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 |   As the first blog entry got exhausted. My second book |
| Evolution of Love Part 2 |
| I counted my years and realized that I have less time to live by, than I have lived so far. I have more past than future. I feel like that boy who got a bowl of cherries. At first, he gobbled them, but when he realized there were only few left, he began to taste them intensely. I no longer have time to deal with mediocrity. I do not want to be in meetings where flamed egos parade. I am bothered by the envious, who seek to discredit the most able, to usurp their places, coveting their seats, talent, achievements and luck. I do not have time for endless conversations, useless to discuss about the lives of others who are not part of mine. I no longer have the time to manage sensitivities of people who despite their chronological age, are immature. I hate to confront those that struggle for power, those that ‘do not debate content, just the labels’. My time has become scarce to debate labels, I want the essence. My soul is in a hurry … Not many cherries in my bowl, I want to live close to human people, very human, who laugh of their own stumbles, and away from those turned smug and overconfident with their triumphs, away from those filled with self-importance. The essential is what makes life worthwhile. And for me, the essentials are enough! Yes, I’m in a hurry. I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give. I do not intend to waste any of the remaining cherries. I am sure they will be exquisite, much more than those eaten so far. My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience. And per Confucius “We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one.” |
| TRANSCENDING CHRISTIANITY The French Catholic monk Swami Abhishiktananda, the time he spent at Arunachala - leading to a deep enlightenment experience towards the end of his life. He had darshan of Bhagavan in 1949, and in the early 1950s, he came back to Arunachala to spend time meditating in its caves. An account of his meeting with Bhagavan (who made a huge and very positive impression on him) and the months he spent meditating in the caves of Arunachala can be found in his book ‘The Secret of Arunachala’ which was published in the late 1970s, a few years after its author had passed away. Before coming to India Swami Abhishiktananda had spent more than twenty years as a Benedictine monk in a French monastery, where he was known as Father Henri le Saux. After some time in India, he adopted the robes and lifestyle of a Hindu sannyasi and called himself ‘Swami Abhishiktananda’. Despite the change of outfit and name, for many years he clung tenaciously to the basic tenets of the Catholic faith that he had been brought up in, feeling that the highest Christian experience and teachings were superior to their Hindu counterparts. In 1973 he had a heart attack on the streets of Rishikesh that left him unconscious and temporarily paralyzed. When he finally recovered his faculties, he instantly became aware that the Abhishiktananda who had held tightly to Catholic doctrine throughout his life had vanished, leaving just an impersonal experience of the underlying ‘I am’. This is how he wrote about it in letters to friends: ‘Who can bear the glory of transfiguration, of man's dying as transfigured; because what Christ is I AM! One can only speak of it after being awoken from the dead … . ‘It was a remarkable spiritual experience … While I was waiting on my sidewalk, on the frontier of the two worlds, I was magnificently calm, for I AM, no matter what in the world! I have found the GRAIL!’ In addition to writing several books that attempted to bridge the gap between Hinduism and Christianity, Abhishiktananda had been a regular contributor to seminars and conferences on the future development of Indian Christianity. After his great experience, he received an invitation to attend a Muslim gathering in France to give a Christian point of view. In declining the invitation, he revealed how all his old ideas had been swept away, and how he no longer felt able to expound a specifically Christian viewpoint: ‘The more I go [on], the less able I would be to present Christ in a way which would still be considered as Christian … For Christ is first an idea which comes to me from outside. Even more after my “beyond life/death experience” of 14.7 [.73] I can only aim at awakening people to what “they are”. Anything about God or the Word in any religion, which is not based on the deep “I” experience, is bound to be simple “notion”, not existential. ‘I am interested in no Christology at all. I have so little interest in a Word of God which will awaken man within history … The Word of God comes from/to my own “present”; it is that very awakening which is my self-awareness. What I discover above all in Christ is his “I AM” … it is that I AM experience which really matters. Christ Is the very mystery “That I AM”, and in the experience and existential knowledge all Christology has disintegrated.’ (‘Swami Abhishiktananda’, by James Stuart, ISPCK, 1989, pp. 348-9) Then, confirming that a lifetime’s convictions had been dropped, he went on to explain that the final Christian experience of ‘I am’ could not differ from its Hindu equivalent: ‘What would be the meaning of a “Christianity-coloured” awakening? In the process of awakening all this coloration cannot but disappear … The coloration might vary according to the audience, but the essential goes beyond. The discovery of Christ’s I AM is the ruin of any Christian theology, for all notions are burned within the fire of experience … I feel too much, more and more, the blazing fire of this I AM in which all notions about Christ's personality, ontology, history, etc. have disappeared.’ (‘Swami Abhishiktananda’, by James Stuart, ISPCK, 1989, p. 349) After a lifetime of meditation and research he had finally conceded that no explanation or experience could impinge on the fundamental reality, ‘I am’. Years before he had predicted that this standpoint would be the inevitable consequence of a full experience of ‘I am’: ‘Doctrines, laws, and rituals are only of value as signposts, which point the way to what is beyond them. One day in the depths of his spirit man cannot fail to hear the sound of the I am uttered by He-who-is. He will behold the shining of the Light whose only source is itself, is himself, is the unique Self … What place is then left for ideas, obligations or acts of worship of any kind whatever?’ (‘Saccidananda’ by Abhishiktananda, ISPCK, 1974, p. 46) ‘When the Self shines forth, the “I” that has dared to approach can no longer recognize its own self or preserve its own identity in the midst of that blinding light. It has, so to speak, vanished from its own sight. Who is left to be in the presence of Being itself. The claim of Being is absolute … All the later developments of the [Jewish] religion - doctrine, laws and worship – are simply met by the advaitin with the words originally revealed to Moses on Mount Horeb, “I am that I am” |
| Jesus said that the bread taken in the 'last supper' was his flesh, and the wine His blood. He meant that all beings alive with flesh and blood are to be treated as He Himself and that no distinction should be made between friend or foe, we or they. Everybody is His Body, sustained by the bread; every drop of blood flowing in the veins of every living being is His, animated by the activity that the wine imparted to it. That is to say, every man is divine and has to be revered as such. Jesus washed the feet of His disciples. When they asked Him why He was doing so, Jesus answered: “I am washing your feet as your servant, so that you may learn to serve the world." Jesus knew that God Wills all. So, even on the cross, when He suffered agony, He bore no ill-will towards any one and He exhorted those with Him to treat all as instruments of His Will. "All are one; be alike to everyone." Practise this attitude in your daily lives. |
| A very learned professor, who had traveled widely in India and Europe,remarked “The Ganges is said to be pure, but on visiting Varanasi I found the drains emptying themselves into the river, and a few yards away someone drinking the water; I was disgusted. I can’t bathe in the Ganges, it makes me feel sick.” Mataji: "The very nature of the Ganges is to purify. Whatever is immersed in the Ganges becomes absorbed by its purity, just as fire purifies. No matter what you throw into it, it will be burnt to ashes. You think tap-water is cleaner than Ganges-water, but tap-water at Varanasi also comes from the Ganges. It is a matter of point of view. From your angle of vision you are right. Yet, fundamentally purity and impurity are of the mind. There is only one Atmã. Filth and sandalpaste are both the ONE, there is neither purity nor impurity. The pure food you eat today will by tomorrow have turned into excrement, into filth. Nevertheless, some creatures feed on it. A dead body which is putrid floats on the Ganges. Vultures swoop down and eat.of its flesh. It is the vulture’s natural food, the bird thrives on it. Life is one. What is dirt to one creature, may be sustenance to another We must reach the state where we know the ONE alone and everything as His forms. There is only One Brahman, without a second." |
| --- “Why did you say that genocide doesn’t happen without your neighbors’ participation?” It was a young girl, catching up after my talk. I had just finished giving a talk at a university followed by a long question and answer session. -- I was at the end of a book tour of ‘The Infidel Next Door’ a work of fiction based on how the Kashmiri way of life was brought to an end through a systematic pogrom. In talk after talk, the Kashmiri pandits had shared a platform with me talking about their exodus. Their feelings had emerged raw, flowed like a stream through the mountain crevices. Their emotions bottled up for decades and hidden from the world, sometimes from each other had burst forth due to abrogation of Article 370 tearing apart the carefully constructed wall of an aggrieved community living through a self imposed alienation for their survival. -- “I am a second generation Kashmiri pandit brought up here,” she continued, “I was too young when my parents ran away from the valley in 1990. How we ran away from Kashmir remains a silent topic in our family,” she said. “I have one question that has always bothered me. How did our neighbors behave when we ran away? I have asked my parents many times but they don’t tell me. Sometimes they say we were too busy running away to notice but I believe the answer is different.” “I will write an answer for you.” I promised her and walked away knowing that the answer might be long and couldn’t be contained in a single sentence. My host had joined us telling me it was time for me to go and catch my flight. Also, some answers are better read in private spaces rather than be discussed in public. -- As I came to the airport and sat in the comfort of my plane, an image from long ago began to emerge. I was sitting in Tihar jail, India’s infamous prison and taking a group with militants. They were laughing, and their words seemed to mock. -- They were from Kashmir, were militants and the talk had turned to the exodus of the Kashmiri pandits from the valley on 19th January 1990. One of them spoke up. “It was a complete spectacle, a total entertainment, the running away. There was nothing like it in the Kashmir valley for a long time. It was as if a circus was going on. Not even when Pakistan won a cricket match had there been such a celebration and you think we will ever welcome them back? Till today it must be the most widely watched spectacle in the valley. We all knew they would be running away and didn’t miss it. It was a celebration and no one wanted to be excluded.” -- “Do you know my mother gave me new clothes to wear to watch them run away? She even cooked some delicious dishes on that day. Every family we know did so. It was a ‘davat’ (party) like atmosphere. My friend’s father gave him a pair of binoculars to go and watch it from the rooftop.” -- “So, it wasn’t a sudden event that took everyone by surprise?” I had asked. “Not at all. We all knew they would run away on that particular day,” he had replied. “You know the funniest thing about it is that no one has yet talked about it. Second the most important aspect was it happened in broad daylight, not in the darkness of the night. It had to be seen, watched like a circus, a full public spectacle, so that all of us could describe it to our future generations, preserved for posterity.” -- “So, do you talk to the younger people, the future generations?” “Yes, not only me but every family I know does so.” -- “Why did it have to be that way?” I had asked. -- “We wanted to see the fear, the terror in their eyes as they ran away,” he continued. -- In movies on ancient Rome, the cameras would often zoom-in on the eyes of the survivors in the coliseum and stay there showing his terror, the victim waiting for his death at the hands of either a lion or gladiator. The death was not fun, watching the terror in his eyes was. That is what the audience would pay for. They would watch fascinated, as they reveled wanting the scene to go on. It was an excitement, unequalled, the adrenalin flowing in. -- “Was the exodus of the Kashmiri Hindus any different in the eyes of their neighbors from that spectacle?” I had wondered. “We had decided to use slogans to terrorize them. They were raised from every mosque in the valley, by all the Imams who announced that ‘kafirs must leave the valley leaving their women behind’.” -- “Do you know why we did it? Because we felt it would be too much stress for us to pull the trigger four hundred thousand times.” He had continued, “We would have done that as a last resort only if it became necessary. We realized it would be much simpler if we could make them run away mentioning that we are eyeing their women. Once gone, they would die of the heat, diseases and illnesses they were not used to. There would be no culpability on us, no guilt to carry. Who would say it was a genocide in Kashmir?” -- His words seem prophetic and visionary seen thirty years later. No one in the world today accuses the Kashmiri Muslims of committing a genocide on their neighbors. On the contrary the Kashmiri Muslims are crying ‘victim’ for their disconnected phone connections and the democrats, the liberals and the labor parties of the world are not only listening but shedding tears at the gross violation of human rights. -- Wasn’t it the biggest mass delusion of all times when four hundred thousand, many times more outside Kashmir believed that it is only a matter of time, a few months at the most when the Kashmiri pandits will come back amongst the same people who had threatened to lynch them? -- I had listened to the details with a sense of déjà vu, an unreality that pores down to my bones even today. The precision, the planning, the execution had been flawless to the last detail. The atmosphere in the group had turned unreal, surreal and a bit nauseating. Every sequence in it had been given attention to and worked out with perfection. From calculating the number of pandits in each village and hamlet, the corresponding number of people assigned to threaten them to leave and the policemen who were relied upon to look the other way, everything was precise to put even Adolf Eichmann to shame. -- When the meeting had ended, I had walked away feeling emotionless. His narration rang in my ears. The murders of pandits had followed a template, a script down to the last detail. Even the date of 19th January 1990 was worked out keeping in mind logistical issues across the border. The militants and the local population had formed a team to become collaborators. Pandits were killed execution style in broad daylight so that it served as a warning for everyone to never imagine coming back to their homes. Kashmiri Muslims in this were not bystanders but active participants. The plan shrouded in secrecy and silence was kept away from the pandits, from the world at large under the umbrella of ‘Kashmiriyat’ otherwise known as mass denial. -- For too long, the majority in India has been at the receiving end of violence and persecution. In Kashmir, in Bengal, in Punjab, in many other nondescript places, no one asks why certain neighbors turn on certain days saying convert or leave and ‘my God is the only God’. Why they threaten to kill, maim and intimidate those with whom they have supposed to have lived for generations in harmony? No one ever asks who started it first, least of all journalists who swear by freedom of speech. The reaction, the response becomes more important than the trigger that caused it. There is a magical thinking that runs deep, in communities who have lived under slavery that somehow this time, things will work out if we stay silent and don’t ask hard questions. That all questions as to the motive of perpetrators be never raised. That things come back to normal if one looks at the other way, don’t look at perpetrator in the eye and demand to know why he did it. As a result no one asks why and who started the direct action day in Bengal, who set fire and murdered the women and children in Godhra train massacre? -- Today, it is we who have become the new neighbors. The boundary has shrunk and is coming to our doorsteps. We didn’t speak up when they needed us. In Kashmir, in Bengal, in Punjab. We stayed silent thinking it will never be us. -- As I write this, the faces of an entire Hindu family butchered to death in West Bengal stares at us asking for justice. Their murderers enjoy an impunity like every other murderer of mass violence has enjoyed in India for ages. -- Only if we decide today collectively to stop that impunity that binds us and ask for accountability from our perpetrators, I believe there is hope and justice for the future generations to practice their faith without fear. -- Millions have been slaughtered for their religious belief throughout our nation’s history. We as a people owe a redemption to our ancestors that their sacrifice for us did not go in vain. -- |
| *Doctors in India changing the way they practice* From a Mumbai doctor. 👨🏼⚕️ "My surgeon friend can perform excellent cancer surgeries, but he only does appendix, Gallbladder and hernias. My physician friend is a jack of all from stomach to heart to brain....but he is content doing opds for fever bp sugar. My ENT friend can do intricate endoscopic sinus,skullbase surgeries, throat cancer surgeries...but he does only polyps and foreign body removals. My dentist friend specialized in Head and neck cancer surgeries, but he is happy doing tooth extraction and RCTs. My anaesthetist friend is a wizard in the ICU with life saving skills up his sleeves, but he is content giving spinal for appendix surgeries. My OBGy friend excels in handling complicated pregnancies and obstetric emergencies...but she rather practices in IVF and gynaecology. My Orthopaedic friend is a master of Joint replacements, but he does only external fixations and a few nailings. My Pediatrician friend is an expert in managing preterm babies, but he closed his NICU and does only OPD consulations. My Cardiologist friend is a master of intervention and does stenting in minutes, but he happily does only 10-5 OPD consulations. *The reason is simple, they dont want to take risk and get killed by an irate mob.* *They all prefer refering even the slightest complicated case to a HIGHER CENTRE, having its own armed Guards, expensive security system & links with local police headquarters.* *No point risking your life for a thankless society.* Do your 10 to 5 and chill 😎😄 *This is going to be the India of tomorrow"* |
| In two independent houses, separeted by a compound wall... Two people were staying, in one a retired person and in the other a techie. They had planted identical saplings on either sides of the compound. The techie used to give lot of water and manure to the plants. The retired, just small quantity of water and little manure. The techies plant grew into lush green, leafy robust plant. The retired person's plant was a near normal but much luxuriant than his neighbor's. One night there was a heavy rain with gusty wind. Next morning both came out to see the fate of the plants. To techie's surprise his plant had got uprooted where as his neighbor's was unharmed! Techie asks the retired as why his plant was uprooted despite such a good care where as the neighbor had hardly cared. *The retired person's answer should be a lesson for all of us:* Look young man, you had supplied every thing a plant would need, in abundance... and the plant did not have to go in search of it... Your roots did not have to go down. I was supplying just enough to keep it alive. For the rest roots had to go down into the ground to fulfil it's needs. Since your roots were superficial, the rain and wind could easily fell it... Since my roots were pretty deeply grounded, they could withstand the onslaught of the nature. |
My wife, Judy, had been after me for several weeks to varnish the wooden seat on our toilet. Finally, I got around to doing it while Judy was out. After finishing, I left to take care of another matter before she returned. She came in and undressed to take a shower. Before getting in the shower, she sat on the toilet. As she tried to stand up, she realized that the not-quite-dry epoxy paint had glued her to the toilet seat. About that time, I got home and realized her predicament. We both pushed and pulled without any success whatsoever. Finally, in desperation, I undid the toilet seat bolts. Judy wrapped a sheet around herself and I drove her to the hospital emergency room. The ER Doctor got her into a position where he could study how to free her (Try to get a mental picture of her bottom the doctor was looking at.) Judy tried to lighten the embarrassment of it all by saying, "Well, Doctor, I'll bet you've never seen anything like this before." The Doctor replied, “Actually, I've seen lots of them- I just never saw one mounted and framed." 😆😜😂 |
| Whenever you have to accept anything from others, take only just as little as you actually need; but when you are the giver, try your utmost to satisfy fully the person who receives. Widening your shriveled heart, make the interests of others your own and serve them as much as you can by sympathy, kindness, gifts and so forth. Whenever you have the opportunity, give to the poor, feed the hungry, nurse the sick. But if you are incapable of doing anything else, you can at least cultivate goodwill and benevolence towards all and pray for their welfare. |
| Be thankful for the difficult times, you grow. Be thankful to each new challenges, because it will build you strength and character. Be thankful to your mistakes, they will teach you valuable lesson. Honestly I feel jealous whenever you give someone the kind of attention I want from you. Not everyone thinks the way you think know the things you know, believe the things u believe, nor acts the way you could acts. Remember this you will go long way in getting along with people. Relax and refuse to let worry and stress in life, there is always a solution will workout for you when you refresh, restore and recharge your own soul. What ever life gives you even if it huts, just be strong and act like you are okay, strong winds shake but never collapse. |
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