Awareness

When I was conversing with a friend what 'Listen to the heart' really meant (Yes I don't have better things to do!) , it triggered me to read and discover, that what people really meant by that line is to listen to one's own intuition. I've considered myself intuitive for long, but it has always seemed like it comes in flashes and I couldn't really invoke it whenever I wanted to. There was a period of time when I believed also that intuition was nothing, but trouble.

My research showed me that intuition works best in dreams and thus it's important to remember our dreams (Many people suggest sleeping with a note-book and pen by the bedside for this reason). About two days after I had read about how intuition and dreams were connected, I had the most vivid dream that I have ever had in my life. (Maybe it was vivid, for I was conscious about having to remember every single detail of it)


The cast of characters in my vivid dream were a varied lot. There was a relative who's long dead now, a close friend at work with whom I confide a lot, Sachin Tendulkar, Superman and another friend and his father. I'll spare the details and cut to the end, for that was the most significant part.

A death had happened, but people were actually hosting a function that was scheduled to be held. The friend's father with my friend was questioning the need for such a function at the present time very vociferously and very aggressively. Lots of people were trying to convince them that things happen, but life goes on, but they weren't quite in the listening mood. Seeing the proceedings, I venture towards the group and was just about to say, "There is no right/wrong. What people believe is only the right thing." and at the moment the words were to come out of my mouth, I woke up.

I didn't have a notebook or a pen handy, but I didn't need them. I was quite awake and I vividly recollected the whole dream in complete crystallized clarity (not the eastman color types of yore!)

Little did I know then, that simple message would prove to be the corner stone of a big transformation within.

I was discussing the dream with a spiritually minded friend and his immediate remark was 'Fancy you saying there is no right/wrong!'. It was true. I've always lived my life with a strong sense of what was right and what was wrong and the slightest deviation from that was enough to trigger anger in me. This was not any mild anger, but pure destructive rage. Rage, which sets my blood boiling, muscles to contract, eyes to shrink, teeth to grit and my face to assume massive ferocious contortions.
I've written a lot of posts about people jumping queues, about people jumping traffic signals, people not doing their work properly - all these used to trigger that rage within me and over the years, quite a few people have fallen victim to this rage. My close friends and family would also vouch for this rage within me. It is this in-built sense of right/wrong that prompts me to question the Maha-bharata too, as to why things happened the way they did. I've been trying to figure out that reason for a really long time and I never thought the answer to that perplexing question would be so simple.
For a background, read All is fair in love and war?,

In the Kurukshetra war, the Pandavas are quite apprehensive about the kinds of trickery Krishna asks them to do, but they eventually do it. Why would Krishna do such things? Weren't they wrong to do? This question has stumbled me for such a long time and to understand the answer to this, one must understand what awareness is all about. One must understand what enlightenment is all about. Of course neither am I enlightened, nor am I aware, but I can see my own transformation within once I see that there is nothing that absolute as right/wrong. We all know that murder is wrong and yet there are situations am sure that we could justify that it would indeed be the right thing to do. How could we have such contradictions in us? How many more of these contradictions do we have within us?

Krishna was not wrong in doing what He did. He did what He had to and in his heightened state of awareness, anything that He did would have been the right thing to do... We can also get to this state of mind by practicing awareness.

What is awareness? Different people call it by different names. Deepak Chopra calls it the gap between thoughts. Eckhart Tolle calls it the stillness of the mind. Buddhists call it nirvana. Some call it moksha. Some call it just awareness, 'to be aware'.

What I've come to understand about it is to be mostly conscious of what's happening outside and within us. Be conscious of your feelings, your emotions, your thoughts, your actions, everything that you do with the body and the mind. Just be aware of all these without having to classify them. For instance we get a thought, just be aware of the thought and when you are aware, you realize that there's a choice on whether we really want to act out that thought. This was a huge revelation to me for it meant I could control my anger quite easily, effortlessly. All I had to do was be aware of the thought that led to the rage and once I was aware of that, I noticed that it never came out as rage. All this time I had led a very robotic conditioned response to situations. Shit happens. So does my anger. It didn't need to anymore. There was a choice and strangely enough once I became aware of this choice, it seemed to always come out in much more loving terms. There was no violent repulsive action, there was just a calm sense of being. This is what prompted me to write the earlier line about Krishna. "He did what He had to and in his heightened state of awareness, anything that he did would have been the right thing to do."

How aware are you?

Watch the video below at least twice. (You don't need my prompting you to watch it twice, you'll watch it at least twice!)

Done with the viewing?

The moment we heard that a murder has been committed, we are immediately lost in thoughts. We weren't paying any attention to what was happening (at least I wasn't). To pay attention is to be completely hopelessly focused in the present, to live in the present.

Here's another simple experiment. Switch on the telly. Done?

Ok. Now think of the colour red. Done?

Watch the telly for one minute with as much attention as you can give this task and then come back here and read below.



Did you see the color red prominently feature on the visuals you saw on the telly? It's not just red. Think of another color if you don't believe me. The moral of the story is our thoughts cloud everything. To really pay total attention, one has to be in a zone of no-thoughts and that is not a easy thing to get into, for that's the state of awareness, that's the state of enlightenment.

When we grow-up, we are conditioned in all sorts of ways by parents, friends, schools, colleges, our experiences, beliefs that we see life through all sorts of thoughts, all sorts of filters. Education gives us a lot of these filters. These are what we call Knowledge, but sadly they don't allow us to see things as we are. J Krishnamurthy asks us to understand each of this, so we can discard them and eventually get to be aware. The moment we say this is right/wrong, we see the world through that filter of right/wrong, not quite conducive to seeing things as they are.
Isn't it interesting? Once you remove all these filters, you wouldn't have any thoughts and if you don't have any thoughts, you would be destroying the concept of the ego and then be enlightened.

Not by any means a easy thing to do. One will have to scruplously understand every little thought that one gets. Think of this one which everyone would have experienced at some point in time. "I Love her. I know. I do." Now watch the video below where Osho speaks about love.

Revealing eh?

Personally life's a lot more pleasant these days once I've been practicing awareness, discarding the in numerous mindless judgements that I have inflicted upon myself.

My initial experiments with awareness were simply to be more conscious of what I was doing. I was holding a cup. I was aware of how I lifted the cup and held it to it's current position. I was constantly aware of my breathing at least a 100 times in a day, something that I was not aware of at all earlier unless my heart was beating very fast. Even this much awareness was instantly rewarding. I was suddenly seeing new things in the sights that I have taken for granted. I was experiencing the car engine's vibration on the steering wheel in a more pronounced manner. Washing dishes turned out to be fun after all! So was ironing clothes. Life was turning colorful and when I researched more out of intellectual curiosity, I discovered that

Hinduism talks of 4 different ways of achieving enlightenment.

a) Jnana - Path of wisdom
    - The path of J Krishnamurty, Ramana Maharshi.
    Ramana Maharshi's teaching is really very very simple. The moment you get a thought, ask yourself to whom did this thought arise. The inevitable answer being "me", ask yourself again, "Who am I?". Eventually all attention will be on that singular question without any other thoughts and He says that too will dissolve in due time revealing the answer.
I see J Krishnamurthy's approach as more holistic. He asks us to understand the nature of thought itself, about how important it is to not subscribe to any guru, religion or school of thought including what He himself says as all of that would introduce more judgements and beliefs. Once we understand and discard all these judgements, beliefs, right/wrongs, thoughts, He says we'll experience the pinnacle of his teaching - 'The observer becomes the observed.", a state of being where we can observe ourselves independently and not have to associate us with our body or mind, a state of being without the ego.

b) Bhakti - Path of devotion
    - Surrender your ego to a guru or God if you prefer. This is what the majority of the population does today, followers of all religion, but sadly they are all lost in mindless rituals and traditions than following the true essence of what bhakti means - surrender of one's ego.

c) Karma - Path of Duty
    - Do your duty without expecting any reward thus destroying your ego.
Everytime you see A R Rahman speak you might hear, "Ella pugalum irivannuke!" (Loose translation: All credit goes to God - something like that)

d) Techniques like meditation, Japa, Raja Yoga etc
  - Osho and other gurus advocate this.

All these paths talk about destroying one's ego thus helping us understand who we truly are. The path of Jnana is supposed to be the easiest, but that's kind of subjective for me to say right now unless I am of course truly aware.

My mom used to tell me that to be a genuine person, one must speak out their thoughts as and when you get them. Well today I know that, that statement is as far away from the truth as it could ever be.

Have you noticed that thoughts are always about the past or the future and never about the present? I've been noticing my thoughts for some time and my automatic tendency now is to classify them as past/future. I couldn't classify them as present. The classification can't really help much and I need to learn to be just aware of them without any judgement/classification.

Here's to awareness!

All is fair in love and war. Really?

Amélie Poulain's friend poses the nice looking guy a series of questions revolving around proverbs.
"A rolling stone"
"Gathers no moss", he answers quickly.

"Out of sight"
"Out of mind"

After a few more proverbs, she declares that her dad used to say that someone who knew proverbs can't be all bad and she tells him where Amélie is.


Though I suppose the French might have their reasons for supposing so, I've never thought of being merely cognizant of proverbs as such a strong and desirable trait. Arguably what you probably believe in might offer a better incisive look at your personality.

There's been two of these especially that make me boil inside every time I think deeply enough about them. One of them is "Out of sight, out of mind" along with it's counterpart the more classy "Absence makes the heart grow fonder". Though I am not quite sure about the times or the circumstances in which these two idioms were born, I have a strong propensity to classify the latter as medieval and the former as one that accurately reflects our contemporary times and in case you are wondering am a sucker for the latter. It's sad that most of today's generation demand instant gratification at everything, at work, at career, at passions and even at love. Whatever happened to the slow moving medieval pace of Pride and Prejudice?
"Out of sight, out of mind" - I mean what is that? Does it mean we don't let each other get out of sight? for a month? a day? an hour? for a minute? What are we? needy dependent people who don't value freedom, solitude? What are we? parasites? It brings more fundamental questions out in the open. Anyone of you would have stayed away from your parents for a reasonable stretch of time. So is that it? You don't care anymore for them? If you do, then why two different yardsticks for your own personal relationships? Do you know what that makes you look like?

The other one that's been on my hit list for some time is the one that strives to remind us that "All is fair in love and war". Really? As simple as that? Yes?

In the holy war of the Mahabharata, the Pandavas resort to all sorts of trickery to win the war.
Arjuna, the embodiment of valour hides behind Sikhandi (who was originally born as a girl) when they attack Bhisma, that warrior who had a rather neat policy of not fighting women. So he simply stood by receiving Arjuna's arrows that cut through him slowly, while doing frankly nothing but trying to distinguish which of the arrows were Sikhandin's and which of them were Arjuna's!
Yudhishtira, the very embodiment of truth lies about Ashwattama's death to Drona (on Krishna's advice) making him lay down his arms when Dhristadyumna swoops down on him with a bloody sword!
Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas asks Karna to not kill his brothers. The great warrior promises to kill only Arjuna if at all so that she would still have 5 sons and during the war, he very clearly has chances to kill each of Bheema, Yudhishtira and Nakula, which he refrains from and spares them with mere taunts! (OK this part from Kunti wasn't exactly trickery, but you get how the odds are stacked against the Kauravas)
Krishna advises Arjuna never to get into a direct battle with Karna as long as Karna holds Indra's weapon as that could easily kill him. Karna is then later forced to use the same against Ghatotkacha (Bheema's Rakshasa son) on one fated day when the battle continues into the night when the Rakshashas apparently have greater power.
Krishna saves Arjuna by pressing the chariot in the nick of time during the direct battle with Karna!
Krishna clues in on Bheema to break Duryodhana's thighs against the established code of fighting in those days.

Iam sure there are a lot more instances I have missed out. The Pandavas finally realize at the end of the war that it was won not because of their valour or military prowess, but because Krishna was on their side. Every time they had a problem, it was Krishna himself, the embodiment of God who guides them on the path of trickery, which they follow religiously after the initial instinctive apprehensions.

On reading various versions of the Mahabharata, my first reaction was one of disgust. I mean clearly there were two sides here. One was in the right and one was in the wrong. Why couldn't the side in the right just win out rightly without having to resort to any sort of trickery? Didn't being the right side imply just that?

I've never understood that part of it until recently when I've come up with a much more plausible analysis, that's comforting and rather soothing once you understand it. What's right and what's wrong isn't exactly in black and white. It's more of shades in gray. It's still distinguishable, but it's quite difficult to figure out what exactly is the right thing to do in a given situation. It's no real wonder that more often than not people get this wrong, ... really wrong. One reason for it is the same impatience that makes them swear to "out of sight, out of mind". See the connection?

what I read from the Mahabharata is irrespective of how the war was won, it's important to know why the Pandavas won it. The Kauravas were practically invincible. Bhishma himself had a boon that he was the only one who could choose when he wanted to die. Drona could never be conquered (without a lie). Karna had Indra's weapon(though use and throw!) that could kill anyone. Yet the Pandavas won, because Krishna was on their side. Dharma was on their side. Here's where it gets interesting. You could see it as the Pandavas won because Krishna was on their side or you could see it as the Pandavas were on Krishna's right side... Krishna's right side, since he was the embodiment of everything there was also a dark side, ... hence those acts of trickery! Which leads us to...

All is fair in war only when you are on the fair side itself.

Love isn't exactly war, but there's a fair side to it and a unfair side to it. There's a compassionate side to it and a vengeful side to it and there's also plenty of shades of gray in between. We might want to see which end of the spectrum it is that we are standing on before we resort to say morally questionable acts. The art of deducing where we stand is often the trickiest part though and is the part that matters, the rest being fair/unfair are mere consequences and maybe, maybe in light of all this it's just worthwhile to reserve judgement until all the facts are presented.

Live and let live ...

It's been a rather long night talking to a friend, who is going through a break-up and I found myself expounding my own theories on how to move on.

Everyone knows that break-ups are painful. The ego is hurt. The pride has to be swallowed. There are and will always be unanswered questions. There is trauma. Dreams evaporate before your very eyes. There is anger. There is depression. There is a feeling of being inadequate. There is a feeling of being totally useless. There are immediate regrets and what ifs. What if I had tried this, tried that? Would things be different? There are fleeting thoughts of what is the purpose of life and what's next. There are vague hazy visions of the future. There will be philosophical questions about yourself, about the existence of God, about whether justice exists in the world today. Well, let's just say it is and it would be a total mess that's simply not possible to explain without experiencing for oneself.

There are multiple ways to deal with it and while it's simply not possible to be so cold blooded-ly analytical and logical (as below) at a time when emotions and tempers will run high, it's not impossible as well.

There is the well familiar way of venting out your frustrations, of trying to reverse the tables of inadequacy, hurt ego back on to the other person. This is probably best captured in numerous movies. The most recent one that comes to my mind is 'Jab we met'.
The problem with this approach is it gives rise to anger and you simply can't say when you are in control and when your own anger is going to consume you. How would one know how much of retaliation is enough? How would you know when to stop, when you are undergoing all the feelings that I had explained earlier in this post? You read so many stories of how things went bad and then turned so violent. A more fundamental problem that I have with this approach is that you start to ridicule your own feelings. Let's say you loved someone deeply. Let's say things didn't work out. So would your love or what you felt be simply changed to hatred just because it didn't work out? Just because the other person left you away? That's so convenient. Is your love so conditional that it can exist only if the other person reciprocated? So fragile? What then is the meaning of unconditional love? Isn't all of love supposed to be unconditional? What then is love itself, if not unconditional? Why bother with these feelings if it's anything else? Does it matter?

Ok. So if love is unconditional, how do i ever move on? Well, that's precisely what brings us to another approach, seldom practiced out in the real world.
First is to realize that relationships seldom break-up cause of one person alone. On the face of it, it might seem that one person is totally at fault and the other totally perfect, but when you strip the facade and look deeper, there will be some size-able fault with both the people involved.
Secondly the person undergoing the painful break-up simply wishes the other person well, and walks away upholding his/her dignity. Find constructive ways in which you can channel your energies to create something of beauty, something of joy.
Write a novel...
Learn music...
Sketch something...
Learn a new hobby...
Tinker around with an automobile...
Go on a long tour...
Direct a movie...
Work like mad!...
Call up and surround yourself with friends, people whose company you enjoy...
Do home interiors...
Participate in contests and competitions...
Try to win a few...
Do some sudoku...
Try cooking new cuisines...
Run a marathon...
Get into a fitness regime...
or just try something different!

Slowly you would re-build yourself, re-invent yourself, feeling good about yourself and the day you are able to do that and be able to think of your past with a smile, know that you are ready all over again to share your life with someone else. This, arguably is significantly harder, for it involves not having to betray your own feelings of what you had felt once, but still being able to simply accept the past and move on...

Moving on is just a state of acceptance of things as they are and you don't necessarily need hate to do that...

Live and let live...

Cricket - The game of life

The proponents of the game of cricket must have been very philosophical indeed. No other attribute can be deemed more accurate for including the controversial L.B.W rule in the rule book. The rule is fairly simple. It's ambiguities stem from it's interpretation by the wise old umpires in the heat of the battle. For some, it turns out to be lucky breaks. Some are given out, when they least expect it. What it is and how it will pan out and affect the course of a game is any one's guess, but in spite of all it's short-comings, it has one oft over-looked quality. It balances things somehow in the game's larger interests, just as we expect life to be one large roller-coaster with it's high shrieks of joy and miserable lowly pits. Well, that's the expectation anyway...

I am not aware of any other game where apart from skill, such a huge slice of luck is required. Football with it's offside rule and the exceptionally rare hand of God goal by Maradona might seem to come close, but in reality, it is by no means even a distant second. The L.B.W is and will always remain the striking force, it is, for it's consistency in causing upsets, when least expected, just as it happens around us.

If you thought L.B.W was the holy grail of cricket's balance, then think again. The toss, the nature of the pitch, the whims of the rain lord, the run rate calculation algorithm might occasionally have even bigger impacts. Couple them all together, and you have a game which can be dull and prosaic even before the first ball is bowled or head for a pulsating humdinger, where the result is not known even after the last ball is bowled. so it is with life.

With the advent of close range cameras, hawk eyes and a lot more technological sophistication, a lot of decisions are under constant scrutiny. Each shot is analyzed and re-looked from various angles, until you start debating whether there could be a phase beyond boredom. What would you prefer? Re-analyze everything or know that Kapil Dev did play a chance-less innings and rescued India from a impossible situation with a knock of 175. There was a strike that day and that glorious innings was never captured on video. That, however does not take it's importance away, but rather only serves to magnify it. The aura of mystery continues to remain, as long as it is not replayed. That, it was never recorded happened for a reason, perhaps to remind us that it is futile to re-play incidents, happy or sad.

Recently there has been no dearth of bending the game's rules. More rules to challenge the umpire, their decisions, even to the extent of going ahead to sack them. Almost everyone seems to welcome some of these latest additions. Little do they realize, that they are robbing the game of cricket of one of it's glorious natures, that of holding a mirror to it's alter ego, the game of life.

For within the confines of cricketing uncertainties, lies the certainties of life, and that being, life itself is uncertain ...



I have no inclination to blog, though this site was created quite some time back. The site has been crying out to me, every now and then to put up something. It only seemed fitting that I humour it's dearest wish by posting what I did, to remind itself, in no uncertain terms about it's own future...