Author: msanjay

How can you find peace in the world? By lying still. You
don’t do anything, don’t try to purify it, otherwise you will
muddle it more. Just lie down on the bank, wait. By lying
still it becomes clear on its own accord. Don’t be worried
about transforming the world; don’t be worried about changing
others. Who are you? And who has sent you on this mission to
change others? Everybody is directly related to the divine.
Why are you there to interfere? You just sit silently.

–Osho—

I think this is a very important quote – it will take some time for me to digest it – maybe the rest of my life. Right now I don’t feel like relapsing into silence (all day every day).

I’m obsessed with writing, it kind of grips me and does not let me go until I pen it down. Sometimes I write useless things and even worse send it to the wrong people, but there have been times when people have gotten back to me saying that they’ve found the (“my”?) words really unique and inspirational and so on. Several people from various forums eg company newsgroup have surprised me at random times saying they’re my fan and have been enjoying my posts. One of the main purpose of putting up the weblog is to publish all the posts I’ve put up in the ng, I think there have been times I’ve unwittingly ended up writting some possibly extraordinary things.

One thing is I’m often as much a reader of what I write as anybody else, they surprise me. Neale Donald Walsch in his book Conversations With God (not that I read it cover to cover) – says he’s just an instrument of some other power. Its only a vague analogy, I don’t hear any voices or any such thing.

But on the other hand, at a certain point, I get attached to my own words and my ego takes over, and its very very subtle to know at which point who’s in control! (personally, I’m certain it would be a waste of time when I write when I’m in control) I end up becoming hopelessly verbose. I think it’s a question of constant experimentation to know when to stop, what to cut out, when to save as a draft and not send, when to delete the entire draft, and most importantly, when to not to blindly react by writing whenever I feel like writing.

Writing is like constructing intricate jewelry using words. It’s a very very expensive hobby – in terms of time – and its very hard to know when its worth it and when its not. So far I’ve concluded experimentation – trial and error – is the only way.

If I think about it, inspiration is what I find in books by Douglas Adams or Feynman or Bach. They really make me happy and give me a different perspective, and help me defamilarise myself with familiar things in my own life (which I think is the essence of what is familiarly known as Zen).

But the thing is when I’d first read HHGTTG in college, I found it a very funny book but nothing much beyond that. But when I happened to read it again the second time a few years later, it suddenly hit me that he’s expressed concepts of fundamental human psychology and universal principles in his writing! But the book is the same! So maybe its not really reading the book itself that made me understand things better.

I would owe my own evolution (hopefully, and relative only to myself in the past) more to sitting in silence with a non-judgemental awareness than reading or writing things.

If I look back, other than being fun, I feel the purpose of my writing – other than a mode of self-expression – at times may also be (just occurred to me now actually) to shout out to the world that there’s more to life than the obvious.

Wrt the quote, which says…

Don’t be worried about transforming the world; don’t be worried about changing others.

…the fact is that when I start off to write, its not to transform or change anything but just to speak my mind. But sometimes, it may end up with a slight subtle twist unknown to me, where I actually start thinking from a reader – am I writing something interesting or not? Worse still is writing with the idea of creating an impression or trying to tell somebody something – forgetting the timeless truth that each person has his own way of learning, and his own time for it as well. And what makes sense to one dosen’t necessarily suit another.

Once I had read somewhere that this is a common situation for writers (who aren’t compelled to write as a business) in general. Needless to say, this is the situation when writing ends up becoming a colossal waste of time – and the best solution is to not write at all for quite a while… until the mind quietens again. 🙂

11-Mar-2005
Had written to Paulo Coelho for permission to publish some excerpts from his site on my blog that were relevant to me, which a representative approved, and also sent me this article link where he explains what he feels about writing! 😀

In search of my island by Paulo Coelho

[Not that he has read this post, but] I felt as if he is reassuring me about my own hesitation towards writing 🙂

Men diverge into two things – either in search of God or in search of scientific truth. It begins with the one common element – curiosity. But the curiosity is not without its limitations. Both usually cannot bear to digest anything beyond the limits of what they know. For example a deeply religious man is likely to dismiss an aethist’s life as meaningless and doomed. Or wrt intution the first thing a scientist will do is remind one, quite correctly, that intution is not scientifically proven.

Though I am and have always been quite a scientifically inclined person (and even have plans to pursue it further) – I believe beyond a shadow of doubt that a significant fraction of science, just like religion, is like the emperor’s new clothes. (You might have read the story when you were a kid, reading it again IMO would still be a worthwhile investment of time.)

Science is intellectual entertainment (“how? why? an answer… there must be an answer… and I will figure it out based on what all these other intelligent people have figured out…”), religion is emotional entertainment (“how reassuring it is that whenever things go wrong, I can ask Some Supreme Power to take care of me and everything else“).

They do have their place, we probably need these things until we can become free from them.

I’m particularly curious about one thing – we have definitely not reached the end of evolution, its still going on… Would we with all our abilities and achievements still be like primitive apes in comparison to countless generations into the future? 🙂

I hear babies cryin’, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world

~ Louis Armstrong

Here are a couple of quotes from H2G2 by Douglas Adams on similar lines. If I were to imagine what an enlightned man would be like, it would probably come close to him 🙂

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers
exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will
instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more
bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already
happened.

Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than
dolphins because he had achieved so much… the wheel, New York,
wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck
about in the water having a good time. But conversely the
dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man
for precisely the same reasons.