the mind into the traps of illusions, which is not easy to recognise.
If we are following any religion – any religion has at least one mind as its origin that experienced the state of meditation, for sure there must be enough resources in that religion about experiencing such state of mind. Possibly, the crowd that intended to spread that religion to enforce their authorities might have suppressed this part of religion from the mainstream religion. But if we intend to go deep into our own mind, the reasons for deep journey is available with in our own religion irrespective of which religion are we following. But our intention is just to have authority or to follow authority, there is no need for taking trouble on this counts, because the crowd is already doing that and numerous methods are available for such things with in any religion.
In other words, meditation must be the central foundation stone of any religion as all religions are built on at least one meditative mind. We all belong to one or the other culture and all culture have a strong root within religion. The core of any culture must be a meditative mind and if we belong to that culture, we are built around a meditative mind. The purpose of any religion is to reach its core or to reach a state of meditativeness. Meditation is nothing but revealing the very core of our mind – possibly the mind of creation itself!
Unless we know, how it looks like or feel like, we may not intend to aspire for meditation. But it may not be possible to express meditation as it is. That could be the reason that any expression about meditation or God is poetic in nature. Most of us are not capable of understanding poems, except mere words. Hence we depend heavily on the interpretations by those who never allowed meditation to happen within them. Due to this fact, in most of the cases, what we hear about meditation is not actually about meditation- they are just the mental images of those who interpreted those poetic languages – with out any understanding of what is meditation.
Then, what could be the way out? One possibility may be by understanding it by ourselves- Allowing our mind to question. The question itself create the necessary understanding, unless we fall into some easy traps like belief etc. In our current life style, unless we face some real problem, we never question. Questioning is never encouraged in our education/Social system. Our social system just fix a target of self development and encourage to achieve it in any way. As long as the social system stops teaching and enforcing belief systems or teaching the limitations of belief systems along with the belief systems or encouraging the questioning of belief systems itself, society as a whole cannot question the content of its own mind.
For a logical mind, meditation can happen only after the avalanche of questioning is transcended or, may be partially transcended. For a devotional mind, there may be alternatives. Unfortunately, seldom there is any devotional mind in society due to the very fact of completely materialistic lifestyle for more than few generations. Those who call themselves as devotee, the possibility is that they are caught with in the trap of their own mind. Of course, there are exceptional devotees still available in the society. But with in the general social structure, they are very, very few and hence ignorable count, compared to the logical minds with in the society. Even one to touch the devotional part of one’s one mind, the logical layer of the mind must be transcended. If not, the logical part of mind cannot allow functioning its own devotional part, due to the very nature of this logical structure within mind. Once the logical layer of mind is transcended, depend on the composition of individual’s brain, devotion or rituals or kiryas or any other means, which can stimulate the mind positively, can prepare the mind for meditation to happen. Unless the logical layer of mind is not transcended (It is about transcending logical layer – not escaping or killing the logics of mind), any Kiryas, or rituals or devotion or any other type of physical brain stimulation may take the mind into the traps of illusions, which is not easy to recognise.
If we are following any religion – any religion has at least one mind as its origin that experienced the state of meditation, for sure there must be enough resources in that religion about experiencing such state of mind. Possibly, the crowd that intended to spread that religion to enforce their authorities might have suppressed this part of religion from the mainstream religion. But if we intend to go deep into our own mind, the reasons for deep journey is available with in our own religion irrespective of which religion are we following. But our intention is just to have authority or to follow authority, there is no need for taking trouble on this counts, because the crowd is already doing that and numerous methods are available for such things with in any religion.
In other words, meditation must be the central foundation stone of any religion as all religions are built on at least one meditative mind. We all belong to one or the other culture and all culture have a strong root within religion. The core of any culture must be a meditative mind and if we belong to that culture, we are built around a meditative mind. The purpose of any religion is to reach its core or to reach a state of meditativeness. Meditation is nothing but revealing the very core of our mind – possibly the mind of creation itself!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Meditation
We may be having a number of myths about meditation. Yes, they must by myths, not the facts –The reason is that, it may not be easy to express meditation in words. Whatever way it is expressed, the possibility is that it goes into our minds and stay there as a myth, unless we attempt to feel it with originality. When we happen to come across another version of meditation, we may enter into another myth. The possibility is that those who are regularly sitting for meditation also may be doing under the influence of such myths, which completely takes away the possibility of meditation to happen. It does not mean, whatever expressed here will be the correct expression of meditation. It may be just a version of expressing it. Probably, the whole content of this blog itself is an approach to express meditation in certain way.
Meditation is a process which has to happen by itself. We may not be able to do meditation. Possibly we can try to set the conditions required for meditation to happen. Meditation is a state of mind. We can not force our mind to get into that state. The mind by itself has to enter into such a state. Possibly we can set the conditions conductive for the mind to enter into such a state.
A mind at the meditative state must be a very active mind, at the same time it is actionless (not inactive) mind. It is not a contradictory statement. The mind is extremely active at one plane, while it is extremely still at another plane. This actionlessness is not due to dullness, but due to activeness of mind in another plane.
We understand meditation in so many perspectives depend on to whom we are listening. There is a perspective that concentration of mind is meditation. Concentration can not be meditation. Concentration is an activity, it is not a process. Concentration is focusing on just one activity of mind and suppressing all other activities. In meditation, there is no suppression. Concentration kill our sensitiveness towards every thing else other than the one we are focusing. Heightened sensitivity towards every thing is meditation. On one side, when we kill our sensitiveness, we can not expect meditation to happen, which need sensitivity. In other words concentration is an action, which kills the possibility of meditation. But concentration may be used as a starting point for meditation, provided we understand the trap within the action of concentration and its limitations.
We sit for meditation to be free from stress. When we sit for removing some thing, meditation cannot happen as the mind is already occupied with the stress which we want to remove as well as the thought of removing some unwanted thing from our mind. Sitting for removing stress is not meditation; it is just an action which diverts mind from stress for the time being. May be continuous practicing of such action may enable the mind to be free itself from the stress at will. But it is not meditation – In meditation, there is no will.
Meditation looks like an abstract thing, when it is not happening. Once it happens, it may be a way of living. The thought of “abstract thing’ may be diverting us away from turning towards meditation. Then we may have the question, why should we turn towards meditation? It is a valid question, when we think meditation is just for a selected few and tough to reach. When we are content with our life, when we are content with our way of living, of course, there is no need for turning towards meditation. But when we are discontent with our life, instead of filling the life with some worthless beliefs, turning towards meditation may be a better possibility. The filling of discontentment with any belief is a trap, which traps us from turning towards the direction of meditation. The philosophical enquiry may be the only key to free ourselves from the trap of beliefs. Now the philosophical enquiry itself may become a trap. Any philosophical enquiry must have got the answer from within us, even if the words are expressed by others. If the answer given by somebody did not match the answer within ourselves, we simply reject that person providing the answer. But if that person’s expression matches with that of ours, we consider that person as our Guru and start following that person - we are already in another trap. This statement is not against having a guru, but to understand the trap there!
So, turning inwards has lot of traps to drag away from such inward journey, but keep us in an illusion that we are progressing in inward journey. It is very simple to understand; only thing is we have to look around within ourselves instead of focusing at just one point within. Only such an understanding can make as be alert about the traps in our inward journey – the traps set by our own mind.
Being alert of all these traps it self may be meditation. Being alert of these traps means that we are alert of our ego. When we are alert of ego, the ego disappears. When meditation happens, there can not be ego. We may be the worst egoist but when meditation happens, there cannot be any ego or ‘I’ centeredness. As soon as the ego enters in our mind, the meditation disappears.
When meditation happens, as there is no ego, we are not behind any thoughts but thoughts may surface within the mind and go. When thoughts are dominant or when we are behind any thoughts, the ‘I’ or ‘me’ centeredness must be the reason. When a thought surface within mind and the ‘I’ or ‘me’ starts tracking that thought, the thought intensifies and we are carried over by that thought. The state of mind in which we are alert and when we are not carried over by any thoughts surfacing in our mind, such a state of mind is meditation. Hence, meditation can happen 24 x 7!
Meditation is a process which has to happen by itself. We may not be able to do meditation. Possibly we can try to set the conditions required for meditation to happen. Meditation is a state of mind. We can not force our mind to get into that state. The mind by itself has to enter into such a state. Possibly we can set the conditions conductive for the mind to enter into such a state.
A mind at the meditative state must be a very active mind, at the same time it is actionless (not inactive) mind. It is not a contradictory statement. The mind is extremely active at one plane, while it is extremely still at another plane. This actionlessness is not due to dullness, but due to activeness of mind in another plane.
We understand meditation in so many perspectives depend on to whom we are listening. There is a perspective that concentration of mind is meditation. Concentration can not be meditation. Concentration is an activity, it is not a process. Concentration is focusing on just one activity of mind and suppressing all other activities. In meditation, there is no suppression. Concentration kill our sensitiveness towards every thing else other than the one we are focusing. Heightened sensitivity towards every thing is meditation. On one side, when we kill our sensitiveness, we can not expect meditation to happen, which need sensitivity. In other words concentration is an action, which kills the possibility of meditation. But concentration may be used as a starting point for meditation, provided we understand the trap within the action of concentration and its limitations.
We sit for meditation to be free from stress. When we sit for removing some thing, meditation cannot happen as the mind is already occupied with the stress which we want to remove as well as the thought of removing some unwanted thing from our mind. Sitting for removing stress is not meditation; it is just an action which diverts mind from stress for the time being. May be continuous practicing of such action may enable the mind to be free itself from the stress at will. But it is not meditation – In meditation, there is no will.
Meditation looks like an abstract thing, when it is not happening. Once it happens, it may be a way of living. The thought of “abstract thing’ may be diverting us away from turning towards meditation. Then we may have the question, why should we turn towards meditation? It is a valid question, when we think meditation is just for a selected few and tough to reach. When we are content with our life, when we are content with our way of living, of course, there is no need for turning towards meditation. But when we are discontent with our life, instead of filling the life with some worthless beliefs, turning towards meditation may be a better possibility. The filling of discontentment with any belief is a trap, which traps us from turning towards the direction of meditation. The philosophical enquiry may be the only key to free ourselves from the trap of beliefs. Now the philosophical enquiry itself may become a trap. Any philosophical enquiry must have got the answer from within us, even if the words are expressed by others. If the answer given by somebody did not match the answer within ourselves, we simply reject that person providing the answer. But if that person’s expression matches with that of ours, we consider that person as our Guru and start following that person - we are already in another trap. This statement is not against having a guru, but to understand the trap there!
So, turning inwards has lot of traps to drag away from such inward journey, but keep us in an illusion that we are progressing in inward journey. It is very simple to understand; only thing is we have to look around within ourselves instead of focusing at just one point within. Only such an understanding can make as be alert about the traps in our inward journey – the traps set by our own mind.
Being alert of all these traps it self may be meditation. Being alert of these traps means that we are alert of our ego. When we are alert of ego, the ego disappears. When meditation happens, there can not be ego. We may be the worst egoist but when meditation happens, there cannot be any ego or ‘I’ centeredness. As soon as the ego enters in our mind, the meditation disappears.
When meditation happens, as there is no ego, we are not behind any thoughts but thoughts may surface within the mind and go. When thoughts are dominant or when we are behind any thoughts, the ‘I’ or ‘me’ centeredness must be the reason. When a thought surface within mind and the ‘I’ or ‘me’ starts tracking that thought, the thought intensifies and we are carried over by that thought. The state of mind in which we are alert and when we are not carried over by any thoughts surfacing in our mind, such a state of mind is meditation. Hence, meditation can happen 24 x 7!
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Leadership
This is not to discuss the qualities of leader with respect to management, but about the impact of the word leader, within our mind and our urge to follow certain leader or to become a leader. With in the context of this blog, a leader is one who can integrate certain component of the minds of a group of individuals and focus the integrated ‘social mind’ towards a fixed goal and be part of that ‘social mind’. The ‘social mind’ is common for all individuals in that group and hence the group is one entity with respect to that goal towards which the ‘social mind’ is focused. The success of that leader is the success of this group and hence how well the ‘social mind’ is integrated.
We have seen great leaders in history, who were capable of integrating the mind of a whole nation and achieve certain results, some of them are positive and some of them are destructive. On day-to-day basis we see leaders everywhere and we ourselves play the role of leaders at certain situations of our life.
Leadership is a quality rather than practicing a method. This statement may be much against all the ‘self help’ groups. This does not mean without inborn quality of leadership one can never assume the position of a leader. But how far happily and peacefully one can perform this integration of minds into a ‘social mind’ and focus that ‘social mind’ towards desired goal depends on one’s natural instinct of leadership.
Wealth and status are most sought commodities by every one of us. We consider education as a tool for making or achieving these commodities. There is no limit for these two commodities one need at any point of time. But we need a little more from what we have ‘now’ and this ‘now’ keep on shifting and hence the limit of wealth and status required are also keeps on shifting with ‘now’. In this race on moving with ‘now’ for capturing wealth and status, we seldom have any sensitivity towards our nature or the way our brain is composed of. On keeping pace with the race, we simply ignore our sensitivity (if at all we have) and hence simply ignore our own life itself.
The natural tendency or instinct expresses itself as our interests and we can easily identify them and align our life accordingly, if we have sensitivity towards our nature. If we follow our interests, we will be living our life naturally and in that living, possibly we can integrate a social mind with out any effort and hence become natural leaders. Unfortunately, seldom were we allowed to follow our interests and seldom are we allowing our children to follow their interests. We brainwash our children to become earning machines, with least attention to their real interests. On this race, we kill their sensitivity also and hence it appears that becoming an earning machine as their interest, for them too. When such children become earning machines and play the role of leader, they need enormous effort to play that role. Because they may not have any natural inclination towards the field in which they are in. In this effort, they lose their life or lose complete sensitivity towards life.
Our mind is bonded with culture, religion, status, beliefs, the knowledge acquired and many other things. With all these bondage, it is not easy for us to understand the truth of any subject. We create our own images of the subject based on all these bondages. Such images are seldom close to truth or reality. They are just images of us, but appear as truth for us due to the bondages we have. In other words, for any subject, we have very limited view as all the paths are blocked by our beliefs, our memory about the previous appearance of subject, and so on. With that limited view, we can see just a small portion of the subject and from that limited viewing build our own images about that subject.
When we have such limited view, any body who understand this limitation of us and capable of handling nice arguments around our view can easily hijack our minds and integrate them into a common ‘social mind’ and direct it towards their own goal. Alas! They are our leaders now! We have political leaders, we have religious leaders, we have cast leader, we have leader for our language, we have many other leaders for us…. Our own leaders!
Another person who can place counter-arguments for first one and if it appeals to us, we got our new leader…… Endless trap! What has been achieved by such leaders except achieving their own goals and making a section of our mind boiling? Of course there may be very few exceptions, who can integrate a worthy ‘social mind’ with respect to a society. But the majority of such leaders of yesterday, today and tomorrow are in this general category that uses the weakness of society for their own cause – may be the cause is noble for them.
We have seen great leaders in history, who were capable of integrating the mind of a whole nation and achieve certain results, some of them are positive and some of them are destructive. On day-to-day basis we see leaders everywhere and we ourselves play the role of leaders at certain situations of our life.
Leadership is a quality rather than practicing a method. This statement may be much against all the ‘self help’ groups. This does not mean without inborn quality of leadership one can never assume the position of a leader. But how far happily and peacefully one can perform this integration of minds into a ‘social mind’ and focus that ‘social mind’ towards desired goal depends on one’s natural instinct of leadership.
Wealth and status are most sought commodities by every one of us. We consider education as a tool for making or achieving these commodities. There is no limit for these two commodities one need at any point of time. But we need a little more from what we have ‘now’ and this ‘now’ keep on shifting and hence the limit of wealth and status required are also keeps on shifting with ‘now’. In this race on moving with ‘now’ for capturing wealth and status, we seldom have any sensitivity towards our nature or the way our brain is composed of. On keeping pace with the race, we simply ignore our sensitivity (if at all we have) and hence simply ignore our own life itself.
The natural tendency or instinct expresses itself as our interests and we can easily identify them and align our life accordingly, if we have sensitivity towards our nature. If we follow our interests, we will be living our life naturally and in that living, possibly we can integrate a social mind with out any effort and hence become natural leaders. Unfortunately, seldom were we allowed to follow our interests and seldom are we allowing our children to follow their interests. We brainwash our children to become earning machines, with least attention to their real interests. On this race, we kill their sensitivity also and hence it appears that becoming an earning machine as their interest, for them too. When such children become earning machines and play the role of leader, they need enormous effort to play that role. Because they may not have any natural inclination towards the field in which they are in. In this effort, they lose their life or lose complete sensitivity towards life.
Our mind is bonded with culture, religion, status, beliefs, the knowledge acquired and many other things. With all these bondage, it is not easy for us to understand the truth of any subject. We create our own images of the subject based on all these bondages. Such images are seldom close to truth or reality. They are just images of us, but appear as truth for us due to the bondages we have. In other words, for any subject, we have very limited view as all the paths are blocked by our beliefs, our memory about the previous appearance of subject, and so on. With that limited view, we can see just a small portion of the subject and from that limited viewing build our own images about that subject.
When we have such limited view, any body who understand this limitation of us and capable of handling nice arguments around our view can easily hijack our minds and integrate them into a common ‘social mind’ and direct it towards their own goal. Alas! They are our leaders now! We have political leaders, we have religious leaders, we have cast leader, we have leader for our language, we have many other leaders for us…. Our own leaders!
Another person who can place counter-arguments for first one and if it appeals to us, we got our new leader…… Endless trap! What has been achieved by such leaders except achieving their own goals and making a section of our mind boiling? Of course there may be very few exceptions, who can integrate a worthy ‘social mind’ with respect to a society. But the majority of such leaders of yesterday, today and tomorrow are in this general category that uses the weakness of society for their own cause – may be the cause is noble for them.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Life Within
If we can observe our own mind little bit, it is possible to recognise a very secret and isolated life we are living within our mind. This is supposed to be our real life. The life we call it as our life – the outward life is much against the life we are living within our mind in most of the cases. But very often we fail to recognise this inner life due to our inattention to our own mind. In most of the cases, we may not be able to share the content of our inner life even to the closest of our relations. If do so, the relation may collapse, irrespective of our entire claim about the intensity of love with that relationship – such is the contradiction between our inner and outward life. Same is the case, if any of our relation revel their inner life to us. To understand this we need not enter into the secret regime of anybody else. What we have to do is just observe our own mind to understand our inner life, the way we actually live our outward life and the contradiction between the two. We can find unlimited contradictions. To understand these contradictions, our consciousness must have sufficient depth.
The same is the case with every one, probably except those who have transcended their consciousness or those eliminated the barrier between their consciousness, sub consciousness and unconsciousness. This is because the mind of every human being works exactly in the same way, if the wandering at outer layer of mind is left alone.
When the outward life is synchronised with inner life that is the time we are actually living our life in the real sense of living. If this is the definition of life, seldom we live our life. The reason is that our consciousness is so thin, seldom are we able to recognise such inner life. Where ever we recognise within that thin consciousness, very often it contradict with outward life. And if we synchronise the outward life with out understanding the structure and contradiction of inner life with all its instability, we can not live in society – we will be labelled as ‘mad’ by the society.
When we are unable to recognise our inner life, our life is a very dull and insensitive life irrespective of the intensity of our outward activity. This dullness and insensitivity of our mind is the prime reason for all the ills of society. The problems like corruption, violence, killing in the society and every thing else are due to the abundance of such dull and insensitive minds in society. An active and sensitive mind can not contradict with the outward life. If it does, it is actually living in hell and not many can live such a life in hell. Only way to live in such hell is to make our mind dull and insensitive so that the contradictions are no more recognised. Hence to have a healthy society, we the constituent of the society must have an active and sensitive mind. If we really want to contribute some thing for the society, we must be active and sensitive which is capable of recognising inner life. This active and sensitive mind of ours will bring in prosperity for the society.
The inner life may become stable when the wandering of mind is limited or the depth of consciousness is increased. When this starts happening, possibly we start recognise our inner life. The recognition of inner life itself may change the way we live our outward life, provided we have sufficient freedom from bondages like fear, lack of security etc. Our life will be real hell, when we recognise our inner life, but we live a contradictory outward life due to any bondage. In the same way, our life must be a heaven when we live the same life within and out!
The same is the case with every one, probably except those who have transcended their consciousness or those eliminated the barrier between their consciousness, sub consciousness and unconsciousness. This is because the mind of every human being works exactly in the same way, if the wandering at outer layer of mind is left alone.
When the outward life is synchronised with inner life that is the time we are actually living our life in the real sense of living. If this is the definition of life, seldom we live our life. The reason is that our consciousness is so thin, seldom are we able to recognise such inner life. Where ever we recognise within that thin consciousness, very often it contradict with outward life. And if we synchronise the outward life with out understanding the structure and contradiction of inner life with all its instability, we can not live in society – we will be labelled as ‘mad’ by the society.
When we are unable to recognise our inner life, our life is a very dull and insensitive life irrespective of the intensity of our outward activity. This dullness and insensitivity of our mind is the prime reason for all the ills of society. The problems like corruption, violence, killing in the society and every thing else are due to the abundance of such dull and insensitive minds in society. An active and sensitive mind can not contradict with the outward life. If it does, it is actually living in hell and not many can live such a life in hell. Only way to live in such hell is to make our mind dull and insensitive so that the contradictions are no more recognised. Hence to have a healthy society, we the constituent of the society must have an active and sensitive mind. If we really want to contribute some thing for the society, we must be active and sensitive which is capable of recognising inner life. This active and sensitive mind of ours will bring in prosperity for the society.
The inner life may become stable when the wandering of mind is limited or the depth of consciousness is increased. When this starts happening, possibly we start recognise our inner life. The recognition of inner life itself may change the way we live our outward life, provided we have sufficient freedom from bondages like fear, lack of security etc. Our life will be real hell, when we recognise our inner life, but we live a contradictory outward life due to any bondage. In the same way, our life must be a heaven when we live the same life within and out!
Friday, September 3, 2010
Searching Unknown
‘Searching of unknown’ is a basic instinct of human species. It may be an instinct unique to the human species. This searching is due to the ‘I’ consciousness of human being. Other animals may not be having this ‘I’ consciousness and hence ‘searching of unknown’ is not needed or supported for them. What the animals care about is their basic survival instincts which are built into their brain. They have the survival instincts. We, human being have the ego built into our brain in addition to the survival instincts when we born. Hence, we have the instinct of ‘Searching of unknown’ with in our brain. Every one of us has this instinct. The only difference between each one of us is that the ‘unknown’ varies from person to person and it may be varying from moment to moment for each one of us.
This instinct must be the reason for all the developments in our societies; positive as well as negative developments – be it development in technological field or medical field or philosophical field or religious field or crime or destruction of cultures ………. For each of these developments – positive or negative, there must be a mind or a group of minds with common ‘unknown’.
At lowest level, gossiping is one of the outcomes of ‘Searching of unknown’, almost every one of us are indulged into it. Basically gossiping is not our nature, but ‘Searching of unknown’ is our nature. For this we declare the activities of another person as ‘unknown’ and gossiping is the result of this search. The gossip is always the images in the mind of those involved in this activity about the subject of gossip.
At material level, the ‘searching of unknown’ results in technological development. Here also the technological development is based on the images in the mind of those involved in this activity about the subject. Unlike the psychological and philosophical ‘unknown’, here we have definite measurement techniques and hence results in to a product for which the usefulness can be measured, and hence pursue or discard that ‘unknown’.
For some body, the unknown may be ‘God’. For their search on ‘Unknown’, if they are serious definitely they will find the ‘God’ – the ‘God’ they find is also based on the images they have about ‘God’ within their mind (it is not the real God!!??). Unfortunately many of us are unable to focus our searching of unknown towards such abstract ‘unknowns’ and keep our ‘unknown’ as very simple so that we spent all our life in gossiping and similar activities. Whenever our instinct set our ‘Unknown’ towards more abstract things like ‘God’, we enter into some belief systems and declare the ‘unknown’ at abstract level is known or understood, and revert back to our simple and easy ‘unknowns’.
Every one of us is searching for the ‘unknown’ – only the ‘unknown’ is different for each one of us. If we go further, each and every one of our actions are towards this searching of ‘unknown’ or the basic reason behind all our activities are this searching of ‘unknown’. For every one of us, wealth is one ‘Unknown’, in the sense that we do not know how much wealth we need – mainly because we do not know where to use our wealth and hence always have a feeling of financial insecurity, irrespective of the amount of wealth we have. Status is another ‘unknown’ for us. We do not know, why do we need social status and why do we need to maintain our social status. The major part of our activities in life is towards earning wealth and status. When we understand and know the utility of wealth, probably we may stop our activities towards earning more wealth than its real requirement and may start living our life in its real sense. If we understand and know status is an imaginary attribute, which does not affect our life in any way by itself, we will never spend all our energy to earn and maintain status – instead we may spend all that energy towards living, in its real sense.
The searching of ‘unknown’ may go into abstract level when the depth of our consciousness increases. As long as our consciousness is thin, our ‘unknown’ is on the surface of our mind which is the likes of information about neighbours, celebrities, other persons, etc. As the depth of consciousness increases, the ‘unknown’ will become more abstract. If we happen to have such abstract ‘unknowns’ and not allowing our consciousness to expand, we may enter into belief systems or cults or followers of certain Guru and so on. Unfortunately many with little bit enhanced consciousness stops allowing their consciousness to expand due to many reasons. Psychological bondage must be the root of all such reasons, like bonded with knowledge and due to that bondage the consciousness stops from expanding. In such cases, even though the ‘unknown’ is an abstract one, it remains as unknown for ever or it is covered up by some belief.
What is the purpose of such expanded consciousness? This question is exactly same as asking what is the purpose of knowledge. The knowledge, in the sense we use the term generally, is required to understand outside world and hence adjust our life moving smooth outwardly. Even though our life is comfortable and expanding outwardly, we are suffering inwardly for simple matters to serious matters with out exception. The expanding consciousness free us from inner suffering and provide inner comfort for us, exactly the same way as the outwardly knowledge provide outwardly comfort in our life.
When will be the ending of “searching of Unknown”? Probably at the point where our consciousness integrates itself into the sub consciousness and unconsciousness OR when our ego is completely dissolved where “I” centeredness is no more, to declare the ‘unknown’ OR at the point where we are with ‘truth’ OR at the point where we are with ‘God’. May be all these statements represent the same!
This instinct must be the reason for all the developments in our societies; positive as well as negative developments – be it development in technological field or medical field or philosophical field or religious field or crime or destruction of cultures ………. For each of these developments – positive or negative, there must be a mind or a group of minds with common ‘unknown’.
At lowest level, gossiping is one of the outcomes of ‘Searching of unknown’, almost every one of us are indulged into it. Basically gossiping is not our nature, but ‘Searching of unknown’ is our nature. For this we declare the activities of another person as ‘unknown’ and gossiping is the result of this search. The gossip is always the images in the mind of those involved in this activity about the subject of gossip.
At material level, the ‘searching of unknown’ results in technological development. Here also the technological development is based on the images in the mind of those involved in this activity about the subject. Unlike the psychological and philosophical ‘unknown’, here we have definite measurement techniques and hence results in to a product for which the usefulness can be measured, and hence pursue or discard that ‘unknown’.
For some body, the unknown may be ‘God’. For their search on ‘Unknown’, if they are serious definitely they will find the ‘God’ – the ‘God’ they find is also based on the images they have about ‘God’ within their mind (it is not the real God!!??). Unfortunately many of us are unable to focus our searching of unknown towards such abstract ‘unknowns’ and keep our ‘unknown’ as very simple so that we spent all our life in gossiping and similar activities. Whenever our instinct set our ‘Unknown’ towards more abstract things like ‘God’, we enter into some belief systems and declare the ‘unknown’ at abstract level is known or understood, and revert back to our simple and easy ‘unknowns’.
Every one of us is searching for the ‘unknown’ – only the ‘unknown’ is different for each one of us. If we go further, each and every one of our actions are towards this searching of ‘unknown’ or the basic reason behind all our activities are this searching of ‘unknown’. For every one of us, wealth is one ‘Unknown’, in the sense that we do not know how much wealth we need – mainly because we do not know where to use our wealth and hence always have a feeling of financial insecurity, irrespective of the amount of wealth we have. Status is another ‘unknown’ for us. We do not know, why do we need social status and why do we need to maintain our social status. The major part of our activities in life is towards earning wealth and status. When we understand and know the utility of wealth, probably we may stop our activities towards earning more wealth than its real requirement and may start living our life in its real sense. If we understand and know status is an imaginary attribute, which does not affect our life in any way by itself, we will never spend all our energy to earn and maintain status – instead we may spend all that energy towards living, in its real sense.
The searching of ‘unknown’ may go into abstract level when the depth of our consciousness increases. As long as our consciousness is thin, our ‘unknown’ is on the surface of our mind which is the likes of information about neighbours, celebrities, other persons, etc. As the depth of consciousness increases, the ‘unknown’ will become more abstract. If we happen to have such abstract ‘unknowns’ and not allowing our consciousness to expand, we may enter into belief systems or cults or followers of certain Guru and so on. Unfortunately many with little bit enhanced consciousness stops allowing their consciousness to expand due to many reasons. Psychological bondage must be the root of all such reasons, like bonded with knowledge and due to that bondage the consciousness stops from expanding. In such cases, even though the ‘unknown’ is an abstract one, it remains as unknown for ever or it is covered up by some belief.
What is the purpose of such expanded consciousness? This question is exactly same as asking what is the purpose of knowledge. The knowledge, in the sense we use the term generally, is required to understand outside world and hence adjust our life moving smooth outwardly. Even though our life is comfortable and expanding outwardly, we are suffering inwardly for simple matters to serious matters with out exception. The expanding consciousness free us from inner suffering and provide inner comfort for us, exactly the same way as the outwardly knowledge provide outwardly comfort in our life.
When will be the ending of “searching of Unknown”? Probably at the point where our consciousness integrates itself into the sub consciousness and unconsciousness OR when our ego is completely dissolved where “I” centeredness is no more, to declare the ‘unknown’ OR at the point where we are with ‘truth’ OR at the point where we are with ‘God’. May be all these statements represent the same!
Saturday, July 24, 2010
(Self) Worship
Over a period of time, probably from the time when we (the human form) started thinking beyond the day-to-day survival, worship had important role in our life – if not outwardly worship, might be the worship deep within our mind and the deep feeling within us. Unfortunately, the worship started due to our (probably) inward movement completely taken a ‘U’ turn and now we started living a life with an illusion of using worship for the gain of our outward life. This ‘U’ turn might have happened at the time when the man worshiped for the first time – probably due to the miscommunication, due to the lack of understanding of followers of those days or due to millions of other reasons, which doesn’t matter for us now. But the concept of worship is spoiled over thousands of years of human life in this earth, by those who are not capable of understanding worship and still we are spoiling this term by taking it to another dimension of ‘Self worship’, may be this also might had been all along!
‘Worship’ is a beautiful term with respect to its original meaning, but very much spoiled one. When we understand, like a cell in our body which is an independent living being but collectively perform the function of our own life and similarly we are an independent entity in this earth but collectively make the life of earth possible and completely- with out exception, fall within the rules of earth for its life, we can do nothing but submitting our entire being to this ‘Maha Dharma’- in Buddhist terms or to the universal law governing the whole of existence – in rational terms or to the ‘God’ in innocent terms, is Worship. Without understanding, there cannot be any worship. And probably we need the understanding that we are not capable of understanding certain things at our current level of perception!
But, today we pretend that we understand every thing, create some concepts of our own so that our ego can sustain with the concept it created, and then perform our worship. It is not worship – It is self worship. Of course there are still many worshipers in real sense. In general, persons like us who are in the worldly life perform only ‘Self Worship’ – may it be on the name of God, or may it be on the name of creation or may it be on the name of some spiritual Guru or may it be on the name of Scriptures….
All the scriptures and Gurus tried to convey the worship or spirituality in its real sense as they experienced. But we are not the same as the Gurus or those who have written the Scriptures. Hence, it is not possible for us to experience the same as experienced by Gurus. Unless we approach the teachings of Gurus and scriptures with enough openness with in us, we translate those teachings of Gurus and scriptures according to our current experience, which is mere conceptualisation. These concepts are created by us for ourselves. On the other hand such concepts are nothing but our own mind or our own consciousness. This includes the concept of our “God’, our ‘religion’, our ‘philosophy’ and so on. In other words all such concepts are we ourselves – created by our own mind, out of its content, which is our ego and hence a completely illusionary entity.
Hence, worshiping any God, any Concept, any religion created by our own mind – may it be told by some Gurus, or may it be told by some scriptures, is nothing but worshiping ourselves – worshiping our own ego which is ‘Self Worship’. But the real meaning of ‘worship’ must be altogether different as explained above.
With this ‘self worship’ we cannot have devotion, because we are submitting ourselves to our own ego. The devotion we feel during the time our worship is towards our own ego, or an entity created by our ego. Almost every one is indulged by this ‘Self worship’. Are we achieving some thing with this ‘Self worship’? Surely, we must be achieving ‘something’ with it. Otherwise, every one cannot be indulged by it. But the worthiness of that ‘something’ may be questionable. It is certain that no body else will worship our ego other than ourselves. Even some perverted minds do that human worship or worshiping other person’s ego, it is obviously for personal outwardly gains and it is heartening to see that even more perverted minds are enjoying such human worships.
In general, our ego will not be worshiped by anybody else and hence the ego worships itself is to gain momentum for its own growth. Probably, this momentum is what our ego gets out of ‘self worship’ and this momentum may have enough worth for our ego. But, as long as the ego is there, suffering is inevitable and the momentum of ego is nothing but the momentum of our suffering.
Coming back to the surface of this problem, from the happening around us, self worship is now dominating every where. On one side people are creating abstract concepts and then worshiping those concepts – the concepts are either created by themselves or by others, and on the other side people are indulged in ‘plain vanilla’ type or simple worldly ‘self worship’ or ‘ego worship’. It may be the outcome of mere economic independence combined with lack of ‘real’ education. It is due to the lack of understanding of the relationships we have with others including the environment in which we live. When the need of physical survival is achieved, due to our inherent nature, due to the struggle the mankind had until few decades/centuries ago for survival, we are in constant search of activity. And due to our self enclosed psychological structure, probably we are unable to direct those activities towards other than ourselves. Hence, we start building comfort and luxury around us rather than directing our energy inwardly. Possibly the inward momentum might not have built into our structure. It is we ourselves to understand the worthiness/unworthiness of outward momentum and then decide to turn inward or not. If we happen to turn inwardly, the real life may be waiting for us there. If we decide not to turn, like the way we are living now- like the way our parents and grand parents lived, we may live for few more years/decades and then for sure die away, with out tasting the real life – may be a wasted opportunity
‘Worship’ is a beautiful term with respect to its original meaning, but very much spoiled one. When we understand, like a cell in our body which is an independent living being but collectively perform the function of our own life and similarly we are an independent entity in this earth but collectively make the life of earth possible and completely- with out exception, fall within the rules of earth for its life, we can do nothing but submitting our entire being to this ‘Maha Dharma’- in Buddhist terms or to the universal law governing the whole of existence – in rational terms or to the ‘God’ in innocent terms, is Worship. Without understanding, there cannot be any worship. And probably we need the understanding that we are not capable of understanding certain things at our current level of perception!
But, today we pretend that we understand every thing, create some concepts of our own so that our ego can sustain with the concept it created, and then perform our worship. It is not worship – It is self worship. Of course there are still many worshipers in real sense. In general, persons like us who are in the worldly life perform only ‘Self Worship’ – may it be on the name of God, or may it be on the name of creation or may it be on the name of some spiritual Guru or may it be on the name of Scriptures….
All the scriptures and Gurus tried to convey the worship or spirituality in its real sense as they experienced. But we are not the same as the Gurus or those who have written the Scriptures. Hence, it is not possible for us to experience the same as experienced by Gurus. Unless we approach the teachings of Gurus and scriptures with enough openness with in us, we translate those teachings of Gurus and scriptures according to our current experience, which is mere conceptualisation. These concepts are created by us for ourselves. On the other hand such concepts are nothing but our own mind or our own consciousness. This includes the concept of our “God’, our ‘religion’, our ‘philosophy’ and so on. In other words all such concepts are we ourselves – created by our own mind, out of its content, which is our ego and hence a completely illusionary entity.
Hence, worshiping any God, any Concept, any religion created by our own mind – may it be told by some Gurus, or may it be told by some scriptures, is nothing but worshiping ourselves – worshiping our own ego which is ‘Self Worship’. But the real meaning of ‘worship’ must be altogether different as explained above.
With this ‘self worship’ we cannot have devotion, because we are submitting ourselves to our own ego. The devotion we feel during the time our worship is towards our own ego, or an entity created by our ego. Almost every one is indulged by this ‘Self worship’. Are we achieving some thing with this ‘Self worship’? Surely, we must be achieving ‘something’ with it. Otherwise, every one cannot be indulged by it. But the worthiness of that ‘something’ may be questionable. It is certain that no body else will worship our ego other than ourselves. Even some perverted minds do that human worship or worshiping other person’s ego, it is obviously for personal outwardly gains and it is heartening to see that even more perverted minds are enjoying such human worships.
In general, our ego will not be worshiped by anybody else and hence the ego worships itself is to gain momentum for its own growth. Probably, this momentum is what our ego gets out of ‘self worship’ and this momentum may have enough worth for our ego. But, as long as the ego is there, suffering is inevitable and the momentum of ego is nothing but the momentum of our suffering.
Coming back to the surface of this problem, from the happening around us, self worship is now dominating every where. On one side people are creating abstract concepts and then worshiping those concepts – the concepts are either created by themselves or by others, and on the other side people are indulged in ‘plain vanilla’ type or simple worldly ‘self worship’ or ‘ego worship’. It may be the outcome of mere economic independence combined with lack of ‘real’ education. It is due to the lack of understanding of the relationships we have with others including the environment in which we live. When the need of physical survival is achieved, due to our inherent nature, due to the struggle the mankind had until few decades/centuries ago for survival, we are in constant search of activity. And due to our self enclosed psychological structure, probably we are unable to direct those activities towards other than ourselves. Hence, we start building comfort and luxury around us rather than directing our energy inwardly. Possibly the inward momentum might not have built into our structure. It is we ourselves to understand the worthiness/unworthiness of outward momentum and then decide to turn inward or not. If we happen to turn inwardly, the real life may be waiting for us there. If we decide not to turn, like the way we are living now- like the way our parents and grand parents lived, we may live for few more years/decades and then for sure die away, with out tasting the real life – may be a wasted opportunity
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Greed
We all, with out exception, are greedy. It is the way we are created. It does not mean we have to live with greed. We can leave behind the greed and carry forward our life. But it may not be easy to do so. At least, we can try to understand that we are greedy and accept this fact. Possibly, this acceptance may change the way we are living, even if it is not eliminating the greed within us.
In reality none of us, may be with very few exceptions, never accept that we are greedy, but can easily point out that others are greedy. This lack of acceptance of our quality of greed may be the cause of many problems we face on daily basis. The realisation that we are greedy may be helpful to nullify at least few of our problems.
We do not like to label ourselves as greedy. Because, greed is a socially negative attribute. Hence instead of getting ride of greed from us, which is almost an impossible task, we create justifications for our greed. With this justification, what we have is not greed according to us, it is just the way of life and finally we are totally insensitive to greed itself. Now the realisation that ‘we are greedy’ itself is an enormous task, let alone the task of eliminating greed from us.
It is very important to have the knowledge of ‘what we are’, before understanding our own greediness. In other words, self knowledge is the key to understand our attribute of greediness, like understanding any other attribute. With out knowing our structure, it can not be possible to find certain aspiration of ours is greedy or not. For example, a person who is having in-built capability to understand finance can get into stock market and earn that person’s living, and more. For that person, being (playing) in stock market is not a result of greed, because there is where that person’s basic capability is present. But for a person, who is not capable of managing even the basic finances cannot have the capability for being in stock market. If such a person, enter into stock market with an idea of earning more money is clear indication of greed. It does not mean the second person is incapable. That person must be capable of some thing else. That person has to put all the effort in the field which he/she is capable by nature. Here is the importance of self knowledge, to understand our basic nature, our capability and incapability, with out any feeling of inferiority or superiority.
The prevailing education systems are not providing any education with respect to self knowledge. Usually, neither we are also concerned with self knowledge. If and only if we are bored with all the entertainments and amusements, we may start questioning our life. Even in such cases, the possibilities are that we may find another amusement with God, religion, rituals etc. Hence the possibility of we going into the realm of self knowledge is very, very remote.
Again back to greed, are we really in a profession in which we are really so involved due to our own nature? According to me, in most of the cases, the answer may be a big NO – as usual with few exceptions! Most of us may be here, where we are now, due to the opportunities available, various forces acting upon us from all our close relations, and then our own violent forcing towards the field in which we are now. Very few of us might have reached this stage where we are now, due to natural inclination. But every one has to survive economically also and hence we need to have some profession and the one in which we are right now is fine with respect to that economical sense. But, it becomes greedy and violent, when we do not understand this fact with respect to our natural tendency towards our profession and we strive to outperform/outsmart all our peers. This is the starting point of greed, which in turn induce violence in profession, and all other related problems and hence sufferings. Same is the case for almost all activities in our life.
Self knowledge is the only key which can make us to understand greed within us and hence free us from all sufferings originating from greed. We may submit the problems and sufferings to God and forget them for some time. But without self knowledge, the problems and suffering are still there and hence they will come to the surface again. By considering our nature, quest to have self knowledge may itself be greedy. But by understanding this particular greed, put forward some effort on gaining self knowledge may be worthy, if we can do that without any additional suffering! – The understanding is to avoid suffering in search of self knowledge.
In reality none of us, may be with very few exceptions, never accept that we are greedy, but can easily point out that others are greedy. This lack of acceptance of our quality of greed may be the cause of many problems we face on daily basis. The realisation that we are greedy may be helpful to nullify at least few of our problems.
We do not like to label ourselves as greedy. Because, greed is a socially negative attribute. Hence instead of getting ride of greed from us, which is almost an impossible task, we create justifications for our greed. With this justification, what we have is not greed according to us, it is just the way of life and finally we are totally insensitive to greed itself. Now the realisation that ‘we are greedy’ itself is an enormous task, let alone the task of eliminating greed from us.
It is very important to have the knowledge of ‘what we are’, before understanding our own greediness. In other words, self knowledge is the key to understand our attribute of greediness, like understanding any other attribute. With out knowing our structure, it can not be possible to find certain aspiration of ours is greedy or not. For example, a person who is having in-built capability to understand finance can get into stock market and earn that person’s living, and more. For that person, being (playing) in stock market is not a result of greed, because there is where that person’s basic capability is present. But for a person, who is not capable of managing even the basic finances cannot have the capability for being in stock market. If such a person, enter into stock market with an idea of earning more money is clear indication of greed. It does not mean the second person is incapable. That person must be capable of some thing else. That person has to put all the effort in the field which he/she is capable by nature. Here is the importance of self knowledge, to understand our basic nature, our capability and incapability, with out any feeling of inferiority or superiority.
The prevailing education systems are not providing any education with respect to self knowledge. Usually, neither we are also concerned with self knowledge. If and only if we are bored with all the entertainments and amusements, we may start questioning our life. Even in such cases, the possibilities are that we may find another amusement with God, religion, rituals etc. Hence the possibility of we going into the realm of self knowledge is very, very remote.
Again back to greed, are we really in a profession in which we are really so involved due to our own nature? According to me, in most of the cases, the answer may be a big NO – as usual with few exceptions! Most of us may be here, where we are now, due to the opportunities available, various forces acting upon us from all our close relations, and then our own violent forcing towards the field in which we are now. Very few of us might have reached this stage where we are now, due to natural inclination. But every one has to survive economically also and hence we need to have some profession and the one in which we are right now is fine with respect to that economical sense. But, it becomes greedy and violent, when we do not understand this fact with respect to our natural tendency towards our profession and we strive to outperform/outsmart all our peers. This is the starting point of greed, which in turn induce violence in profession, and all other related problems and hence sufferings. Same is the case for almost all activities in our life.
Self knowledge is the only key which can make us to understand greed within us and hence free us from all sufferings originating from greed. We may submit the problems and sufferings to God and forget them for some time. But without self knowledge, the problems and suffering are still there and hence they will come to the surface again. By considering our nature, quest to have self knowledge may itself be greedy. But by understanding this particular greed, put forward some effort on gaining self knowledge may be worthy, if we can do that without any additional suffering! – The understanding is to avoid suffering in search of self knowledge.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Self Esteem
An attribute, probably most talked about by self-help gurus and psychologists in the profession of counselling. Self esteem may be required for certain persons at certain mind set. It can be used as an antidote for self induced suffering. But, it may be a problem when we always live with the antidote. In such case, we may have to identify the cause of requirement for antidote and hence eliminate the cause itself for a reasonable life.
When we live with self esteem, it completely takes away the quality of humbleness. Humbleness is not the feeling of low. On the other hand, it is the attribute which makes us learners. Humbleness is one of the basic attributes require for us to experience the life. Without humbleness, we can not be active ‘listeners’ – listeners in the real sense.
As the name suggest, Self Esteem support the growth of ‘self’ or ‘ego’ or ‘I-centeredness’. The growth of ego is nothing but identifying or attaching ourselves with more qualities. More qualities, means we have more relationships. We are already having a complex web of relationships within us and this is the addition to that web of relationship. When we have more relationships, we have more to manage for our day-to-day life. Already we are deep in our relations – due to our insensitivity we are unaware of most of the things we are related with, these additional relations are new burden for us and with in no time we will be insensitive to these new relations also. For sure, we are adding to our problems and hence suffering.
Self Esteem may be advocated for suppressing the feeling of lowness. If we like not to enter into the trap of self esteem, we need to understand why we are entering into the feeling of lowness. And if we never feel low within ourselves, there is no question of self esteem.
Feeling low is the result of comparison of ‘what we are’ with ‘what we should be’. What ‘we should be’ may be a concept of ideal or a particular attribute of another person. Obviously, if one is making such comparison there can not be any other alternative other than feeling low. An ideal is always ideal, even though the ideal is another living person. One can never reach an ideal. It does not mean one should never look beyond the present state of oneself. The life itself is looking beyond what we are today. If we end our experiencing with what we are today, there will be no more life. At this stage we are dead. But this looking beyond is very much different from looking for an ideal and the desire to become that ideal. If we are sensitive enough to ourselves, we have sufficient intelligence to look beyond! – No ideal required.
The bitter reality is that no one out there to educate us on these aspects. If we want to live the life to the fullest of possibilities, we should start studying our own life and understand our own life. On this regard, we are alone in this world; for each one of us is unique creation. No body else can help us in this regard as the reality for them may be entirely different from that of each one of us.
As much as we pursue self esteem, so much the feeling of lowness gain ground deep with in us. In other words, at conscious level we feel great with our own effort, but at deeper level, we may be sinking with out any effort. The antidote may be eating away our life itself – the precious, short life! Understanding must be the only way out! What to understand? None other than ourselves - The qualities that keeps us alive, the influences of external world on ourselves, the influence of our relationships over us, The influence of our own evolution over us that is not even under our control, the beliefs and concepts we ourselves created to support the existence our ego, and so on. Such an understanding can only make us to see ‘what is’ rather than striving for ‘what should be’. Such an understanding is the seeing of truth or reality.
This understanding is the only possibility to remove the cause of ‘feeling lowness’ so that we can be free from the antidote of ‘Self Esteem’ and hence being with humbleness. Such humbleness makes as active learners – the learners of life from moment to moment.
When we live with self esteem, it completely takes away the quality of humbleness. Humbleness is not the feeling of low. On the other hand, it is the attribute which makes us learners. Humbleness is one of the basic attributes require for us to experience the life. Without humbleness, we can not be active ‘listeners’ – listeners in the real sense.
As the name suggest, Self Esteem support the growth of ‘self’ or ‘ego’ or ‘I-centeredness’. The growth of ego is nothing but identifying or attaching ourselves with more qualities. More qualities, means we have more relationships. We are already having a complex web of relationships within us and this is the addition to that web of relationship. When we have more relationships, we have more to manage for our day-to-day life. Already we are deep in our relations – due to our insensitivity we are unaware of most of the things we are related with, these additional relations are new burden for us and with in no time we will be insensitive to these new relations also. For sure, we are adding to our problems and hence suffering.
Self Esteem may be advocated for suppressing the feeling of lowness. If we like not to enter into the trap of self esteem, we need to understand why we are entering into the feeling of lowness. And if we never feel low within ourselves, there is no question of self esteem.
Feeling low is the result of comparison of ‘what we are’ with ‘what we should be’. What ‘we should be’ may be a concept of ideal or a particular attribute of another person. Obviously, if one is making such comparison there can not be any other alternative other than feeling low. An ideal is always ideal, even though the ideal is another living person. One can never reach an ideal. It does not mean one should never look beyond the present state of oneself. The life itself is looking beyond what we are today. If we end our experiencing with what we are today, there will be no more life. At this stage we are dead. But this looking beyond is very much different from looking for an ideal and the desire to become that ideal. If we are sensitive enough to ourselves, we have sufficient intelligence to look beyond! – No ideal required.
The bitter reality is that no one out there to educate us on these aspects. If we want to live the life to the fullest of possibilities, we should start studying our own life and understand our own life. On this regard, we are alone in this world; for each one of us is unique creation. No body else can help us in this regard as the reality for them may be entirely different from that of each one of us.
As much as we pursue self esteem, so much the feeling of lowness gain ground deep with in us. In other words, at conscious level we feel great with our own effort, but at deeper level, we may be sinking with out any effort. The antidote may be eating away our life itself – the precious, short life! Understanding must be the only way out! What to understand? None other than ourselves - The qualities that keeps us alive, the influences of external world on ourselves, the influence of our relationships over us, The influence of our own evolution over us that is not even under our control, the beliefs and concepts we ourselves created to support the existence our ego, and so on. Such an understanding can only make us to see ‘what is’ rather than striving for ‘what should be’. Such an understanding is the seeing of truth or reality.
This understanding is the only possibility to remove the cause of ‘feeling lowness’ so that we can be free from the antidote of ‘Self Esteem’ and hence being with humbleness. Such humbleness makes as active learners – the learners of life from moment to moment.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Peace
Terror and Violence are so common now days and we talk about peace on next few days, whenever such violence strikes any part of world and it may be few more days, depend on the number of dead innocent people. We can not stop such violent activities until the time more of the common population have peace with in them. The term ‘more of the common population’ indicates here as a minimum number of people in a society, if all of them initiate certain change with in themselves as individuals so that the effect can be perceived on the society. In other words, it is minimum number of individual minds required to adapt a change so that the ripple effect can be perceived on the ‘Social Mind’
In my opinion we, almost every one of us, cannot say we are living peacefully – may be with very, very few exceptions. When we ourselves, the constituent of our own society, are not peaceful, can we except the society to be peaceful? If we do except, it is a clear indication of some thing seriously wrong with us.
If such question arises we may go into a defensive mode and define yardstick for measuring peace and violence. May be, the outcome shall be that if it is physical damage or loss of life, it is violence or terror activity, if not it is peace. If we happen to have such yardstick, we are just fooling ourselves. Whatever we talk about peace in society or peace in country are just for our time pass or just to prove our intellect.
For any person involving in any terror activities- not the one involving in such activities for money or similar personal gain, is doing such activity with the belief that it is the noblest activity of his life. The key point is the “belief”. The belief drives such persons into to mad state of mind. It is the strong ‘belief’ which is the reason for all violence and terror in societies. It is certain that we are all also strong believers of certain beliefs. The only difference is that the belief of them (so called terrorist) is directed to certain direction and that of us are directed to some other direction. But essentially both are same – both are source of violence. In fact, the violence with in us, the common people, is the reason for the change in direction of violence with in so called terrorists. This is not to justify the activities of terrorists or against the punishment awarded by law of court to such terrorists. Such law is indisputably required to maintain certain order of society.
But every one of us is responsible for such terror activities. We are full of violence with in us – probably unable to perceive by us due to the fact that it has become our way of life. We are nurturing such violence and terror within our children – do any thing to score in the academics, like killing their simple joy on playing, killing the evolution of their mind, killing their passions on certain field and so on. Every one of us is doing this with out exception - in most cases unknowingly and in some of the cases by imposing our own desire over the children.
How to change the violence and terror in society? As indicated earlier certain part of the society has to become violence free with in them as individuals and that will have ripple effect on the ‘social mind’ so that the violence within the society slowly disappears – probably over a period of many, many generations.
The hard fact is that we are not willing to make such changes within us. Or we are unable to recognise the field of violence within us, to initiate such change. Certainly it needs some effort from us. We need to look into our beliefs – any thing we are taking as granted with out even understanding it as our belief. The term ‘understanding’ does not mean a conceptual understanding - it means the strong perception within us with out any need to have some concepts or assumptions to prove it. Again it is not a belief that we think as we perceive! It is our being. For sure, one needs to observe oneself extensively. And understanding this is slightly complex due to the way our mind act.
Only by observing our mind by our own mind, a revelation of the content of our mind may be possible. That is the only possibility available to study or analysis ourselves. In other words the mind as observer, observe the same mind as observed. In other words, the observer and observed are same. When the observer and observed are the same, the observer needs a great deal of honesty to observe him/herself. The observer should have enough openness to see the fact when it observes itself. When such openness is not there, for sure, the observer sees only a biased opinion about the observer – the observed. This is the reason that we are fare away from truth.
For perceiving the violence within us, we need to be aware of the fact that the observer and observed are same and the problems associated with such observation. When we are observing somebody else, we can clearly indicate the problem. That is the reason we are able to identify violence with the so called terrorists. But when we are observing ourselves, being the observer and observed are same, not able to cognize the truth. The very understanding that self observation is the observation of our mind about its own existence, the mind may throw out some of the yardsticks created by it and start observing itself. Such observation may start revealing truth. As the yardstick is created by our own mind, is based on its own functioning, any amount of measurement with that yardstick can not revel any mistake in the measurement. This is because the yardsticks are created by our own mind with its content as reference.
Such an observation without any yardstick can possibly make us to understand that we are also violent in our effort to earn wealth, status, position, security of ego and such numerous factors. When we are violently suppressing our peers on our quest to earn a position in the organisation we are working, we call it normal. When somebody else violently performing some action to uphold their belief or fight back against the suppression, we call it terrorism. Is it not double standard? This is not to support the action of terrorism, but to identify that the root of terrorism is also with in each one of us.
We just want the so called terrorists to change, being ourselves as well terrorists – in the sense of violence within us. It is nothing but violence towards others (or towards so called terrorists) by us. We just want to talk about violence, terrorism, etc. We really do not want to eliminate terrorism. It is the real fact! For understanding this fact, we need to really look into ourselves – our own ego!
And one word of caution! Understanding all our problems with in as does not mean losing of our ‘self esteem’. In fact ‘self esteem’ it self is an escape from ‘what we are’, and possibly in some cases indulges violence.
In my opinion we, almost every one of us, cannot say we are living peacefully – may be with very, very few exceptions. When we ourselves, the constituent of our own society, are not peaceful, can we except the society to be peaceful? If we do except, it is a clear indication of some thing seriously wrong with us.
If such question arises we may go into a defensive mode and define yardstick for measuring peace and violence. May be, the outcome shall be that if it is physical damage or loss of life, it is violence or terror activity, if not it is peace. If we happen to have such yardstick, we are just fooling ourselves. Whatever we talk about peace in society or peace in country are just for our time pass or just to prove our intellect.
For any person involving in any terror activities- not the one involving in such activities for money or similar personal gain, is doing such activity with the belief that it is the noblest activity of his life. The key point is the “belief”. The belief drives such persons into to mad state of mind. It is the strong ‘belief’ which is the reason for all violence and terror in societies. It is certain that we are all also strong believers of certain beliefs. The only difference is that the belief of them (so called terrorist) is directed to certain direction and that of us are directed to some other direction. But essentially both are same – both are source of violence. In fact, the violence with in us, the common people, is the reason for the change in direction of violence with in so called terrorists. This is not to justify the activities of terrorists or against the punishment awarded by law of court to such terrorists. Such law is indisputably required to maintain certain order of society.
But every one of us is responsible for such terror activities. We are full of violence with in us – probably unable to perceive by us due to the fact that it has become our way of life. We are nurturing such violence and terror within our children – do any thing to score in the academics, like killing their simple joy on playing, killing the evolution of their mind, killing their passions on certain field and so on. Every one of us is doing this with out exception - in most cases unknowingly and in some of the cases by imposing our own desire over the children.
How to change the violence and terror in society? As indicated earlier certain part of the society has to become violence free with in them as individuals and that will have ripple effect on the ‘social mind’ so that the violence within the society slowly disappears – probably over a period of many, many generations.
The hard fact is that we are not willing to make such changes within us. Or we are unable to recognise the field of violence within us, to initiate such change. Certainly it needs some effort from us. We need to look into our beliefs – any thing we are taking as granted with out even understanding it as our belief. The term ‘understanding’ does not mean a conceptual understanding - it means the strong perception within us with out any need to have some concepts or assumptions to prove it. Again it is not a belief that we think as we perceive! It is our being. For sure, one needs to observe oneself extensively. And understanding this is slightly complex due to the way our mind act.
Only by observing our mind by our own mind, a revelation of the content of our mind may be possible. That is the only possibility available to study or analysis ourselves. In other words the mind as observer, observe the same mind as observed. In other words, the observer and observed are same. When the observer and observed are the same, the observer needs a great deal of honesty to observe him/herself. The observer should have enough openness to see the fact when it observes itself. When such openness is not there, for sure, the observer sees only a biased opinion about the observer – the observed. This is the reason that we are fare away from truth.
For perceiving the violence within us, we need to be aware of the fact that the observer and observed are same and the problems associated with such observation. When we are observing somebody else, we can clearly indicate the problem. That is the reason we are able to identify violence with the so called terrorists. But when we are observing ourselves, being the observer and observed are same, not able to cognize the truth. The very understanding that self observation is the observation of our mind about its own existence, the mind may throw out some of the yardsticks created by it and start observing itself. Such observation may start revealing truth. As the yardstick is created by our own mind, is based on its own functioning, any amount of measurement with that yardstick can not revel any mistake in the measurement. This is because the yardsticks are created by our own mind with its content as reference.
Such an observation without any yardstick can possibly make us to understand that we are also violent in our effort to earn wealth, status, position, security of ego and such numerous factors. When we are violently suppressing our peers on our quest to earn a position in the organisation we are working, we call it normal. When somebody else violently performing some action to uphold their belief or fight back against the suppression, we call it terrorism. Is it not double standard? This is not to support the action of terrorism, but to identify that the root of terrorism is also with in each one of us.
We just want the so called terrorists to change, being ourselves as well terrorists – in the sense of violence within us. It is nothing but violence towards others (or towards so called terrorists) by us. We just want to talk about violence, terrorism, etc. We really do not want to eliminate terrorism. It is the real fact! For understanding this fact, we need to really look into ourselves – our own ego!
And one word of caution! Understanding all our problems with in as does not mean losing of our ‘self esteem’. In fact ‘self esteem’ it self is an escape from ‘what we are’, and possibly in some cases indulges violence.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Relationship
We are made up of relationship. With out relation, we are not. Our entire mind must be of a web of complex relationships – relationship with our parents, spouse, children, friends, society, culture, other living things, earth, sky and every thing else in the creation which we are capable of perceiving. This relationship and reaction of relationships constitute all the layers of our mind. If the relationships do not exist, the mind is not and hence we are not; for that the psychological ‘we’ are just our mind.
In our very close human relationships, in general, we understand the relationships very well and if we really have proper understanding of that relationship, there is no problem in our life with respect to that relation ship. If we analyse our problems, it is certain that the problems are due to misunderstanding of certain relationship in our life. Does it translate to that if we understand all our relationships which make our existence, there will be no more problems in our life?
Will it be possible? – Possible to understand all our relation ships? It must be possible! But for that we need to recognise this fact that we are made up of relationship. This recognition may be possible if we can observe the content of us – the content of our mind to the extent possible for us. Once we start observing our mind, the relationships which we are made of may start revealing itself.
We are always aware about very obvious relationships which we are psychologically dependent – like parents, spouse, children, brother, sister, and friends and so on. We may recognise the relationships with street vendors, shop keeper, government employees, etc when we need their services. We recognise our relation with society and culture when some body provoke with respect to these aspects. More than that, in general, very rarely we perceive any relationships with any thing else in this world – except probably our relationship with God, with out even understanding what is God!
Do we really understand the nature of these relationships? If we do, our life must be altogether a different one, for sure! It may not be possible for anyone else to make us understand our relationships. Even though the relationships are common, the way we have our relationships are unique. No body else can understand our relationships and correct us. Hence it is we to understand our own relationships with every body and every thing.
When we understand the relationship very well, naturally we will deeply respect that relationship – the relation with whatever it may be. Unless we understand our relationship with our parent or children, we cannot respect that relationship. Unless we respect that relationship, we cannot respect them as individuals. When we are not respecting them, our action towards them will naturally be violent. When we are violent towards others, the remainder is just problems – problems in our own life!
If we go a little bit more, we are related with this cosmos and this earth. Unless we understand this relationship, we cannot understand how this earth is supporting our own life and our significance on the earth. If we happen to establish that understanding, we will be altogether a different person. We start deeply respecting the relationship between us and the earth. The relationship brings in deep gratitude towards the earth. This gratitude and showing off the gratitude will no more a formality or rituals. It will be becoming the core of our being, due to the very understanding of our relationships. Unfortunately we are going in the reverse direction and due to lack of understanding we are locked at the beginning itself. It is about the rituals we perform regularly. The rituals are to understand our life and living in its real sense. Unfortunately we stop at performing the rituals. The rituals are meaningless, if it is not taking us to the understanding it is intended for. Once we have that understanding rituals are no more necessary.
When we understand our relationship with our food, the limitless destruction of possibilities of life in each and every seed we consume for our food on daily basis, we can not but respect our relationship with our food and more importantly we cannot over consume or waste any food and with this many of our problems might have already solved. When we have such deep understanding and respect to this relation can we do any harm to anybody or any thing? – including our own earth. If we are not harming anybody or anything, there will be no conflicts with anybody and anything. When this happens, the life we live will be a heaven!
In our very close human relationships, in general, we understand the relationships very well and if we really have proper understanding of that relationship, there is no problem in our life with respect to that relation ship. If we analyse our problems, it is certain that the problems are due to misunderstanding of certain relationship in our life. Does it translate to that if we understand all our relationships which make our existence, there will be no more problems in our life?
Will it be possible? – Possible to understand all our relation ships? It must be possible! But for that we need to recognise this fact that we are made up of relationship. This recognition may be possible if we can observe the content of us – the content of our mind to the extent possible for us. Once we start observing our mind, the relationships which we are made of may start revealing itself.
We are always aware about very obvious relationships which we are psychologically dependent – like parents, spouse, children, brother, sister, and friends and so on. We may recognise the relationships with street vendors, shop keeper, government employees, etc when we need their services. We recognise our relation with society and culture when some body provoke with respect to these aspects. More than that, in general, very rarely we perceive any relationships with any thing else in this world – except probably our relationship with God, with out even understanding what is God!
Do we really understand the nature of these relationships? If we do, our life must be altogether a different one, for sure! It may not be possible for anyone else to make us understand our relationships. Even though the relationships are common, the way we have our relationships are unique. No body else can understand our relationships and correct us. Hence it is we to understand our own relationships with every body and every thing.
When we understand the relationship very well, naturally we will deeply respect that relationship – the relation with whatever it may be. Unless we understand our relationship with our parent or children, we cannot respect that relationship. Unless we respect that relationship, we cannot respect them as individuals. When we are not respecting them, our action towards them will naturally be violent. When we are violent towards others, the remainder is just problems – problems in our own life!
If we go a little bit more, we are related with this cosmos and this earth. Unless we understand this relationship, we cannot understand how this earth is supporting our own life and our significance on the earth. If we happen to establish that understanding, we will be altogether a different person. We start deeply respecting the relationship between us and the earth. The relationship brings in deep gratitude towards the earth. This gratitude and showing off the gratitude will no more a formality or rituals. It will be becoming the core of our being, due to the very understanding of our relationships. Unfortunately we are going in the reverse direction and due to lack of understanding we are locked at the beginning itself. It is about the rituals we perform regularly. The rituals are to understand our life and living in its real sense. Unfortunately we stop at performing the rituals. The rituals are meaningless, if it is not taking us to the understanding it is intended for. Once we have that understanding rituals are no more necessary.
When we understand our relationship with our food, the limitless destruction of possibilities of life in each and every seed we consume for our food on daily basis, we can not but respect our relationship with our food and more importantly we cannot over consume or waste any food and with this many of our problems might have already solved. When we have such deep understanding and respect to this relation can we do any harm to anybody or any thing? – including our own earth. If we are not harming anybody or anything, there will be no conflicts with anybody and anything. When this happens, the life we live will be a heaven!
Friday, June 25, 2010
Health
All along, the discussion in this blog is mainly with respect to psychological health. May be it is time to have a look on our physical health also. It may be very important to have physical health, if we wish to have psychological health.
The life expectancy of human population increased considerably compared to that of few decades ago thanks to the availability and accessibility of medicines and medical systems. Does it translate to more healthier human population? According to my perception it is not. Of course, the better affordability and availability of nutritious food to economically weaker section of population has increased their health considerably and reduced the child death rate enormously – still this section have to do physical activity. For the economically privileged section of population, it may be the opposite due to many factors. In spite of this deteriorating health, the life expectancy has increased just because of the availability of medical systems.
Probably understanding the term ‘Natural Selection’ with respect to evolution may be helpful for this discussion. ‘Natural selection’ is a key term in the process of evolution of living beings in earth. It is the process by which certain heritable traits—those that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce —become more common in a population over successive generations. For more details on natural selection refer the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
Human beings are also susceptible to the process of natural selection. Just remember, this process of change happen over hundreds of generation. It can not happen with in few generations. From the time of evolution of human being until few decades ago, physical hardship is essential for survival of human being. Hence the natural selection has to favour for hard physical activities and it is the case. Our body is designed for performing hard physical activities, for our own survival. Now it is no more at least for a so called elite group. If the body designed for physical activity is not performing the function intended, due to the design, the body goes into havoc. But we are capable of holding it in to a survivable structure by means of medicines. If generations of this group do not perform hard physical activity and survive in this earth, the natural selection favour a design change – through gene modification slowly over hundreds of generations. But the chances are that such group may not exist for so long, due to the very nature of design of human body.
The Director’s report section of the annual report of one of the pharma company for the year 200-09 was stated as follows.
"............ ......... .Tighter controls on pricing envisioned in the new drug policy threaten to reduce margins and impact business. However, factors such as rising prevalence of lifestyle related diseases coupled with improving health awareness and purchasing power, will continue to drive growth in the pharmaceutical market...... ......... ......... ...."
Hence it is an established fact that lifestyle related health disorders are increasing steadily and it is going to be the main growth driver for Pharmaceutical companies in the future. On the other hand, by the name of lifestyle, we degrade our own body and earn profit out of it, by owning the shares of Pharmaceutical companies. What a contradiction in our basic way of living?
It is not that we are just degrading our own body due to our lifestyle, but are encouraging to degrade the body of our children also. It is the height of violence we are executing over the next and future generations. On the contrary we think imposing a little bit control over our children to channel their energy and focus to the possible right direction as violence over them.
Those are in the age group of thirty and above as on now, even though grown up in cities, might have had reasonable physical activities and opportunities to learn life independently during their growing up stage. The life of younger one seems to be real pity. The major part of such population in the middle class and above has absolutely no physical activities. Even if the elite class is having some physical activities, it is just couple of hours on weekly basis. The major part of their time is spent on academics even at the level of primary classes and whatever remaining time available is in front of visual media. The human body had undergone hundreds of thousands of years of ‘natural selection’ not for such a life style. Neither the body can be adjusted by itself for such a life style with in few generations. In such cases, the body can not sustain itself for the period intended for its survival – It has to be supported by medicines. If this is the case, is it not violence the lifestyle we are imposing over our children?
Another alarming fact is the way we are damaging our ears. The ear is designed to sense certain amount of longitudinal vibrations during the life span of body. But the way we are imposing violence on our ear drums by means of ear/head phone for each and every thing over considerable duration in any day, it is inevitable with in couple of decades to become the ear aids as common as eye glasses on today.
We are bombarding our body from every direction by the name of lifestyle. The more alarming fact is that we are encouraging the next generation to bombard their body from every direction on the name of same lifestyle. It is not that there are positive aspects of life style. For sure there are many, many positive aspects. But if we are not aware of these few negative aspects, especially the effect of lifestyle on our body and mind, all these positive aspects are nullified. If the body and mind are not in healthy condition to enjoy the lifestyle change, then what for these lifestyle changes?
The life expectancy of human population increased considerably compared to that of few decades ago thanks to the availability and accessibility of medicines and medical systems. Does it translate to more healthier human population? According to my perception it is not. Of course, the better affordability and availability of nutritious food to economically weaker section of population has increased their health considerably and reduced the child death rate enormously – still this section have to do physical activity. For the economically privileged section of population, it may be the opposite due to many factors. In spite of this deteriorating health, the life expectancy has increased just because of the availability of medical systems.
Probably understanding the term ‘Natural Selection’ with respect to evolution may be helpful for this discussion. ‘Natural selection’ is a key term in the process of evolution of living beings in earth. It is the process by which certain heritable traits—those that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce —become more common in a population over successive generations. For more details on natural selection refer the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
Human beings are also susceptible to the process of natural selection. Just remember, this process of change happen over hundreds of generation. It can not happen with in few generations. From the time of evolution of human being until few decades ago, physical hardship is essential for survival of human being. Hence the natural selection has to favour for hard physical activities and it is the case. Our body is designed for performing hard physical activities, for our own survival. Now it is no more at least for a so called elite group. If the body designed for physical activity is not performing the function intended, due to the design, the body goes into havoc. But we are capable of holding it in to a survivable structure by means of medicines. If generations of this group do not perform hard physical activity and survive in this earth, the natural selection favour a design change – through gene modification slowly over hundreds of generations. But the chances are that such group may not exist for so long, due to the very nature of design of human body.
The Director’s report section of the annual report of one of the pharma company for the year 200-09 was stated as follows.
"............ ......... .Tighter controls on pricing envisioned in the new drug policy threaten to reduce margins and impact business. However, factors such as rising prevalence of lifestyle related diseases coupled with improving health awareness and purchasing power, will continue to drive growth in the pharmaceutical market...... ......... ......... ...."
Hence it is an established fact that lifestyle related health disorders are increasing steadily and it is going to be the main growth driver for Pharmaceutical companies in the future. On the other hand, by the name of lifestyle, we degrade our own body and earn profit out of it, by owning the shares of Pharmaceutical companies. What a contradiction in our basic way of living?
It is not that we are just degrading our own body due to our lifestyle, but are encouraging to degrade the body of our children also. It is the height of violence we are executing over the next and future generations. On the contrary we think imposing a little bit control over our children to channel their energy and focus to the possible right direction as violence over them.
Those are in the age group of thirty and above as on now, even though grown up in cities, might have had reasonable physical activities and opportunities to learn life independently during their growing up stage. The life of younger one seems to be real pity. The major part of such population in the middle class and above has absolutely no physical activities. Even if the elite class is having some physical activities, it is just couple of hours on weekly basis. The major part of their time is spent on academics even at the level of primary classes and whatever remaining time available is in front of visual media. The human body had undergone hundreds of thousands of years of ‘natural selection’ not for such a life style. Neither the body can be adjusted by itself for such a life style with in few generations. In such cases, the body can not sustain itself for the period intended for its survival – It has to be supported by medicines. If this is the case, is it not violence the lifestyle we are imposing over our children?
Another alarming fact is the way we are damaging our ears. The ear is designed to sense certain amount of longitudinal vibrations during the life span of body. But the way we are imposing violence on our ear drums by means of ear/head phone for each and every thing over considerable duration in any day, it is inevitable with in couple of decades to become the ear aids as common as eye glasses on today.
We are bombarding our body from every direction by the name of lifestyle. The more alarming fact is that we are encouraging the next generation to bombard their body from every direction on the name of same lifestyle. It is not that there are positive aspects of life style. For sure there are many, many positive aspects. But if we are not aware of these few negative aspects, especially the effect of lifestyle on our body and mind, all these positive aspects are nullified. If the body and mind are not in healthy condition to enjoy the lifestyle change, then what for these lifestyle changes?
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Fulfilment
Fulfilment is a state of mind, which every one wishes to have. Now the question is how do we get into such a state of mind? For that, we need to understand what is fulfilment and why are we seeking it. The very understanding it self may change our thoughts on fulfilment or may cease such thoughts itself. If it happens, there will be no more seeking on fulfilment!
We seek fulfilment only when we are discontent with what we are. It is a state of mind where the discontent or the thought of discontent dominates. The feeling of discontentment is a psychological phenomenon which gets strengthened when we compare ourselves materialistically or qualitatively with others. It may be that we compare ‘what we are’ with ‘what we should be’. We get into the idea of ‘what should be’ by means of ideals we have. The comparison triggers our ego, either in the positive or in the negative direction with respect to the current state of ego. In other words, the discontentment is an activity of our ego.
The ego is the “I centeredness” or the qualities we attach ourselves to identify ourselves. When we start understanding our ego or the qualities we attach with ourselves, we start approaching the maturity level of accepting ‘what we are’ and live the life of our own – not to imitate or try to live the life of any body else and hence there is no struggle for reaching ‘what should be’.
The state of mind corresponds to fulfilment is momentary, but the struggle for that state of mind is too long and this struggle in turn deteriorate our mind further. In this cycle, the state of mind corresponding to the feeling of fulfilment may not be possible. When we are content with ourselves, there may not be any feeling of emptiness and hence no need arises for filling any emptiness. Hence there is no requirement arises for fulfilment. On the other hand, when we are content, there will not be any thoughts with in us which demands for fulfilment. In other words the mind is completely calm. This means, the brain has its energy to spend on useful action rather then spending on deteriorating thoughts.
The action induced by the quest for fulfilment or due to discontent is a trap. As noted above, discontentment is due to our urge to move from “what we are’ to ‘what we should be’. ‘What we are’ is the truth and ‘What we should be’ can never be the truth. When our action is towards ‘What should be’, it is towards an illusionary point. But the action towards this illusionary point also produces certain result, which we must accept any way – and in most cases we welcome those results. As the action is towards a point far away from ‘what we are’, the result will also be far away from ‘what we are’. Now we are entangled with this result, as we did our action for that result and keep moving away from ‘what we are’. Now this result demand for many more actions which will be much against the fact ‘what we are’ and there is no escape… we are in a trap! We may not realise this trap, but start suffering from the chain of actions/events due to this trap.
The process of conceptualisation may lead us to the conclusion that if we are content with ‘what we are’, we may not seek and hence our progress in any direction stops at the point where we are content. Being content with “what we are” is not a substitute for activeness. Living is being active. We can live content with ‘what we are’. In fact that is living! When we are living, we are active and hence there is no standstill in our progress in any direction and that progress will be in the right direction. If our action is induced by the discontentment it can never be the right action and hence it can induce only suffering – the progress we can see on such actions are jut virtual progress, induced by the feeling of discontentment.
We seek fulfilment only when we are discontent with what we are. It is a state of mind where the discontent or the thought of discontent dominates. The feeling of discontentment is a psychological phenomenon which gets strengthened when we compare ourselves materialistically or qualitatively with others. It may be that we compare ‘what we are’ with ‘what we should be’. We get into the idea of ‘what should be’ by means of ideals we have. The comparison triggers our ego, either in the positive or in the negative direction with respect to the current state of ego. In other words, the discontentment is an activity of our ego.
The ego is the “I centeredness” or the qualities we attach ourselves to identify ourselves. When we start understanding our ego or the qualities we attach with ourselves, we start approaching the maturity level of accepting ‘what we are’ and live the life of our own – not to imitate or try to live the life of any body else and hence there is no struggle for reaching ‘what should be’.
The state of mind corresponds to fulfilment is momentary, but the struggle for that state of mind is too long and this struggle in turn deteriorate our mind further. In this cycle, the state of mind corresponding to the feeling of fulfilment may not be possible. When we are content with ourselves, there may not be any feeling of emptiness and hence no need arises for filling any emptiness. Hence there is no requirement arises for fulfilment. On the other hand, when we are content, there will not be any thoughts with in us which demands for fulfilment. In other words the mind is completely calm. This means, the brain has its energy to spend on useful action rather then spending on deteriorating thoughts.
The action induced by the quest for fulfilment or due to discontent is a trap. As noted above, discontentment is due to our urge to move from “what we are’ to ‘what we should be’. ‘What we are’ is the truth and ‘What we should be’ can never be the truth. When our action is towards ‘What should be’, it is towards an illusionary point. But the action towards this illusionary point also produces certain result, which we must accept any way – and in most cases we welcome those results. As the action is towards a point far away from ‘what we are’, the result will also be far away from ‘what we are’. Now we are entangled with this result, as we did our action for that result and keep moving away from ‘what we are’. Now this result demand for many more actions which will be much against the fact ‘what we are’ and there is no escape… we are in a trap! We may not realise this trap, but start suffering from the chain of actions/events due to this trap.
The process of conceptualisation may lead us to the conclusion that if we are content with ‘what we are’, we may not seek and hence our progress in any direction stops at the point where we are content. Being content with “what we are” is not a substitute for activeness. Living is being active. We can live content with ‘what we are’. In fact that is living! When we are living, we are active and hence there is no standstill in our progress in any direction and that progress will be in the right direction. If our action is induced by the discontentment it can never be the right action and hence it can induce only suffering – the progress we can see on such actions are jut virtual progress, induced by the feeling of discontentment.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Conceptualization
In the technical world, conceptualization is a basic and fundamental process necessary for any technical development. Almost all our day-to-day activities lies on this technical world, which is basically required for our survival. In addition to survival, it forms the basis of our comforts and luxury we are enjoying and hence supporting the growth of our ego in leap and bounds. When it comes to our inner world, conceptualization is a process that destroys our journey towards truth – if at all have we ever started such a journey.
At this point, I would like to bring the words of sage Pathanjali and J.Krishnamurti (JK) on this subject of conceptualization into this discussion. It is to indicate that over a time span of about 2000 years, the purpose (of inner journey/study) remains the same.
Sage Pathanjali gave us the famous “Yoga Sutra”, which contain four sections with about fifty sutras in each section. In the first section called “Samadi Pada”, sage Pathanjali indicates the purpose of Yoga and in first few sutras indicates few of the hindrances for Yoga. The following are first few verses of Yoga Sutra
I.2. Yogesh citta-vrtti-nirodaha
-Yoga occurs when the mind field is liberated from patterned fluctuations/distortions
I.3. Tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam
-Then the seer abides in true form/nature
I.4 Vrtti-sarupyam itaratra
-At other times the mind fluctuates/distorts with the forms.
I.5 Vrttayah panchatayah klishtaklishtah.
-These mental fluctation/distoration can be placed within five categories which are afflictive or non-afflictive
I.6 Pramana-viparaya-vikalpa-nidra-smrtayah
-These five categories are adherence to fixed belief systems, faulty/confused assumptions, conceptual thought constructs, inattentiveness/mental dullness and past-nonintegrated memories.
According to sage Pathanjali, conceptualization (vikalpa) is one of the five hindrances for yoga to occur.
JK has spoken in length about concepts, conceiving concepts and their effects on our mind. The following is a small extract of JKs words about concepts.
JK: ……….. you are saying it is still a concept. Is it? When the house is burning, is it a concept? When you have pain, is that a concept? When you are faced with danger, is it a concept? Concept only comes when you avoid the fact of 'what is'. When you are confronted with 'what is', there is no concept. You act, or you run away from it. Concepts exist only when you cannot understand the fact, the 'what is' and try to translate that 'what is' according to your background of your conditioning.
In our current way of living, we conceptualize any thing and every thing. It may be about God, Life, Yoga and likes on one side of the spectrum of conceptualization and personnel behavior, materialistic requirement for living and likes on the other side of the same spectrum.
Why are we conceptualizing every thing? Can’t we live our life with out conceiving concepts? - We do not have the humbleness to say, “I don’t know”. Hence we have to know about any thing and every thing. In any conversation, we have unlimited urge to project that we are knowledgeable in the subject of conversation. The only possible way of knowing every thing in our current way of living is conceptualization. Once we have some concepts, we have the right arguments to justify our knowledge and hence the ego is satisfied. We can live without conceptualization when we are matured enough to have the humbleness so that saying “I don’t know” will no more hurt our ego.
We need to take the trouble of freeing ourselves from concepts, if we intend to live a complete life in its real sense. If our intention is just carry on our life – the way we are living now, may be with little more physical comfort and luxury, there is no need to take any trouble in freeing ourselves. In that case, why are we talking about God, religion, ancient wisdom, morality in public life, corruption and so on. We need to just carry on our life. God, religion etc. are not required for carry on our life. But we cling to God, religion, morality etc, yet we are not taking any initiative to approach truth. By way of conceptualization, we hide all our ignorance, inabilities and capabilities, and live within the shadow of concepts. What a conflict in our life at its basic level itself!
All sages from Pathanjali to JK, even before and after them, were exposed this problem. Yet we are unable to integrate their findings into our life. But we take a great pride on saying they are our ancestors and create one more shadow over the possibilities and hence safeguarding our ignorance. Until the time we bring in some awareness on what we are doing and thinking, we can’t escape from the ignorance, which wrapped our entire life. Are we really interested in an intelligence life?
If this problem is looked at from another angle, we need to get into concepts to understand any thing. Hence we cannot ignore conceptualization completely. But need to be free from those concepts. For example, when we are talking about creation, existence etc, getting into the concept of God is inevitable. But if we enclose ourselves within that concept, we cannot really understand the truth of creation and existence. Instead of that, if we are free from the concept of God itself, our knowledge about God itself may change. At the end what we call as God may be entirely different from the God of today. Yet it is a concept and have to be free from that concept also, if we intend to live our life.
And, if we do not have freedom from sage Pathanjali’s sutras or JKs concepts, we create another set of concepts and enclose ourselves with in those concepts. This is the case with followers of any spiritual system. The followers conceptualize the system they are following and alas, they are inside a trap – a trap, which they believe, will free them from all other traps. This is evident from the fact that in any spiritual system, only the master might be the realized one, seldom the followers reach the stage of realization. Only a handful of followers who are managed to free themselves from the concept of the system they are following itself reach the stage of realization.
At this point, I would like to bring the words of sage Pathanjali and J.Krishnamurti (JK) on this subject of conceptualization into this discussion. It is to indicate that over a time span of about 2000 years, the purpose (of inner journey/study) remains the same.
Sage Pathanjali gave us the famous “Yoga Sutra”, which contain four sections with about fifty sutras in each section. In the first section called “Samadi Pada”, sage Pathanjali indicates the purpose of Yoga and in first few sutras indicates few of the hindrances for Yoga. The following are first few verses of Yoga Sutra
I.2. Yogesh citta-vrtti-nirodaha
-Yoga occurs when the mind field is liberated from patterned fluctuations/distortions
I.3. Tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam
-Then the seer abides in true form/nature
I.4 Vrtti-sarupyam itaratra
-At other times the mind fluctuates/distorts with the forms.
I.5 Vrttayah panchatayah klishtaklishtah.
-These mental fluctation/distoration can be placed within five categories which are afflictive or non-afflictive
I.6 Pramana-viparaya-vikalpa-nidra-smrtayah
-These five categories are adherence to fixed belief systems, faulty/confused assumptions, conceptual thought constructs, inattentiveness/mental dullness and past-nonintegrated memories.
According to sage Pathanjali, conceptualization (vikalpa) is one of the five hindrances for yoga to occur.
JK has spoken in length about concepts, conceiving concepts and their effects on our mind. The following is a small extract of JKs words about concepts.
JK: ……….. you are saying it is still a concept. Is it? When the house is burning, is it a concept? When you have pain, is that a concept? When you are faced with danger, is it a concept? Concept only comes when you avoid the fact of 'what is'. When you are confronted with 'what is', there is no concept. You act, or you run away from it. Concepts exist only when you cannot understand the fact, the 'what is' and try to translate that 'what is' according to your background of your conditioning.
In our current way of living, we conceptualize any thing and every thing. It may be about God, Life, Yoga and likes on one side of the spectrum of conceptualization and personnel behavior, materialistic requirement for living and likes on the other side of the same spectrum.
Why are we conceptualizing every thing? Can’t we live our life with out conceiving concepts? - We do not have the humbleness to say, “I don’t know”. Hence we have to know about any thing and every thing. In any conversation, we have unlimited urge to project that we are knowledgeable in the subject of conversation. The only possible way of knowing every thing in our current way of living is conceptualization. Once we have some concepts, we have the right arguments to justify our knowledge and hence the ego is satisfied. We can live without conceptualization when we are matured enough to have the humbleness so that saying “I don’t know” will no more hurt our ego.
We need to take the trouble of freeing ourselves from concepts, if we intend to live a complete life in its real sense. If our intention is just carry on our life – the way we are living now, may be with little more physical comfort and luxury, there is no need to take any trouble in freeing ourselves. In that case, why are we talking about God, religion, ancient wisdom, morality in public life, corruption and so on. We need to just carry on our life. God, religion etc. are not required for carry on our life. But we cling to God, religion, morality etc, yet we are not taking any initiative to approach truth. By way of conceptualization, we hide all our ignorance, inabilities and capabilities, and live within the shadow of concepts. What a conflict in our life at its basic level itself!
All sages from Pathanjali to JK, even before and after them, were exposed this problem. Yet we are unable to integrate their findings into our life. But we take a great pride on saying they are our ancestors and create one more shadow over the possibilities and hence safeguarding our ignorance. Until the time we bring in some awareness on what we are doing and thinking, we can’t escape from the ignorance, which wrapped our entire life. Are we really interested in an intelligence life?
If this problem is looked at from another angle, we need to get into concepts to understand any thing. Hence we cannot ignore conceptualization completely. But need to be free from those concepts. For example, when we are talking about creation, existence etc, getting into the concept of God is inevitable. But if we enclose ourselves within that concept, we cannot really understand the truth of creation and existence. Instead of that, if we are free from the concept of God itself, our knowledge about God itself may change. At the end what we call as God may be entirely different from the God of today. Yet it is a concept and have to be free from that concept also, if we intend to live our life.
And, if we do not have freedom from sage Pathanjali’s sutras or JKs concepts, we create another set of concepts and enclose ourselves with in those concepts. This is the case with followers of any spiritual system. The followers conceptualize the system they are following and alas, they are inside a trap – a trap, which they believe, will free them from all other traps. This is evident from the fact that in any spiritual system, only the master might be the realized one, seldom the followers reach the stage of realization. Only a handful of followers who are managed to free themselves from the concept of the system they are following itself reach the stage of realization.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Emptiness
Often we feel emptiness or meaninglessness in our life, even without any significance change in our life or way of living. Probably we feel it when our life events become a routine, may be it when we are not able to entertain ourselves or the entertainment itself become a routine, or when we encounter a joyous moment where we have a feeling of mission accomplished or at an extremely sorrow moment.
There is a difference in the emptiness we feel, in each of these events. In one set of events, the emptiness or meaninglessness due to the fact that thought is active but it cannot find anything to chew and the thoughts are tiered with the usual chewing. In another set of events, it is due to the fact that the thought itself is not there. The emptiness or meaninglessness in this case is due to the absence of thoughts, where being submerged in the field of thought is our usual way of living.
The first set of emptiness is due to the fact of repetition of events in our life. When the life events are just repetition, it becomes a habit and the consciousness does not have any function there. Due to our lifestyle, our consciousness has shrunk to a small layer where it lost its capability to observe the continuous changes within our body and mind. There are many, many activities happening within our body and mind, but they have already gone beyond the reach of our consciousness. Since the consciousness has shrunk and shrinking, we have to fed consciousness with new activities to keep it active. When the consciousness is unable to find any activity, the ego is also not fed with anything. When the ego is not able to find any supporting events, it projects emptiness and meaninglessness so that the consciousness is motivated to find activities and hence the ego is supported. In the other side when we are sensitive, the consciousness goes deeper and deeper, where we start understanding the function of ego and its illusionary nature. The deeper we understand about our ego, the less will be the projection of emptiness or meaninglessness of life.
Again we feel emptiness or meaninglessness of our life, when entering in to the realm of philosophy. The philosophical quest may ground all our beliefs on which our life is supported. Once the beliefs, morality, etc, which formed the base of our egoistic existence are grounded the outward activity required is just for the survival of our physical body and we start ignoring our ego. Yet our ego is possibly active within us. When the ego is active, it must be fed with activities which support its existence. When our philosophies direct us towards meaninglessness with our regular activities except the survival of physical, the ego get into a struggle for its survival and project that the life itself is meaningless without the activities that support the very existence of ego. It is a trap by our ego for its survival. To get out of this trap, we must have the understanding of trap – the ego itself. If not recognize this trap, our philosophical quest may lead us to emptiness
At moments of extreme joy or extreme sorrow or moments of accomplishments, we may enter into a state of emptiness or meaninglessness. During such moments, the thoughts cease to exist. It is a moment where we have a feeling that nothing else to enjoy or nothing else to suffer or nothing else to achieve. As long as we are in that state, without any thoughts it is fine. As soon as the thoughts come in again, it tries to capture the moment of thoughtless state. The active ego projects it as emptiness of life. If there is nothing available to support the ego, it is emptiness for ego, even in actuality we live in abundance. As long as the ego is active, we may not be able to perceive the vastness of this emptiness or the emptiness which enclose everything else with in it. In such moment of thoughtlessness, if the ego is not active, the emptiness contains everything within it which the mind can perceive.
On one side, the feeling of emptiness and meaningless provide enough motivation for carry on with our daily activities, but the sensitivity of our body and mind are taken away. On the other side, we regain our sensitivity towards our body and mind or our consciousness is being expanded, but may live with a depressed feeling of emptiness. On an over look, this seems to be contradiction. Because this translates into the postulate that for having sensitivity we have to be with emptiness and meaninglessness. For, sure it cannot be the case. Instead of having a depressed empty life, being insensitivity may be a better option. If we analyse that feeling of emptiness or meaninglessness, it will be very clear that such state is not the real state, but a projected state. As long as the ego is active, it creates conditions to support it. The feeling of emptiness or meaninglessness is such condition created by our ego to find enough motivation for getting into activities which support ego. The feeling of motivation is a condition created by our ego, to get support. Out of this motivation, we are ready to go any distance – at the end the ego is satisfied and supported.
We may need motivation for doing any activity. But motivation is a condition created by our ego. This again seems to be a conflict. To resolve this conflict, we may have to understand what motivation is? Can we carry on our life with our complete capability without the need for any motivation? This may be a subject of another title “Motivation”.
On one side, we lose our sensitivity due to the routine activities and hence habits. With this insensitivity to happenings within us and around us, the ego needs more violent activities and hence projecting the feeling of emptiness. On the other side, due to our sensitivity, momentarily we enter into a state of thoughtlessness and in this case also, the ego projects the feeling of emptiness. A real conflict, difficult to resolve! Ego is the base for this conflict and understanding our ego is the only way out to resolve this conflict. Once we understand our ego, ego is no more!
There is a difference in the emptiness we feel, in each of these events. In one set of events, the emptiness or meaninglessness due to the fact that thought is active but it cannot find anything to chew and the thoughts are tiered with the usual chewing. In another set of events, it is due to the fact that the thought itself is not there. The emptiness or meaninglessness in this case is due to the absence of thoughts, where being submerged in the field of thought is our usual way of living.
The first set of emptiness is due to the fact of repetition of events in our life. When the life events are just repetition, it becomes a habit and the consciousness does not have any function there. Due to our lifestyle, our consciousness has shrunk to a small layer where it lost its capability to observe the continuous changes within our body and mind. There are many, many activities happening within our body and mind, but they have already gone beyond the reach of our consciousness. Since the consciousness has shrunk and shrinking, we have to fed consciousness with new activities to keep it active. When the consciousness is unable to find any activity, the ego is also not fed with anything. When the ego is not able to find any supporting events, it projects emptiness and meaninglessness so that the consciousness is motivated to find activities and hence the ego is supported. In the other side when we are sensitive, the consciousness goes deeper and deeper, where we start understanding the function of ego and its illusionary nature. The deeper we understand about our ego, the less will be the projection of emptiness or meaninglessness of life.
Again we feel emptiness or meaninglessness of our life, when entering in to the realm of philosophy. The philosophical quest may ground all our beliefs on which our life is supported. Once the beliefs, morality, etc, which formed the base of our egoistic existence are grounded the outward activity required is just for the survival of our physical body and we start ignoring our ego. Yet our ego is possibly active within us. When the ego is active, it must be fed with activities which support its existence. When our philosophies direct us towards meaninglessness with our regular activities except the survival of physical, the ego get into a struggle for its survival and project that the life itself is meaningless without the activities that support the very existence of ego. It is a trap by our ego for its survival. To get out of this trap, we must have the understanding of trap – the ego itself. If not recognize this trap, our philosophical quest may lead us to emptiness
At moments of extreme joy or extreme sorrow or moments of accomplishments, we may enter into a state of emptiness or meaninglessness. During such moments, the thoughts cease to exist. It is a moment where we have a feeling that nothing else to enjoy or nothing else to suffer or nothing else to achieve. As long as we are in that state, without any thoughts it is fine. As soon as the thoughts come in again, it tries to capture the moment of thoughtless state. The active ego projects it as emptiness of life. If there is nothing available to support the ego, it is emptiness for ego, even in actuality we live in abundance. As long as the ego is active, we may not be able to perceive the vastness of this emptiness or the emptiness which enclose everything else with in it. In such moment of thoughtlessness, if the ego is not active, the emptiness contains everything within it which the mind can perceive.
On one side, the feeling of emptiness and meaningless provide enough motivation for carry on with our daily activities, but the sensitivity of our body and mind are taken away. On the other side, we regain our sensitivity towards our body and mind or our consciousness is being expanded, but may live with a depressed feeling of emptiness. On an over look, this seems to be contradiction. Because this translates into the postulate that for having sensitivity we have to be with emptiness and meaninglessness. For, sure it cannot be the case. Instead of having a depressed empty life, being insensitivity may be a better option. If we analyse that feeling of emptiness or meaninglessness, it will be very clear that such state is not the real state, but a projected state. As long as the ego is active, it creates conditions to support it. The feeling of emptiness or meaninglessness is such condition created by our ego to find enough motivation for getting into activities which support ego. The feeling of motivation is a condition created by our ego, to get support. Out of this motivation, we are ready to go any distance – at the end the ego is satisfied and supported.
We may need motivation for doing any activity. But motivation is a condition created by our ego. This again seems to be a conflict. To resolve this conflict, we may have to understand what motivation is? Can we carry on our life with our complete capability without the need for any motivation? This may be a subject of another title “Motivation”.
On one side, we lose our sensitivity due to the routine activities and hence habits. With this insensitivity to happenings within us and around us, the ego needs more violent activities and hence projecting the feeling of emptiness. On the other side, due to our sensitivity, momentarily we enter into a state of thoughtlessness and in this case also, the ego projects the feeling of emptiness. A real conflict, difficult to resolve! Ego is the base for this conflict and understanding our ego is the only way out to resolve this conflict. Once we understand our ego, ego is no more!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Knowledge
Knowledge is the crown every one wish to have. Due to our nature, we have the basic urge for gaining knowledge. Again, based on our nature, the urge for the type of knowledge we seek differ. On one side it is technological knowledge, simple techniques we use in our day-to-day life to complicated rocket launching technologies or the medical technologies for maintaining our own body. They are mere technological knowledge, which helps us to make our life comfortable.
On the other side, we have the knowledge in psychological realm – any knowledge which supports the existence and growth of ego. As long as the technical knowledge is pure, without any interference from knowledge in psychological domain, they are great. It helps us to have a better, comfortable, easy life. But that is a very rare possibility on considering the general tendency of human being. For a common man or women or child, the technological knowledge gets superimposed by the knowledge in psychological domain. This may be the starting point of all our troubles and sufferings. Almost all destructions by human being might have been due to the interference of knowledge in psychological domain with the technological knowledge; for any destruction, technological knowledge is must, but technological knowledge alone cannot initiate any destruction – It can only cause an accident.
If we like to have only the technological evolution and eliminate human initiated destruction, we must understand the interface between technological knowledge and knowledge which support our ego. That may be the Wisdom. For that knowledge, we have to have the capability of understanding the mechanism of any technological knowledge being infected by our own ego. For that we must have complete understanding of our own ego; understanding of our ego amounts to the dissolution of ego itself. If that happen what remains is pure technological knowledge.
Knowledge is also a trap, inescapable trap. When we are unaware of our ego and its functions, we never recognize what is real and psychological domain of knowledge. Whatever reaches the mind, it takes it as knowledge about the subject – it cannot recognize the egoistic component of that knowledge, as the superimposition of egoistic component happens simultaneously as we start conceiving any thing in our mind. As we are deep inside an unlimited such nests of knowledge, it is nearly impossible to realize truth – the only way out is start understanding our own ego, which may start unwind the nests and possibly make us free; free from our own knowledge and hence ego.
To understand the truthfulness of our knowledge, we must have enough freedom from the knowledge we gained. We must be capable of withstanding the shock of knowing that our knowledge is just illusion. Almost none of us have that quality. Our entire life is built on the belief that we are knowledgeable. If we need to face the fact that our knowledge is just an illusion, the entire span of life we had until now is meaningless. The void generated by the understanding that our knowledge is illusion lead as to believe that our life is meaningless. Now we need to have the courage to face a meaningless life. The very thought (note – it is the thought) that our life is meaningless may takes away our desire to live – for sure, no one like to be in such a state!
Look at the same scenario from another angle. We are sufficiently free from our knowledge. This freedom gives us the capability to just go ahead in our life, even if we understand our knowledge on certain subject is illusion – because we have no egoistic attachment with our own knowledge. This very freedom allows as look into the subject from another perspective – This may be the true knowledge about the subject. Anything here in the world is constantly changing and hence the subject under study can also change at any point of time. As we are free from our knowledge, we can look into the same subject again and again with perspective required for the new situation. This is the true knowledge. That is the knowledge gained with freedom from our own knowledge is true knowledge – The knowledge of life on moment-to-moment basis. In such a life, the knowledge of any religion is unnecessary, the knowledge of any scripture is unnecessary, the knowledge of any morality is unnecessary. What we need is just the knowledge about ourselves. It is experiencing ourselves. It is Living. Without experiencing our own existence, what we call as living is not living – it is, just existing.
On the other side, we have the knowledge in psychological realm – any knowledge which supports the existence and growth of ego. As long as the technical knowledge is pure, without any interference from knowledge in psychological domain, they are great. It helps us to have a better, comfortable, easy life. But that is a very rare possibility on considering the general tendency of human being. For a common man or women or child, the technological knowledge gets superimposed by the knowledge in psychological domain. This may be the starting point of all our troubles and sufferings. Almost all destructions by human being might have been due to the interference of knowledge in psychological domain with the technological knowledge; for any destruction, technological knowledge is must, but technological knowledge alone cannot initiate any destruction – It can only cause an accident.
If we like to have only the technological evolution and eliminate human initiated destruction, we must understand the interface between technological knowledge and knowledge which support our ego. That may be the Wisdom. For that knowledge, we have to have the capability of understanding the mechanism of any technological knowledge being infected by our own ego. For that we must have complete understanding of our own ego; understanding of our ego amounts to the dissolution of ego itself. If that happen what remains is pure technological knowledge.
Knowledge is also a trap, inescapable trap. When we are unaware of our ego and its functions, we never recognize what is real and psychological domain of knowledge. Whatever reaches the mind, it takes it as knowledge about the subject – it cannot recognize the egoistic component of that knowledge, as the superimposition of egoistic component happens simultaneously as we start conceiving any thing in our mind. As we are deep inside an unlimited such nests of knowledge, it is nearly impossible to realize truth – the only way out is start understanding our own ego, which may start unwind the nests and possibly make us free; free from our own knowledge and hence ego.
To understand the truthfulness of our knowledge, we must have enough freedom from the knowledge we gained. We must be capable of withstanding the shock of knowing that our knowledge is just illusion. Almost none of us have that quality. Our entire life is built on the belief that we are knowledgeable. If we need to face the fact that our knowledge is just an illusion, the entire span of life we had until now is meaningless. The void generated by the understanding that our knowledge is illusion lead as to believe that our life is meaningless. Now we need to have the courage to face a meaningless life. The very thought (note – it is the thought) that our life is meaningless may takes away our desire to live – for sure, no one like to be in such a state!
Look at the same scenario from another angle. We are sufficiently free from our knowledge. This freedom gives us the capability to just go ahead in our life, even if we understand our knowledge on certain subject is illusion – because we have no egoistic attachment with our own knowledge. This very freedom allows as look into the subject from another perspective – This may be the true knowledge about the subject. Anything here in the world is constantly changing and hence the subject under study can also change at any point of time. As we are free from our knowledge, we can look into the same subject again and again with perspective required for the new situation. This is the true knowledge. That is the knowledge gained with freedom from our own knowledge is true knowledge – The knowledge of life on moment-to-moment basis. In such a life, the knowledge of any religion is unnecessary, the knowledge of any scripture is unnecessary, the knowledge of any morality is unnecessary. What we need is just the knowledge about ourselves. It is experiencing ourselves. It is Living. Without experiencing our own existence, what we call as living is not living – it is, just existing.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Intelligence
For the purpose of arriving the meaning of intelligence, let us use the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’. An artificial intelligence is a logic solver which process multiple, complicated logics and produces an output – a choice less output. From this, we may be able to arrive the definition of intelligence as the capacity of our brain to produce action without choice.
In all aspects, intelligence is one of the assets every one wish to possess and believe having possessed. But the general meaning considered for intelligence is something like capability to choose from the available choices by means of assumptions, imaginations and conclusions arrived out of these two or similar parameters. Due to our urge to possess intelligence, and the meaning we considered for intelligence, we push ourselves to the extent of making choices even in simple activities where choosing is not at all required and then suffer on those choices. We also call the learning of decision making to choose as education. It does not require any intelligence to understand wherever choices are there, suffering is inevitable. On the other hand, we call the learning of how to suffer (in most of the cases) as education! It is a real pity!
Having the capability of unlimited consciousness, human must be the only species in this earth capable of having unlimited intelligence. We must be already having this intelligence. This intelligence within us must be masked by our ego and the qualities supporting and growing the ego. Once we understand what intelligence is and realize that we have this unlimited intelligence, there is a possibility of unmasking our intelligence, in its real sense.
The intelligence may be explained further by the function of brain within the realm of our body. If there is any infection in our body, the brain sends antibodies to required location and stage a war against infection. This is intelligence. There is no choice to choose for the brain, if an infection is detected. The only choice is fight against infection as long as the body has the capacity. None of our education systems provide such intelligence to us. Our education system provides just information. We need to have intelligence to process that information imparted by education. Of course, every one of us has the intelligence, but each one of us unmasked it to different extent.
As long as we are in the realm of duality and hence comparison, intelligence cannot be put in action. The existence of duality within our mind and hence the act of comparison generate thoughts in the psychological domain which support the ego at one side and fragment our mind at the other side. Fragmenting the mind means, it stores the information about any subject where ever the thought goes and put bits and pieces of information into our memory. Thought can go only up to the extent of our knowledge. Thought cannot conceive anything which we did not know. Hence thought cannot capture the complete information about any object/subject. Since the mind has fragmented information about the subject, it uses this information to describe the subject. The mind is nothing but the information processed in our brain. Now the information processed is fragmented information about the subject, our mind itself is fragmented.
With this fragmented mind obviously intelligence cannot act. The brain cannot solve the logic with so many fragments about a subject. In such situation, there are many possible ways of action or choices and hence many possible outcomes.
Intelligence cannot be acquired. It cannot be cultivated. We can only remove the veil wrapping our intelligence. Intelligence can be unwrapped only with knowledge – the knowledge of the veil wrapped around our intelligence. This unwrapping of intelligence makes us completely understand and in synch with the eternal cosmic rules or Dharma, in Buddhist terms. Even without our intelligence functioning, we are forced to obey the cosmic rules, but with the functioning of intelligence, we may be living in synch with cosmic rules and hence with cosmos. On the other hand, we may state that intelligence is being synch with the cosmic rules pertaining to the subject.
All inanimate objects are in synch with the cosmic rules pertaining to those objects. They have no tendency to be away from cosmic rules. This is the case with all animate beings, having up to five senses. As the number of senses increases, their understanding about cosmic rules may also increases and the intelligence pertaining to those beings make them to adjust themselves to be in synch with the cosmic rules. We can very well understand these facts, by giving a little bit attention to the behavior pattern of animals, birds, plants etc.
If we extrapolate that, human with sixth sense must have much higher intelligence and must have the capability to understand and be synch with the cosmic rules of much higher level. But in general, we are much away from this fact. This could be very well due to the limitlessness nature of our sixth sense and hence our inability to handle it. Are we really incapable of handling our senses? It cannot be. The creation must have much higher intelligence and if we are not capable of handling our sixth sense, it must have been limited within of the limit our capability. Being given the sixth sense, definitely we are capable of handling it. If we are unable to handle it and hence suffering then it is our mistake. Due to this mistake and escape from our incapability, we wrapped our intelligence with veils, which we are unable to remove it now and hence suffering.
Unless we live with our intelligence, we are not living the life pertaining to the human species.
In all aspects, intelligence is one of the assets every one wish to possess and believe having possessed. But the general meaning considered for intelligence is something like capability to choose from the available choices by means of assumptions, imaginations and conclusions arrived out of these two or similar parameters. Due to our urge to possess intelligence, and the meaning we considered for intelligence, we push ourselves to the extent of making choices even in simple activities where choosing is not at all required and then suffer on those choices. We also call the learning of decision making to choose as education. It does not require any intelligence to understand wherever choices are there, suffering is inevitable. On the other hand, we call the learning of how to suffer (in most of the cases) as education! It is a real pity!
Having the capability of unlimited consciousness, human must be the only species in this earth capable of having unlimited intelligence. We must be already having this intelligence. This intelligence within us must be masked by our ego and the qualities supporting and growing the ego. Once we understand what intelligence is and realize that we have this unlimited intelligence, there is a possibility of unmasking our intelligence, in its real sense.
The intelligence may be explained further by the function of brain within the realm of our body. If there is any infection in our body, the brain sends antibodies to required location and stage a war against infection. This is intelligence. There is no choice to choose for the brain, if an infection is detected. The only choice is fight against infection as long as the body has the capacity. None of our education systems provide such intelligence to us. Our education system provides just information. We need to have intelligence to process that information imparted by education. Of course, every one of us has the intelligence, but each one of us unmasked it to different extent.
As long as we are in the realm of duality and hence comparison, intelligence cannot be put in action. The existence of duality within our mind and hence the act of comparison generate thoughts in the psychological domain which support the ego at one side and fragment our mind at the other side. Fragmenting the mind means, it stores the information about any subject where ever the thought goes and put bits and pieces of information into our memory. Thought can go only up to the extent of our knowledge. Thought cannot conceive anything which we did not know. Hence thought cannot capture the complete information about any object/subject. Since the mind has fragmented information about the subject, it uses this information to describe the subject. The mind is nothing but the information processed in our brain. Now the information processed is fragmented information about the subject, our mind itself is fragmented.
With this fragmented mind obviously intelligence cannot act. The brain cannot solve the logic with so many fragments about a subject. In such situation, there are many possible ways of action or choices and hence many possible outcomes.
Intelligence cannot be acquired. It cannot be cultivated. We can only remove the veil wrapping our intelligence. Intelligence can be unwrapped only with knowledge – the knowledge of the veil wrapped around our intelligence. This unwrapping of intelligence makes us completely understand and in synch with the eternal cosmic rules or Dharma, in Buddhist terms. Even without our intelligence functioning, we are forced to obey the cosmic rules, but with the functioning of intelligence, we may be living in synch with cosmic rules and hence with cosmos. On the other hand, we may state that intelligence is being synch with the cosmic rules pertaining to the subject.
All inanimate objects are in synch with the cosmic rules pertaining to those objects. They have no tendency to be away from cosmic rules. This is the case with all animate beings, having up to five senses. As the number of senses increases, their understanding about cosmic rules may also increases and the intelligence pertaining to those beings make them to adjust themselves to be in synch with the cosmic rules. We can very well understand these facts, by giving a little bit attention to the behavior pattern of animals, birds, plants etc.
If we extrapolate that, human with sixth sense must have much higher intelligence and must have the capability to understand and be synch with the cosmic rules of much higher level. But in general, we are much away from this fact. This could be very well due to the limitlessness nature of our sixth sense and hence our inability to handle it. Are we really incapable of handling our senses? It cannot be. The creation must have much higher intelligence and if we are not capable of handling our sixth sense, it must have been limited within of the limit our capability. Being given the sixth sense, definitely we are capable of handling it. If we are unable to handle it and hence suffering then it is our mistake. Due to this mistake and escape from our incapability, we wrapped our intelligence with veils, which we are unable to remove it now and hence suffering.
Unless we live with our intelligence, we are not living the life pertaining to the human species.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Philosophy
Due to the power of consciousness and capability to compare, we tend to have many questions on every aspect of our life. Many questions pertaining to our existence also arises within us. These questions may not have any direct answers. We need to comprehend the perceivable and then derive the answers for such questions. These questions, method of deriving the answers and the answers together may be termed as philosophy – a simple definition of philosophy!
The general tendency towards philosophy is that it is only for the so called “think tanks” as it does not have any practical application. If we consider the above definition of philosophy, it has practical application in every aspect of our life, practical application in how we perceive even the simplest object/subject we encounter on moment-to-moment basis. Philosophy is not for read, memorise, and follow. It is for asking questions and then gets clarified from our own experience – either inner or outer.
Our entire life goes on just our struggle for survival. The first survival requirement is physical. For sustaining our life, we have to have the means for physical survival otherwise we have to give up our life. Once this is accomplished, we spend our entire energy for the survival of our ego – not only survival of ego, but growing the ego. We not even recognize that we are wasting the entire energy of our life just to support and grow our ego, which in reality never exists. Ego is a function which developed and nurtured in our mind field with support from our imagination power, which find ways for our physical well being to some extent as well as the destruction of mankind. How to recognize such waste of energy? Philosophies come to our rescue. Philosophy doesn’t mean verbalization of all abstract thoughts of some so called “think-tank”. It is our questions of why, what, where, when and how, and the answers we find ourselves– not the answers of somebody else, which is their philosophy, not ours; at best we can take them as a reference, not as authority.
When we enter into the realm of philosophy, we need to be very careful about one aspect. Our mind is so powerful it can get convincing answer for any and every question, if we allow it to find an answer. On this attempt, the mind creates so many illusions which if we are not aware, take it as real and come to a conclusion for our philosophical question. If we accept somebody’s authority on philosophical thought, it is easier to reach such conclusion. And if it happens, it is not easy to change that conclusion we arrived. It gets into our brain as final answer. Now we start looking into everything with reference to this answer only – we remain in constant illusion. It is a trap from which we never can exit if we are caught into it, unless we recognize the trap. Almost every one of us is caught into a nest of such traps. The only way to come out of that trap is to recognize it. The possibility of reorganization is there only if we accept the possibilities of such traps exist.
Many learners of philosophy are just learning it as a concept. Hence they are not able to taste the philosophy, but put into their brain as concepts and words. It can be only used to put forward conceptual arguments. There cannot be any real use out of such learning. Equally dangerous is the habit of questioning certain philosophy and if gets negative answer, reject the whole line of philosophy itself – including the one which we understood at the core of our being. In such case, the best option will be keeping the question open and carry on with other questions. Down the line, we will get the answer for sure, because every question/answer start from one concept and ends at another.
Philosophies are to stimulate our questioning capabilities – not for providing predetermined answers and nullifying our questioning ability. The answers given in any established philosophy are just some guiding tools, but the real answer has to come from our being – be it Veda, Upanishad, Vedanta, Githa or whatever it may be. As soon as we take it as an authority, our philosophical search is completed within a trap. No philosophy can be an authority for us. We are the authority for ourselves - any particular philosophy may become our being, but not authority. The philosophy should not dictate the terms in our life, but it can be our way of life. One has to be very clear about this distinction. If not we will be ending our life in a trap – The illusion on philosophy.
The general tendency towards philosophy is that it is only for the so called “think tanks” as it does not have any practical application. If we consider the above definition of philosophy, it has practical application in every aspect of our life, practical application in how we perceive even the simplest object/subject we encounter on moment-to-moment basis. Philosophy is not for read, memorise, and follow. It is for asking questions and then gets clarified from our own experience – either inner or outer.
Our entire life goes on just our struggle for survival. The first survival requirement is physical. For sustaining our life, we have to have the means for physical survival otherwise we have to give up our life. Once this is accomplished, we spend our entire energy for the survival of our ego – not only survival of ego, but growing the ego. We not even recognize that we are wasting the entire energy of our life just to support and grow our ego, which in reality never exists. Ego is a function which developed and nurtured in our mind field with support from our imagination power, which find ways for our physical well being to some extent as well as the destruction of mankind. How to recognize such waste of energy? Philosophies come to our rescue. Philosophy doesn’t mean verbalization of all abstract thoughts of some so called “think-tank”. It is our questions of why, what, where, when and how, and the answers we find ourselves– not the answers of somebody else, which is their philosophy, not ours; at best we can take them as a reference, not as authority.
When we enter into the realm of philosophy, we need to be very careful about one aspect. Our mind is so powerful it can get convincing answer for any and every question, if we allow it to find an answer. On this attempt, the mind creates so many illusions which if we are not aware, take it as real and come to a conclusion for our philosophical question. If we accept somebody’s authority on philosophical thought, it is easier to reach such conclusion. And if it happens, it is not easy to change that conclusion we arrived. It gets into our brain as final answer. Now we start looking into everything with reference to this answer only – we remain in constant illusion. It is a trap from which we never can exit if we are caught into it, unless we recognize the trap. Almost every one of us is caught into a nest of such traps. The only way to come out of that trap is to recognize it. The possibility of reorganization is there only if we accept the possibilities of such traps exist.
Many learners of philosophy are just learning it as a concept. Hence they are not able to taste the philosophy, but put into their brain as concepts and words. It can be only used to put forward conceptual arguments. There cannot be any real use out of such learning. Equally dangerous is the habit of questioning certain philosophy and if gets negative answer, reject the whole line of philosophy itself – including the one which we understood at the core of our being. In such case, the best option will be keeping the question open and carry on with other questions. Down the line, we will get the answer for sure, because every question/answer start from one concept and ends at another.
Philosophies are to stimulate our questioning capabilities – not for providing predetermined answers and nullifying our questioning ability. The answers given in any established philosophy are just some guiding tools, but the real answer has to come from our being – be it Veda, Upanishad, Vedanta, Githa or whatever it may be. As soon as we take it as an authority, our philosophical search is completed within a trap. No philosophy can be an authority for us. We are the authority for ourselves - any particular philosophy may become our being, but not authority. The philosophy should not dictate the terms in our life, but it can be our way of life. One has to be very clear about this distinction. If not we will be ending our life in a trap – The illusion on philosophy.
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