RAMBLINGS UNDER AN AMUSED SKY ...ACCEPT THE REJECTING

..."Accept everything. When you reject something, you reject a part of yourself. Pick it up, reshape it and give it the meaning that echoes the music of your life. There is nothing else you need to know about God and Godliness."......(AND A VARIATION ON THAT ..OR IS IT JUST A CONTINUATION ?? ))

RAMBLINGS UNDER AN AMUSED SKY

".When you find you are in no mood to accept, and that you are in fact in a mood strongly to reject, go ahead and do that, and accept that attitude too; its part of your acceptance of the self which rejects. Be happy, if that -- rejecting -- makes you feel good; but don't bother if you are unhappy over that too.. you might as well enjoy being unhappy, or whatever you want to be; if its unhappy that you want to be, its unhappy that you should be. If that indulgence in unhappiness gets you some nice feeling,like feeling special etc., its wonderful. And -- what's glorious -- its not such a grave sin to want to be unhappy. ( The problem may be that you don't know you want to be unhappy and thats the only reason why you are unhappy; you might think the whole universe wants u miserable while you want to smile. Wrong ...more often than not.) Go ahead and enjoy your unhappiness. Lots of others are doing it. Quite often, feeling miserable or sad is a way of announcing a moral superiority. Our unhappiness is quite often a judgement passed on our surroundings or on the people we meet in life. That judgement needn't be right. And don't let this little bother about being right or wrong interfere with your indulgence or your moral self-righteousness. We spend most of our lives being viciously self-righteous. Read all the comments on Facebook, especially those relating to issues moral, social or political. You will be amused or surprised or peeved ( depending on how you want to feel) over just how many people find people bad. People are so full of contempt for people and people think they love people but people don't understand or love them. Its gets to a point that people forget who are the people whom the people are talking about really . It can be hilarious except that it usually marks you out as utterly idiotic even while you sit out there smugly believing that 'people' does not include you. Sometimes its so funny to know how many people would hate to be called people. That will rob them of a precious target to hate. Generally, people can afford a belief that people are bad !

Return to Facebook's number one and sublime USP: the fact of its being full of experts on fields of which these experts are no part. Its amusing how passing a judgement against people who are in a profession which they have never dared to enter is not only a national pastime; its a global 'feel good' factor.i Nothing makes us feel good as much as talking bad does. Nothing seems to make us feel pious and clean as much as rolling in the muck against others does. You needn't be peeved at it though you might be. Its only a harmless little fun, generally at the cost of others and generally meant to announce a moral superiority of one's own or of some icon or idea we have chosen to identify with -- and using that icon and idea as nothing more than a stick to beat those whose faces and voices we find unpleasant. Being good is no fun if you can't prove someone --preferably everyone --else around you bad and evil. Being good wouldn't be half the fun it is if there were not enough bad people around !!. If you indulge , you are fine. If you find that this world is full of only two kinds of people -people you can hate and people you can ignore--- if you find also that this world is full either fools or knaves ( or both), barring a handful you whom you have selected as symbols of all the virtues which you believe that you possess and you want others to possess ; if you find that pious and noble people are heavily outnumbered in this world and that you are at the head of this minority ; if you find that no one can succeed where you have not succeeded except through brutal force, money or deceit or some such talent; if you find that you are no higher in life than you are, and that the only reasons for this are that you were not born in a rich and powerful family or that you are not mean and hypocritical enough; and if you find that your beliefs like these are no insult to countless honest and successful people in this world; in short, if you find that you are fully justified in all the bitterness and other negative stuff you harbour against those whom you have declared to be either your opponents or enemies or at leas "unlike" you, then you can go home, pour yourself a drink and enjoy the evening. All your beliefs and responses about and towards life and 'people' stated above conclusively prove one thing: you are normal and you don't need to be taken to a psychiatrist. Have you ever noticed that more often than not, dogs bark at no one in particular and for no reason in particular. They are merely expressing an annoyance at their neglect by their master or by a passer-by. Dogs are so innocent. They do all the wrong things for all the right reasons. But they do all the right things for all the right reasons. That's where we differ from them. But at the heart of hearts, its the same instinct. If we could accept a pack howling their way to divine emancipation and bliss, we can also accept all the little idiosyncrasies I mentioned above . There is no need to be contemptuously dismissive of these idiosyncrasies. These in fact are a set of cradle conduct norms, and beautifully simple and enjoyable for that reason. The only problem with these is just so much bitterness we get into on account of these. If we could somehow howl without reason but forget as soon as the barking was over; if we could also be simple and stupid yet loving and happy -- somewhat like Whitman's animals ... and, above all, if we could also just listen to others without a premeditated holy resolve to invent how and where we want to differ with what we hear.. if we could just look at a tapestry of small truths of life, some of which are ridiculous and some others meaningless and still some others that may not agree with our notions of a perfect, ideal world.. If we could somehow walk through life, smiling generally and hurt only a real thorn runs into tender flesh -- and in all cases, refusing to complain against the thorn even while coolly and efficiently exercising our right to take the thorn out -- if we could stroll through life without much fanfare and pompy-oompy proclamations of self-righteousness and without an " I -will-die-or-kill- to-have-the-world-answer-to-my-needs-for-holy-perfection" attitude -- then, perhaps, we may not make this planet an abode for a scientifically perfect and advanced generation which might turn out to be the emperor of cosmos, but we might leave the world a little less unhappy than we found it. During my university days, we had a chapter titled "On Doing Nothing", a small, sumptuous but simple comment on the virtues of a delightfully lazy attitude to life. It ended with something like this: "All the trouble in this world is caused by people who believe that they must always be up and doing, and worse, by people who actually are up and doing. Without them, there would be no holocaust, no atom bomb, gas chambers and no wars and no repression and slavery. There may also be no aeroplanes, no ships, no cell phones, computers, ACs, fluorescent tubes, automatic watches, internet, virtual TV . But there could be more leasure and more happiness and more peace." ( Not the exact word; Sanjeev Ahluwalia who used to be student would perhaps help by recalling and reproducing the exact quote); But relax, he needn't be up and doing either. I would rather have him relax and enjoy than scurry for lap top to google)... And Let the typos and other errors also remain where they are !!!).... Fall in love. In love -- not with this or that, but just in love. Fall in love thus; but beware philosophizing even on love. Nothing renders love hollow and cluttered more than spinning philosophies does. Talk about love, by all means; and talk without direction, without purpose, without reason, without a need to prove this or that about love. Love stands self-proven. But you can enjoy talking about it because it feels nice. Just talk as you love talking. Once done with talking, get back to the real thing: love. What is true of love is even more true of truth. ( And God !! What talking and talking and talking and talking is going on here !!! :) :) :) But am I talking or singing -- without the notes??? :) 

Psychological singularity and God experience..

 Contrary to popular versions of god-experience, religion has practically nothing to do with the next world, or life hereafter. I am not forgetting all that literature,  talking about reward and punishment in next life, but that is where organised religions differ from relgious experience of the kind that mystics are believed to have had. As in Zen, so in all religious experience, it is about "here" and "now"...to experience the" hereness" of the here and the "nowness" of now. Meditation too is about stopping your mind from wandering into future or possibilities and to focus only on the simple -life exprience of now-ness and hereness. Its about eliminating past and present and focusing on shunaya -- the zero, the nothingness.  Pranayam too is all about that. After-life be damned; its about filling your present moment with Godness ( which is another name for the experience of fullness of life and of one's being) Its got nothing to with the ideas of your sins being visited upon you in later life-- or your virtue being rewarded. Its about surrender to whatever is, and to submit to the overpowering force of God-ness, cosmos, universe, or laws of universe ( also known as 'hukam' in religious  lexicon). There is nothing supernatural about it. Religious experience is all about Nature-experience. or fullness-experience.By Nature, we  mean all that  there is, and to experience all that there is in a single moment of highest density--, a moment that is as infinitely powerful as the absolute and infinite gravity of cosmic singularity .. that's religious experience. Its like hitting upon a psychological singularity; the absolute gravity, when everything is contained in an invisible small point of mind and matter.   In short, all the mountains of theorizing about how a certain creature resembling in many ways man and known as God created man and everything else, and how our actions will determine an after-life etc....these were fairy tales as first lessons in primitive education to teach mankind in its infancy. But soon, the race grew out of infancy and the Hindu savants and Muslim faqirs and Zen masters  and others realised that life is all about the moment that is upon us and what we make of it. Pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow -- they all exist in the present only. Future is an abstraction and past a name given to mere memory......don't i already talk like some savant gone out of his mind ?????????? ..............  Thats my  present, may be And present alone is the reality. jo bhi hai, bus yahi ik pal hai....is pal ke hone se duniya hamaari hai / ye pal jo dekho to, sadion pe bhari hai, ...ye pal ujaala hai, baki andhera hai....( Says Eliot: Time past and time future are both contained in time present, which is eternally present... something to this effect.)

 Let's lead ourselves inward to where the very best resides within us -- that best is none but our own reflection-- in fact, that best is we ourselves.


Crooks will do what the crooks should do; its their job. Our job is to focus on what we will and must do. We owe it to no one except ourselves.No armies of crooks can be used to justify our own neglect of our own simple job: to focus on the best within us -- HERE AND NOW .

Zillet-e-Khauf-e-sahar na ho to parvana hi kya? Urdu poem

Gaafil-e-mehfil shama na ho to jal jana hi kya?
Zillat-e-khauf-e-sahar na ho ta parvaana hi kya ?

Ladkhadata dar-b-dar jo mar na jaaye, kaisa Qais?
Zinda gar tere bhi dar pahuncha to phir deewana kya?

Tashnagi main masti-e-hasti mille to jaanu rind,
Pi ke hi behka jo main to shokhiy-e-rindaana kya?.

Hazel:nothing contradicts nothing

HAZEL May 23, 2012 9.00 PM

"You are the only proof you need and the only proof you will ever get that you are not an illusion.  You are not a seeker of Truth but Truth itself. You and your seeking and that which  you seek are all rolled in within you. All else is an illusion, and eNothing cven that illusion is part of you only. Don't shy away from that it but accept it for what it is meant to be: a plaything for your mind."

And then after a pause," Accept everything. When you reject something, you reject a part of yourself. Pick it up, reshape it and give it the meaning that echoes the music of your life. There is nothing else you need to know about God and Godliness. "

Words seemed to wing towards him from afar, carried aloft a gentle, almost imperceptible easterly wind. And for the first time, the words were beginning to mean something. But the words contradicted everything he had learnt in life , even the good things or things he thought were good. Even more important, these words   ran contrary to everything she had told him in life. There was a tinge of deep disquiet , so unlike her, in her voice, and the words seemed to belong to a person he had never her to be. "Had she given up on all that she stood for, all that she had suffered for -- uncomplainingly, stoically, even happily? Had she hit upon the untruth of her life?"

He struggled with these thoughts as she caught him looking at her with eyes that carried a little puzzlement and disbelief and confusion. And she smiled at him again and this was the smile he had always known since his childhood. This smile had always defined all that he was and had always in a strange way, stripped him bare to the soul . What it revealed was a little trusting child.

She smiled gently and but today the smile unsheathed a strange discomfiture in him. Till she started speaking again.

"White does not contradict black; it only defines that. Darkness is not the absence of light but only a proof of its presence elsewhere. Truth is not timed and therefore it is not eternal either. It is eternal because it dies every second, every hour, and in its death is truth reborn. That which does not surprise is not truth but there is nothing that will not surprise if our minds had not fallen dead. Life is nothing but the ability to receive and respond to surprises. The moment surprises cease, something like death takes hour. There is no happiness except that carried to you in little packets of surprises. Life is bringing surprises with every breath; quite often, these are too many for us to stand or even acknowledge. From one heart-beat to the next, it is all surprises. Total predictability, total consistency, total death. There is another name for death; boredom. And an even worse form of it: insensitivity. Do I make sense even today? If I do, the you or I need to reconsider our position. Life does not and is not meant to make no sense. Life lived fully is a ceaseless ecstasy, and ecstasy makes nonsense of all your norms and laws and sense and reason."

She stopped speaking. But around head and in her eyes, a storm raged in full fury. And he was still wondering , why is there so much calm and peace behind her eyes that rolled like a frenzy. Suddenly, he was reminded of the pot-makers wheel that moved in feverish circles but looked perfectly still at the center.

The moon above shone with more than a cool glow and its rays kissed the tops of the trees and the bosom of the river in their wonted loving way. And the dark heart of the forest also shone bright under moonlight. There was absolutely peace all around, broken occasionally by the competitive blare of temples and Gurdwara in the nearby town. 

Why defeat in love is sweeter than victory in war?

Why do I love ideas but am suspicious of all ideologies? Why do I not need a God to be religious and why do I not need a religion to love God? Why do cosmos and God mean everything together and each nothing at all by itself ?  Why do I not have to  believe in scriptures in order to be thrilled by them? Why do I love prophets but am never able to respect them? Why do morality, virtue and evil seem so ridiculous and compassion so profound? Why do loyalty and love not mean anything to me together and everything each by itself? Why have I felt that it is impossible to say "I love this but do not love that? Why have I always felt that love is something else when qualified by an object? That one can only say "I love", but not that "I love this,  or I love that?"  Why pain is noble and profound when it belongs to someone else and a bit of a selfish pity when one's own? Why pain has a higher meaning than love? Why does even the happiness you bring to a humiliated mother or a suffering child or helpless sister or poor father far nobler and intense than even the greatest bliss the fulfillment of a relationship can bring? Why being truthful and pious in a relationship is nobler than being alone and happy, and yet an overwhelming feeling of being in love with no one in particular brings you closer to an even higher bliss? Why defeat in love is sweeter than victory in war? Why losing humility is a bigger loss than losing an argument, even a war? When will these questions cease? Should they?



     Organised religions, no matter how noble their objectives initially must have been and no matter how useful a purpose they must have served in introducing some sort of order in primitive societies, have come to be identified more with exploitation, mayhem, hatred and cunning than with the professed noble goals. Certainly, I regard these religions -- and other forms of religious bigotry like communism, socialism or whatever( even secularism, which by itself has become an intolerant communal group) --......I regard these religions and ideologies as not only mischievous but also brutal and cunning. SO clearly, my God is not a separate entity, an iconic emblem of morality wielding draconian powers. I am closer to Einstein's -- and mystic's -- concept of God, and that God defies all definitions and contours. At best, even religions talk about the same force --Nau - Nav - name -- also mean energy. ( Jeta keeta, teta nau... All that exists is Energy) Obviously, no sane man can accept ideas that run contrary to empirical evidence,and thus a God creating man in his own image at one stroke is out for me. But the symbolic value of that myth still remains profound. Interestingly, despite the loud political sloganeering around the findings of scientific discoveries, especially around Darwin, the theory of origins and evolution of species changes nothing except details about the act of creation; as for the essentials of cosmic mysteries, only half baked religioinists and half-baked scientists would get into a quarrel. There is vast zone of agreement between them. A book, Tao of Physics, makes an interesting reading in this regard. That the book is written by a scientist of great repute -- Capra -- helps. But my observations draw only partially on those ideas.

Sunnycaves: Ideology is what remains once life and passion have fled from an idea

Sunnycaves: Ideology is what remains once life and passion have fled from an idea  Hazel

Ideology is what remains once life and passion have fled from an idea

Ideology is what remains once life and passion have fled from an idea. Life will be a lot simpler without ideologies of any kind. All ideologies eventually turn into religions and fall a prey to opinionated narrowness at best and fanaticism in general. It may sound incredible: more human blood has been shed in the name of these ideologies, with or without the religious content, than in the pursuance of any selfish individual goals, including personal hatred and greed.


Talking to trees is love;  tree-ism is ideology. Only in the sense of becoming sanctified dedication of a eprsonal feeling deos the word "religion" have a safe and a beautiful meaning.

Peace cometh dropping in as dew on a petal

Sometimes, I give myself company and look back at the hectic year or so that went by with such hurly burly mental adventurisms that I hardly had time to be with myself, even for a minute. But because I have never regretted anything in life, treating even mistakes as part of the learning process, I can look back peacefully and smile at my own stupidities. But all that feels like a montage of quickly shifting images from some previous life, lived many a millenia ago....all those passionate fights, debates and all. Great fun, but nothing much more. But for what it was, it was certainly enjoyable -- and, who knows, even useful. As I said, I never regret even my losses and look at them as investments in peace and happiness. May be, the peace that is dropping slow in on my soul these days may be the fruit of the feverish investments of my past. Even if that were not so, I would not trade the treasures dropping in on my lap  with a Kingdom of  Heaven.

        And I have often found it  amazing how sometimes people you have never known in life, never met suddenly turn up into important images in that montage,  and  suffuse the whole spectrum of life with soft light when harsh colours are threatening to dominate everything around us. For this, the only natural response is  gratitude -- gratitude which itself brings peace dropping in as gentle dew on  some tender weather-ravaged petal on a  cool, clear dawn. I have often experienced that on some particularly dark days, a voice would come singing softly of how pregnant clouds sometimes proudly  wave their standard, challenging stormy winds that threaten to wipe them clean off the skies. Storm over, a cool breeze fills the vales and its peace everywhere.   (HAZEL)