a common man ಸಂಜಯ

I was so confident of reaching the top, but failed. In a kind of unplanned way. After around maybe 40% I was resting for a few moments after the previous stretch. But resting in that posture itself was tiring. So when I resumed, my arms kind of just became numb and gave way. For a moment it was like a ‘kick’ (like in the movie Inception) where suddenly I wake up from a dream to falling into a vast empty space.

Of course the rope broke my fall (luckily, instead of breaking ) and I gently came down.
Read the rest of this entry »

“Something fell from your car, don’t you want it?” I asked.
“No” said the elite looking young man from the back seat of the SUV parked on the road.
“Well we don’t want it either” I said – pointing to the plastic cup filled with peas he’d just thrown out.
“Oh yeah” he nodded and retracted back inside.

I wanted to add a lot more things like “do you see those cows shitting right there in the middle of the road because they didn’t know better – can’t we be any better?” or and most of all I wanted to say “you live in this country, how can you treat it like one big garbage can, don’t you have any f*ing dignity?”

I started feeling a lot of anger especially at his indifferent reaction. There’s always a choice between reacting with anger in making it an ego issue, and taking a step back from the situation and channeling the anger in a constructive direction, to act with a sense of purpose. As I wasn’t very inclined to do the latter at that moment, I just left it at that and walked away. If I hadn’t chickened out, I might’ve tried something constructive like picking up that cup myself (I don’t mind really) without any expectations that he would do better next time, but atleast I’d have the satisfaction that I did something

I’ve really done that at times, with the right balance of mind it can be done and isn’t such a bad idea eg: Nature vs Garbage

Wish every kid on the planet a happy children’s day!
Read the rest of this entry »

Familiarity breed contempt, when one is judgemental.
Familiarity can breed synergy when one is non-judgemental.

Some people may be interesting to get to know at first, but after a while once we get to know a bit more about the darker sides over time, a distance starts developing. Prejudices, grudges and so on keep on accumulating even among the best of friends. Most of this is we never even are aware about. Sometimes one small incident gives rise to a split in a relationship, and even though that incident in itself might be very trivial and of no major consequence. Romance is just one example, where the so called love-marriages end up becoming hate-divorces!

Human nature is such that we get a kick out of finding faults in others and criticizing others.

But with a little more patience and understanding, we can discover that there’s a much better kick in being non-judgemental. And in looking at the complete picture instead of just one or two narrow perspectives.

Gandhi had said something interesting:

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

“drops” could even refer not just to people, but even different aspects of the same person – “A person is an ocean…”

“These are things we know that we know … there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
~ Donald Rumsfeld

Oprah Winfrey hosted a series of 10 live webinars with a very interesting teacher – a German born, resident of Canada, named Eckhart Tolle. Over 9 million copies of his books have been sold in United States of America. Below is just a very small excerpt.

We may even have an extremely fit body, but our mind may not match it in fitness (for example the case of Del Potro who threw his shoes into the crowd in frustration when he lost a match in the recent Wimbledon )

Here Eckhart speaks about our mind… the same basic science behind what you and me made up of. Not exactly covered in any school syllabus…

(emphasis mine)…
———-

This (“pain body”) accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. If you look on it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting quite close to the truth. It’s the emotional pain body. It has two modes of being: dormant and active.

The pain body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, “become you,” and live through you. It needs to get its “food” through you. It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, and even illness.

So the pain body, when it has taken you over, will create a situation in your life that reflects back its own energy frequency for it to feed on. Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.

Once the pain body has taken you over, you want more pain. You become a victim or a perpetrator. You want to inflict pain, or you want to suffer pain, or both. There isn’t really much difference between the two. You are not conscious of this, of course, and will vehemently claim that you do not want pain. But look closely and you will that your thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going, for yourself and others.

http://www.detoxifynow.com/et_pain_body.html

Please note that the idea is to only reflect on one’s own life!

See if you can relate it to any of the following articles:

• Your resentment and misery is a source of entertainment for you!

• Misery makes you capable of attracting people’s attention!

Extremely intelligent and ‘well-educated’, Anders Behring Breivik learnt to make his own bomb using chemicals from fertilizers, use sophisticated weaponry, and plot and execute the whole thing. But SO completely cold and heartless.

From the news…
Read the rest of this entry »

They started playing this music (instrumental) at the pool. I’d just finished my swim, but jumped right back in just to listen to it. In the floodlit water, there were dancing circles of ripples… it had started drizzling. Holding on the edge of the pool, I floated on my back to stare at the dark sky, and the raindrops backlit by the floodlight kept falling like a stream of stars. It felt like an ethereal intergalactic journey, or maybe less poetically, one of the old Windows screen savers Read the rest of this entry »

…and he is us

 

Pogo daily strip from Earth Day, 1971. (wiki)

Its a tragic comedy that man would rather pursue breaking the sound barrier, than breaking the “somebody else” barrier.

As long as we have the “somebody else” barrier, terrorism will thrive.

Let us strive to put an end not to merely terror-ists, because they are one of us whether we like it or not, but to terror-ism.

Praying for recovery and strength of all our brethren in Mumbai.

See also:

Dear Terrorist – be my son or brother in your next life!

photo Copyright : NYtimes: People’s belongings are seen lying on the floor amongst streaked pools of blood at the shooting site in Chattrapati Shivaji Railway terminus in Mumbai on November 26, 2008. Young policeman is escorting a oldman out of blood smeared Platform. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/11/26/1127-MUMBAI/25962244.JPG

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

Experienced the gist of this poignant song… though in a lighter way, this morning…

Read the rest of this entry »